October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1)

by Melanie Wilber

  He was raised in Iowa, but his parents moved out to California seven years ago and lived in Monterey now. And his two younger brothers, Jimmy and Nate, were in Texas and Missouri. He loved Iowa and often longed for it, but since Annika had been gone, it never seemed the same.

  Before they landed in Denver, Andrew and Jerry exchanged email addresses and phone numbers. Andrew said something about possibly offering him a job sometime, and Jerry sounded interested. He was excited about all the good things happening at his own church, but someplace smaller going through some changes sounded appealing to him, and the areas where Andrew knew they were lacking happened to be Jerry’s specialties.

  “So what’s first, the conference or seeing family?” Jerry asked.

  “I’ll go to the conference this evening and out to The Farm tomorrow for part of the day. I’ll go back and forth a few times before the week is over. I can’t spend a whole day at The Farm or they’ll put me to work.”

  “Your parents?” he asked.

  “No, my wife’s family. My late wife’s.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Jerry said. “I guess I never asked about your wife.”

  Andrew still wore his wedding ring. He had never been able to take it off, and it was just as well because he had no interest in getting remarried. “She passed away a few years ago,” he said, not going into detail, and Jerry didn’t ask. “We used to go to the conference in Iowa a lot, but--”

  He didn’t finish, and Jerry didn’t say anything, but he seemed to understand this wasn’t an average conference for him. Andrew said one last thing, hoping Jerry would take his words seriously.

  “Cherish your wife, Jerry, and your kids. Twenty-five years of ministry--that’s my best advice.”

  ***

  The beautiful farmlands of central Iowa were a welcome sight. Sarah didn’t know if she was doing the right thing by coming to the ministry conference, but the familiar landscape brought her comfort. It was three months ago today Levi had suffered his fatal heart attack, leaving her a widow two weeks shy of her forty-eighth birthday. It seemed like a long time ago, and like yesterday.

  They had been coming to this particular conference for many, many years. Levi’s first church assignment twenty-five years ago had been here in central Iowa. They had married that same year after a two-year courtship: the absolute highlight of her life up until that point. She’d had a pleasant childhood and fulfilled her dream of going to college, but meeting Levi Whitfield, being gently wooed by him, and marrying him at the age of twenty-three had been simply divine.

  As had their marriage. Two children and twenty-five years hadn’t changed that. Their love had only grown and deepened into something she couldn’t describe with words. Their souls had connected into one, and nothing could have prepared her for losing him. There had been warning signs. His doctor had put him on some medication, and they were discussing surgery, but she never thought he would go so quickly. One minute he was sitting there at the dinner table, making her smile like always, and the next he was clutching his chest and on the floor. She gave him CPR until the paramedics came and took over, whisking him away in the ambulance, but he never recovered.

  “Ma’am, you need to put your seat belt on,” she heard the stewardess say. Taking her eyes from the window, she realized the young woman was talking to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, latching the buckle into place and wiping the tear slipping onto her cheek. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she suddenly felt like she couldn’t do this. She shouldn’t be here, not without Levi. It wasn’t right.

  Once inside the airport terminal, she almost went to the ticket counter to see if they had any flights going back to Minneapolis today. But something kept her feet moving toward the entrance and the line of taxis waiting outside. She had paid for her room at the hotel already, and she needed to get away for a few days, she supposed. She may as well see this through, even if she did stay in her room and cry the entire time.

  There were several hotels near the large city-church where the four-day conference for pastors and their wives was being held, and she had purposely chosen a different one than where she and Levi usually stayed. She didn’t think she could enter the lobby of the Holiday Inn without him, so she had chosen another listed on the Internet as part of her flight and hotel package.

  The only reason she had come was because her friend had talked her into it. Following their years at a church here in Des Moines, Levi had been reassigned to a struggling church in their conference near Kansas City, and they had been there for ten years before moving to Minneapolis seven years ago. But every year Levi wanted to return to this particular conference in Iowa because some of the pastor-friends he had made over the years would be here, and she had gotten to know some of their wives also. One of them was Linda. Linda and her husband had come to Levi’s funeral, and Linda had been calling her once a week ever since.

  When she first suggested coming this week, Sarah told her no. The conference was for pastors and their wives. Sometimes pastors came without their wives. She had stayed home some years when the children were young and it hadn’t been practical to leave them for an extended amount of time, but wives didn’t come without their pastor-husbands. She thought Linda had been ridiculous to suggest such a thing.

  “You might not have Levi anymore, but you’re going to be a pastor’s wife until you marry someone else with a different vocation,” Linda said. “The women at your church are still looking at you that way, so you may as well come and get the encouragement you need to continue in that role.”

  Sarah supposed she was right, although some of the women at her church had been more of a support to her recently than she was to them. She did plan to remain in Minneapolis. Her two children were there. Chandler was twenty-four and married. Her daughter-in-law, Heather, had delivered their first child seven months ago. And Faye, her twenty-two-year-old, had gotten married last month. She and Jamison had considered postponing the wedding, but Sarah told them to go ahead with it. She knew Levi wouldn’t want his sudden death interfering with their wonderful plans to marry after three long years of courtship.

