Chapter 9
Jones dragged himself out of bed in the morning. It had been extremely late, or very early, depending on how one looked at it, before they got to bed last night.
They’d helped Gilbert get his children in the pickup and take them home. Before they left, he’d asked if they would take them to their horse therapy session and spend some time with them while he made arrangements. His mom had said that she would go with him and help him if he needed it.
Of course they’d been happy to say yes, although it was going to be a long day. And perhaps it was going to be a hard day, depending on how the children were taking it.
But he and Amy had a lot of things planned, so they would be busy, because all the things they had planned the children could do with them.
He made two cups of coffee and then got in his truck and headed to Amy’s.
Now that he was on to her, he wondered if she would be getting up before him, trying to get into the dog food container and get it done before he saw it.
He figured not, since they hadn’t poured the dog food that they bought the day before in the bin; it was still in the back of his truck. So she needed to wait until he got there. He could do it first thing that morning when he got there. Last night, he had dropped her off, made sure she made it into the house okay, and driven directly home .
The last thing he needed or wanted today was an emergency call. He prayed it didn’t happen, although Murphy’s Law pretty much guaranteed that it would.
Amy stood in the yard, looking at the first rays of sun that were coming over the mountain.
He stopped and got out, grabbing both coffees and walking over. She kept her eyes on the sunrise.
“First sunrise on earth without Sally here,” she said softly.
He stopped beside her.
“True,” he said, figuring that if she wanted to think like that, that was up to her. He personally wanted to focus on the things that they could do to take care of the children and move on.
But people grieved in different ways, and while Amy wasn’t the kind of person who contemplated things for a long time, he knew she could be a deep thinker at times.
Apparently this was one of those times.
“I’ve never had a sunrise that you haven’t been here, somewhere,” she said, looking at him.
She had a coat and hat on, and her hair spilled out from underneath her beanie as she held the coffee close to her lips and blew on it but didn’t drink any.
“I had four months without you.” He grinned. “But I don’t remember them.”
“Yeah.” She turned back and looked at the mountains again. There was pink spilling out from the top of them, although the sun was probably still another thirty minutes from appearing.
Steam drifted out of the holes of their tumblers as they stood looking at the sunrise together.
“Why couldn’t we try it?” she said softly, not turning, just staring straight ahead.
He knew immediately what she meant. He had the same thought, maybe brought on because of Sally, maybe seeing Gilbert, maybe knowing that what he had with Amy was special.
“I think we should,” he said.
“But not today. Not tomorrow.”
“No. We’ll have to get a license on Monday. I don’t know how long the waiting period is, but I think Friday is thirty days. We need to be married before then.”
“All right. Wednesday or Thursday?” she asked, turning and looking at him.
He nodded. “We’ll talk to Pastor Connelly.”
“I’ll invite my family. What about your parents?” She stumbled a bit over the words. They didn’t see his parents often, although Amy had seen them almost as much as he had over the past ten years. Because every time he went, he took her with him. Moral support, he supposed.
“I could go today and talk to them and invite them too.”
“All right. What about the snowstorm?” she asked, knowing that he was the one who watched the weather out of the two of them.
“Still coming. It said maybe Wednesday.”
“So.... Where does that leave us?”
“We get married anytime after we get the license. If we get it Monday. Just find out when the pastor’s willing. I guess you’ll have a marriage and a funeral this week.”
“I think he’ll agree to marry us.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Well, I might wonder if we’re actually meaning it. Or for just doing it for the money.”
“He wouldn’t know anything about the money.”
“It’s just kinda fast. You know? If I were him, I would be asking questions because I wouldn’t want people that I marry to be doing it lightly. And a lot of times, pastors require marriage counseling before a person gets married.”
“If he says we have to have marriage counseling, we’ll have to see if we can talk about it. Otherwise, we could just get someone at the courthouse to do it. I don’t know anything about that, but I’m sure there’s such a thing.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“I would want this to be a real marriage, and all that entails, for life.”
“I know. I got that when we talked yesterday. I want the same thing, I just... I know this is cliché, but I’ve been up all night thinking about it, and the biggest thing, my biggest fear, is not that we won’t make it as a married couple. I know we will. Neither one of us are going to give up. I just... I don’t want to lose our friendship.”
She turned as she said that and looked up at him, and his heart melted. How could it not? The thing that she was the most concerned about was not herself, not the money, not whether she was doing the right thing, it was him. His friendship with her. He meant that much to her.
“I don’t think it’s cliché, because it’s true. Sometimes when friends try to be more, everything blows up in their face. I’ve seen it happen, and I know you have too.”
“I have,” she said, nodding.
“Then we’ll just have to make sure we don’t let that happen. I can’t imagine being mad at you, although I know it’s possible.”
“You did get mad at me once a few years ago.”
“It’s been ten years since, and I was justified in my anger at the time.”
“I didn’t think you were,” she said, lifting a shoulder like she had nothing to do with it.
“Stop right there, missy. You were just as mad as I was, and you didn’t talk to me for three whole hours, which to you is a lifetime.”
He had his finger up, and he pointed at her.
“You’re ruining the sunrise with a raised voice,” she said, grabbing his finger, and he braced himself, because had it been someone else, they would have bent it back or something, but she took it, brought his hand up and linked his arm with hers, then slid her fingers together.
“A real marriage,” she said, looking at their hands.
She took a breath and closed her eyes, blowing it out slowly. “That kiss yesterday changed my mind about a lot of things.”
“Same. And it wasn’t even that good.”
Her eyes popped open, and her head jerked to his. “Not that good?”
“I’m pretty sure we will have better ones in the near future,” he said, one side of his mouth turning up.
Her lips quirked too. “Okay. I’ll give you that.”
They stared at the sunrise, watching as the sky grew pinker and brighter with spots of orange and light blue as day broke.
She was right, it was their first day without Sally. Lucas, Marissa, and Robert’s first day without their mother. And it was the first day of a new turn in the relationship that he had with Amy. He stood there thinking about it all, along with the new start with his best friend, her hand in his, as the sun rose, the brightness of the sunrise bloomed and then faded, and the sky turned milky blue.
“We have a lot of things to do today.”
“Are we still going to bake cookies?”
“I kinda think the kids would enjoy helping us. We can do that at your mom’s. We should make it there before they get up.”
“And then we’re taking them with us as we visit the kids we’ll be picking up in the horse-drawn wagon tomorrow, right?”
“Right, and then at two o’clock, they have their horse therapy session.”
“And after that, we’re dropping them off with someone else and taking a nap.”
“Or planning our wedding.”
She laughed. “What do we have to plan? I mean, it’s not going to be fancy or anything, right? Do I need to go dress shopping? You saw how much money was in my bank account, right? ”
“You saw how much money I was inheriting, right?”
Her laughter carried on the breeze as they turned and walked toward the dog kennels.
“You know that’s our money.”
“I had no doubt of it, although isn’t money the number one thing that couples fight about?”
“I think so. What are you trying to say? That we can’t have money or we’ll fight?” He huffed out a breath and grunted. “You think I have to give it away? Or not claim it?”
“That’s up to you.”
“No. It’s up to us,” he said, holding her hand up, their fingers laced together, the sight unfamiliar. This was new. This whole relationship thing. He wasn’t quite sure where it was going to take them, but he knew for sure that wherever it was, he wanted Amy beside him.