by Dana Mentink
When Rhett stepped inside, Paulo’s face hardened. There is no forgiveness here, Stephanie thought with a cold surge of dread. He ignored the hand Rhett offered.
“As I said, I did not come for you.”
Bethany began to gather the dishes. Stephanie secured Sweetness to a kitchen chair and hurried to help.
Rhett cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming. I want to say that what I did to you eight years ago was wrong.” The words were clear and firm, crafted over a long period of grief and regret.
Paulo’s eyes flashed. “Yes, it was wrong. I loved Karen. You despised me because I was poor and from another country. You never got to know me, and yet you did your best to ruin me.”
Rhett winced. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m trying to be a better man.”
Paulo cocked his head slightly, examining Rhett. “I hope that’s true. You come from humble beginnings too. It was sheer hypocrisy to condemn me for that.”
Rhett nodded, head bowed. “Would you like to see Karen?” he asked finally.
“Yes.”
Rhett gestured him outside. Emotion flickered across Paulo’s face as he stepped across the threshold and caught sight of his long-ago love. Stephanie could not resist a peek through the glass doors. She saw Karen smile when Paulo kissed her on the cheek. Rhett remained for a few minutes before he came back into the house and closed the sliding door, leaving them to talk.
Rhett’s skin was pale, his mouth drawn and lines showing on his forehead. “I told him to tell her everything and anything.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I am not sure how she will take it, being reminded what I did to them, but that’s not important.”
Bethany chewed her lip. “What is important, Rhett? What do you hope to get out of this?”
He didn’t answer.
“He wants them to fall back in love again.” Stephanie said. “To pick up where they left off.”
“Why not?” he said, chin lifted. “God sent me on this path. Karen’s life is restarting and so is mine. Why shouldn’t she rediscover the love she had with Paulo if that’s what God wants?”
What God wants or what you want? Seeing the fear in his eyes, Stephanie wanted to reassure him, to tell him there was every likelihood that the two would rekindle their love. But how much had changed for Paulo in these last eight years? How much had changed for Stephanie in just one day with Spencer? Would she be able to restart a relationship with him? No, but not because he’d changed, she realized. Because she had.
Stephanie Pink was not the wattleseed coffee-chasing girl anymore. She’d learned a lot about herself, particularly in the last few hundred miles. It startled her to think that maybe God had a plan for her through this journey that didn’t have anything to do with that manuscript. How odd. How strange. The thought of God intervening in her life scared her. He was still not welcome in the escapades of Stephanie Pink. She shoved those thoughts away.
Rhett paced the living room, every few orbits checking on Panny nestled in a towel. Stephanie helped Bethany wash and dry the dishes, and they perked some coffee to sip, huddled in the kitchen so as not to interrupt the reunion or the pacing.
When the sliding door announced Paulo’s entry into the house again, Stephanie nearly spilled her coffee.
Paulo stuck his head in the kitchen, his demeanor sad, she thought. “Thank you for having me,” he said to Bethany. “It was good to see her again. Nice to meet you, Stephanie.” And then he strolled out.
“Wait!” she wanted to yell. “What happened? Where do things stand?” In a moment, Sweetness pulled loose and dashed after him. Stephanie followed, snagging the leash.
Rhett was face-to-face with Paulo. “You’re leaving? When will you come back?”
“We have exchanged numbers. We will keep in touch.”
“That’s it? That’s all? Just keep in touch?” Rhett demanded.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “Did you expect we would fall into each other’s arms?” He laughed, a hard, bitter sound. “That’s exactly what you thought, wasn’t it? So naive for such an accomplished man.”
Rhett’s cheeks darkened. “So is this to punish me? You’re rejecting Karen because you want to get back at me for what I did?”
Paulo sighed. “Your ego astounds me. Karen only has vague memories of our time together. She feels no strong connection to me, nor I to her. I have moved on. She will too. Maybe it’s time you did also, Rhett.” Paulo walked past him.
