42
Later that evening, as the last rays of summer sun were slipping behind the San Juans, Beth went to the horse pasture with an apple for her father's horse Temuche. The sorrel gelding ate the juicy fruit with a great deal of chomping and then pushed at her hands looking for more treats.
“I think Hastings was holding out on me about the wolf pack,” she confided “I think that's why he didn’t flinch when Mercy saved us from the cougar.”
Temuche pawed the dirt once.
“Were you in on the secrecy too? What else do I need to know, old fellow?”
He pawed the earth another time, and something in the ground caught Beth’s eye.
The paw prints of a wolf.
Temuche didn’t seem at all troubled by the tracks cutting through their feeding ground. None of the other horses did either. Maybe the horses recognized Mercy for his true self. During her journey back to the Blazing B, Beth had decided that the appearance of that wolf was a supernatural revelation of God’s glory in one of the most natural expressions on earth: a wild animal returning to the home where he had once been driven out. Without anything but hope to give her confidence, she saw a promise in the family’s discovery of the wolves’ den—a promise that even if the Borzois were driven off this land, someday they would be allowed to return.
She followed the tracks and quickly realized that the trail was headed for the barn. The side door was wide open, and the prints headed directly inside.
The interior lights had been left on and were spilling out into the night sky. Beth rushed in.
“Mercy?” she whispered.
She heard a rustling in the tack room and moved toward it first, and as she rounded the doorway she surprised Jacob Davis, who was standing under the bare bulb of the little tack room, looking down at the corner where his empty saddle rack protruded from the rough wood wall.
He startled when she barged in, which startled her. They both stood there for a minute, she with her hand over her heart, waiting for it to settle. Jacob ran his hand through his hair and laughed lightly.
“You snuck up on me,” he said.
“Sorry. I didn’t expect anyone here right now.”
“Me neither.”
“What are you doing?” She took a few steps into the room and noted that Mercy’s paw prints crossed the dusty floor and went straight into the corner where Mathilde’s saddle should have been hanging. There was just one set of prints headed in one direction. They led to the wall and seemed to disappear into the saddle rack itself. She couldn’t stop staring at it and suddenly wished that she wasn’t here, in this room with those prints and this man and that empty rack on the wall.
He said, “Do these mysterious wolf friends of yours walk through walls?”
“Mercy opened a door by himself once, but walls—I don’t think he walks through walls.”
“Huh.” The response was half impressed, half skeptical. Jacob crossed his arms and joined her in staring at the corner where the prints stopped so inexplicably.
“Where do you think he went?”
“He goes wherever he wants,” she says.
“Maybe you can tell me more about him.”
Beth nodded but didn’t know where to start.
Jacob kept his eyes on the empty rack and said, “I was going to ask if you’d mind me tagging along when you and your grandfather take the car back to Burnt Rock. I can drive the trailer for Hastings. I’d like to hear the whole story.”
“It’s a pretty long story,” she said.
“If the drive’s not long enough for it, we can find something else to do until you tell it all. However long it takes.”
“Okay,” she said.
He said, “It took guts to do what you did. Going after your grandfather like that.”
“Nothing turned out the way I wanted it to,” she said.
“In my experience it almost never does. But do you regret what happened?”
“No,” Beth said. She didn’t even have to think about it.
He took a deep breath. “Many times everything comes out better.”
“Even when we don’t get what we want?” she said, suddenly needing to know he agreed with her view.
“Especially when we don’t get what we want. Not always, but I mean, what do we know about what we really need?”
Beth laughed. He was looking at her with a serious expression, and her laughter seemed inappropriate. She cleared her throat.
“Well, who knew I had guts, huh?”
“Oh, I’ve always known it.”
“You have, have you?”
“Yes, ever since the night when you turned that calf around inside its mother, because the vet couldn’t get here through the snow.”
The memory came back to Beth like a rush of pleasure. “I forgot about that. A little something I thought I could do just because I’d read James Herriot’s books. When was that?”
“The coldest February night in a decade.”
