“Me?” Sam stifled a laugh. He regretted almost everything. Except his performance on the field. But that was changing, wasn’t it? And it wouldn’t last forever anyway.
“You never think about if you’d moved back and gone into business with your dad? You’d be taking over for him soon and be one of the most respected businessmen in town. You might have a couple of rug rats to chase around. Someone to spoon with on a cold night.”
Someone to spoon with sounded appealing—if she had a pixie haircut and smelled of flour and sugar. “So you have no regrets right now, but how can you be sure your marriage will go the distance?”
“You mean not divorce?”
Sam lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Given my folks’ example, I wonder if I can make a marriage work long term.”
“I don’t know what happened with your parents. I just know that when things are tough, Elena and I remind ourselves that we chose each other. We made promises to each other and to God. It also helps to remember that the tough times don’t last.”
Sam raised his brows. “It’s that easy?”
Gabe scoffed. “It’s not easy at all. Sometimes it’s harder than a week of running drills in ninety percent humidity. But you keep God at the center and never give up.”
“Daddy! We’re waiting for you!” A plaintive cry sounded from across the street.
“I better go. Think about the prayer group? Saturday mornings at the church. Seven a.m.”
“Saturday mornings at the church,” Sam echoed as he watched his former teammate rush across the street to hoist the kid over his shoulder.
Gabe made it sound like being married, staying married, was something you did, not something that happened to you. And what was that about keeping God at the center? Sam’s family had attended church every Sunday. Frank had been an elder passing the offering plate and Mom had been at church pretty much all the time. If that wasn’t keeping God at the center, what was? It hadn’t done their family much good.
Chloe talked about feeling God’s hand. He could use some direction about his career, that was for sure. But about relationships? He wasn’t sure God cared much who Sam dated.
He shrugged and climbed the four steps. Better get his coffee and head to therapy.
Chloe had gotten a couple hours of sleep and then worked all day at Haven’s before she had a chance to tell Mom about the banquet. Evening shadows crept across the backyard and into the kitchen window where she finished up the dinner dishes.
“Did you dance? Like at Frank’s party?” Mom folded the dish towel then draped it on the hook by the fridge.
“Everything was special. We danced, feasted, and hobnobbed. Did everything except go up in a hot air balloon.”
Mom sat at the table and opened her copy of the Tennessean, then smoothed out the paper. “This says Buck was there. Did he sing? That’s not special.”
“Because you can call and ask him to sing you a praise song whenever you’re feeling down. To the rest of the world, he’s a big deal.”
Mom adjusted her glasses on her nose and kept reading. She had almost lost all of her hair, but it was slowly coming back now that she’d started taking a biotin supplement. The oncologist said the tumor was shrinking and Chloe found she could breathe easier on treatment days. Only one more dose of chemo, then a round of radiation and, God willing, Mom would be fine. “Popcorn’s in the pantry. How was the mayor?”
“She’s—I don’t know. She’s nice? She’s the mayor. I said hello and goodbye. She was cordial enough, but I don’t live in Nashville, so since I can’t vote for her, I got the feeling she was looking past me all night.”
Robin had been ecstatic at all the new followers the bakery’s social media accounts gained during the day. Laura Kate scrolled through her feeds, showing Chloe the posts about last night’s event and the likes and comments. Chloe noted the conspicuous absence of any tweets by one @CurvyCarla and grinned to herself.
Chloe rummaged in the pantry for the popcorn and started a bag in the microwave.
“Do you love him?” Mom leaned back in her chair, looking at Chloe over the top of her reading glasses.
“Way to cut to the chase, Mom.” Chloe got a bowl out of the cupboard, uncertain she could put her feelings into words. “I might…possibly yes, but I still love Jean-Marc too.”
After Chloe got the popcorn set up in the microwave, she sat in her chair again, rested her elbows on the table, and placed her chin in her hands. Then she took a deep breath before asking, “Mama, why didn’t you ever remarry?”
Mom closed the newspaper, refolded it. “The easy answer is that once you’ve had steak, you never want to go back to hamburger.”
“Daddy was prime filet, that’s for sure.”
Mom’s smile was a shooting star, there and gone in a nanosecond.
“Are you saying there’s no other steak in the world?” Jean-Marc was steak. But so was Sam.
