Daria had taken Maribeth to lunch, to a new little café that had opened in Clayton. They had marked the anniversary with shared tears. But the day had been mostly a joyful celebration of their friendship, of the fact that time had already begun to heal some of the pain. And that because of Jon and Nicole’s growing romance, they, too, had a hopeful future of shared holidays and celebrations, and eventually, God willing, shared grandchildren.
Beside her, Cole stirred. “You getting up?” he asked, squinting at the digital alarm clock on his nightstand. “Don’t you have to get the turkey in the oven?”
“In a few minutes,” she said, rolling toward him and nestling into the warm shoulder he offered. She breathed in the familiar, sleepy scent of him and thought that today it would not be difficult to give thanks for the blessings in her life.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” a voice very close to her ear said.
Natalie mumbled and pulled the quilt over her head. She was awake now, but the dream still perched on the edge of her consciousness like a vulture.
“Come on, Nattie, wake up.” Noelle’s voice was a pleasant distraction.
Natalie threw off the covers and sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, trying to erase the last vestiges of the nightmare. Her younger sister scrambled to the end of the bed and sat there, smiling, rocking on her knees. Though Noelle had grown taller and her figure had begun to bud, she still had the look of a little girl. Natalie kicked her playfully from under the quilts and sent her sprawling.
“What’s your big hurry, Noey?”
“Don’t call me that!” Noelle shrieked.
But Natalie recognized an old game in her sister’s protest, and she played along. “Okay, Noey. Whatever you say.”
“Stop it! I’ll tell Mom.”
The two tussled on the bed until Natalie, decidedly on the losing end of the scuffle, finally gave in.
“We better go see if Mom needs help with dinner,” she told Noelle. “Do you know what time Grandma and Grandpa are coming?”
“I think they said eleven. But you know Grandma. They’ll probably get here at ten. Did you know you snore?”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do. I tossed and turned half the night because you were over there sawing logs.”
“I was not—Noey!”
And they were at it again. The door burst open, and Nicole joined the fracas.
“I sure do like your room, Nattie,” Nicole said when all three finally lolled, out of breath, on the beds.
“Oh, so you admit it’s my room?”
“Excuse me—your former room.”
“Your old bed is pretty comfortable, actually. Although I did have trouble sleeping with all the snoring going on.” Natalie looked meaningfully in Noelle’s direction.
“That was you!” Noelle shot back playfully.
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
Ten minutes later, Natalie padded down the hall to the bathroom with a smile on her face. It was so good to be home.
In the shower though, flashes of the nightmare returned. It was torture to relive that last night of Sara’s life over and over again, as her dreams compelled her to do, and yet she was strangely drawn to the mental images of her friend. Sara always seemed so real, so alive, in her dreams.
Natalie adjusted the faucet and let the sharp needles of scalding water pelt her, wishing she could wash away the heaviness that lingered in her spirit as easily as she washed the grime from her body.
Twenty–Two
It was hotter than blazes inside the hut. David Chambers sighed and pushed his stool away from the desk. He peeled the sweat-damp shirt away from his back, then kneaded his temples with tapered fingertips, trying to tame the monster of a headache that had stalked him all morning. “Need an aspirin?” Nathan Camfield asked, eyeing him from behind his own desk.
“Maybe. I can’t seem to shake this thing.”
Nate closed the laptop he’d been working on, opened a drawer, and tossed David a small brown bottle. The younger man nodded his thanks and downed two of the tablets with the cold dregs of his morning coffee.
“Will you have some e-mail ready to send when I go to San José next week?” David asked, inclining his head toward the computer.
His colleague nodded, opening the laptop again.
A few minutes later, Nate burst out laughing.
David looked up, startled, but Nate continued to gaze at the computer screen, chuckling. “I guess you had to be there,” David said wryly.
“Oh, sorry,” Nate said as though he’d just realized that he had laughed aloud. “I’m just reading an e-mail from Natalie.”
“Ah,” David said. “I take it things are going well with her?”
Nate looked up and smiled. “Things are going great, actually. She seems to be thriving in college.”
“That’s good,” David replied. Then, with mock accusation, “Although I don’t see how she could be doing too well in a place like that.”
It was a running joke between the two University of Kansas graduates. David liked to give Nate a hard time for allowing his daughter to go over to “the dark side” of KU’s Division I rival, Kansas State.
“Hey, I’ve had to swallow my pride, Chambers,” he said. “I think you’re just going to have to learn to do the same.” His expression turned serious. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know that she’s getting along so well. It’s been a rough road for that girl. It’s hard to believe she’s about to finish her second year of college already.”
“Well, I’m glad things are going well for her. It’s nice that she’s been writing you so often.”
Nate nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair, balancing the laptop on one knee. “I don’t mind telling you that it’s been the biggest blessing of the past two years—getting to know Nattie a little better. You know, when I came back here, I never thought …” His voice trailed off and he looked away, as though embarrassed by his show of emotion. But he swallowed hard and continued, “I never thought I’d get a chance to have any kind of relationship with my daughter. Who would have thought an invention like e-mail would make it possible?”
