by Lois Richer
“You forgot stubborn.” She laughed at his expression. “I do love you, Ben Cummings. I love David Bentley, too. But Ben’s my favorite.”
“Good to know.” He kissed her nose.
“About that loan—”
“Truly, Jayne, all I did was to give you the papers and approve the other board members’ decision to lend to you. You gained the loan on your own merits.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
“I have lots of things to tell you. But I can’t do it right now. I have to face those reporters.” He kissed her once more, quickly, before easing her out of his arms. “I think you should go home, so you’re out of the fray.”
“No way.” Confident of her love and of the Father’s love that had brought them together and would see them through their future, she placed her hand in his. “No more outsider, remember? We’re in this together.”
“Jayne, darling, you have no idea what reporters are like.” He cupped her face in his palms, stared into her eyes. “Nothing in your life will be sacred from now on.”
“They can’t touch me, Ben. Not as long as you love me. Not as long as our protection and success come from God alone,” she reminded.
“That’s another reason I love you.” Ben kissed her, folded her hand in his and grabbed the doorknob. “Ready?”
Jayne squeezed her eyes closed, whispered a prayer then smiled at him.
“Ready.”
Together they stepped forward to face their future.
Epilogue
Very early Easter morning, Ben picked up Jayne at the condo. Together they waited in the darkness of his beautifully landscaped yard and watched the pink gold of sunrise creep across the clear cerulean sky.
“I’m sorry your parents aren’t here to share our happiness, my darling,” Ben whispered, his strong arms around her, his lips pressed against her ear.
“They are. All Heaven is celebrating, Ben.” Jayne turned in his embrace, so she was facing him. “That’s what Granny Em said. And Emma is never wrong.”
“Look.”
Jayne turned to see the big yellow sun crawl over the horizon, splashing the earth with its warmth. When it was fully visible, she looked at Ben.
“He is risen.”
“He is risen indeed,” he responded in the age-old greeting.
“I’m so glad we got everything out in the open last night.”
“Me, too, though it was wild for a few minutes. I’m guessing we’ll be under the spotlight for a while,” Ben said. “Until another, better story comes along to replace David Bentley.”
“Or until your next book. But I’m okay with that.” She grinned.
“Good. The reporters were actually pretty fair about giving us some space today. Having Jerry there was a help.” Ben shook his head. “But tomorrow, don’t be surprised to find them lurking in Rose’s Roses or your new landscaping site.”
“Mmm, free publicity.” Jayne laughed at his dour glance. “With God’s help, we’ll get through it.”
She checked her watch and sighed. “The flowers,” she said quietly.
Ben nodded, drove them both to Rose’s Roses, where they loaded his car with fragrant arrangements and vases.
“And two Easter lilies, in pots.” Jayne giggled as she set them on the floor. “You looked so wary that day.”
“You looked mad.”
“We were both dumb.” Jayne placed big pastel bows in front of the little evergreens Ben had set in front of the church on that very first day they’d met. Then she helped him arrange the flowers around the set which the committee had put together the night before. When it was finished, she stood back, amazed. “It looks just like what I’ve always imagined the garden of Jesus’s tomb would look like,” she whispered. “The setting for God’s biggest gift to us.”
Ben’s hand slid into hers as they remembered the sacrifice of their Lord. When Jayne moved, Ben drew her back.
“Jayne Rose,” he murmured, “I love you very much. Will you please marry me?” In the palm of his hand nestled a black velvet box.
The fragrance of the Easter lilies mixed with hyacinths and jonquils filled the sanctuary and rose to the rafters. Jayne looked from the box to his face and saw love shining there, for her. A smile stretched across her face and she couldn’t have stopped it if she’d wanted.
“I love you, too, Ben Cummings. Yes, I will marry you.”
He kissed her thoroughly then opened the box and slid a beautiful ring onto her finger.
“It’s a rose,” she whispered, studying the setting for the yellow diamond.
“A desert rose,” he agreed. “For my desert rose.”
