Once in Every Life

"Okay. Well, maybe you can learn by watching."

He went to the blanket and lowered himself onto its bumpy surface. Drawing his knees close to his chest, he glanced down at Caleb, who was sleeping, then looked again at his wife and the girls.

Lissa was showing them how to thread the dandelion stalks together to form a crown. Katie and Savannah looked mesmerized.

It occurred to Jack then, as he watched his wife, that he had called her Lissa. He hadn't even thought of her as Amarylis.

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Changes, he thought with a grim tightening of the mouth. More changes.

Ignore her. Just goddamn ignore her.

Jack said the words to himself over and over again, but try as he might, he couldn't make himself do it.

The sight of her mesmerized him, flung him back in time to a distant place and time. He stared at her in silent, heart-wrenching awe, willing her not to move.

She sat in the tall grass kneeling, her burr-studded skirts tucked carelessly around her body. Her hair, the color and texture of spun gold, fell around her shoulders and spilled down her arms. Bright yellow dandelions wreathed her head like the finest of crowns. She was smiling, an honest-to-God smile that took his breath away.

Beside her, the parasol she should have had perched over her head lay planted firmly in the ground, its white, lacy expanse shielding Caleb's naked body from the bright noonday sun.

The girls chattered happily back and forth, and every now and again Jack caught wisps of their conversation, but more often than not, he sat stone-still in a hazy half world of his own. A world of long ago and far away.

Everything about Amarylis was blazingly new and yet achingly familiar. He felt as if he'd stumbled back in time, to a past?their past.

She looked ... different. Younger. Almost like the caring, joy-filled girl he'd courted when they were both younger and still believed in God and love and each other. And yet, even that wasn't quite right. There was a tenderness in her now that was new and compelling. He saw it in her every move; the way she smiled at Katie or nodded encouragement to Savannah, the way she absentmindedly rubbed Caleb's naked back as she talked.

It was that softening more than anything that made him wonder. Made him almost believe.

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She looked up suddenly, as if drawn by his perusal. Their eyes locked. A friendly smile shaped her lips.

Without thinking, he smiled back.

Surprise widened her eyes. A pink blush spread through the peach-hued softness of her cheeks as her smile slowly faded away.

Jack felt like an idiot. He looked away.

"Don't," she breathed, shaking her head slightly.

Reluctantly he looked at her. "Don't what?"

"Don't stop smiling. I ... I like it."

Jack felt as if he were falling again. He reached uncomfortably for the cup of water beside him, not surprised at all to find that his hand was shaking. His fingers curled around the sun-warmed tin and he clung to it, feeling ridiculously like a drowning man hanging on to a rapidly sinking oar.

Suddenly he remembered Doc Hayes's words: Could be

you got yourself a new wife.

Jack felt something he hadn't felt in a very, very long time. Something he'd vowed never to feel again. And try as he might, he couldn't bury or ignore the emotion.

God help him, he felt a spark of hope.