CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kelsey settled back on the couch, pulling her legs up to cross them. She held a plate in her hands, and her drink sat on the end table. “This smells so good.”
“It does, and I’m starving.”
Zane limped over to sit on the couch with her. She waited for him to say grace. Once he had, Kelsey started up the movie.
When Rori had told her that the ladies were getting together while the guys went for dinner, then played some volleyball, Kelsey knew she’d wanted her to join them. The problem was, it was at Charli’s, and since it was a gathering of Zane’s family, she would have felt more comfortable attending if the invite had come from a family member.
Though she was getting more at ease with a few of the Halverson family members, it was mainly the men. Connecting with the women seemed a little more challenging. Also, she still wasn’t sure about investing her emotions into relationships that she might not be able to keep if things didn’t work out with her and Zane.
Kelsey hoped Rori would continue to be her friend, but she was prepared for that not to happen. Friends came and went. She’d learned that early on in her life.
“Why aren’t they boiling their water?” Zane asked, interrupting her thoughts. He pointed his fork at the screen. “Everyone should know that when the world has ended, and they’re having to scrounge for food, you boil any water you find if you don’t have any other way to purify it.”
Kelsey chuckled. “Yep. Always boil the water.”
“Do you do anything to prepare for disaster?” Zane asked.
Finishing the bite she had in her mouth, Kelsey shook her head. “We talked about it, of course, living in a hurricane zone, but we didn’t have the room to stock up a lot. We did have hiking backpacks with emergency supplies. A couple of changes of clothes, socks, shoes, flashlights, cash, some bottles of water, a couple of boxes of granola and protein bars, a charging block, charger cords, and our important papers in a small fireproof safe. Just some things that would give us a decent start if we needed to evacuate.”
“Sounds like a good plan, except we should have had a portable water filter.”
Kelsey chuckled. “True. Sometimes I wondered if we should do more, but I didn’t put too much thought into it. We hadn’t been through a hurricane yet, so I don’t know if it would have been enough.” She scooped up a forkful of chow mein. “How do you feel about stocking up?”
“I didn’t tell you how I felt?” Zane asked.
“Well, yes, you told me how you felt as the person you were pre-accident. But maybe four years ago, you felt differently.”
Zane nodded. “I always made sure I was prepared for winter, keeping things in my trunk that would help me if I got stranded.”
“Yeah. I had stuff like that too.”
“But these people that build bunkers underground?” Zane stared at the screen. “I’m not sure I could justify the cost.”
“Maybe you could open a bunker restaurant.”
Zane grinned as he laughed. “That would be something.”
“Just think of all the rich people who’d like to come to something so unique. It would be the hottest place in Idaho.”
“I can’t imagine the cost of building something like that underground. I’d definitely have to bring in Alexander as a partner.”
Something happened on the screen, drawing their attention. As they finished eating, they watched the rest of the movie.
When they’d gone to pick up the food, they’d stopped at the grocery store and Kelsey had run in to grab some dessert. Zane had asked for ice cream and brownies, so she’d picked that up for them.
When the first movie was over, they made themselves bowls of ice cream and brownies and started up another one.
For a moment, she was able to put aside everything that had happened over the past few weeks and pretend that they were back before the accident, spending time together. The only difference was that they usually didn’t sit on opposite ends of the couch. Cuddling up together had been part of what she’d enjoyed about their times spent watching movies.
These times were a reminder of what she’d lost, but they also gave her hope. At least, the man she loved was still with her. The accident could have had a very different result, and she’d be grieving the complete loss of her husband. Until he said differently, there was hope for them.
As the movie continued, Zane shifted his body so that his legs were stretched out in her direction and sank further back into the couch. Pre-accident, she would have curled up with him, stretching out along his side, with his arms around her.
Though she still had hope, her patience wasn’t as plentiful. She wanted to be further along in this new relationship they were trying to piece together. They might have only been married for six weeks, but it had been enough time for her to get used to loving and being loved by Zane.
She desperately wanted that back. They’d now been apart for the same amount of time that they’d been married, and it really sucked.
It was almost ten when the second movie drew to a close. They cleaned up their food, taking the leftovers upstairs to the kitchen.
As they were transferring the remainder of the Chinese food into containers, Rori and Lee arrived home.
“You had Chinese?” Lee asked. “Any leftovers?”
“You’re hungry?” Rori frowned at her husband. “Didn’t you have dinner with the guys?”
“Sure. We went to the diner before the gym, but then I played a bunch of volleyball and burned it all off. I’m hungry again.”
