Where We Belong

by Lynn Austin

  After Andrew returned and opened the crate, Rebecca dug through it, pulling out each prize and scattering packing material all over the floor. While Edmund and Timothy admired the treasures, Rebecca pulled her sister aside.

  “Can we tell Soren and Kate our decision tonight? I don’t want to wait another day. I want to start treating them as children right away and not as servants.”

  “I don’t want to wait, either. I’ll talk to Edmund. We’ll invite Kate and Soren to join us for dinner this evening, and we’ll tell them the news.”

  It took a great deal of coaxing on Flora’s part to convince Soren and Kate to sit down at the table and eat with them rather than serve them as butler and maid. “What’s going on, Rebecca?” Timothy leaned over to whisper. “Why are your butler and maid sitting with us?”

  “You’ll see.” Their servants’ uneasiness was so apparent that Flora decided not to wait until the end of the meal to tell them the news. Rebecca felt excited yet so nervous she could scarcely sit still. She had asked Flora to go first so she’d have time to gather her thoughts.

  “Edmund and I have something we want to tell you, Soren,” Flora began. “The reason you’re eating dinner with us tonight is because we no longer want you to be our servant. We want you to be our son.” Soren’s face went pale as he sank back in his chair. Rebecca thought she could hear his heart pounding from across the table, and the look of wonder and hope and disbelief on his face brought tears to Rebecca’s eyes. She had witnessed the “adoption parades” at the orphan home when the children would file past prospective parents for inspection, always wondering if this would be the day they’d find a new home. She could only imagine the thoughts that were whirling through Soren’s mind right now at finally being chosen. He seemed unable to speak.

  “I should have adopted you and Gunnar when you first came to the orphanage,” Flora continued, “but my own stubbornness prevented me from seeing what God intended. Edmund loves you as much as I do. Will you agree to be our son?”

  Soren folded his arms on the table atop his empty plate and hid his face in them. His shoulders shook as he wept. Flora and Edmund both rose to go to him, hugging his shoulders and patting his back. “What do you say?” Edmund asked. “Please say you’ll agree.” Soren looked up, his face wet with tears, and nodded.

  “There’s more,” Rebecca said, unwilling to wait a moment longer. She turned to Kate, who looked stunned and confused by what had just happened. “Kate, you remind me of myself, full of contradictions,” she began. “You aren’t a very good lady’s maid, but you’re an excellent assistant and friend. I would like to adopt you as my daughter. I believe we could have a very interesting life together.”

  Kate’s eyes went wide with fear as she shook her head. “No. . . . No, you can’t do that. You know I’m a thief—”

  “You were a thief,” Rebecca interrupted. “Your past doesn’t matter anymore. We all forgive you, and God will, too, if you ask.”

  “But you don’t know all the other things I did,” she said, still shaking her head.

  “I don’t need to know, although you’re welcome to tell me if it will make you feel better.”

  “No, I can’t! And I can’t be your daughter. . . . I’m not good enough!” She stood, nearly upsetting her chair, and ran from the room.

  “Excuse me.” Rebecca also rose. “Please, go ahead and eat.” She followed Kate all the way up to her room on the third floor and was breathless by the time she reached it. The irony wasn’t lost on Rebecca that both of the people she loved—Kate and Timothy—were refusing to accept grace and a brand-new life. Kate’s door was open, and she was lying facedown on her bed, sobbing. Rebecca sat on the edge beside her and stroked her beautiful red hair for a few moments before speaking. “I don’t need to know your past, Kate. It won’t change my mind about wanting you for my daughter. You can tell everything to God and ask Him to forgive you, and He will. That’s why Jesus died for you.”

  Kate’s sobs gradually died away. At last she rolled over and sat up to face Rebecca, wiping her tears as they continued to fall. “You need to know the truth about me. The reason I came here to Evanston to work for you was so I could hide out. There’s a man named Joe who got me out of jail after I got caught trying to steal a purse, and now he’s looking for me. He said he owns me, and he tried to make me work in his brothel, but I ran away. He says he has policemen and even judges who work for him, and if they find me I’ll be in a lot of trouble. That’s why I wanted to go on the trip to the desert with you. I needed to get as far away from Joe as possible.”

