Just Above a Whisper

by Lori Wick

  “Thank you for coming and putting up with that.”

  “I don’t feel that I put up with anything.”

  “She’s protective of me and has a hard time not knowing what we say to each other,” Reese said, now willing to offer an explanation. “If I spend too much time out here, I’ll be in trouble for not having said all of this to you indoors.”

  Conner smiled. “I’ll let you go then. We don’t want you in trouble.”

  Reese smiled, still surprised at how wrong she was about him. Conner smiled back, wanting to touch her arm or make some gesture to show that he cared, but he quelled the desire.

  Putting his hat on his head, he said, “I’ll plan on tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be in the garden,” Reese said in reply, watching again as he walked into the evening dusk.

  Eighteen

  Reese had done as Conner asked. She had not used the back door for work of any kind, not even going out to sweep that porch or tend the flowers that had grown at the rear of the house. The back entrance was the door she preferred for several tasks, but she didn’t feel inconvenienced.

  The side doors, the one that led from the kitchen and the one that exited to the yard from the buttery work area, had become the doors she used when needing to be outside. She emptied water out these doors, shook out brooms, rags, and rugs, and today she even ate her dinner on the bench that sat against that side of the house.

  It was getting cold in Tucker Mills, October nearly on them, but today Reese was hot, and after making a sandwich for herself, took it outside with a large mug of tea. Reese loved the smell of fall. The leaves were changing and the crispness of the air was intoxicating. She prayed for a long time, thanking God for the wonder of the seasons and for the good job He’d given her.

  Conner came to mind as she began to eat, but she didn’t pray about him, asking God only to help her be wise and not take her feelings to a place where they would sit alone. She thought about what she knew about Conner Kingsley and even Dalton, and realized she’d learned much by cleaning their house.

  There was no pretense in them. The men she saw at the meetinghouse and at the bank were the same men she saw in the privacy of their home. Reese felt this said a lot for their character and was pleased to know them.

  In the midst of these thoughts, the prickly feeling came on her again, and not just a feeling this time but sound to go with it. Reese studied the barn. Someone was out there. She heard another noise, like a door opening, and stood to go that way. She was only about halfway across the yard when all grew quiet. Staying very still, she studied the buildings but saw nothing.

  Much as she wanted to tell herself her imagination was overactive, she knew it wasn’t true. Someone had been in the barn. Debating whether to go for Conner and Troy right then, Reese realized that whoever it was was probably long gone.

  Not wanting to sit outside any longer, Reese went back indoors, locking the door behind her. She knew what she had to do: She had to tell Conner. Just as soon as she did that, however, the doors to that side of the house would be barred to her as well.

  “All alone?” Maddie asked when she stepped into the store.

  Doyle smiled hugely at the sight of his niece and came around the counter to hug her.

  “Sit down,” he invited, and they took chairs by the wood stove. He hadn’t needed to fire it up yet, but summer or winter, it was everyone’s favorite place to sit.

  “How are you?” Maddie asked.

  “I’m all right. Did Jace tell you?”

  “Yes, and I know just what you’re feeling. You’re full of questions and a little bit afraid that it’s not real.”

  “That just about sums it up. I didn’t know, Maddie. I didn’t realize God could be so personal. I read in my Bible yesterday about Zacchaeus and how short he was. I had heard that story from the time I was young, and always the emphasis was put on Zacchaeus. I never saw the compassion of Jesus before yesterday. He could have condemned Zacchaeus for his sin but saved him instead.”

  Maddie couldn’t stop the tears that came to her eyes.

  “Now, don’t do that,” Doyle begged. “You’ll get me going, and then Cathy will come, and we’ll both have some explaining to do.”

  Maddie laughed a little and brushed at her face.

  “How is it going with Cathy?”

  “I can’t tell. I told her last night. I asked God to help me, and then I told her how I believed in His Son to save me.” Doyle shook his head with regret. “She didn’t get it, Maddie. She stared at me and wanted to know what I was hiding. I couldn’t get her to understand that what I was saying was real. She was pretty quiet at breakfast and again when she brought my dinner.”

  “It might take some time,” Maddie said.

  “Will you be seeing her?”

  “I plan to stop there before I head home.”

  “Maybe she’ll talk to you.”

  When Doyle uttered these words, he didn’t know how close he was to the mark. Maddie visited with her uncle for a while longer and then headed next door to the house. Cathy was very sober, and Maddie wondered whether she would even want company, but that didn’t take long to change.

  “Have you been to see your uncle?” Cathy asked, anger punctuating every word.

  “I just came from there.”

  “Did he tell you about his experience with God?” The words were spat out. “I think he’s sick again and won’t tell me!” Her voice broke a little. “What am I going to do, Maddie?”

  “Sit down, Cathy,” Maddie urged her with compassion. “I want to tell you something.”

  It took some coaxing and Maddie making tea to get Cathy to settle at the worktable in the kitchen.

  “I want you to listen to me,” Maddie began, seeing that her aunt was beyond agitated. “I have something to explain to you.”

  “About Doyle?” Cathy looked afraid.

