As for how I failed you, there are too many ways to mention. I know there is much to forgive. Perhaps too much.

But I’m asking for your pardon anyway—because I love you. I always have, and I always will. Life without you is empty and lonely and bleak. Please give me the opportunity to prove I’ve seen the light, and that I’ve changed. All I ask is a chance.

Fingers quivering, she lowered the letter to her lap. Touched the petal of a hydrangea in the bouquet Steve had delivered. The flowers were beginning to wither . . . as her love for her husband had withered in those final months as they argued nonstop over the graduation gift—the apex of their years-long dispute. And it had dried up after Jonathan died, crumbling like an autumn leaf after a hard freeze.

But unlike the flowers in this bouquet, their love had roots—and roots could harbor life, despite a parched landscape.

In fact, wasn’t there a Scripture verse about that? In Job, appropriately enough?

Beth pushed herself to her feet, fitted her crutches under her arms, and hobbled to the bedroom. Dug through a drawer in her dresser. Pulled the Bible from beneath a stack of scarves she never wore.

She clamped it under her arm and moved on to the kitchen. After setting it on the table, she lowered herself into a chair and flipped through to Job.

A quick skim brought her to the verse she was seeking.

“For a tree there is hope; if it is cut down, it will sprout again, its tender shoots will not cease. Even though its root grow old in the earth and its stump die in the dust, yet at the first whiff of water it sprouts and puts forth branches like a young plant.”

She read through the passage again as a goldfinch launched into its courting song outside the window. Closed the book.

Strange.

She hadn’t been praying for guidance. She hadn’t been praying period since she’d walked away from God. But it seemed he’d provided it anyway. Through Christi, and Charley’s visit, and her sudden recollection of this somewhat obscure but hope-filled verse that spoke of second chances.

For Charley was right about the Almighty. He didn’t hold grudges—unlike his sons and daughters, who not only often rejected him but harbored resentments against each other.

She sat back in her chair as she listened to the finch’s lyrical warble.

Maybe she needed to trust, as Charley had said, that her prayers hadn’t gone unheard. That God had, indeed, listened with compassion from his clear view above the human tapestry. A tapestry his children saw from the ragged, messy underside, and who prayed without knowing the big-picture consequence of a positive response to their pleas.