Angie remembered the worry that had caused the parents in Hart’s Crossing, afraid their own children might be unduly influenced.
Once again, Bill seemed to read her mind. “It’s a freelance piece for a magazine, and this is just the sort of story they love.”
“What sort is that?”
“Come on and see for yourself. We’ll only be gone a couple of hours or so, and I promise you’ll find the time it takes worthwhile.” He leaned forward, and there was a hint of a challenge in his brown eyes. “Maybe you’ll want to write the story yourself.”
Thump-thump. “Okay.” Thump-thump.
* * *
Bill had to admit that he loved the pink-peach color that infused Angie’s cheeks as she looked at him. Maybe it was male pride rearing its ugly head, but he suspected Angie hadn’t blushed much in recent years. He rather liked the idea that he was the one who’d made her do it.
“I should call Mom and let her know where I’m going. I wouldn’t want her to worry.”
“Good idea.” Bill pointed toward the desk on the opposite wall. “You can use that phone while I gather my notes and recorder.”
He watched her rise from the chair, turn, and walk across the room. She looked cute in that baseball cap, T-shirt, and Levis. He’d take that outfit hands down over some pinstriped business suit.
Man, he had it bad. He’d fallen in love with her. There was no denying it.
* * *
Francine hung up the telephone and turned her head to find five pairs of eyes watching her.
“That was Angie. She’s going somewhere with Bill. Something about a story he’s working on.”
“Hmm.” Till resumed her sewing. “Bill and Angie. That would give her a good reason to stay in Hart’s Crossing.”
Francine felt a flutter of hope. She didn’t know a finer person than Bill Palmer. When she’d prayed for a husband for her daughter, she’d always asked God to send a mature Christian man who exemplified godly values. That certainly described Bill.
Still, her hope was mixed with concern. Angie had begun asking questions about God. She was spiritually hungry. Francine didn’t want her daughter’s blossoming desire for truth to take a backseat to romance.
Francine sent up a quick prayer, asking God to put a shield around Angie at the same time he was opening the eyes of her heart.
Chapter 11
BILL PALMER DROVE A 1965 red Ford Mustang convertible, the sort of car people in California would kill to own. Bill’s had belonged to his father, who’d purchased it new when he was fresh out of college, and both father and son had kept it in superb condition.
With her ponytailed hair whipping her cheeks, Angie stared at the majestic mountains to the north as the Mustang—top down—sped along the deserted country road. Bill didn’t try to engage her in conversation; he seemed content to let her lose herself in thought.
Except she wasn’t thinking about anything. She was simply enjoying being. Being with Bill. Being in this convertible, sun on her face, wind in her hair. Being away from the hustle and bustle of life. No to-do list to check. No appointments to keep. No stress or worries.
After about fifteen minutes, Bill slowed the car and turned onto a single-lane gravel road. It wound into the foothills, dead-ending when it reached an old, weather-beaten, two-story house surrounded by a corral, a barn, and other outbuildings in various stages of disrepair. Two black-and-white border collies rose from the porch and barked a warning before racing out to circle the Mustang, heads slung low. They didn’t look particularly ferocious, but Angie made no move to open her door, just in case.
“Lady. Prince. Get back here.”
Angie looked toward the house again. A rail-thin woman with pixie-short blond hair, wearing a faded plaid shirt and denim coveralls, stood in the front doorway of the house, her face shadowed by the porch roof. She held a toddler in the crook of one arm, balancing the child on her hip.
“Is that Kris?” Angie asked. The girl she remembered had been on the chunky side, and her hair had been long, reaching all the way to her waist.
“Yes, that’s her.” Bill opened the driver side door as he waved toward Kris. “Hope you don’t mind,” he called as he stood. “I brought a friend with me.”
“Don’t mind a bit.” Kris moved to stand on the edge of the porch.
As Angie got out of the car, two things registered in her mind. First, two young girls—perhaps three and four years of age—had come out of the house to stand near Kris, each gripping one of her pant legs. Second, the right side of Kris’s face bore an angry scar that pulled at the corners of her eye and mouth.
Bill met Angie at the front of the car and took hold of her arm. “This is Angie Hunter, Francine’s daughter. Maybe you remember her from Hart’s Crossing High.” They walked together toward the foot of the porch steps.
“Well, I’ll be.” Kris’s grin was lopsided due to the scar, but it was genuine. “It’s good to see you again, Angie. I hear your mother’s recovery is going well. Give her my best, will you?”
“Of course.”
“Come on up and have a seat on the porch.” Kris touched the head of the older of the two girls. “Ginger, can you and Lily play with your dolls while Aunt Kris visits with her guests?”
Ginger nodded but didn’t budge.
Kris looked at Bill. “Would you mind taking the baby while I get the girls settled?”
“Glad to.” He released Angie’s arm, then handed her the steno pad and pen he’d carried in his other hand. “Come here, Tommy,” he said as he climbed the three steps.
The toddler grinned and nearly sprang from Kris’s arms to Bill’s. It was obvious this wasn’t Bill’s first visit to the Hickman place.
