Page 9 of Pistol Perfect

Mabel had never met a happier, more supportive family, and she admired Mrs. Stryker for raising her kids mostly as a single parent after her husband had passed away.

Of course, Mabel figured if people made God the center of their family, things would almost have to turn out. And that’s what happened with the Strykers.

She settled into her chair while Lark fingered the back of hers.

Lark usually had trouble relaxing. She always seemed to be on the move. Maybe that’s how she got so much done.

Whatever it was, Lark stood behind her chair, her fingers tapping the back edge.

“Remember the three girls we had here over the winter?”

Mabel remembered well. Annabelle, Bernice, and Caren. They were sweet girls, seven, nine, and eleven years old. Too young for Lark to keep. Usually Lark had teenage girls and sometimes even girls who had graduated from high school but wanted to get their lives turned around.

Mabel had fallen in love with the young siblings and had taken them under her wing. She’d even given them her room, moving out to the couch so the girls had a place to stay.

“I loved them,” Mabel said simply.

Lark nodded, a smile lifting her face. “I knew you did. And you were so good with them. They were...special.”

“They were.” Mabel touched the condensation on her tea glass, trying to ignore the pain that shot through her heart.

She figured out, sometime in the last ten years or so, that she had to open her heart to people, even though it was painful to lose them. She hated that pain and as a teenager held herself aloof from people in order that she wouldn’t get so close to them, only to end up losing them.

Ironic that she lost her parents, which should have reinforced that desire, the desire to protect herself.

But that had really been the catalyst that cracked her heart and made her realize that life was short, and she needed to make sure she showed her love and people knew she cared.

Whenever it was, the three girls had stolen her heart like no one else ever had. She cried embarrassingly hard when they’d left.

“The grandmother wants to send them back. She’s too old to care for them.”

Mabel’s eyes lit up. Her mind started to whirl. Could she take them? Could she do it? She would make it work. She would figure something out. Even if she had to hire a nanny to keep them while she worked.

Lark didn’t have a clinic, so pretty much everything they did was farm calls. Anything that needed to be done in a sterile, clinical environment, they sent to the college clinic in Boise.

So, it wasn’t like she was gone for eight hours a day every day. She might be gone for twelve hours one day and then only two the next. Or she might have a day in the middle of the week off. She never knew.

“I’ll do it. I’ll take them.” Mabel wasn’t sure whether that was what Lark was asking or not, but she wanted to make sure that Lark knew she was eager, desperate maybe, to have the girls again. She wanted them to have the best opportunity possible to thrive, and they’d already been through so much, with their mother in jail and their father... No one knew exactly who or where their father was. Mabel wasn’t even sure they all had the same father. But she never voiced that question aloud.

“I thought you would.” Lark’s hand gripped the back of the chair, then, as though she were forcing herself to relax, she pulled the chair out and settled herself in it.

She didn’t touch the tea on the table in front of her.

“But she won’t let us have them.”

“What?” Mabel said, her thoughts coming to a screeching halt. “I thought you said—”

“The grandmother called me. She wants a home for them, but she doesn’t want them to come here.”

“Why not?” Mabel asked, and she could hear her voice rising.

“It’s okay. It’s nothing that we did, exactly. It’s just what we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wants the girls to have a father in their life. I... I understand that. And I think that’s a good thing.”

“Of course it’s a good thing. Study after study has shown being in a home with a mom and a dad, married and stable, will help children thrive, but that’s not the way the world works. Sometimes you just can’t do what’s best, and you have to do what you can.”