Mountains of Grace

by Kelly Irvin

  “How is that possible?”

  “A shift in the wind? Fire is capricious and irrational.” Emmett leaned against his truck and rubbed stubble the color of copper pennies on his cheeks. “In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a fire run like the one yesterday.”

  The lean-to stood out like a lantern on a dark night. It served as a sure sign that life would go on.

  “When can we start rebuilding?”

  “The threat isn’t over. The fire is only partially contained.”

  “Is it safe for us to be here?”

  “For the moment.” Emmett held up his phone. “The IC will call me if it makes a turn in this direction, but we shouldn’t linger too long.”

  Caleb turned to look for Jonah. The older man had removed his straw hat. He squatted next to the pile of debris that had been his home. His fingers touched the ashes. Caleb straightened. “Should I tell Jonah?”

  “Jonah and I’ve known each other a while.” Emmet straightened his hat. “Let me.”

  The sheriff was a kind man. Caleb squatted and touched the ashes at his feet. Cold. Gott, Thy will be done. Your will, not mine. Give us strength and stamina for the road ahead. Give us the peace that passes understanding.

  He rose as Jonah and the sheriff approached. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jonah.”

  “No need.” Jonah returned the hat to his iron-gray hair and dusted his hands on his pants. “Did you see the lean-to is still there?”

  “I did. Amazing.”

  “A miracle.” Jonah pulled the SUV’s door open. “Let’s go see what we can salvage at your place.”

  Not much, as it turned out. When they drove up, Ian stood, legs spread, arms crossed, staring at a pile of debris much like the one at Jonah’s, only smaller.

  His throat tight, eyes burning, Caleb took his time approaching the man who’d been his cabin mate for almost two years. At his footsteps Ian turned. Caleb waved his hand at the remains. “Not much to salvage.”

  “Nothing.” The two syllables held no hint of emotion. Ian removed his straw hat and flapped it in front of his face. “The other cabins are gone too.”

  “Much work to be done then.”

  “It’s so hot.” Ian settled the hat back on his sweaty hair. “I’m tired of summer. It’s time for autumn.”

  Caleb searched for words of comfort for a man who reserved words as if they were as scarce as water in the desert. “Autumn will be here any day. Morris will want to rebuild, I reckon.” Morris Tanner owned the cabins and rented them out for income. “Cool weather will be gut for rebuilding. We’ll want to get at least the walls and roof up before winter comes.”

  “I’m thinking of going home.” Ian’s gray eyes filled with unshed tears. He wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. “I can stay long enough to help rebuild, if you need me to.”

  “You’ll go back to Kansas then?”

  “I missed Haven even before this.” His hand swept out toward the cooling metal twisted into strange shapes like a fancy sculptor might make. “This seems like Gott’s way of pushing me that direction.”

  “What about Leesa?” Ian hadn’t said much, but Caleb had gathered from the giggling conversations between Mercy and her sister that Ian and Leesa were courting. “Will you ask her to go with you?”

  “Jah, if she’ll have me.”

  “Gut for you.” He searched for the right words. “Don’t worry about helping us. Go on.”

  “You’ll settle down and take a fraa. You won’t be living in a cabin much longer anyway.”

  From Ian’s lips to God’s ears. Caleb’s longing encapsulated in one sentence, thrown out for the world to hear by a man determined to drift away. Caleb’s throat tightened. He took a breath. “Are you sure you want to go home?”

  “My daed will be happy to have me back on the farm.” Ian took two steps back from the cabin remains. “These mountains are beautiful, but they can be brutal. Farming is simple and straightforward. Kansas is flat and easy.”

  He removed his hat and flourished it in a strangely formal bow. “I’ll leave all this to you.” He slapped the hat back on his head. “The Planks, the Schwartzes, and the Borntragers still have their houses.”

  “Praise Gott.” The conversation was over. Ian had made his decision. While he withdrew, Caleb would move forward. “We’re headed to the school next.”

  “I’ll help.”