“I was like, what?”
“Fourteen,” he said, and she was startled by the swiftness of his memory. He finally turned away from the saddle rack and faced her. He held up his big hands and turned them over. “You were the only one with hands small enough to fit through that cow’s narrowness. You didn’t even wrinkle up your nose.”
“You coached me, if I remember right. Mr. College Grad, Expert on the Herd.”
“You didn’t need much coaching.”
He was regarding her with a look of admiration that made her uncomfortable. Her heart was thumping harder than it needed to for a person just standing around.
“I thought you were angry with me then,” she said.
His admiration turned to surprise. “Why would I have been angry? You were a crazy success.”
“I don’t know. I was so happy—that calf, staggering around alive because I’d pulled it out. But you didn’t have much to say about it. You kind of wandered off. I just thought I’d done something wrong but you didn’t want to say so, me being your boss’s daughter and all that.”
Jacob smiled then. “Oh. That.”
“Oh that what?”
Now his face reddened, she could see it clearly even under this wicked incandescent glare, and his embarrassment so embarrassed her that she didn’t dare press him to explain. She tried to rescue him from the awkwardness she’d caused.
“Mom said she’s asked you to take on some of Dad’s old duties. Congratulations. You are so right for that job.”
“I guess Levi didn’t want it.”
“That would be an understatement.” She pushed her fingers into her pockets.
“What do you think he’s going to do?” Jacob asked.
“Look for a way around those wolves.” Beth sighed. “I feel sad for him.”
“One day at a time, Beth. You never can tell how God can turn a thing around. Or a person.”
“This is true.” She was reminded of God’s promise to heal her family. Did the promise include Levi? There were so many questions unanswered still.
“I’m sorry you won’t get to attend vet school as soon as you’d planned,” he said.
“Me too.”
“But I’m also glad you’re staying here.”
She liked the sound of his voice, the meaning of his words.
“I’m glad you’re glad.”
That awkwardness between them was back again. It could only be that tension rooted in the wrong that she’d done. She hated that it was there, preventing them from being the friends they were. And because it seemed that the only way around it was to go directly through it, Beth said the only thing to pop into her head, which was probably not the best thing she could have picked:
“I learned a thing or two about your saddle while I was up in Burnt Rock.”
Jacob cleared his throat and glanced back at the vacancy where it should have been. This simple motion filled her with a great need to leave the room, to step away from Jacob’s closeness and from the discomfort of the choice that she couldn’t undo, even though her sin had been redeemed. Mostly redeemed. She turned away and started to walk out. She might as well get this whole thing over with.
“You said you were going to tell me what I owe you for it,” she said over her shoulder.
She heard him following her out of the tack room and out of the barn and into the fresh air, where she could breathe a little more easily. She went to the metal corral gates and propped her foot on the bottom rail. He came with her but kept enough space for a horse between them.
She refused to fill the silence this time.
After a few beats he said, “When we were here that day and you were hosing down Gert, you asked me why I came back here after I finished school,” he said.
Beth tried to think of how that conversation connected to his missing saddle.
He said, “I just figured there wasn’t any place I’d rather be while I waited for you to grow up.”
His words were like eyeglasses that instantly sharpened a fuzzy perspective. Their history took on a new light: his lack of girlfriends since that February, his aloof but brotherly treatment of her, his outspoken confidence in her abilities. She bowed her head to the rail and began to laugh softly. It was amazement running through her now, stronger than any guilt or regret or fear. “Really?”
He wrapped his fingers around the corral rail and nodded once.
“You are a patient man, Jacob Davis.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His smile was cockeyed and endearing.
She lifted her head and returned his pleasant expression. “But I think we ought to start with a clean slate, a zero account.”
“There is no such thing. We’ve known each other too long.”
“You really ought to tell me what I owe you for that saddle.”
“Oh, I will. But now’s not the time.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not what you think.”
From the corner of her eye, she could see that his lopsided grin was playful.
“How do you know what I think?”
He refused to answer, only to tease silently.