David smiled. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
Being the only two Americans in Timoné, David Chambers and Dr. Camfield had spent hours discussing their families and friends back in the States and sharing the emotional struggles and heartaches each had brought to the jungle with them. And though the man wasn’t quite old enough to be his father, David’s relationship with Nate was the one he’d always longed to have with his own absent, uncaring father. The friendship that had grown between him and Nate was truly one of the foremost blessings of his thirty-two years. He sometimes suspected that God had called him to Timoné more for his own sake than for the benefit of the people for whom he hoped to translate the gospel.
“Ready for a lunch break?” Nate asked now, glancing at his watch.
David looked at his own watch. “I’d better not yet. I really want to finish with this first.” He indicated the stack of papers scattered across his desk. “But thanks. I’ll grab something later.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll run by and check on Carlos on my way home.”
Still sharp of mind, Carlos Muentes was the patriarch of Timoné, and though there was no way to know for sure, village lore claimed that the man was one hundred and ten years old.
“I don’t think the man is long for this earth,” Nate said, shaking his head.
“That’s what you said six months ago,” David reminded him with a wry smile.
Nate gave him a glib wave that seemed to say “touché” and left the office whistling a tuneless air.
David capped his pen and rose from the hard stool that served as his desk chair. He stretched his weary muscles and sighed heavily. In spite of his prayers to the contrary, a fog of melancholy had settled over him. Sometimes he felt elated that he had accomplished so much in his short time working with the translation of the Timoné dialect.
Other days he felt his was a nearly impossible task and that even if he lived to be as old as Carlos, he would still be a thousand years from realizing his goal. This day was definitely one of the latter.
He gathered the reams of word lists and computer printouts he’d been working on and shuffled them into two semi-tidy piles. If only he had some help. Of course, Nate assisted him with the translating whenever he could, and David had begun to work with some of the Timoné people. But Dr. Camfield’s role here was as a physician, and he couldn’t be expected to sacrifice the care of the people for David’s work.
He eased his tall frame back onto the stool, scooted up to the desk, and arranged the pages of the word lists in front of him again. Stroking his beard, he did some quick calculations. He was already putting in fifty hours or more each week, but maybe if he added just one extra hour each day, he could begin to feel that he was making some headway.
Natalie put the heavy books on the checkout counter and waited for the librarian to scan them. She wasn’t looking forward to lugging these all the way back to the dorm, but she needed them for a history paper that was due Friday.
She managed to zip the volumes into her backpack, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and pushed open the wide doors that led outside. She smiled to herself as the balmy air hit her face. Spring was in the wings, and her heart felt lighter just thinking about it. She was almost at the halfway mark of her college years. Where had the time gone? It seemed as though only yesterday she was packing up her room at home and moving into the dorm, an anxious, wounded, but beginning-to-heal teenager.
She had grown up a lot in the past two years. And yet even after all this time, she had so many regrets for the way her life had turned out. Sometimes her guilt over Sara’s death hounded her until she wasn’t sure she could bear up under the weight of it. Too often she awakened in the middle of the night feeling a pressure in her chest that she knew no medicine would relieve.
It helped to have Evan to talk to about these things, but even Evan Greenway couldn’t completely take away the sting. Still, his presence in her life was a blessing. The profound history they shared had forged a steadfast bond between them. Together they had hashed and rehashed their thoughts and feelings about the tragedy that had so changed their lives. And together they had come to a tentative peace about what had happened to them. It was good to have someone with whom they could each openly acknowledge their guilt, but also rejoice in their redemption.
Natalie didn’t know what the future held with Evan. It was hard to contemplate, when she was still struggling to know what she wanted to be when she grew up. Although they’d acknowledged the chemistry that existed between them, they’d also agreed to take it slowly. Still, neither of them had dated anyone else since that first impromptu meeting in the student union over two years ago now.
She slowed her pace, deep in thought. She did love Evan. And he had told her that he loved her too. But she sometimes wondered if their love for each other was based too much on mutual sympathy, even on a strange gratitude to each other because they could share the history of the tragic accident that had taken their friends’ lives.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the muted jangling of her cell phone beneath the canvas of her backpack.
Without breaking stride, she slid the bag off her shoulder and rummaged through it, searching for the phone. It was probably Evan. He had invited her to go with him to a film in the student union tonight. She was tired, and she had a ton of homework, but she’d probably go. It had been a few days since they’d been able to spend any time together, and she missed him.
She pressed a button on the face of the trim phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Nattie!” her sister’s voice chirped. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to answer.”
“Oh, hey, Nikki. What’s up?”
It had been good to have her sister on the same campus this year, although the two sometimes went for days without running into each other.
“Where are you, Nattie? Right this minute.”
There was a peculiar tone in her sister’s voice.
“Why?” Natalie asked. “What’s going on?”
Nicole giggled. “Just tell me where you are,” she insisted.
Natalie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. She turned three hundred and sixty degrees on the walkway, as though she might see Nicole lurking behind one of the huge oak trees on the lawn. “I just—left the library. I’m on my way back to the dorm. What is going on? Where are you?” she persisted.
