A Stranger's Gift (Women of Pinecraft)

by Anna Schmidt

  “I thought as much.” Her lips thinned into the familiar judgmental line Hester knew so well. “Do not let this opportunity pass you by, Hester Detlef. You are not a young woman anymore. Your prospects are limited. Trust me, I know. If you love the man and there’s any possibility at all that he has feelings for you, then you must take the initiative.”

  Okay. This has to be the anesthetic from the surgery talking. “Olive, would you like a little water to—”

  “Oh, don’t patronize me, Hester. I promised Sarah that I would make sure that you didn’t give your entire life over to caring for others to the detriment of your own happiness. Well, I have failed miserably at that vow until now. But seeing you with John the other night, I accepted that God had sent this young man to you and that it was my responsibility to see that you didn’t miss the only opportunity you may have to marry and have a family of your own.”

  “I’m not quite that desperate,” Hester said tightly. “I mean, I do have male friends, and I do go out now and again.”

  “For work, always for some project you’ve dreamed up,” Olive said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We are speaking of love here, and either you speak up now or forever hold your peace, as the saying goes.”

  Hester had the sudden thought that they were not really talking about her but perhaps about Olive’s unrequited love for Arlen. “Olive, once John sells his property, there’s no telling what he will do. He might even decide to go back to Indiana.”

  “Then it is up to you to see that he doesn’t. If you love him, and he returns that love—”

  “And that is the question, isn’t it?” Hester said.

  Olive’s mouth worked to find a retort and came up empty. She closed her eyes and feigned sleep.

  Hester smiled and got up to stretch her back. She walked out into the hallway and heard the ding of the elevator bell and then the whisper of the sliding doors and looked up to see John coming her way. Without hesitation she went to meet him, not caring whether he returned her feelings or not but wanting only to bask a moment in the warmth of his smile.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I came to find you. I have some news.”

  “You sold the property,” she guessed. He nodded and her heart fell. “That’s—”

  “To Zeke’s brother, Malcolm.”

  “Malcolm Shepherd bought Tucker’s Point.”

  “Not to develop. He’s going to fund Rainbow House.”

  “But when I met with him, he seemed so underwhelmed with the whole idea. He asked me a lot of questions, and not once did he show the slightest enthusiasm for the project.”

  “Well, you must have said something right. He’s going to establish the Rainbow House Foundation and use the house as the headquarters. You can stay, Hester. Everything can go on just as it is now.”

  She could hardly believe what he was telling her. She had prayed so hard for God to find a way for them to make the project a success, and now her prayers had been heard and answered. With no regard for the bustling throngs of medical personnel and patients and visitors moving up and down the corridor, she let out a squeal and leapt up to wrap her arms around John’s neck. He spun her around.

  “Stop that,” Olive ordered.

  But as soon as John set her back on her feet, Hester grabbed his hand and pulled him into Olive’s room. She just had to share the news. Then Agnes appeared at the door, so they had to repeat the story again. “And John’s been asked to be the director of the foundation. You can have an office right there in the house and live upstairs,” she told him. “And maybe there would even be room for me to set up a free clinic,” she said. “And in time—”

  “So that inappropriate display of affection just now was because of the sale of your land, John Steiner?” Olive demanded. “Not because you proposed to this young woman?”

  Hester’s face felt as if it might melt under the sudden heat of her embarrassment.

  “I was getting to that, Miss Crowder,” John said. “Although I had thought to make the occasion something a little more inviting than a hospital room.”

  Olive snorted derisively while Agnes clapped her hands together and beamed.

  “On the other hand, there’s no time like the present, right?” John dropped to one knee as he held both of Hester’s hands in his own. “Marry me, Hester Detlef.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Olive groaned.

  John ignored her. “I love you, Hester,” he continued. “And with God’s blessing, perhaps someday you will come to care for me in that way as well. But for now …”

  Hester pulled one hand free and stroked his hair away from his forehead. “Get up, John,” she said softly.

  “First answer the question. Will you marry me?” he asked again.

  She felt tears leak down her cheeks. “No,” she whispered and fled the room.

  Outside the hospital, Hester stopped, uncertain of where to go or what to do or how to think of the incredible string of events she’d just experienced. Her elation over the eleventh-hour rescue of the Rainbow House had been short-lived when John had suddenly announced his intention to propose marriage and then had actually done so. Was he making fun of her?

  Of course, he had no idea what her feelings were—but still. Surely in his giddiness over the sale and the possibility that he might be offered a position that would support him, he had only thought to make Olive and Agnes laugh with his silly antics. His social skills had never been fine-tuned, especially after he’d spent over two years living as a near hermit. Maybe he’d thought she would join in the joke. But it was a cruel joke, and she had never thought him to be a cruel man. Stubborn, immovable on certain issues, but never intentionally cruel.

  For she knew—had known but not admitted—that she loved him. She fled through the hospital lobby and out to the street. In minutes she found herself at the corner of Highway 41 and Bahia Vista. To her right was Pinecraft. She considered going home and letting her father console her, but her unhappiness would only make him feel bad as well. So she turned left and walked to Orange Avenue and then past the parking entrance to the botanical gardens and around the corner to the little beach that led into the bay.

