by Becky Wade
“Yeah,” his dad said gruffly.
“I love you, too,” John said.
Tears pooled in his mom’s eyes.
“Mom,” John said with a trace of warning. He didn’t want her to break down into a full-blown cry.
Though his dad looked like a panicking horse around the eyes, he reached across the loveseat they were sitting on and took her hand.
“I know, I know.” She gave a shaky laugh. “It’s okay. These are happy tears.”
“I’m off on Thursday, John. I could drive out to Shore Pine and we could do a little fishing,” his dad offered.
“Sure. Anytime.”
“Who do we know who could recommend a psychologist, Ray?”
“I don’t need a psychologist,” John stated. Though he was scared he might.
“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to someone, honey.” His mom started in on a story about her friend Denise’s daughter who’d been treated by a wonderful doctor when she’d been suffering from postpartum depression.
His parents were trying to help him. His dad the way he knew, by inviting him to go fishing. His mom the way she knew. They were trying to help him because he was their son and they loved him and that’s what parents did for their kids—they helped and they loved.
He saw the two of them, then. He saw their imperfections and their quirks and their good, good hearts.
His mom, with her gentle hands and slender build and plain hairstyle. She had a tendency to get flustered when stressed, but she could beat them all at Scrabble. She was an excellent cook. A volunteer at the church ministry that provided clothing to families in need. She was such an understanding elementary school vice principal that kids always left her office smiling, regardless of why they’d been sent there.
His dad, with his broad chest and thick graying hair, was the best fisherman John had ever met. A genius at predicting the weather. Prone to accidentally letting a swear word fly when the Seahawks fumbled. The person everyone called to help them move because he’d always come, work hard, and never complain.
He remembered his mom laying a washcloth on his head in the middle of the night when he was sick. He remembered his dad grounding him for missing his curfew. He remembered them sticking a candle in his favorite breakfast, blueberry pancakes, every year on his birthday.
They’d supported him at every school program and every sports banquet. They’d just about bankrupted themselves paying for baseball and driving him to tournaments. They’d sat in their fold-up bleacher seats at his games wearing the T-shirts and hats of his team.
Would Brian Raymond’s outcome have been different if he’d been adopted at birth by Christian people as decent as these?
Probably.
John had gone on a search for his parents. And he’d found them.
Here they were.
Here is where they’d always been.
Miles to the south, Nora smoothed the blank sheets of stationery resting on the table before her. She chewed on her bottom lip. She tapped her pen.
God was calling her to follow through on Willow’s idea to write John a letter. She’d been praying about it, and she knew what He was asking her to say.
It was just that . . .
Great Scott! This terrified her. She drew in a breath, collected her bravery, and started writing.
John,
I’m a history lover, but I have to confess that I’m not much of a letter writer. I’m an email sender. I’m a texter and Facebook messenger. But for you, I’m sitting here with stationery in front of me and a pen in my hand. Hang on to your hat, John. I’m writing you a letter.
Our last meeting didn’t go well, and I’ve been thinking nonstop about a lot of things ever since. Actually, I’ve been thinking nonstop about a lot of things ever since our lunch with Sherry.
The Lord says in the Bible that justice is His. You’re familiar with that verse, right?
There’s evil in the world, but in the end, God assures us that the light will win out over the darkness. Justice will be His.
Brian Raymond raped six women. But do you know how many people you saved, John? In the Yemen mission alone you’re documented with saving eleven lives. I don’t know much about your other missions. I’d like to. I know enough to guess that eleven isn’t the total number you saved during your career with the SEALs.
Can you glimpse God’s justice at work?
Brian injured six people. But you, Brian’s son, saved eleven.
Justice was the Lord’s.
And then, shortly after you were handed a diagnosis that came to you because of Brian Raymond, God made a way for the two of us to meet.
I thought our meeting was a coincidence, just like the coincidental meetings that led so many of my friends to their boyfriends. But after Sherry told us what she told us, it’s no longer possible for me to see our meeting as accidental.
All along, God knew you were Brian’s son and He knew I was my mother’s daughter. I believe that He brought us together on purpose, which explains why we’re such a good match even though we’re not much of a match on paper at all. Before the two of us learned that we were connected by Brian Raymond, God was already redeeming the awful things that happened to our mothers through our relationship.
Justice was the Lord’s.
You told me the other day that you see my mother when you look at me and Brian Raymond when you look at yourself. Now that I’ve had time to think about it fully, I’d respond to you differently. I’d respond to that statement by saying, great.
Great!
Look at me and see my mother and marvel at the way God is vindicating her loss. Look at yourself and see Brian and remember how God was able to take what Brian did with evil intentions and turn it to good.
I’ll admit to you that after my broken engagement, I’d come to expect very little from God. But since I met you, I’ve seen that He CAN do big things. That He IS doing big things. That I should expect the miraculous from Him. And that He’s worthy of my trust.
He’s been telling me that I can’t fix this situation between us on my own. He’s also been telling me that expecting Him to do big things isn’t enough. He expects me to do big things when He asks me to. Which frightens me.
