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Chapter 6
First is really caringabout each other. Then listening to each other. I was only 15 and George was 19 when we married. If my husband hadn't really loved me and been very patient we wouldn't have stayed together. He was the love of my life. We were married 59 years when he passed away with Leukemia. I have been a widow for 12 years. Life is kinda empty now so I find enjoyment in reading. Your books have been a great way to spend many empty hours. - Virginia Jones. Lawrenceville, GA. Near Atlanta
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Peyton tried to thinkof a man who could be a surrogate father to Owen. She had friends whose husbands would help. Coleman, who had given him riding lessons, treated him like a son.
But Coleman was busy with his ranch and with the auction barn. He didn’t have time to volunteer to do baseball on top of everything else. Especially for a kid he wasn’t even related to. Peyton had the feeling that if she were to talk to Coleman’s wife, Sadie, that Sadie would talk Coleman into doing it, and he would, just because that was the kind of man he was.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Apologizing for everything in one big fell swoop. For being a failure as a mom and a parent. For not being good at baseball. For not being enough to keep her husband happy.
Funny how the stupidest little thing could make her feel like she wasn’t good enough at anything.
“It’s not your fault, Mom. But the Piece Makers told me today that the guy who has the library used to be a ballplayer. I thought... I thought maybe if you helped out in his library, I might end up being out there some, and maybe he’d help me with my game.”
Honest to goodness, if her son asked her to go to the moon and jump off and grab a Mars’s rock on her way home, she’d put all of her effort into trying.
There wasn’t much of anything she wouldn’t do for him. But...
“I met him today, honey. He’s...not a very nice man.”
“So?” Owen held the ball in one hand, slapping it against his glove, and then stared at her.
She knew exactly what he was saying. And she didn’t say anything.
“Come on, Mom. You told me a million times that when people aren’t nice to you, that’s just your cue to love them harder.”
“That’s true. I guess I have said that.” Over and over and over again. Funny he would decide to remember it right now when he’d forgotten every single other thing she’d ever said to him.
“You said that people who are mean are usually mean because they’re hurt.”
“I said that too.”
“You always told me I had to be nice to Grandma, even though she wasn’t very nice to us, because God put hard people in our lives to teach us things that He wanted us to learn. A lot of times, one of the things He wanted us to learn was that love is stronger than unkindness and hate.”
“True.”
Why had she wished earlier that he would start talking? When they’d been sitting in the house, why hadn’t she enjoyed the blessed silence of not having her words thrown back up into her face?
“I guess... I guess a lot of times people say things, and they don’t really mean them, because you can look at a person and you can tell by their actions whether or not they mean their words.” He slapped the ball in his glove, watching it carefully, talking without much inflection.
She closed her eyes. He’d heard that from her too.
“Is there anything that I’ve ever said that you’ve forgotten?” she asked, not a little sarcastically.
“I listen to you, Mom. You think I don’t, but I do.” He held the ball in the glove, and he stared straight at her. “But I want you to do what you say and not just tell me to do it.” His lip pulled back. “Most of the time, you do what you say, but...” He let his voice trail off.
Man.
She sighed.
She didn’t even bother to try to pretend she wasn’t sighing.