While Bill, little Tommy in arms, and Angie sat on two straight-backed chairs, Kris and the girls disappeared inside. Minutes later, they were back, Kris carrying a blanket along with several dolls and stuffed animals. She spread the blanket on the floor near a third chair and soon had Ginger and Lily seated in the center of the blanket, playing with their toys.
“Sorry,” she said. “They’re still pretty shy around strangers. A whole lot better now than they were six months ago, though.” Softly, she added, “Thank God.”
Those two words on the lips of the “crazy Kris” of Angie’s memory would have sounded totally different than the way they sounded now.
“Can I get either of you something to drink? I made some sun tea yesterday.”
“I’m fine,” Angie answered.
“So am I,” Bill echoed.
“If you’re sure.” Kris sat on her chair.
Bill shifted Tommy to his left thigh. “We’re sure.” He glanced at Angie. “You mind taking notes since I’m holding the little guy?”
She shook her head, rather glad for something to do. Otherwise, she was afraid she would stare too long at Kris’s scar.
Bill reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew his tiny recorder before saying, “Kris, why don’t you tell us your story in your own words? We’ll save any questions until the end.” He set the recorder near his interview subject and turned it on.
“Okay.” Kris glanced down at the two small girls, then turned her head to gaze toward the rolling landscape. “I guess if I say I was a wild kid, it wouldn’t surprise either one of you.”
No, Angie thought, it wouldn’t.
“I was using drugs and drinking pretty heavy by the time I was a sophomore. I was way more than my mom could handle, that’s for sure. She was a widow by then. Trying to raise me right and take care of this place by herself was too much. When she tried to discipline me, I fought back. I was a real hellion.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Finally I took off with my boyfriend, Grant. He was both my lover and my supplier, and I needed him for both reasons. Over the next couple of years, we traveled all around the country. Wherever the wind blew us, that’s where we ended up.”
Kris’s tale was not unlike the stories of countless other women trapped in the d
rug and alcohol culture. The poverty. The homeless, vagabond existence. The verbal and physical abuse that came in waves. And eventually, abandonment by the man she thought she loved. A succession of other men followed, complete with reckless, meaningless sex and an increasing need for a chemical high.
“When the car accident happened—” she touched the scar on her cheek—“I was so wasted I didn’t remember a thing. Still don’t. I came to in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and they told me the driver, the man I was with, was killed in the crash.” There were tears in her eyes, but she blinked them away before they could fall. “The sorry thing is, I didn’t even know his name. Had no idea where he picked me up or how long we were together. Days? Weeks? Months? Truth was, I didn’t even know I was in Richmond until later on. So I laid there in that hospital bed, knowing I was never going to be pretty again, that I was always going to have a scarred face. I understood the mess I made of my life, and I saw what I’d become, and I wished God would strike me dead right then and there.” Her smile, when it came, was nothing less than angelic, despite its lopsidedness. “Instead, he gave me a glimpse of heaven. It was like the walls of that hospital room slid open, like automatic doors at a department store, and Jesus was standing there, saying, ‘Look what I have for you, Beloved, if you follow me.’”
Angie was transfixed by both the expression on Kris’s face and by her words. She forgot about the steno pad and her note taking. She almost forgot to breathe.
“So I followed him,” Kris finished softly, “and there hasn’t been a day since that he hasn’t made me glad for it.”
Kris continued with her story, telling of the many months of her recovery, both from the accident and from her addictions. She told of the woman from a local church who took Kris into her home and nourished her with love.
“It took me over a year to work up the courage to call home. I hadn’t talked to Mom since I ran away at sixteen, and I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to forgive me. Finally I realized I had to call, whether she forgave me or not. I had to tell her how sorry I was for what I did to her, for the way I disrespected her. Only I was too late. Mom had passed away about the same time as my accident, and I never even knew it.” Her voice lowered, and the tears returned to her eyes. This time she allowed them to fall. “I never got to tell her how sorry I was for what I put her through. People think there’ll be plenty of time to make amends with those we love, but that isn’t always true.”
Kris fell silent, but Angie knew there was more to come. The evidence of that was sitting on Bill’s lap as well as playing with dolls on a blanket next to Kris’s chair.
“It took a while for me to work through the pain and confusion I felt. And all the guilt. I carried around a load of it for a long time before I laid it at the foot of the cross like Jesus tells us to. And then he sent these little ones into my life to love and to love me in return.”
“You’re not really their aunt,” Angie said, suddenly remembering Kris was an only child, same as she was.
Kris stroked Ginger’s hair. “No, I’m not. That’s just what the kids call me. I became friends with Susan, their mom, in a Bible study we were in together, and later I took care of her when she was dying of cancer. She had no other family to see to her, and she wasn’t married to their father. Besides, he took off when she got pregnant with Tommy, and nobody knew where he was. After they found her cancer, the doctors wanted her to have an abortion, said it would improve her chances of surviving longer, but she wouldn’t do it. Susan said she wouldn’t take his life to save her own. She went home to be with the Lord when Tommy was about five months old. Long enough for her to take care of arrangements for her children to stay with me. After we buried Susan, the kids and I moved back here, to the house Mom left me in her will. It’s a miracle, really, the way God’s provided for us all.”
