She shook off the mounting accusations and sought out Evan’s face in the congregation. She found him, gazing at her with the same fervor in his eyes that she saw in Jon’s when he looked at Nicole. Oh, Evan. I don’t know if I can ever be worthy of that gaze, ever deserve such love.
She was halfway through college now—finally the adult she’d always longed to be. So why did she still so often feel like a confused little girl who didn’t know what she wanted from life?
Nicole reached the foot of the altar, and Daddy placed her hand in Jon’s. Natalie could read in the tension of her father’s jaw that his emotions were close to the surface. She couldn’t help but wonder what she would see on his face on her wedding day. Probably relief, she smiled to herself.
When the pastor asked, “Who gives this woman in holy matrimony?” Daddy answered in a quavering voice, “Her mother and I.” Nicole and Jon presented red roses to each of their mothers and laid a pink rose on the altar in memory of Sara. Then Natalie turned with the rest of the wedding party to face the altar as Jon and Nicole ascended the platform. Nicole offered her a bright smile as she relinquished her bridal bouquet to Natalie for safekeeping while they exchanged their vows. Natalie returned the smile and forced herself to focus on the present, to celebrate this most consecrated day in her sister’s life.
In voices that were strong and sure, Jon Dever and Nicole Hunter promised to love, honor, and cherish each other until death parted them. And as the last notes of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” floated away, and Natalie took the arm of the best man to follow her sister and new brother-in-law down the aisle and out of the church, she compelled her saddened heart into submission, surrendering up a prayer of gratitude.
She caught Evan’s eye once more, and the smile that upturned the corners of her mouth was true, the light that twinkled in her eyes genuine.
Daria Hunter balanced on the top rung of the stepladder and paused to wipe beads of perspiration from her forehead. She blew a wayward strand of hair from her eyes and took another box down from the top shelf of the big walk-in closet in their bedroom. How in the world had they managed to accumulate so much junk in the few short years they’d lived here? She corrected herself. The years had been short, but not so few.
Holding a stack of dusty shoeboxes in the crook of one arm, she climbed down the ladder and took them out into the bedroom and stacked them on the end of the bed. Blowing a cloud of dust off the lid, she opened the first one. Peeling away a layer of brittle tissue paper, she smiled as she recognized the low-heeled pumps she’d worn at her wedding to Cole. The ivory satin was yellowed with age, and the shoes were hopelessly out of style. She rewrapped each shoe carefully and nestled them back in the box.
Two decades had passed since the day Cole had carried her over the threshold of this farmhouse on their wedding day. Oh, how time had stolen away those years. But they’d been given many happy memories in return.
A tear slid down her cheek, and she felt guilty for feeling gloomy when there was so much for which to be joyful. Nicole and Jon were married and due home from their honeymoon at the end of the week. Noelle was halfway through her senior year of high school. And Natalie—oh, dearest Natalie—finally seemed to be healing from the wounds of her youth. Her eldest daughter still had another week of Christmas break before beginning the second semester of her third year at the university. Their time with her had been a treasure.
Yes, it had been a wonderful winter. Filled with emotion and impending goodbyes, but wonderful all the same.
Daria put the wedding shoes in the pile designated for the church’s rummage sale. One couldn’t save everything. She opened the next box.
The sight of the cassette tapes and newspaper clippings caused her heart to leap. Keepsakes of Nate. The memories came crashing back, as clear as if they had happened yesterday. And yet, somehow the things that had happened to them—to her and Nate and Cole—seemed at the same time surreal.
Picking up one of the audiocassettes, she read the label. Timoné—Language. How well she remembered the day these tapes had come back to her in the mail. She had been in love with Cole, trying to get over Nate, believing him to be dead. Unable to bear listening to them, she had packed them all into this box, save one that she set aside for when Natalie grew up. She had shipped them off to the old missionary woman who had served in Timoné before them, to be forwarded to the mission headquarters, in hopes that they would be of help to the next missionaries Gospel Vision might send to Timoné. Someone had copied the tapes and returned the originals to her with a warm note of gratitude.
Only one time in the ensuing years had she gotten this box down from the closet. Only one time had she played one of the recordings. It had probably been a dozen years ago now. She sighed, replaying the memory in her mind.
Cole’s partner, Travis Carruthers, had decided to strike out on his own, leaving Cole to work eighty-hour weeks. Daria had gone back to work at the clinic, but she deeply resented having to leave their three little girls in childcare. The stress of those months had precipitated a severe crisis in their marriage. One night she and Cole had had a huge argument. In the midst of it, he stormed out of the house, leaving her so angry she was shaking.
She had gone up to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. She crawled out of bed and, in an effort to burn some of the anger that was still raging inside her, she’d started cleaning this very closet. As she pulled things from the shelves, she made a mental list of Cole’s faults. She had crucified him in her mind that night, and to make matters worse, at her most vulnerable moment, she had come across Nate’s tapes hidden away in the closet. As the recording played, she had deliberately allowed her love for Nathan Camfield to be resurrected. Listening to his strong, sure voice, she remembered only the sweetness of first love, recalled only Nate’s admirable qualities. And in the space of an hour she had believed that life with Nate would have been perfect. She compared the two men to whom she had pledged her love, and in her mind Cole came up so pitifully short that she wondered if she could ever again find the love she’d once felt for him.
