Things Worth Remembering (30 page)

“Good, we’ll have some time to ourselves before I head for St. Louis Monday morning.”

“Want me to take some days off and come with you?”

“I don’t think so. I’d like to have some girl time with Mother . . . as much as Phillip will allow anyway.”

“Phillip?”

“It’s only a suspicion, but I do believe Mother has found a man she actually enjoys.”

“Her boss?” Luke seems shocked.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” I say. “I’ll take a DVD of wedding pictures to show Mother while I’m there. She’ll be glad to see how nicely everything turned out. I hope to be home by Thursday, since the kids will be back here Saturday. I may go back to Mom’s a few days after that. Then I’ll have a week or so before school starts. Pardon me while I rest my eyes again.”

I think I might have actually dozed off, because we are pulling into the garage. We come into the kitchen and turn on the light.

“What in the world!” I say.

The sight is glorious.

“Did you do this, Luke?”

“Don’t look at me!”

On the bar are two large vases filled with daisies. There is another vase on the kitchen table. I walk over and look for a card, but none of the vases has one.

“I can’t believe it,” I say.

Luke has turned on a light in the living room and is calling for me. I walk in, and the living room and the dining room have been transformed. Vases of daisies are everywhere. Three sit on the piano, two are on the large coffee table, and every other table in the room boasts a vase full of the darling daisies. Another vase graces the dining room table, and two more are reflected in the mirror over the sideboard.

“They’re amazing,” I say.

I check each vase for a card, finding nothing. But of course I know who is responsible for this daisy wonderland, and overwhelmed by this offering, I sit on the couch, my face in my hands, and sob.

Our daughter has done a wondrous thing.

Luke sits beside me and dries my tears with one of the Kleenexes he had neatly folded and put in his jacket pocket for emergencies.

He smiles, and I smile back.

“Come on,” he says, and he takes my hand and we go into the bedroom, where daisies overflow vases on the dresser, our bedside tables, and the table by the chaise longue. I can even see a vase on my vanity in the bathroom. It is propped against this final vase that I find a card.

It is one of Maisey’s gold-embossed thank-you cards. I read it, smiling through the tears once again gathering in my eyes.

I hand the note to Luke and he reads it while I walk through the house once more, looking at this astonishing display of forgiveness and honor and love. I examine the flowers, wondering how Maisey could have orchestrated such a thing, how she could have found so many flawless flowers so quickly, how she could have afforded such extravagance.

Luke says that this gift was obviously a collaboration between Maisey and Marcus. And I know he’s right.

“Let’s go to bed, babe,” he says.

“I don’t want this day to end.”

Of course I know it must, so I take myself into our bathroom and begin the routine—from the sublime to the mundane. Except tonight, as I exchange my dress for a gown, wash my face, brush my teeth, and take my vitamin and calcium pills, daisies keep me company.

“Done,” I say, returning to the bedroom, “but I hate to turn out the light.”

“The house will still be full of daisies tomorrow,” Luke says.

“That’s true.”

I sit on the edge of the bed and read my card one more time before I place it against the vase on my bedside table, turn out the light, and nestle close to my husband, throwing my arm across him as I did Maisey last night.

I know he’s practically asleep, but he turns to kiss me, an absolute necessity on such a momentous night. “Good night, Kendy.”

“Good
night, honey.”

A
very
good night!

My smile lingers even in the dark, and I thank God that Maisey’s wedding was as wonderful as we hoped it would be when she was a child.

I’ll probably read Maisey’s note again tomorrow before I put it, along with Mother’s note, into my memory box for safekeeping. But when I read it in the future, it’ll only be for the pure joy of seeing her familiar handwriting, for what she has said will be forever engraved on my heart:

Mom~
          
The bedbugs want you to have these daisies. (The bedbugs
are talking again, making up for lost time.) They say to share
these flowers with Dad. They say your daughter loves you both
very much. They say it is you, Mom, who is more darling than
a daisy. Though daisies
are
lovely, aren’t they?

~Maisey

NOVELS BY JACKINA STARK

Tender Grace
Things Worth Remembering

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JACKINA (pronounced with a long “i” to rhyme with China) Stark recently retired from teaching English at Ozark Christian College to spend more time writing and traveling. During the twenty-eight years she taught at OCC, she traveled nationally and internationally to speak and teach, and wrote many articles for denominational magazines. She has been married to her husband, Tony, for forty-two years. They live in Carl Junction, Missouri, and have two daughters and six grandchildren.

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