Free Blue Heart Blessed by Susan Meissner Page B

her eyes. She was afraid to touch him. Something red glistened on his forearm.
    “Warren… L’Raine…” Owen said as he struggled to rise but then fell back.
    Chloe glanced over her shoulder. Warren had the gun trained on the robber, who was on his knees. L’Raine was on the telephone at the cash register, dialing with shaking fingers.
    “They’re okay. They’re all right. Warren has the gun. L’Raine is calling for the police,” she said. “Are you hurt?”
    Warren squinted and grimaced. “I can’t believe how much it hurts.”
    “Oh!” Chloe said, as tears sprang to her eyes.
    “How do you gals wear these things all day?”
    For a second, Chloe sat speechless and dumbfounded. Then she realized Owen was not talking about a gunshot wound. He was talking about her earring.
    Which he still had clipped to right ear.
    As it turned out, the bullet had grazed Owen’s arm as he fell across Chloe and lodged itself in the wallboard behind them. The wound required fourteen stitches.
    The four choir members never made it to the concert that night. After giving their statements and getting Owen’s arm attended to, they had missed the event entirely. Instead they went to a diner and sat up half the night drinking coffee and falling in love— Owen with Chloe and Warren with L’Raine.
    Four years later, on the day after their college graduation, the four young people were married in a double ceremony.
    L’Raine and Warren eventually had three boys and lived in a little town on Lake Superior where he led a high school choir. Chloe and Owen lived in Minneapolis where Owen taught elementary band. He and Chloe tried for many years to have a child. Eventually, they adopted a little boy from Korea named Joo-Chan. They gave him the name Kellen. Many years later and to their absolute surprise, God gave Owen and Chloe a baby after all, a little girl, and Owen named her Daisy because those were the flowers he would bring to Chloe while they were dating. At night, Owen would sing “A Bicycle Built for Two” to his daughter, and she loved it. The little girl loved the line, “I’m half crazy all for the love of you.”
    And they were all very happy.
    Ever-after seemed wildly possible.
    I know it sounds a bit more like a police blotter entry than a love story, but it is a love story. It’s love like I picture it in its truest form: My father saving my mother from the bullet; my mother dashing to the ground to see if he was okay; Warren toppling the bad guy and yelling for L’Raine to grab the gun; and L’Raine trusting him and reaching down to take hold of it.
    That is a picture of love to me. In its most basic form.
    It’s keeping the one I care for from harm, looking to this beloved’s wounds, toppling evil in its tracks, bending down in trust.
    I think I knew all along that Daniel didn’t love me the way my dad loved my mother, the way Uncle Warren loved L’Raine.
    And I suppose I didn’t love Daniel the way my mother loved my father. If I did, I never would’ve wanted him to marry someone he didn’t love absolutely.
    It floors me still that when Daniel told me he was certain he’d be unhappy if we went through with the wedding, I still begged him to marry me.
    As if his happiness meant nothing at all to me.

Fifteen
    S aturdays at Something Blue are usually the busiest days of the week no matter what time of year it is. It’s the only day I rely on additional help on the sales floor. Mom and L’Raine take Saturdays off—they’d be on their feet the whole day if they didn’t, and they usually spend it golfing, shopping and looking for eligible bachelors to fix me up with.
    Three college students pretty much run the show on Saturdays. It works out great for them since they aren’t in classes on Saturdays and they can arrange the hours so that there are always at least two of them on the floor from nine a.m. to nine p.m. I give them a modest commission, too, which keeps them lively, on their toes and not buried