Mom and I turned off University Avenue and pulled into the potholed parking lot outside a large, rustic building. The neon sign blazed out the name Wild E. Coyote. It was September 1992, and line dancing was the big thing in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Mom had been after me to go with her for weeks. “It’ll do you good to get out. A lot of your friends will be there,” she said. “Some folks from church. And who knows, maybe you’ll even meet someone.”

Yeah, right. It was fine by me if I never dated another man in my life. I was done with love. Still, I liked to dance and Mom wouldn’t quit asking, so I agreed to go. The place was packed with people in their Wranglers and cowboy boots, and country music was blaring. I’m not ready for this, I thought. But the more I twirled and stomped along with everyone else, the more I got into it. I had to admit, line dancing was the most fun I’d had in a long time. So I went back to the Wild E. Coyote. Mom and Dad were more than happy to watch Zak and Jesse.

One night in October I noticed this tall guy with feathered-back hair. He looked young, despite his scruffy attempt at a beard. He had on a plain button-down shirt with baggy jeans and sneakers. Whenever I saw him at the Wild E. I found myself watching him. He was always at the center of a group of friends. A few times I caught him glancing back at me. Then one night there was a barn dance. You took your partner and danced in a big circle, switching partners every eight beats or so. Right when the song ended, I was standing in front of the guy. “Want to keep dancing?” he asked.

“Sure.” He wasn’t a bad dancer.

He told me his name was Kurt Warner. We danced together till closing time. He walked me out to my car. I could tell he wasn’t ready to say good night.

I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but better his now than mine later. “I want you to know I’m a divorced mother of two,” I said. “So if I never see you again, I’ll understand.”

Kurt was quiet for a second, then shrugged and said, “Hey, thanks for the dances.”

I got into my car thinking, That’s the end of that. Fine. I don’t need more heartache. I’d already had my share, and then some. I’d had to take a hardship discharge from the Marines to take care of my son, Zachary, after he was brain-damaged in an accident. Then my husband told me there was another woman. The divorce went through just a month after I gave birth to our second child, our daughter, Jesse. The kids and I moved back to my folks’ house. Men? Forget about it. My parents and the Good Lord, they were the only ones I could count on, or needed to. It’s just you and me now, Lord, I’d say in my prayers. And I trust you.

The next morning there was a knock at the door. I answered it with Jesse in my arms. Kurt stood there with a rose in his hand, smiling sheepishly. I was still in my bathrobe and hadn’t put on any makeup. “How did you find me?” I demanded.

He mentioned a mutual friend who’d told him where I lived. “I’d like to meet your kids,” he said.

A thousand things ran through my head, but what came out of my mouth was, “Okay, come on in.”

Kurt walked into the living room. Right away Zachary crawled over and grabbed his hand. Kurt barely paid attention to me. Instead he got down on his knees and tickled Zak. Soon the two of them were wrestling around and giggling. Zak looked sad when Kurt finally left a couple of hours later, with a quick “See you line dancing” to me.

I realized I’d never gotten to tell him what was wrong with Zak. In fact, it seemed like it didn’t matter to him. He was as happy playing with Zak as he had been at Wild E. Coyote surrounded by his friends. What was with this guy?

Kurt played football at the University of Northern Iowa. I had less than no interest in sports, but I did like spending time with him. People started teasing me about how I danced only with Kurt, and I reluctantly admitted that we were dating. At first I wondered why all our outings were at the Wild E. But then I realized neither of us had any money. He was just a college student and I was in nursing school. “Why don’t you come over to my parents’ house?” I asked one night. “We can microwave some popcorn and watch a movie with the kids.”

“Sounds great,” Kurt said.

That’s how we really got to know each other, all those movie nights in my parents’ living room. After I put the kids to bed Kurt and I would stay up and talk. If he had a game coming up, he’d get all excited and ramble on about plays and stuff. “You know I don’t care about sports,” I’d say. “I’ll pray you play your best, and I’ll even come to the game, but don’t expect me to understand what’s going on on that field.”