The clock in the hall downstairs chimed the hour, and Daria realized with a start that she’d been staring into the past, entranced by her memories, for several minutes.
She smiled now as she remembered the stern lecture Maribeth Dever had delivered when Daria had gone whining to her after that fight. Bless her dear heart, Maribeth had set her straight. Daria saw now, more clearly even than she had that day, how true her friend’s words were. Every marriage had its valleys—and sometimes they seemed treacherously low, the walls insurmountable. Yet how many of their friends had tragically traded the valleys of one relationship for another whose gulf turned out to be far deeper?
She had gone home from her friend’s house that day and packed the tapes away. She hoped someday Natalie would treasure them, but she knew that they represented a part of her life that she could never revisit.
How grateful she was that she had stuck it out, that she had chosen to love Cole again. The love they now shared was precious beyond belief. Cole completed her, made her whole. It was more than she deserved, but she embraced it, accepted it fully as a gift from God, a reminder of his power to redeem even the most impossible dilemma.
She put the cassette gently back into the box and dropped the lid in place. Maybe it was time to pass the tapes on to Natalie. Her daughter had grown up so much over the last two years. And to Daria’s great joy, Natalie and Nate had forged a solid friendship via e-mail.
She shifted the box on the bed, putting it with a small collection of things reserved for Natalie. And with a heart overflowing with gratitude, Daria Hunter continued to sort through the tangible reminders of a life that—in spite of her grim fallibility, in spite of her grave mistakes—God had chosen to bless richly.
Natalie drove slowly across the gravel and parked at the back of the rambling old house. She turned off the ignition and went around to open the trunk of her car. She shaded her eyes and gazed up
at the dormer windows that jutted out from the third-floor apartment. Her apartment. It still gave her a little thrill to turn the key in her own door. Last summer she had finally managed to convince her parents that living in an apartment instead of the dorms would round out her education in the proverbial “real world.”
She and Amy Stinson, her roommate in the dorms, had seen the little For Rent sign planted in the yard one day last spring when they’d been out jogging. They’d quickly composed a jingle to help them remember the phone number and chanted it all the way back to Ford Hall, lest they lose the apartment to someone else. But not only was the apartment still available, but the landlord was also willing to hold it for them over the summer for a minuscule monthly fee.
Natalie had enjoyed every minute of apartment life. Well, almost every minute. She rarely felt like cooking, and it got expensive eating out all the time. But she did enjoy the peace and quiet and the freedom from the rules of the dorm. She was looking forward to having the place all to herself during the upcoming week. Amy’s brother was graduating from college back home in Indiana, so Amy wouldn’t be back for another week.
Natalie unpacked the last of her things from the car’s trunk and climbed the open stairway that hugged the side of the house.
She smiled as she heard Daddy’s fatherly caution echo in her ears: This is an accident waiting to happen, Nattie! You girls be careful on these steps this winter. Love for Cole Hunter welled up in her unexpectedly. Things had been so much better between them since she left home. More regrets. Why hadn’t she been able to see what she had until it was almost too late? Why had she wasted so much time provoking quarrels with the people she loved most?
She brushed away the troublesome thoughts and unlocked the door to the apartment. The space had been closed up for two weeks, and the air inside smelled musty, but already it felt like home. She looked around the high-ceilinged room with its white painted woodwork and beaded-board paneling. The mismatched collection of furniture and the flea-market knickknacks she and Amy had collected only added to the cozy feel of the place. It took two more trips to carry everything in from the car. She dumped it all in a heap on the living room floor, then went to take a quick shower.
Refreshed and comfortable, with a thick terrycloth robe around her, she began unpacking the latest batch of goodies from her parents. Mom had been cleaning closets like a madwoman since Nicole’s wedding, and the girls had reaped the rewards of her efforts. Nikki inherited the extra bedding and some decorative items for the house she and Jon hoped to buy. Natalie had gotten some dishes and glassware for the apartment out of the deal, along with some other odds and ends she’d rescued from Mom’s rummage sale pile.
She unwrapped the glasses and plates and put them to soak in the kitchen sink, then went back to sort through the rest.
The old shoebox was at the bottom of a grocery bag, underneath some well-worn dishtowels and potholders. Natalie lifted it carefully from the bag and slid off the lid. A dozen or more cassette tapes were filed in a neat row in the box, and beside them, an assortment of yellowed newspaper clippings, old letters, and brochures from Gospel Vision.
When her mother had given her the box, she had seemed nonchalant about it. “I don’t even know if these old things will play anymore,” she’d said, thrusting the box into Natalie’s arms. “But, well, I thought you might enjoy listening to them.”
Natalie felt she’d been offered a hallowed gift.
