“My word,” she said. “Are we expecting company?”
Standing at the stove, her back toward the kitchen entrance, Angie glanced over her shoulder. “Morning, Mom.” She smiled at Francine as she pulled the skillet from the burner. “I thought I’d get a jump start on breakfast. Are you ready for your eggs? I can fry them now that you’re up.”
“Thank you, dear.” Francine wasn’t nearly as hungry as she was curious. “Just one egg, though.” She took her usual seat at the table.
“Okay.” Angie removed the strips of bacon from the frying pan and placed them on paper towels to drain before taking the eggs out of the refrigerator. “I couldn’t sleep last night, Mom. I was thinking a lot about the meeting Bill and I had with Kris Hickman.”
Angie hadn’t said much to her mother when she returned home the previous afternoon, and Francine had been careful not to press for details. She’d sensed Angie wasn’t ready to talk. Now it appeared her daughter was ready to open up.
“I was thinking maybe I—” Angie stopped abruptly, pulled the skillet from the burner a second time, and turned toward Francine. “Mom, I love you.”
A lump formed in Francine’s throat. “I love you, too, dear.”
“I…I need to tell you how sorry I am.”
“Sorry? For what?”
Angie came to the table and sat down. “I love you, Mom, but I haven’t shown it the way I should. I’ve been so stingy with my time. I’ve loved you when it was convenient for me and my schedule. That’s a selfish, self-centered kind of love. All these years, you’ve never chastised me for my selfishness, even though it must have hurt you.” Tears brimmed in her daughter’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Francine took hold of one of Angie’s hands and squeezed. “You’re forgiven, my darling child. I’ve always understood how important your career is to you.”
Angie shook her head, as if denying her mother’s statement. “Last night I kept thinking of how Kris never got to tell her mom she was sorry, never got to spend time with her as an adult. She never got a second chance with her mom after she ran away from home. I don’t want that to happen to us. I want to be close to you, Mom.”
For a time, neither woman spoke. Neither was able. They sat in silence, holding hands, and allowed forgiveness to flow between them. Finally, Angie sniffed, rose from her chair, and went to retrieve the box of tissues on the kitchen counter near the telephone. After wiping her own eyes and blowing her nose, she brought the box to the table so Francine could make use of the tissues, too.
Francine was still dabbing at the corners of her eyes when her daughter said, “Mom…I think maybe I’d like to stay in Hart’s Crossing a while longer. What would you say to that?”
“Oh, honey. I’d love it more than anything. You know I would.”
Angie sat down again. “I don’t know for how long. But I…Well, I need to figure out some things about myself. I need to change some of my priorities. I think I could do that better here, without the pressures of my career pulling me this way and that.”
Thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you.
“I thought I’d talk to Bill later this morning. He mentioned I could do some work for him at the Press. I doubt he could pay me much, but the money isn’t an issue right now.”
Francine had the almost irresistible urge to jump from her chair and shout “Hallelujah!” while dancing about the kitchen, bum leg or no. But she managed to maintain control of her emotions, pretending calm. “You do what you think is best, dear. You’re welcome to stay with me for however long you wish.”
“Okay, then.” Angie grinned. “Guess I’ll fix the rest of our breakfast now. I’m famished.”
* * *
Angie chose to walk into town later that morning. Sunlight filtered through the leafy tree branches to cast a latticework of light and shadows upon the sidewalk and street. The buzz of lawnmowers came to her from several directions. Three boys, about the same age as Lyssa, rode their bikes past her, going in the opposite direction, and all of them said “Hey” as if they knew her.
Hart’s Crossing never changes.
Just a month ago, she’d thought the same thing with derision. Now she was glad for it, even while knowing it wasn’t entirely true. Her hometown had changed. People had moved away. Others had arrived to make this place their home. The high school had been remodeled. The Lamberts had built their dental clinic. Hart’s Crossing Community Church had a new pastor in John Gunn, and Dr. Jeff Cavanaugh had taken over the practice of old Doc Burke when he’d retired.
But Angie could still count on the wisdom of Till Hart and the juicy hamburgers at the Over the Rainbow Diner and the folksy news included in the Mountain View Press. She knew kids would still ride their bikes down the middle of the street and the police chief would know most folks by name and neighbors would go to hospital waiting rooms to sit with family members, whether asked or not.
Maybe in the weeks and months to come, however many that might be, she could add to her list of things that had and had not changed about Hart’s Crossing.
And about herself.
Seeing the “open” sign in the door of Terri’s Tangles Beauty Salon, she stopped there first. She found her friend seated in her salon chair, sipping a cup of coffee.
“Hi, Terri,” she said as bells tinkled overhead.
“Well, hey. Didn’t expect to see you this morning. What’s up?”
“Not much.”
Terri’s eyes narrowed. “Then why do you look like the cat that swallowed the canary?”
“Do I?” Angie sat in a blue hard-plastic chair. “Maybe it’s because I’m happy.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Maybe it’s none of your business.” She tried to sound irritated but failed.
“Everything’s my business. I’m a hair stylist. People tell me as much as any therapist or bartender might hear.” She wiggled her fingers in a spill-the-beans fashion.