We talked a lot about faith. That and family. I found out Kurt’s parents got divorced when he was four. Late one movie night Kurt glanced at the floor, where some of Zak’s toys were strewn. “You’ve got great kids, you know. Think they miss having a daddy?”

“I can take care of them just fine, thanks,” I told him, maybe a little defensively. Zak and Jesse liked Kurt an awful lot. My mom liked Kurt too. So did I. But that’s all. He was just a real nice guy.

We had been seeing each other for about a year when I walked into the living room one day and found Kurt sitting on the floor playing with Zak. Watching them, I felt a surge of warmth. I caught myself thinking, Kurt’s so good with the kids. I bet he would be a great father someday. He had Zak’s magnetic writing board on his lap. Zak was just learning to walk. He picked up the board and tottered over to me. I took it and saw Kurt had written “I love Momma” for Zak. Underneath that he’d added, “I do too.”

Strange that the word love would make me feel such panic. I erased the board quickly and wrote, “I love my momma too.” There, that would keep things from going too far. I just wasn’t ready. I doubted I ever would be.

Kurt graduated in 1994 and went to the Green Bay Packers as a free agent. He didn’t make the cut. He came back to Cedar Falls with nowhere to live. So he moved into my parents’ basement. He got a job as a stock boy at the Hy-Vee grocery, making minimum wage. It was a tough time for him, for us both, but Kurt wasn’t about to give up.

About a year later he was picked up by the Iowa Barnstormers, an arena football team in Des Moines. It wasn’t the NFL, but it was pro football. I thought I would be okay with his leaving. I was tough; I’d been in the Marines after all. But one day when I went to visit Kurt, I found myself thinking, He loves me so much, Lord. I wish I could love him like that. Where had that thought come from?

Later that year my dad retired and my parents moved to Arkansas. I’d finished nursing school, passed my boards and gotten a job so the kids and I could afford our own place. Finally, I was making it on my own.

On Sunday night, April 14, 1996, my sister called. “I can’t talk long,” I told her. “You know Mom calls me every week, right after the Sunday night movie’s done.”

“Brenda—” There was a long pause. “Mom and Dad were killed tonight.”

I grabbed for something to hold onto and tried to absorb my sister’s words. Mom and Dad were killed tonight. A freak tornado had struck their house.

All I wanted to do was yell at God. I’d believed in him, trusted him. People said things like, “God needed your parents in heaven,” and I’d think, I needed them here!

No one really understood what I was going through. I would rant, “Why did you have to take them? Why did this happen after everything else that’s gone on in my life? It’s not fair! I can’t even trust you now, God!” Kurt just held my hand and listened. It was the only thing that helped.

I should have known from the moment he showed up at my front door, but I’d resisted. The kids fell for him. So did my parents. I guess I did too. I just couldn’t let myself trust that feeling—until after one of my tirades, when Kurt pulled me into his arms and held me for the longest time. I drew back and looked him in the eye. No one else on earth would stand by me like this. It was then I finally felt sure. Lord, you sent this man. You want me to trust you by trusting him. I’d loved Kurt for a long time. Now, at last, I was ready to accept it, to accept the man the Lord had brought to me.

On September 18 we closed on a new house in Des Moines. Kurt was doing well with the team, and he took the kids and me out to celebrate. He went whole hog: a limo, appetizers and dessert. He’s going to pop the question, I thought.

Kurt didn’t say much on the way over to the new place. I was the one who opened the front door. The floor was strewn with rose petals. I followed the path of petals out back to the dark patio. Kurt was right behind me. He stooped and turned on some music, then popped up with a rose in his hand, just like that morning he’d turned up on my doorstep. Strings of lights on the back fence flickered. Kurt reached into the rose and pulled out a ring. He got down on one knee and said the words that the lights on the fence spelled out: “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I said to Kurt. And to the love God gives, which I can trust in no matter what. Jesse and Zachary cheered. Then Kurt took me in his arms, and we danced out there under the stars.