  The load of fear and guilt that Kate had been carrying stunned Rebecca. She could have cheerfully murdered this “Joe” with her bare hands for putting an eighteen-year-old girl through such an ordeal. “You should have told me sooner, Kate. Flora and I have lawyers who can take care of problems like this.”

  “How? If Joe finds me he’ll beat me and take me back to his brothel!”

  “There must be a record of your arrest. My lawyers can find out the name of the person who bailed you out and paid your fine. Once we have Joe’s full name, we can go after him. It’s against the law for policemen and judges to take bribes, not to mention against the law for Joe to operate a brothel. He’s the one who will be on the run, not you. I assure you, Kate, you don’t need to live in fear a single day longer.”

  Kate stared at her as if afraid to believe that what she was saying was true. “Why would you do all this for me?”

  “Because I’ve grown to love you, and I want you to become all that God created you to be. I believe you’d make a wonderful daughter.” Rebecca took a chance and pulled Kate into her arms. Tears of joy filled her eyes when Kate hugged her in return.

  At last they pulled apart, and Rebecca handed Kate her lace handkerchief. “When we come to Christ, our past is forgiven, and we get a brand-new start. That’s the way it will be for you, too. From now on, your name will be Kate Hawes. All of this is yours,” she said gesturing to the room. “You no longer have to sleep on the third floor. You may choose any bedroom you’d like. Tomorrow you can help me develop the photographs, and we’ll see how they came out. You were so good at handling ancient manuscripts that I know you could continue doing that kind of work, if you’d like. Professor Dyk and I have talked about starting an institute for ancient Near Eastern studies once the University of Chicago is up and running. John D. Rockefeller is interested in supporting it, and I would like to as well. . . . But I’m getting way ahead of myself, aren’t I?” she said with a laugh. “The question is, will you allow me to adopt you, Kate? Will you be my daughter?”

  Kate nodded and fell into her arms again, crying as if she might never stop. Rebecca thought of all the wonderful moments in her life—traveling the world, seeing the pyramids, falling in love with Timothy, finding the ancient codex with the Gospels—and knew that this moment was one of the very sweetest.

  “It’s official,” she said when she and Kate had dried their tears and splashed water on their faces and rejoined the others in the dining room. “We’re a family now.” Her smile faded when she noticed that Timothy’s place at the table was empty, his chair pushed away. “Where’s Timothy?” she asked.

  Edmund’s expression looked pained. “He asked us to convey his apologies. He said he needed to leave.”

  “Did he say why?” Rebecca asked. Edmund shook his head. She reached for Kate’s hand and squeezed it as her heart seemed to break in two.

  Chapter 33

  Rebecca huddled in the basement darkroom with Soren and Kate, developing the pictures they’d taken in the Sinai. “Look how perfect this one is,” she said, holding up the finished photograph. “I’m thrilled that they came out so well. And the academic community will be pleased, too.” So far, all of the photographs they had developed looked perfect, the underwriting visible enough to translate. “Let’s quit for today,” she said, switching off the light. They could only work in the darkroom for a short time before the odor of the
pungent chemicals drove them upstairs again. It was going to take a long time to process the hundreds of pictures of the codex, but there was no reason to hurry. More than a week had passed since Timothy walked away, and Rebecca had heard nothing from him. Even so, the newfound Gospels would prove invaluable to scholars and other skeptics, if not to Timothy.

  Rebecca had kept busy with plenty of other work besides developing the photographs. She’d spent time searching for the right venue to publish the catalogue of works in the monastery library. She’d begun an outline of the book she planned to write about the palimpsest she’d found, along with her own conclusions. She’d gone downtown to Flora’s office to speak with their lawyers about hiring a Pinkerton investigator to locate “Joe” and make certain he was sent to jail where he belonged. And most important, she and Flora and Edmund had gone to the Cook County Circuit Court with Soren and Kate to begin the adoption process.

