“I know he does, and he thinks you are worth it, Hazel. If he isn’t worth it to you, you have to stop it.”
“I like Ruston. I don’t like his job.”
“Even if he quit his job, he would still believe what he believes. God would still be important to him.” Natalie said the words that Hazel knew were true. You can’t separate the man from his beliefs, even if you could separate him from his job.
Looking down at her hands, she admitted, “It’s a part of him. I know. It’s why I’ve stayed away from him until yesterday.”
Natalie turned in her seat and looked at her closely. “How long have you been staying away from him?”
“Since your wedding, mostly. Before that, I could avoid him easily.”
“My wedding?” she asked in surprise. It had been months before.
“You don’t remember? Oh, yeah, you weren’t there.” Hazel laughed at her joke.
Natalie glared at her and then started to laugh with her. “I wish I could forget.”
“It was the best wedding I have ever been to,” Hazel said, still smiling at the memory of sitting and talking to Ruston while he held her sleeping son. The wedding didn’t even cross her mind.
“Haze, I want to tell you that I’m sorry I was a bad friend before the accident and after. I should have called you when I woke up. We should have talked years ago. I let you push me away, I shouldn’t have.”
“I wouldn’t have talked to you, even if you’d tried,” Hazel admitted.
“I know that, but I should have tried. Our friendship was worth trying for.” Natalie put her hand on Hazel’s leg.
They sat in silence for a while as they both got lost in thought. Lost in the past they shared and the one they did not. The wind blew gently around them as they sat swinging.
Pushing herself out of the swing, Hazel said, “John Henry is up. I have to go get him.” There had been no sound coming from the house, but she needed away from Natalie, away from the past.
Ignoring anything that Natalie was going to say, she rushed into the house and went up the stairs. To her surprise, John Henry was awake and sitting in his crib. Lifting her son from the crib she knew he was too big for, she set him on the floor. When he didn’t move from where she set him, she looked toward the door and saw Natalie had followed her through the house.
“Sorry for the mess. I haven’t had a lot of time to clean lately.” No amount of cleaning could make the room look any better than it did right now. There wasn’t enough room for the stuff in it.
“Do you want me to help you clean out another room? If we do it together, it might not be so bad. He needs his own room.” Natalie’s eyes looked from one side of the room to the other.
“That’s okay. We’re just fine.” Hazel touched the top of her son’s head, who was still standing next to her, but he was looking at Natalie in the door.
“No, you’re not. He needs a bed, and you need privacy.”
“It’s fine,” Hazel stated firmly.
“He is going to be four, Hazel. You still have him in a crib. And you live in a shoebox with him. You have to clean one of those rooms for him.” Natalie had her hands on her hips in the doorway, blocking Hazel’s exit, forcing her to think about those rooms and whose they were.
Sitting heavily on the bed behind her, she buried her face in her hands. “I can’t. That would mean they’re gone, Natalie. Gone forever.”
Natalie sat down next to her and pulled her into her arms. “They are already gone forever, Hazel. You have to let them go. You have to live.”
“It’s hard to be the one that gets to live,” she whispered as John Henry hugged her. She hated that her son was so used to her crying.
“I want to help. I want to be there for you when you need someone, but first we need to make room for you to live. I’m going to get the book club together, and we’ll do this. You don’t have to both be here. We’ll make a room for John Henry. You just have to tell us when to come.” Natalie moved back so that she was sitting against the wall, her long legs almost hitting the crib. Hazel moved back to sit next to her former friend.
Maybe just friend now.
Both sat in silence because both knew right now Hazel couldn’t agree to what Natalie suggested. Maybe in time, but not that day.
“Girl talk,” Natalie said because she always hated silence and inactivity. “A preacher, how weird is that?”
Hazel wiped her eyes and watched John Henry pull a toy from his crib and start to play with it. “I try not to think about it. I see him as a guy, not his job.”