Free Heaven's Touch by Jillian Hart

Don’t you worry about me, got it?”
    Westin’s wide eyes remained owlish, but he nodded. “Okay, Uncle Ben. If you gotta go, me and Mom could stay with you. So you don’t get scared.”
    Amy knelt to draw the boy into her arms. “That’s mighty brave of you, but Uncle Ben’s going to be all right. We’ll get some pizza and that’ll fix him right up. What do you say, Ben?”
    â€œSure. Pizza is a respected cure for headache pain.”
    Cadence felt the earth shift beneath her feet. The boy was Amy’s son? Not Ben’s? Her brain screeched to a halt as she watched the McKaslin clan—people she hadn’t seen since high school—gather around Ben. He rose to his feet and his family handed him his crutches, concerned but hiding it behind gentle kidding comments meant to make him smile.
    Ben took his crutches casually, as if they were no big deal at all, and that’s when she noticed the surgical scars running up the length of his calf. And the unmistakable red-purplish round scar, about the size of a quarter, that could be only one thing—a bullet wound. He’d been injured in the line of duty. Wounded defending their country.
    Respect hit her square in the chest, as if she’d been the one to take a wayward fastball. The brightness of the sun, the motion and activity on the fields surrounding them, the noise of the games and the scent of summer on the wind faded into nothing.
    Only Ben filled the center of her senses—how he positioned the crutches and leaned on them, saying God had graced him with a hard head for a reason, reassuring Paige that he was telling the truth.
    Then he turned to wink at her, as if to let her know there were no hard feelings. The breeze puffed through his short dark hair and brought her the scent of his aftershave, woodsy and crisp—the same, after all these years.
    This was the man who’d abandoned her first. The one who’d said he’d never settle down. He wasn’t made to be held back. He was meant for bigger and better things than being tied down to a wife and a diner the way his dad was.
    It was hard not to let the anger rise, even after all these years. She’d thought she’d found peace, that she’d moved past an event that had happened almost half a lifetime ago. She’d been wrong. Forgiveness had many layers. It was hard to take a step back from the family she’d once known so well. Paige was in her late thirties now; the last time Paige had spoken to her, she’d been a young wife with a baby on her arm. The strapping teenage boy standing next to her had to be that baby son.
    And Rachel and Amy had been high school andjunior high girls. Cadence wondered how so much time could slip away when she wasn’t looking.
    Amy took her son by the hand, and a ring sparkled on her fourth finger. Marriages and children and family—those were the things that mattered. That gave each year more precious meaning than the last.
    Before the family’s conversation could turn to her—they’d established that Ben was fine and Westin, who’d been hospitalized apparently, was no longer worried for his uncle’s welfare—she took another step back. Her teammates were calling for her and it would be so easy to step back into the crowd and disappear without saying another word to the McKaslins.
    The busyness and noise of the city’s huge baseball park returned and she waved to Rachel, who appeared to be the only one noticing her departure.
    An arm clasped her shoulders. It was Paige. “The last time I saw you, you were on TV wearing a shiny medal.”
    When Cadence studied Paige’s face, she saw there was only kindness reflected in her brown eyes, and the tension inside her eased. Whatever hard feelings there had been long ago when she and Ben broke up were not here today. Some things in the past were truly forgiven, and for that Cadence was thankful.