The Matchmaking Pact

“Sorry, Nicki. I really gotta run.”

“Will you still cover my preschool class after lunch? I’ve got to take Kasey to the doctor.”

“Absolutely. Drive safe.”

“And I’m going to be praying something will happen to you to make you change your mind.”

Josie just laughed. “It would take quite something for that to happen. See you.”

Josie hurried down the street, glancing at her watch again, feeling a moment of guilt as she remembered doing the same in front of Silas. She couldn’t help it. In the past month, time had become her nemesis.

After the tornado had left her and Alyssa’s home uninhabitable, they had moved temporarily into one of the cottages belonging to the Waters family along the river.

And when her grandmother was discharged from the hospital, unable to take care of herself, unable to walk and also unable to move into her home, she had moved in with Josie and Alyssa.

Every day was spent caring for her grandmother and Alyssa, dealing with an insurance company who required endless reams of paperwork, making lists and appointments for her grandmother and trying not to grieve the loss of the things she had owned.

Josie hurried up the walk to the house. This morning the physiotherapist was coming for her grandmother, then she had promised Nicki that she would cover her preschool class after lunch.

Then she had to get what she needed for her own baking class later that afternoon.

As Josie ran up the temporary wheelchair ramp to the cottage, she heard her grandmother’s shrill voice calling her name.

And she paused, her fingertips resting on the door.

Please, Lord, give me patience. Help me to care for my grandmother as I should. She waited a moment, as if waiting for a quick answer to that prayer to come raining down from Heaven, then she turned the knob and stepped into the cottage.

“I’ve been waiting for hours,” Mrs. Carter called out as Josie walked down the narrow hall to her grandmother’s room. “Where were you?”

Her grandmother lay on the bed, clutching the blankets, her frown indicating her displeasure with her granddaughter. The early-morning sun slanting in highlighted the frown lines puckering her grandmother’s forehead and the lines of disapproval bracketing her pinched lips.

Betty Carter’s long hair, her grandmother’s pride, was already neatly brushed, waiting for Josie to put it up in the chignon Betty had worn from the day she was a bride.

“Alyssa wanted me to bring her to school today,” Josie said, walking to the bed.

“Girl is up to something. You better keep an eye on her.” Betty caught the bar that had been installed specially for her and eased herself to a sitting position. “I think she’s headed for trouble. Just like you.”

The stream of negativity made Josie wonder again why she hadn’t listened to the doctor’s suggestion to put her grandmother in a short-term care facility instead of trying to take care of Betty herself.

No one would have faulted her. Josie was trying to rebuild her life one piece at a time. She had the responsibility of her niece and she had her job and she had her plans. More than enough for one person.

But when Josie had found out her grandmother was being discharged early, she knew exactly why she had to take Betty into her own home instead.

Guilt. The eternal motivator.

Guilt over the fact that her grandmother had lain, in pain from a broken femur and shattered collarbone, for four hours after the tornado struck her home before rescue workers got to her. Guilt over not spending enough time with her grandmother when she was in the hospital. Guilt over a sketchy past Josie had tried to leave behind but one her grandmother would dredge up time and time again.

And threaded through this all was the slim hope that one day her grandmother would grant her scarce approval, turning to Josie with a smile instead of her habitual scowl.

“Alyssa is a good girl,” Josie said quietly, defending her niece. “Just like her mother.”

“You better hope she takes after Trisha—otherwise you’ll have your hands full. Like I did. Visits from the cops. Phone calls from other parents. You were nothing like Trisha and even less like your mother. Debbie was a good daughter and a good mother. Good thing she didn’t live to see what happened to her girls. One dead and the other nothing but trouble….”

Josie closed her ears to her grandmother’s litany of shame as she helped Betty Carter to the edge of the bed, moving her just as the physiotherapist had shown her the last time she had come for a home visit.

“Just put your arm over my shoulder and we’ll go up on the count of three. Ready?”

A few quick maneuvers had her grandmother in the wheelchair.

“My goodness, girl, could you be any rougher?” Betty frowned as she tried to get herself settled, pulling her pink, fleecy housecoat around her with one arm. “That collarbone will never heal if you aren’t more careful and you made my leg hurt. Again.”

“What would you like for breakfast, Gramma?” Josie ignored Betty’s complaints as she shifted the wheelchair through the doorway. The temporary living arrangements had never been meant to be wheelchair accessible, but thankfully a volunteer who had come to High Plains to help with the rebuilding had built a rough ramp up to the front door.

“I’m not hungry.” Betty closed her eyes and sighed. “You can do my hair right away.”

“I’ll need to get some elastics from my room first.”

“Why didn’t you think of that in the first place? I always have my hair done in the morning. You know that.”

Josie walked to the room she shared with Alyssa, closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

“Please, Lord, give me patience,” she whispered, clenching her hands into fists. “Please help me to love her as You love her.”

She waited a moment, then pushed herself away from the door and walked to her dresser.

She shook her head when she saw the framed photograph sitting front and center on the dresser.

Her niece had come home from school one day with this picture of her best friend, insisting on putting it on the dresser.

In the picture, Lily held the reins of the horse and grinned at the camera, her hair brushed and braided. She wore a cowboy hat and blue jeans. Silas was on the horse, his mouth tilted in an unfamiliar smile. He wore a cowboy hat pushed back on his head and he leaned toward the camera, his arms resting on the pommel of the saddle, as if about to divulge some secret.

When Alyssa had brought the picture home she said it was so she could remember her friend when they weren’t together in school.

Josie picked up the picture. Lily looked a couple of years younger than now, which made Josie suspect Lily’s mother had snapped the picture. Hence Lily’s neat hair. And Silas’s warm smile that transformed a face that Josie had seen only scowling or frowning.

He wasn’t a happy man, and she wondered what it would take to see that smile again.

She set the picture back on the dresser, snatched the elastics she needed out of a basket holding Alyssa’s hair stuff and hurried back to her waiting and impatient grandmother.

“You took a long time,” Betty said, scowling at her granddaughter.

As Josie brushed her grandmother’s hair, she wondered what it would take to get a smile from Betty Carter, as well.

“Did you give your dad the picture?” Alyssa slipped her backpack on and tugged her braids loose from the straps. They always got caught. Sometimes she wanted to get her hair cut, but then she wouldn’t look like her friend Lily anymore. Lily’s dad would never let her cut her hair, so Alyssa kept her hair long, too.

Tommy Jacobs bumped her as he ran past them, heading out the door to catch the school bus. Alyssa was a bit angry with him, but then she remembered that he was a foster kid and he had lost his dog. When she thought about that, she felt sorry for him and wasn’t mad anymore.

“Yeah. He looked kind of funny when I did, though.” Lily dropped her books in her backpack, but didn’t zip it up before she put it on.