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Jubilee wasn’t sure whether it was her posture or the dejection in her words, or maybe it was just because Jubilee always had a tendency to see the good in everyone.
Eva wanted Matt, and she was only doing what she did to try to get him.
It wasn’t Eva’s fault that Matt had gone along with it, although Jubilee had heard from Clara that she didn’t think Matt was actually going to go riding with Eva and Nora. She’d gone to bed and didn’t know if they had or not. And she told herself she didn’t care.
Jubilee hadn’t been sure how she felt about that anyway. After all, Nora was such a sweet girl, and of course she wanted her parents to be together. Jubilee wanted that for them. If it had been her own girls longing for her to be back with her husband, even though her husband had cheated and treated her terribly, it would be tempting for her to do that. Just to make her girls happy.
Thankfully, her husband had been just as unkind to her girls as he had been to her. Neither one of them had ever breathed a word about wanting her to go back to him.
She dreaded the idea that they might, although she knew that time seemed to heal all wounds, and it made things that were bad at the time seem not so bad with the rosy glow of hindsight.
Regardless, she didn’t want to borrow trouble, but she understood where Matt was coming from.
Even though there was a part of her, a part of her that wanted to be admired and appreciated as a woman, a part of her that was a little bit petty and needy, who was offended that Matt had told her that he would go riding with her and then allowed Eva to invite herself onto their excursion, most of her understood that she and Matt weren’t really going on a date. They were just doing something fun together. And why not bring his daughter and his ex?
It wasn’t like he was trying to put them into their relationship. They didn’t have a relationship, so he could hardly do that.
“Eva.”
Eva looked up at her.
“If you don’t want to work with me, that’s fine. But if it’s something that you’d like to do, I’m okay with it. We can do this together. I think it would actually be kind of fun, although...” Her brows crinkled. “I feel like Bethann railroaded me into it. Is that what she did to you?”
Eva laughed. “If you consider railroading having someone come up to me and say, ‘you look like the perfect person to cochair this committee, and I’m going to find you a cochair to do it along with you, and you’re just going to love it, so get used to the fact that you’re going to be doing it,’” Eva imitated Bethann almost exactly, “then yeah. I think I was railroaded.”
Jubilee laughed. “All right. That makes two of us. Still, I was kind of looking for a reason to get involved in the town and looking for a way to get to know people. This feels like a good one, if you’re up for it?” She gave an encouraging smile, not one that was condescending but one she hoped was friendly and kind, that wasn’t slobbering, that wasn’t begging, but also wasn’t lording it over her either.
It must have done the trick, because Eva grinned. “Sounds good.”
“All right. So, we are down to four minutes.” Jubilee glanced at her watch. The pianist had just started to play the prelude. “Do you want to meet at the diner after the service? I heard a rumor already this morning that Griff whipped up another batch of strawberry cheesecake, and they would be serving until it was gone this afternoon. What do you think?”
“What about your girls?” Eva asked, a little bit of a shadow crossing her eyes. Maybe because she wouldn’t have been kind if Jubilee hadn’t taken the first steps.
“Lana, she’s so sweet, asked if she could have them this afternoon. I haven’t had a chance to take them on a horse ride, and she was going to go to Davis and Kim’s stable and rent some of their beginner horses for the girls. They’re so excited.”
“And you are going to go?”
She actually had been going to go. She’d wanted to ride since she’d gotten to Strawberry Sands, but after the debacle of the previous evening when Matt had asked her and Eva had pushed in, she’d given up on that pursuit. Particularly since it meant having to deal with Matt, whom she managed to avoid since then.
“Nope. I have the afternoon free. And strawberry cheesecake sounds like a really nice way to spend an afternoon. If that’s okay with you?”
“It is... Jubilee?”
“Yeah?” Jubilee said, having already taken one step away, toward the pew where Scarlett and Penelope sat with Nora and Lana.
“Thank you. You could have been...unkind. Or, at the very least, refused to work with me. I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Jubilee said. She didn’t think Matt would agree, but she couldn’t blame Eva for wanting Matt back. For wanting Matt to begin with. He was obviously a good man. A hard worker, someone with a sense of humor, and someone who truly loved his daughter. All things that Jubilee would admire in a man. She also thought he would probably be faithful, although she thought that about her ex-husband too, and she’d been wrong.
She was tempted to turn back to Eva and tell her that she wasn’t really interested in getting together with anyone, and Eva didn’t have anything to worry about her wanting anything to do with Matt, but she decided that that would just be overkill. She kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t entirely sure that she trusted Eva to be her very best friend, but she thought they could get along well enough to work together for the festival at least.
Especially since Bethann had no idea of what had been going on as far as Jubilee knew, and it was the Lord who allowed them to be put together. Maybe He just wanted to see if Jubilee was going to love the way God wanted her to love. A big love. A love that overlooked faults and insults and petty hurts. A love that took someone who was unkind, or even betrayed her, and loved them anyway. The way Jesus loved his disciples, the way God loved the world before He sent His son for it.
That was the kind of love that garnered attention, that was the kind of love that made people look at a person and know that they were a Christian, because someone could love that way.
Maybe she would be successful. She’d messed up her life so often, and she definitely wasn’t feeling that kind of love toward her ex, although she worked through a lot of the bitterness and hurt and had been more than willing to forgive and forget. That took a certain amount of love.
Up until they signed the divorce papers, she would have taken him back.
