It was a tradition Pastor Johnson had started a few years prior, and the townspeople had loved it. Several times for the Sunday evening service, they had the entire service by candlelight. It was beautiful and warm and cozy and made the winter seem not so long and dreary.
Olivia had never liked the winter, even though Winters was her last name.
Cam had joked that Winterses couldn't live somewhere where they didn't actually have a winter.
She closed the box, holding it still as she sealed it with packing tape, and tried to push back the sadness that always threatened when she thought of her late husband.
He'd loved the Marines, and had signed up for a third tour, even though Olivia had begged him to get out so they could settle down and raise their family together.
But sure enough, no sooner had he re-enlisted than he'd been deployed.
Not anywhere exceptionally dangerous, but during a training exercise, he'd been killed, and he'd never gotten to go to Okinawa.
She had been planning on going with him, and while all of her was devastated that she had lost her husband, there was a part of her that was happy that she hadn't had to move across the globe into a country that she had no interest in making her home.
Japan was probably a really amazing country, and she wouldn't mind visiting, but she didn't want to live there. She wanted to live right here in Mistletoe Meadows. Except... she wanted to live here with her husband and children, not as a single mom and a grieving widow.
Cam, why didn't you listen to me?
She wanted to scream it in his face, although it would do no good. He'd just laugh and ruffle her hair like she was two instead of thirty, and tell her that she was worrying for nothing.
It was so annoying. Because she'd been right. She wasn't worrying for nothing. She was worrying because it was legit toworry, and her fears had come true. And now, their boys, Aiden and Ethan, were four years old and had no memories of their father. Cam hadn't even known she was expecting when he had died.
She was still upset about the fact that he had re-enlisted, and she hadn't told him what she suspected.
Plus, she'd been scared. She didn't want to have babies over on the other side of the world.
Well, she didn't have to. She had them at home, and she had them alone.
Swallowing, she noticed the headlights flash across the shop, and looked out the window to see that the new pastor had arrived at the parsonage for the last time. Mrs. Tucker had said that he had one more load, and then he'd be there for good. That was when Mrs. Tucker had picked up the candle that Olivia always gave anyone moving to the community as a housewarming gift. It smelled like freshly made bread, and she could just sit and burn it all day long. She loved the scent, and was kind of proud of herself for coming up with it. It was one that she had invented back when candles were still a hobby for her. Something she did as therapy, to fill the long days and nights when her husband wasn't home.
She had never aspired to be more than a wife and a mother. It's what she'd always wanted. Well, she did enjoy leading her small Bible studies, and was working on writing one for herself. Not that she ever thought she would publish it. She just always had ideas and thoughts about God and reading the Bible, and had decided to organize them in a way that she could go back and look at years from now. Plus, she took copious sermon notes, and had notebooks full of those things too. That was her other hobby. But... what was that to a dead Marine's wife?
She'd kind of gotten away from that in recent years, because partly the candle shop had taken all of her time, and partly because she was a little angry at God. How could he give her twins, and then take her husband away almost in the same breath?
Were those the actions of a loving God? She didn't think so. Howcould she say that God was good, when she wasn't even sure she believed that anymore?
The car lights shut off, plunging the entire area into darkness. And then she saw the light flicker.
Mrs. Tucker must have lit the candle and put it somewhere in the parsonage.
That made Olivia smile. The idea that there would be a little welcome for the pastor. A little smell of freshly made bread, and maybe it would make him smile.
She hadn't met him. The twins had been sick for a month earlier that fall when he had come for several Sundays and pastored the congregation as a candidate for the church.
Apparently the congregation hadn't needed to hear anyone else, because they loved this Pastor Mark Stevens so much.
Plus he was a good friend of Noah Parker.
As much as Olivia loved Noah, and admired and respected him, she would've liked to have heard the pastor for herself.
But she couldn't take her sick children to church, and one of the things that a single mother didn't have the luxury of doing was to discuss with her husband which one of them was going to go and which one of them was going to stay.
Everything was on her shoulders.
She set the box aside and started packing a new one. She had twenty more orders to do before she could quit for the night.
Her eyes were drawn again to the window, just in time to see the lights in the parsonage go on, and see a figure, tall and broad-shouldered, outlined in the door before it closed behind him.