“I’ve been wondering what became of your saddle,” she said.
“It’s not something I worry about.”
“Still, I think I should find out.”
“That’s up to you.” A warm breeze came down off the San Juans and lifted the side of Beth’s hair across her face. She turned her back to the rails and faced Jacob. His admiring expression caused her to laugh again.
“So why don’t you tell me how that saddle came to be yours. It’s got quite a history from what I can tell.”
“It does.”
“So what’s the story?”
“It’s a pretty long story,” he said.
“Now you’re making fun of me. Tell me, please. However long it takes.”
“I will. But now it’s your turn to be patient, Bethesda.”
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“Do you mind it?”
She shook her head. In fact she loved it, but couldn’t find the words to say so. “If you stare at me any longer your eyes will dry out.”
“Small price to pay,” he said. He stepped toward her and tucked her wandering strands of hair behind her ear. The rough skin of his fingertips grazed her temples. He lowered his hand to hers, and she gave it to him.
Jacob pulled her toward him and encircled her with his strong arms as protective as the shelter of trees. He gently held her head against his chest and kissed the part in her hair. The warmth of feeling safe covered Beth all the way down to her feet. His quiet sigh was full of contentment.
“Thank you,” he said.
She closed her eyes. “For what?”
“For taking that saddle.”
“What?” She lifted her chin to see his face. He was looking across the dusky corral. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” he said.
“Explain yourself, sir.”
“Patience.” His voice teased again.
“Tell me.”
“All in due time.”
“How long do I have to wait?”
“How long are you willing?”
The lighthearted banter suddenly felt weighty. She held the question in her heart. “For as long as you’ll let me stand here like this,” she said. “With you.”
“Forever then.”
“Forever,” she repeated. “I can be patient.”
“It’s a good thing I believe in miracles.”
They laughed together.
Author Note
What miracle are you waiting for?
I wrote House of Mercy during a season of begging God for a particular answer to prayer. Instead of giving me the solution I wanted, God gave me complications, uncharacteristic calm, and a question: Do you believe I’m good even when I don’t give you what you think you need?
My heart said, Right now it doesn’t seem like you’re being very good to me. And my mind said, Hey wait—is this a trick question? If I give you the right answer will you give me what I want?
Instead of indulging my pouting, God has taken my hand and led me on a guided tour of all the ways he has proven his goodness to me across the years. That uncharacteristic calm, for example, couldn’t have come from myself. My “surprise” son is a constant source of joy and laughter. I’ve been welcomed into a community of God-fearing people who surround me with compassion, support, and kindness that I’m sure I don’t deserve. These gifts top a very long list. And all of them are from him.
The goodness of God is not a trick question. It’s a reality even more real than our troubles. As this book goes to press, I still don’t have the answer to my prayer. The answer that I want, that is. The one I think I need. And yet he has been more patient with me than I have been with him—proving his goodness again. When I seek him, I find him, no matter my circumstances.
Today, it seems that everyone I know is waiting for some kind of miracle. We’re in need of important things. We’re desperate for particular answers to our heartfelt prayers. But we are not abandoned. We hold the hand of a good God. Whatever pain, injustice, or deferred hope you face, my new prayer is that God will give you more than a happy ending (which waits for us in the next life, if not this one). May he fill you with a lasting sense of his true goodness and of his love for you.
Erin Healy
January 2012
An Encounter with Mercy’s Kin
A couple of years ago I had a face-to-face encounter with a few wolves. I’m happy to say it was in a controlled environment and not the wild, at the wonderful Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center in Divide, Colorado. Arriving with a storybook prejudice of wolves as a vicious kind of large dog, I was unprepared for the wolves’ astonishing size, majestic demeanor, variety, and even the playfulness of their socialized ambassadors.
Kekoa is a male gray (Timber) wolf like Mercy of this novel. Gray wolves are only beginning to return to their native Colorado habitats after being expatriated from the Rocky Mountain region in the 1930s. Today they are migrating from places like Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico, where they have been formally reintroduced.
