Mixed Signals

by Liz Curtis Higgs

  Radio is a funny business—literally. Listeners often conjure up hilariously off-the-mark ideas of what radio personalities look like. My own letter writers suggested I had olive skin, long dark hair, stood 5’2″ and weighed 105 pounds. Well, almost …

  It was fun to spin the hits again with the staff of WPER and share some crazy memories from my broadcasting years. If you’ve read any of my nonfiction books, you know I married a wonderful radio engineer, but David isn’t based on my dear Bill at all … honest!

  David’s story is his own, and probably my favorite one in the book. Most of us walk around feeling like we need to be forgiven for something. In truth, we do need that—it’s called grace. Norah is the most grace-giving encourager I’ve ever “met.” Perhaps because of her gifts of discernment and womanly wisdom (not to mention her wonderful way with muffins!), she was the hardest character for me to bid farewell at book’s end. If you have a Norah in your life, give her a hug for me, will you?

  And should you be considering a hot air balloon ride anytime soon, don’t be dissuaded. I’ve been aloft ten times and it’s very safe!

  Thanks again for visiting Abingdon, Virginia, with me. I’m always honored to hear from my readers and love to keep in touch once a year through my free newsletter, The Graceful Heart. For the latest issue, plus bookmarks and autographed bookplates, please write me directly:

  Liz Curtis Higgs • PO Box 43577 • Louisville, KY 40253-0577.

  Or visit my website: www.LizCurtisHiggs.com.

  Until next time … you are a blessing!

  Reader’s Guide

  Choose an author as you choose a friend.

  WENTWORTH DILLON, EARL OF ROSCOMMON

  1. Mixed Signals features not one romantic couple, but two, as well as a large supporting cast. Which character most engages your sympathy? Which one amuses you? Whose life story most parallels yours? And who reminds you of someone you know?

  2. Describe the following characters with just two words each: Belle O’Brien, Norah Silver-Smith, Patrick Reese, David Cahill, Sherry Robison. Do your two-word descriptions capture their appearance, personality, background, or vocation? What makes a character come alive for you?

  3. In a novel filled with unexpected twists and turns, which moment in the story truly took you by surprise? What did you think might happen? And how did you feel when things went a different direction than you expected?

  4. What have you discovered about life on the air and around a radio station that’s been interesting or eye-opening? Which aspects of a radio career appeal to you? What might be some of the drawbacks of a job in broadcasting?

  5. The epigraphs that introduce each chapter are chosen with care, meant to hint at what’s to come. Is there one quotation in particular that makes you smile? Or makes you think? Choose one of your favorite epigraphs and explain why it suits the story.

  6. Abingdon is a real town in the Virginia Highlands; the buildings and streets exist just as they appear in the novel. How does the use of a genuine setting affect your reading experience? Describe Abingdon as you see it in your mind’s eye. (Photos of various locations in Abingdon can be found at www.LizCurtisHiggs.com.)

  7. The underlying theme of Mixed Signals is grace, demonstrated through acceptance, forgiveness, and unconditional love. In what ways does Norah extend grace and to whom? Does Belle offer mercy to others? And what about David?

  8. Does one particular scene stand out in your mind—perhaps the Christmas Day debacle, or the afternoon Norah pays a visit to the bank? Which scene from the novel is your favorite, and what makes it memorable?

  9. Because of their personal histories, the main characters each have something to prove, either to themselves or to others. See if you can name what each person is determined to accomplish: Belle, Norah, Patrick, David, and Sherry. By story’s end, which character shows the most growth emotionally? And spiritually?

  10. The title, Mixed Signals, refers not only to the broadcast signal a radio station emits. How do various “mixed signals” come into play in the novel? Do the characters learn anything in the process of untangling their crossed wires? What insights have you gained while turning the pages of Mixed Signals?

