“Saw you eying the goal. First time the rain’s stopped in three days. We could turn on the outside lights, run a few layups. Does wonders to ease a man’s tension.”
“You’re not helping. Mom wants the playpen now. Volleyball sets and lawn darts—we could start an outdoor camp with all this stuff.”
His dad laughed, cleared off the top of a short filing cabinet, and sat on top of it. “When your sister’s kids come in the summer, they like to dig around in here. It’s like a treasure hunt for them.”
Travis made a secret vow to enlist his nephews in organizing the clutter come June. Twenty bucks a piece and he would never have to face this catastrophe again. Spying what looked like a playpen leg, he pulled, only to be bonked on the head when a slippery slide and three inner tubes cascaded down.
“Careful. We don’t want to end up back at the hospital after you finally busted out… what was her name?”
“Erin,” Travis growled. Why did Joshua need a playpen anyway? With a mighty yank, he pulled the thing free, sending a shower of dirt into his face.
“Yes, Erin. Seems like a lovely girl. Shame that she’s all alone.”
Travis stopped, his anger suddenly cooled by his father’s words.
“You’re right, Dad. It is a shame she’s all alone. I appreciate you and mom taking her in until she’s well.”
His father waved his hand as he moved forward to help Travis through the path they’d made. “Your mother loves to help, and you know we couldn’t turn away anyone who really needs us.”
Travis stepped out of the garage, breathed deeply of the clean night air, and looked again at the basketball goal. He still would enjoy a game, but his need to pound the court had passed.
“Have I told you and mom how much I love you lately?”
“Not that I can remember.” His dad grinned at him, a twinkle sparkling in his eyes. He picked up the water hose and began squirting off the playpen. “Your mother’s right inside though. I’m sure she’d be happy to hear it.”
Travis looked at the lighted window over the kitchen sink, but he didn’t move toward it. Instead, he backed up to his dad’s new Ford truck, leaned against it, and crossed his arms. Then decided to stick his hands in his pockets. Nothing felt right though. He pulled his hands back out. It was as if he’d outgrown his own skin. He watched his father turn off the water and rewind the hose.
“Best just to say what’s on your mind.”
“You ever cross the line in your job?” The words shot out of his mouth before he’d formed them in his mind.
“Well, now. Let me think.” His dad joined him next to the truck. Together they studied the house, and something about his closeness eased the ache in Travis’s soul.
“There were times I did what I thought was right, then later I wasn’t so sure.”
Travis felt his head bobbing in the darkness, reminding himself of one of those crazy bobble-head dolls in a car window. “Exactly. What else can a man do? It’s not like they give you a manual. I mean they do, but it doesn’t cover everything.” He crossed his arms the opposite way, then finally let them hang at his side.
His dad reached out and cupped the back of his neck, though he had to reach up to do so. “Manuals are written by men, son. Seems like God is always throwing new situations at us. Or maybe we manage to find new messes to tangle up in.”
Travis let his head fall forward and allowed his father to massage the knots in his neck. He felt like a boy again, running home and expecting his parents to make things right. His father telling him everything would be okay. The comfort was easier to accept in the darkness.
“Is caring about Erin that big of a problem?”
Every muscle in Travis’s body went taut. He stepped away from the truck and stared at his father.
“I care about all of my clients.”
“First one you ever brought home.” The words were a kindness, not an accusation.
“She didn’t have any other options. I explained—”
His dad raised his hands, palms forward, in that age-old sign of surrender. “Tell yourself what you want. You can stuff it down until you have a crick in your neck and everyone but your old man believes you. I’ve never seen you look at a woman the way you look at Erin. I expect that scares you.”
“Yeah, it scares me,” Travis said, forgetting to deny his feelings. “I’m her caseworker, Dad. I can’t afford the luxury of caring for her or Joshua personally. I need to be objective and approve or disapprove her case before a judge. Then I’ll probably never see her again. How can I afford to care for her?”
The last words threatened to strangle him.
His dad stepped forward and clapped him on the back. “God has a purpose and a plan. Never doubt that.”
Travis could only stuff his hands into his pockets and stare out into the night.
—
Erin woke to bright sunshine, streaming through yellow curtains, and the sound of Joshua cooing as someone talked baby nonsense to him.
That would be Barbara Williams, Travis’s mother.
Running her fingers over the seam of the handmade quilt, tracing the pattern of the purple and rose tulips, Erin allowed herself to luxuriate in the fact she did not have to immediately jump out of bed. Maybe she should, but she didn’t have to, so she wouldn’t.
She had the uncanny sense of lying inside a pat of butter. The walls were painted a warm yellow and trimmed in white molding. A well-framed print adorned each wall, except for the one directly across from her bed. It contained a ten-by-ten square with a three-dimensional mosaic of sorts—a collection of found items it seemed.
Erin pushed back the quilted cover and padded across the carpeted floor to stand in front of the mosaic. It wasn’t large, but its simplicity and placement on the wall drew her attention. That and, of course, the objects it contained.