  “I think we should all travel to Cambridge next year,” Rebecca said as they climbed up from the basement darkroom. “There’s a specialist there who can help me confirm the date of our Gospels.”

  “Do they have camels in Cambridge?” Kate asked. “And sheikhs? Because if so, I think I’ll stay home.”

  “No,” Rebecca laughed. “Cambridge is in England, where Edmund is from. It’s a very civilized place, I assure you.” They had just reached the top of the stairs when the pounding of the front door knocker echoed through the foyer.

  “I’ll see who it is,” Soren said. He still hadn’t broken his habit of attending to visitors who came to their door. They hadn’t hired a new butler yet, but knowing Flora, she would be bringing a candidate home from the orphanage any day now. Rebecca let Soren answer it while she went into the kitchen in the rear of the house to ask the cook for a cup of tea.

  “I’ll bring it to you in your study when it’s ready, Miss Rebecca,” the cook said. Rebecca pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen to the hallway, then froze when she heard a familiar voice coming from the foyer.

  Timothy.

  Her heart began to thump painfully. She didn’t think she could bear to see him face-to-face yet. She needed more time to heal. She had tried a dozen times to write him a letter and say all of the things that were on her heart, but each attempt had ended up wadded into a ball and tossed into her wastebasket. She held her breath, praying that Soren wouldn’t tell him she was home or invite him in. She inched closer so she could hear what Timothy and Soren were saying, and was surprised to hear a third voice joining the conversation—Kate’s.

  “You listen to me, Professor,” Kate said. “Miss Rebecca . . . I mean my mother . . . went to the ends of the earth for you! We know exactly what she lived through because we lived through it, too! We rode on two trains and three different ships just to get to the Sinai Desert. Then we had to ride on camels. Did you ever ride on a camel, Professor? Because if you had, believe me, you’d know how much Miss Rebecca loves you! So you’d better not tell me that the Bible she found doesn’t convince you to believe.”

  Rebecca smiled as she closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, out of sight. She could easily picture Kate standing with her hands on her hips as she fearlessly confronted Timothy. Poor man. No wonder he seemed to be speechless. Then soft-spoken Soren joined in the argument, surprising Rebecca.

  “Professor Dyk, I want you to know that I became a believer out there in the Sinai, and it wasn’t because of the book we found. I’ve been going to church with the sisters ever since I came to work for them, but the stories they told there and in Sunday school seemed like fairy tales to me. Then we got stranded out in the desert with a crazy sheikh who liked to fire off his rifle and scare everybody half to death, and I no longer saw a religion, I saw faith—just like in the Bible. We were completely helpless out there, but God protected us.”

  “It’s true,” Kate said. “There were times when I was scared out of my mind, but the sisters weren’t. You’d never see any other fine ladies like them traveling all alone to the middle of nowhere like that, but the reason they’re fearless is because they trust God. They would make us join hands and pray whenever we got into trouble, and you know what? I didn’t think God could possibly come through for us, but He did. He even gave the sheikh a baby boy because Miss Flora and Miss Rebecca prayed.”

  “God answered their prayers for Mr. Edmund, too,” Soren continued. “He got better when the doctors thought for sure he would die. But it wasn’t just the fact that he didn’t die that convinced me to believe. It was because Mr. Edmund wasn’t afraid to die. It’s like the sisters always say, ‘God knows when the hour of our end will be.’ And Mr. Edmund told me that whether he lived or died, he still believed that God loves him.”

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Kate said the moment Soren paused. “They could have left me out there with the sheikh in order to save their own lives, but they didn’t. I’ve seen a lot of bad people in my life, greedy people who wanted to hand me over to men like the sheikh because they only cared about themselves. But I’ve never seen people like Miss Flora and Miss Rebecca. I want to be just like them. They’ll tell you that they’re the way they are because they know Jesus. Then I guess I want to know Him, too.”

  Rebecca covered her mouth to hold back a sob. She wished her sister could hear what Soren and Kate were saying. Flora was going to dance for joy when Rebecca told her.

