The Construction of Cheer - Liz Isaacson Page 0,91
very much, and he made a little more progress every single day. She smiled gently at him, her mother heart so full and yet so fragile. “Rhett just texted to say that Penny died this morning.”
She looked back at her phone. “He said Conrad’s been crying for an hour, and he hopes Bill can take out bloodshot eyes in photos.”
She set her device down and got up from the table, her stomach clenching. She did not want her grandson to have to endure pain and disappointment. Losing a dog was hard on everyone, and Penny suspected Rhett himself had shed quite a few tears. “He’s had that dog for thirteen years.”
“I’ll call ‘im,” Gideon said, already getting up from the table. He loved dogs as much as Rhett, and he’d been through several in his life. She could still remember the two big mutts that had bowled her over at the park in Sweet Creek.
Their handsome owner had come running around the trees, calling for Moose and Mack, and that had been the first time Penny had met Gideon Walker. Those two dogs had changed the course of her whole life.
Tears came to her eyes as she looked out the window above the kitchen sink. Gideon now had two dozen miniature horses in the pasture behind their farmhouse, and she took comfort in the low drone of his voice as he spoke to their first-born son about the loss of his dog.
Penny could clearly see Gideon in that park. Gideon coming to her apartment while they dated in college. Gideon bringing doughnuts to her study groups on campus.
She saw him dressed in a sharp, black tuxedo, that stunning and sexy cowboy hat on his head while he waited for her to carefully step down the aisle on her father’s arm. She’d been the first Aarons child to marry, though she was the youngest.
Her mother had dealt with three weddings in a twelve-month period, and then she and Daddy had passed away in a terrible trucking accident that had left Penny reeling for years. Even now, she wished her mother was there to guide her. She’d lost her very best friend and greatest mentor the day her mother had died.
Her tears fell, though over four decades had passed since that terrible day Darren had called in pure agony to tell her the news.
“I finally did it, Mama,” she whispered to the back yard. She’d told her mother she wanted to be a lawyer since the age of twelve, and her mother had always supported her, though she certainly had a different idea of what Penny should dedicate her life to.
Sadness always came to her when she thought about the fact that none of her sons had known the beauty of her mother’s spirit, and that none of them had learned from her father the way she had.
She and Gideon had not stayed in Sweet Creek, and the egg farm Penny had loved as a youth had disappeared from her life as her husband pursued his dreams in the field of technology.
She’d dropped out of college when she’d had Jeremiah, as he was only fifteen months younger than Rhett. With two babies in less than a year and a half, and Gideon working crazy hours, Penny had put her dreams on hold.
They’d kept too. For forty long years, they’d kept.
When she’d first told Gideon she wanted to go back and finish her degree, he’d been nothing but supportive. He’d studied with her, and encouraged her, and before she knew it, she’d finished the coursework.
Then came the bar exam. More studying. More prayerful nights. More work. She wasn’t as quick in body or mind as she’d once been, but her bravery was just as strong. She’d signed up for the spring exam, and she’d passed it.
Her sons and their wives wanted to throw her another party, and she’d finally agreed—with one condition: They all had to do family photos before the event.
She wanted seven big, beautiful family photos on her walls, with all of her sons, all of their wives, and all of her grandchildren. She wanted one with just her and Gideon, just as they were, with their wrinkles and gray hair and years of wisdom behind their smiling eyes.
No one had put up much of a fuss—except Jeremiah—and their family photos were getting taken up at Shiloh Ridge Ranch later today.
Gideon’s touch ran along her waist, and Penny leaned into him. “How is he?”