“Probably?”
She chuckled. “What I’m getting at, though, is that you seemed happy with him. I’ve never seen you so excited to go out and try new things. No one’s ever been able to pull you away from your studies long enough to get you to stop and smell the clover.”
I stared into the depths of my mug. Not her, too.
“And I just can’t help wondering…why are you so determined to stay here? To stay alone?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“Don’t even go there, Jessie. You know we don’t. But don’t tell me you’re staying here just for your degree. You can get one of those anywhere. You used to talk about seeing the world or even just other parts of our own country. You’ve never been to Nashville, and we live five hours away.” She reached out and tugged gently on my pajama leg. “What happened to that girl who wanted to see and do it all?”
“That was before my mom got cancer,” I whispered into my tea.
“Jessie Nickleby!”
I looked up, surprised by the sudden anger in her voice.
“Now you listen to me because I’m only going to say this once. Don’t you dare waste your life because you’re afraid I’ll lose mine.”
“But—”
“I did not give birth to you so you could sit around and spend your life worrying about me. You have a good man who makes you happy and loves the Lord and genuinely cares for you. I’ve seen it in his eyes, all those weeks at church. When you’re around, he can barely take his eyes off you.”
“Bet he’s not doing that now,” I muttered.
“And why not?”
I took a deep breath and told her the last thing he’d told me.
“Stupid boy.” My mother closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met two people more suited to each other and so inept at showing it.” She rubbed her face and huffed as I swallowed and tried not to show how much that smarted.
“Look,” she said, taking my hand. “I know he moved fast. Even for…normal people, two months is fast. But people say stupid things when they’re hurting. Why don’t you talk to him? Ask him to slow things down. Use this deployment to get to know each other—”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to go begging.” I stood and went to my desk to begin picking up my mess. As I did, the table of the missing man flashed across my mind. I would not be an orphan and the woman whose man went missing as well. “There’s a reason I don’t date airmen.”
“Are your plans really so important that you’re going to put them ahead of love?”
I froze. “I nearly lost you,” I said slowly. “And I couldn’t take it if I lost him, too.”
My mom looked as though she wanted to argue more, but after a long moment just shook her head and went to the door.
“I think you’re making a big mistake,” she said before stepping out.
Maybe. But as much as I loved Derrick now, I was saving myself from making an even bigger one. If I stopped right here and didn’t fall any harder, the knife of loss couldn’t be buried any deeper into my heart than it already was.
36
All I Need
Derrick
Istared blankly at the checklist for the millionth time that weekend. We were leaving a day earlier than had been planned, but that wasn’t really a shock. It was a rare thing for deployments to go exactly as planned. It had been six days since the disastrous proposal, and I was more than ready to be gone.
She’d been like a dream. Or rather, like a fairy tale princess. And for one shining moment, I’d been her Prince Charming. But the moment that stupid ring had fallen from my pocket, the look on her face had told me all I needed to know.