“I’m just leaving Ford. Just keep heading this way. I’ll meet you halfway.”
“Nikki! What—”
The phone clicked and went dead.
Quickening her pace, Natalie headed north, her mind reeling with possibilities. Had something happened at home? But no, whatever it was must be good news. Nicole had definitely seemed happy and excited, not worried or upset.
A few minutes later, she spotted her sister walking—no, trotting—toward her on the walk. “Hey! What’s up?” she yelled, lengthening her stride.
Nicole ran the last few steps, closing the distance between them, and almost bowled Natalie over with a bear hug.
Natalie struggled to get out of her clutch. “Nicole Hunter, if you don’t tell me what is going on this very second, I’m going to strangle you!”
Nicole released her, laughing joyously. She backed away a bit and held out her left hand. “Oh, Nattie, look.” Just as suddenly as she had laughed, tears sprang to her eyes.
A glint caught Natalie’s eye, and she grabbed her sister’s hand. An expensive-looking diamond solitaire glittered on her sister’s ring finger. “Nikki!” she shrieked. “You got your ring!”
“Jon gave it to me for my birthday,” she beamed.
Natalie pulled her sister into a hug again. “I can’t believe it. You’re engaged? Oh, Nikki— Hey, wait a minute,” she protested good-naturedly, “Your birthday’s not until April.”
“Jon couldn’t wait.” Nicole grinned. “He picked it up this morning and officially proposed over lunch at Applebee’s.”
Natalie gave her sister another squeeze, genuinely happy for her. “Oh, Nikki, I can hardly believe it. My little sister, soon to be a married woman. Have you set a date?”
“Over Christmas,” Nicole said.
“Really? Have you told Mom and Dad yet?”
“No. I haven’t told anybody. You’re the first.”
Natalie felt tears well unexpectedly behind her eyelids. “Oh, I am so happy for you.”
They started back toward the dorm together, chattering like the squirrels that played on the telephone wires overhead.
“Can I tell Evan?” Natalie asked, before they parted ways in the lobby of the dorm.
“You can tell the whole world as far as I’m concerned. Well, wait … better tell him not to say anything until I call Mom and Daddy and Noelle.” Nicole cocked her head and eyed Natalie. “I bet you’ll be next, Nattie. I bet you and Evan will be following us down the aisle.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Natalie held up a hand, palm out. “Slow down there, sister. I don’t think so.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Nicole said, a lilt in her voice and a teasing gleam in her gold-flecked brown eyes.
“No, Nikki, I’m serious.” She shook her head vigorously. She didn’t want any rumors starting. “We haven’t even discussed the subject.”
The doors to the elevator glided closed, and if Nicole responded it was lost in the soft hum of the conveyance’s motor.
Natalie took the stairs to her floor two at a time, her mind racing. So Nicole was getting married. Not that she was surprised by the news. Everyone had always known that Jon and Nicole would end up married. But this was sooner than she’d expected.
She wondered what it would be like for Jon to be officially a part of their family—present at every Thanksgiving table, every Christmas gathering. Would he find it easier to forgive her when she was his sister-in-law? Or would s
he be an even harsher reminder of the true sister he’d lost? Oh, Father, will the pain ever stop? Will every good thing that happens always be ruined by memories of what I did? She stopped short, realizing how self-centered she was being. Help me be happy for Nicole.
She thought about what Nicole had said about her being next. Did she dare to dream that she might someday know the same kind of happiness that Nicole had found with Jon? Could Nicole be right? Was Evan part of the future God had in mind for her?
Twenty–Three
The strains of Lohengrin’s “Bridal Chorus” filled the sanctuary. From her place beside the other bridesmaids at the front of the church, Natalie watched her sister come down the aisle on Daddy’s arm. Nicole Hunter’s smile, the beatific glow on her face, said it all. This was the fulfillment of her dreams, the thing she had desired above all things since she and Jon Dever had fallen in love as young teenagers.
Natalie stole a furtive glance at Jon, who stood soldier-stiff at the helm of the contingent of groomsmen. He was as handsome as ever, and there was no mistaking the love in his eyes as he watched his bride walk slowly toward him.
For a brief instant, old feelings welled up inside Natalie—the ache of longing for what might have been, the niggling pangs of jealousy at seeing one of her sisters get all the attention. When she was thinking rationally, she could recognize the feelings for what they were: vestiges of her first innocent crush and remnants of the insecurities that had plagued her for too much of her childhood.
And regret. She would probably always feel a twinge of regret for what could never be changed. But relics though they were, the emotions still stung sometimes—especially on a day like today. Sara. Sara Dever should have been standing here beside her. Oh, how tender Sara’s memory was on this day. Natalie could look out at the wedding guests and see it in the faces of Sara’s parents—Maribeth’s valiant effort at a joyful demeanor betrayed by the missing sparkle in her eyes. Don’s furrowed forehead, and hair gone gray too early, gave him away. And everywhere she looked, friends of Sara. People who would never again be graced with the gift of Sara’s sweet smile or the joy of her laughter. And all of them knowing full well Natalie’s part in their loss. I’m so sorry, Sara.
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