by Lois Richer
“Go ahead,” Autumn said in a surprisingly neutral tone.
Jon tensed and clenched his fists with each sound Ruth made.
“That’s it,” Daniel encouraged his wife. “Her legs are out.”
A loud groan followed his pronouncement.
“She’s a he. It’s a boy.” Daniel’s voice rose in excitement.
“Yes!” Matthew’s voice came from another part of the room, and Jon could picture him shooting his arm into the air and fist-pumping.
Jon waited for the baby’s wail. His heart stopped when he didn’t hear it.
“He’s not crying.” Ruth’s voice trembled. “Is he okay?”
Autumn lifted the baby toward Ruth and out of his sight and leaned forward. She and Jamie must be resuscitating him. Jon counted, one, two, three, four...fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven. Come on! A loud cry broke the silence. “Thank You, Lord,” he whispered.
Autumn straightened back into view. “You can cut the cord now, Matthew.”
The radiance on her face as she watched lit his heart. He stood in awe. Unlike Autumn, he’d never been free to simply celebrate God’s gift of life. And, although his part had been small, he was glad to have been a part of bringing that joy back to her. It was the least he could do.
He slipped back downstairs before anyone saw him and stood at the window viewing the bright pinpoints of light the stars made in the clear night sky. More of God’s wonders. Witnessing the birth, knowing there was nothing he could do to help Autumn, was humbling. About twenty minutes later, he heard water running upstairs. He was sitting on the couch leafing through a hunting and fishing magazine when Autumn and Jamie came down.
“Hey,” Autumn greeted him, her face still aglow. “We’re giving the family time to get acquainted with their new son.”
Jon stood and put the magazine down on an end table. “A boy to even things up.” He walked over to Autumn.
“Exactly what Matthew thought. You were so quiet down here,” Autumn said. “I wondered if you’d left.”
Guilt pinched him for a second as he thought about his stealing upstairs. “Not a chance.” His voice sounded thick to his ears.
“We did it.” Autumn gazed up at him.
“No, you did it,” he replied.
“I think I’ll go make that tea, Autumn,” Jamie said, reminding him that he and Autumn weren’t alone. “And take mine out on the back deck and look at the stars.”
“Yes, the tea,” Autumn said. “Leave the water and I’ll have some, too.”
Jamie grinned at him from behind Autumn and gave him a thumbs-up sign.
“How are you?”
“Great,” Autumn said. “It was beautiful. I couldn’t have asked for a better birth experience, even if it was touch and go for a minute.”
“I know.”
Autumn tilted her head and looked sidewise at him. “You know?”
“You were awesome. I don’t know if I could have handled it as well as you did. I’ve never done a natural breech birth.” Jon explained how he’d been upstairs in the hall, rushing on before she could find fault with his action. “It was beautiful. You were beautiful.” His voice grew husky. “You are beautiful.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She returned his kiss with a fervor that he hoped was really for him and not simply a release of adrenaline built up during the birth.
“I couldn’t have done it without you, your believing in me, pushing me,” she whispered against his lips.
He loosened his embrace. “Yes, you could have. Maybe not this birth, but another sometime in the future.”
“Thank you anyway, for being on my team.”
“It’s a winning team,” he said, “the only type I belong to.”
Autumn laughed. “Me, too.”
He took her hand and led her to the couch. “Sit. I have something to say, something I was thinking about after the birth when I was looking out at the stars.”
“This sounds serious.” Her eyes twinkled.
“It is.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so self-conscious with a woman. But Autumn wasn’t just any woman. “We make a great team on the job. And off the job, too. Can we go back to Monday morning before I got stupid?”
She stared at him and his heart froze. She wasn’t going to forgive him? Where were those smooth words that used to come easily to his tongue? He swallowed. They’d come easily because his heart hadn’t been involved with any other woman. With Autumn, he needed straight words.
“I care for you, may be falling in love with you. I think you care for me.” Or had. He prayed she still did.
“I do.” Her delicate features softened. “But I needed to know your commitment to Help for Haiti didn’t preclude your making a commitment to me, to us.”
His heart skipped two beats. “I think we could have something real and lasting.”
“Even though you’re going to Haiti?” she asked.
“Even if I go to Haiti.” He caught his “if” only after he’d said it.
“Even if I don’t go to Haiti?” she pressed.
He slipped his arm around her shoulders and she placed her head on his shoulder. “Real love can weather a separation, if necessary. I want to see if we can build that kind of love.”
She nestled a little closer. “I’m game if you are.”
Epilogue
Three months later
“Haiti or Bust,” the multicolored banner strung across the Hazardtown Community Church hall proclaimed to everyone who entered. Autumn stood behind the serving window in the church kitchen and cast an eye over the crowd that had gathered for the luncheon to honor the doctor and nurse the church was sponsoring through Help for Haiti. Jon slipped in beside her.
