Despite what he didn’t have, peace streamed through him, and Deacon somehow knew that God hadn’t abandoned him. He wouldn’t abandon him. He didn’t even knowhowto do that to one of His children.
“So maybe I just have to hold on a little longer,” Deacon murmured. “Is that it, Lord? I just have to hold on a little longer?”
Yes, my son.Deacon heard the words in his mind, and as much as he didn’t like them, he supposed he’d have to find a way to live with the truth.
He leaned his head back against the rest of the rocking chair and gently toed himself back and forth as his eyes drifted closed.
If that’s what I have to do,he thought.Then bless me with the strength to do it.
twenty-three
Tucker Hammond lay on his side, his arm draped over Bobbie Jo’s waist. She breathed deeply in his arms, but he knew she hadn’t fallen asleep.
“It’ll be fine, sweetheart,” he told her, his voice barely audible to his own ears.
“We just have to draw really firm lines with them,” Bobbie Jo whispered back.
Tuck hated seeing his lovely wife so tense and irritated. She’d been working on curbing her temper since he’d met her a couple of years ago, but finding out her mom had lost her job at the elementary school six months ago, and that her daddy didn’t make enough at the hardware store to cover their bills, had sent Bobbie Jo’s irritation to the stratosphere in only one second.
Tucker’s default reaction was stunned silence while Bobbie Jo scoffed and stomped around. In the end, her mother and father were going to lose this rental in only another week, and they had nowhere else to live. Nothing lined up.
Bobbie Jo turned in his arms and slid her hand along his ribs and under his arm. “I just don’t get what they thought would happen,” she whispered fiercely.
He moved his hand to push her hair back off her face.
“Did they just think a miracle would manifest itself out of nowhere?”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I think that’s what they thought.”
“It’s justridiculous,” she said. “Who thinks like that?”
“I think what they thought…is that they would tell you when we came for Christmas and we’d do exactly what we did—offer for them to come live with us.”
“If that’s true, I don’t want them to live with us.”
Tucker didn’t want her parents to live with them in the mansion at all, but he couldn’t say that, and he couldn’t leave them here in Oklahoma without proper housing.
“We’re going home tomorrow,” he whispered. “And we’ll make sure everything’s ready in the upstairs suite, and it will be fine. We’re out on the farm all the time, and they’ll have that second bedroom to set up as a den or a living room, and Tarr said he would text me pictures of the electric stove top when he goes to the store tomorrow.”
“I guess it’s really lucky that we have someone who’s thought about living up there without bothering us,” she said.
Yes, Tarr had already done all the research about how to make the second-floor suite more independent. They’d put a microwave and a mini fridge in the loft, but the moment Tucker had called and practically screamed at his best friend that his in-laws were going to have to come live with them, Tarr had said, “No problem. I’ll make sure that suite is everything they could possibly want, and we can put a two-burner stovetop on the countertop out in the loft, and Briar knows how to install islands for more storage and counter space, and they can even make a reading nook in that loft. It’shuge.”
He’d gone on to detail how they could stage the second bedroom as a living room, and they had a full bathroom and a bedroom with a linen closet as well. “It’ll be great,” Tarr said.
And hey, they have no other options,Tuck thought.
“Do you really think it will be temporary?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Bobbie Jo said. “I’m sorry, Tuck, but I really don’t know. My parents have always been self-sufficient, and I just don’t know what’s happened in the last few years.”
She sighed and rolled over again, and Tucker had the very real feeling that this was just the beginning of a long night of tossing and turning and talking as they both tried to filter through their feelings and figure out what to do.
A couple of days later, Tuck found himself standing on the elevated edge of one of the pallets in front of Tarr’s RV. He gestured on that side, while Ashton waved in another trailer opposite from him.
“There.” Tarr had called his friend Jentzen again, and he’d just arrived with a heavy-duty extension cord, a bag full of surge protectors, and a one-hundred gallon water barrel.
Tuck had been inside Tarr’s RV since he’d moved it to this location on the south side of the arena, and while he wasn’t super pleased with the mobile home community going in on his property, he also recognized it as a great blessing from God Himself.
