Her Wedding Wish by Jillian Hart

him every morning when he opened his eyes and saw how hard she worked for him and the kids, and always with a smile on her lovely face. It drove him through his painful, grueling physical therapy appointments where he went beyond what the therapist asked him to do.
    Her words ate at him in all the dozens of silent moments between them through the day—when they were in the car driving from one appointment to the next. When they were in the house together, she in one room, he in another. When they were at the table, quiet as their children talked and giggled.
    It tore him up every time he looked at her. Especially now when she walked into the living room wearing the dark blue dress that shimmered around her. His jaw dropped. The photo album he held ruffled shut. No woman on this planet could ever be as lovely as his wife.
    Yes, the Lord had blessed him infinitely.
    “Do I look all right?” She looked nervous of his opinion and patted at the sleek cinnamon shine of her hair. “I hope no one can tell I threw this on in exactly three and a half minutes. This is Aubrey’s wedding. I can’t have her regretting that she invited me.”
    “You don’t look all r-right.” Emotion jammed in his throat. “Y-you look perfect.”
    For once a smile brightened her face, her eyes, her soul. Jonas stared at her, this lovely creature, and realized it was his words that had made her so happy. Happy like in the pictures he’d studied every spare minute he had. Happy like in the wedding pictures.
    And not sad.
    “Jonas, there you go, trying to charm me again.” She was blushing though, and he realized, as she went to grab her purse from the hallway table, that she was self-conscious. She might not know what he saw: all her beauty, all her strength, all her goodness.
    He had to learn her vulnerabilities, too. He could see that.
    “I’ll grab the kids’ things and be right back,” she said adorably. “Then we can go.”
    “Daddy! Daddy!” Madison stormed up to him in a pair of her mother’s too-big shoes and held out a plastic phone to him. “It’s ringing!”
    He’d quickly learned a lot about his daughter. She loved pink and purple. Her favorite toy was the play cell phone she talked into constantly. She went from being a ballerina to a princess to a mermaid all in one afternoon. But his wife, she wasn’t so easy to peg. As he leaned to put his ear to the phone, he kept his eye on her. He couldn’t rightly say why his heart stirred, but it did.
    “Hello?” He gave his daughter a grin. “Maddy, it’s for you.”
    “For me? Goody!” Pleased, the little girl took back the phone, chattering away as if to a good friend.
    He had no trouble at all knowing where Madison had learned such a thing. She had watched her mom and her aunts always talking to one another.
    She needs a sister of her own, he thought, and when he glanced at his wife, he couldn’t help blushing.
    She was no longer a stranger to him, no longer someone he didn’t know. He had learned a lot on their date. That the Lord had blessed him with a great woman, a woman he must have once loved beyond his own life.
    He had learned from the wedding album, which he had studied three times now, that they had been best friends, best everything, just as Danielle had once said. He didn’t know what that all meant, but he had a pretty good idea whenever he saw his wife looking so sad and alone and strong.
    He had been her pillar. He could see that, too. He stared down at his gnarled hand and the cane, for which he had just traded his walker. No, he was hardly strong enough for her to lean on.
    But he would be.
    “Hey, Dad!” Tyler burst through the slider door, his good clothes spotted with water from a quick trip outside to the backyard. “I turned off the hose like you said!”
    “You got yourself a little wet there, son.”
    “I know. There was a hot spot I’d forgotten to put out! I couldn’t leave it.” A devoted play fireman, Tyler raced across the room,