We were not allowed to stand when meeting the wolves, but if we had, and if Kekoa had put his paws on our shoulders in greeting, he would have towered over our heads at seven feet.
Shunka is an Arctic/Timber wolf mix who weighs nearly 150 pounds. It’s possible he only loved me for the meat treats I had to offer him, and for the hood of my jacket, which we had to detach and toss out of the enclosure because he was determined to make it his own. But as Trey explained to Beth, Shunka’s wet kiss marked my acceptance to his pack.
As this book goes to press, Kekoa and Shunka are still important ambassadors for the CWWC. A live webcam of their enclosure, as well as virtual tours and photo galleries of the rest of the pack, can be accessed at www.wolfeducation.org. But if you have the chance to visit in person, I think you will never look at wolves the same way again.
With humble gratitude to
My wise editors, who seem to have bottomless wells of wit and insight: Ami McConnell and L. B. Norton.
The savvy fiction crew of Thomas Nelson, who devote their days to excellence: Allen Arnold, Ami McConnell, Amanda Bostic, Natalie Hanemann, Becky Monds, Katie Bond, Eric Mullett, Kristen Vasgaard, Ashley Schneider, Ruthie Dean, and Jodi Hughes.
My intrepid Creative Trust agents, who boldly navigate the waters of industry change: Dan Raines, Meredith Smith, Kathy Helmers, Jeanie Kaserman, and Kevin Kaiser.
My early readers, who remind me of all the reasons I should keep writing: Mike and Lynn McMahan.
The real-life Colorado ranchers who helped me tend to details: Joyce and Merrill Bond. (Any enduring errors are mine, all mine.)
My savior in the sea of social media: Leah Apineru.
My precious family.
My Lord, my hope, whose mercies are new every morning.
An Excerpt from The Baker's Wife
March
The day Audrey took a loaf of homemade rosemary-potato bread to Cora Jean Hall was the day the fog broke and made way for spring. Audrey threw open the curtains closest to the dying woman’s bedside, glad for the sunshine after months of gray light.
Audrey moved quietly down the hall into the one-man kitchen, where she sliced the bread into toast, brewed tea, then leaned out of the cramped space to offer some to Cora Jean’s husband, Harlan. He refused her without thanks and without looking up from his forceful tinkering with an old two-way radio. Over the past month, his collection of CBs and receivers had overtaken the small living room. His grieving had started long ago and was presently in the angry stage. Clearly, he loved his wife. The retired pharmacist dispensed her medications with faithful precision but didn’t seem to know what else to do. If not for the radios, Audrey believed, he might have wandered the house helplessly and transformed from smoldering to explosive.
As Audrey arranged the snack on a tray, one of her earrings slipped out of her lobe and clattered onto a saucer, just missing the hot tea. She rarely wore this pair because one or the other was always falling out, but Cora Jean liked the dangling hearts with a rose in the middle of each. The inexpensive jewelry had been a gift to the women of the church on Mother’s Day last year.
She put the earring back in her ear, then carried the tray to Cora Jean’s room, settled onto an old dining room chair by the bed, and steered their conversation toward happy topics.
Cora Jean was dying of pancreatic cancer, the cancer best known for being unsurvivable. Audrey sat with the woman in the late stages of her illness for many reasons: because she believed that people who suffered shouldn’t be left alone; because she was a pastor’s wife and embraced this privilege that came with the role; because Cora Jean reminded Audrey of her own beloved mother.
She also went to the woman’s home because she couldn’t not go. In the most physical, literal sense, Audrey was regularly guided there, directed by an unseen arm, weighty and warm, that encircled her shoulders and turned her body toward the Halls’ house every week or so. A voice audible only to her own ears would whisper, Please don’t leave me alone today. It was no pitiful sound, and Audrey never resented it, though from time to time it surprised her. In these moments she thought, though she had never dared to try it, that if she applied her foot to the gas pedal and took her hands off the wheel, her car would take her wherever God wanted her to be.