  Other Books by Liz Curtis Higgs

  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

  Bookends

  Three Weddings and a Giggle

  HISTORICAL FICTION

  Thorn in My Heart

  Fair Is the Rose

  Whence Came a Prince

  NONFICTION

  Bad Girls of the Bible

  Really Bad Girls of the Bible

  Unveiling Mary Magdalene

  Rise and Shine

  CHILDREN’S

  The Pumpkin Patch Parable

  The Parable of the Lily

  The Sunflower Parable

  The Pine Tree Parable

  Go Away, Dark Night

  Don’t miss this charming contemporary novel by bestselling author

  LIZ CURTIS HIGGS

  BOOKENDS

  Emilie Getz and Jonas Fielding are as different as two people could be. She sticks to the rules; he likes to break them. She’s into saving relics; he’s into saving souls. When Emilie’s search for an archaeological treasure leads her to the one piece of land she can’t have (thanks to Jonas), they find themselves on opposing sides. Who will win their engaging battle of wits?

  ISBN 978-1-59052-437-4

  Bookends Excerpt

  It isn’t possible!

  Emilie Getz peered into the window of Benner’s Pharmacy, amazed to find every detail exactly as she’d remembered. The soda counter where she’d sat as a child and ordered cherry colas, the stout glass jar stuffed with locally-baked pretzels, the racks of colorful greeting cards, the customers—regulars, no doubt—perched on vinyl-covered stools. Gazing out at her, gazing in.

  She pushed open the door and found herself stepping into a time warp, like Alice falling through the rabbit hole into another world. Except Emilie knew this world—knew it inside and out, even after eighteen long years of self-imposed exile.

  Home.

  A tentative smile stretched across her features as she reached for the local paper, fresh off the press earlier that December day.

  “Thirty cents,” the clerk behind the counter said, then amended the price when Emilie added the latest issue of Victoria, one of her few monthly indulgences. On many a rainy Carolina evening Emilie basked in the magazine’s artful depiction of life at its loveliest, then closed her eyes and thought of England and how splendid it would be to take a handful of her more mature history majors there.

  Someday.

  For the next six months, though, she was firmly planted in Pennsylvania soil, on a mission that could make a visit to merry old England—financially speaking—a distinct possibility. Who knew? The newspaper she’d just purchased might include an article about her arrival in town this very week.

  “Merry Christmas,” the clerk called out as Emilie gathered her reading materials and hurried down the steps. Slowing when she reached the icy sidewalk, she headed in the direction of her temporary lodging half a dozen doors east.

  The cozy white cottage, built to last by John William Woerner in 1762, greeted her warmly. The town cooper, bleeder, and tooth drawer had left a solid legacy in the little house. Already it felt like home, even with stray boxes left to unpack and potted plants waiting for new landing spots. Emilie fixed herself a light supper of cheese and fruit, then unfolded the newspaper with guarded anticipation. Keeping one eye on the clock, she brushed stray wisps of hair out of her face as she scanned each page, hoping to discover a warm welcome there as well.

  What she found was less than encouraging. Her momentous homecoming resulted in two short paragraphs, buried on page sixteen of the Lititz Record Express. The headline, set in modest type, simply announced: “Local Scholar Returns.”

  “Local scholar?” Nothing more? The story that followed offered little in the way of fireworks: “During her six-month sabbatical, Dr. Emil
ie Getz will write a commemorative book for the Moravian Congregation’s historic 250th anniversary.”

  That was the whole of it.

  Not a word about her being commissioned by the church or singled out from her peers for this honor.

  No box around the story, either. No boldface type. No photo.

  A tightening sensation crawled along her neck. Oh, honestly, Em! Swallowing with some difficulty, she snapped the newspaper shut as if to scold the editor for so easily dismissing seven years of doctoral work in eighteenth-century American history.

  The weekly paper landed on a nearby drop-leaf table with a disappointing slap. “All things come round to him who will but wait,” she reminded herself, her clear voice punctuating the evening stillness. As usual, Longfellow offered the perfect antidote to her blue mood. The Christmas Eve vigil, less than an hour away, would dispel any lingering melancholy.

