Bluegrass Blessings by Allie Pleiter

Author:Allie Pleiter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2009-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

It’s Tuesday. They’ll open my bakery today. Dinah hugged her knees to her chest in the post-midnight darkness of her mother’s living room. Her living room, once. Her living room again?

She’d slept in fits and spurts last night. The doctor appointment had only applied clean, clinical terms to the horror of it all—her mother was right in that respect; the details didn’t change anything. And yes, Doctor Oliver was handsome and charming in a way that surely impressed her mother, but how Patty had ever thought Dinah could see that man as anything other than the harbinger of doom, she’d never know. Even under the best of circumstances—which this was anything but—sane women just don’t date their mother’s oncologist. The fact that her mother had even considered fixing them up, and had even made broad, embarrassing hints to that effect during their appointment, still had Dinah shaking her head.

Oh, God, I can’t do this. How can I get through this? This is miles beyond me. Don’t do this to me. I know I have no right to say that, but You already know that’s what I’m feeling. I’m begging You—don’t do this to me. I’m not strong enough to take it.

A tear—the hundredth of the night—trailed down her cheek and she pulled out the packet of tissues she’d stuck in her back pocket. I’ll be keeping tissues in my pocket for a long time, won’t I? Oh, Father, there’s no way out of this, is there? I’m trapped, I’m trapped.

I’m here, I’m here, she heard from down deep somewhere. I’m here in the dark, I’m here in the fear. I will not leave you.

“‘Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death…’” she quoted to herself.

She got up and walked the house, wrestling with the challenge ahead of her. She loved the life she’d built in Kentucky. How can You take that away from me now? How can You give me all that, all those people, and rip me away from them now? And yet, the other choice facing her was just as compelling. How can I leave her? I know we fight like cats and dogs, but how can I go now? This is…the thought hit her like a physical sensation…my last chance. I have to try. What kind of human being would walk away from this? It was going to cost her everything she thought she loved. Don’t You know what You’re asking me, Lord?

She stumbled in the darkness on a basket filled with Christmas cards by her mother’s couch. A plump, glowing baby Jesus looked out from the top card, reaching toward a maternal hand.

He did know. The realization nearly knocked the wind out of her, making her suck in a breath that was more of a sob. Of course God knew what it was like to lose something so dear you thought you wouldn’t survive the loss. And really, she was being selfishly short-sighted—it wasn’t like Middleburg was going to suddenly fall off the face of the earth.

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