I refuse to be cautious about this. I refuse to be scared.
Well . . . maybe I’m a little scared. But I’m working on it.
Here’s the BIG, not-cautious thing I need to say to you, John. . . .
I love you.
Regardless of anything. The fact that Brian Raymond is your biological father. My insecurities. Your eyesight. My fears. What the future may or may not hold. Or the fact that you very well might reject me.
I need to tell you that, no matter what, I love you.
—Nora
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
John lowered Nora’s letter. He stood in his foyer, on the spot where he’d been standing when he’d looked through his mail.
Carefully, he set her handwritten pages on his entry table. Then he walked to his bedroom and turned on his bathroom shower. While he waited for the water to warm, blocks began to fall within him. One after another. Like stacks of children’s building blocks crashing down. Unstoppable.
When the water was hot, he stepped in, set his palms on the tiles, leaned into his arms, and cried. Sobs wracked his big body. He cried for Sherry and Nora’s mother and the other women. He cried because his eyesight was fading. He cried for the children he wouldn’t have. But most of all, he cried because Nora loved him, and he felt so unworthy of it and so incredibly relieved.
She loved him.
When he stepped from the shower, he felt clean on the inside for the first time since his meeting with Sherry. His eyes were scratchy and his throat hurt, but he was lighter. Hollowed out and ready to start over.
He pulled on a pair of track pants and returned to his foyer. He read Nora’s letter a second time. He turned over everything she’d said in his mind. Then read it again.
He carried the pages to the back of the house.
Today, he’d finally felt well enough to return to work. If Sherry’s letter had been the branch he’d grabbed to slow his fall down the endless cave, then his visit to his parents the day before yesterday had been a rope. And Nora’s letter . . . Nora’s letter was like a hand reaching down into the shadows and pulling him up.
It was near dinnertime, but the gray clouds pressing low over Lake Shore Pine made the hour feel later. Wind tossed light rain against his windows with a soft tapping sound.
He read the letter again, then placed it on the kitchen table. For the first time since he’d come inside the day Sherry had told him about Brian, he unlatched his back doors and shoved them along their track.
Outside, rain that wasn’t warm or cold peppered his face, chest, hair. He took the path to the water, continuing until he’d reached his dock’s farthest point.
Choppy whitecaps marked the lake’s navy-blue surface.
To survive as a SEAL he’d had to find a core of toughness, independence, and fierce confidence within himself. Back then, it had sometimes seemed like he’d be able to build his identity on those qualities and on the things he’d achieved after leaving the teams.
But then he’d been hit back-to-back by his diagnosis and the news that Brian Raymond was his father.
The old things, the things he’d been holding on to for a long time, had been stripped away. He couldn’t base his identity on the people he’d come from, or his abilities, or his health, or even on Nora.
All those things could be taken away. None of those things were at the core of who a person—who he—was.
Here I am, he said to God. I’m a sinner who’s been forgiven by you and who’s loved by you. That’s the only identity I have left to claim.
It turned out that was the only identity he needed. The only identity that would last.
It was freeing to recognize how short he fell, how totally inadequate he was. It meant that John didn’t have to work hard to be accepted by God. Even when he’d been at his best, his efforts never would have made him good enough for God. They definitely wouldn’t make him good enough now.
Jesus was the only good one. Everything John had received was a straight-up gift.
He didn’t agree with all of God’s choices. There was much that made him angry, that he didn’t understand, that seemed unfair. However, in addition to giving him grace, God had also seen fit to give him Nora. God had given him Nora, and it was hard to argue with that. Difficulties had come his way, but so had she.
It was a bargain he could accept.
Nora loved him.
I need to tell you that, no matter what, I love you.
That was what she’d written, and it seemed like a miracle. Maybe it was a miracle.
What could he do to answer her letter? He wanted to tell her “I love you, too” in a way that would be impossible to misunderstand.
He was ready to do his own big thing.
For her.
Nora’s employees stood in a predawn huddle in the parking lot of the Library on the Green wearing colonial clothing. Nora hurried toward them carrying a huge thermos of coffee in one hand and a box of cinnamon-sugar donuts in the other. She’d wedged cups and a stack of napkins under one arm.
Today was the opening day of the Summer Antique Fair they’d been planning for months. The Fair would open at nine, and they had a great deal to do between now and then.
“I come bearing apology gifts,” Nora announced. “I know it’s unforgivable of me to ask you all to arrive here at six.”
“Completely unforgivable,” Nikki confirmed.
Nora set the coffee, donuts, cups, and napkins on the hood of Nikki’s Camry.
“I only got four hours of sleep last night,” Amy said dolefully, reaching for the coffee. “I stayed up helping Grace with a report that had to be emailed by midnight last night. What sort of teacher asks students to email in reports by midnight?”
“What sort of mom helps her perfectly capable seventeen-year-old daughter with her report?” Nikki asked.
