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of the bargain. After all, she knew her parents followed God’s ways as best as they could. They all prayed. They all believed. She’d had faith that God would work things out. She had been patient. And then—boom—Curt had married someone else. That’s when she knew she shouldn’t have listened to her parents or to God. They had all let her down.
    Her heart was broken and it was because she had obeyed someone else’s rules.
    Of course, she could not live her life with her face turned away from her parents any more than she could renounce God. She wished she could say she’d had an epiphany of understanding somewhere along the line and that she had forgiven God and her parents; but it wasn’t like that. Life had just inched up on her.
    Her father had his first heart attack and Doris June had to stay in close contact with her parents, even if shewasn’t talking to God. Finally, she became tired of avoiding God, too. There was no undoing what had been done and she was the only one suffering. She missed going to church and talking to God in prayer, especially when she was worried about her father. She had no real choice but to return to God. It was a bitter decision, however, and the dryness never really left her heart.
    Her struggle with God had been very private though. She didn’t want others to know how hard it had been for her. It was humiliating that she had cared so much about a man who had not cared enough about her to wait.
    She might not have been able to live without talking to her parents and to God, but she could live without talking to Curt again.
    Although, it wasn’t easy to keep anything from the people in Dry Creek. Many of them mourned with her over Curt and she knew it. Dry Creek was small enough that the loss of one was the loss of all, whether it was a house that burned down or a crop that was lost due to hail.
    All the pity for her lost love became awkward, however.
    Doris June wished there was a no-sympathy-needed card she could send to others to say that she was fine now and that, while she appreciated their sentiment, she didn’t need special treatment. Unfortunately, there was no such card. There also didn’t seem to be any time limit on the sympathy. People still treated her as if she had reason to be upset at any mention of Chicago or brides or weddings.
    In fact, Doris June usually didn’t get a wedding invitation in the mail like everyone else. Instead, it would be delivered by hand to her mother with instructions to only give it to her if her mother thought she could handle it.
    If there was any justice anywhere in the world, the people of Dry Creek would forget all about the day she and Curt had started to elope only to end up in the sheriff’s office with a bent fender on the Nelsons’ old field pickup and a swirl of angry parents buzzing around them.
    Curt hadn’t even been going fast when he hit the signpost. Neither one of them knew there was a signpost there. They found out later that the highway maintenance crew had just come into Dry Creek the day before to put up the sign as a precaution.
    Fortunately, the sheriff who had helped them that night had retired years ago, moving to Florida. He had been the only one to witness the tears she had cried when Curt, angry with his parents for what he saw as their interference, had stomped off and left her at the sheriff’s office alone to face the remaining questions about the accident. She didn’t want to ride back home with her parents and had asked a classmate to come and get her. That classmate had proved a poor choice and within days the story of how Curt had left Doris June sitting at the sheriff’s office was all over the school.
    Doris June hoped the gossip about that day was dead and buried. Twenty-five years seemed long enough to make it a forgotten subject.
    Besides, by now everyone in Dry Creek probably expected her to move back to help take care of her