A friend was going to look after my dog, Muffin, while I went into the hospital for some surgery. On the way to her house I stopped to see my mom and dad, Muffin trotting in after me as though she were a regular member of the family. A Benji look-alike, she’d been my soul mate for seven years. From the first time I’d spotted the wiry-haired stray hiding in the briers by a chain-link fence, we’d been inseparable. I’d always tried to give her the best life I could.

“Muffin will be just fine while you’re gone,” Mom assured me.

“I can’t believe you’re not putting that mongrel up at the Hilton,” Dad commented. “The way you spoil her! Giving her that fancy-dancy stocking full of dog biscuits at Christmastime and taking her everywhere.”

I steeled myself against his words. That I spent too much money on Muffin was an old issue. That I should be saving for a rainy day was an even older argument.

“I’ve always told myself,” Dad went on, “that I’d be better off if I were Roberta’s dog.”

I just hugged Muffin a little harder and tried to ignore Dad’s remarks. But even after I left, they stung. I dropped Muffin off at my friend’s and drove on to the hospital, still thinking of what Dad had said. Why did his criticism hurt so much? I was a grown woman with a successful career as a nurse. Why did his approval matter? It was as though I were a little girl again, trying to make my daddy proud.

A child of the Depression, Dad had had to be careful with money. He’d worked as a telegraph operator on the railroad and supplemented his earnings selling old pocket watches at flea markets. A horse trader, people called him. When I was barely out of diapers, I picked up his jargon. He loved to tell about the time he tugged on my pigtails and asked if I’d take a five-dollar bill for my Tiny Tears doll. I took a long look at her pink bottle and packet of tissues and shot back, “I want more, this here’s a rare one!”

By the time I was 10 years old, I was doing odd jobs in the neighborhood, hoping to match Dad’s industry. I hosed off porch furniture, waxed floors and starched the curtains in a neighbor’s guest bedroom.

With the first dollar I earned, I put aside 10 percent for church, but the next 10 cents I took straight to Broughton’s Dairy. There I bought a double-dip cone of lime sherbet, Daddy’s favorite, and climbed the steep iron stairs of the telegraph tower where he worked.

I tapped on the screen door and hollered, “Surprise!” I just knew he’d be pleased. “I bought this for you with the money I’ve been making.” Lime-green sherbet dripped down my fingers as Daddy tapped out a Morse code message.

Finally he looked up and smiled. But as he took a lick of soupy sherbet, he cautioned, “Don’t be squandering all your hard-earned money on ice cream now. You should be putting something away for the future.”

All the way home I fought back tears. Wasn’t there anything I could do to make him happy? When I was a little older I took up the violin so I could join in when he pulled out his fiddle. Then I studied piano. My first recital, I knew how proud he’d be of the way I played “The Londonderry Air.” But at the last minute Daddy couldn’t come. He had to work overtime. We needed the money. For a rainy day.

After I studied nursing and pursued my RN career, I became something of a horse trader myself, going to flea markets, collecting antiques. No matter what I bought, Dad was able to take the wind out of my sails when I told him the deal I’d made or how much I’d managed to save.

With Muffin, though, I never cut corners. She deserved the very best. In the hospital after my surgery, I kept thinking of how happy I’d be to see her again.

It was then that I received word Muffin had jumped the fence in my friend’s backyard and raced off. No one could find her. Lying in my hospital bed, I prayed that whatever happened, she would be safe. Still, when no news came, I was frantic.

The morning my mother drove me home from the hospital, all I saw were dogs. Dogs playing, dogs barking, dogs running to greet their masters. But no wagging tail awaited me when I got home.

“I’m so sorry, Roberta,” Mom said, tucking a blanket around me on the sofa. “Your father is worried too.”

Yeah, right, I thought, scrunching miserably into the pillow. Later, I got up to make a cup of tea, and the phone rang. The caller said she’d seen the ad about Muffin and wanted me to know she’d just lost her little pooch and knew exactly how I felt.

The ad? I wondered groggily before stumbling back to rest.

The next night I got more calls. One man who worked at the Waffle House asked for a better description of Muffin. Before hanging up he added, “Your dad must think the world of you to go to all this trouble.” Why did he say that? Another caller said, “The dog your father described to me is here, I’m sure of it.” What were they talking about?

