All God's Promises (A Prairie Heritage Book 7)

by Vikki Kestell

  “I was pretty let down. So when we came to Rose’s room, I refused to open the door. I didn’t want to be disillusioned further. I stood in the hall and told myself that I would imagine the room the way Rose had described it in her journal.

  “I leaned against her door and sort of started talking to Rose—as if she were in the room on the other side of the door. I know that sounds odd, but I told her I wished she could have been there to tell me about her Jesus. I think it was the first time I had admitted to myself that I wanted to know Jesus like Rose knew him.”

  Kari’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And that’s when . . . Jesus spoke to me. He told me he was waiting for me to open the door between us. Behold I stand at the door and knock, he said. I didn’t know that was actually a Scripture verse. I only knew that he was calling me to surrender my life to him.

  “And I did.”

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 4

  NO ONE AT THE TABLE MOVED OR SPOKE. The waiter approached, but Anthony waved him away. The moment was too holy to be disturbed.

  Finally, Kari whispered, “That dim hallway in Palmer House filled up . . . with Jesus. I could not stand under the weight of his presence. Alannah felt him, too. We both sank to our knees, and wept for the beauty of it, the majesty of Jesus’ . . . holiness, I guess. All I knew was that when I cried out to Rose that I wanted to know her Jesus, he answered me! He said, I am here. And when I surrendered, I could feel him working inside me. He was washing all the ugly, dirty parts of me away.

  “After a while, Alannah and I got up and went downstairs, but I knew I would never be the same. Rose’s Jesus was now my Jesus. He is my Jesus now.”

  Kari’s tear-stained face turned toward Anthony. “So you see, dear Anthony, I don’t regret knocking on the door of Palmer House—although things got stranger still.”

  Anthony nodded, but Kari’s last words seemed to snap them out of their hush.

  “What things, Kari?” Gloria asked. “Stranger how?”

  Kari sighed and gathered her thoughts. “In order to keep my ‘tale’ manageable, I need to leave a lot of detail out. I’ll skip ahead and say that, a few days later, Quan suggested I leave Denver to go visit Rose’s homestead in Nebraska! I say ‘suggested,’ but it was a pretty strong suggestion.”

  “Homestead?” Anthony and Gloria were confused.

  “Yes. Alannah and others told me more about Rose. Apparently, many years before she moved to Denver, Rose had bought an abandoned homestead in Nebraska. That’s where she met her husband, Jan Thoresen, Joy’s father.”

  “You pronounce ‘Thoresen’ differently now,” Ruth observed.

  Kari chuckled. “Oh, yes! Mixxie set me straight. Apparently the ‘Th’ is pronounced ‘T’ and ‘Jan’ is pronounced ‘Yahn.’ Mixxie was quick to point out my errors.”

  Ruth quirked one eyebrow. “She sounds charming.”

  “Our Mixxie is something else, believe me. Anyway, Quan gave me directions to RiverBend, the little town near Rose’s homestead. He said that lots of Thoresens still lived nearby and would be delighted to tell me more about Rose. He went so far as to arrange for me to stay with the part of the family living on Jan Thoresen’s old homestead. Said they were looking forward to meeting me.”

  Kari directed a look toward Ruth. “That struck me as odd, you know? Why would these complete strangers want to meet me?”

  “Why, indeed,” Ruth murmured.

  Anthony’s forehead creased in puzzlement and disquiet. “So you went? To stay with total strangers?”

  Kari nodded.

  “Mija,” Gloria whispered, “Even I can understand Anthony’s concern. You are a very wealthy woman now. Was that wise?”

  Kari looked down. “Perhaps it wasn’t wise, but I think if you had met Quan and Shan-Rose and Alannah and the others you might have felt differently, as I did. It may not have been wise, but it was God. This family, these people, they love the Lord with all their hearts. They . . . I felt safe with them. I felt welcome. Loved, even.”

  Ruth, Gloria, and Anthony looked at each other.

  Ruth responded, “So you felt safe taking Quan’s ‘suggestion’ to visit Rose’s homestead?”

  “I did. I was confused as to why they were so insistent, of course, but never for a moment did I feel used or in danger.”