“The good type,” Blake answered. “I only got four hours of sleep, too, because my friend and I were making plans for the Hayride of Horror we’re doing for Halloween. There’ll be a lot of disgusting gore. It’ll be sweet.”
“I wish I’d only gotten four hours of sleep because I’d been up most of the night—for all the right reasons—with a new husband.” Nikki worked on a donut, bright pink lips speckled with sugar. “I need a new husband bad.”
Nora swiveled at the sound of a car. Willow’s familiar Range Rover pulled up and she and Britt climbed out. They were both dressed in light jackets to combat the early-morning chill.
“Your sisters always look so young and fresh,” Amy said wistfully.
“I know,” Nora answered. “It’s revolting.”
“It’s outstanding,” Blake insisted. “They’re outstanding.”
“This is a surprise,” Nora called to them as they neared.
“It’s your big day. We thought you could use a few extra hands,” Willow said.
“Thank you.” Nora was genuinely touched. Her sisters loved her more than she’d realized if they were willing to show up for unpaid duty at six in the morning.
Nora had eaten her donut on the way here in the car, so she retrieved her trusty tote bag from her trunk and extracted a clipboard and pen. She went through three pages of notes with the group, stopping whenever anyone had a question or discussion was needed to iron out a detail. The sky began to lighten to pearly gray in the east.
She was just wrapping up the final item when a small figure came jogging toward them. “Randall?”
“Good morning, Ms. Bradford.”
“Are you here to help, too?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
There wasn’t any guessing about it. He prided himself on the role he played within the world of the village. That he’d gotten himself out of bed at this hour proved it. Nora handed him the last donut.
These people were her people. Her misery over John had heightened her appreciation of her family and friends.
Almost two weeks had passed since she’d written and mailed John her letter. She’d yet to hear anything. She had no way of knowing if he’d read it. And if he had read it, whether or not he’d balled it in his fist and thrown it in the trash.
She didn’t regret sending it. She’d felt led to do it, and Willow had been right—it had been important for her to voice what she’d so dearly wanted to voice. At the same time, it was harrowing to put yourself out there the way she had in her letter. Whenever she thought about the fact that she’d told John outright that she loved him, her muscles clenched as if bracing against a blow.
“Okay!” Nora said. “Are you all clear on what you’ll be doing?”
“Clear!” Nikki jerked upright and gave a crisp salute.
Randall put one thin arm forward. “Awesome Antique Fair on three,” he instructed. The rest of them laid their hands on top of his. “One, two, three.”
“Awesome Antique Fair!” they all shouted, then headed in separate directions.
Nora’s sisters kept pace with her as she took the path along the side of the library toward the central green. She fumbled in her purse for her key ring so that she’d be able to unlock the library’s door. When she found it, she turned toward the library. As she lifted her head, keys in hand, something off to the side caught her eye. The ground lights framing the long, rectangular swath of grass glowed prettily against the dew. Her attention followed the lights all the way to the end of the green where . . .
Where . . .
Nora came to an instantaneous stop.
At the far end of the green, where a blank space had always been, stood a chapel.
Her jaw sagged. Fingers of early-morning light reached across the horizon to tip the chapel’s spire and roofline. This wasn’t just any chapel.
This was the Hartnett Chapel. Her chapel. The chape
l she’d loved for so long and wanted for so long. And like a dream, like an optical illusion, like a mirage, there it was, placed precisely in the spot she’d saved for it.
Astonishment sifted over her. She blinked, but the chapel didn’t disappear. A pair of birds flew past the quaint structure, winging heavenward.
She moved forward a step. Concentrating hard, she could just make out a figure on the chapel’s porch. A male figure.
She covered her mouth with her hands. Her heart leapt, then beat furiously.
“Maybe you should go over and say hello,” Willow said gently.
Nora had temporarily forgotten her sisters’ existence, but they were standing just behind her, watching her with excitement. Several yards behind them, her employees had gathered. Nikki gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Her sisters had . . . maybe all of them had . . . known about this.
Of course. John wouldn’t have been able to move a building onto her property without the help of her family and employees.
“Let me hold your bag.” Britt extended a hand, and Nora numbly passed it over.
“Keys,” Willow said.
She passed them over, too. “Thank you,” Nora said.
“Thank him,” her sisters said in unison, then looked at each other and said what they’d always said when they were kids. “Jinx!”
Nora set off toward the chapel on legs that had gone weak and wobbly. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.
She didn’t think boyfriends were in the habit of having historic chapels moved to their girlfriend’s villages unless they wanted to give their girlfriend her dream come true. And boyfriends didn’t typically want to give girlfriends their dream come true unless they really, really liked them.
As Nora drew nearer, she could see that the chapel sat on the steel beams and specially made dollies the house-moving company used to transport buildings. The Hartnett Chapel had been lifted from Mr. Hartnett’s property, trucked here, and—at some point since she’d left work last night—deposited in Merryweather Historical Village. It lacked nothing but a fresh foundation. Once she had that laid, it could be lowered into its new permanent location.