The lids came back off the containers—they’d really ordered far too much—and soon all of them were seated at the breakfast nook with plates of food.
“How did volleyball go?” Zane asked.
“It was good. Peyton is really excelling at both basketball and volleyball. He held his own against us. The girls decided to stay with the women, so Peyton was the only kid there with us.”
“It was good that Amelia and Layla stayed with us,” Rori said. “They helped take care of the little ones.”
“Did you two enjoy your evening?” Lee asked.
“Yep,” Zane said. “We watched some cheesy disaster movies.”
“That’s not exactly my idea of a good time,” Rori said.
Zane chuckled. “Yeah. I know that it’s not the most popular genre, but I like it, and so does Kelsey.”
“Bonding over disasters,” Lee said.
“That seems appropriate,” Zane replied. “Since we’re trying to make our way out of one.”
They continued to chat until it was almost midnight. Kelsey could hardly contain her yawns, since she’d only had about four hours of sleep coming off her night shift.
When she and Zane reached the landing of the second floor, Zane paused. “Thanks for a great evening. I really enjoyed it.”
“I enjoyed it too. I’m glad we were able to hang out.”
She wished they didn’t have to go their separate ways. But while she missed having him close to her as they slept, he didn’t remember having that closeness with her. Her heart ached a bit as they said goodnight and went to their separate rooms.
As she got ready for bed, however, Kelsey realized that even though she wanted to be physically close with Zane again, she didn’t know if she could embrace that closeness with this Zane. At least not yet.
Each day, she reminded herself that she had to keep moving forward. And moving forward meant accepting that she might never get her version of Zane back again. Somehow, she had to reconcile the two in her mind and allow herself to feel love for this Zane, just like she had the pre-accident Zane.
It was easy to say she loved Zane, but each time she thought about it, those feelings were directed toward her version of Zane. How she was supposed to mesh the two in her mind and heart was something she was still trying to figure out.
She wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
Over the next few days, Kelsey did some last-minute cramming. The date of her exam had arrived quickly, and now she was nervous.
She still hadn’t told anyone she was going to take the exam. Maybe once she’d taken it and passed, she would tell them. If she didn’t pass, she didn’t want anyone to know. And she’d pick herself up and try again as soon as she was allowed to.
The night before her exam, Kelsey had let the others know she would be gone for a good chunk of the next day. She’d have over an hour’s drive to get to Spokane, and they said she should allow five hours to take the exam, including breaks. Then the drive back would be another hour or so.
Her plan was to leave around six-fifteen, so she’d have plenty of time to find where she needed to be and get herself signed in.
She had already put all her stuff together and laid out her clothes. She planned to wear a comfortable pair of jeans and a lightweight sweater, just in case the testing room was cold. It was light enough that she wouldn’t be too hot as long as the room temperature wasn’t set to boiling.
“Where are you going?” Rori asked.
“To Spokane,” Kelsey told her. “I have some personal stuff I need to take care of. I’ve kind of been putting it off since I got here, but now I just want to get it done.”
“Do you want company?” Zane asked.
Kelsey had been afraid that he’d offer that. She didn’t want to turn him down, but he couldn’t come with her.
“I appreciate the offer, but I think I’d better just go on my own this time.”
Zane nodded. “It’s probably for the best. With my leg, I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with you.”
“Maybe next time,” she said. “When I don’t have to spend so much time taking care of things.”
Kelsey could see the curiosity on the faces of the other three, but she resisted giving more details.
Would they offer her support and encouragement? Most likely.
Would she want them to know if she failed? Definitely not. Especially not Zane.
Since she was going to be up earlier than usual, she said goodnight around eight and went upstairs to take a shower and get to bed. Her stomach was churning with nerves, and she hoped that she’d be able to sleep because she wanted to go into the exam well-rested.
She resisted the urge to look over her notes and test exams one last time. If she didn’t know the subject already, she wasn’t going to learn it through last-minute cramming.
When her alarm went off at five-thirty the next morning, Kelsey crawled out of bed, surprisingly refreshed. Though she’d tossed and turned for a bit before falling asleep, once she was out, she’d stayed out.
After dressing in the clothes she’d laid out, she braided her hair, leaving a small chunk free at the front to keep her appearance from being too stark. The occasion didn’t call for a lot of makeup, so she applied just enough to even out her skin tone, then swept on a layer of mascara.
Just after six, she left her room, planning to get some coffee before she hit the road. The aroma of coffee that greeted her surprised Kelsey, as she didn’t think anyone ever got up that early.