Jayne had no words. But it turned out she didn’t need them as the choir, perfectly in pitch and four-part harmony, broke into the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
Dear Reader,
Hello! I’m so glad you decided to join me for this mini visit to Palm Springs. It’s a place I’ve especially enjoyed as a retreat, a vacation spot and a place of always changing beauty. Desert Rose touches on a topic so many of us battle—that of fear, which generates worry. As Jayne and Ben discovered, fears and worries happen because we lack trust in our precious heavenly Father. Few characters of the Bible had more reason to worry than David, yet no matter how desperate his plea, he always remembered who God was and that his deliverance came from the One who knew his heart.
As you celebrate Easter, I pray you’ll find deep peace, a fount of great joy and trust in the perfect love of the one who gave his life for us, knowing that he will always be there to hear our cries and to wipe our tears.
Blessings to you, dear friends.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
King David is a major figure in Biblical history. Discuss his life and the mistakes he made both before he was king and during his reign.
In the story, Jayne carries a lot of past baggage that has made her wary of trusting anyone, especially God. Consider issues in your own past and how they continue to affect your life today. What is holding you back from being free of your past?
Define fear. Was Jayne’s fear of surgery really a lack of trust? Suggest ways we can identify fears in our own lives which hold us back from fully experiencing God’s care for us.
Ben said he’d prayed many times for a woman to love him for himself. Are such prayers Biblical? Discuss ways we can open ourselves to love in our lives and ways we can safeguard our hearts against love that isn’t genuine.
Easter was the time when Emma and Jayne remembered death. But at the end of the book it also becomes a time of joy and new life. Suggest ways we as Christians can share the hope that Easter is meant to give.
BLUEGRASS EASTER
Allie Pleiter
For knitters everywhere who know it’s about so much more than just the yarn and needles.
Acknowledgments
I could not have crafted this story without the help of the wonderful people at Esther’s Place Fiber Arts Studio. Natasha and Donna Lehrer shared their insights, anecdotes, facts and faith in a way that made this story a special gift for me as both a writer and a knitter.
Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be.
—1 Peter 5:2
Chapter One
Two o’clock in the afternoon was one of Audrey Lupine’s favorite times in the library. Adults only. The little children—staples of any weekday library crowd—had gone home for naps and the rambunctious teen after-school crowd had yet to arrive. She could actually manage a cup of tea at her reference desk this time of day. Not exactly the English high tea, but close enough. She was just inhaling the luxurious aroma, browsing through a textbook, when a blond head bobbed up to the desk.
“How old are you?” A round pink face framed in layers of wavy blond hair topped the desk edge. A set of elbows parked themselves just under the face.
“Pardon?”
“The lady at my old libr
ary—” she mispronounced the word in a way other people might find adorable “—was really old.”
Audrey was pretty sure twenty-nine was not anywhere in the neighborhood of “old.” What parent had taught—or more precisely forgotten to teach—this little girl to mind her manners? “I guarantee you I am not ‘really old.’ But even if I were, that’s not a nice question to ask.”
The girl’s blond brows scrunched together over pale blue eyes. “Why not?” Her head disappeared below the desk only to bob up again, this time with a yellow backpack. “You can ask me how old I am.” She granted it like the greatest of favors. A magnanimous grade school gesture. “Go ahead, ask.”
“I won’t.” I’m debating with a second grader. Worse, I seem to be debating decorum with someone under four feet tall. Audrey closed the textbook with what she hoped was a “this conversation is now over” thump.
No such thing. “I’m seven and three-quarters. Dad says I’m seven and thirty, but I’m not sure what that means.” The head bobbed up and down now, alternating heights, as if standing on…
Oh, no. “You’re not standing on your books, are you, young lady?”
Blink. Pause. “Nope.” The head bobbed back down again, and Audrey heard suspicious scrambling. Audrey counted to ten and reminded herself that even precocious second graders grew up to read books. As for the remark about “seven and thirty,” Audrey agreed with “Dad” one hundred percent. Now if only Dad would show.