Angie pushed her hair away from her face as she turned her head to look out the window. Across the street was the Hart’s Crossing Municipal Building and the city park with its white gazebo near the river.
“Ang?”
Without looking at Terri, she said, “You know how lots of towns put speed bumps on certain streets when they can’t get traffic to slow down the way they’re supposed to?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I feel like somebody installed a giant speed bump in my life this spring.” Angie turned toward her friend again. “I’m going to slow down and take a look at the neighborhood I’m passing through. Maybe I’ll discover I like it more than I thought I would.”
Terri leaned forward in her chair. “And that means what, exactly?”
“It means I’m not in such a hurry to return to the rat race. It means I want to figure out what matters in this world. It means I want to spend more time with my mom so we can get to know each other again. It means I want to see more of you and Lyssa, too.” And more of Bill Palmer, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak those words aloud just yet.
“It means you’re going to stay in Hart’s Crossing!” Terri squealed as she jumped up from her chair.
Angie grinned. “Yeah, that’s what it means. At least for now.”
Chapter 13
LONG AFTER DARKNESS BLANKETED Hart’s Crossing, long after the lights in the homes in the Hunter neighborhood winked out, long after her mother retired for the night, Angie sat in one of the rockers on the front porch. She watched the twinkling stars overhead and thought how they didn’t seem as bright in the city.
What was it her mother used to say? God’s in his heaven. All’s right with the world.
Tonight, Angie could believe it.
Only she didn’t think he was just in his heaven. It seemed the more Angie looked around, and the more she was with her mother and Terri and Bill and Kris and Till and others, the more she thought it was possible God was here on earth, too.
“Am I right?” she whispered. �
�Are you here?”
It might be nice if he would answer her in the same way he spoke to Moses in The Ten Commandments. Then there would be no shred of doubt. But he didn’t. If God listened to her soft inquiry, he didn’t give her an audible reply.
Maybe he wanted her to figure it out for herself, the slow way. Maybe this was another speed bump in the road of her life.
What was it she’d read in the past few days? That it was impossible to please God without faith, and that faith was the confident assurance that what was hoped for was going to happen.
Faith in the unseen, in the hoped for. A huge request for someone with Angie’s penchant for fact gathering, for trusting only in the seen and the proven. Huge but maybe not impossible. She had a legacy of faith and love—from her mother and from her friends in Hart’s Crossing—to help her find the way.
“Who knows?” she said, still staring at the heavens. “Maybe you’ll even see me in church tomorrow. Now wouldn’t that shock the good folks of my hometown?”
Smiling in amusement, Angie rose from the rocker and went inside.
Veterans Way
Hart’s Crossing Series #2
Robin Lee Hatcher
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
—1 Corinthians 13:7
Prologue
August 14, 1945
STEPHANIE WOULD NEVER FORGET the jubilation that raced through Hart’s Crossing, Idaho, at the end of World War II. People danced in the streets and blew horns and whooped and hollered and set off fireworks. As a nine-year-old, she couldn’t quite grasp the significance of everything her parents and other adults said about V-J Day, but she understood something wonderful had happened.
So did ten-year-old Jimmy.
Maybe that’s why he gave Stephanie her first boy-girl kiss right there outside the Apollo Movie Theater on that warm August night. The kiss might not have been as dramatic as the photograph she would see later on the cover of Life magazine, the one of that sailor bending a nurse over his arm and kissing her on the lips. But that didn’t stop Stephanie’s heart from racing, and it didn’t stop her from deciding, right then and there, that she was going to marry Jimmy Scott when she grew up.
Chapter 1
September 21, 2005
STEPHANIE WATSON LOVED AUTUMN, especially the warm and hazy butter-yellow days of Indian summer.
For what seemed the first time since her husband Chuck’s death last year, she took pleasure in the beauty of her surroundings as she walked along the street toward town. The leaves on the trees that lined the thoroughfare were turning yellow, gold, orange, and red, and flowerbeds wore a spectacular coat of riotous colors.
Why, she wondered, did nature’s palette seem more vibrant in autumn?
Next year, she would plant chrysanthemums along the front of her house. And asters. She was partial to asters. She hadn’t gardened this year. Last spring, the idea of watering and weeding all summer long seemed far more than she could manage. But next year? Yes, next year she would be ready.
Her widowed friends had told her things would get better, that even though she continued to miss her husband of fifty years, time would dull the pain. She didn’t believe them at first. She didn’t believe them for a long while. But it seemed they were right. The pain in her heart was less, and the memories in her mind were sweeter.
Stephanie was thankful to God for that.
Bells chimed overhead as she opened the door to Terri’s Tangles Beauty Salon. Terri Sampson glanced over her shoulder, her hands busy with blow-dryer and brush as she finished styling Till Hart’s silver-gray hair.
“Please tell me you’re early, Steph.” Terri’s gaze darted to the clock on the wall.
“I am. It’s such a beautiful day I hated to stay indoors another minute. So I decided to walk over.” Stephanie met Till’s gaze in the mirror. “Good morning, Till. How are you?”
“I’m dandy, thanks. And you?”
“I’m good, too.”