  Getting out of the taxi in front of the more upscale hotel than she was used to staying in, Sarah took her bags from the driver and stepped toward the front entrance. By the pictures she had seen on the computer, she knew this was a nice place, much fancier than Levi would have selected, but nothing could have prepared her for the sight when she stepped through the revolving door and saw the beautiful central atrium come into full view before her.

  Chapter Two

  When Grace Morgan checked her phone before lunch, she was glad to see her dad was going through with his plans. Over the weekend he had wavered about going to the conference, but she had assured him they would be fine without him for a few days. She would miss him and wasn’t anxious to get him out of the house, but she knew he needed some time away.

  She hadn’t forgotten about taking Tabitha to the DMV today, but she texted him back and thanked him for the reminder. Driving her younger siblings places during the last five years had become as routine as eating three meals a day. She didn’t mind, but taking Tabby to get her driver’s license did come with a mixture of emotions. Not having to drive her baby sister around to all of her activities would be a welcome change, but a loss as well. Being involved in Tabitha’s life had been a joyful experience. She couldn’t believe she was seventeen.

  When their mother died tragically five years ago, Tabby had been twelve, Tate fourteen, Danae seventeen, Drew twenty, and herself twenty-two. And her world had stopped. Her mother was her best friend. They had gotten along so well during her teen and college years, it was almost weird. Watching mothers and daughters fight had baffled her until she became like a surrogate mother to Danae during the two years following their mother’s death. Of the five of them, Grace was certain Danae had taken it the hardest. It hadn’t been a good time to lose her mother. Not that there was ever a good time, but at seventeen
and beginning her first serious relationship with a boy, it had not been a good time.

  Tabitha had been much easier, thus far anyway. When Tabby started dating Ryan two months ago, Grace had a bad feeling come over her in light of what she’d been through with Danae. But Tabitha seemed to be handling her first dating experience fine. Ryan was sweet and perfect for her. She had no doubt they were falling in love and hoped things didn’t turn sour somewhere along the way. She was as much of a romantic as the next girl, but when her sister had been fooled into believing she was more than the object of a teenage boy’s raging hormones, she wished the whole idea of love had never existed.

  Danae was doing better now, and they were closer than ever as sisters. Danae would be graduating from Lifegate Christian College next spring and hopefully marrying her college sweetheart next summer. They weren’t officially engaged, but John was one of those stable guys who wouldn’t date a girl for two years and give her every reason to believe he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her if he didn’t, at least she hoped he wasn’t. Danae had been through enough.

  Grace had her share of sleepless nights over her sisters. She would often lie awake in bed, talking to her mother and asking her for advice. She had totally blown it with Danae during that first year. Danae had needed her to be her friend and big sister, not her mother. But being five years apart, they hadn’t been super-close growing up, and she had been away at college since Danae was thirteen.

  Following graduation, two months after her mother passed away, Grace had moved back home, found a teaching job at a local middle school, and tried to step into her mother’s shoes, but her small feet were not nearly big enough. She didn’t think anyone’s could have been big enough, but still, she wished she had done better.

  “You going to lunch?”

  Grace looked up from her phone to see Abbie standing in the doorway of her classroom. “Yeah,” she said, turning to take her lunch out of the bottom drawer. Leaving the room with Abbie, she fell into a normal conversation with her friend like most days at this time. Abbie taught Language Arts, and they had both worked here for the same amount of time: this was their sixth year.

  “So your dad left this morning?” Abbie asked. “Are you surprised?”

  “Not really. He doesn’t usually say he’s going to do something and then back out.”

  “Did you decide about the concert this Friday?” Abbie and her boyfriend were going to one in Monterey, and they had an extra ticket. Abbie had asked her about it last week, but she hadn’t been sure of her dad’s plans. He had been debating about only going for the conference in Des Moines or spending a couple of extra days with her grandparents at The Farm.

  “My dad isn’t coming home until Saturday. I should go to the game.”

  “It’s not like you haven’t seen Tabby cheer before. You and your dad go every week.”

  “Sorry, I can’t. I don’t know what Tabby’s plans are afterwards. She might need a ride home.”

  “Not if she gets her driver’s license this afternoon.”

  “Then I really want to be home,” Grace laughed. “I’m sorry, I have to be a mom this week.”

  Abbie didn’t say it, but Grace knew she was thinking it. ‘You’re not her mom, Grace. You’re her sister.’ Others didn’t understand, but she had to do it this way. She didn’t know how to do anything else.

  ***

  It was four o’clock when Sarah checked in at the front desk of the hotel, and she didn’t have anything to do until dinnertime. The conference had officially started this morning, but Linda and George weren’t getting here from Oklahoma until this afternoon, and she wasn’t going to walk into the church and register without anyone at her side.

