Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
He grumbled and didn’t say anything else.
His eyes fell to the rocking chairs.
He gazed longer than one would deem a normal amount of staring. Then he started toward his boat.
What an odd, odd man. The grumpier he grew, the more I felt the need to do what I did best—kill him with kindness. It drove me a bit mad that he didn’t seem to like me. People liked me! I prided myself on being liked by many. Theo not liking me was doing a number on my psyche.
“By the way, I know you ate one of my cookies,” he said without turning back toward me.
I smiled a little. It was a delicious cookie.
“Are you going fishing?” I called out.
“Yup,” he replied.
“Can I go fishing with you?”
“Nope.”
CHAPTER 4
Molly
We moved a little slower as of late. Harry was a bit slower than me, but I never rushed him. As long as he was still moving, I was happy. I locked his wheelchair into place before I moved to the side of the bed where he’d been resting. His olive skin was soft from the bath I’d given him earlier. Emma, the nurse we’d hired to help around the house, said she’d be more than willing to give Harry his showers, but Harry said, “Ain’t no damn way another woman’s washing my balls. You’ve been playing with these balls for years, why stop now?” Even with his health issues, he was still such a fool.
“Willow looks good,” he mentioned as I helped him into his wheelchair. “I can’t believe you two have been in touch for so long over the years.”
“She’s a good thing,” I replied. I never saw myself making such good friends with a young girl in her late twenties, but when I randomly met Willow at a crocheting class in Chicago, we instantly clicked. Something was so special about her spirit. I’d lived a long time and had met many people, but never anyone like Willow.
She took being a free spirit to a new level. Harry said that was why I connected with her, though.
“She’s a carbon copy of who you once were, and you are the blueprint of what she’ll become,” Harry told me once before.
He was right, too. Willow and I had much in common. We danced when no music was playing and laughed way too loudly. We’d strike up conversations with anyone and everyone, never falling short of words, and we’d always lead with love—and color.
Oh, how the two of us girls loved our vibrant colors.
Harry called me his rainbow, a burst of energy and colors that lit up his world.
When I first met my husband, he was a bit reserved. He’d just left the military and did things by the clock. Literally. And if anything could rub a free spirit the wrong way, it was military time.
Yet somehow, even with all our differences, the two of us fell in love.
Over and over again.
Even though he called me his rainbow, I knew he was mine. I couldn’t imagine my life’s canvas without all his colors swirling around it. I also couldn’t believe we were coming up on our sixtieth anniversary. I lived more life with that man than I had without. He was in every chapter, every paragraph, and every sentence.
What would I do after he was gone?
Still here, Molly, I told myself on repeat. He’s still here.
Each night, I pushed Harry to our back porch, where we’d sit and stare at Westin Lake. That lake in front of us wasn’t just a lake—it was us. We lived within those timid waves. Hundreds of our memories existed because of that water.
We’d lived on our land for years and watched our grandbabies run by the dock and dive off the edge. We’d taken our boats out on dozens of adventures with loved ones. Harry sat on said dock and fished for hours with his friends. He’d counted a thousand stars in the sky as he lay in the grass with my head in his lap. We’d held hands a million times out there, too. I couldn’t even count the number of kisses we’d shared on that water.
That lake was our story. And each day that passed recently made it feel so very bittersweet.
Still here, Molly. He’s still here.
I sat in a chair beside my husband’s wheelchair, making sure we were shoulder to shoulder.
My husband didn’t look like he did when we first met. He was chubbier now, and his shoulders curved forward. Those muscles he once flexed repeatedly to make me swoon were now soft. The brown hair on his head was now white with a bald spot right in the middle. And his thick, dark beard was now Santa Claus white. He looked different in ways, but my love for him only grew over time.
Plus, some things remained the same. His button nose. His laughter. Oh, if I could swim within Harry Langford’s laugh forever, I’d be the happiest woman alive. Yet it was his eyes that meant the most to me. When I looked into those deep blue eyes, I was twenty years old all over again, falling in love for the first time.