Hurrying down the stairs, she approached the kitchen. Her heart skipped a beat at the sight of Zane sitting at the counter. He looked up and smiled, his tousled appearance making her heart continue its wild gallop.
“You’re up super early,” she said as she walked closer and set her bag on the counter.
“When you said how early you were planning to leave, I thought I’d get up and make sure you had some coffee for your drive.”
Kelsey retrieved her travel mug from the cupboard. “Thank you. I really appreciate you doing that.”
“Are you sure you don’t want company?” he asked. “I would just have to brush my hair and get my shoes.”
Kelsey glanced over as she removed the carafe of coffee, almost wishing that he hadn’t gotten up because she didn’t want to have to turn him down again. But the ingrained need to keep potential failures to herself kicked in.
“I’m sure,” she said. “I need to tackle this stuff by myself. I should have done it sooner, but with everything that’s been going on, it hasn’t been possible. Finally, I decided I just needed to get it done.”
“Well, if you run into any trouble, call me, and we’ll come rescue you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said with a smile. “But I hope I don’t have to.”
She poured coffee into her mug, then added some cream and sugar. After stirring it, she put the lid on.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to eat before you left.”
Kelsey considered it, but then shook her head. The nerves in her stomach had completely robbed her of her appetite. Instead, she said, “I’m just going to grab a couple of granola bars to eat later.”
“You should take an apple or banana too,” he suggested.
Kelsey nodded and went to the fruit basket on the counter to choose a banana. “If only I could take some chocolate syrup to dip it in.”
Zane chuckled. “You need a portable chocolate fondue.”
“That would be great.” She put the food into her large tote bag. “I’d better get going. Gotta be there for my first appointment by seven-thirty.”
“Well, hope everything goes smoothly,” Zane said, getting to his feet. He followed her to the front door, using one crutch as he walked. “Drive safely. If you want, you could text me when you get there.”
She turned to look at him, and when she saw that he was actually serious, she nodded. “I will.”
Stepping out onto the porch, she continued to the steps leading to the decorative stone path that took her to where her car was parked. She climbed behind the wheel of her car and started it up.
As she put it in gear to pull away from the curb, she glanced at the house, surprised to see Zane still standing in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the jamb. Kelsey lifted a hand to wave at him, which he returned, then she turned her attention to the road as she drove away.
Christian music drifted from her car’s speakers. The first time Zane had used her car, he’d tuned the radio to a Christian station. She’d just left it there, since she didn’t feel strongly enough about any genre of music to change it.
After she’d been on the road for about fifteen minutes, the radio station switched from music to a podcast . As the intro music faded, a man with a lovely mellow voice began to talk.
“Hello. My name is Jonathon Anders. Welcome to On This Journey, a podcast where I talk to Christians from all walks of life to hear their stories and learn how God has worked in their lives. Today, I have two people with me, one of whom I have a history with that stretches back years and across continents. It is my absolute joy to have Danae and Brock Peterson with me today. Welcome.”
A woman and man responded, thanking him for having them.
“As regular listeners of this show know, I was raised as a missionary kid in Asia, and a lot of those experiences have shaped my outlook on God, faith, and the world around me. Danae was one of the people who shared some of those experiences with me. We attended the same MK boarding school, and I knew her first husband. We were all in the same grade, and William and I played on the school’s basketball team through our high school years.
“Everyone knew that Danae and William were going to get married. They were just that couple in high school, having started dating in our freshman year. A few years after graduation, I heard that they’d gotten married and had some kids. It seemed they were well on their way to their happily ever after. But Danae’s story didn’t end there.”
“No, it certainly didn’t,” Danae agreed.
“Do you want to share with us where your journey has taken you since we graduated?”
“Sure. It’s a story that never gets easier to tell, but I also feel it’s important to share and to show how God works in even the most terrible of circumstances. Like Jordan mentioned, William and I were high school sweethearts. William planned to go to college to become an engineer. My dream, however, was to be a wife and a mother. We married not long after graduation—to the dismay of our parents—though they still supported us.”
“Your parents were all friends, right?” Jordan asked.
“Yes. We were all part of the same mission, and I’d known William from when we were very young. Us getting married felt like joining two families who were already super close.”
“So your parents already had a really good idea of who their child was marrying.”
“Yep. Which was part of the reason why they hadn’t objected too strongly to us marrying so young.”
“How did those early years of marriage unfold?”