  Without bothering to remove her shoes, she waded into the calm shallow waters, uncaring of the way her skirt was getting soaked with salt water and would show the stains once it dried. Far more important was the fact that it was low tide and the exposed mud flats stretched out all around her. She could walk all the way out to the clam beds in water that never rose higher than her ankles. And she had the place to herself. There were a few boats anchored offshore, but the only sounds she heard once she moved downshore from the beach were the clinking of metal riggings against masts and the call of shorebirds as they strutted about collecting their afternoon meal.

  “How can you possibly love him, Hester Detlef? You have known this man for a matter of maybe three months, and for much of that time you thought he was the most …”

  And yet, presented with even the suggestion that they might make a life together, she had begun to think that it might actually become a reality. When she had seen him coming down the hospital corridor, his smile meant only for her, how her heart had sung with joy at the sight of him. She had practically run to him.

  “Fool.” She bit off the word and splashed on toward the clam beds, hoping that at least one of her favorite horse conches would be feeding there. Their sunset-colored bodies always made her smile, and right now she needed anything that might take away the bitterness she was feeling toward men in general and John Steiner in particular. At least here she didn’t have to encounter the man, didn’t have to think about what she might say to him the next time they—

  “Hester!”

  She turned long enough to see John leaning the bicycle that Zeke had brought him against a stretch of wire fencing and kicking off his shoes before he splashed into the bay and tried to cover the distance between them.

  “Go away,” she shout
ed and pressed on toward the clam beds.

  “We need to talk,” he replied and then grunted as he almost lost his balance and then righted himself and kept coming.

  “You’re going to cut your feet, and I am not in the mood to patch you up. Just go away, please.” “No.”

  “You are without a doubt the single most obstinate human being I have ever known,” she grumbled.

  “Well, at last we have something in common, Hester, because that goes double for you.” He had come even with her now and dogged her steps as she moved on. “Why won’t you marry me?”

  “Because you don’t really want to marry me. It was sweet of you to want to entertain Olive and Agnes, but I get it that you proposed on a whim. Olive embarrassed you into it, and I certainly won’t hold you to it.”

  “And maybe—just maybe—I meant it when I told you I love you.” His tone was gentle so that the words came at her not as another jab of their argument but as more of a caress.

  “How do you know?” She fought against the flutter of fresh hope that stirred within and bent to pick up a small, perfectly striped banded tulip shell.

  “Because when I look to the future, I can’t imagine meeting the challenges ahead without you there with me. Because, other than my mother, you are the only woman I’ve known who is strong enough to admit that she had dreams of her own.”

  “I’m not your mother.”

  “I’m not looking for a mother. I had the best. I’m looking for a wife, Hester, a partner I can share life with.”

  “Sounds like starting up a business,” she grumbled, but inside she was holding his words close to her heart.

  “It’s a marriage, Hester, a sacred union.”

  They waded through the water side by side for another ten yards until they reached the clam beds. “Careful here. The edges of the shells are sharp.”

  He stayed where he was as she picked her way to an open spot and bent to pick up a large shell. “Hi there,” she said softly as she turned the blackened shell over and was surprised when the coiled resident of the shell did not snake back inside and close its aperture to keep danger out. Instead, the creature stretched its sunrise-orange body outward, as if welcoming her. “Look,” she murmured, holding the shell up so that John could share in this rare display of God’s wondrous creation.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, and then as she bent to replace the shell on its feeding ground, he added, “But not half as beautiful as you are, Hester.”

  It was not the way of her people or his to offer such compliments. They came from plain stock, simple people who found beauty in serving God. And yet she could not help but rejoice that this man whom she had come to love found her pretty.

  “We should get back,” she said softly as she picked her way around the sharp edges of the clams until she was standing with him on a sandbar. “By now no doubt Olive has spread the word of the debacle she witnessed.”

  She turned to go, but he stopped her by taking her hand and weaving his fingers between hers. Then he lifted both their hands to his lips and kissed hers. “Hester, I believe that everything that has happened for me these last two years has been leading me to this moment, to you. I believe that God has brought us to each other. I know that separately we can each do good, but together just think what we might accomplish.” He touched her cheek. “I love you.”

  She looked up at him and saw in his gaze what she knew she could not hide in her own. She loved him, and in that moment she saw as clearly as if she were gazing into a mirror that he did indeed return that love. “Marry me,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  And when he kissed her, she knew that he had been right, that this was right and that God had indeed led two strangers to find each other so that they might travel the rest of the way together.

  ANNA SCHMIDT is the author of more than twenty works of fiction. Among her many honors, Anna is the recipient of the Romantic Times’ Reviewer’s Choice Award and a finalist for the RITA award for romantic fiction. She enjoys gardening and collecting seashells at her winter home in Florida. To contact Anna, visit her website at www.booksbyanna.com.

  Return to Pinecraft in May 2012

  for the story of sisters Emma and Jeannie in

  A Sister’s Forgiveness

  a story of family, forgiveness, and redemption.