  They joined Emmett, Tim, Jonah, and the others in a small, sedate parade—it brought funeral processions to mind—past other Plain properties where sheds and outbuildings had burned, but no other houses. The English families hadn’t fared as well. Jonah leaned forward and pointed past Caleb. “The Drakes lost their place.”

  “I feel for Mike and DeeDee. They were fixing to be empty nesters in a few years. Their three kids grew up in that house.” His gaze straight ahead, Emmett drummed his thumbs on the wheel. “I know your young’uns will be torn up too, Jonah.”

  “Job will take it hard. We never did find those rabbits of his.” Jonah managed a terse smile. “He’ll have the chance to see the forest return. The wildlife will come back. By Gott’s grace, no one was hurt. Life will go on, better than before.”

  A true statement by a strong believer. Caleb studied the road ahead. He longed to be the stoic, stalwart believer that Jonah was. His own father and his uncle had died in a freak accident when Caleb was still in school. The community rallied around them. He and his siblings never wanted for anything.

  His mother never remarried. She worked hard and had no time for affection. A house did not a home make. A hole always remained where his father’s love had once been.

  The loss of the cabin must have stirred up those memories. It had been a long time since the images assailed him. The procession to the graveyard. The two gaping holes in the ground. His mother’s stoic face.

  The empty chair at the table.

  No more silly jokes. No more claps on the back. No more instructions on how to do the things a man must know how to do.

  Gott, help me.

  As a child he’d prayed those three words hundreds of times. Lying in his narrow bunk in a room shared with his brother. Ashamed of the silent tears shed into the pillow.

  Eventually, he became accustomed to the cool quiet that seeped into the cracks and crevices of their once warm, joyful home. To the way his mother never quite looked at him when she talked. She was busy, dishwater up to her elbows or hanging clothes on the line or digging up potatoes in the garden or rushing to take pies to the church dinner.

  A boy couldn’t complain because his mother worked hard.

  Not a Plain boy, certainly.

  Emmett pulled into the open field where the log cabin school stood amid the ashes. The outhouses were gone, but not a stick of the brown rectangular building had been marred.

  “Praise Gott.” Jonah pushed the door open. “He is gut.”

  Caleb followed. How would Mercy feel when she found out their family home was gone but the school remained? Should a person read a message or a sign into this? That she should continue her work with the scholars?

  His pea-sized brain hurt. He’d never been good at schoolwork. He loved to lose himself in books, reading for hours on end, but the monotony of schoolwork had sent him into a world of daydreaming that irritated his teacher to no end. To spend time in a classroom after the allotted number of years would be downright torturous.

  Mercy would beg to differ.

  He hustled into the building. Smoke damage, but flames had touched nothing. Add some paint and it would be good as new. He went to Mercy’s scarred oak desk first. Her lunch box still sat on one corner. The image of her startled white face the day before filled his mind. How quickly she’d recovered. Such presence of mind. Such concern for her charges. No matter how scared she was on the inside, on the outside she remained cool and collected. He respected her. How did a Plain man say that to a Plain woman?

  “I’ll help.” Ian approached and grabbed the other end. �
��You want to go backward or forward?”

  Puffing, they hoisted the desk into the back of Emmett’s truck. Ian wiped his red face with a bandana and stuck it in the pocket made by the button flaps of his flat broad pants.

  “Mercy will be happy to have her desks and her books.” He brushed past Caleb. “Maybe she’ll appreciate your bringing them to Eureka enough to offer you a piece of her huckleberry pie.”

  “She’s not a great cook, truth be told.”

  “Leesa’s piecrust is tender, and so is her pot roast.”

  Not so with Mercy’s, but a lifetime with the woman he loved would be worth all the tough piecrust in the world. Caleb stared at the mangled metal that had been a swing set. Life was short. Nothing mattered more than spending it with the people a man loved.

  Time to rebuild. Houses with lots of room for little ones to sleep. Swing sets for when they played outdoors.

  And the room where husband and wife snuggled in the dark and spoke words of love. Caleb would not give up on that dream.

  Or on Mercy.

