Sweet Blessings (Love Inspired) Read Online Free PDF Page B

she deeply regretted.
    Don’t think about it. It’s over and done with now. She’d do best to erase the entire experience from her mind. She’d told the incident to the deputy on her way home. He lived four doors down. He was on his way out on an emergency call, but he told her he’d be by the diner in the morning if she wanted to file a report. She didn’t. There was no point. Things like that were public record and she wanted to keep as far away from the ugliness of the outside world as she could. For her son, and for herself.
    This trailer wasn’t much, but it was hers and she’d worked hard to make the best of it. The tan shag carpeting was nothing fancy, but it was freshly vacuumed and in good repair. She’d laid it herself, after buying it as a remnant from a flooring outlet store in Bozeman.
    Last year she’d retextured the walls in the living room and applied several coats of the lightest blue paint. The couch had been in the family for what seemed like generations. She’d reupholstered it andmade the throw pillows that cheerfully matched the walls. Pretty lace curtains—she’d made a good yard-sale find with those—hung on decorative rods she’d mounted and gave the cozy room a sense of softness.
    This was her sanctuary, and Westin’s boyhood home. She breathed in the serenity and felt more centered. She knelt to blow out the candle, and darkness washed over her. Tonight the shadows did not seem as peaceful. Hail echoed through the spaces and corners of the trailer and filled her with trepidation, as if the past could rear up and snatch away her life here.
    I’m just tired, that’s all. Amy rose, breathing in the faint smoke rising off the wick and peppermint-scented wax. The uneasiness remained.
    â€œMom!” Westin stood in the wash of light from his bedroom door, looking like a waif in pjs that were a size too big. He was holding his stuffed Snoopy by the ear.
    Her heart broke. Why was she letting the unease from the past trouble her? There was no reason to look back. She’d come a long way, and she’d done it all by herself—okay, with the help of God and her sisters. Westin was waiting for her, and no way was she going to let him down.
    â€œAre your teeth brushed?” she asked, because it was her job as a mom.
    â€œKelly made me.”
    â€œAnd what about your prayers?”
    â€œYep. I told ya. I’m really, really ready.”
    â€œThen get into bed, young man. Hurry up.”
    He ran, feet pounding as he raced out of her sight. The squeak of the box spring told her he’d jumped onto his mattress and was bouncing around, all boy energy, even this late at night.
    If only she could harness it, she thought wistfully, as she bent her aching back to blow out the other candle on the little dinette set in the eating nook. Every bone in both feet seemed to groan and wince as she headed down the hall, drawn through the darkness by the light in her little boy’s room.
    Westin was waiting and ready, tucked beneath his covers. A candle in a stout holder—Kelly must have placed it there—shone brightly enough on the pillow to reveal the boy’s midnight-blue bedspread with the planets sprinkled all over it. The rings of Saturn. The storms of Jupiter. The icy moon of…Jupiter? She couldn’t keep straight which moons belonged to which planets, but she should know it by heart because it was nearly all Westin talked about.
    â€œKelly and I saved the chapter on black holes for you to read, Mom!” Big blue eyes sparkling, Westin hid a cough in his fist and scrunched back into the pillows. Snoopy, clenched tightly in the crook of one arm, was apparently anticipating the wealth of information on black holes, too.
    â€œI’ve been looking forward to this all day.” Amy settled onto the bedside and held the heavy library book open in her hands. The spine cracked, the plastic cover crinkled