“We did it,” she said, feeling a tingle of warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the kitchen, the crowded hall or her pride that the singles group’s mission project had raised enough money to send not one but two medical professionals to Haiti.
“And then some, thanks to the efforts of the male contingent of the fund-raisers,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “Will I never hear the end of it? You only pulled ahead because your grandfather signed the check from your grandmother and the church treasurer logged it for the male team. The church treasurer who just happens to be a man.”
Jon draped his arm across her shoulders and squeezed her to his side. “He was only calling things as he saw them.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. Once Jon had caught on that competition could be friendly, he’d taken up the gauntlet with both hands. She supposed it was only right that his team had won, even if it was on a technicality.
The guests of honor entered the hall to a round of applause. Dr. Michaels and his wife, Leigh, would save countless lives, as Jon wanted. As they all wanted. Pastor Joel and his wife led them to the head table. Jon watched with a serious, almost longing expression that made her start.
“Do you regret your decision?”
His gaze remained focused on the head table. “We could have done a lot of good.”
He’d said that he no longer felt a calling to serve in Haiti himself and had spent much of the past three months in sometimes acrimonious negotiations with his grandfather working out his multiyear contract to direct the newly sold birthing center. The center’s buyers had appointed his grandfather to represent them in all of the sale negotiations because he had so much experience with similar purchases.
Although Adirondack Medical Center had accepted his resignation, they hadn’t actively searched for a replacement. They’d left that to the new owners, who’d had an offer ready when Jon had decided not to go to Haiti. The offer he’d renegotiated with his grandfather. Jon had driven down to Westchester to sign the contrac
t yesterday, returning late last night, so she hadn’t had a chance to ask how it had gone.
He squeezed her to his side. “And you’ll do a lot of good here as the new assistant director of the birthing center.”
Autumn checked the squeal that rose in her throat. “Are you serious?” She’d hoped for a midwife position on the center staff. Assistant director was unbelievable.
He nodded and she waited for his familiar self-satisfied grin to break across his face. Her heart dropped when it didn’t.
“Grandfather wanted to bring in one of his people. For balance, he said. He also accused me of letting my personal feelings color my business decisions. I set him straight on that.”
Of course he did. For Jon, business was still all business. But she chose to believe his feelings for her had played at least a small part in his defense of choosing her as assistant director. Even if he didn’t realize it.
“I needed a guarantee that someone would be in control at the center to carry out our vision if I wasn’t.”
Autumn slipped out from under his arm. “But why wouldn’t—”
“Here you are,” her father interrupted. “We saved you two seats at our table. If you don’t come and take them right now, I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to hang on to them. I can’t believe the turnout.”
“We’d better take the man up on his offer,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t want to miss out on lunch because I have no place to eat it.”
He placed his hand at the small of her back and they followed her father through the maze of tables that had been set up in the hall. The pleasure of his nearness and the proprietary expression on his face washed away her question about why he was concerned with not being at the birthing center.
“I found them hiding in the kitchen,” Dad proclaimed to the rest of her family, who were seated around the table shoulder to shoulder without an inch to spare.
“I was putting out the desserts,” Autumn said.
“Sure you were,” her aunt Jinx teased.
Autumn’s cheeks warmed as she and Jon took the empty seats between her father and Aunt Jinx. Jon nudged his chair a half inch away from her father and closer to her, sending a thrill through her when he brushed her shoulder and leg with his. The slow smile that creased his face said he’d felt it, too.
As the meal progressed, Autumn noticed that, for someone who hadn’t wanted to miss lunch, Jon was doing very little eating and a lot of pushing his food around on his plate and shooting furtive glances at the head table. In answer to one of Jon’s glances, Pastor Joel gave him a solemn nod.
Pastor stood and uneasiness made the cookie she was eating go dry and stick in her throat.
“I’d like everyone’s attention, please.” Pastor Joel paused until the luncheon chatter quieted. “I know we all enjoyed hearing Dr. Michaels and Leigh talk about Help for Haiti and their plans to serve at the organization’s mission there, courtesy of our fund-raising efforts here at Hazardtown Community Church.”
The room broke into rousing applause.
Pastor Joel waited until it died down. “I’d like to give a special thanks to Autumn Hazard and Jon Hanlon for heading up our fund-raising competition. We had a good time, didn’t we? And we males dominated this time.”
Laughs and more applause followed.
“Jon has asked to speak to you about some new plans he has.”
Pastor Joel’s eyes sparkled and Autumn’s stomach lurched. New plans that she didn’t know about. Jon making provisions for the birthing center if he wasn’t there. She couldn’t throw off a fear that Jon had changed his mind and had decided to join Help for Haiti. While their relationship had blossomed in the past few months—she loved him—they hadn’t made any verbal commitment to each other.
“Thanks, Joel.” Jon stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot and avoiding Autumn’s gaze.
