the door so hard Montana cringed, and started the vehicle. It roared as he stomped on the gas as he backed up. He laid on the horn as he drove away, and Judge said, “You’re such an infant, Mister,” in a cruel, cruel voice Montana didn’t think he’d want anyone to hear.
Montana wished she could make herself very small so she could disappear into the windows behind her.
She couldn’t, so when Judge turned around to return to the house, he looked right at her. “Hi,” she said weakly.
“Bishop isn’t here yet,” Judge said, frowning as he strode back into the house. He slammed that door too, and Montana took that, along with his statement about Bishop not being there, as him saying, don’t come in until he is.
Montana sighed and sat down on the top step of the porch. She could overlook the town from here, and she gazed down on it as her pulse calmed. Yep, everyone was just in some state of disrepair on the inside, no matter how put-together they were on the outside.
I’m heading in now. I’ll call with an update afterward. Montana sent the text to the group with Aunt Jackie, Uncle Bob, and Aurora in it and looked at Bishop. “I’m ready.”
“You gonna text your mom?”
“Oh, right.” Montana kept forgetting that things between her and her mother had improved over the past month, since she’d found a way to pray vocally for her and then text her. Her mother had texted back, and while they weren’t sharing deep thoughts or feelings yet, they were speaking. That was something.
She sent a quick text to her mother about the meeting for the bid finalists for the library. With that done, she faced the current library, and it was a sad, little blue building in an older part of town. It looked like it had once been a house, and Montana wouldn’t doubt that for a moment.
“It’s going to be great,” Bishop said. “You’re one of the top three. Even if you don’t get it, that’s a huge compliment.”
“Yes,” she said absently, trying to gather her strength and courage together. She’d debated dressing up for this meeting tonight, but in the end, she’d just put on a clean pair of jeans and a top with red, pink, and yellow flowers splashed across it.
“Go on, now,” Bishop said, plenty of cowboy drawl in his voice. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
She looked at him, an extreme sense of gratitude and adoration pouring through her. “Thank you, Bishop.” She leaned toward him and found the last of her strength as he kissed her. “Go have fun with your mother.”
“See you in an hour.”
Montana got out of the truck and went inside the library. It wasn’t hard to find the sign with a huge arrow and the words conference room. She went that way, pausing outside the only door in this short hallway.
“Whatever Thy will is, I will be okay,” she whispered. “But I’d really like to get this design and build.” It would catapult her to the top of the list of builders in Three Rivers. Everyone would know she’d designed and built the library, and thousands of people would use it. “I’ve worked my whole life for this.”
So had a lot of other people, Montana knew. Just because she’d worked hard didn’t mean everyone else hadn’t. Her hard work didn’t make her more deserving.
Bishop was right; even if she didn’t get the bid, getting selected as one of the three finalists was a huge honor.
She opened the door and walked in, already scanning to see who else was there. Her eyes landed on Micah Walker, and her heart plummeted to the ground.
Yes, Wyatt had been driving Aurora to Bowman’s Breeds for about a month now. She liked Wyatt. He always had a smile and a laugh, and once he’d brought Montana a loaf of bread from his wife Marcy.
She’d hosted Oliver and his family at her aunt’s house for the Fourth of July, and that had gone really well too. Tripp Walker was kind and actually somewhat soft-spoken. He wasn’t Oliver’s biological father, but he treated Ollie as his own. They acted the same. They spoke the same. They even wore the same hat—one of Wyatt’s signature pieces, she’d learned.
Montana had been giving her burdens to the Lord for a couple of months now, and while she still wasn’t quite to the place of forgiving her sisters, she’d been learning more and more about the Walkers, getting