This five-years familiar experience had not always involved Cora Jean, but others like her, so Audrey had long since stopped questioning how it happened. The why of it was clear enough: Audrey was called by God to be a comforter, and she was glad for the job.
Audrey had a knack for helping people in any circumstance to look toward the brightness of life—not the silver lining of their own dark cloud, which often didn’t exist—but to the Light of the World, which could be seen by anyone willing to look for it. In Cora Jean’s case this meant not dwelling too long on the details of her prognosis, but in reading aloud beautiful, hopeful, complex poetry, especially the Psalms and the Brownings and Franz Wright. It meant watering the plants (which Harlan ignored) and offering to warm a meal for him before she left. It meant giving candid answers to Cora Jean’s many-layered questions about Audrey’s personal faith—in particular, about sin and forgiveness and justice.
And about the problem of so much suffering in a world governed by a “good” God. Cora Jean seemed preoccupied with this particular question, and her focus seemed to be connected to the yellowed family portrait hanging on the wall opposite the bed.
There were two brunette girls in the thirty-year-old picture. Audrey judged the age by Cora Jean’s bug-eyed plastic-framed glasses, Harlan’s rust-colored corduroy blazer, and the children’s Dorothy Hamill hairstyles. Audrey had a similarly aged childhood portrait of herself with her parents. She guessed the daughters to be nine, maybe ten, and they appeared to be twins, though one of them was considerably chubbier than the other.
A pendant on a large-link silver chain hung from the upper left corner of the cheap wood frame. The pendant was also silver, crudely hammered into a flat circle, like a washer, that framed a small translucent rock. Audrey suspected it to be an uncut diamond.
It would be rude to ask whether she was right about the stone, but on the day the fog broke and the sun brought a wispy smile to Cora Jean’s pale face, Audrey decided to ask about the portrait she often stared at.
Audrey lifted her teacup to her lips and blew off the steam. “Tell me about your family,” she said gently, indicating the picture with her eyes.
Cora Jean’s smile crumpled, and the soft wrinkles of her skin became a riverbed for tears.
Audrey wished she hadn’t said anything. Meaning to apologize for having heaped some kind of emotional ache on top of the cancer’s pain, she returned her sloshing teacup to the tray, then reached out and placed her hands on top of Cora Jean’s, which were clutching the sheets.
That was the second unfortunate choice Audrey made that day, with a third yet to occur before the sun set. The woman’s sorrow—if it could be thought of as something chemical—entered Audrey’s fingertips, burning the pads of her fingers, the joints of her knuckles, her wrists. The flaming liquid pain seeped up her arms, searing as it went: elbows, shoulders, collarbone. And then the poison found her spine, an aqueduct that delivered breathtaking hurt to every nerve in Audrey’s body. She yelped involuntarily. Here was a sensation that she had never experienced.
She wished that she could save the dying woman from the terror. She also wished that she had never dipped her toe into these hellish waters.
The pain bowed her over Cora Jean’s fragile body, a posture at once protective and impotent, and paralyzed Audrey. The women cried together until every last drop of the agony had let itself out of Audrey’s eyes.
In time Cora Jean said, “Thank you for understanding,” and fell asleep, exhausted.
Audrey, who understood not a bit of what had transpired, said nothing. She tuned the radio to Cora Jean’s favorite classical station, then waited, agitated and restless, for the hospice nurse to arrive.
Audrey stumbled out of the house, forgetting to give Harlan a polite good-bye. She stood on the square front stoop, stunned and spent and a little bit frightened, and leaned against the closed screen door for a long minute. She fiddled absentmindedly with one of her rose-in-a-heart earrings.
She began to wonder if she wasn’t as well-suited for her divine calling as she had once thought. Surely sitting with a person through suffering didn’t mean sharing the pain like that, experiencing it firsthand. How had it happened? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything except that she would prefer to avoid that kind of intensity in the future. She would do what she was able to do, and there was no point in feeling guilty about her shortcomings, if guilt was the right name for this emotion.