“So how old are you?”
“Did your daddy ever tell you some questions aren’t nice to ask? Especially to ladies?” Wouldn’t Gran have had a field day with this little one? Gran had loved the wild things little kids said, just ate remarks like this up like candy. Despite her years in the library, Audrey hadn’t inherited Gran’s tolerance for youthful antics.
“Mom was thirty-one. She told everyone.”
Audrey was just about to take this little girl to task for blurting out her mama’s age when it hit her. She’d said “was.” As in the past tense of is. As in is no longer. Normally she wasn’t much for insight where young ones were concerned, but Audrey sensed a need to extend a little grace here. Even if the little girl was using books for steps and asked a woman’s age. Twice. Audrey pushed back her chair and came around to the front of the desk. “I think thirty-one is a nice age.”
She was dressed in the blinding style of a little girl who picked out her own clothes. Pink socks with green tights under a purple skirt with a blue sweater bearing red ruffles. A riot of color to match her outrageous personality. Uneven pigtails only rounded out the effect. She tucked her hands behind her, bouncing back against the desk in a fidgety rhythm. “I think angels don’t get an age. What do you think?”
You could drive a truck through the subtext on that one. Angels. Mama was in Heaven, maybe? Audrey’s heart melted. A little girl who’d lost her mama was just about the saddest thing ever.
“Maybe,” Audrey said, squatting down to the little girl’s height and trying desperately to ignore the smudgy footprint that graced the stack of early-reader books, “angels get whatever age they want. You know, get to pick one. That’d be fun, don’t you think?” She scooped up the books as casually as she could manage. “I’d pick twelve, personally.”
The child’s face scrunched up in puzzlement. “Twelve?” She balked, obviously thinking it a pretty poor choice. “Why twelve?”
“I remember being really happy when I was twelve. My grandma taught me to knit when I spent the summer at her house. She lived on a lake and I got to go swimming a lot. It was a good year.” She paused for a moment before gently asking, “So, Miss Seven and Three-Quarters, do you have another name I could use?”
“Me? I’m Lilly.”
“That’s a nice name. Who brought you here today, Lilly?”
“Oh, Daddy,” she said as if it were obvious and began bouncing herself off the desk front again. The hollow, echoing thump reverberated through the library’s quiet.
“Um,” Audrey said, taking one of Lilly’s hands to pull her off the desk and stop the percussive thuds, “do you think Daddy might be wondering where you are?”
“Oh, no,” she replied, now inspecting the cup of pencils poised for patrons’ convenience at the edge of the desk. “He knows we’re at the library.”
Audrey caught the cup of pencils just as it tipped over the edge. “Do you think Daddy might be wondering where in the library you’ve gone off to? I wouldn’t want him to worry.” Now this wasn’t a genuine question. Even a seven-and-three-quarter-year-old could stand in the center of the Middleburg public library and see every corner from one spot. This library wasn’t big enough to misplace anyone.
Lilly, of course, had a solution for this, and simply yelled “Da-a-a-d-d-y!” without the slightest hesitation.
While earsplitting and highly inappropriate, it was effective. Before the second syllable—well, actually, Lilly’s rendition somehow had four syllables—a man with matching blond hair came darting out of the nonfiction stacks with a duly mortified look on his face.
“Lilly, I asked you to stay by Daddy while he found his books.” He gave Audrey what she called “the parent look,” the regretful shrug parents gave any member of the library staff when their unattended children misbehaved. Only this time, “the parent look” was replaced by an equally mortified look of recognition. “Oh, my, you’re our neighbor, aren’t you?” He looked down at Lilly. “What do you know, Lilly. We live next to the librarian.”
Audrey should have recognized him. Lilly and her father were the ones who just bought the old farmhouse next to her place. She’d seen him from a distance, waved hello from the driveway, but hadn’t yet talked up close.
