Brandon stirred the fire. “Okay, you’re persuasive, Professor, but I still think Reece is trying to play in the two-hundredth dimension, and something about ‘people died’ doesn’t make my stomach feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“If we thrust aside our emotional reactions to Reece’s statements, we can easily conclude he is not insane. We also know he loves God with tremendous passion. Consequently, for the moment, I think our choice must be to trust him. More crucial is we trust God. Stay with this.”
“But keep our eyes open,” Dana said.
Brandon stood and nodded. “Wide open.”
When they reached the cabin five minutes later, Brandon stopped just inside the sliding glass door and watched Reece shove a stack of papers into his black leather satchel.
“You’re not residing in the main cabin with us tonight?” Marcus said.
“No. That will give the three of you a chance to talk about me without the chance of my overhearing your conversation.” Reece stared at them. “Don’t look surprised. Of course you’re going to debrief on the lunatic who brought you up here and the insane ideas he’s trying to push on you.”
The three let out stifled laughs.
“We just had that conversation,” Dana said. “We don’t think you’re insane anymore. Possibly delusional, but Marcus has persuaded us to keep our minds open.”
“Good to hear.” Reece tipped his hat and strode to the front door.
“Where are you going to sack out?” Brandon said. “Since you don’t have to work in the morning, are you going to crawl off to sleep in the bath?”
“John Lennon, 1965. Side one, second song on Rubber Soul.”
“I’m impressed!” Brandon laughed. “That would go over most people’s heads.”
“Went over mine,” Dana said.
“You have to remember, Brandon, I’m slightly older than you three. I was alive when ‘Norwegian Wood’ came out.” Reece stepped through the front door. “If you do need me for any reason, I’ll be sleeping in one of the seven cabins. In the one called Piñon Bothy, named courtesy of Doug Lundeen.”
“What is the origin of the name?” Marcus asked.
A hint of a smile surfaced on Reece’s face, then vanished an instant later. “Piñon is the name of the small pine trees dotting this area. They give shelter, food in the form of pine nuts, and they grow strong in difficult environments. They also make great firewood. The tantalizing aroma you’ve smelled during our fire comes from the piñon.
“Bothys are small cottages in Scotland you would find along the shores of the ocean and in the mountains. If a traveler found one and needed shelter, they were welcome. They were left unlocked and full of provisions.”
Reece opened the door and turned to go. “Don’t stay up too late. And if you don’t sleep well tonight, don’t worry—tomorrow night you most assuredly will.”
NINETEEN
DANA WENT OUTSIDE TO THE FIREPLACE ON THE NORTH side of the cabin to start a fire and mull over the things Reece had said. Sixminutes later the fire crackled like popcorn, and she slipped off her shoes and held up her blue stockinged feet to let the flames make them toasty warm.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Marcus stood in the doorway.
“Not a bit.” She motioned to the chairs on her right. “I’d enjoy it.”
Marcus settled into a tan wicker chair.
Dana adjusted her sweatshirt. “What’s the toughest thing about being here for you?”
“Being absent from my wife and daughters. Fighting the feeling I should be with them right now instead of here.” A shadow flitted over the professor’s ruddy complexion.
He wasn’t attractive in the classic sense. His ears were a bit too big for his face, his head a bit too small for his body, but his countenance was full of trust. And that was attractive. He would have been a wonderful older brother.
“Their names?”
“Kat is my wife, Abbie is my older daughter, and Jayla is the younger.” Marcus pulled a photo out of his back pocket and stared at the picture for at least ten seconds before handing it to her. Kat had auburn hair and a radiant smile, as did the girls. She guessed his daughters’ ages at ten and twelve.
“They’re beautiful.” She handed the photo back to him. “You’re the only testosterone in the house, huh?”
“That wasn’t always the situation.” Marcus sighed, grabbed a piece of wood, tossed it into the fire, and stared at the flames. “But it is now.”
Whoops. Everyone had their hidden sorrows. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—”
“Don’t be. What indication have I given you that you might know?” He glanced at her with sad eyes. “There is no harm in asking. But I’ll reserve the right to tell you about it till another day. What about for you? What’s the toughest part?”
Dana sighed. “Having Brandon here, as you might imagine. Regardless of whether it’s part of some divine plan, it’s still a sizable sliver in my heart. No one will ever be able to tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“Because of your past together?” Marcus shifted the logs and sat back in his chair, gazing at the river.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do you care to share your story?”
Dana shook her head. It was the last thing she wanted to do. But in seconds the feeling changed. Maybe it was being at Well Spring. Maybe it was because seeing Brandon had stirred everything up again, and she needed to talk to someone about it. Maybe it was because there was something about the professor that made him trustworthy. Should she? The silence stretched to a minute.
“I worked at Spirit 105.3—”
“Really? My wife listens to that station with great frequency. You were employed there?”
“For seven years. Then three years ago I took a job to manage the sales department of another station in Seattle.”
“Was that a beneficial move?”
“I’m not sure. I know it was the right move. But I miss the people at Spirit. I still have a lot of friends there.”
