His step was light, he was ravenously hungry, he teased Sadie with a new lighthearted attitude she had never seen before. They ate sandwiches at the train station, they ate on the train, and they ate when the train arrived at the station in Montana. As Sadie watched her husband, she could only guess at the price he had paid to make that visit into the unknown, reminding herself yet again that he didn’t have that strong system of support from a normal home life the way she did. When their life resumed its usual rhythm, Sadie thanked God they had gone, returned, and met Timothy and Jackson. Doing so had instilled a sense of worth in Mark. Was it because Mark had filled Timothy’s bottle with Jell-o water? Had helped Jackson eat his oatmeal? Had found a new sense of having done something right? In that time of darkness and pain, had he somehow found that in all situations some good can come of it? Surely he had. This spring in his step, this light in his eye was a miracle. Sadie had been afraid that Jackson being a doctor would intimidate Mark, lowering his fragile self-esteem, but it had worked the opposite way.
