Page 137 of Doyle

Doyle glanced at the door. Misty stood inside the screen, her arms around herself.

“And then you started volunteering for disaster teams. And cleaned up after tornadoes and hurricanes and floods... and finally, you left.” He looked at the ring in Doyle’s hand. “I want you to go, Doyle. With Juliet’s blessing. With our blessing. Into the future God hasalwaysplanned for you.”

He put his hand on Doyle’s shoulder, then pulled him to himself, spoke softly in his ear. “And it’s okay to let yourself love again too.”

He released Doyle. Walked back to the hose, picked it up, and returned to his garden spraying. The mist rose, catching the light of heaven.

Doyle pocketed the ring and walked away.

But hours later, as he sat at the bonfire, the sparks popping into the darkness, the fire inside hadn’t died.“I want you to go.”

Conrad had driven out from the city, his hair long, a middle-of-the-playoffs beard on his chin. He was laughing at his girlfriend Penny’s second burnt marshmallow. “You need to give it time to cook.” He took the roasting stick from her and blew on the blackness, then shook the mess into the fire.

“I wasn’t born with the patience gene,” Penny said, grabbing a fresh marshmallow from the bag his mother passed to her.

Harper sat next to Jack, trying to harness the melting goo of her s’more. Jack had gotten up to stir the glowing embers. He seemed more content than Doyle had ever seen him, really, the prodigal erased from his countenance. It seemed that, even with the bus project, Jack might be sticking around. He wore a green shirt, jeans, a baseball cap backward on his head, and set the poker down, sitting next to Stein.

Stein stared into the flames. Two weeks of healing had him up and walking around, but his brooding reminded Doyle of the Stein that had arrived home three years ago, broken, angry and trying to figure out his life.

They’d been a pair.

But not today. “You guys remember when David Pierce came to our church and told us about his crazy rock band for Jesus and how he’d started a missionary school in Amsterdam?”

Stein shook his head.

“Sorry, no,” Jack said.

“I do,” his mother said. She wore a pair of jeans, an old flannel shirt, her hair back in a bandanna. She met his eyes. Smiled. “You came home and said you wanted to be a missionary.”

He smiled back. “I did.”

She nodded.

He drew in a breath. “I think... maybe my time in Mariposa wasn’t so much about starting something new... but a restart.”

“Are you going back to med school?” His father came over with a couple loaded pie irons for roasting and handed one to his mother. “Blueberry.”

“I’m not sure. I do know that it’s time I return to myself. Or to a better version of that guy. Hopefully wiser.”

Silence, and Jack looked over, smiling. Conrad ran a hand over his mouth, nodding.

Stein stared at him, hard. “A stronger version.”

“Even if you don’t exactly know where God is going to take you,” Harper said, glanced at Jack. He winked at her.

“And maybe that journey won’t be alone.” Penny pulled her marshmallow stick from the fire. The marshmallow had started a nice brown edge. She put it back over the coals. “Tia is back.”

He looked at her. “Really?”

“Yeah. Home, but not out of the game. She’s working on something new for Declan.”

“Declan is back too?” Stein asked, a sharpness in his voice.

“I don’t know. But I do know that Tia’s up to something. She’s been holed up in her home office ever since she came home about a week ago. You know her—she always has a plan.”

Doyle sat up.

And just like that, in the glow of the fire, he saw it.

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