Audrey sighed and finally walked off the Halls’ stoop and across the lawn. Cora Jean’s windows weren’t the only ones opened that day. Because the fog was gone, others in the working-class neighborhood had raised sashes to lure cleansing breezes into their homes. This is what Audrey would later blame for her third poor choice of the day.
Wide oaks offered shade on both sides of the street. The separation from the sun would be a gift from God come summertime, when the air was too tired to stir even a single leaf in any of the towering eucalyptus trees.
The fleeting question of whether Cora Jean would be alive then passed through Audrey’s mind. She kicked it out of her consciousness, still feeling raw and drained. She moved toward her car, wanting to go home and find answers in her sleep.
When she stepped off the curb to round her parked car and climb into the driver’s seat, she felt the atmosphere move. Invisible but solid, thick air stepped in front of her like a large man who intended to hijack her car or snatch her purse. Her keys, hanging from her fingertips, jangled as if she’d struck something. She steadied herself with one hand on the hood of the car, bracing her surprise. She had never experienced this “leading,” as she called it, so close to another event. The effects would either pass shortly or lead her onward.
Heat like a strong arm snaked across the back of her shoulders. Audrey stepped forward to get out from under the weight. The move was reflexive, a whole-body flinch that sent her right into the invisible obstacle again. This time she was met with pressure, square and flaming over her sternum, and a crushing pain went straight to her heart. The grip on her shoulders squeezed, keeping her upright where she couldn’t escape the wounding.
The hurt was blunt and weighty, a pestle grinding in a mortar. Audrey’s lips parted and flattened, stretching out like a cry, but no sound came out of her mouth. The skin around her nose and eyes bunched up until she couldn’t see, but there were no tears. She folded at the waist, her body bending over the car just as she had drooped over Cora Jean. This connection was unwelcome, and Audrey resisted it.
The arm let her sag, all but dropped her, and she lowered her forehead onto the hood. The drill into her heart kept turning, creating a whining noise that grew louder in her own ears until it drowned out everything else on the street. No birds, no cars, no children playing on lawns or in driveways.
And then the violence stopped. The body of heat released her, and Audrey found herself breathing heavily and wondering if anyone had witnessed her bizarre behavior. Her head pounded, every blood vessel in it taxed as if she’d been wailing for hours. Audrey rested her cheek on the smooth shell of the hood and waited for her heart and lungs to find their rhythms again.
The sound of real sobbing reached her then.
Cora Jean? Audrey jerked away from the car, looking, her breathing still deep and quick. The earth tipped, then leveled out again. The muscles at the base of her neck were painful knots.
After three or four seconds she stepped back onto the curb and crossed the grassy easement to the sidewalk. The noise wasn’t coming from the Halls’ house but from somewhere down the street. She started walking, hesitant to follow the heartache, unable to do anything else.
The terrible sound pulled her toward one of the neighborhood’s nicer homes, a single-story brick house with an attached garage. The cries came from an open window at the front of the house. Audrey stepped off the sidewalk and cut directly across the lawn, getting as close to the window as the bordering juniper hedge allowed. The dirt underfoot was still soft from the rain that had escorted in winter’s final batch of fog. A sheer curtain in the window blocked her view of anyone on the other side.
“Hello?” She raised her voice. “Hello? Are you okay?”
Abrupt silence answered her.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but do you need help?”
The house in front of her was as still as her own when her husband and son were out. Audrey waited.
“Are you injured?”
She understood that she might be facing a delicate situation in which her confident desire to help someone could cause more problems than allowing that someone some privacy. But in her view, it was worse to be lonely than to be embarrassed by a good Samaritan—and even worse for her to disobey God’s clear direction—so she decided to persist at least until the person told her to stop.
“Maybe there’s someone I can call for you?” she offered.
“I know how to use a phone.” It was likely that the female speaker was the same one who had been crying. Her N sounds were nasal and stuffy. But the tone was far more irritated than grieved. As a pastor’s wife, Audrey understood the fine line between the two emotions.
