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“I was scouted by the Dallas Cowboys!” Brady retorted.
“And Vegas? What was that about?”
“Stupidity,” he admitted, his expression faltering, leaving Blake to wonder what he wasn’t saying. “A way to get lost from the fact that my life’s dream had just come to an end.”
Marshall seemed to remember suddenly that Blake was standing there. Or else something else occurred to him. He stood straighter, then backed away. “We’ll discuss this more later,” he told his son as he walked off.
Just before he was out of sight, he turned and said, “Thanks for the good work, Blake. We appreciate it.”
No problem, Blake might have said if the older man had waited around for a response.
As it was, he took one look at the frustration on his buddy’s face and said, “It’s time for the game. You want a lift?”
Which meant that not only was he going to the game, but he was trapped into staying until the end.
Unless he found some excuse why one of the other guys would have to drive Brady home.
JUNE STOPPED BY Annie’s house Wednesday evening after church, with some materials to give her daughter regarding the upcoming holiday bazaar. Annie had decided to do a series of human interest stories to garner more interest in her mother’s project, to try to pull in more business for the charity function. June was collecting stories from as many of the participants as she could.
“Did you know Margie Ames started making quilts after her mother died as a way of ensuring that her memory lived on throughout Margie’s life? Every single quilt she sews has at least one square of material from a piece of her mother’s clothing.”Annie wasn’t even sure she remembered which of her mother’s peers Margie Ames was. But she wanted to know. Wanted to get reacquainted with all of the people whose stories her mom was bringing her.
She used to love to go to church. To play with the babies and hear the ladies making plans to help out someone or other, or throw a baby shower, or meet for lunch. How had she grown away from that? And why?
“Do you remember how old I was when I quit going to church?” she asked her mom, standing with her in the foyer of her home. She’d have invited her in, but didn’t have a sofa to offer her a seat.
“Of course I do,” June said. Though dressed as usual in nondescript, pastel-colored slacks, with a matching blouse, she had lost some weight, and she looked good. “You don’t?”
Frowning when the certainty in her mother’s voice made her feel as if she should know, Annie shook her head. Then tugged her little black shirt down over the waistband of her jeans, covering the thin line of belly that was showing.
“You were thirteen, Annie.”
That grabbed her attention—and jabbed at her heart. “After Daddy died?”
June nodded. “You were mad at God for not saving him.”
Annie had no recollection of that at all.
“Reverend Wayne tried to speak with you—several times—but you’d have none of it. You refused to go to church after that, and Cole, who’d always followed around after you, wanting to do everything you did, decided he was going to stay home with you, too.”
“He did?”
With a soft smile, June nodded.
“I thought you didn’t want us to go. That you left us home.”
“Of course I wanted you to come to service,” June said. “I hated sitting there in church by myself, surrounded by other families….”
“So why didn’t you make us?”
“You were pretty feisty even back then, my dear.” Her loving smile took the sting out of her words. “And I just wasn’t up for the battle.”
That Annie remembered. “You could have stayed home.”
June shook her head, her smile fading. “Those were such hard years, honey. So many things were happening that you couldn’t possibly understand. It took me years to understand them, and I was an adult. How could you possibly hope to get it?”
Things she didn’t understand? Besides the fact that her father had taken his own life when he’d had an entire family who loved and supported him?
“I was just putting some tea on,” she said, when she would have liked to stay right there and ask her mother what she meant. “Would you like to have some?”