Lilly evidently wasn’t too impressed. “She wouldn’t tell me how old she is.”
Daddy offered a guilty smile while snatching Lilly up by the elbow. “We live next to the smart, kind librarian who’s about to get an apology from you.”
Lilly mumbled an obedient if not heartfelt “Sorry,” her small chin jutting out with pint-size authority.
Dad then offered his hand. “Paul. Paul Sycamore. Sorry about Lilly’s questions. She’s…um…fascinated with women’s ages lately.” He hoisted a backpack over one shoulder and tucked one hand into the pocket of his brown corduroy pants. With the T-shirt and plaid flannel shirt, he had the look of an overgrown college student. A scruffy brand of charm but with an intellectual edge. Definitely not the average Middleburg guy. He leaned in a bit and lowered his voice. “We lost her mom—my wife—a while ago and it’s just this thing she seems to do. I’m sorry if she wasn’t nice about it.” He said it with a resigned normalcy—as if he spent every day surrounded by such a sad truth—and it made Audrey’s throat tighten up.
“I was nice,” Lilly disputed.
“Actually, she was,” Audrey offered, caught up in a sudden sympathy for the young widower. He looked like a nice guy, he really did. He had an inexplicable slowness about him that looked a bit like resignation. As if he’d long given up being startled by anything. Which was an awful lot of inferences to make about someone from such a casual meeting, but Audrey was surprised by the strength of the impression, “Lilly is direct, I’ll grant you,” she explained, “but she was nice. Well, nice-ish. For almost eight, I suppose.”
“We don’t even have a library card yet. Things have been a bit hectic, getting Lilly settled in school and all.”
Gran would have had her hide for not having gone over to the new neighbor with a good Kentucky welcome. And she would have, if the ewes hadn’t been so needy this week. She’d been out in the barn twice a night for “the girls,” who seemed oddly agitated by the February weather. Still, she should have been able to make it over with some cookies from Dinah Rollings’s bakery, if not something home-baked. Audrey turned her attention to Lilly. “Are you going to King’s Christian Academy? I think I saw you last week when I brought some books over. Are you in Ms. Madison’s class?”
“Yup. I can read c
hapter books already.” She pointed to the stack of books she’d abused in front of Audrey’s desk.
“All the more reason to have a library card. But you have to promise, no more standing on books.”
Mr. Sycamore looked shocked. “You stood on the books? She knows better, really.” He eyed his daughter. “Keep that up and they may not give you a library card.”
“They have to.” Lilly planted her hands on her hips. The girl had no shortage of attitude, that was certain.
“Actually,” Audrey said, peering over her glasses, “we don’t.”
Lilly looked shocked.
“But on the promise that you’ll do no such thing again, I’ll give you a card.”
The registration process provided Audrey with a host of information about her new neighbor. He’d moved from Pennsylvania, Lilly was his only child, and most interesting of all—he was a veterinarian. Very handy neighbor for a librarian with the world’s smallest sheep farm. Four sheep wasn’t really a farm, even though she called it that.
Dr. Sycamore was quick to point out, however, that he was taking a break from his veterinary practice. “On sabbatical,” he called it.
“Further study?” Audrey asked. That’s what people took sabbaticals for, wasn’t it?
“Actually,” Lilly’s father said a bit shyly, “to write. I’m working on a novel. I’ve been saying I’d write one for years.” His voice got the sad tinge again, and she noticed Lilly looked down and stubbed her foot against the base of the desk.
“I have to say, I admire your effort. I meet lots of people who say they want to write a book, but you’re the first person I’ve met who’s actually followed through on that.” She tried to make her voice sound as encouraging as possible. “What kind of book?”
“Spy novel, actually. Having to do with horse training, breeding, the international racing circuit, that sort of thing.”
She’d expected something closer to All Creatures Great and Small. Or a veterinary topic. “Really?” Spy novel? It sounded downright exotic.
“I had a fair number of equine patients back in Pennsylvania, and there’s certainly no lack of research material here.”
