for saving us,” Patty said, and instead of shaking Cathy’s hand, she kissed her cheek.
“I was just in the right place at the right time,” Cathy said to Alice. “All’s well. Go home and take care of your baby.”
Alice hugged her again. “I am your friend for life. Just know that.”
At that point, Cathy slipped across the street and disappeared up the alley. She kept thinking about that urge she’d had to get out of the house, even after she’d spent the better part of the day shopping. She should have been resting with her foot up, but she’d had an urge to be outside, and now she knew why.
When she was little, her mama used to tell her how sometimes God used real people to perform miracles for Him. Now she understood what that meant. It was no coincidence that she felt the need to be outside. That was God getting her in the right place at the right time to help.
She took a deep breath, and when she exhaled, it felt as if she’d let go of more than the incident from today. Maybe the last demons from her past were gone, too. She’d never been able to stop the devil she’d lived with, but she’d stopped that coyote, and put an end to the devil it had turned into from the disease.
And so she kept walking, crossing streets into the next alley, and then the next, until she was walking into her backyard, right past that gazebo and all the way to where she’d dropped the broom and the garbage bag. She picked them up and went inside. Today was not the day to clean the gazebo after all.
* * *
Hope swung by the trailer park to pick up her boys. That’s how she thought of them. Her husband and his brother. She’d taken the both of them on the day she said “I do” and hadn’t regretted one moment of it since. She watched them walking toward her and smiled. Duke was at least two inches taller and his hair was darker, but it was easy to see they were brothers.
They looked as tired as she felt, but with good reason. It was thirty minutes by car from the farm to Blessings, and the search team had walked the whole way down tracking that coyote.
Chapter 11
“There’s my girl,” Jack said as Hope pulled into the park. “I am so ready to sit down,” he added, and headed toward her with Duke beside him.
But as soon as Jack reached the car and opened the passenger side door, he saw the exhaustion on Hope’s face.
“Oh, Hope, honey…you look exhausted. I’m driving home.”
“I won’t argue,” she said. “It was a hectic shift in the ER.”
She got out and gladly took the front passenger seat as Jack held the door. Working and pregnancy were really pulling her down.
Duke got in the back seat, then tapped his brother on the shoulder.
“Would you please drive me by Cathy’s house before we leave? I want to check on her.”
“Sure,” Jack said, and headed toward Cherry Street, while Hope reclined the passenger seat and closed her eyes.
It only took a few minutes to get to Cathy’s house, and when Jack pulled up in the drive and parked, Duke got out.
“I won’t be long.”
“Take your time,” Hope said. “I’m off my feet, and that’s all that matters.”
“Same here,” Jack said.
Duke’s heart was pounding as he headed for the house. He’d never been scared for a woman’s life before. At least not that he could remember. It was a feeling he didn’t know how to process. All he knew was that seeing her made him happy, and when he left her, she was all he thought about. If that was love, he was so deep in it he was drowning.
And then he reached the door and knocked.
* * *
Cathy was washing up at the kitchen sink when she heard a knock at the door. She grabbed a towel to dry her hands and went to answer it, expecting it to be more fallout from the coyote incident. But the moment she opened the door, Duke stepped over the threshold, wrapped his arms around her, and just held her.
Cathy sighed. It appeared that he knew what had happened, and who was she to turn down a hug like this?
All the worry Duke had been feeling settled the moment she was in his arms. He went from the hug to a kiss, and when her arms slid around