Denton sighed and looked around the messy diner. The boys had not taken his reassignment lightly. To them he was abandoning them, and that was the worst kind of disappointment. Denton looked at the clock next to the door fifteen minutes past eight. Denton looked back down at the table in front of him and fiddled with the small box in his hand. Samantha King had been at the center of his thoughts too often to be considered proper. Sometime in the three years since he had come back Sammie had unassumingly and very humbly made her way into his heart.
He glanced at the clock again; it was twenty minutes after eight. Any minute now she would come shuffling through the door. Her head would be down and her shawl pulled tight. She would look up eyes searching for him, and he would be where he always was waiting for her, at the table in the back with two steaming cups of coffee waiting for both of them. Smiling softly he put the box back in his coat pocket, and not a moment too soon.
The door above Tibby's roused Denton from his musings. He looked up to find Sammie entering just like he knew she would, looking up just like he knew she did, and finding him in the back of the room just like he always was. She smiled as she sat down, greeted him with a soft hello, and took a sip of her coffee.
He didn't say anything until she had visibly relaxed into her chair.
"How are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine." She answered with her long fingers wrapped around her mug. Denton smiled.
"You always say that…." She took another sip of her drink.
" Because I'm always fine."
"Samantha King, I know for a fact, young lady that you have been working longer hours lately!" She set down her mug, sighed, and traced the pattern on the table with her finger.
"You've been talking to your parents again." Denton leaned back in his chair.
"I always talk to my parents. They just happened to bring up you. The dark rings under your eyes tell stories as well. Why are you working so much? My parents are taking care of you aren't they?"
Samantha smiled at him. It was a sweet smile that almost made it seem like she was not completely exhausted.
"They need me. They need me, Brian! Those little boys lead such dreary and gray lives! If I can maybe make a little part of their lives better; let in just a few bright rays of hope I don't feel so bad about come home to your parents' house every night."
Denton sighed and reached over to take the hand still tracing the table. She gave him a look that rivaled that of new born puppy.
"Okay, Okay, just promise me you get some of the older boys to help you, and you don't have to everything. Other people do work at the Refuge." Sammie nodded her head and softly muttered her acceptance of his heartfelt speech. Denton breathed a sigh of refief and grinned.
"Let me walk you home. The Refuge's Savior needs rest if she wants to bring rays of hope to her little boys' world." She lightly smacked him in the stomach as they both stood.
"Don't mock me, sir!" he held the door for her as they walked into the night.
"Wouldn't dream of it ma'am."