A miracle? Wouldn’t a miracle have been for Susan to live instead of die of cancer? Wouldn’t a miracle have been if Kris hadn’t been scarred in that accident or had never run away from home in the first place?
As if Kris heard Angie’s thoughts, she said, “I didn’t have anybody. They didn’t have anybody. But together, we make a family. That’s God’s miracle. All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”
Angie was incredulous. “You’re saying you think this all worked out for the best?”
“For the best?” Kris shook her head slowly. “No, I’m not saying that. Lots of bad, hard things happen to people, and plenty of it isn’t the best. The best won’t happen until this world is free of sin, once and for all, and God’s will is done on earth the same way it is in heaven. But for now, he takes what the devil means for harm against us, and he turns it into something beautiful in the lives of those who trust Jesus. That’s what he’s promised in his Word.” Kris leaned forward in her chair, her gaze so filled with peace it pierced Angie’s soul. “That’s how much the Lord loves us.”
The old Angie—the one who’d arrived in Idaho on that small plane thirty-one days before—would have scoffed outright. She would have accused Kris Hickman of sermonizing or, at the very least, being simpleminded. But today, seeing something in this woman’s eyes, hearing it in her voice, she neither scoffed nor accused. She listened, and she tried to understand. She wanted very much to understand where that sort of peace came from…
Because she knew she didn’t have it.
Chapter 12
ANGIE TOSSED AND TURNED on her bed that night, unable to fall asleep, unable to shake the voice in her head and the memory of Kris Hickman and those three children, unable to ignore the peace she’d read in Kris’s eyes, despite the painful nature of her story.
“I was way more than my mom could handle.…So I laid there in that hospital bed, knowing I was never going to be pretty again.…Jesus was standing there, saying, ‘Look what I have for you, Beloved, if you follow me.’ So I followed him.…I never got to tell her how sorry I was for what I put her through. People think there’ll be plenty of time to make amends with those we love, but that isn’t always true.…It’s a miracle, really, the way God’s provided for us all.…He takes what the devil means for harm against us, and he turns it into something beautiful.…That’s how much the Lord loves us…
“That’s how much the Lord loves us…
“That’s how much the Lord loves us…”
At 3:00 A.M., Angie gave up and got out of bed.
Tucking one leg beneath her bottom, she sat on her desk chair, opened her laptop, and turned it on, determined she would seriously begin her job search. Surely that would help cure whatever ailed her. Getting back to the real world was what she needed. Getting back to the hustle and bustle of the newspaper business.
Only instead of clicking the Internet link on her desktop, she opened her word processing program. She sat there a while, staring at the cursor blinking on the screen, and then she typed: Kris Hickman is an unlikely heroine in a very different kind of love story.
It wasn’t a bad lead. Maybe not the best, but not bad either. And it didn’t matter one way or the other since she had no intention of writing the article. It was an interesting story but had nothing to do with her. Maybe she simply needed to jot down a few things in order to clear it from her head.
“I never got to tell her how sorry I was for what I put her through. People think there’ll be plenty of time to make amends with those we love, but that isn’t always true…”
Perhaps those were the words that troubled Angie most of all. What if something far worse than knee problems had affected her mother? What if she’d died without Angie seeing her again? She’d neglected her mother for so long. Oh, she’d made those occasional visits and had called on a semi-regular basis, and her day planner had helped her remember to send flowers on Mother’s Day and birthday gifts every February, items purchased in haste and without much thought for whether or not they were things her mother would want or need.
But what about the one thing that r
eally mattered? What about giving of herself, of her time? No, that she hadn’t done. But what was a career woman to do? Angie had to have a job, didn’t she?
Of course, Bill had offered her employment at the Press. The pay couldn’t be much, but if she sold her house in California, she would have a nice nest egg to see her through for a long spell. Despite her dire expectations, she hadn’t found these weeks in Hart’s Crossing onerous. Maybe she’d even enjoyed them.
She thought of Kris Hickman again and the strength of the faith that had been revealed as she related her story. A strong faith shared by Angie’s mother, Bill Palmer, and Terri Sampson, to name only a few of the people she knew. For the first time in her life, Angie wanted to know why they believed what they believed. Perhaps if she stayed in Hart’s Crossing a while longer, she would find the answers to the questions that plagued her.
Angie swiveled her chair around 180 degrees, thinking that her life had been a good deal simpler when she wasn’t so bent on self-analysis and spiritual discovery.
* * *
Francine awakened to the smell and sound of bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Turning her head on the pillow, she looked at the red numbers on her digital clock. Six-forty. What on earth? Angie rarely ate breakfast, let alone this early in the morning.
Francine sat up and reached for her robe. A short while later, aided by her cane and moving slowly, she made her way out of her bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen. The table had been set with the bright yellow plates Francine favored. The clear-glass tumblers had been filled to the brim with grapefruit juice.
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