Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,6
never had feelings like that for anyone else.
The kind of feelings where she couldn’t wait to see him and couldn’t wait to get away from him. Not exactly the kind of feeling she’d ever had for anyone else.
Definitely confusing.
The form on the bed didn’t move as she slipped closer to the crib, the baby stirring in her hands just slightly. She adjusted the warm body, getting ready to lay her down.
Her own mother and little sister were somewhere in northern Arkansas right now.
The guilt that she could never quite shake tightened her neck as she thought that maybe rather than helping Race and Penny, she should be back with her mother and Hazel.
She had to live her life, and her mother wanted to stay stuck in the past.
Or maybe she was just afraid that what her mother had would be contagious.
There were things she didn’t want to think about, so she shook those thoughts as well, gently setting Gabriella down in the crib and tucking the blanket around her.
The baby stirred and jerked as babies do before settling back and relaxing.
In the dim light, Poppy could just make out her outline, and she smiled at it. Precious little one.
Turning, she took two steps before a voice came softly and weakly in the darkness. “Who is that?”
Poppy swallowed. In the year or so that she’d been with Race and Penny and in the years before that with her parents, she’d been around a lot of people who were sick and tired and had given up hope. Her mother being one.
She was never sure what to say to these people. Her own journey was so long and so hard she couldn’t sum it up into a sentence or two that might be coherent, and sometimes, she just felt it wouldn’t help anyway.
All of her problems had been in her mind.
It wasn’t like she had cancer, with her body being slowly eaten away and death creeping closer and more certain every day.
She wasn’t sure the foundation she’d built in her mind would handle that kind of load. “It’s Poppy Kyle. I work with the church in Mistletoe, and I brought some food out for you and your children.”
“And West.”
Poppy nodded, although she realized Minnie probably couldn’t see her, so she said softly, “Yes. And West.”
“He’s grown up into a good man.”
Poppy nodded again. Unsure what else to say. She didn’t know West when he was younger.
“But he’s bitter and angry, and he needs to let the past go.”
Again, Poppy didn’t know anything about West’s past, although Minnie’s words made guilt tighten her neck and travel down her backbone. She hadn’t thought that West might have gone through anything hard. She had trouble cutting people slack when their trials hadn’t been as severe as hers.
Maybe she was arrogant, thinking she had it worse than anyone else, and if she could live through it, everyone else should be able to too.
God gave different trials to different people.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she whispered, bending over just a little and finding Minnie’s hand on the bed with her own, grabbing it and squeezing. How difficult it must be to have four children who needed you and be unable to get out of bed to take care of them.
Minnie seemed to squint into the darkness at Poppy, and then she said, “I think it will be good for him.”
Poppy didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to talk about West. She had no idea how to define her feelings for him. She couldn’t talk to a stranger about them when she didn’t even know what they were herself.
“I thought...” Minnie’s voice trailed off for a moment. “I thought, once upon a time, there could be something between him and me, but I think we were too much alike. He needs someone who hasn’t suffered like he has. Who doesn’t have the same darkness in their soul, and whose smile can light up a room along with the dark cracks of his heart.”
The slender hand under hers moved, squeezing Poppy’s fingers weakly. “I remember seeing you on the church steps. Your smile and your energy and the compassion that just seems to flow from you was enough to touch my soul. I wish I could be like that. But I think that’s what West needs.”
Minnie was so wrong. She had no idea how wrong she was. For maybe the thousandth time, Poppy wondered if people actually knew what had happened to her whether they would think that her