Picking up a small stack of airmail envelopes, she took the top one and pulled out a thin sheet of paper. It had been years since she had seen this letter, but she recognized it immediately. It was the very first letter her father—Daddy-Nate—had sent after his return to Colombia. Sometimes, on Nathan Camfield’s birthday, before Natalie signed a card or colored a picture for him, Mom would let her read the letters he had written to his infant daughter. She couldn’t remember when or why they had ended the tradition. But she read the words now as though they were freshly penned.
Dearest Natalie,
I am back with my Timoné people now, and I am happy to be here. I know I am where God wants me to be. Someday your mommy can tell you about these people and this village where your life began.
I hope you will always know how much I love you and how precious you are to me. I pray for you every day, as I know your mommy and daddy there in Kansas do too. God has blessed you with a wonderful home in which to grow up, Natalie. I hope you will never forget how greatly God has blessed you. You are a special girl with so many people who love you, and I know God has great things in store for you. I will write again soon, but for now, remember that I love you with all my heart.
Keeping you in my prayers,
Your Daddy-Nate
She leafed through the sheaf of letters, and her eyes misted with memories. She folded the letter and slid it carefully back into the envelope. Plopping down cross-legged on the floor in front of the stereo, she chose a cassette from the box and inserted it into the slot.
She waited for a few seconds, adjusting the volume knob, suddenly realizing how disappointed she would feel if her father’s recordings had not survived the years. The tape droned softly, as though it were blank. She was just about to hit the fast forward button when a resonant voice filled the room. Natalie adjusted the volume again and sat back to listen. It was Nathan Camfield’s voice she heard—there was no doubt about that—but the voice coming from the stereo speakers was deeper and missing the gravelly tone that Natalie knew.
She remembered Grandma Camfield telling her that Nate’s voice had been damaged by the smoke he’d inhaled in the fire that nearly cost him his life. Still, it shocked her, hearing this tangible evidence of one of the many things he had lost in his ordeal. Tears sprang to her eyes, and a lump formed in her throat. Several minutes went by, and she realized that she had become so mesmerized by the timbre of her father’s voice that she had been paying little attention to the content of his words.
She swiped at her damp cheeks and reached up to punch the rewind button. She hit play again, hanging on to every nuance of sound the stereo speakers emitted.
“I just returned from a hunting expedition with some of the men,” the voice began again. “The rainy season is coming, and the village is busy laying up provisions.”
In the background Natalie could hear the intermittent squawks and twittering of tropical birds and what sounded like water trickling over stones. She could almost smell the damp floor of the rain forest, could almost see the dense foliage. Never had she been so enthralled by what might have, under ordinary circumstances, seemed boring. But this was her father! This was a glimpse into the life of the two people who had given her breath.
Her father went into some detail about his experiences on the hunting trip. Then he paused and cleared his throat. “We’re making progress with the language,” he continued. “Daria has struggled with the rather guttural tones of the dialect. For some reason, it seems to come more naturally to me. Daria claims it’s because I snore. I didn’t dare tell her that she does too.” His laughter filled the room. It was a joyful sound—one that was naively oblivious to the sorrows that were perhaps mere days away.
Natalie stopped the tape and pressed eject. She popped out the cassette and inspected it for a date, some indication of when it might have been recorded. The tape was labeled Timoné—Impressions, followed by a number that seemed to denote the chronological sequence in which the recording had been made.
She started the tape playing again, stretching out on the carpet on her belly, chin resting on one fist.
“For instance,” Nate went on, “the word for coffee is cazho.” He pronounced the word with a rough inflection, as though he had something caught in his throat. “Daria is inclined to pronounce the word as cash-o, which is the Timoné word for nose. The natives find it quite hilarious when she offers to put sugar in my nose.” Again his laughter filled the room, and Natalie found herself smiling too.
“It has been a little frustrating
for her,” he said now, his tenor suddenly more serious, “but she’s hanging in there.”
For nearly three hours, Natalie listened as her father’s voice recounted with humor the everyday details of the life he had once shared with her mother.
She was mesmerized, astonished by the realization that at the time he had recorded these words, he could not have known that he would someday have a daughter named Natalie Joan, and that through no fault of his own, his little family would never know life together on this earth.
As his words soaked into the core of her being, something she could not name began to emerge in her spirit. And like a fledgling on the frayed cusp of the nest, she somehow knew that this nameless emotion would soon give her wings.
Twenty–Four
Okay, Evan, listen to this.” Natalie pushed the play button on the tape recorder and waited for the now familiar voice of her father. Evan had just arrived back in Manhattan after the Christmas break, and Natalie had waited impatiently all through supper to surprise him with the recordings. She adjusted the volume, plopped on the floor by the stereo, and watched Evan’s face as Nathan Camfield’s voice filled the room.
Evan sat on the edge of the big overstuffed chair in Natalie’s apartment and listened politely, but she could see that he wasn’t catching the same excitement that she had felt in discovering the tapes. She’d intended to play an entire cassette for him, but after fifteen minutes, he leaned back in the chair and began to fidget. She waited for a lull in her father’s narrative and ejected the tape.
“Well?” She looked at him expectantly. “What do you think?”
“That’s really neat, Nattie,” Evan said. “I can see why you were so happy to get those tapes.”
After the Rains Page 20
