Healing Tides
Page 20
“Then Dr. Jared will be my daddy,” he whooped and took off racing across the room to spread the good news.
“We could adopt him, Glory.” Jared took her hand, led her outside, down to the beach. “After we’re married we could adopt him as our son.”
“I’d like that.”
They sealed the deal with a kiss.
“You seem pensive. Is anything wrong?”
“Well, there is something that’s been bothering me.”
“Tell me,” he encouraged, wrapping his arm around her waist as they watched darkness fall.
“I was thinking about our wedding.”
“I’ve never been to the Arctic. Will you show me the sights?”
“What about the children? They should be present. They are a part of us. How can I choose between here and there?”
“Why do you have to?” He touched her nose, traced her lips. “We’ll have two weddings. One here, one there.”
“Two? But that’s hardly usual.”
Jared burst out laughing. “My darling Glory, there is nothing usual about us. We’re hardly typical. Arctic and tropical.”
“I like husband and wife better,” she told him.
“Me, too.”
Epilogue
The wedding of Drs. Jared Steele and GloryAnn Cranbrook took place in Tiska at the end of June, when the sun forgot to go to sleep and the cold white world withdrew to make room for new life.
The bride wore a traditional Inuit wedding costume. So did her friends and the little boy who preceded the wedding party down the aisle. Chuckles erupted when Bennie explained exactly how Arctic wildflowers should be scattered.
Pono gave the bride away while Kahlia tended Bennie. Harmon and Elizabeth ensured all the guests enjoyed a sumptuous buffet.
A second wedding took place a week later, at Agapé’s beach. The bride wore a plain white silk dress that grazed her bare toes. The groom sported a colorful Hawaiian shirt identical to Bennie’s. Glory chose Elizabeth and Leilani as attendants. Bennie stood by Jared.
The entire hospital was invited to a traditional luau feast.
It was after dark, while the music still whispered on the wind and the children were coaxed to their beds, that Jared and Glory finally left the party. They were in their car ready to drive away when Elizabeth appeared.
“I have a gift for you.”
“Elizabeth, you’ve already given us so much. We can’t accept anything more.”
“It’s not from me,” she explained. “You’ll have to come with me to see it.”
So they followed her to Sister Phil’s cottage. A painting sat on the sofa.
“She did it herself. She made me promise that when you got married, I’d give it to you.”
“She knew?” Glory traced the top half of the painting, her fingertips grazing over silvery white mounds of snow bowing to the midnight-blue of an Arctic night.
“She knew.” Jared smiled at the bottom scene of a beach, “their” beach, peeking through the fronds of a palm tree while whitecaps rippled over the sea beyond.
“There’s a note,” Elizabeth explained. She held out a sheet of paper on which a faint spidery hand had written.
God created individuals with special abilities not to further their own plans, but to make His plan complete. When you can’t hear His voice, trust His heart.
They turned to thank her but Elizabeth had left them alone.
“We’ll build our home around it,” Glory whispered as she leaned her head against his shoulder and remembered the wonderful woman who’d started the legacy they would now continue.
“God and His will,” Jared agreed. “What could be better?”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1298-9
HEALING TIDES
Copyright © 2008 by Lois M. Richer
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