  “Go on,” Anthony asked.

  “So I went and I met a man named Søren—Jan Thoresen’s great-great-grandson—and Søren’s little boy, Max. Max’s mother is dead, and Søren’s sister, Ilsa, runs the home now. Søren and Ilsa showed me a wall of photographs of the Thoresen families. Jan and his brother, Karl, came from Norway to America in 1866—and their descendants number in the hundreds now.

  “The best parts of the wall for me were the pictures of Rose and Joy. There were only a few, but to see Rose’s face was priceless. As I looked in her eyes, it was like I knew her.”

  Anthony expelled a breath. “Well, no harm, no foul. It looks like you came through your adventure unscathed—and actually for the better! I’m so glad you know Jesus for yourself now, Kari.”

  Kari’s mouth curved into a slow, mischievous grin. “Oh, I haven’t finished my story yet, Anthony. Not by a long shot. Shall I go on?”

  “Yes!” Ruth and Gloria said together.

  “I stayed with Søren and Ilsa for the rest of the week. Actually, I couldn’t leave because my Caddy had met with an accident. So I was ‘stuck’ on the farm until the neighborhood mechanic could get me on the road again.”

  Kari laughed. “I learned a lot about farming that week, let me tell you! I got up before dawn every morning and helped Max with all his chores, then I helped Ilsa can and cook. It was quite the learning experience. And I got to see Rose’s old homestead, across the creek from Søren’s farm. It was a pleasant time, actually. But that next Friday was when everything unfolded.”

  The waiter appeared again. He frowned at Kari’s untouched meal “Was your meal unsatisfactory? May I get you something else?”

  “Uh, no; I couldn’t eat and talk at the same time. Would you box it up for me? And if you’ll clear things away and bring us coffee, we would like to sit and talk a while longer.”

  “Of course.” Taking Kari’s hint, he said nothing further and went about his business while Kari continued her story.

  “That Friday, after I’d been with Søren and Ilsa for a week, they announced that they were hosting a family reunion of sorts. With only that much warning, a horde of Thoresens and the families I mentioned in Denver descended upon us! Cars, RVs, trailers, and vans full of people. They set up a tent on the lawn like you’d expect to see at a big wedding. And food? Food, food, and more food—because as the day moved on, the crowd grew until a couple hundred people were milling around on the lawn—and they all wanted to meet me. So strange!

  “That evening, Søren took me into their living room and introduced me to three old gents who were, as he explained, Joy Thoresen Michaels’ sons from her second marriage. I knew from what I’d been told in Denver that her first husband, Grant, had died, and that Joy had remarried. These three men were her children.”

  Ruth, Anthony, and Gloria grew alarmed when Kari broke down.

  “What is it, Kari?” Ruth whispered.

  “I-I looked around, and my attorney, Clover, from New Orleans was there, too! So was his wife, Lorene. And Owen, Brunell & Brunell’s investigator. I was so confused, but Søren asked me to trust them. Clover said everything would be all right.”

  Anthony muttered, “What in the world . . .”

  “I know! I was so confused! Søren introduced me to Joy’s sons, and they stared at me like I was an apparition and asked to see Rose’s journal. Matthew, the oldest of the three, said they would not take her journal from me, so I brought it to them.”

  “That blamed journal!” Anthony was growling again.

  “Yes. But the journal was the key to everything, the thread by which God led me and accomplished his purposes.” Kari’s voice was so low that the
others strained toward her to catch her words.

  “Matthew said that he and his brothers had some of Rose’s family history to relate to me. He seemed sad, but when I looked in his eyes, they were so kind that I decided to trust him. I said all right, so Matthew told me.”

  Kari had to stop while the waiter placed steaming cups of coffee in front of the four of them.

  “Told you what?” Ruth demanded as soon as the waiter left.

  Kari massaged her temples. “First Matthew asked me if Rose’s journal had said anything about the father of Mei-Xing’s baby. I said, yes, that he had kidnapped Mei-Xing—and months later when she had been found, he was dead, and Mei-Xing was pregnant.”

  “My head is spinning,” Anthony muttered.

  “Mine, too,” Gloria agreed.