“What caused your departure?”
“Personal reasons.” Dana pointed toward the cabin.
“I see.” Marcus leaned forward and tossed another log on the fire. “He was involved with the station?”
She pulled her legs onto the chair and sat crisscrossed as the memory swelled up in her mind. Her assistant, Rebecca, had rushed into her office that day five years ago waving her hands like she was on a parade float with her arms programmed at quadruple speed.
“He just pulled into the parking lot! Our parking lot!”
“Who?” Dana asked.
“Brandon Scott. He’s doing a private set for the air staff and programming and anyone else in the station who wants to come.”
“That’s right, I was going to try to make that. I like his music.”
“Try?” Rebecca grabbed Dana’s hands and pulled her into the hallway. “No, no, no, you must do.”
Dana slid into a chair in the back just after Brandon started his set. He was cute. And she liked his laugh as he bantered with the group. After his third song, he set his hands on top of his guitar and glanced at the twenty or thirty of them and smiled. “You guys rock. Truly. This is so fun for me. Thanks for the invite.” His gaze settled on Dana and stayed there longer than on the others. Quite a bit longer.
He launched into a song about running the wilds together, and something inside her stirred. If she were still in her teens, she would have called it a crush. Now she wasn’t sure how to define it. As Brandon sang he continued to glance at her and the feeling inside her grew.
As he played the rest of his songs, she fell in love with his music. When she shook his hand before he left the station, she had the distinct impression she would be falling in love with him.
She sighed, folded her hands, and stared at Marcus. “The next day at work I got a rose from Brandon with an invitation to have lunch. That turned into dinner, which turned into beach walks and movies and eventually a diamond on my
finger. Then one day six months later, three months before the wedding day, he showed up at my home and shredded my heart, and here we are.”
“That’s why you left Spirit 105.3?”
“I couldn’t handle hearing his music all the time and walking past that signed poster of him in the hallway every day.”
“What were his reasons for ending the engagement?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Marcus frowned and stared at her. “An explanation for his actions wasn’t given?”
“Nothing more than he was sorry, please forgive him, and this was ‘what he had to do.’” Dana tossed the book she’d had in her lap onto the chair to her right. “I asked him six more times why, and six times he answered, ‘I just know I have to.’”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
They sat in silence watching the fire die down.
“It’s interesting to observe the way he looks at you,” Marcus said.
“How?”
“Like a man who has lost his greatest treasure.”
Dana shook her head. “You need to get those glasses of yours replaced with ones that help you see more clearly.”
“I realize that sentiment might be a challenge to hear, but it’s true.” Marcus stood and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’m going inside to attempt to get more of the slumber I didn’t get last night. Thanks for revealing part of your story to me.”
Dana stayed at the fire for another twenty minutes, trying to ignore Marcus’s comment about the way Brandon looked at her. She found more failure than success. But even if Brandon did still have feelings for her, it didn’t matter. She would never let him back into her heart. She would never let anyone back in ever again. Being abandoned was her calling in life, and she’d learned to live with it.
Dana stood and stirred the fire, then tried to squash the feeling of despair sloshing around her mind and heart as she walked toward her bedroom. She should be thrilled. She was seeing parts of God she’d never imagined. She was in a stunning setting. But her heart ached.
You are so alone.
She let the thought spread through her soul. Because it was true. You will always be alone.
She flopped down on the bed and stared at the knots in the pine wood on the wall to her right. Part of her wanted to stay. Step further in. See if God would or could bring healing. Another part dreaded the idea because it would mean opening up. And she couldn’t do that.
You don’t belong here. He tricked you. He can’t be trusted. You know that now.
Reece. Some friend. No, he hadn’t lied to her. But he’d deceived her. He could have told her Brandon would be here. And she had to make budget. Had to!
They’ll fire you.
No. It wouldn’t happen. She would develop a promotion that would loosen the purse strings. Write a package advertisers would snatch up by the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it needed to be in motion today. Not next Monday. Now.
She pulled out her cell phone and checked her e-mail out of habit. A message flashed: NO SERVICE, COULD NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. Tomorrow she would borrow Reece’s car. Drive out, write the promotion, and get it to the station. She’d be there and back in two or three hours easy. Then she could breathe. Then she could open herself up to what God had for her at Well Spring.
Dana sat up and squinted at the window. A small square envelope was taped to the top right corner. She slipped off the bed, pulled the note off the window, and opened it in the wicker chair in the corner of the room.
Dana,
I’ve never been talented with words, so I won’t try to make this note one of eloquence. And I’ve never had an overabundance of tact or subtlety, so forgive my bluntness.
You’re screaming to get out of here. Every emotion you have is
telling you to flee. But you must not leave. Stay in the wound. It’s the only way to find healing.
The enemy is likely throwing thoughts your way that are not your own. Fight it.
And Brandon is not your enemy.
Give it time, please?
Put everything from home out of your mind—including your radio station. Do not let the temporal distract you as you’re delving into the eternal.