Rhett seized his arm. “I can help her remember. I can help you two financially.”
Stephanie wanted to groan. Oh, Rhett.
Paulo’s face went cold. “I do not want anything from you. You say you are trying to be a better man. This…” He shook his head in disgust. “This is not the actions of a man doing that.”
Paulo left. Rhett stood staring out the front door. Stephanie had never felt so helpless as she did in that moment. How could she comfort Rhett? What was the way to ease the pain as he came nose to nose with his own failure?
“Rhett,” she started.
He did not turn. Instead, he walked out the door and disappeared down the sidewalk.
Rhett walked the neighborhood for several hours, along streets he did not know, past homes and shops he did not see. He felt alternately numb and grief stricken. Emotions clattered through him like a rusted can kicked along the gutter.
Rhett Hastings was smart, a fiscal genius, and yet his own actions seemed ludicrous and incomprehensible to him now. Had he really thought he could engineer the situation so Karen and Paulo would love each other again? Had he actually offered money to speed the deal along? The disgust in Paulo’s eyes burned into Rhett, and at that moment Rhett knew that the man he had despised was his better. He’d been stupid, callous, and ridiculous.
But his plans? God’s plans for him? Hadn’t he been following along obediently?
“Where were You, God?” he muttered savagely, his hands balled in his pockets. “I thought this was what You wanted too.” Had he been wrong about hearing God’s voice? Walking away from his business? Everything? What had he done? Panic welled up inside him until he was walking so fast he was nearly running. It wasn’t too late. He could get Karen settled, go back to his company, and pick up right where he left off.
He stopped at the corner, breathing hard. In his memory there was Karen, sitting in the sunlight, smiling at him, loving him the way he’d craved for so long. The very thing he’d wanted with all his heart and soul. God had given that back to him, hadn’t He?
But maybe that was gone now too if Paulo had told her everything. Rhett was the brother she once again adored because she couldn’t remember how he’d hurt her until Paulo came back into the picture. Paulo told her what Rhett should have said months before. He could add coward to his list of failings. How he wished he could get into his plane and fly away from his self-made disaster. His gut swirling in a wrenching tide of uncertainty, he found himself running, sprinting along the dark streets until he reached Bethany’s house again.
Everything was still except for his own quickened breath. A dim light shone in the living room, and he found Karen tucked into a chair, rocking Panny as if she was a furry infant. “Stephanie showed me where the food was,” she said. “We got her to eat two teaspoonfuls. Sweetness supervised until he fell asleep.”
Rhett now caught sight of the big boy, lying next to Karen’s chair, his legs twitching as he chased a squirrel in his dreams, the furry prize always slightly out of reach.
He sat in a chair across from her, his heart thumping. “How…how was your visit from Paulo?”
“Very nice. He remembers things much better than I do. He said we were good friends.”
His heart nearly broke as he looked into her gentle blue eyes, so like his own. Anguish over the past filled him, sins that could not be undone, damage beyond repair. He couldn’t go back and straighten out that wrecked past, but a tiny spark of hope still stubbornly clung to life inside him. Could there still be something good along the path that
lay ahead? Did he really trust that God had a future for Rhett Hastings in spite of his disastrous choices?
He forced the words out of a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. “Karen, you were more than friends with Paulo. You loved each other. You were going to be married. I didn’t think he was good enough for you, so I pulled strings and got him deported.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Paulo didn’t tell me that.”
“He didn’t?” Rhett cleared his throat. “That’s because he is a man of integrity, which is more than I can say for myself. He didn’t want to tell you about the terrible thing I did because he didn’t want to cause you pain.”
“I’m sure you couldn’t do something like that, Rhett.”
Somehow he got his mouth to set the words in motion. “Yes. I could and I did. You haven’t spoken to me for eight years because I hurt you so bad. You said you had no brother anymore.” His throat closed up. “Karen, the head injury made you forget what a terrible brother I’ve been. I’m sorry. I’d give anything to undo the damage. I thought by bringing Paulo here…”
He felt tears on his cheeks. Tears. He hadn’t cried since the day his mother left.