The following day a coworker drove me around to check on the leads I’d received. None of the shaggy mutts people had found were Muffin. One was 100 miles away, but I knew how Muffin loved to jump into any open car door, so I felt compelled to investigate. Alas, the “female dog with matted hair” turned out to be a male cat. “I felt so bad for you I guess I got carried away,” the stranger admitted.

Then my sister called. “I found Muffin at the pound!” I was beside myself with relief as I went with her to investigate. But I knew at once when I approached the cage that the thin, mangy dog wasn’t my Muffin.

“Just call her name,” my sister urged. “Maybe she’s lost weight.”

“Muffin!” I cried. And from the saddest corridor in the animal world, 56 dogs of every description howled in unison.

With that my heart just broke. All those animals longing for a home expressed my own longing for my dog. It was as though my loneliness had found a voice.

That night another stranger called. She wanted me to know she was praying for me. “I don’t know why this had to happen to you, honey,” she said, “but God knows how you feel. Trust him with your sadness.”

By then I had given up, but when one more person called, absolutely certain he had my dog, I allowed myself to hope one more time. A friend drove me to the end of a muddy hollow, where a man stood with a yelping, stubby-tailed orange dog much bigger than Muffin. “She just has to be yours,” he insisted as the huge dog pawed my skirt.

“I don’t think so,” I said sadly.

The man looked at me woefully. “Lady,” he said, “I’ve already promised my grandkids a trip to Disney World with all that reward money your father’s giving.”

I was stunned. “Reward?” From the man who always accused me of squandering money on Muffin? The thrifty father who wanted me to save for a rainy day?

“I got the ad right here.” He pulled out the beat-up newspaper he had jammed in his back pocket. “See, this one.” He held out the want ads and pointed to an item he’d circled.

I took the paper, read it once, then twice, blinking hard to clear the tears that blurred my vision. The ad was clear and to the point. “Please help me find my baby girl’s lost dog,” it said. “$1,000 reward.”

“Thank you anyway,” I said in a wobbly voice. “Do you mind if I keep this newspaper?”

Mom and Dad visited me that night. “Daddy,” I said, “you and I have some things to talk about.”

That’s when Mom spilled the beans: “He’s been looking everywhere for Muffin. He gets in the car and drives all over, calling out the window. And he’s been telling people to call and to pray for you.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Now I had to ask him about the biggest surprise of all. “Daddy,” I said, “what about the reward money?”

He shuffled his feet. “Well,” he said, “I figured it was the only way that dog could be found.”

“But a thousand dollars? Daddy, that’s so much money! You’ve never splurged like that. What about always saving for a rainy day?”

Daddy fixed his eyes on a crack in his brown leather shoe. “Sweetheart,” he said, “the day you lost your little Muffin I felt the biggest downpour of my life. You were so sad, I would have given anything to get your dog back for you. I’m sorry she hasn’t come home.”

I thought of all the scrimping and saving Dad must have done to put away a thousand dollars and how quick he was now to give it up for me. The years suddenly faded, and I was once more the girl who had learned bargaining from the best horse trader in the business. You can’t put a dollar figure on love, but Dad had come up with “a rare one” of his own. Nothing was too much for my happiness.

“Thank you, Dad,” I said, my voice breaking.

This story has a bittersweet ending. Muffin never turned up, but my prayers that she was okay did a lot to comfort me. Eventually, Dad took me back to the pound, and I brought home one of those howling mutts that was yearning for a home. It wasn’t a replacement for my lost dog—nothing could take the place of Muffin—but this was a new dog to spoil to my heart’s content. I named her Cleo, and we had many happy years together. And from that point on, Dad and I had an understanding. He can complain all he wants about the money I spend, and I can spoil my dog as much as I want.

Love can express itself in many different ways. I realize that when I was young, Daddy worked hard to be a good provider, saving for a rainy day. Then, as now, he was sheltering his baby girl, and giving me love the best way he knew how.