Danae softly cleared her throat. “At first, they were easy. William was in school and working, I was working part time, and the rest of the time, I was at home, trying to create an environment that I thought would make our marriage flourish. However, it wasn’t long before I got pregnant, and once I had our first child, I was determined to be a stay-at-home mom.”
Kelsey found herself totally caught up in the story the woman was sharing. In fact, she felt a bit of a knot in her stomach as the story unfolded, knowing something catastrophic must have happened because she was there with a man who wasn’t her first husband.
“By the time our third child was born, we were both overwhelmed. William had dropped out of school by that point in order to work full time and support our family. Though our marriage was struggling and parenting was taxing our ability to model love and patience to our children, we tried our best to hide our struggles from everyone.”
Kelsey understood why. They were failing and didn’t want people to know.
“One Saturday, William said he’d give me a break, and he took the kids out for breakfast at McDonalds. Only, they never came home. A drunk truck driver made sure of that. It was an absolutely horrible time. The grief and guilt were overwhelming, and I couldn’t understand why God had taken all of them and left me.”
As Kelsey listened to Danae share how she struggled to survive mentally and emotionally in the days, weeks, months, and years that followed, Kelsey marveled that she had made it through. The strength she’d needed to do that was incredible.
Except that Danae made it clear she hadn’t done it alone. That she believed God had been with her through that time, giving her what she needed to move forward.
Kelsey thought of her own situation. She felt a bit like she’d experienced the death of a loved one, with Zane having lost his memory of her and their marriage. Though it was possible it would return, the more time that passed without that happening, the less likely she thought it was that it would.
However, her loss was nothing compared to what Danae had experienced. And yet, even after the death of her family, Danae had found a way to keep going. From everything the couple shared about their journey, Kelsey knew that they had relied heavily on God.
Would she be able to more readily accept what had happened and move forward if she trusted in God?
Zane seemed to be trusting God with his situation, and from what Rori and Carisa had said, he was choosing to try to love her and work on their relationship because of God.
“I’ve had people ask me how I can be so trusting of God when He could have saved my family and yet didn’t. I think that’s a question a lot of people have when something bad happens.”
“And do you have an answer to that?” Jonathon asked.
“Well, my first response is that I don’t know the mind of God,” she said. “But I know that’s not the answer people want. All I can say is that I tried to cope with what had happened on my own, and I was contemplating suicide. When I turned to God and asked Him to help me, I was able to slowly, but surely, deal with the tremendous grief that dominated my life.”
“How did you and Brock meet?”
Kelsey listened as the couple shared the journey they’d each taken to find the other and the things they’d had to overcome in order to have a future together. Brock had faced struggles, and he’d had challenges of his own that might have kept them apart. The journeys they’d taken seemed impossible and even improbable to someone like Kelsey.
“As Christians, we will only live our most God-honoring lives if we seek His will for us,” Brock said. “Sometimes it can be hard to know what that will is. Sometimes the road seems rough and impassible, but God is faithful. Just like He helped Danae with her struggles, and me with mine, He will help those who seek Him and ask for His guidance.”
Kelsey thought about everything she’d been struggling with. The loss of the man she loved. The uncertainty about her future. Her marriage. Her career.
She hadn’t experienced what Danae and Brock had, but she was facing so much uncertainty that seeking God’s will for her life was appealing. But she wasn’t a Christian, and that seemed like something she had to change if she wanted God to direct her life.
Maybe Rori and Carisa would help her understand what that meant. The pastor had mentioned it a few times in the sermons she’d heard him preach, but she needed to know specifically what she had to do.
The podcast was ending as she pulled into the parking lot of the building where the test was taking place. She still had a few minutes before she had to go inside, so she stayed in the car, her thoughts full of everything she’d heard.
One upside to having been distracted by the podcast was she hadn’t had time to worry about the looming exam. Remembering her promise to Zane that she’d let him know when she arrived in Spokane, she plucked her phone from the cup holder.
Arrived safe and sound.
She stared out the window as other cars joined her in the parking lot. It was almost time to go in, and the nerves that had faded away on the trip were coming back to life.
When her phone let her know that a text had arrived, she saw that Zane had replied.
Zane: Wonderful! Hope everything goes smoothly there. Let me know when you’re on your way home.
Kelsey stared at the red heart he’d added at the end of the message. He seemed committed to their relationship, but if he didn’t really have feelings for her, how long would that commitment last? She was scared of what the answer to that would mean for her.
But for now, she needed to focus on this exam to secure at least one part of her future.