  “In a way,” Maddie tried but then shook her head because Cathy was trying to talk again. “Just listen.”

  “All right,” Cathy agreed. Remembering Maddie’s condition made her sit still.

  “At first this won’t make sense to you, Cathy, but I want you to keep listening.”

  Cathy nodded, wondering where this could be going.

  “Not all beliefs are the same, Cathy. And as much as we might want that to be okay, God says it’s not. Some pastors are not teaching what the Bible says.”

  Cathy wanted to ask her what she was talking about but made herself stay quiet.

  “We can know where we stand with God. And we can know if we’re good enough for heaven. The answer to that is that none of us is good enough for heaven.”

  “Well, I know we sin, Maddie, but not like some people.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Cathy. When God asks you about your sin, you won’t be able to bring up someone else who you think was worse. You will have to answer for your own sins, and that’s what Doyle realized.”

  “So he is going to die?”

  “Of course he’s going to die.” Maddie kept her voice gentle. “We’re all going to die. And by that time, it’s too late. Eternity has to be settled here and now, on earth, and Doyle took care of that.”

  Cathy looked thoughtful but not angry. Maddie gave her a moment of silence and then kept talking.

  “It scared Doyle to see Mr. Somer fall like that. He’s still not out of bed, by the way. Doyle was reminded of how swiftly our lives can end here. And he knew he wasn’t ready to meet God.”

  “But he’s been a good man.”

  “I challenge you to find any Scripture that says being a good person is enough to let you stand before a holy God,” Maddie said.

  Cathy licked her lips. Maddie sounded so sure. And lately she had been different. A lot of women changed when they were in the family way, but that didn’t explain the changes she’d also seen in Jace.

  “So what’s a person to do?” Cathy asked.

  “What you just did. Ask questions until you have al
l the information you need. Ask questions with a searching heart until you know that your goodness isn’t worth anything and that salvation is because of Christ’s shed blood.”

  “Maddie,” Cathy said, her voice amazed. “I’ve never heard you talk this way.”

  Maddie reached over and took her aunt’s hand. “I can’t take anything to heaven with me but the people I love, and only then if they agree with God. I don’t want you to be left out, Cathy. That would break my heart.”

  “Maddie, I just don’t know. It’s all so new.”

  “Yes, it is, and I’m not asking that you decide in one day, but please listen to Doyle. He can help you understand, even though it’s new to him.”

  “He’s wanted to talk since Mr. Somer was in the store,” Cathy admitted, “and I haven’t let him.”

  “It’s not too late to listen.”

  “I’ve got to go and see him,” Cathy said as she stood. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I’ll see you later. Maybe Jace and I can come in on Friday or Saturday night.”

  Cathy barely said goodbye, but Maddie didn’t notice. She was out in the wagon as fast as her legs could carry her, wanting to run the horses all the way home.

  I’ll plan on tomorrow night had been Conner’s words to Reese when he’d left after tea Tuesday night.

  I’ll be in the garden Reese had said in return. And now the moment had arrived. The evening was cool, and there was little to do outside, but Reese’s wait paid off when Conner’s long legs brought him back to the fence.

  “More vegetables?” he asked.

  “Not tonight,” Reese said, already moving for the porch stairs. Conner sat beside her.

  “How is Mrs. Greenlowe tonight?”

  “Doing fine. I told her you’d be coming. She seemed all right with it as soon as I explained that we’d be talking about spiritual things.”

  “I hoped you hadn’t forgotten about that.”

  Reese shook her head, not able to look at him just then.

  “Will it be too hard for you?” Conner studied her profile.

  “Not if you don’t look at me,” Reese said, glancing up and finding him with a huge grin on his face. While she still watched, he shifted so his face was in profile to her, and Reese began, even though she wished it were dark.

  “I think you know that I was at Mr. Zantow’s from the time I was 17.”

  “Troy told me about the papers.”

  “Well, Mr. Zantow had certain patterns, and I learned them well, even before my father died.”

  “Like what, for example?” Conner asked, still turned to the side.

  “I could count on him leaving for the tavern soon after tea. He never came home until he was very drunk. Before my father died he all but ignored me, but once I was alone, Mr. Zantow’s attention turned to me. He never seemed to remember a thing during the day, but at night, when he was deep in his cups, he would seek me out.

  “I never had trouble holding the door against him or getting away if I wasn’t in my room. He wasn’t a large man, and when he was drunk, I was much stronger. All of that worked until one night when I thought I had plenty of time. I was bathing by the kitchen fireplace when he suddenly came barging in the door.”

  Reese paused, and Conner had a hard time not looking at her. He also thought that if Mr. Zantow had been on the premises just then, Conner would have become violent.

  “Seeing me like that must have given him some kind of strength.” Reese’s voice was very soft. “We wrestled until I found enough balance to push him. I pushed hard. He went back against the stones on the fireplace and then slumped to the floor. There was a lot of blood, and I thought I’d killed him. I threw my clothing on and went for Doc MacKay. He checked Mr. Zantow, who wasn’t dead but just bleeding from a head wound.