  Working her way through the house, snapping off lights and turning on small electric candles, Emilie reminded herself that there would be substantial headlines in much bigger newspapers soon enough if all went as planned. And it will. It must. She’d worked too hard, too long, to allow any other outcome.

  The fact was, the Record Express didn’t know the whole story. Couldn’t know—not yet—or it would ruin everything. Her research on the original Gemeinhaus—“common house”—was strictly off the record until her suspicions about the location could be verified. It would take hard evidence—remnants of a foundation or identifiable artifacts—to ensure that her ideas were based on fact.

  In 1746 when John George Klein donated part of his farm property for a building that would serve as school, meetinghouse, and parsonage, it was raised on a bluff on the south bank of a small stream.

  A finished Gemeinhaus stood there by May 1748, no doubt.

  But not the first one. If her painstaking research was correct, the first building—completed but never consecrated—was raised on a plot of land farther southeast than its later counterpart, and finished a full year earlier.

  Now she had to find it. She had to prove it, if only to convince those confounded men in Salem College’s history department that a woman—a younger woman at that—could play their game and win.

  No mistakes this time. No hasty conclusions.

  This would not, could not, be another incident like Bethabara, an academic disaster of epic proportions for her. She, who always triple-checked things, had missed a critical bit of information that sent an entire archaeological crew on a fruitless dig in the old Moravian village outside Salem, North Carolina.

  The Bethabara dig had yielded nothing except sore backs and hot tempers. And a foundation stone that boldly proclaimed her mistake to the academic world: 1933. Not a 1753 site, as she’d insisted it would be. “Getz’s Blunder,” they called it when they thought she wasn’t listening.

  It hadn’t cost her tenure; it had cost her pride.

  She would succeed this time, of that Emilie was confident. Not a single soul in her academic circle knew about her Lititz Gemeinhaus research. If she kept her nose to the grindstone, she might pull this one off without undue embarrassment. The endless hours she’d spent squinting at ink-spotted diaries and faded antiquarian maps were about to bring her the recognition that she’d waited far too many years to receive.

  It was her turn. Her turn, mind you.

  A glance at the hand-hewn clock mounted in the wall assured her that, if she left in the next minute, she would arrive at church at precisely seven o’clock, in plenty of time to choose a seat to her liking. Emilie stepped out the front door onto east Main Street and inhaled the frosty air, pulling her scarf more tightly against her neck. The temperature had already dropped a few more chilly degrees.

  History swirled around her feet as surely as a hint of snow eddied about the tall lampposts standing guard over the busy intersection of Cedar and Main. Five-pointed Christmas stars framed the old glass globes with red and white bulbs, just as they had every December in memory. Across the street stood the Rauch house—its pretzel ovens still in the basement—and the corner house that once featured Lancaster County’s first drugstore.

  Home.

  The slightest shiver of expectation ran down her neck.

  Her parents were spending the evening delivering baskets for the needy in Lancaster, leaving her on her own until tomorrow. Solitude never bothered Emilie—in fact, the peaceful, orderly nature of living alone suited her perfectly.

  Emilie locked the wooden door behind her, ventured down the steep brick steps, then turned right to pass the post office, keeping an eye out for icy spots. The evening was cold and starless, with a stout enough breeze to send her scarf waving like a flag on the Fourth as she hurried toward the church one block away. It would be good—wouldn’t it?—to walk through those narrow wooden doors again. Long overdue, really, though she’d only been in Lititz for two days, all of which she’d spent unpacking enough resource materials to keep her busy through June.

  Emilie noted with a smile of satisfaction that the old Moravian Congregational Store, circa 1762, hadn’t been altered one iota except for the addition of dormers in the roof. There were laws about remodeling such buildings. “Remuddling is more like it,” she murmured to no one in particular as she neared the corner and turned right onto Moravian Church Square.

  In the chilly night, her heart skipped one beat, then two.

  It was all there. The trombone choir, their elegant brass slides pointed toward the sanctuary doors, sounded a hymn as recognizable as her own name. The snow-dusted sidewalks guided visitors to the Putz—the church’s annual diorama of Bethlehem of old. And hanging from every porch ceiling on the square were Moravian stars dancing in the wind, their ivory glow dispelling the darkness.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing.

