Love Finds You in Hershey, Pennsylvania (15 page)

After the nurse left, Jasper addressed him again. “You’re sure you don’t have a thing for Sadie?”

“A thing? Oh, you mean do I think she’s cute?”

“Yeah,” Jasper confirmed.

Dmitri shrugged. “Sadie is a very pretty woman, but I fear she is too…what did she call it? Accident-prone, for me.”

Japer grinned delightedly and with a dreamy sigh said, “Yeah. Yeah, she is.”

Dmitri couldn’t help thinking that if Sadie was crazy then Jasper must be too. They were perfect for each other.

Jasper snapped out of it. “In that case, Dmitri Velichko, I think I’m going to need your help.”

The sermon that Sunday morning was on forgiveness. About how God granted second chances and people should too.

Sadie found herself sinking lower and lower into her seat as Dmitri listened with attentive interest. What made matters worse was the man who sat in the very back of the church—the last row on the left-hand side. Sadie had noted him when she entered but pretended she hadn’t seen as she took her seat halfway up the aisle. Dmitri took the end beside her, amid many a jealous glare shot at Sadie from numerous single, eligible young ladies.

Sadie didn’t notice any of them. She was too concerned with whether the guy in the back had seen her.

The guy was Mac.

And the sermon was for her. She was sure of it.

“What kind of life would that be like?” Pastor Samuel asked. “What kind of
love
is that like? To forgive the worst of transgressions—to love despite the most horrific of misdeeds? Jesus was mocked, spit on, and despised for what crime? Because He
loved
. Not only loved of His own accord, but He demanded that very thing from those who followed Him. What kind of God demands you to love not only your
own
enemies…but your neighbor’s enemies? Your best friend’s enemies? Even the enemies of your child? What kind of God does He think He is?” the pastor demanded, before answering his own question.

“A God who weeps with you. Who cries your tears and then wipes them away. A God who sees your worst and loves you in spite of it while all the time cheering for the very best He knows you can be. What kind of God demands that we forgive our enemies? A God who forgives His. A God who forgives
us
.”

Sadie felt a lump form in her throat. She couldn’t resist the urge anymore. She glanced over her shoulder, back at Mac. He didn’t see her gaze, though. His eyes were closed, and there were tears on his cheeks.

Sadie wasn’t even sure he’d heard the pastor’s words. But it looked like he’d
felt
them. Maybe that was the better way to receive them anyhow. She turned back around.

When the service ended, Dmitri thanked her profusely for inviting him. He’d been looking for a church for some time and thought that maybe this could be it. He wanted to go speak with the pastor, but he had to ask her something first.

She waited politely, all the while wondering if Mac was still sitting in the back row. She dare not look.

“Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asked.

Her eyes, which had wandered surreptitiously to the side, suddenly flew back to his face. His expression was open, innocent of deceit. His cool blue eyes reflected honest invitation, and his perfect white teeth were aligned in a smile.

What? Really?
Had yesterday’s experience affected his short-term memory? Didn’t he realize she was jinxed?
From the expectant way he was grinning at her, he was apparently serious.

Oh…why not.
“All right,” she conceded. “If Jasper is willing to babysit, that is,” she amended. Something about suggesting that Jasper babysit while she went out on another date with Dmitri twisted her tongue and made her feel as though she’d swallowed a mouthful of Tabasco.

It hurt.

But Dmitri grinned broadly. “I doubt Jasper will have a problem with it.”

Oh? And how do
you
know so much?

She only smiled weakly.

“I’ll call you,” he told her.

“All right,” she agreed.

“Do you need a ride home—you and Kylie?”

She shook her head. “We’ll be fine. Thanks.”

He rushed off to speak with the pastor. Sadie turned. Just as she’d thought, Mac still sat in the back row…watching her.

She made her way down the aisle, stopping to greet acquaintances as they called her name. One mother thanked her for the party—Billy hadn’t stopped talking about it since he’d returned, telling a fascinating story about poisoning one of the guests. She hadn’t known it was one of those murder-mystery parties. Sadie didn’t tell her otherwise. Smith and Jones cackled behind their hands as she went by, but she smiled brightly at them, taking a stab at the forgiveness thing by genuinely wishing them a wonderful afternoon.

They stopped laughing.

By the time she reached Mac, he was waiting for her. She didn’t know what he expected, nor what she was there to offer. The sermon had spoken to her but not enough to warrant forgiveness for nearly thirty years of bitterness and disappointment. She gripped the back of a chair and attempted to offer a stepping-stone, if nothing else.

“Would you like to have lunch with Kylie and me?”

Mac’s smile found its way straight to her soul and warmed her with the assertion that she had made the right move.

“There’s nothing I’d like better, Sadie girl.”

Mac knew, from Jasper, that Sadie and Kylie had a tradition of eating Sunday luncheon at Suncatchers each week. Kylie didn’t get to come into the restaurant much otherwise, but Sundays were special. She and Sadie sat at the same table—beneath Kylie’s display of sun-catchers—and talked, Mac supposed, about anything and everything mothers and daughters share. At times, Jasper said he would join them, when he wasn’t visiting his aunt. But sometimes he knew it was best to give them their girl time.

