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Walking back to the trunk, she popped the hood and pulled her suitcase around so she could open it.
“Could someone just pick us up and give us a ride?” Scarlett said.
“Why aren’t you calling a tow truck, Mom?” Penelope asked as her girls came around the back of the car.
She hadn’t wanted them to worry about money. She hadn’t wanted them to worry about anything. She wanted their childhoods to be safe and happy and secure. But what she wanted and what actually happened were obviously not going to be the same thing.
“I don’t want to call a tow truck when I can’t pay them for what they’re going to do,” she said matter-of-factly so that it didn’t worry the girls. She had learned that it seemed like if she acted worried, then they became worried as well.
“So what are we gonna do?” Scarlett asked, probably understanding the implications of the fact that they couldn’t afford to pay for a tow better than her younger sister. Even if her younger sister was the one who usually had something to say about it.
“We’ll pray as we walk. We’re going to be happy that we have legs. Happy that it’s a beautiful summer day and not the middle of winter. It’s cold up here in the winter. With lots of snow.”
“I love snow!” Penelope said. “How soon is it going to snow?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I’ve never been here when it snows. But it’s June, so probably not until fall.” She looked back down at the suitcase. “I’m going to pull out an outfit for each of us that we can wear tomorrow, plus our night things.”
The girls talked a bit as they chose an outfit to take, and Jubilee put them in a plastic grocery store bag.
They hadn’t passed a single car for the last ten minutes they’d been driving, and no one had passed them since they had pulled over to the side of the road, so when she heard a motor floating over the quiet of the lake air, she picked her head up.
Should she try to stop them?
It turned out like so many things in her life she worried about—it resolved on its own.
When she straightened and turned around, the pickup coming toward her already had its turn signal on and was slowing down.
She supposed she probably should have been scared, but it made her smile. This was what Strawberry Sands was to her. People stopping to help other people, even if they were complete strangers. The townsfolk helped each other even more.
It was the kind of community she wanted to be a part of.
Still, she was expecting a kindly older gentleman, or maybe even a teenager, but the man who pulled up behind her and stepped out of his pickup was in his late twenties or early thirties, and handsome, as he shoved the cowboy hat down over his head and slammed his door closed. The stubble on his jaw was enough to make Jubilee’s heart beat faster before she reminded her heart that handsome jaws and charming men made terrible husbands.
She would be the expert in that.
Her girls pushed closer to her side as the man walked toward them. His hand came out, and he lifted the brim of his hat just a little.
“I’m Matt. Looks like you might be needing some help.”
Matt. She highly doubted it was the same Matt that she’d crushed on years ago, when she had spent the summer in Strawberry Sands. That was not why she was coming back. But she couldn’t deny there was a part of her that longed for those sweet summer days when she sat on the beach and admired him as he rode his horse up and down the shoreline.
There were surfers in the water, boaters as well, but it was Matt and his horse that had always caught her eye.
“I’m Jubilee, and yeah. Unfortunately, I seem to have made bad decision after bad decision and am once more against the wall.”
His face was serious, but one side of his mouth turned up, and her heart started beating hard again. It didn’t seem to listen to anything she said. That didn’t mean she had to do whatever it wanted to. In fact, in her experience, she was better off if she did the exact opposite.