  “Doc made sure he was going to be all right, and I took myself off to bed. I didn’t sleep. The next morning I went to see Alison Muldoon. I knew her husband was a pastor, and I was so shook up about what had happened that for the first time in my life I wanted someone to pray for me. Douglas said he would be happy to but that I also could pray for myself. He explained God’s plan of salvation that morning, and I believed.”

  Reese took a huge breath. Conner thought she might be crying, but when she went on, her voice was normal.

  “It was an awful night in one sense, but completely freeing in another. I don’t know how I found a way to tell an almost stranger about what happened to me, but I did it. And Douglas was so compassionate. Alison cried, and I couldn’t remember anyone ever crying over me before.”

  Conner had not banked on what this would do to his heart. His chest hurt just listening to her voice and having to think about what a lonely, desperate life she had lived, prey to a man who didn’t know what a treasure she was.

  “Well, anyway,” Reese continued, her voice growing even softer, “I don’t know what else to tell you, except that I’m glad Mr. Zantow didn’t die that night. It would have been awful, and hard as it was, the whole ordeal led me to Douglas and Alison and then to Jesus Christ.”

  Conner had to look at her. She was sitting very still, her eyes on her lap.

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  Reese knew from the sound of his voice that he was now facing her. It wasn’t a story she shared very often because the memory was hard, and a woman didn’t tell a man about being undressed or bathing. But with Conner it was different. When he’d cared enough to ask, Reese had wanted to answer.

  “We’ve run out of daylight again,” Conner observed.

  “It’s happening early these days.”

  “I’d better let you get inside.”

  “Oh, Conner,” Reese suddenly remembered. “I have to tell you something. I can’t believe it slipped my mind so completely, but someone was in the barn today. I’m sure of it.”

  “You saw someone?”

  “No, but I heard something, and when I started that way, all fell quiet.”

  “Were the horses restless? Was that the noise?”

  “It wasn’t anywhere near where you keep the horses. It was over in the deserted area.”

  Conner thanked her, already on his feet and making plans in his head.

  “I want to discuss this with Troy, and then we’ll talk in the morning. All right?”

  “All right. Goodnight.”

  Conner bid Reese goodnight as well and thanked her again for telling him. For the third night in a row, she watched him walk into the dusk.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Reese went indoors. She spoke for a few minutes to Mrs. Greenlowe but then bid that lady goodnight. Not normally wearied by anything, Reese felt as though the wind had been knocked completely out of her. For the first time since she’d come to Christ, she didn’t take time to pray but crawled into bed and slept immediately.

  The crack of dawn found all three men searching the barn and outbuildings that stood near the big house.

  “Look here,” Troy called to Conner in the middle building. He showed him footprints and the core of an apple.

  “Someone’s recently been camped out in here,” Conner concluded. He walked outside and looked at the doors. “Let’s air these buildings out,” Conner suggested, swinging each door open wide, so that most of the interiors were visible to the green.

  “What did you find?” Dalton asked as he came upon them, not having spotted anything in the haymow of the barn.

  “Reese was right,” Troy said, heading that way to show Dalton.

  The older brother nodded and asked, “Will Reese be all right with one of us around all the time?”

  Conner heard and answered, “My greater fear is that she won’t be all right if we’re not around.”

  This was not a hard point for the men to agree upon. Conner planned to tell Reese about it as soon as she arrived.

  “So tell me,” Dalton quizzed Reese from the doorway of one of the bedrooms upstairs; it was midmorning. “Do you like children?”

&n
bsp; “I do like children,” Reese said patiently, even though this was the fourth time he had found her to ask a question. “Do you like children?” she asked in turn, just as she’d done the three other times.

  “Very much. I have five.”

  “That’s a fun number.”

  “Okay,” Dalton said enthusiastically. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  “Okay,” Reese agreed, holding her laughter until he was out of the room.

  The men had told Reese their plan was to be around for however long it took to discover the identity of their intruder, and not seeing any help for it, she had agreed graciously. What she hadn’t expected was for Dalton to volunteer for the first shift. Not that it mattered. Reese simply avoided the study where he worked on his business papers. Little did she know that he would seek her out.

  And he was being so obvious. Reese thought if Conner knew about it, he wouldn’t be happy at all. She would never tell, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t learn of it.

  “What about housework? I mean, I know you do it, but do you enjoy it?”

  Reese turned, amazed that he was back.

  “Yes,” she answered, still managing not to laugh. “I like almost all housework.”

  “What don’t you like?”

  “The laundry.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it’s hard on the hands, but mostly because the table is high enough that I can’t sit and low enough that it makes my back ache.”

  “Okay,” Dalton said before he slipped away.

  Reese did some slipping of her own down the back stairs as it was time to check on dinner. She thought if she moved quietly enough, she might get some work done in the kitchen without being disturbed.

  “What about celebrating Christmas? Some people think it’s wrong.” Cathy had come to the store to check with Doyle.

  “I’m not sure about that. We can ask Jace.”

  Cathy’s intent look was becoming familiar to Doyle. Ever since she’d come to see him the day before, she had been asking questions. Most he couldn’t answer, but for once she kept thinking instead of trying to prove her point.