Jacob's Ladder
Page 19
She stood in the early-morning sunshine, remembering the conversation she’d had with Thomas the night before, the way he’d slid his finger along the sides of her face, the way they’d leaned into each other, the way he’d promised to be in North Carolina in less than a day if she called him, if she needed him, if she just wanted to see him.
She smiled, the warmth of the season pressing down upon her, because she was relieved of the burden she had carried so long. She felt different than she ever had; she felt free.
Somehow in the hearing of the dead man’s story, in watching the exchange of the ladder from John Sunspeaker to Philip Lujan, in realizing the price that the old man, Jacob, had paid to give passage to long-abandoned and lost souls, she felt chosen, called like he, to give a restless spirit a place to begin and end.
Jacob’s ladder, Rose thought, recalling the story from the Old Testament, is just what Thomas said it is. It is the mercy that shows up like a dream in the fretful night while lost in the wilderness, a dream that comforts, a dream that promises that even though you are running for your life, unsettled, desperate, unforgiven, one day you will find true rest, one day you will find your way home.
Rose understood that her father would more than likely not even recognize her, might not even know that it was he who had called her back to North Carolina to grant the forgiveness that would be his ladder, his vehicle to start him on his way home. She knew that he would probably deny that it was his soul that spoke to her in dreams.
Rose walked away from where she had been standing, threw her trash in the garbage can at the side of the station, and returned to the driver’s seat of her car.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rose said to herself as she buckled the seat belt and pulled into the Tennessee traffic. “I’m not just going for him.”
She merged into the morning commute without being impatient about the traffic or about what she might not find when she stood at her father’s bedside. She had learned a great lesson from Jacob and from his commitment to return the ladder to the Natchez tribe.
On the morning of her return trip to North Carolina, Rose recalled the quest of the old man from New Mexico and the way he had devoted himself completely to returning the ladder to the lost souls. She also remembered how she felt when his nephew handed the ladder to Agent Lujan.
Rose thought of that moment when they stood in the sudden breeze as she drove along in the slow progress of traffic, how it seemed so clearly to be the perfect and final release of a restless soul.
Rose understood that, just as it had been for Jacob Sun-speaker, the man who discovered purpose in a dream and wholeness in the fulfillment of a three-hundred-year-old promise, as we allow ourselves to become the vehicle of grace for another, we are merely securing the rungs of the ladder that guarantees our own sweet passage home.
She smiled and moved ahead.
ALSO IN THE SHADY GROVE MYSTERY SERIES
Down by the Riverside
ALSO BY JACKIE LYNN, WRITING AS LYNNE HINTON
FICTION
Friendship Cake
Hope Springs
Forever Friends
The Things I Know Best
The Last Odd Day
The Arms of God
NONFICTION
Meditations for Walking
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
JACOB’S LADDER. Copyright © 2007 by Jackie Lynn. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lynn, Jackie.
Jacob’s ladder : a Shady Grove mystery / Jackie Lynn.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35231-8
ISBN-10: 0-312-35231-X
1. Camp sites, facilities, etc.—Fiction. 2. Nurses—Fiction. 3. North Carolina—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.Y547J33 207
813'.6—dc22
2007009198
First Edition: June 2007
eISBN 9781466856899
First eBook edition: October 2013