  “Most rich ladies don’t have time for people like Kate and me,” Soren said, “or those poor, raggedy children in Sunday school and at the orphanage. Most people turn away and walk in the other direction when they see us coming. But Miss Flora and Miss Rebecca look us right in the eye and tell us that God loves us—and then they show us that it’s true by loving us themselves.”

  “You know, a smart man like you should stop and think,” Kate said. Once again, Rebecca could picture her with her hands on her hips and her chin jutting forward in that cocky stance of hers. “The sisters have everything in the world. They could sit here in their mansion like queens and let people wait on them all day. But they don’t. Miss Flora goes to the orphanage and over to the rotten parts of town, and then she spends the rest of her time in her office figuring out how to give her money away to people who no one else cares about, because that’s what Jesus would do if He were as rich as she is. And Miss Rebecca—my mother—travels to dangerous places to study, then spends hours and hours writing books so she can convince smart people like you that there really is a God who loves you.”

  “Kate’s right, that’s the point of everything they do. They want everyone to know that God exists and that He loves us. I’ve been hearing in church how Jesus came and died for us so that all the bad things we’ve done could be forgiven and we could become God’s children. But it never made sense to me until the sisters did the same things for us. Kate and I both spent time in jail, yet they rescued us. We had nothing to offer but a pile of troubles—” Soren’s voice broke, and he had to pause for a moment. “And yet they adopted us as their son and daughter. Everything they own is now ours. Can’t you see that it’s not a fairy tale? That it’s the gospel story?”

  “If you don’t believe that the Bible is true, Professor, then you may be a smart man but you’re a fool. And you’re going to miss out on a whole lot more than just marrying my mother.”

  No one spoke for a long moment. Rebecca longed to know what Timothy was thinking. She waited, holding her breath until he finally broke the silence.

  “I-I don’t know what to say.” No one else seemed to know, either, and there was another long pause. “I-I came to speak with Rebecca . . . if she’ll see me. Do you think she—?”

  “I’m right here, Timothy,” she said stepping from the shadows.

  Timothy’s eyes shone with tears. He looked as though he had just survived a windstorm and needed to sit down. He looked from Kate to Soren and back to Kate again, as if expecting them to say something more. Then he turned to Rebecca. “My dear,” he said in a hushed voice. “I believe
I’ve just encountered my burning bush.”

  Rebecca went to him and took him into her arms, silently praising God.

  Epilogue

  CHICAGO

  CHRISTMAS EVE 1890

  Soren sat in Gunnar’s parlor, watching his brother play on the floor with the toy train he had bought him for Christmas. Soren had just finished telling him about his adventures in the Sinai Desert—how he’d seen the ancient pyramids of Egypt, ridden on a camel, and eaten dinner with a Bedouin sheikh.

  “That was quite a trip you took, young man,” Gunnar’s father said from his chair near the fireplace. He puffed on his cigar, blowing fragrant smoke throughout the room.

  “Tell it again!” Gunnar begged.

  Soren laughed and ruffled Gunnar’s hair. “I think once is enough for today. Next summer I’ll be going on a trip to England, so I’ll have lots of new stories to tell you when I get back. We’re all going this time, even my new father, Mr. Edmund. And the professor is going, too, now that he and Miss Rebecca are married.” He was supposed to call them Aunt Becky and Uncle Timothy, but Soren still wasn’t used to the new names. “I have a cousin named Kate who’s coming on the trip, too.”

  “Is she a girl?” Gunnar asked. “I have three cousins and one of them is a girl. She gets real mad when we tease her.”

  “My cousin has a temper, too. But Kate and I are learning to get along. She spends most of her time studying with Aunt Becky and Uncle Timothy because she never went to school, and she’s trying to catch up.” Kate had calmed down a lot now that she didn’t have to worry about Joe anymore. He was in jail where he belonged, and he would never know that Kate was the one who had put him there.

  “Can you come here and live with me now?” Gunnar asked, climbing up to sit on Soren’s lap.