  They planned to meet there at six, and dinner would be served at six-thirty. Taking the glass elevator overlooking the hotel‘s central atrium to the fourth floor, Sarah felt embarrassed she had chosen such a fancy place. She hadn’t thought about the cost when she made the reservations because she was used to them paying that amount for the flight and a three-night stay, but she forgot she was only purchasing one plane ticket instead of two. On the way to her room she tried to determine what the nightly rate of this place must be, but her mind was mush. She had no idea why she was here.

  Once inside the confines of her room, she laid down on the bed and had a good cry. When she left the house this morning, she felt strong and determined to have a good week, but now she wanted to go home. It was ridiculous for her to be here, not to mention incredibly hard. She had never traveled without Levi before. Nothing felt right.

  At five o’clock she decided to get up and make herself presentable. Dinner on the first night was always fancy, so she needed to change and redo her face and hair after an hour of grieving. She missed Levi and knew she would be hearing a lot of sympathetic words tonight from those who had known him, but she didn’t want to look like a wreck. She didn’t want to pretend she was perfectly fine either, but it had been three months since his death, not three weeks, and she knew her life was going to go on.

  Taking a shower and drying her medium brown hair that was going grayer and grayer by the day, Sarah put on her favorite dress, the coral one that went with her brown eyes so well, Levi had told her. It had been her favorite ever since. The women at church were probably sick of seeing her in it and wondering if she was too strapped for money to afford more clothes, but here no one knew how often she had been wearing it these last three months. She could probably wear it every night and no one would know the difference.

  She didn’t want to arrive before Linda and George, so she purposely dawdled and then went down to the front desk to see if they could tell her where the church was from here. The Holiday Inn was within walking distance, and she and Levi had always strolled back and forth several times a day, but she didn’t know if this hotel was that close.

  It wasn’t, and the clerk suggested she take a cab. He called one for her, and she went outside to wait, but she felt stupid for not thinking of that when she made the reservations. She had been planning to attend one session each day, either in the morning or the afternoon, have dinner at the conference, and attend the evening meeting. She had done that in the past when Levi was teaching, but taking a taxi back and forth would get expensive, and she didn’t want to stay at the church all day.

  She breathed a little sigh of relief when she saw Linda and George waiting for her outside the main entrance of the large church. It was good to see some familiar faces, and Linda was one of her closest friends. They only saw each other once or twice a year, but as a pastor’s wife it was often difficult to get close to women in her own church. Sarah loved the women dearly, even those who were sometimes overbearing or full of complaints, but forming close friendships with them didn’t come easily. Levi had always been her best friend, and that had been enough for her. But with him gone, the void in her heart was very large.

  “You made it,” Linda said, giving her a warm and heartfelt hug. “I’m so glad.”

  “I’m not sure if I am yet,” she replied honestly, but she managed to give a little smile.

  “You’re with us, Sarah. We won’t abandon you, I promise. Even if you just want to go shopping the whole time we’re here, I’ll go with you.”

  Tears stung Sarah’s eyes, knowing Linda meant her words. She needed others to understand how difficult this was for her and were willing to do something about it. “I might take you up on that.”

  ***

  Grace saw Tabitha waiting in front of the high school when she pulled into the bus-loading area. The busses had already left, and Grace stopped along the yellow curb. Tabby opened the passenger door and got inside, seeming her usual happy self. Tabby was one of those people who was rarely in a bad mood. Full of energy and smiles and genuine joy--that was her baby sister.

  “Are you nervous?” Grace asked.

  “Yes! I can’t believe I might be getting my license today,” she squealed. “I’ve been waiting so long, but now that it’s her
e, I can’t believe it!”

  Tabitha was a good driver, and Grace knew she would likely pass unless she made a major mistake. Tabby didn’t like leaving cheerleading practice early, but they only did driver’s tests at the local DMV on weekdays from nine to four, so it couldn’t be helped. Tabitha was the head cheerleader this year, and she took her role and responsibilities seriously. She didn’t like letting the other girls down.

  “How’s Ryan?” Grace asked.

  “He wasn’t at school today. He’s super-sick. I hope I don’t get it.”

  “Did you kiss him yesterday?”

  “Yes,” she said but didn’t sound too sorry about it. “I guess that’s the price of being in love.”

  “In love!” she teased her. “You’ve only been dating him for two months, Tabitha Kristen Morgan!”

  Tabby made no apologies. “I was in love with him before we started dating. He’s the one for me, Gracie. I know it.”

  “That’s great, Tabby,” she said seriously. “And I knew that. I’m just teasing you.”

  “Did Dad make it to Iowa yet?” she asked. “Have you heard from him?”

  “No, not yet. He said he would call tonight.”

  “Do you think I could call him now?” Tabby asked. “Will his phone work there?”

  “It should, unless he’s still on the plane,” Grace said, seeing Tabby take her phone out of her backpack. Tabitha placed the call, and Daddy answered. They talked for a minute with Grace listening to Tabby’s end of the conversation.