  * * *

  The half-muffled sobs of a grown man would pierce hearts made of the heaviest stone. Tim swallowed against tears that threatened to escape. He gritted his teeth and waited. Head bowed, Lyle Knowles stood at the edge of his family home’s ruins. Lyle lifted his purple Colorado Rockies baseball cap and settled it on wild silver-streaked blond curls. He turned and trudged through thick ashes into the greenhouse only a few yards from the pile of debris. It stood as sun filled and bright as ever.

  “Tim, come here.” Lyle’s voice, hoarse with emotion, floated from the interior of the aluminum frame and polycarbonate shelter that held everything from fragrant herbs to pansies and Boston ferns to cucumbers and green peppers. “You have to see this.”

  Dodging the remnants of trees, an old truck, and a riding mower, Tim sloughed into the nursery. Lyle held out a perfectly round, perfectly red tomato. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Tim accepted his offering. The tomato’s silky skin felt warm.

  “Do you like tomatoes?” Lyle tugged another from the plant that sprawled over a wire cage intended to keep it up off the soil in the plant bed around it. “I love fresh tomatoes. I wish I had some salt and pepper. Go on, eat it.”

  “Thanks. There’s nothing better than a fresh tomato.” Tim took a big bite like he was eating an apple. Juice and seeds ran down his chin. He laughed and slurped them up. “Hmmm, so good.”

  Busy with his own tomato, Lyle didn’t answer. He walked farther down the aisle and stopped by smaller pots of basil, oregano, and thyme. He leaned down and inhaled. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “That it survived. Yeah.” Tim inhaled the warm scents of earth, peat moss, decaying leaves, and herbs. “It’s amazing, too, that come spring we’ll see all kinds of green sprouting where there’s only black, burnt remains now.”

  Lyle wiped his hands on his pants. He sighed. “I loved that house.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll rebuild.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “I’ll borrow my brother’s RV in the meantime. Casey and the girls can stay in town, but I need to be out here.”

  “As soon as they give the all-clear.”

  Lyle clapped Tim on the back. “Thanks.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You put up with my oldest daughter.” Lyle snorted and headed for the door. “Only the Lord knows why.”

  Tim followed him out to the truck. “About that.”

  Lyle tugged his door open and then paused, his gaze on the pile of debris that had once been his home. “Son, I’m not trying to get in your business. I know she’s a handful. Always has been.”

  Now. He wanted to discuss this now. Maybe it made sense. The home where Juliette grew up lay in ruin. They couldn’t go back. The only way left was forward.

  Tim waited until the other man climbed into the cab and did the same on his side. “Truth is, sir, I’m stuck.”

  “Don’t sir me. I told you, call me Lyle.”

  “I’m stuck. I thought maybe you could give me some insight into why she’s the way she is.”

  “And how is that?”

  His grimace said it all. Tread softly. Juliette was the man’s daughter. Lyle could say whatever he wanted about her. Let someone else bad-mouth her and that was a bear of a different breed. “Why do you think she stopped going to church?”

  “Good question.” Lyle sank against the leather seat. “She was never an easy one to figure. Juliette always chafed at being told what to do. But it got worse in high school. From one day to the next. Seriously, she came home from a trip to the lake with her youth group. She basically dug in her heels and refused to go back. No matter what we said or did, she flat-out refused. She said we could ground her for life and it wouldn’t matter. I always wondered if something happened or if it was just female hormones in a dither.”

  No way discussing female hormones with Juliette’s dad sounded like a good idea. Tim punched the starter and the truck roared to life. He circled around until the decimated property appeared in his rearview mirror. “She doesn’t talk about her issues with church or religion unless I push hard. Then she gets really defensive.”

  “I’ve tried. Her mom has tried.” Lyle sounded weary and sad. “Casey has a book on praying for your adult children. We did a lot of that when she was in high school and then when she left for college. We’ll keep praying. Our pastor says to take it to the Lord and let Him do the work.”

  “I try to do that. Every time I think I took it to the altar and left it at His feet, I discover I’ve picked it up and started carrying it around again.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “I try.”

