Free A Time to Love by Barbara Cameron Page B

left."
    "I am sure their mother looks down on them with pride."
    Chin in hand, elbow propped on the table, she studied her grandmother. "Funny, I thought that too. Now I know where I must have gotten it. I remember one summer, when I was visiting, you found me crying about my mom being gone. I was so sad, and you said something like that. It made me feel better, made me feel she was still close by."
    Now wasn't the time to tell her grandmother that she'd felt her mother very, very close when she was injured. But maybe one day—
    "I'm glad you remembered. You understand how hard it is for them to be without their mother."
    "Yes. Maybe that's why we have sort of a bond."
    "It was very hard for Matthew to lose his wife, too."
    Jenny nodded.
    "But it's been almost three years," Phoebe said. "Time for Matthew to think about marrying again. He's a good man who deserves to be happy. And his children deserve a mother."
    "Has he been seeing anyone?" Jenny asked, hoping she sounded casual.
    "Courting, you mean?"
    "That sounds so charming," mused Jenny, taking another sip of her chocolate. "Some of our customs must seem oldfashioned to you."
    "Well, my coworkers sometimes teased me that I was oldfashioned," she confessed. "I happen to think I just prefer tradition, you know?"
    Phoebe reached across the table to take Jenny's hand."Sometimes it's hard to remember you're not Amish."
    "Well, I'm sort of half, if you think about it. Even though Daddy left, I think he still considered himself one of the Plain People." She sighed as she glanced around the kitchen, always her favorite room of her grandmother's house. "I always loved it here. It felt like my second home."
    Her grandmother nodded. "It's good to hear you say so."
    Smothering a yawn, Jenny rose. "I'll wash up, and then it's bed for me."
    Her grandmother patted her hand. "See you in the morning."
    Jenny washed the mugs, dried them, and put them away. It had been a very long time since she'd done any housekeeping. She realized she liked the feel of doing such a chore instead of letting the dishwasher do the job.
    Standing here in her grandmother's kitchen felt very homey to her in a way that her own never did. And it wasn't just that a modern kitchen made it feel sterile. Working so much, she'd seldom been home enough to really enjoy any part of her apartment, she realized. And the kitchen had been merely a place to nuke a frozen dinner or eat takeout.
    Maybe while she was here she could try cooking some of her grandmother's recipes. After all, she had the time to stop and enjoy the simple pleasures of home-cooked food.
    Now she'd had time to smell—the hot chocolate!
     

     
    "Jenny!" Annie cried as she ran up the walkway a few days later.
    "Annie, be careful!" Matthew called after her.
    The child stopped a few feet before Jenny. "Rweady to go?" she asked with a big smile.
    "Yes, I was just waiting for you." Jenny maneuvered the steps carefully.
    Matthew waited beside the buggy. He helped Annie up, then held out a hand to Jenny.
    "It's very nice of you to give me a ride to the speech pathologist."
    Annie bounced on the seat. "I like it!"
    "You're sure it isn't too much trouble?"
    Matthew climbed in and started the buggy moving. "None at all. You're seeing a different speech therapist than Annie's, so we don't even have to wait for each other."
    The receptionist appeared surprised when Jenny walked in. She looked from Matthew to Annie and then back at Jenny. She handed over a clipboard with a new patient form for Jenny to fill out but didn't say anything.
    Naturally speech therapy was less physically taxing than physical therapy, but Jenny was disconcerted when Carol, her therapist, told her she needed intensive speech therapy several times a week.
    "It's going to take that much to get you where you want to be. But we can get you there." She paused. "What is it? What's wrong?"
    Jenny sighed and shook her head. "I wanted to be away from the hospital, but at least it was easy to do