A button in the shape of a heart. An old cross. A flower. She reached out a finger to touch the star-shaped emblem and trace the letters placed carefully atop the stone, h-o-p-e. Positioned beneath this word was one final item—a carving of Christ.
With the sun warm on her face and her hand on the mosaic, she noticed what she could not have seen from across the room—a word etched repeatedly into the background of the ten-by-ten square. Grace. Only the one word written in an old script. Grace.
The morning’s rays had warmed the stone. Standing there, her fingers tracing the letters, the warmth traveled up her arm. Inexplicably, the ice around her heart began to melt, and she was powerless to resist it.
She no longer wanted to resist it.
Joshua’s murmurs from the other room blended with the aching in her heart. The tender words of Nina and Jules always seemed to run through her mind, even when she tried to push them away—even when their bittersweet memory pierced her like a scalpel meeting bone.
In the last week she’d learned that memories were sometimes painful, but loneliness hurt much worse.
She needed all her memories of Jules and Nina—could no longer afford to push them away. The child in the next room was a gift, and grace? Her fingers retraced the word. She needed grace as surely as she needed to rise from the bed today.
She bowed her head, drew in a deep breath, one that went past the aches of her losses, and prayed the only prayer she could remember. The simple one she had learned kneeling between Nina and Jules during Communion.
The words poured from her like a cleansing rain, lifting her heart in that shaft of light so she didn’t stop with “for thine be the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” but instead, she sank to her knees in the soft carpet and thanked God for sending Travis to rescue her and Joshua.
For sending her to find Joshua.
For prompting Joshua’s mother to call her in the first place.
Once she began thanking God, it was difficult to stop. She might have stayed there until her knees cramped had it not been for the tap on the door and Barbara’s head popping in, followed by Joshua’s smile.
>
When Erin didn’t rise from the floor, Barbara walked over and sat on the chair.
“I stood to look at the mosaic,” Erin tried to explain, wiping at the tears on her cheeks as she smiled for Joshua. “Next thing I knew I was on my knees.”
Barbara nodded in understanding. “The mosaic has had that effect on me more than once. I found it at a market in Newport. George wanted to put it in the living room, but I thought it needed the light.”
She reached out and touched Erin’s forehead. “How do you feel?”
“Better.” Erin sniffled, laughed, then kissed Joshua’s hand. “Better than I’ve felt in a long time.”
“That’s good to hear, honey.” Barbara waited a beat, then handed Joshua over, folded her hands on her lap, and beamed at her—the woman’s smile fitting into the room as naturally as the tulips sewn into the quilt. “Mr. Joshua has had his breakfast already. I had the idea he wanted to see you, but if you’d like I could take him into the living room to play while you shower.”
Erin buried her face in Joshua’s curls, inhaled deeply of his smell. For once the joy she felt at having him wasn’t tainted by the burden of worry over how she’d care for him. Somehow she knew their situation would work out.
“Thank you.”
“He’s no problem at all. We like to read books. Don’t we, Joshua?”
“I meant thank you for everything.”
“I knew what you meant, and it’s still no problem.”
As Erin shuffled down the hall to the shower, she realized how sick she’d been. Pausing halfway to catch her breath, she studied a row of pictures lining the wall—family pictures. It was difficult to tell who the babies were, but once she’d pegged Travis, she backtracked.
It looked as if he was probably the second child, because in the very first picture Barbara was holding an infant in her lap and a toddler stood by her side. These were followed by Travis in kindergarten, Travis in Little League with his bat proudly held over his shoulder. Sometime after Little League a baby sister appeared. Then Travis in high school—playing basketball and baseball, smiling for an academic awards ceremony.
In each photo either his father or mother stood behind him, proudly resting a hand upon his shoulder for the picture. Until the last one. She stepped closer and felt sorrow splinter in her chest as she recognized the college she had attended for one year. Travis was graduating—cum laude from the looks of it.
In this photo he’d become the man she knew. He had outgrown his parents, and so he stood a little behind them and rested his hands lightly across the backs of their shoulders. Otherwise, the smiles were identical to the ones in Little League.
Erin closed her eyes and tried to slow the hammering of her heart. She had never experienced the domestic scene displayed on this wall. Her life had been filled with a toddler’s horror, yearly visits to a judge, and her sister’s valiant attempts to make whole what her father had torn apart.
Jules and Nina had done their best though.
She would do the same for Joshua.
With God’s help she would.
Twenty-Five
Erin walked into the kitchen, feeling more like her old self than she had since the fever began four days before.
“Tea or coffee?” Barbara asked.
“A cup of hot tea would be wonderful. Thank you.” She bent and planted a kiss on Joshua, who was propped in an old-fashioned high chair. Excited to see her, he kicked his legs.
“The shower helped,” Barbara noted.
“It did. I feel almost like an animal rescuer again.”
“How did you choose such an interesting career?”
Erin laughed as she accepted the hot tea and slice of warm cinnamon bread, suddenly realizing she was famished. “Thank you. I suppose my career choice was Doc England’s doing.”
“I guessed as much. He speaks very highly of you.”
