Keeper of Your Heart

Two

I was twenty-five when I married Amelia Duncan. I'd met her weeks before, in a library of all places. She was reading a book about budgeting and I sparked up a conversation on the subject. She went on to tell me her sob story of a life, including her husband walking out on her and her two kids and how alone she felt.

There was no love connection, but after a few weeks, I decided to offer her a marriage of convenience. To this day I have no idea what I'd been thinking.

While I'm thankful I got Bentley out of the deal, it was the worst five years of my life. I saw it as a group of memories I wished I could wash away, but would never be able to.

I watched her dote on her two children and grimace when she'd feel Bentley move in her stomach. There were days I prayed that God would protect my baby until I could physically hold her in my hands.

There was just no connection between Amelia and our child. It was the hardest thing I ever had to witness and I blamed myself more than once for putting Bentley through it. She didn't deserve to have a mother that didn't love her.

Day in and day out, from the moment she took her first breath and was placed in my arms, I tried with everything I had inside me to give enough love to fill her heart.

When Erica passed away, there was no hope for Amelia. I didn't blame her for going off of the deep end. There weren't words for what I'd go through if I lost Bentley, but I couldn't understand the way she reacted when it came to her other kids.

They were all equally her children and when Erica died, having already discarded Bentley, she seemed to forget Jackson existed.

It was hard for me to understand but I still forced myself to try not to judge her. It was a tough battle.

There were a few soft knocks on my door, pulling my attention from my memories and to the present. I glanced at the clock and realized I'd been deep in thought through my lunch break.

"Come in," I said.

The door opened and I was surprised when the customer from days ago walked in. She was carrying two coffee cups and she placed one in front of me before saying, "I'm sorry if I seemed rude the other day. I didn't realize you had such a strange way of speaking to your employees."

"My employees are a part of my family, Ms. Sanchez."

Her eyes flashed with surprise. "You remembered my name?"

"I don't give a lot of 'on the house' work, so yeah, I remembered your name."

"Oh," she nodded. "Okay, well I just wanted to stop by and say, thank you for that. I'd like to pay for the work done, though."

"Absolutely not. I was rude to you and I shouldn't have been. That was on me."

She pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and was in an obvious battle in her mind. I smiled to myself and offered, "How about you take me out to lunch and we'll call it even?"

Her eyes widened before she shook her head in refusal. I felt my chuckle deep in my chest.

"Come on, I'll even promise to order the biggest meal on the menu."

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Well, for starters, I don't even know you."

"What else?" I asked.

"What do you mean what else?"

"You said 'for starters', so what else do you have against a date?"

"Um," she thought about it. "I don't know you?"

"You already said that so let me rectify that. My name is Isaac Cooper, I'm the owner of a small town car lot and shop. I have a twenty-two year old daughter that works for me and I'm single."

"Is that the pink haired girl?" she interrupted, ignoring the single comment.

"Nope. That's her best friend, Sam. My kid's name is Bentley. She's across the hall right now. Anyway, I'm forty-nine, I like food and I like cars."

She eased herself into the chair in front of my desk. "You named your daughter Bentley?" I nodded. "Didn't her mother have anything to say about you naming her after your career?"

"Bentley doesn't have a mother." I stated, feeling irritation at the thought of anyone associating Amelia with her. She looked confused so I decided I needed to elaborate a little, so she didn't think I was a jerk again. "She left when Bentley was five so she's not really a subject I like to think about."

"I understand. I have a son, Ryan. He's a couple of years older than your daughter, but when he was just a few months old his father left me. Said he couldn't be strapped down." She let out a humorless laugh. "The idiot had no idea what he was giving up, in my opinion. Ryan is everything to me."

I noticed her eyes fill with tears and asked, "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," she laughed. "Sorry, we just live far away from each other since I moved out here just a couple of weeks ago for a job. He thought it would be good for me but so far all I can think about is going back home just so I'm close to him."

"Do you think they realize it?" I asked.

"Does who realize what?"

"Our kids. Do you think they realize how much of our world they make up?"

She smiled. "I highly doubt it."

I agreed.

I didn't convince her to take me to lunch that day, or the next time I saw her in town. It was the third time I'd run into her, at The Market, that she finally agreed to some form of a date.

"But it's Christmas," she said, placing a bag of frozen vegetables in her cart.

"Yeah, it's also Bentley's birthday. We make a big thing about Thanksgiving and we had a birthday dinner the other night so we don't usually get together for this."

"That's possibly the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

I shrugged. "It's just how we do things. Plus, she has her friend to fuss over."

"Sam?" she asked.

"I wish," I groaned. "But, no."

"Okay, well," she smiled. "I guess dinner would be okay."

"Really?" I asked, grinning for maybe the first time in years.

"Yeah, really."

"Excellent. Where are you taking me?" I asked and she laughed.

"Why don't you come over and let me cook for you?"

"I'd love that."

She gave me her address and we parted ways. I couldn't remember ever feeling this happy about a date. Then again it had been over thirty years since I'd gone on a date like this one.

I didn't date when I was in the military, and I definitely didn't date my wife. I hadn't wanted to bring a bunch of women around while Bentley was growing up, and then when she was an adult it was as if there were no women that interested me, or for that matter was interested in me. Small towns can be like that.

My phone started ringing and I glanced at the caller ID before I answered, "Happy Birthday, squirt."

"Merry Christmas, old man," she answered.