She looked down at the table so no one would see the tears that pricked her eyes. If he needed to go to Haiti, she would survive, and if their newly forged love didn’t, it would simply mean it wasn’t a true love. She blinked. Even though she thought it was.
“As some of you know, when I came to Paradox Lake and the Ticonderoga Birthing Center earlier this year, I’d planned to only stay until my contract was up next summer and then go and serve with Help for Haiti. That was before Autumn came back into my life. So I asked her to join me in serving with Help for Haiti.”
Autumn’s head shot up. That was settled months ago. He’d asked her, and she’d told him she couldn’t, that her place was serving the people here in her hometown. Now he was going to ask her again in front of all of her family and friends? Her answer was still the same. Yet why would he have negotiated with his grandfather to have her appointed assistant director of the center if he still wanted them to go to Haiti? Confusion filled the hollow in her stomach.
“Now.” He cleared his throat and smiled the smile that made women’s knees go weak. The smile she could no longer claim to be immune to. “We’re about to undertake an even more life-changing journey right here in Paradox Lake...I hope,” he added in a soft afterthought no one but she and her family could hear.
She crushed the paper napkin on her lap and her mind whirled with questions.
“And I couldn’t think of a better place to announce it than here among family and friends.”
Autumn followed Jon’s gaze as he looked around their table and over to where his grandmother sat with his grandfather and her friends. Nana gave him a two-thumbs-up sign, and a hint of a smile showed on his grandfather’s normally serious face.
Jon stepped away from his chair, dropped to one knee and reached into his suit coat pocket.
Autumn dropped the napkin on the floor.
He looked up at her, his eyes bright with a vulnerability she’d never seen before. “Autumn, I love you. Will you marry me?” He opened the jewelry box he’d pulled from his pocket.
“Oh!” All she could think was, he wasn’t leaving.
“No?” The look of despair on his handsome face was devastating.
“No...”
His despair deepened.
“I mean I said ‘oh’ not ‘no.’ You surprised me. Yes, yes, I’ll marry you.” She shot out of her seat and threw her arms around him. “I love you, too.”
Above the cheers, someone started chanting, “Kiss, kiss,” until it became a room-wide buzz.
Autumn loosened her grip on Jon, and he bent his head to softly kiss her. “I’ll finish this later in private,” he whispered against her lips as he pulled away.
“I’ll be looking forward to that.”
He took the ring from the box and slipped it onto Autumn’s finger. “We make a good team.”
She held her hand out so the ring glittered in the light. “The best. The very best.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A RANCH TO CALL HOME by Leann Harris.
Dear Reader
Welcome back to Paradox Lake for Autumn Hazard’s story. You may have met her already as a high school student in Small-Town Sweethearts or a college nursing student in Small-Town Dad.
My daughter, who is a certified nurse midwife, inspired the story. Early in her career, she had a birth where the baby didn’t make it. She wasn’t at fault. It was a home birth and the parents resisted her professional opinion that something was off and they needed to go to the hospital—until it was too late. My daughter was shaken to the core.
I thought, what if Autumn was a midwife who no longer had the confidence to catch babies? Then, I brought in Dr. Jon Hanlon, a man from her past, who exudes nothing but confidence in his technical approach to delivering babies. A man whose faith helps Autumn come to grips with her situation, while he’s unaware that he, too, needs to take some direction f
rom above concerning his own career and life.
I hope you enjoy their journey.
Please feel free to email me at [email protected] or snail mail me at PO Box 113, Selkirk, NY 12158. You can also visit me at Facebook.com/JeanCGordon.author or a JeanCGordon.com or tweet me at @JeanCGordon.
Blessings,
Jean C. Gordon
Questions for Discussion
Have you ever been in a precarious job situation like Autumn?
How did you handle it?
What would you do if you felt you could no longer do the job you’d trained for and loved?
Was Jon right in taking the position at the birthing center with the intention of staying there no longer than a year, just long enough to gain the administrative experience he wanted? Why or why not?
Was Autumn right in assuming that Jon’s reputation from Good Samaritan Hospital was justified?
Like Jon, do you think Autumn is too close to, too dependent on her family?
Or do you think he feels that way because he’d like a more loving family relationship?
How might his relationship with the rest of his family have colored his conviction that he’d been called to serve as a missionary in Haiti?
Do you think God would call him to atone for his cousin Angie’s “indiscretion” and death?
Why did it take Autumn and Jon so long to realize that they had a common goal of providing care to mothers in an underserved area where that care is really needed?
Which approach to birth are you more aligned with, Jon’s or Autumn’s?
What’s your impression of Jon’s grandmother and their relationship?
Was she dishonest in her deal to buy the birthing center? Could you forgive her as readily as Jon because she did it out of love?
Were Autumn and Jon right to go ahead and try to forge a relationship, even though he was still planning to go to Haiti?
Should Autumn have been more confident in his love at the luncheon where he proposed? Why do you think she wasn’t?
