Chapter 7 #4
love them. Especially little girl ones,” he added with a laugh, and tickled little Penelope gently.
“She’s such a little doll,” Josie enthused.
“Are you going to the service?” JJ asked her.
She looked at him. “The what?”
“The service.” He lowered his voice. “You know.”
“I don’t,” she replied in the same whisper he was using to tell her.
“For my dad. Cole said it would be this afternoon. He thought Thanksgiving Day would make it easier for me. You know, having
people around. Otherwise, it would mostly just be me at the graveyard, since I don’t have any family.”
She bent and hugged him close. “You have all kinds of family. And of course I’ll go.”
“JJ,” John said and his voice was hesitant. “They’re all getting ready to go. You okay?”
“I’m okay, John,” JJ said, stepping back and smiling sadly. “I’m just glad . . . well, that we have other people coming. Dad
would have liked it. He didn’t have a lot of friends ’cause we moved around so much.”
“You’ll have loads,” Josie said softly, trying not to look at John. Her heart was going wild in her chest.
“Let’s go,” John said, and waited for them to go ahead of him to the cars in front of the house.
While the men got the cars lined up and started, Josie took Penelope gently from Maddie’s arms and cuddled her, smiling from
ear to ear. “She’s so precious,” she told the child’s beaming mother.
“We think so, but we’re prejudiced,” Maddie chuckled.
Josie cuddling the baby was a sight that affected John so much that instead of smiling he looked like thunder.
Josie saw that expression and it made her uneasy. She cleared her throat and gently handed Penelope back to her mother. “She’s
just gorgeous,” she told Maddie.
“Thank you,” Maddie said, with a grin. “We don’t even watch TV anymore. We watch Penelope.”
“Babies are fascinating,” Stasia agreed, patting her large stomach.
“And you still don’t know what you’re carrying, right?” Maddie teased.
“We want it to be a secret,” she replied, glancing with adoration at her husband, who was talking cattle with his dad. He
glanced back at her and beamed.
“Well, old Mrs. Boyer at the diner says that she’s carrying in front and high, so it’s got to be a boy,” Odalie said with
relish.
“Now, just a minute here,” Stasia began, laughing.
“Okay, everybody ready to go?” Cole asked.
The rest of the crowd piled into cars, Josie sitting on one side of JJ, and John, driving his Jaguar, on the other side. They hadn’t even planned it. It just seemed right somehow.
They’d opened a grave at the local Methodist church cemetery. Wreaths and sprays of beautiful Christmassy flowers were perched
all around the burial site. JJ burst into tears when he saw the casket with its beautiful blanket of white and red flowers
on top.
Josie cuddled him while he cried. Then they filed in under the canopy where the seats were.
The minister smiled and gave a short speech about JJ’s dad and his love for his son and his hard work to keep the small family
together. JJ was so impressed. So was Josie. She knew Cole or John had talked to the minister beforehand and summarized JJ’s
father’s short life. It was a beautiful speech.
There was a prayer. The minister shook hands with everyone. Before they could get up, a small military unit arrived, all in
uniform, rifles slung. They greeted the family and lined up past the casket, where the flag had remained draped, because JJ’s
father was a combat army veteran.
The unit gave a twenty-one-gun salute, to JJ’s fascination. Afterward, they took the flag from the casket and folded it carefully
into a thick, neat triangle. They presented it to JJ with words of commendation for his dad. JJ cried and thanked them all.
The ride home was quiet. Josie sat with her arm around JJ, who was strapped in between her and John in the front seat.
“It was real nice,” JJ said as they reached the house. “And the flowers were so pretty. And Dad got a flag.” He held the flag
tight. “Those men said he was a hero.”
“He was,” John replied. “A brave man and a good father.”
“I know you’ll miss him, JJ,” Josie said softly. “But time heals.”
He smiled at her. “You lost your mama,” he said softly. “I guess it was hard for you. The funeral, I mean.”
He was so perceptive. She dropped a kiss on his hair, hiding her tears. “Funerals are hard,” she said, sounding choked.
Amazingly, John reached past JJ and curled his hand around Josie’s.
She looked at him through eyes veiled with tears.
“Time heals.” He repeated what she’d said. He smiled at her. And for the first time, it was a genuine smile.
When they got back to the house, JJ went in with Heather. John and Josie were at the end of the procession back inside.
She looked up at him. “You going to call the herpetologist about Precious?” she asked.
He nodded, looking down. “I know he’s just a snake. But I’m attached to him.”
She smiled gently. “I had all sorts of pets, too. And I loved all my pets that I lost. I had this huge husky, white with red
points. He loved to jump in the snow, and we had a lot of it up in Wyoming where the ranch is—was,” she corrected. “My dad’s
selling it,” she added quietly. “He said he’d have Mama’s grave moved. She’s buried there.”
He heard the pain in her voice. “You loved the ranch.”
She nodded. “But I can’t run a ranch,” she said sadly. “I just hope that somebody gets it who won’t sell all the cattle and
plow up the land or build things on it that don’t belong there.”
His eyes narrowed. “That would be sad,” he said, and his mind was working already. He had contacts in real estate circles . . .
“Anyway, I had a husky. He was called Rikku, and I loved him dearly.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“He got cancer.” She looked down. “It spread to his bones. They said they might be able to save him if they cut off the infected
leg and did chemo and radiation.” She smiled sadly. “But the vet told me that it wouldn’t save him. It would keep him alive.”
“And he’d just suffer longer,” John guessed.
She nodded, without speaking. She was too choked. She cleared her throat. “My mother died last year. She was in the hospital
the week before she died, and I wasn’t able to be with her. I had this job . . .” She stopped short, about to betray herself.
“My dad was off with some other woman, as usual, and I had no siblings. So when they released her from the hospital she was
mostly alone. A maid found her on the floor one morning, already gone.” She smiled quietly. “I was away a lot when she needed
me. But she never threw it up to me. After all, she sacrificed her family life for her job. It was what she expected people
to do.”
He didn’t like the picture he was getting of her life. He wondered what sort of school she’d gone to. Reform school, maybe?
“She sounds like a good woman.”
She nodded. “The best. Church every Sunday, prayer circles. If someone died, she was the first to go, the last to leave.”
She turned and started walking. It hurt to remember. “I wanted so badly to be like her.”
And failed miserably, he was thinking, but he didn’t say it.
“I guess we’re all different for a reason, even if we don’t know what the reason is,” she said philosophically. “Even animals
play a part in our lives. They come to us for reasons we may never know. Rikku came to me at a particularly sad time in my
life. He got me through it.” She looked over at him. “Life is cold if you don’t have a purpose.”
Hers was to save lives. But he didn’t know that. She sensed that he was about to say something icy, so she grinned at him
and said, “I think JJ’s grown an inch already.”
He laughed, cut off at the pass. “Maybe two, at least that’s what Dad says.” He shook his head. “He’s an unusual child. Old
for his age.” He laughed softly. “If there are ‘old souls’ on earth, I think JJ is one of them.”
Her heart jumped. She’d been compared to one herself, while she was in college, by a friend. Odd that John would know about such things.
She started to ask him when Heather stuck her head out the back door. “Maddie and Cort are leaving,” she called.
“On my way,” John called back, and Josie said nothing as she followed him inside.