  “You think your head is spinning? How do you think I felt?”

  Kari spent five minutes introducing them to Su-Chong Chen, his mother, Fang-Hua Chen, Pinkerton detective, Edmund O’Dell, and Mei-Xing’s “backstory.”

  “Some of the details are still a muddle to me, but I think the gist of it is this: After Mr. O’Dell found Mei-Xing and brought her back to Palmer House, and after she had her baby, Mr. O’Dell worried that this nasty Fang-Hua woman might try to take Shan-Rose. Shan-Rose was, after all, Fang-Hua’s granddaughter. So Mr. O’Dell took the precaution of assigning guards to Mei-Xing and Palmer House.”

  “But all this happened years ago, Kari! What does it matter at this point?” Ruth said what Anthony and Gloria had to be thinking.

  Kari smiled through her tears. “As it turns out, it matters a lot. Matthew told me that on April 12, 1911, Rose put Shan-Rose and Edmund side-by-side in a baby buggy and took them for a walk in the park. She had two armed guards with her.

  “Rose took her journal and her Bible with her. She wrote the last entry in her journal while at the park with the babies.”

  Kari sobbed and covered her mouth with her hand. She had to stop to gather herself. “As Rose was leaving the park, four men hired by Fang-Hua attacked Rose and her guards. In broad daylight! Fang-Hua’s men shot and killed Rose’s guards. They shot Rose.”

  “What? No!” Ruth’s mouth hung open. “They shot Rose?”

  “Matthew said Rose survived the shooting. But the men Fang-Hua hired kidnapped—” Kari stumbled to a stop, the words stuck in her throat.

  Ruth, Gloria, and Anthony slid anxious looks toward each other, but it was Anthony who verbalized their questions. “They kidnapped Shan-Rose. But they recovered her, yes? I mean, you met her in Denver only days ago, right?”

  “No, that’s not what happened,” Kari whispered. “This is the hard part. Those men made a terrible mistake. Apparently, the kidnappers thought Fang-Hua’s grandchild was a boy. They didn’t take Shan-Rose; they took Edmund. They took Joy’s baby son, Rose’s grandson.”

  “Oh! O Lord Jesus!” Ruth exclaimed.

  “Yes, the men who took baby Edmund made a mistake, but their boss, Dean Morgan, the man Fang-Hua hired to oversee the job, hated Joy. I guess they had a history—I’m a little fuzzy on this part—but the upshot is that Morgan despised Joy.

  “Anyway, when his men messed up, Morgan decided to take revenge on Joy. He took Edmund and drove away from Denver, never to be seen again. He drove from Denver . . . all the way to New Orleans.”

  Ruth’s whisper was scarcely audible. “New Orleans? But . . .”

  Kari lifted her eyes to her friend. “When he arrived in New Orleans, Morgan took on a new name and new identity, that of Peter Granger. He raised Edmund as his nephew, Michael Granger. My father.”

  Ruth grasped Kari’s hand. Anthony muttered something to himself in Spanish. Gloria looked from face to face.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. “I don’t understand! What does it mean?”

  Kari could not answer right away. Ruth handed her a tissue and Kari accepted it with a grimace. “The kidnappers inadvertently swept up Rose’s journal in the baby’s blanket. Peter Granger—the man also known as Dean Morgan—had to have found and kept it. He was the one who placed the journal in the trunk in the garage.”

  She dabbed at her eyes. “Can you understand why I couldn’t tell you everything over the phone? Why I waited until I had you all together?”

  Ruth bobbed her head. “Don’t give it another thought, Chica. This is all quite a lot to take in. So many . . . implications.”

  “It has been twelve days since they told me,” Kari agreed. “I am still trying to grasp all the ‘implications.’”

  “So Joy’s son Edmund grew up as Michael Granger and is your father? You are certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “His mother was Rose’s daughter, Joy?”

  Kari smiled through more tears. “Yes. Joy is my grandmother and Rose is my great-grandmother!”

  Anthony interjected, “Wait a minute. How can you be sure? How can your attorneys be sure? How can they be certain this isn’t some elaborate hoax, a plan to rob you of your inheritance?”

