The Wedding Shop Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    In the end, wasn’t it all just wood, hay, and stubble? A stray bullet from life could steal it all.
    After the funeral Haley filed the papers to end her military career, broke up with Dax once and for all, ending the dysfunction and despair, hopped on her Harley, and drove across the southwest, struggling to find her sense of right and wrong, her faith and hope.
    That’s when she heard God speak. Like a strange echo from her Jesus-freak teen years. His gentle voice was a soft rain over the dry, craggy terrain of her heart.
    “Go home.”
    It was easier to yield to His whisper than she imagined. Because His voice came with the love her hungry heart and thirsty soul desperately needed.
    But home? With the parental units? It would be challenging.
    Once home, Mom insisted she apply to grad school and, well, here she sat. In her old bedroom, facing another Morgan family New Year’s goal-setting event, and she had bupkis. Mom’s admonition slithered through her thoughts.
    “If you have no goals, you will achieve nothing.”
    Know what? She didn’t want to achieve anything. She wanted to find the pieces of herself she’d lost—not to war, as so many of her fellow airman had, but to so-called love.
    “Knock, knock.” Mom peered around the door. “How’s it going up here?”
    Haley pointed to her pad of paper. “Great.”
    Mom leaned against the doorframe. “You could always write what you wrote in high school. ‘Wear a bikini to school,’ or ‘Drive around the square at midnight on my birthday in my birthday suit.’ ”
    Haley laughed. “I only wrote those things to irritate you.” Her sports medicine doctor mother needed a little controversy now and then. Haley was more than happy to oblige.
    Mom would get all flustered, claiming Haley just wanted to “vex” her (true!), while her four brothers guffawed. Then Dad, the mechanical engineer, who tried really hard not to burst out with his own laugh, sided with Mom. “Hal, come on now.”
    “I can’t help but think of Tammy.” Mom made her way over to the window where a soft white light hit the glass, the glow of Dad’s Christmas lights flooding the room with a bright warmth.
    “I was thinking of her too.” Haley moved to the window, peering out and down, seeing the tip of Dad’s slippers as he stood on the porch, staring toward the street.
    With him, she’d known safety in this house her whole life. When she embarked on her own adventures, she never grasped that men like Dax existed. She’d only known the kindness of her father and the teasing, sideways love of her brothers.
    “I saw Shana Eason the other day,” Mom said. “Looked like her soul had left her. Eyes vacant. Moving like she had no purpose.”
    “She and Harm lost their only child, Mom.”
    “I can’t imagine. I can’t.” Mom retrieved Haley’s notepad and handed it to her. “When you were in Bagram, I woke up many nights, saying prayers.”
    Haley glanced around at her mother, intrigued by her confession. “I thought you didn’t believe in prayer.”
    “Can’t say as I do, but it’s true, there are no atheists in foxholes. There are no atheist mothers with children at war.”
    Picking up her pad of paper, Haley returned to her spot on the floor. “Is everyone here?” The brothers all returned to Heart’s Bend for the big goal setting. Two from Atlanta. One from Nashville. Another from Orlando.
    “Seth and Abigail just arrived.”
    “In their new Mercedes?” One was a lawyer and the other a psychiatrist.
    “Yes.” Mom grinned. “That’ll be you one day. You’re going to outshine them all. You have the smarts of Seth and Zack combined.”
    Then why was she sitting on the floor with absolutely no vision for herself?
    Her brothers were achievers just like their parents, David and Joann Morgan. Each one married an achiever. Among the four couples—she was the only one not married—there were six PhDs. The remaining two slackers only had law degrees.
    She was