  Lyle pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned his head back on the headrest. “Do me a favor.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “She’s worth the effort. Don’t give up on her.”

  “I won’t.”

  A few seconds later Lyle’s snores rattled the windows and kept Tim wide awake for the rest of the drive.

  That and the thoughts that fenced in his head. Don’t give up. Pray. You’re gonna get your heart broken. She’s worth it. She’ll never change. God’s will. Broken heart. Worth it.

  What he wouldn’t give for a decent radio station in this neck of the woods.

  13

  Eureka, Montana

  Uh-oh. This didn’t look good. Juliette widened her smile. No dice. His expression somber, Tim threaded his way through the square wooden tables at the Front Porch Grill House. His boots clomped on the varnished wood floor. Usually the scent of hamburgers on the grill and french fries made him grin. Not today. He had all the trappings of a man on a mission. He also filled out his tan uniform quite nicely.

  Stop that.

  She picked up her menu, then laid it down. She always had the peanut curry salad. The Grill had the best burgers in town. Maybe she should get a vegan burger on a gluten-free bun. Her stomach might appreciate it, but her taste buds would scream bloody murder. If she were a betting woman, she’d bet on Tim having the cowboy burger. Why a man would put barbecue sauce on a perfectly good burger was beyond her. Thinking about food didn’t help. In fact, it only made the pain that lived in her gut worse.

  It was now or never. She’d always been able to move mountains with a toss of her long blonde hair. Not this mountain. He would never go for it. Changing jobs. Following her to Billings. The call offering her a job came at nine o’clock, also known as the crack of dawn in Juliette’s book.

  After fleeing her childhood home with her entire family and a few possessions the day before, the call had been anticlimactic. She’d had to think about who the headhunter was. When the painfully cheerful words penetrated the fog, she hopped from bed and did a Snoopy dance. She needed gainful employment badly. Tim had a job, but he was in law enforcement. Surely he could work in law enforcement or security in Montana’s largest city.

  But wou
ld he want to?

  The billion-dollar question.

  Tim towered over her. His swoop-down kiss on her forehead came and went so fast she had no chance to turn her face and try to catch his lips on hers.

  “Why so grim?” She caught his hand and tugged. “A decent kiss isn’t too much to ask.”

  “You know better.” His tanned face now red, Tim settled his cowboy hat on an empty chair, grabbed a menu, and eased into the chair next to her. At least he hadn’t sat across from her like he usually did, keeping safe real estate between them. “Have you talked to your dad?”

  “No small talk. No how are you.” She reached up and smoothed his mussed hat hair. Someday there would be no hair to muss, but that didn’t keep him from being a handsome man. “No I’ve missed you.”

  “Juliette, I’m serious.” He wore his sheriff’s deputy air, but his deep-blue eyes were filled with warm empathy and something that seemed like dread. “Have you talked to him?”

  “He called a couple of times, but I didn’t pick up.”

  Tim met her gaze head-on. “You should probably go to your aunt’s.”

  “So he can pick at me about what I’m doing and where I’m going and my life in general? Not until I have a burger with my guy. Or a salad, as the case may be. I ran five miles this morning and worked out with my cousin’s equipment. I feel good. I don’t want to blow it—”

  “We went out to Kootenai this morning. That’s why I had to push back lunch to an early supper.”

  Juliette’s throat began to ache. Her heart hammered in her chest. Salad no longer sounded appetizing. “And?”

  “It’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  “Everything?” The words seeped out in a high-pitched squeak she didn’t recognize as her own. “All of it?”

  “Except for the greenhouse.”

  The greenhouse she’d spent so much time watering with a hose. “Maybe I should’ve watered the house more and the greenhouse less.” Saving stupid plants, when everything her parents owned went up in smoke. The table and chairs where they played Monopoly and dominoes and cards on cold winter days. The pool table where she learned to beat her father at his own game. Mom’s library of what she called “clean” romances. Grandpa Knowles’s grandfather clock that reminded them it was time to catch the school bus.