Mom Over Miami Part 30

wlmom: Thank you, Hannah, for starting my day off on such a thoughtful note. Am adding reading through the book of Samuel to my burgeoning to-do list! Bye.

NachoMama: Bye.

Lauren Faison felt just like her. Who would ever have imagined?

Sadie for one.

Loved it. Love you. Love yourself and see you when you get back.

April echoed the thoughts.

Aunt Phiz promised to stand by with prayer and light as long as Hannah needed her.

Hannah whizzed through those, but when she got to her minister's name, she paused. Had she insulted him with her crack about not knowing why he chose her? Would he dress her down for her flippant words?

Only one way to see.

Dear Hannah, How you are going to handle the Christmas pageant? With style, girl! With style! And all the help you need. Just ask.

She smiled until it sprang to mind exactly the kind of help she'd gotten for her last church undertaking-the women poised and already waiting to help her right over the edge.

"DIYCyd has sent you an e-card." She searched and found the header easily. An e-card. From Cydney. "Hmm, wonder if she made it herself?"

If it were a do-it-yourself e-card, would it crash her computer? Hannah held her breath and clicked the blue link.

Doves and flowers and rainbows filled then faded from her screen while the computer d.i.n.ked out the notes of "Wind Beneath My Wings." At last the words "You Are My Hero" swelled against a pink and orange sunset.

"Okay." Hannah waited for some kind of explanation, but the program ended with only the choices to view it again, respond to the sender or send the message to someone else.

"What message?" she asked the screen.

Click.

Back to her mail and the one, two, three e-mails from the other half of the duo. "Of course, Jacqui would have to outdo her sister."

E-mail one: Thank you, E-mail two: Oops! Hit send with my charm bracelet. Thank you, Thank you, Th E-mail three: Took my charm bracelet off. Maybe now I can get through a whole note.

Thank you, Hannah. Thank you a hundred times over. You said it all. How I feel, and Cydney, we were on the phone to each other first thing this morning. You made it possible for me to tell you, and I speak-type?-for Cydney, too, our truth. We are miserable decorators.

"You don't say?" Hannah shut her eyes and shook her head to keep the images of the nursery suite incident from a.s.sailing her. After a moment she turned back to the e-mail.

We never wanted to decorate or design anything. Ever.

"Oh." She got it now. Jacqui wasn't confessing they made miserable decorators. They were miserable because because they were decorators. That was her truth. they were decorators. That was her truth.

Gluing plastic gems to tennis shoes and putting up wallpaper borders in the guest powder room is one thing, but interior decorating as a business is beyond us. We just did it because people said we would be good at it.

"Really? Were these people drinking at the time?" Bad, Hannah. But she couldn't help it; knowing that the best mom in the world and the worst interior decorators shared the same insecurities that she did made her a little giddy.

We still want to do everything we can for the church and the nursery program.

"Giddiness subsiding," Hannah murmured.

So we thought why not take over child-care duties Sunday mornings? If we shared them between the three of us, we could all serve and still attend some of the services.

Hannah sat back, overwhelmed. That was the kind of help she could really use. The gift of time. "Wow."

She raised her hand to hit the reply b.u.t.ton when a knock at the door drew her away.

"Room service!"

"Oh, breakfast!" She lost track of the time. So much for showering and getting dressed. She squirmed into her robe and grabbed her wallet to get some tip money. "Be right there."

She rushed to the door then, remembering a show she'd watched on the perils of travel, made use of the peephole in the center of the door. "Flowers?"

She couldn't get the door open fast enough. "I bet my husband sent these, didn't he?"

"I don't know, ma'am, I just deliver them."

"Oh, and breakfast-guess you didn't make that, either." She laughed.

He didn't. "No, ma'am."

"Um, okay, then." She stopped herself from launching into a lengthy story about how the misdirected newspaper column and the flood of empathy and support it had brought her had her unusually energized. Flas.h.i.+ng her brightest I-am-really-not-a-nut smile, she pressed the tip into his hand and thanked him as she shut the door behind him.

The room filled with the aroma of bacon and roses, and instantly Hannah thought if they would ever make that a perfume, she'd buy it by the gallon. "They'd sell it by the gallon, too, in stores that sold everything for a dollar."

She left the breakfast tray on the dresser and set the roses down by her laptop. She took a deep whiff of the dark peach blooms, worked the small rectangular card free and murmured, "I am married to the most wonderful man in all of...Dr. Briggs's office?"

She blinked. Sure enough. Payt hadn't sent the roses-the women in Dr. Briggs's office had!

She read the succinct but very welcome message. "'We put a sign in the break room. 'Nacho Mama Doesn't Work Here Anymore. Clean Up After Yourself!' Enjoy your well-earned vacation.'"

More time. Wow, she wouldn't know what to do with it all. Starting with right now. Here she was all alone in a strange city in a strange state with no itinerary or plans. It was the kind of thing that sounded blissful in the midst of her usual chaos, but now she hardly knew what to do first.

Actually, that wasn't entirely true. She needed to make a phone call before she did anything more.

She sat at the table and dialed out even as she resumed opening e-mails.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, and she wondered if maybe they had all slept in when the one voice she wanted to hear most in the world answered.

"Bartlett here."

His voice warmed her to the center of her being. "Bartlett here, too."

"Good morning, suns.h.i.+ne."

"Well, the sun is s.h.i.+ning in Miami, but how about where you are?"

"The weather is okay and so are we, though I might have heard the rumblings of low thunderclouds coming from Tessa's room."

"That's what you get for feeding her popcorn."

"It wasn't popcorn, it was canned chili."

She plunked her feet down so hard her chair squeaked. "What?"

"I was trying to improve on your nachos for the boys. Say, did you know that canned chili holds that can shape the entire length of time it takes to sail across the kitchen?"

She put her hand over her eyes. "I was going to ask if I should make plans to hurry home, but now I might just add an extra few days onto my stay."

"You can, you know."

"What can? We still talking chili here?"

"No. I think we're talking turkey. If that's what they call it when two people are speaking frankly."

"There's a bad pun in there someplace about turkey franks, I know."

"Hannah." His voice was deep and sincere.

"Payt?" Hers, more tentative.

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? I'm the one who ran away." sorry? I'm the one who ran away."

"No, you're the one who followed through on the plans we'd already agreed to. And I don't blame you."

"You should. I acted like such a baby."

"You acted like someone who was tired of always being a good soldier."

She knew how hard it was for him to bring up his childhood pain, and how genuinely he must understand her plight when he compared it to his own.

"I messed up the second honeymoon, Hannah. I made you work at the office and never told you how much I appreciated it. I do, you know."

"Yeah?"