Husband by Choice

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

JENNA WAS THE talk of the Stand over the weekend, and hated every second of the notoriety. By Monday, she was actually eager to leave the place to meet with Yvonne and Olivia, and when she returned, kept her speech therapy appointments and then sought solace in the Garden of Renewal.

Plans were underway for the pool party. It was going to be for adults only. Shelter employee Maddie Bishop, who was six months pregnant, was going to be the unknowing guest of honor. Her husband, Darin, along with his brother, Lynn’s husband, Grant, had volunteered to watch the seventeen underage residents. A group of women were planning snacks and games for the kids to keep them busy and happy.

Jenna meandered through the Garden and smiled at the few women there, but didn’t stop to speak. The Garden was meant to be a peaceful retreat, not an area for socializing.

She’d never spent any time there and on that afternoon she tried to open up and allow the privacy, the towering trees and the beds of glorious, sweet-smelling flowers, to heal even a tiny part of her. But it appeared she was immune to the salve.

And so she started to pull weeds. Because there were a few, scattered about, and she’d met Grant Bishop and his mentally handicapped brother, Darin, over the weekend and knew that the men had their hands full keeping up with Grant’s landscape design business and yard maintenance at the Stand, as well. She knew only because Darin had told her.

He’d also told her it wasn’t anything his brother, Grant would ever tell anyone.

You had to look hard to find anything on the grounds of The Lemonade Stand that wasn’t immaculate. But when she saw some weeds growing at the base of some of the trees in the thick woods that set the Garden off from the rest of the grounds, she dropped down to pick them.

She left them in piles as she worked, with the plan to come back and gather them in her blouse to carry them up to the trash. She worked quickly. Quietly. Undaunted by the fact that there were easily three or four acres of woods surrounding the Garden.

The earth felt good beneath her hands. Dirt under her trimmed nails. Kept short in deference to the baby she’d tended, the diapers she’d changed.

And for every weed that wanted to play tough, that gave her a hard time, she held a mental victory celebration as she hung tougher and succeeded in pulling it out by its roots.

This was what she was going to do with the memories of Steve. Pull them up by their roots and throw them in the trash.

When she’d rid her life of him.

Didn’t matter if there were acres of memories. Or tough ones to excavate. Didn’t matter if she got it all done in one day, or had to repeat the effort over and over again for the rest of her life.

She could pull them out and throw them away.

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