The issue causing your stress at the moment isn’t that the station needs you—it’s that you need the station. It has become your idol, the thing you turn to for assurance, for worth, for your joys and even your sorrows. And it keeps you from feeling totally alone.
Now you are in an environment where you are stripped of the caffeine-like shots of e-mail. There’s no promotions director or client or salesperson needing your immediate attention. Here you are not needed at all. But you are wanted. You are valued. You are desired by God himself.
And you are not alone.
Breakthrough is coming. I promise.
Reece
For a man who supposedly didn’t have a way with words, Reece did quite well. She let the note fall to her lap. She wasn’t sure whether to hate the man for reading her mind once again, or like him for telling the truth.
TWENTY
REECE WOKE AT SIX ON TUESDAY MORNING AND grimaced. Too late. His alarm hadn’t gone off. He wanted to be up by five. This day needed to be slathered in prayer, and now he’d have less than half the time he wanted before waking the others. He wanted to be on the trail by eight o’clock because he wasn’t positive what kind of shape the three of them were in. Yes, he wanted them gasping for air most of the way up, but he didn’t want to kill them.
By seven fifteen he had a breakfast of biscuits, scrambled eggs, and sausage sitting on the kitchen counter for whoever wanted it. Marcus sat in the big chair next to the fireplace. Dana was in the kitchen putting together a bowl of fruit, some yogurt, and making toast. Now they just needed Brandon.
A minute later the musician bounded down the stairs two at a time from the upstairs bedrooms. “Good morning, all. Great to be alive today, wouldn’t you agree, Dana?”
She glanced at Brandon with a disgusted look and turned back to her food. Reece gave a slight nod. Good. Better to have them sparring than to have complete silence. There was hope for détente yet.
“Gentlemen, grab some eggs, biscuits, and sausage if you like, or create your own breakfast like Dana is doing. Just be done in fifteen minutes or less.”
Brandon grabbed a plate and piled it with eggs and two biscuits. Close behind Brandon was Marcus. No eggs. Just one sausage, a biscuit, and a banana.
“Eat well,” Reece said. “This day could be a bit strenuous.”
“Spiritually or physically?” Marcus asked.
“Both. We’re going on a little hike.”
Dana carried her breakfast to the table and sat with her back to them. “Define little.”
“Less than ten miles round trip.”
“That’s not little.” Dana took a spoonful of yogurt.
“If you’re in shape it is.”
“I already worked out this morning,” Brandon said.
Reece ignored the comment and picked up a jar of salsa. “Do you want some of this for your eggs, Brandon?”
He shook his head. Reece grabbed a drinking glass and poured the entire contents of the jar into it, then stood and walked to the window and toasted the trail they’d be on in fifteen minutes. “To a day that resounds with life to the full, much joy, and much freedom.”
He lifted the glass of salsa to his lips and drained half of it in one gulp.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Reece spun to see Brandon standing right behind him, shaking his head and squinting.
“Having breakfast.”
“That’s salsa.”
“It’s breakfast. It’s low calorie, high in nutrients, and with the heat that’s in this, it cleans out the system at the same time.” Reece flicked the glass with his fingernail and the noise rang out through the cabin.
“You and Stallone.” Brandon laughed. “You’re the Rocky Balboa for the spiritu
al set.”
Reece glanced at his watch, drained the rest of the salsa, and turned back to them. “All right.” He raised his voice. “We’ll meet at the rise just beyond the archery range in ten minutes. At eight o’clock we leave. Don’t be late.”
“Yes, sir, Drill Sergeant, sir!” Brandon gave an exaggerated salute and stood with his chest out, stomach in, chin up.
Reece stared at him and felt a smile rise inside. It almost made it to his face. He loved this kid. He looked at each of the three and prayed. They needed God to come through when they reached the lake.
Be there, Jesus.
Dana breathed deep as she stood with the others in a tight circle and guessed it was the aroma of piñon trees that filled her senses. Reece had predicted a breakthrough for her today. A hope rose inside that he was right.
Reece scuffed his hiking boots in the dirt and cleared his throat. “A couple of quick things before we start. First, it’s uphill all the way to our destination. In a few places it will be steep. Very steep. Second, the pace I’m going to set will likely irritate you at first, and by the time we take our first break, I’m guessing you’ll be ticked off at me. I don’t care. This isn’t summer camp. It’s boot camp. Third, if you feel like you’re going to keel over, let me know. Any questions?”
“What’s our destination?” Brandon asked, hands on hips.
His dark blue sunglasses and red bandanna took Dana back to a hike they’d taken together soon after they started dating. The hike where he’d first kissed her. So soft, so tender. She pushed the memory from her mind. Stop it.
“Our destination?” Reece replied. “Up.”
“What’s the point of the hike?” Marcus added.
Brandon stretched his arms over his head. “I’m guessing we’ll find out when we get there, right, Reece?”
He stared at Brandon. “That’s right, guitar man.”
A look passed over Brandon’s face that said he liked the name.
“Are you ready?” Reece hiked up the strap on his daypack and glanced at each of them.
Marcus and she nodded.
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