Read My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) for Free Online Page B

any control over. Your father loves you and your brother very much and cares about me. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this and be as happy as before. You hang in there. I’ll see you when you come home, and we’ll plant the vegetable garden and ride bikes out to Bear Falls and downtown to have lunch. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a few more weeks and then we’ll talk all about it. It’s going to be fine.”
    It was the first time I had ever said anything to either of my children that I didn’t believe to be true. When I talked to Paul, I gave him the same spiel. And so it went. I did not share my grief with my children.
    I hung up and hadn’t even set the phone down when it rang again. It was Race. When Janie had heard from a friend from home that her mom and dad had split up, she immediately called her father at his office to dispel the nasty rumor. Race had tried to warn me when he got off the phone with her, but the phone at the house was busy. Janie got her call through first.
    “Cammy, how did Janie sound to you?”
    “Upset, Race, very upset.”
    “Do you think I should fly out there?”
    “I don’t know, Race, that’s up to you. Don’t start asking me now what you should do, okay?”
    “I should have waited. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
    He was really hurting. I could hear it in his voice. I wanted him to care for our children, but I wanted him to care for me too. The hurt he was feeling was for Janie. I’m the mother—she’s the child. It’s funny how you sometimes have to remind yourself of something so obvious when you’re a parent. I wasn’t going to kick him when he was down, but comfort him? I couldn’t do it.
    Janie and Paul called me daily the following week. Every time I hung up the phone, I was exhausted. Acting is hard work. Answering the phone became a full-time job. I couldn’t ignore it anymore in case it was the kids. If they couldn’t reach me, they would worry.
    Loretta went home and we made a deal that she would only call me on Sundays to check in. But there were lots of other callers. Some were genuinely concerned while others were looking for juicy details. I knew who was who. I eventually broke down and resorted to technology, which I avoid whenever possible—I got Caller ID.
    I forced myself out of bed every morning and tried to focus on what I needed to do. I had been thoughtfully relieved of most of my volunteer commitments, but I still had the plants to take care of at the food bank and the animal shelter.
    Plants, as it turns out, don’t have much of an opinion about divorce and they don’t take sides—two of the many things I love about them. Also, when you take care of them well, they always look so happy to see you.
    Minnie said I could come back to work at the garden center whenever I was ready. I wasn’t ready. Financially I was okay. Race had let me know he would keep his paycheck going directly into the checking account, and we would settle our finances later. He would make sure I had what I needed. All of that was in the note. Remember the note with the key?
    I stuck to the Rivers plan, did yoga with Kathy, and got up early every morning to ride five miles on my Schwinn. It was the same bike I’d had since high school and the one I had taken to college.
    I may not have had control over my husband, my life, not even my own mind, but my body was something I was able to get a handle on. Planning and preparing my meals and sticking to an exercise routine gave me a sense of order in my spinning-out-of-control life.
    I wrote to Beverly Rivers to tell her how she had changed my life. The truth was that Race, Paul, and Janie had been the only people who had ever changed my life. Race changed it the first day I sat in his classroom. Paul and Janie changed it the first time I held them and looked into their perfect little newborn faces. Again Race changed it, the day he told me I would live the rest of my life as a divorced woman. Even if I