Personal Journal Entry
RHONDA Regalman walked out of a courtroom at the same time Carol came out of hers. They met in the center of the shared waiting area, entrances to courtrooms on both sides all around them. Rhonda raised an eyebrow as Carol yawned so hard she thought her jaw might pop.
“Rough night?”
“This Richmond Red thing’s going to be the death of me.”
Rhonda shuddered. “I don’t think I’d want to be that literal.”
“You’re probably right.”
It was after three and she was practically stumbling by the time they arrived back at the office. As they went through the glass doors and into the reception area, Carol nodded to the receptionist before going through the next set of doors. As they walked down the corridor, Carol said, “I think I’m going to try to cut out of here early, Rhonda. I’m not feeling well.”
Rhonda narrowed her dark brown eyes at Carol. “You look exhausted. Did you sleep at all last night?”
Carol rubbed the back of her neck. “Not even a little.”
“That makes for a long day.” She gestured at Carol’s office. “I think I left my file on your desk after lunch.”
Carol opened the office door. When she turned on the light and looked at her desk, she stopped short. The largest bouquet of flowers she’d ever seen sat right in the center. Every color in the spectrum had to be represented, and she knew it would take a horticulture expert to name all the blooms. She enjoyed the smell of the sweet fragrance while she searched for the card. Finding it nestled in the center, she felt the first genuine smile of the day when she read, “Happy Mother’s Day Month. Love, Bobby and Lisa.”
“Oh, how very sweet,” she said, moving the vase from her desk to her credenza.
“Who are they from?” Rhonda asked.
“My daughter.” She felt a renewed sense of energy, and sat in her chair. “For an early Mother’s Day.”
“Rather elaborate for an 8-year-old, isn’t it? Seems like she’d get more joy out of picking some flowers.”
Carol quickly estimated the approximate cost of the bouquet and realized that it amounted to an extravagant gift. She grinned and said, “I don’t even care right now. These flowers made my day.”
Rhonda picked up her file. “Get some rest tonight.”
“Congratulations on the guilty verdict today.”
“Well, he was guilty.” Rhonda paused at the doorway. “Hope you manage to get out of here.”
With a laugh, Carol answered the ringing phone. “Yeah, here’s hoping.” As she pressed the button to engage the call, she said, “Carol Mabry.”
CINDY Brooks sat at the table in the corner of the coffee shop and felt her eyes blur a bit behind her reading glasses. She’d been in the same spot for about four hours, and thought maybe it was time to pack up and go home.
As a freelance writer, she enjoyed getting out of the apartment and people watching while she fulfilled various commitments, but today just dragged on and on. The words weren’t coming, and evening approached. Cindy decided she’d grab some coconut soup from her favorite Thai place and move to the pool side of her apartment complex. Maybe inspiration would strike then.
“Hello,” a warm voice said. She paused in the middle of packing up her laptop and looked up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Her writer’s mind immediately started compiling all the different descriptions of blue she could come up with: cerulean, sapphire, cobalt.
“Mind if I sit here? The rest of the good seats seem to be taken.”
She felt nervous, flustered, excited. As she felt sweat bead on her upper lip and her cheeks flush, she gestured to the chair across from her. The pool could wait. “Of course. Please. I was about to leave anyway.”
“Oh, please don’t leave,” he said. “You’re the best looking view in this place.”
Unsure of what to do, feeling clumsy and silly, she held out her hand. “I’m Cindy.”
The hand that gripped hers felt warm, strong. “Rob,” the man said. He had dark lashes that framed his blue eyes, a black goatee, and black hair. He was perfectly dressed in a dark gray suit and royal blue shirt that made his eyes glow. She felt herself getting lost in their depths.
“It’s a pleasure, Rob,” she whispered.
“SO the trick is not to use any salt. No water on your meat, make sure it’s completely defrosted, and absolutely no salt. You can use butter or some olive oil, and you can use some pepper and other seasonings. No problem. But water and salt will just ruin an otherwise good steak. So, what are the two most important things?” Bobby Kent turned the steak on the grill and added some more seasoning to it.
“Start with a defrosted steak, and don’t use water or salt,” Lisa answered.
Bobby grinned. “That’s my girl.”
Lisa sat in the swing on the back porch playing with a pair of dolls. The beautiful voice of Melody Mason Montgomery on the radio filled the air. “Where’d you learn that?”
He frowned a little bit. “From my dad.”
Lisa looked up, her dolls momentarily forgotten. “Grandpa Kent?”
