Once inside, Joy set down her purse and bag on the bench in the foyer and exhaled. “Home.”
“It’s nice to travel, but so nice to come home again, isn’t it?” Michael hugged her. “I put your luggage upstairs.”
“Thank you, Michael. How’s your mom doing?”
“She’s hanging in there. I think the wedding has given her new hope since Dad died. A purpose, you know?” Michael shrugged.
“I’m so glad. I’ve been thinking of her . . . praying for her.” Joy squeezed his forearm. “And for you, too, Michael.”
“Thanks. It’s been difficult, but things are settling down.” He headed toward the kitchen. “All the estate stuff, banking, ugh.” Tossing up his hands, he plopped onto a barstool at the kitchen island and sifted through some papers. “Not to mention all the phone calls.”
“You’re a good son, helping your mom with all this.” Joy pecked his cheek.
“He is.” Jaime smiled. “He’s so patient.”
“So after I shower and change, we can talk about the wedding plans and everything, okay?” Joy patted Michael’s shoulder.
“Mom. It’s after midnight.” Jaime chuckled. “Come on, go take your shower and then head to bed. We’ll talk in the morning after I make you breakfast, okay?”
Joy yawned. “All right. Sounds good.”
“Michael’s staying here tonight in the guest room,” Jaime said.
“She thought she heard some noises out back and asked me to stay over.” He laughed. “Chicken.”
“Hey, I couldn’t sleep. It sounded like a thump.” Jaime narrowed her eyes. “Or a growl. Anyway, it was something nonhuman. And you were scared too.”
“I was not.”
Joy listened to them tease each other as she made her way upstairs and into her room. They sounded like best friends and so in love with one another that it made her heart warm.
Sitting on the bed, Joy glanced around the room. When she left the house back in April, she had no idea what it meant to take a chance and find adventure. Now back in her room after almost two months in Italy, her adventures dimmed in the soft lambent light of the scented candle Jaime had lit for her.
Now she’d have to start again. A new life in her hometown.
A new role as mom, confidante, and mother-in-law. Could she do it? Leave behind her old self and embrace the new?
On the dresser across the room, she spied a framed photo of her parents at Easter long ago, when she and her brother were little. Joy walked across the room and pulled open the drawer to retrieve some clean undergarments, but the photograph stopped her. The smiles on the faces reminded her of happier times.
With her dad.
His voice inside her head remained as clear as ever.
“Joy, honey,” he said one summer afternoon, “let me show you how to hit the ball, all right?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
He knew she wanted to play softball, so he wanted to prepare her for tryouts that summer. Joy smiled at the memory.
“You hold the bat like this,” he said as he gripped the bat. “Then set your feet like this.”
Ten-year-old Joy did her best to copy him at the ballpark. But because she had never batted before, he patiently showed her a proper stance at home plate.
“Swing at the ball, honey,” he said from the pitcher’s mound.
His tall, thin frame standing so many feet away remained in her mind as if the memory had happened yesterday.
“You can do it, honey,” he’d shout.
Joy slammed the drawer shut, leaned on the dresser, and wept.
“God, what am I going to do?” she cried. “I wish my parents were here. I wish my dad were here so I could ask him for advice. He was so wise.” She ran a finger across the photograph. “He’d know what to do and what to say.”
When she didn’t make the team that summer, Joy had sat crying under a tree at the park that evening, refusing to leave.
As the sun set, she saw the lights of her father’s car enter the parking lot.
“Joy, it’s time to come home now.” He stood by the car. “Come on, honey. Let’s go.”
She shook her head, staring at a bug on the ground. The slamming of the car door and his approaching footsteps sent shame through her. She cried even harder, pulling her knees up to her chin and burying her face in her arms.
He sat down on the grass next to her. “It’s okay, honey.”
Joy looked up at him, tears streaming down her face.
“You’ll make the team next year.”
“They made fun of me, Daddy.” She sniffled.
