Chapter 11: Decisions

The day starts off by the phone awakening them. Kate reaches over and sleepily grabs the phone and answers it, “Hello.”

Even though Gabriel and Molly cannot hear the other end it goes like this, “Can you talk?”

“Uh,...” Kate looks over to see if Gabriel is paying attention, “Yeah, mostly.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Actually I just realized much better. Thank you.”

“Do you have an answer for me yet?”

“Let me talk with them and I’ll call you back in a couple of hours.” Kate hangs up.

Molly is stretching herself awake and Gabriel is gingerly making his way to a sitting position. “Good morning, babygirl.”

With a big yawn Molly answers, “Good morning. Aunt Kate, who was that on the phone?”

“That was my boss and he wants an answer to the business trip. Gabriel?” Gabriel turns to her. “What do you think about me leaving Molly with you while I go on this business trip? I’ll pay you and plus if this business opportunity pays off I can pay you more.”

As Gabriel is getting ready to answer he notices Molly paying very close attention at this new circumstance. “You don’t have to pay me to take care of Molly. In fact, I cannot charge to carry out Jesus’ ministries. But on a personal level I would love nothing more than to spend more time with my new buddy.” Molly wants to explode starting from deep down inside her. Besides adoring Molly all the way to heaven Gabriel has to see where this is going. Gabriel figures it is a necessary bonding for the coming glory. He has a daughter, a granddaughter, a student, a friend, a fellow soldier and so much more all in the pretty little package who is Molly. Amen.

Molly turns to Kate with a huge smile and starts bouncing up and down with prayer hands. “Pleeeeeeease.”

Kate smiles and says, “Well, I think we know Molly’s opinion.” Kate and Gabriel both laugh.

Gabriel takes a deep breath and says, “Don’t forget I have a criminal past; though I haven’t committed a crime in over thirty years.”

“Molly loves you and trusts you and she is safe really for the first time in her life. That is enough for me.”

“Okay.” Gabriel is playing it cool, but he can feel that divine ecstasy building between him and Molly again.

Molly screams “Yes!!!” and flies into Kate’s arms saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then she starts to cry and gently crawls into Gabriel’s arms so as not to hurt his bad leg or worse. Gabriel starts brushing her hair out of her face so he can kiss her tears away. The look they share states they both know the need for the other and Molly slowly and approvingly nods her head yes.

“However, if you wanted to give Molly some money for food and such, that would be fine with me.”

“Done.”

Well, this day certainly has begun as Gabriel would hope all good peoples days would begin: with joy, hope and love. Gabriel has the happiest little girl in the world in his arms and the healing force of it is something he has not experienced since coming home to God. In fact, strangely, it feels quite similar. It has to be the will of God.

“When will you be leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

It hasn’t hit Molly yet that her aunt Kate isn’t going to be around for a while and she is being left with a guy she has known all of four days now. But neither Kate nor Gabriel doubt for one second that if you were to ask Molly she would have it any other way. She absolutely believes God answered her prayer for Him to send her her knight.

While Molly and Gabriel do their morning routine, Kate calls her ‘boss’ back. Gabriel listens and though some of the talk is without a doubt cryptic, it sounds plausible.

Breakfast comes and goes in complete joy and tenderness. After cleaning up Kate goes into the bathroom, but she left her wallet out and open. Gabriel looks at Kate’s credit card and it has her real name on it. In the beginning Kate had said they are going by false names. Using a credit card would make it quite easy for her and Molly to be tracked. She is either naive or playing at something.

Gabriel leans over and whispers in Molly’s ear, “Is that Kate’s real name?”

Molly looks at the bathroom door and then the card and says, “Yes, I think so.”

“Kate said she had been using fake names for you guys so you wouldn’t be found.” Molly shrugs her shoulders with hands in the air. Gabriel smiles at her and leans in and gives the top of her head a kiss.

Kate comes walking out of the bathroom not worrying about modesty either. Molly looks at Gabriel and Gabriel minutely shakes his head. “So, guys, you want to do something special today?”

“Yeah!” says Molly. Gabriel bobs his head while puckering his lower lip.

“What shall we do?” Kate wonders.

“I think you can go to movie theatres again.” Gabriel offers.

“Yeah, I want to do that!”

Gabriel continues, “Plus there are a bunch of nice shops up here. We can go to Sutter Creek on the way back and explore.”

“Sounds good. I love antique shops.”

“Yes, those kinds of shops.”

It doesn’t take long before Molly is holding up her arms for Gabriel to take off her new nightgown. It is one of her very favorite things to have Gabriel dress her. This time they go with red Levi pants and a cute top with a kitty cat on it. It is used as it came from a thrift store, but Molly is acting like Gabriel just gave her the Taj Majhall.