“Of course you do,” Audrey said gently. “But sometimes it helps to assign tasks to other people. Take a load off your own shoulders.”
At the edge of the elevated windowpane, the curtain flickered.
“You’re trespassing.”
Audrey’s defenses went up. Her compassion had been rejected on many occasions, but never beaten back with accusations.
“That’s true, I am. I’m sorry, but I . . .” She had yet to land on an easy explanation for the experiences that led her to other people. Geoff’s position as a church leader required that Audrey’s choice of words—and confidants—be discreet. Anyone who thought she was outside of God’s will, or heretical or occult or misguided or just plain loony, would frown on her husband too. Even so, Audrey believed people deserved simple, no-frills truth. The world was so full of deceptive spin that most days she worried it might gyrate right out of orbit.
“I just sensed you could use a friend right now. My name’s Audrey and I go to Grace Springs Church. My husband’s the pastor there. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Doesn’t matter, I’m not trying to recruit anyone. Anyway, do you like fresh bread? Geoff and I bake bread as a hobby, to give it away. I’d like to give you a loaf. I have some with me in my car because I was visiting one of your neighbors before I heard you crying. I’m parked right down—”
A door slammed inside the house and the curtain rose, then sank.
Audrey waited for a minute while the juniper leaves tickled the legs of her jeans. Sometimes people came back. Sometimes they wanted relief so badly that they didn’t care if it was offered by a total stranger.
But not this time.
Audrey left the yard, returned to the sidewalk, and started walking back toward her car, thinking about the woman inside the house. She passed the mailbox on her left, and her thoughts were interrupted. Her feet took her backward two steps, and she took another look at the side of the black metal receptacle. The name MANSFIELD was applied to the box with rectangular stickers, black block letters on a gold background.
Mansfield. As in Jack Mansfield, the church elder? She glanced at the house number. She’d have to check the church directory. Mrs. Mansfield, Jack’s wife, was a math teacher at her son’s high school. Ed had her for geometry his sophomore year.
Audrey resumed walking, trying to bring up the woman’s face. They’d met once, at a school event. Mrs. Mansfield refused to attend church with Jack, and Audrey had understood this reality to be a tender bruise on the elder’s heart, maybe even on his ego.
Julie. Her name was Julie. And their daughter’s name was Miralee, which was easier for Audrey to remember because until last week, the start of spring break, her son had dated the girl for a brief time.
If that had been Miralee crying, her refusal to come out was completely understandable. And Audrey was a fool not to have realized where she was. She still wasn’t sure if the kids’ breakup had been Ed’s call or Miralee’s. Audrey’s nineteen-year-old had been so strangely tight-lipped that she assumed Miralee had broken things off. Secretly, Audrey wasn’t sad to see that relationship end, though she hated that Ed was in pain. Now, after being subjected to the sounds of the broken heart in that house, she wondered if her assumptions had been wrong.
The thought passed through her mind that she should go back, knock on the front door like a respectable friend, apologize, and get to the bottom of things. Fix what Ed had broken, if necessary, though Ed wasn’t prone to breaking very many things in life. He was a good boy. A careful boy. Man now.
Audrey looked back at the redbrick house.
A flash of light, a phantom sensation of liquid fire tearing through her body, prevented her from returning to the Mansfields’ property. She had no desire to press Miralee for details of the heartbreak. Especially not after the girl had refused.
She had done what God asked of her. This excuse propelled her back toward her car, the sunny air rich with the scent of rosemary-potato bread pushing against her face.
Audrey didn’t second-guess this decision for three months. In June the Grace Springs Church board, spurred to fury by none other than Jack Mansfield, fired her husband and barred him from seeking another post as pastor.
The story continues in The Baker's Wife.
About the Author
ERIN HEALY is the author of Never Let You Go, The Promises She Keeps, and The Baker’s Wife. She also coauthored with Ted Dekker the bestsellers Kiss and Burn. She and her family live in Colorado. Visit ErinHealy.com