A long moment stretched between them. He could tell she was putting little bits of memory together in her mind and weighing them along with his revelation. For a moment her expression fell, and he knew she remembered enough to believe his confession.
Rhett could hardly force himself to look at her, to watch the hurt emerge again like a stubborn vine that kept springing to life after being cut away.
Oh, God, his heart cried out.
“All this…” she spread her fingers. “This plan, this arrangement to meet Paulo. It was your way of seeking atonement.”
He couldn’t answer.
After a moment more, she pursed her lips, reached across the dog, and took his hands in hers. He clutched her fingers.
“You didn’t have to tell me the truth just now,” she murmured.
“Yes, I did.”
She lifted his hands to her mouth and kissed him lightly on the knuckles. “Then you’re not a terrible brother anymore, are you?”
She forgave him. She saw past the sin to his boundless love for her. The forgiveness was so achingly sweet it got right inside him and filled up the places left dark for too long. He let himself cry then, and she sat with him, patting his hands and saying soothing nothings as if he was a broken-down dog left in the mud, alone and unloved. Panny reached out a tongue to lick the salty tears that fell on her thin coat.
Rhett and Karen sat for a long while together, talking some, but mostly not. When he got some control of himself, he wiped his face.
She handed him Panny and reached for her cane. “When will we leave in the morning?”
“Leave?”
“For the orchard.”
The orchard. His plan had gone so completely awry, he’d thought it was all over. His plan for a reunion had fallen to splinters, but there was still the apple orchard and the spark of light that danced across Karen’s face when she spoke of it. The orchard where they had spent many happy hours. A place where she could be happy in a new sort of future.
“We’ll leave at ten, okay?” he managed.
He helped her stand.
Grasping her cane, she gave him a thumbs-up. “All right, big brother. I’ll be ready.”
Sixteen
Stephanie helped Bethany prepare breakfast. Rhett did not join them.
“Prepping the trailer,” he said as he breezed through the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
She suspected he did not want to talk about the aborted reunion. She would never tell him that she’d made her way into the house to check on Panny and seen him there, sitting at his sister’s side, tears flowing. Executing a quick about-face, she had returned to the trailer without being noticed.
She pondered over what she’d witnessed. Rhett had obviously told Karen the truth because Paulo had not. Paulo might not be back in Karen’s life, but something had definitely happened between brother and sister, a reunion that was exactly what Rhett needed.
That could only be a God thing. Even Stephanie could not deny it. All right, God, she said silently. I’ll give You that one.
She helped Karen pack a small bag, complete with several fashion magazines crammed in. Even with Sweetness in the trailer, it was cramped with three adults in the pickup, so Stephanie welcomed their occasional breaks. At every stop on the journey, she sneaked back into the trailer, trying to get her mind back to business. She intended to stalk the Jackson Agency’s website, Twitter feed, and Instagram pages for any indication that they’d made contact with Agnes Wharton. Of course, they would play that close to the vest, but she knew their selfie-crazed top agent, Laura Burns, couldn’t resist posting photos of herself wherever she might be, secrecy or not. One picture from Eagle Cliff, Washington, and Stephanie would know they’d stolen her author.
During their second stop, Sweetness seemed unhappy to be confined to the trailer in spite of the quick walk they’d enjoyed, but she didn’t dare trust him out of her sight. He hid under the sofa, whining and sniffing, gumming his spatula, and emerging only to check on Panny.
“It’s okay, Sweetness. We’re on our way back to your mama. One more stop, and then it’s home to Agnes.”
It was a stop where they would part ways forever. Rhett had promised he would drive her to Agnes, but she could not ask him to leave Karen. She’d get a taxi or hire a driver. Then it would be a matter of miles. Sweetness delivered. Manuscript acquired. Stephanie on her way back to New York. She should be on fire for the last leg of the journey, but instead, she found herself oddly melancholy. To leave this old rusty trailer? The company of two misfit dogs? Or one flawed man who was trying so hard to become a better one?