Now, sitting in the atmosphere his daughter had worked so hard to create, amid her mother’s collection of suncatchers, with Kylie chattering at her side, Mac felt another piercing stab of regret for the years lost, the moments squandered, the time spent.

How could he have wasted so much?

Sadie and Mac didn’t do much talking over lunch. What was there to say, after all? Kylie easily filled the void, however, with her chatter about the birthday party, the cake, Jasper running off to the hospital, and “Grampa” tearing apart the volcano to get Jasper’s keys.

Kylie dunked her french fries into her ketchup (three dunks per fry, precisely) and then chewed them around a mouthful of words about yesterday’s adventures. Mac answered questions when asked but mostly sat basking in the glow of the girls’ companionship.

His girls.

He tried not to think of them in quite that light, considering that Sadie hadn’t said a word about actually forgiving him and letting him start over. But it was difficult not to see them that way. They were both such a delightful blend of him and Amelia.

They had long chestnut hair—long like Amelia’s, brown like his own—and matching chocolate eyes. Their skin was smooth, and their noses slightly indented at the tip. Amelia’s had been the same. Sadie’s lips were like hers, but Kylie’s were a little wider than Sadie’s.
Must be Ned’s mark on her,
Mac thought.

And then there were their mannerisms. Kylie dunked her fries just like Sadie had as a child. Most times when Mac sailed back into town, he’d take Sadie out for a burger and fries. And she’d dip each fry three times in the ketchup before popping it into her mouth. Just like Kylie was doing.

Mac looked at Sadie now. She chewed a bite of her salad and nodded at Kylie’s latest comment.
She doesn’t even know,
he thought sadly. She didn’t remember. But of course not—why should she? He hadn’t given her much worth remembering.

“You used to do that, you know.”

This sudden declaration, after so long in silence, caused both Kylie and Sadie to instantly fall quiet and turn their heads. Embarrassment shot through him.

“Do what?” Kylie asked.

Mac dropped his fork, wishing he hadn’t spoken aloud. Sadie’s soft voice eased him, however.

“Do what, Mac?” she echoed Kylie’s question.

He cleared his throat and gestured at Kylie’s fingers, still clutching the ketchup-coated spine of a fry.

“Dip your french fries in ketchup three times before eating them.” Despite his self-consciousness, he smiled his typical sad smile at the memory. “Three times. No more, no less. I’d take you for cheeseburgers and fries at—”

“The Bridge Diner,” Sadie filled in.

He nodded. “Yeah. You always got—”

“A cheeseburger, plain, except for relish and mustard. And french fries, the crimped kind, and the edges were always a little burnt.”

“But you liked them that way,” he whispered, stunned that she remembered such details. She’d only been a little girl. They’d stopped going to The Bridge by the time she turned twelve.

“And you had the Big Burger with all the toppings except onions— never onions—and your fries were always crimped too,” she said. “If I ate all mine, you’d give me some of yours. And we had milkshakes. Strawberry for me, vanilla for you. You’d give me a quarter for the jukebox and tell me to choose any song I liked.”

Mac felt his insides tearing in two. “And you always chose Elvis Presley.”

“ ‘It’s Now or Never.’ “

“It was your favorite,” he said.

“No.” She frowned. “It was yours. That’s why I picked it.”

Their table fell silent once more, the tension stretching in a palpable plane between them. Mac’s appetite disappeared, but it was Sadie who pushed her plate away. Kylie glanced at her mother’s unfinished food and then laid her tiny fingers over top of Sadie’s.

“You dipped your fries like Kylie?” she asked in her breathless child’s tone.

Mac was blinking rapidly. “She did, Kylie. She did.”

“Why don’t you do that anymore, Mommy?” she asked.

Sadie didn’t say anything.

“Mommy?”

“We’ll talk about it later, baby.” Her voice cracked on the last syllable.

The quiet that followed was extremely awkward. Kylie couldn’t stand it for more than a few moments.

“Grampa, Kylie wants to thank you for her birthday gift,” she said.

He smiled at her, his heart twisting with happiness. “You’re welcome, Kylie girl.”

Sadie emitted a choked sound from deep in her throat, and Mac looked her way in concern. Clearing her throat, she changed the topic. “Jasper said you got a job.”

Mac turned his attention away from Kylie and picked up his fork once more. He was having the herb-crusted chicken, at Sadie’s recommendation. He hadn’t eaten much of it, but it wasn’t because he didn’t like it.

“At the mechanic’s shop.”

Sadie nodded and reached for her plate again, pushing a section of her lobster salad around the rim of the dish. “Do you like it there?”

“Only been there a couple days. Hard to tell yet.”

She nodded again. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“That old motel on the outskirts of town. I’ve stayed there before, a time or two.”

Mac hadn’t always stayed at the house when he’d come back to town over the years.

Sadie stiffened her spine before saying, “Mom left a couple of things for you. We’ve been keeping them at the house. A few old letters, I think. Some books. I don’t know if you’re interested in them—”

“Of course I’m interested.” He met her eyes squarely this time, and his tone indicated his hurt that she would assume he didn’t care.

She looked down at her plate. “Well, whenever you want them, you can come and get them. It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”

Mac knew better than to remind her that he didn’t plan on going anywhere either.