  And that pleased Emilie immensely. From her wavy brown hair to her sensible leather boots, she was a woman who understood the importance of tradition. This was her hometown, after all. Her home congregation. Her people, as her Winston-Salem friends would say. The last thing she wanted was to find everything she valued—everything she loved—tossed aside in the name of progress.

  Slipping through the door with a nod to the greeter, she made a beeline for her favorite seat near the front, blinking hard as her senses were overwhelmed with awakened memories. The lump in her throat felt like an orange stuffed in a Christmas stocking. She sank onto a much-worn padded pew and tucked her small purse beside her, careful not to disturb the couple to her left as she made a nest for herself with her cashmere dress coat.

  It seemed that every minute of eighteen years had passed since she’d sat in that exact spot.

  Not true. It seemed like yesterday.

  Letting her eyelids drift shut, Emilie drew in a quiet breath, savoring the spirit of Christmas past that hovered around her. The lingering scent of beeswax candles—snuffed at the close of the earlier vigil service—still tinged the air. Behind the wide door to the old parsonage, aromatic coffee and sweet buns waited for the final love feast of the season, soon to be served to the chosen and the curious who filled the pews of the Lititz Moravian Church.

  Home.

  Eyes still at half-mast, her ears tuned to the faintest traces of Pennsylvania German in the voices murmuring around her, Emilie didn’t see the man preparing to sit down next to her until he landed with a jarring thump, flattening one side of her cashmere nest.

  Good heavens. Didn’t he realize he was sitting entirely too close?

  Not lifting her head to acknowledge him, she merely shifted to the left and whispered, “Pardon me,” while she tugged at her coat sleeve. The black jeans plastered on top of it were the sorriest excuse for Christmas Eve attire she’d ever witnessed. Obviously not a Lititz man.

  When his response wasn’t immediate, she turned her whisper up two notches. “Sir, if you would, please. You’re sitting on my—”

  “Really? No kidding.”

  His full-volume growl sounded like a muffler headed for a
repair shop. Young and old in a three-pew circumference turned to see who was disturbing the peace. When Emilie’s gaze joined theirs, she found herself face-to-face with something even more disturbing.

  The man—and he was definitely that—had impossibly short hair, enormous eyes with brows covering half his face, and a five o’clock shadow that darkened his chin line to a slovenly shade of black.

  Before she could stop herself, Emilie grimaced.

  Ick.

  A lazy smile stretched across the field of dark stubble, at which point his narrow top lip disappeared completely. “Sorry, miss.” He leaned slightly away from her, keeping his eyes trained on hers as he released her coat. “My mistake.”

  She snatched back her sleeve, chagrined to feel the crush marks in the fabric and the warmth of his body captured in the cloth. Men! Flustered, she fussed with her coat, trying to rearrange it just so without brushing against those tasteless black jeans of his, the ones that matched his black T-shirt and black sport coat, which, Emilie couldn’t help noticing, displayed an unseemly number of blond hairs.

  A masculine hand thrust into view and the muffler rumbled again. “So. I’m Jonas Fielding. And you are …?”

  Blushing is what you are, Em!

  She swallowed, hoping it might stop the heat from rising up her too-long neck, and offered her hand for the briefest shake. He was so … so not like her professorial peers at Salem College, buttoned up in their conservative shirts and ties. This man was—goodness, what was the word for it? Earthy. Masculine. Something. Whatever it was, it unnerved her.

  Still, she really ought to be polite. They did have an audience, and it was Christmas Eve.

  Pale fingers outstretched, she nodded curtly. “Dr. Emilie Getz.”

  He didn’t shake her hand—he captured it. “New in town, Dr. Getz?”

  The oldest line in the book! And he couldn’t have been more wrong. She jumped at the chance to tell him so as she slipped her fingers back through his grasp and stuffed them in her dress pocket.