A Mother's Strength by Allie Pleiter

Author:Allie Pleiter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-06-11T15:16:34+00:00

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To anyone else, Molly suspected this was just a simple, small-town festival. A bunch of people doing something creative and crazy to celebrate the pride Wander Canyon had in its carousel. And the carousel was worth celebrating. It was charming and whimsical and a little offbeat...just like Wander Canyon.

To Molly, today was a gigantic victory. A foothold, a source of hope, an accomplishment and a golden memory all wrapped up in one goofy gray hippo cart.

She steered the lumbering little cart slowly down Main Street with all the grandeur of a New York City ticker-tape parade. She waved to friends and neighbors as if she’d been crowned Queen of Everything. She watched Zack smile and wave as if his introverted self had somehow fallen away with all that sanding.

For a shining half an hour, Molly watched her son triumph. What a gift that was. What a blessing, Lord. Thank You.

Sure, there were a few sideways glances at the use of a golf cart. No one in Wander Canyon owned one, so she could almost watch a few bystanders figure out that it must have come from Mountain Vista. Norma Binton scowled, but then again, Norma Binton scowled at everything. Some defiant part of her was glad to have played a role in redeeming the resort for the town. Not everything was ever one hundred percent bad. She’d held fast to her belief that there was a sliver of good in even the worst of people, that rainbows always hid inside storms if you kept looking long enough.

This hippo may be an ordinary gray, but he was every color of the rainbow in Molly’s eyes.

And in someone else’s eyes.

She scanned the length of the sidewalk until she saw Sawyer. He stood next to Wyatt Walker, then stopped talking with Wyatt to wave with uncharacteristic enthusiasm when he caught sight of Zack. Her whole body registered the moment her gaze locked with his. A powerful zing of gratitude, connection...and yes, affection surged through her.

She was coming to care for him. Quite a bit, despite the mountain of questions he raised in her. His connection with Zack meant the world to her, but Molly was running out of ways to tamp down the connection she herself felt to Sawyer. He was loyal. He knew how to care, but was trying hard not to. He was wounded, although she didn’t yet know how or when.

“Broken people can recognize broken people,” Mom had said. That was back in the final days of her mother’s own battle with breast cancer, as everyone was wrapping their sore spirits around the understanding that this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. “How do I keep going?” she’d wailed at her mother’s bedside. Losing Mom felt as if it would break her life in ways that couldn’t be repaired.

Through her own damage—the failed marriage and the cancer—Molly had come to realize the truth of her mother’s statement. Brokenness was a gift of sorts. It gave a rare and particular empathy you couldn’t get any other way.

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