Free Thanksgiving Groom by Brenda Minton

too.
    â€œHe’s stubborn.” She whispered as she dried the next plate.
    She hadn’t meant to think out loud. Wilma glanced her way with a curious smile and went back to the dishes.The older woman washed a coffee cup and handed it to Penelope to be rinsed.
    â€œAre you grumbling about Tucker?”
    â€œYes.” Penelope dried the cup. “Yes, I am. He’s stubborn. He’s like my father, my brother and all of the other men that I know. He’s obsessed with control and with work. He’s driven by his need to succeed. He thinks he can make decisions for everyone around him.”
    Wilma clucked a little. “He’s driven, but he’s good at heart. He’s finding himself, finding that part that he lost a long time ago.”
    â€œHe’d better hurry.”
    â€œWe all need time, Penelope. We need time to adjust, to find ourselves, to find faith and to find our path in life.”
    â€œBut you and Clark, you have faith. You know where you’re going.”
    Wilma smiled, soft and a little sad. “We’ve struggled, too. It happens to all of us.”
    â€œWhat happened?” Penelope let the question rush out. “I’m sorry, that was wrong of me. A few days of knowing you doesn’t give me the right to barge into your life.”
    â€œIt isn’t something we’re hiding from.” Wilma squeezed water from the dish rag and draped it over the now empty bowl. She sighed. “I guess we’re not hiding from it. We were trying to outrun our sadness. Let’s have cocoa.”
    â€œI’ll heat the water.” Penelope picked up the pitcher of water on the counter and filled the teapot.
    â€œYou’re getting very good at this.”
    â€œI have to admit, it isn’t second nature. Second naturewould be turning on the faucet and heating water up in the microwave.” Or having someone else do it for her.
    â€œYes, but there’s something about this life, about doing things in a way that isn’t easy, that makes a person grow.”
    Penelope put the teapot on the stove. She had watched Clark tend the fire inside the stove and she opened the door now to see if it needed more wood. It didn’t.
    â€œI hope I’m growing.” She turned, staying next to the stove, leaning against the counter. The room smelled of wood smoke and the fish they had fried.
    â€œYou are. This is a good place to test your mettle, see what you’re made of.”
    â€œI’m not sure if I’m made of much.”
    Wilma sat down at the table. “You’re made of the best our good Lord has to offer. You’re the finest metal and you’re being tested now. He’s put you in the fire and you’ll come out better for it. We’ve been there, girl. We’ve been there.”
    The teapot whistled. Penelope poured water over cocoa in the cups, stirred the contents and moved to sit at the table with Wilma. They sat across from one another in that simple kitchen lit by candles and lanterns, cocoa in front of them.
    â€œWe lost our son.” Wilma’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears, and then a few of those tears dripped down her cheeks. “We were in Germany, he was in New York working. When we learned that he’d been hurt, we prayed and prayed. He was the child God had given us when we thought we would never have children.”
    â€œHe must have been very special.”
    â€œHe was.” Wilma smiled a little, but her pain was evident in her eyes.
    Penelope breathed in past the tightness in her chest. She was new at faith and didn’t know how to say it easily, that she’d pray, or even that she understood. She’d never gone through anything that tore her heart out.
    Her life felt shallow. She squeezed her eyes closed and thought back to all of the things she’d done to try to make her life matter—the charity work, the foundations, and then traipsing off to Treasure Creek, as