Till and Stephanie had known each other since they were girls, living their entire lives in this sleepy little town on the plains of southern Idaho. The two women had many things in common, many of the same beliefs, likes and dislikes. However, while Till, the granddaughter of the town’s founder, had never married, Stephanie had been married nearly all of her life.
Memories of Chuck flashed in her mind, and she felt a bittersweet warmth in her chest. How she missed him, his wry sense of humor, the gentle touch of his hand beneath her elbow as they crossed the street, his grumpy complaints as he searched for his ever-misplaced eyeglasses.
Terri turned off the blow-dryer, bringing a sudden silence to the beauty shop.
After a moment, Till said, “Steph, you’ll never guess who’s returned to Hart’s Crossing to live.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “James Scott. Can you imagine? After all of these years, he’s decided to move back to Idaho.” Till looked at Terri. “You know the big blue house on Horizon Street?”
“The Patterson house?”
“That’s the one. Only the Pattersons didn’t own it. It’s belonged to the Scott family since it was built back in the late thirties. The Pattersons rented it for twenty years.”
Stephanie sat on one of the chairs attached to a hair dryer. “I didn’t know the Scotts still owned that house. I thought it was sold after Mrs. Scott went to live in Seattle with James and his wife.”
“No.” Till shook her head. “Betty Frazier has been managing it for them for at least a decade. She was chomping at the bit to sell it, too. It would have brought her realty firm a very nice commission. I can tell you, she never expected James to return to live in it. Who would? Not after fifty years.”
“Fifty-two years,” Stephanie corrected. “He was eighteen when he went into the army.”
Till leaned toward Terri and, in a stage whisper, said, “Steph and James were sweet on each other when they were kids. Everyone except his mother called him Jimmy back then. My, oh my. What a handsome fellow he was.”
Terri’s eyes widened with interest. “Is that right, Steph? You had a boyfriend before Mr. Watson? I can’t picture that”
“After fifty years with Chuck, it’s hard for me to imagine it either.” Stephanie smiled. “But it’s true. Jimmy Scott was my first love.”
Terri sat on the second dryer chair. “Tell me more. You know there’s no keeping secrets in a hair salon.”
Stephanie allowed memories to drift through her mind—sweet, innocent, misty. Goodness, who was that girl and when had she become the white-haired woman she saw in the mirror today? It seemed only yesterday that Jimmy Scott kissed her outside the Apollo Movie Theater. But yesterday was actually sixty years ago.
“Well?” Terri prompted.
“I was his best friend when we were in elementary school, and when I was nine, I decided I was going to marry him. That was the night he gave me my first kiss.” She laughed softly. “We dated all through high school, and by then everyone else expected us to get married, too.”
“So what happened? Why didn’t you marry him?”
“For one thing, he never asked me. He meant to, I think, but he never did. After he went into the army, we corresponded, but then I met Chuck and he stole my heart.”
“And you had to write Mr. Scott a Dear John letter?” Terri looked from Stephanie to Till and back again. “How awful for him.”
Stephanie shook her head. “Actually, he’d met someone, too. It all turned out for the best. If he hadn’t gone away, I might not have married Chuck, and James might not have married Martha. They were together almost as many years as Chuck and I.”
“James lost his wife about three years ago,” Till told Terri as she rose from the styling chair, patting her hair with her right hand. “To cancer. I heard she was ill for a long time before passing. Must have been terribly hard on him and their children, losing her that way.”
As difficult as losing Chuck was for Stephanie, she was t
hankful her husband hadn’t suffered. He’d enjoyed good health right up to the end. On the day he died, he’d played a round of golf, come home, sat in his easy chair, and slipped into the presence of Jesus.
Till stepped toward the cash register. “What’s the damage, Terri?”
“Fifteen today, Miss Hart.”
“You need to raise your prices, young lady.” Till placed two bills on the counter, a twenty and a five. “A worker is worthy of her wage, you know.” She gave a farewell wave to Stephanie, and then left the salon.
“Just give me a minute to sweep up, Steph, and then we’ll get you started.”
“No hurry. Take your time.”
Time was one thing Stephanie had plenty of these days.
* * *
James Scott stood in the living room of his boyhood home, wondering if he was as crazy as his children thought. Why would a man in his right mind leave the city where he’d lived and worked for more than forty-five years to return to a small town like Hart’s Crossing? That’s what his son and eldest daughter had asked several times over the past few weeks. James had a hard time giving Kurt or Jenna an answer, mainly because he wasn’t sure himself.
James and his wife, Martha, had loved living in Washington State. They’d owned a lovely home in Bremerton, purchased long before Seattle area housing prices shot through the roof. All three of their children—Kurt, Jenna, and Paula—had been raised in that four-bedroom home, and it was there Martha had breathed her last one windy March morning more than three years before.
Maybe if his kids and grandkids lived in the Pacific Northwest, James would have remained in Bremerton. But Kurt and his family had settled in Pennsylvania after a series of job-related moves; Jenna lived in England with her husband of five years; and Paula, a divorced mom of two, had a home in Florida. Visits to Washington were few and far between for all of them. James understood. They had busy lives of their own.
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