The conversation ends there when Cora lets out a sudden screech that quickly builds into a full-blown cry.
Jesse doesn’t miss a beat; he scoops her up and pops a binky in her mouth, and when she settles, he hands her carefully to me. It makes me a little nervous, but when she stays content, I relax.
Chapter 6
Karissa
Jesse just dropped me back off at Cody’s cabin. I said I could walk but he wouldn’t let me. Maureen was waiting on the porch with a casserole and a container of cookies. Said she had a sweet tooth with all her pregnancies, and I can’t help but agree.
“Cody told me you were looking at apartments in town?” she asks, setting the food on the counter.
“Yeah. They’re just…expensive,” I say, adjusting my shirt. “But I know I have to get out of everyone’s hair.”
She gives me a soft smile. “Unfortunately, wewillneed that cabin come September. But do you see how God put you here in the timeframe when we aren’t using it, come just next week? He’s got a plan.”
“I didn’t think about it that way.”
She hums and pulls out a dining room chair. “Do you mind showing me some of the places? I thought maybe we could crunch some numbers, if you’re okay with that?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
I open my laptop and sit beside her at the table. She smells good, motherly…is that a scent?
I pull up the listings I’d been eyeing, and as I scroll and click through, she talks me through the monthly costs—rent,groceries, utilities, baby stuff, gas, insurance, my car, and me, of course.
Somewhere between the second and third place, the numbers start to blur. My chest tightens, and my eyes burn. I’m due in less than two months. Even if I worked every day until then, it wouldn’t be enough. And then what? Government assistance? Maybe. But even that isn’t going to stretch far.
Tears start to spill before I can stop them.
“Deep breath,” Maureen says softly, her hand moving in slow, soothing circles across my back.
I try, but it’s shaky. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, embarrassed as tears fall. “I just, I never thought I’d be in this situation. These numbers…I mean, I’m already behind and the baby isn’t even here yet.”
After a quiet moment she speaks, her voice still calm and steady. “You know, Leonard and I weren’t married long when we found out we were expecting Jesse. We were nineteen, didn’t have much savings. We stayed here with his parents.”
I blink, surprised. “Nineteen?”
She nods. “That’s what you did then. Got married young, had a bunch of babies.” She laughs.
“Geez,” I mutter. I can’t imagine getting married and then having a baby that young. I’m nearing thirty and feel likeI’mtoo young to be doing this.
“We were scared too; he was a surprise. We were going to build a house first. But his parents…they were good to us. And back then, Dakota Flight started growing quicker than anyone expected. But it was very successful. We got to build our house when Jesse was a toddler, Cody a few months old. It started out as just a two-bedroom. We had done it that way, knowing we’d want to expand in the future but just couldn’t at the time.
I look toward the window, in the direction where I know the main house sits, though you can’t see it from here.
“You raised four kids in a two-bedroom?”
“Yup,” she says with a nod. “The boys had the upstairs, back when it was just a loft. When I found out Addison was on the way, we finally decided to finish everything. Added the dining room, built the master bathroom upstairs, and put up walls so the boys could share one room and Addison could have a nursery.”
“Wow.”
“It all ended up working out.” She smiles.
It’s crazy how everything can look so built-up and put together from the outside. But in reality, this family started right here from almost nothing. In a small cabin with fear of the unknown, and a baby on the way.
Just like me.
“God always showed up. Even when we didn’t have it all figured out…we still made a good life.”
