Image by Daina Krumins from Pixabay
No matter how glorious a weekend, Monday is always coming, and with it, hard reality …
Mrs. Velma Stepforth had to get back to Washington D.C. to deal with details around her attempted murder and the loss of the home she had lived in for the ten years of her divorce.
Mr. Thomas Stepforth Sr. had to drive his (ex-)wife back to Washington, not betray all of his feelings about that symbol of their reconciliation being gone, and then get back to Lofton County, VA … things were moving around Lofton National Bank in the county seat, Big Loft, VA, and he did not want to miss out.
Yet that situation did not need him to be there, and he was not certain if Mrs. Stepforth wanted him around either as she grieved and wound down the end of her life alone.
She also was not saying anything about accepting that her life was over in Washington and coming back to Lofton County with him – for all the glories of the weekend, she had never so much as hinted at that concession.
They would be remarried, and wanted to be, and that was settled … but the woman would not be rushed, even when nearly every token of her independence was in ashes.
“Oh, I got the important things out of the house,” she was saying that morning over their last breakfast at the Tiptoe Bed-and-Breakfast. “You know my style cannot be cramped.”
Sure enough … she had walked away from him without missing a beat, and she planned on walking back at her own pace.
Mr. Stepforth realized he still had a lot of work to do, because the resentment was burning up strongly again.
And then, it all disappeared like a cloud of fog as the Stepforths went out to the parking lot and saw a big old turkey trot going on – a big bunch of wild turkeys were coming through, and Mrs. Stepforth mingled her laughter with the gobbling of the turkeys.
“Remember the days when we would have laid hands on anything and everything we thought would be a deadly weapon to turkeys at a time like this? We would be all over this parking lot, trying to get our iceboxes and everyone else's filled for the month, because only God could provide us meat with the money we had back in the day!”
Fifty years of history … and yes, that had been the way it was, and only she and he understood it … did it matter if it were five or six weeks or even months more before they were officially back together, with all that history and love?
Mr. Stepforth took a deep breath, and released still more resentment.
“Well, Velma, we thank God that He is big enough and good enough to deliver turkeys and us, and even able to deliver some of us from making turkeys out of ourselves!”
She laughed uproariously, and he smiled … she didn't understand the context of his joke entirely, but then again, she knew him … so, yes, she did understand on the deeper levels.