She’d never met anyone like Rhett. So simultaneously strong and vulnerable. So arrogant and uniquely humble at the same time, a man who was bent on living out the words in his Bible, determined to climb out from beneath the shadow of his sins.
But God can use a bad man for good, can’t He? He has plans to prosper us, all of us, saints, sinners, and everyone in between. She wondered if he still believed that after his plan with Paulo had fallen apart. But then she recalled the love shining on Karen’s face in the lamplight. Rhett had his sister back, though not in the way he’d thought.
“Saints, sinners, and everyone in between,” she said softly. “Imagine that.” Thoughts of Rhett continued to whirl around in her mind until she set them firmly aside. She spent an hour surfing the Internet with no indication that Jackson’s agents had made any inroads with Agnes Wharton.
Several hours later, while Rhett and Karen went in search of cold drinks at a tiny grocery store, Stephanie’s phone rang. With fumbling fingers, she answered.
“This woman,” Mr. Klein said without preamble. “She has called here a number of times. I gather it has something to do with your…traveling companion.”
“My what? Who’s been calling?”
“An Evonne somebody or other. Her diction is atrocious. Here is the number.” He rattled it off and hung up.
She mulled it over. Evonne was not the “take no for an answer” type. If she didn’t return her call, the woman would continue to hound Mr. Klein, who was already at the end of his patience with Stephanie. Best to face it, stonewall if necessary, and hang up quickly.
She dialed. “Hello, Evonne,” she said brightly, “this is Stephanie Pink. We met in Big Thumb.”
The bad connection crackled between them.
“So you finally decided to return my call,” Evonne said in triumph. “You’re…” More crackling. “Found you on your company website.”
Stephanie was beginning to think having her name and photo plastered on a website could be a double-edged sword. “How nice. What can I do for you?”
The woman replied with something she did not catch but was most certainly not friendly small talk.
“I didn’t quite hear that.”
&nb
sp; “…not going to brush me off!” Evonne snapped. Stephanie thought Mr. Klein was in error. Evonne’s diction was in top form just now.
Stephanie held the phone away from her ear. “I’m not trying to brush you off. Mr. Hastings has a right to his privacy.”
“He’s a criminal.” Intense static.
“What?” Stephanie’s spine stiffened. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know enough.”
Stephanie shot to her feet and began pacing. “Wise up, Evonne. You write for a newspaper, so you should know that what you read in print and online is not always the truth.” Stephanie knew firsthand the power of a well-twisted word. She’d helped many a mid-list author add bows and frills to their bios.
“He’s a dirty, rotten…”
Stephanie’s blood was past the simmering point. “You’ve got no right to talk about him like that.”
“I most certainly do.” More crackling static.
“You listen to me, Evonne. Sure, Rhett Hastings is a ruthless businessman, and yes, a food snob. I mean, who doesn’t eat white bread? And no, he doesn’t say the kind and sensitive thing when he should, which I’ve explained makes him a blubber head, but you know what?”
“…if you’d just shut up and listen,” Evonne said.
“No, you listen,” Stephanie thundered in such a loud voice that Panny’s head periscoped up from the blanket and Sweetness barked. “He’s done a lot of bad things in his life, but he’s honest about them, and he’s trying to make himself better, and God is going to help him do that, which is more than I can say for most people. And besides, that darling man is nursing a dying dog back to health, and that’s something they never print in the paper, now do they, Evonne?” Her voice rose to a deafening crescendo. “Now do they?”
Over her panting, she realized two things simultaneously. Her phone connection had been severed and she was shouting at no one, and Rhett stood in the doorway, his mouth open, eyes wide.
Stephanie knew her face was red. She scrolled in her mind through the tirade he’d just overheard and fixed on two words: “Darling man.” Her mortification was complete.