“Doc and Jules were very close.” Erin sipped the chamomile tea. She braced herself against the tightening in her chest that always accompanied memories of Jules and Nina, but it didn’t come. Studying Barbara’s kitchen, she thought she knew why. Who could be sad sitting in the midst of a bird’s nest? Feeders hung outside every window. As she watched, a goldfinch hopped to the tube nearest her and pecked at its breakfast.
The nature theme echoed throughout the kitchen, with placemats touting different types of woodland birds, window valances displaying nests photographed in the wild, even the salt and pepper shakers imitating male and female woodpeckers.
“Like birds?” Erin asked.
Barbara smiled and sat down on the other side of Joshua. “I do, as a matter of fact. When the boys were small, I used to worry about every little thing. My grandmother was eighty-seven at the time. She would remind me that God even looks after the sparrow.”
“Sparrows?” Erin pressed her tea cup to her lips, staring over the rim at Barbara.
“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Barbara laughed, reached out, and retrieved Joshua’s pacifier from the tray where it had tumbled beyond his reach.
Erin could tell the words had transported her to another time, another place. “Sounds like something from the Bible, but I’ve never heard it before.”
“Luke, chapter twelve. The disciples are in a tight spot, and Jesus is trying to comfort them, encourage them. He’s also telling them not to fear death.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a pep talk.” Erin ran her finger along the top of her cup, but didn’t dare look up into Barbara’s eyes.
“There are worse things than death. Jesus knew that, and the disciples were about to learn—as was I.” Barbara hesitated while two more finches settled at the feeder. When she continued, her voice brimmed with precious memories. “Granny Ruth would visit me, always quoting Luke before she left. I’d nod and pat her hand because I loved her more than I loved chocolate mint ice cream, but I thought her a little senile at the time.”
She stood and refilled their cups with fresh tea from a small white pot that was covered with a quilted tea cozy. “Then Travis’s brother, Tommy, died of a ruptured appendix. I believed my world had ended. Wanted to curl up in bed and never rise. Granny Ruth showed up in my room one day, reminded me God hadn’t forgotten Tommy, but only needed him home sooner than the rest of us. God never forgets his children, she said. I don’t know if I understood what she was saying, but I did crawl out of bed and wash my face—that day and every day after.”
They both sipped their tea and watched the goldfinch that had been joined by three others with less color.
“Granny brought me my first feeder that day. She set it up outside this window.”
“That feeder?” Erin asked.
“Oh my, no. This was over twenty-five years ago. Feeders don’t last more than five or ten years, what with all the storms they withstand. God’s love does last though. I learned that eventually, but it took many hours of sitting here, watching God’s miracles. Travis’s sister was born four years later.”
“So God took one child away and replaced him with another?”
Barbara’s eyes crinkled into a smile as she folded and unfolded the paper napkin. “I don’t believe so. Tommy was never mine to begin with, Erin. We’re given children to love forever. We’re entrusted with their care. One child, one person, can never be replaced by another.”
When she raised her eyes, Erin was surprised to see no tears there. Would she ever learn to lean on God that way? She’d only this morning learned to stop blocking him out.
“So tell me about your ARK.”
The smile again spread across Erin’s face of its own accord. She accepted the change of subject as a gift.
“When I think about it, my love for animals began with Jules. He’d take me with him into the barn, mostly to get me out of Nina’s hair. When I’d find some little bird or rabbit, he’
d help me to sneak it back into my room.”
“Jules and Nina were lovely people,” Barbara said as she retrieved more bread. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened. When they passed, we were all shocked. I remember coming by to see you. I don’t suppose you even recall that. You looked as if you’d been carried away in the same ambulance.”
Erin looked up in surprise, studied Barbara, then shook her head. “You’re right. I don’t remember anything from those weeks. I’d barely started the ARK, and I was so glad to be back in Livingston. School wasn’t… it wasn’t a good fit for me. Being home and with the animals was what I was supposed to do. I thought we had years left to spend together.”
Barbara nodded. “And Jules and Nina were so healthy.”
“Yes.” Erin bit her lip, more to stop the words than for fear she might cry.
“When you try to bottle up what’s circling round in your mind, it pecks away at your insides.”
Erin’s head jerked up. Again the smile spread across her face. It felt tight and unnatural like new skin over a fresh wound.
“I’ve been angry at God for so long,” Erin admitted. “Angry about Nina and Jules. Angry about… things that happened even before their accident. Then this morning, something happened. It all seemed to drain out of me onto your guest room floor. I realize that sounds crazy.”
She glanced up at Barbara nervously, suddenly remembering this woman was her caseworker’s mother.
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all. God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes he takes our anger and robs us of it when we least expect it. I remember feeling like I was trying to walk one legged without my crutch after Granny shamed me out of bed.”
Erin felt her head nodding. “Without the anger, I don’t understand how I feel. It’s as if this thing has lived curled inside of me for so long, and now it’s suddenly missing.”
Erin stopped, sipped her tea, and tried to put her thoughts into some coherent order.
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