  Kari sobered before she answered. “I have grown to trust my attorney, Clover Brunell, and he knew Peter Granger personally. When Clover was shown mug shots of Dean Morgan from his stint in jail in 1910, he positively identified him as Peter Granger. There is no doubt at all. But Anthony, there is more.”

  “More? I’m not sure I can handle ‘more’—my head is about to explode as it is!”

  Kari sat up straighter in her chair. “But this is where I will need you, Anthony, because as crazy as all this sounds, what I’m about to tell you is crazier.”

  Now Kari’s pace quickened. “I have left out many of the details, but I spent that weekend meeting all of my family—my uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins galore. It was overwhelming, to say the least. Then, everyone left and it was just Søren, Ilsa, Max, and me again, on the farm. I felt like I would have the time to sort of think about and absorb all the ramifications, you know?”

  Kari turned to Ruth. “You remember my recurring nightmare. The panic attacks.”

  Ruth tucked her chin, acknowledging Kari.

  Kari addressed all of them, her intensity growing. “All my life I have had the same dream, a horrible dream from which I always awoke before it finished. In the nightmare a dark curtain came down between me and something that was hidden, something important. Well, I know what the dream was hiding now—what I had not been able to remember since I was a child.

  “After everyone left the family reunion, I had the dream again—only this time the curtain was ripped away and I saw what it was hiding.

  “The night my parents died, our car broke down on the side of Route 66 between Gallup and Grants. Before they tried to fix the car, Mommy and Daddy took me off the side of the road into a field.

  “That’s where I was when the truck hit my parents. I saw it, but when the police came, I was traumatized. I could not speak. But now I remember what happened. In that last dream, I saw it again and I remembered.

  “I remembered that my parents set me on the side of the road with my little sister and baby brother. Mommy and Daddy told me to watch over them.”

  Ruth gasped, and Kari turned toward her.

  “I have a sister and a brother, Ruth. They were with me, off the side of the road in the weeds, when the truck hit Mommy and Daddy. I remember now what happened. We believe they were taken away, adopted illegally—sold by a woman, a social worker, we think.”

  She stared across the table. “That’s what I need you for, Anthony. I need you to find my sister and brother.”

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 5

  KARI SPENT THE REST OF THE EVENING and the next morning at Anthony’s office going over her story with him while he took exhaustive notes. By lunchtime, he recapped the only clues he had to go on.

  “Your parents were missionaries who returned to the United States on sabbatical in October of 1958. They died October 8, 1958, only a week into their sabbatical. Your sister and brother were born on the mission field, which is why Owen
Washington never found a record of their birth. Your sister, Elaine, is approximately three years younger than you, and your brother, Samuel, was an infant, making him about six years younger than you.”

  “Yes; and I recall part of the social worker’s name tag,” Kari reminded him. “First name, Marge, last name starting with an S.”

  “That really is the only usable bit of information we have,” Anthony admitted, “If . . .”

  “If?”

  “If your memories can be trusted.”

  Kari flushed. “How many New Mexico social workers named Marge can there be on that exact date? Either there was one, or there wasn’t.”

  “Calm down, Kari. If there was a Marge S working for a state or county agency, I promise I will find her—I will start today. And you wish me to work with Owen Washington from your attorney’s office?”

  Kari sighed. “I apologize, Anthony. Yes. I believe my attorneys will allow him to work exclusively for me when I tell them the situation. He has a large number of connections around the country who may help us. In any case, I will throw all my resources into this search—whatever the cost.”

  “Good to know. Searching records—particularly old ones—and finding the people who were working in the social services bureaucracy then, and conducting interviews with them will take time—and time equals money. May I have Mr. Washington’s contact information?”

  “Yes, but please wait for him to call you. He wouldn’t know what you were talking about right now. If there’s nothing more for me to do here, my car is already packed. I will leave for New Orleans today and meet with my attorneys and Owen as soon as I can arrange it.”

  “They don’t know the rest of your tale? My brain still reeling from everything you told us at dinner last night!” Anthony rubbed the bridge of his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and grumbled, “I’ll never be able to eat at El Pinto again without reliving that dinner!”