All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

With a sudden alertness, Molly snapped into action, digging into her pocket for her phone. “What’s the time? How far are we now?”

“Molly.”

My gut twisted the instant she saw it. The time. The dollar amount. The impossible gap that still remained.

I touched her arm, slid my hand down to her elbow. “Sweetheart, you’ve done an incredible job. I’ve never been prouder of anything or anyone in my life as I am of you and these kids.”

She blinked as if she was still trying to sort something out, still trying to calculate an impossible victory.

“Wait. No, wait.” She sat up straighter, tapping furiously on her screen to a site I didn’t recognize. But her face broke into a smile that nearly cracked my heart in two. “There’s more.”

“More what?”

“Money. We have eighty-seven thousand dollars more than what our little train has accounted for.”

I glanced up again at the projection screen that was still on, still live.

“How?” I asked with a skepticism I tried to tame. We only had one donation site advertised on the campaign link.

“Uh . . . it’s from a private donor,” she said almost as if it could have been a question and not a statement. Something wasn’t adding up.

Before she could refuse, I swiped her phone from her grasp. A despicable move on my part, and yet her uh had been a red flag she couldn’t unwave.

The second I flipped the screen around, all preconceived notions about what I might find were blotted out by the image of Molly’s red Tesla, on an online auction, slashed by a digital SOLD sign. For $87,000.

I blinked down at her. “You sold your car.”

“Yes.” She lifted her chin slightly before launching into a monologue only Molly could produce on the spot. “I know it might seem crazy to you, Silas, but I couldn’t have been talked out of it. It was the right thing to do. It’s less than the Cobalt scholarship would have brought in, but it’s still something. Something I needed to do. And I don’t regret it. Not for a single second. Not even if . . .” She glanced up at the projector screen, her shoulders dropping as the math failed to add up to the end goal. “Not even if it didn’t get us to the mark in time.”

It hadn’t, and yet, it wasn’t the disappointment of an unmet goal that had captured my thoughts in this moment. It was the incredibly selfless woman in front of me.

I linked my hand in hers, rubbing my thumb along the soft skin of her wrist. “I love you,” I said, studying the extravagance and depth of her eyes. “Even the crazy, impulsive parts of you that I don’t always understand. Because those are the parts that have challenged me. That have changed me.” I released the breath I’d been holding since before this campaign began. “I know there will be a lot of unknowns to come for us both in the future—in this program and in your career.” Her gaze dipped to our joined hands. “But I don’t want our relationship to be a part of those unknowns, Molly.” I kissed the back of her hand. “I don’t want you to doubt what I feel for you.”

“And how do you feel?” she asked softly.

“Like I can’t imagine a future that doesn’t include you in it.”

She moved her hands to the back of my neck. “Did Silas Whittaker just use the word imagine? Because I’m pretty sure he told me once that imagination wasn’t his strong suit.”

“That was the pre-Molly Silas.”

“Ah, so then what does the post-Molly Silas imagine?”

I smiled down at her, more than willing to share that picture with her. “I imagine standing beside you as a partner. I imagine supporting you as a friend. I imagine encouraging you as a confidant. And I imagine loving you in all the ways a devoted husband would adore his wife.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “How’d I do?”

Her breath came out shaky. “I’d definitely give you five stars.”

I kissed her then, in a room where hope still remained in spite of uncertainty, challenges, and chances won and lost. Molly wrapped her arms around me, breaking our kiss to settle her head against my shoulder as we watched the rising sun together through the window. And even without her saying a word, I knew where her thoughts had traveled. It was impossible not to.

“It will be okay,” I said, lowering my mouth to her ear and stroking her arm. “The kids will be okay. Everything we’ve raised so far, we’ll invest it for the future. We can try for the Murphey Grant again.” In another five years was what I didn’t say.

She didn’t reply for several minutes, though I knew her mind said much. “I really believed we would make it. I knew how big the number was, how impossible it seemed, but . . .”

“I know.” I stretched out my legs, pressing her warmth even closer to me. “I know.”

“It’s hard not to question what we might have done differently. How much more we could have pushed.”

I thought on her statement for some time, thinking back to the early days when Fir Crest Manor was being transformed into The Bridge. “I remember praying for the first kids in our program. Their needs felt so much bigger than what we were equipped for. The resources we had available in those early years were scarce.”

Molly craned her neck to look at me. “How did you make it?”

I smiled, though at the time, I’d done anything but. “The only way we could—by taking one day at a time and continuing to trust God in the big and the small. This place has always been His. To grow and bless in His timing and in His way. It’s a hard lesson, and one I’ve lived through repeatedly.”

“But sometimes God’s timing is brought through a miracle,” Molly said in a way that called for a response.

“Yes, and I would never discount that. I’ve been the recipient