Bobby nodded and felt his shoulders tense and his jaw clench. “Yeah. Your grandpa. He knows his way around a grill. Always has. I’ll give him that.”
Bobby felt the tension in his shoulders relax a bit when Lisa went back to her dolls. He closed the lid on the grill and took a deep breath. He picked up his glass of ice cold tea and took a long swallow, thinking the picturesque scene lacked only one ingredient. Then he smiled when he heard a vehicle pulling into the driveway next door.
He lifted the lid on the grill long enough to toss on three ears of fresh corn smothered in butter and wrapped in foil, then closed the lid and waited. He knew she would walk over to get Lisa, and the two of them would convince her to eat dinner at his house. They’d both already conspired about it. The only downside was that he would have to watch them leave at the end of the evening, but that would eventually change. He felt confident of that.
After last night, and then the afternoon he spent with Lisa, he no longer thought the feelings that had begun to bloom for Carol were a backwash of his feelings for Lisa. He loved Lisa as if he had been there since the very day she was born and nothing would change that. His feelings for Carol, though, were another matter.
He found Carol, well, intriguing. That was the only word his artist’s mind composed that adequately described her. She intrigued him, with her ability to shoulder so much responsibility and make it look easy, and for the love she so obviously had for her heavenly Father, her friends, and their daughter.
There was a reason he’d knocked on the door of her dorm room the night before he left college, a reason why he’d chosen to celebrate such a momentous night in his life with her. There had already been something in the makings there that a simple telephone call had interrupted, and Bobby intended to continue on with that regardless of the near decade interruption they’d endured.
Logically, he wanted to take it slowly with Carol. Her life was packed as full as it could get, and he wanted nothing to throw her off balance, especially if he could prevent it. Intellectually, he knew there was nothing but time in front of them now.
Emotionally, he wanted to make up for lost time. Spiritually, he knew with a certainty that went much deeper than knowledge or something as fallible as the human heart that he and Carol belonged together as husband and wife; that God wanted them to be the married parents He intended all along. Bobby determined that for now he would keep praying, biding his time, loving his daughter, and honoring Carol until she reached the same inevitable conclusion.
In the meantime, he flipped the corn and watched her cut across the lawn. She’d obviously taken the time to change clothes before heading over, because she now wore a pair of Capri pants and a T-shirt for which Bobby felt silently grateful. Convincing her to stay would be that much easier since she didn’t have to change out of her work clothes. He watched his daughter run to meet her mother, then started to whistle a tune he had been working on lately.
She reached him, her arm around Lisa’s shoulders. First, he noticed how tired she looked, then the wary look in her eyes. He gave an inward sigh, prepared to use whatever charm necessary to put her at ease.
“Hello, Bobby. Thank you for the beautiful flowers,” Carol conveyed.
“That was entirely your daughter’s idea. She wanted to make sure I understood that Mother’s Day was one of my duties as a dad,” he explained, walking over to the umbrella-covered table and pouring her a glass of iced tea. “But you’re welcome, Carol. Hope they cheered you up.”
“They did,” Carol confessed.
He handed her the glass and waited until Lisa was back on the porch. “How was your day?”
Carol shrugged. “It was a productive day.”
“Productive is good,” he replied with a grin. He could see the fatigue under her eyes.
She walked over to the grill and sniffed. “I am really hoping that this extra food is for us. I am not anywhere near being in the mood to cook. I had planned on taking Lisa out for pizza or something.”
“Well, I aim to please, Darlin’,” Bobby said. He frowned when Carol’s cell phone rang from her pocket, and wished he didn’t know that she had to answer it.
“Carol Mabry,” she answered. He watched her face light up and, when he heard her acknowledge the person on the other end, felt an unfamiliar tug of jealousy. “Henry! How are you?”
She drew in a sharp breath after a few moments, and reached behind her for one of the chairs set around the table. Bobby tried to hear what was being said on the other end, but couldn’t, and decided to just wait for the call to end. “Thank you for calling. How much longer will you be on duty?” There was another short pause, then Carol whispered good-bye and put her phone away.
“Something wrong?” Bobby asked.
Carol rubbed her forehead, obviously trying to find her voice. “Bobby, your father had a major heart attack today and has been rushed to the hospital. He’s hanging on but it’s really bad. They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.”
He expected to feel nothing, so he was unprepared for the wave of panic that overtook him. Carol stood and touched his arm. “We can go right now, if you want.”
Bobby nodded. Most of him didn’t want to care, but the small part that did started taking over. He would regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t go say good-bye. “Let me get this food off the grill. We can eat on the way.”