Page 12 of Through the Dark Night
“Yeah. I don’t know that Dad really enjoyed it, but he kind of joined in with us and pretended that everything was okay.”
“That’s what parents do sometimes,” Shannon said with a grin.
“Is that what you’re doing now?” Emma asked, and the question was unexpected. And Shannon felt her smile slipping a bit before she propped it up deliberately.
“No. It’s not. I’m excited about my future and about this inn. And it might not work out. It might be a total bust, but I’m going to have fun while I’m doing it. I wish I would have enjoyed that day on vacation so long ago instead of worrying the entire time about gas.” She lifted her shoulder. “Everything worked out in the end.”
Maybe she was pretending a little bit for her daughter. But she definitely didn’t want Emma to worry about her.
“I’d like to come see you. Some weekend soon?” Emma said, and Shannon didn’t have to fake her smile.
“I’d love that,” she said, and she didn’t have to fake any happiness about it.
They chatted a bit more before hanging up.
Shannon sat at the bar, looking at her phone, thoughts and feelings swirling through her. She was alone, by herself, her children were both happy and successful and living their own lives. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She had this huge project in front of her, and while she hadn’t lied to either one of her children, and she truly was excited about the challenge, she was also scared to death.
She didn’t want to sit and ruminate on it. There was plenty of time for her to take a walk before it got dark, so she grabbed her jacket and then walked out the door, going down the hill to the path along the bluffs. She and Lance had actually spent a lot of time onthat path, and it was worn smooth by decades of couples and dreamers, walking along, enjoying the lake view, maybe dreaming the way she was now. Or avoiding their thoughts, similar to her as well.
She and Lance had spent an entire year meeting out here and watching the sunset. She stood, her hands in the pockets of her coat as the sky changed colors and the sun sank slowly. The lake rippling and reflecting the sunlight back.
So many memories wrapped up in this view.
She and Lance had talked about their hopes and their dreams, their plans for college and beyond. In fact, she had forgotten about it until now, but this was the exact spot where Lance had shyly offered her a promise ring. It wasn’t an engagement ring, and he wasn’t asking her to marry him, but he wanted her to know that he was sincere, and while she had dreams of college and beyond, and he did too, he wanted her to know that she was the only one he would ever want. She remembered him saying something along those lines.
Had he been serious? Had he really not gotten married to anyone in the time that she’d been gone? She knew he hadn’t been married before she left. In fact, his sister had been in a car accident while she and James had been away at college and then law school. And she had heard that Lance had stayed to help with her care.
She wondered about that now. At the time, someone had said that his sister would recover physically, but mentally she would always have issues, but she didn’t remember what they were. And honestly, she’d been wrapped up in herself, in her own family, since she and James had had a child unexpectedly while James still had several years of law school left. She had her hands full juggling work and childcare and trying to support him, and she ended up dropping out of college.
That was why Yolanda was so much older than the other children.
She couldn’t remember exactly what had been going on with Lance’s sister, who was a good bit younger than he was.
As she was racking her brain, footsteps interrupted her reverie.
She looked up to see Lance approaching in running gear. Obviously, this was his normal jogging route.
He saw her about the same time she saw him, and she could see the surprise on his face, followed by what looked like pleasure, perhaps.
He slowed as he came to her and then stopped beside her, breathing hard but not panting.
“Beautiful evening,” he said simply, his eyes lifting to the sunset which had exploded across the sky in a riot of colors.
“It’s pretty,” she said, knowing her words were inadequate for the display of immense beauty that swept across the sky. She’d forgotten how glorious the sunsets could be over the lake.
They stood in silence for a while as his breathing slowed, and she felt comfortable. Interestingly. Although that long-ago memory, the promise ring, the idea that she had taken that ring, and made a promise, and then broken it barely a month into her first semester of college, bothered her.
Was she any better than James? A promise ring was a promise. Of course, she and Lance had had a relationship, but it wasn’t a marriage.
She hadn’t made vows to him, just made a promise.
But she felt guilty for breaking it even more so than she had back then. The conversation that they had when she called him to tell him that she’d found someone else had been hard and awkward, and she was pretty sure Lance was crying when he got off the phone. She’d felt bad about it for a while. And then, all through her marriage, she knew for a certainty that she’d made the wrong decision, but once the vows had been said, there wasn’t anything she could do to change it, other than what her husband had done, which was to go back on her promises and break vows that had been made before God.
She didn’t know how long they had been standing there, but it had been a while. Lance hadn’t said anything else, and she hadn’t felt the need to either. It was a comfortable silence. Maybe the kind of silence that friends who had been friends and had known each other, everything about each other, years ago, could have.
“Are you really gonna stay this time?” Lance finally asked, breaking the silence with a casual question that probed deeply.
She found herself being able to be more honest with Lance than she could with either one of her children and maybe even with herself.
