A Family for Christmas. Kate Welsh

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СКАЧАТЬ kids to have another adult just disappear on them.”

      Maggie stared at him. Even she hadn’t thought of that. Trent became more of a puzzle about the children every time he opened his mouth. “Are you too tired to talk awhile?” she asked. “I thought we should formalize some plans.”

      Trent turned, his smile bitter. “We’ve been married ten years, Mag. Why not say what you mean? You’ve never had trouble expressing your feelings in the past. I seem to remember several dissertations on my faults that lasted a good long while before you walked out.”

      “Fine. Where do we stand?” she asked flatly.

      Trent visibly started. “I—I don’t know.”

      Maggie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Please help me say the right things, Lord. “I shouldn’t have left you, Trent. Both Michael and Sarah tried to tell me that I still loved you too much to start over without you, but I wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t see past the emptiness inside me that called out for a child. Then I left and the emptiness grew. I managed to achieve so many of the goals I thought I wanted—the house in Valley Forge, the reduced hours at work. I found that hole I’d wanted to fill with a child filled with the love of Jesus. Then I found out that even as a single parent I had a chance for a foreign adoption, but the emptiness only got worse because you weren’t there to share it with me.”

      Maggie blinked to clear her swimming vision. “I was wrong. I promised you for better or worse, but when worse came along, I folded my tent and walked off. I can’t change what I did. I can only tell you how sorry I am and will be for the rest of my life. I can only tell you that I love you. And that I’d like to try to make it all up to you.”

      Trent closed his eyes and sighed. “I don’t honestly see how you can.”

      Maggie felt the pain of his words in every pore of her body, but she prayed for strength and found it. She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. He stiffened at her touch and tears flooded her eyes, overflowing down her cheek, blurring her focus. “Please let me try. Please.”

      Narrowing his blue eyes, he stared at her for a long moment. “I don’t know.” He turned and walked away, dropping into the rattan sofa against the far wall of the small parlor. He was silent for several minutes, staring ahead. Then he looked back over at her. In his eyes she saw such stark longing and desire that she gasped, but his clenched teeth and hand said that his need for her still warred with pain and anger. “Why don’t you tell me why I should?” he demanded.

      “Because I’ve never stopped loving you. And I think it’s God’s plan that we be together.”

      “You left me!” he shouted, his voice breaking, his anguish bursting through the anger.

      And that pain—pain she’d inflicted—felt like a knife in her heart. “I know it won’t be easy for either of us, but I think we can salvage our marriage.”

      “It was you who decided to scuttle our marriage in the first place.”

      Regret had never weighed more heavily on Maggie’s shoulders. She walked to the sofa and sat on an ottoman placed nearby. The hurt and confusion on his face nearly overwhelmed her. How could she have done this to him? “I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry for all the arguments before I did. But we have ten years together behind us, and the raising of four children ahead of us. I think those are fourteen pretty good reasons to try again. And you can’t say I only want to try now because of the children. You know I felt this way before the accident. Even before I learned about the foreign adoption possibilities. You know that!”

      “And I told you how I felt every time you contacted me.”

      Had he decided not to reconcile, after all? She braced herself. “This morning you told Ed you were agreeable to getting back together. Have you changed your mind?”

      Trent shook his head. “The kids need both of us to protect them from my parents. I just don’t know how to handle you and me.”

      “You could try relying on the Lord. It’s the best way I’ve found to face adversity.”

      “I don’t even know what that means. Who is this Lord? A God who cares about us? Who fixes things and changes lives? I sure never met Him at the church I grew up in. He’s a concept I can’t even relate to.”

      Maggie nodded. The last she’d heard from Michael, Trent still saw faith as a crutch. At least now he was questioning in his own way. “How about taking it one day at a time? How about looking at me and the kids as a package deal. Please say you’ll move into the house with us. That you’ll be waiting for us when we come back north.”

      “I…I’m not sure. I just don’t know if I can. I’m going to have to play it by ear. Like you said. One day at a time.”

      Trent stared at the key in his hand. Then at the lock. He’d waited a week since the memorial service and funeral. And he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. The last time he’d talked to Mike, his brother had most of the house torn apart to put in a new climate-control plant. Which meant there was not only no heat or air-conditioning, but no hot water, either. Ed had called to warn Trent that if his parents did sue for custody, a home study would be done on both environments.

      One step at a time, he reminded himself, and turned the key. But when he went inside, he wished he could take back that last step. He hadn’t understood: this wasn’t torn apart—it had been demolished. There were almost no walls! What had they been thinking to call this mess a paradise. It sure didn’t look like Paradise Found to him! It was more like Paradise Lost!

      Trent closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again. Nothing had changed. Studs. Subflooring. Exposed pipes. Then he remembered the kitchen Mike had mentioned finishing. A bathroom and a room he’d created as a family room from two smaller ones at the back of the house. Mike had begun the project shortly after Maggie walked out on their marriage. How could nearly nine months have gone by since he visited Mike and Sarah at their own house?

      He’d seen them often, but at his place. He’d met them at the zoo one day. Had taken them to a lake in Jersey another. But he hadn’t come to their home. Mike had told him the place was torn up, and Trent had used it as an excuse because he was afraid to run into Maggie. Afraid he’d weaken, take her back. Afraid he’d pull her into his arms, kiss her senseless and beg her to forgive him for denying her the children she needed, then never let her go.

      Trent shook his head and picked his way through the entrance foyer, past the remnants of a sweeping staircase, and down the hall to the kitchen for which Mike had been so full of plans. He pushed open the leaded-glass swinging door, and stood spellbound.

      The room stood like a monument to his brother’s talent. For so long Mike had been told that to work with his hands would be unseemly. Trent didn’t know Mike’s Lord, but he thanked Him just the same, because somehow He’d given his brother the courage to be who he was meant to be. And now Trent understood why Mike and Sarah had named the house Paradise Found.

      Black granite counters gleamed. Oak cabinets shone. It was…overwhelming in its beauty. He ran his hands over the cabinets and the frosted leadedglass inserts. He recognized the cabinet doors that framed the glass. On his last visit, just after a particularly nasty fight with Maggie, Mike had shown Trent the prototype he’d just finished. Sarah’s art—bordered by Mike’s.

      Tears flooded his eyes. Trent made his way to the kitchen table and dropped his head onto his forearm where СКАЧАТЬ