Hurricanes in Paradise by Denise Hildreth (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

really known what hurting was like. But once you know what it’s like to hurt, you’re different. Your compassion is richer. Your eyes are more aware. I see that in you. And one day I hope you’ll share some of that with me.”

She shook her head. “I doubt you could handle my story.”

He leaned in. “One day I hope you’ll trust me enough to try me.”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. The leaping in her heart had her too concerned that if she said anything in that moment, she would officially spill her entire life and not come up for air until every last detail had been unearthed from even the deepest graves.

He pulled twenty-five dollars from his wallet and set it on the table, then grabbed her hand, rescuing her from herself. “Come on. I want to take you somewhere else.”

She slipped out of her side of the booth. “Where?”

“It’s a surprise. Your first step in learning to trust me.”

Little did he know that his last statement had already cracked open that door. This would be her second step.

* * *

The room was closing in around Winnie. She jerked open the sliding-glass door to the patio and stepped into a rush of warm, salty air. Her fingers fumbled frantically with the scarf around her neck as if it were a noose only moments from ridding her of all known life. When she was finally free, she flung it to her feet, where the wind whipped it and flew it like a kite over the manicured lawns of the resort. “I don’t care!” Winnie wailed. “The saleslady talked me into you anyway!” But her heart knew she wasn’t talking to the scarf.

She dropped her head down on the railing. Her bangle bracelets clanged against the railing as her arms dropped too. There was nothing rhythmic about her tears or her rage. They were fierce, violent, surging.

“I don’t want to move on, Sam! I don’t! I don’t! I’m fine with the way it is. I have you all to myself every night.” Her tears dropped in scattered puddles on the concrete beneath her feet. “We talk. You listen to my day.” She snorted hard, trying to stop the faucet of her nose. She had kept this pain at bay for three years, knowing that if she ever allowed it to break free, it would consume her. It had. It was. And she had nothing in her to stop it this time.

“I don’t want to move on!” Her voice was desperate, pleading.

And then words were whispered to the very center of her soul. It’s time.

She jerked her head up. “Who’s there?” Her head darted from side to side as she looked at both sides of her balcony to see if someone else was out. There was no one. At least no one she could see in the darkness. She shot her gaze downward. But no one was below her. She turned her head upward in the most contorted way, but there was no one there, either.

“Don’t toy with me! I’m not in the mood!” Her blue eyes blazed out at the darkness. She was sure that a passing ship would mistake them for the lighthouse that stood at the end of the harbor.

It’s time, Winnie. It’s time.

“No! No! You can’t! You can’t leave me!” She felt a tearing in her heart. A knife went in and sliced her in two, and she crumpled. Her jacket caught the side of a chair as she fell and pulled it up around the back of her neck. She fought with her right sleeve until she finally set herself free, and there she hung, one arm stuffed inside the sleeve of her bedazzled denim jacket and the other sleeve wrapped in a knotted mess around the chair. Pretty much the way her insides felt. “You already left me once! I won’t make it if you leave me again!” Her body heaved as the pain of her grief coursed through her.

It’s the only way you will make it.

Her hands tried to grip the concrete beneath her. Gravel slid underneath her fingernails. “But I need you! I need you so bad!”

You need to start living. And you can’t live holding on to Sam.

The word Sam startled her. “Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?” she sputtered through her tears.

A flutter went through her heart. And in that moment she knew it wasn’t Sam talking to her.

Sam’s voice had always been in her head. There was only one voice that swept through her heart.

The wailing ceased, but the tears were relentless. She looked up into the moonlit sky as if she were going to peer into heaven itself. But she didn’t have to. Heaven was whispering in her heart. Tugging her. Wooing her. She had found Jesus on a wooden bench at vacation Bible school when she was six years old. Anytime He talked to her, it was always in her heart. But she had stopped listening after Sam’s death. Now she knew why. She was mad at Him.

“It’s not fair, you know.”

Yes, I do know.

“I miss him.”

And I miss you.

She shifted on the concrete, the solidness of it doing nothing for her old bones. “He’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

The whisper in her heart came again. For a long time.

She sniffled again and wiped her runny nose with her sleeve. No one ever had to know. “You’ve missed me?”

Like crazy.

“I haven’t known what to do without him. I’ve been so mad at You.”

I know. And I’ve tried to get your attention. I’ve wanted to hold you, comfort you, show you some new things.

She blinked hard; tears gathered on her eyelids in bulging droplets. The moon swelled in her sight, its beauty almost new. As if she hadn’t seen it in a while, either.

“But I’ve been too angry, huh? Caught up in all these old things, the past.”

Buried.

“A part of me died with Sam.”

I know it did. That is what happens when you’ve become one. Your pain shows the