Why her? Why this travel agent?
Why now?
Seth didn’t have the answers to those questions any more than he knew what was wrong with the toaster.
The look in her eyes, he decided. Yes, she was attractive, and even from a distance he could see that her eyes were a pretty shade of blue. Alpine blue, if he were to give the color a name. Deep, dark, intense. It was the intense part that spoke to him. In the fathomless depths he saw her pain. Naturally he could be seeing something that wasn’t there, a reflection off the window, but he didn’t think so. The pain was what he recognized because it was a reflection of his own. Whoever this woman was, whatever had happened in her life, she’d suffered. The same way he’d suffered. He felt her hurt, realized in those brief seconds when their eyes had held that her anguish lay just below the surface the way his did.
Then, too, he could be imagining it all. He wasn’t a psychologist. Nor had he done any counseling. But he’d walked that same rut-filled pathway himself, and he recognized the pitfalls.
So they attended the same church. Great. It was a beginning. It made matters a bit easier. Now all he needed to do was develop a few more of the social graces, like learning to say his name without stuttering or stumbling over his own two feet.
Hey, introducing himself didn’t sound like such a bad idea, if it didn’t take him five years or more. But for now he was content to let matters be. He wasn’t unhappy. His life had meaning. If he wanted to risk his heart again, it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
“Daddy.” Judd stepped inside the garage. “The football game’s going to start.”
“I’ll be inside in just a minute.”
“Okay.” But Judd lingered. Not that it was unusual. His son enjoyed watching him work. Often Seth invented a project that required Judd’s or Jason’s help. Both had already proved themselves to be worthy nail pounders.
“You know what Mrs. Miracle said?”
Seth didn’t have a clue. “What?”
“She said we should take a vacation.”
Seth hesitated. “A vacation?”
“Yup. During spring break. When’s that?”
“March or April.” He’d need to check the school calendar. It was an odd comment for the housekeeper to make, although she’d made a habit of saying some pretty unusual things. Just the other night she’d gotten a chuckle out of him. She’d said something about a woodpecker owing his success to his head and not just his pecker. He chuckled anew.
“Are we going on vacation?”
He had plenty of vacation time due him, and it sounded like a fun thing to do. “I’ll think about it.” He brushed the bread crumbs from his hands and ruffled his son’s hair affectionately. “First let’s go see the Seahawks whop the Broncos.”
“Yeah.” Judd thrust his fist into the air.
Smiling to himself, Seth walked from the garage into the kitchen.
Mrs. Merkle was busy, Jason at her side, helping her prepare dinner—“helping” being the operative word. What he saw set his mouth to watering. The woman cooked like a dream.
“I’m making pie,” Jason proclaimed proudly. “From scratch.”
“Great.” He beamed Mrs. Miracle an appreciative smile. Apple pie was his personal favorite.
The housekeeper skillfully ran the sharp edge of the knife around the Granny Smith apple. The peeling twisted and curled away from the blade like a tight ringlet. “I always said that a good cook starts from scratch and keeps on scratching.”
Seth grinned, acknowledging her wit. “Judd and I are about to watch the football game.”
“Are we going on vacation?” The same question, this time from Jason.
“I’m thinking about it.”
“There’s a travel agency,” the housekeeper commented, her eye on the apple. “Right next to the Safeway store—you know the one I mean, don’t you? There’s that nice young lady who owns it. The same one who was in church this morning with Harriett Foster’s niece. I’m sure she’d be more than happy to help you plan a trip with the children.”
Seth stopped abruptly, and so did his heart. “How is it you know Harriett Foster?” To the best of his knowledge, this was Mrs. Merkle’s first week at the church.
“Oh, my, anyone who attends Community Christian knows Harriett Foster.”
It wasn’t possible that the housekeeper knew that he held any tenderness for this nameless woman he’d spotted in church that very morning. Was it?