Raising Attabury: A Contemporary Christian Epic-Novel (The Grace Series Book 5)

by Stallings, Staci

  Greg’s eyes went wide. “What? Are you serious?”

  “You tell me.” Eric spun the computer, and Greg came closer to inspect it. “Doesn’t that look like the same thing to you?”

  A long moment and Greg nodded. “Sure looks like the same one.”

  “I would’ve thought they would be back by now,” Dani said as she helped Rachel in her kitchen making lunch.

  “Leave it to guys to get lost and not bother to ask for directions.” Rachel brought the lettuce over. “It was nice to see Jaycee looking like she’s going to live today.”

  “No doubt. Eric’s been saying how worried Derek has been.”

  “Sage too. Every time I talk to her, she asks if we’ve heard from Derek and how things are going. Not that I blame her. It’s so hard to care from a few thousand miles away.”

  “Tell me about it. Being in Raleigh not to even mention Scotland while y’all were working on the house, that was about to drive me right up the wall.”

  “I bet it’s going to be a whole lot less stress when it’s done, and you can quit thinking about Ridgemount for a while.”

  Dani put her head down, knowing she couldn’t tell her friend without the real truth coming out. “I hope so.”

  As they headed back, the import of the last hour weighed between them in the pickup. Every time Eric searched for something to say, he ran into the topics of the cash and the move like an out-of-control semi on an icy hill. How could life change so drastically so quickly?

  “Not that it’s here or there, but Dani sure seems different these days,” Greg said, glancing over. “A lot less stressed. Lot of spunk though.”

  Eric nodded. “She is something else. I’ll tell you that. Like trying to hold onto a live spark plug sometimes.” He laughed. “I’m starting to remember…” However, he didn’t finish the sentence as scenes from the past week rewound through his mind.

  Clearly he didn’t need to as Greg caught his meaning anyway. “Remembering is a very good thing.”

  “Yes it is.”

  Greg dropped Eric off at Rachel’s and headed home. Eric found them cleaning up the lunch dishes with no sign of Caleb.

  “I’ll get him a plate,” Dani said to Rachel, “you just go on.”

  Without argument, Rachel left the kitchen.

  “What’d y’all find out in Greely?” Dani asked as he sat down at the island, and she went to work filling the plate with lunch.

  Eric let out a long breath. “Well, we went through some of it and looked some things up online. It could be very good, and it could be really, really good.”

  Her face snarled in confusion. “Meaning?”

  “Well, we found this site with these three bills that look exactly like what they have pictured. If that’s the same one, those three alone could be worth around 3,000.”

  The fork hit the plate. “Dollars?”

  “Yep. The real kind.”

  Scooping and fixing, she went silent; however, Eric knew her mind was anything but silent.

  “How much do you think is there?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t know. I wrote some things down, but I really think we’re going to need to take it in somewhere and get it appraised. But first I want to put out some fishing lines online, just to get a feel for what we might have.”

  She put the plate in front of him and leaned on the island. “Wow. Thousands. That’s crazy. Maybe it could help us pay off one of the mortgages.”

  “Or both of them.”

  Her eyes widened. “Or both of them.”

  By Sunday morning when they were seated in the church, Dani’s mind was spinning. The evening with the others had been pleasant but uneventful, and that was fine with her because she didn’t need one more event swirling with all the others. The fact that Caleb had adamantly clung to the you-can’t-see-the-house mantra the whole weekend wasn’t helping matters. Normally she could talk a fly out of soup, but she’d long-since left normal in the rearview.

  “Nehemiah,” the pastor said, and Dani did her best to force the other thoughts from her head. “Anyone ever heard of him?” He raised his hand, but only a couple people in the congregation joined him. “Nehemiah? Old Testament? Jerusalem?” he asked as if prompting them, hoping to get more of them to remember the name.

  None of this had a prayer of helping Dani. She’d never heard of the guy. Of that, she was 100% certain.

  The pastor put his hand back on the pulpit, and the other hands went down as well.

  “Let me help you out a little. Nehemiah was a cup bearer for the king. That means when the wine or whatever was brought in, Nehemiah drank it first to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.” He tipped his head in levity. “How’d you like that job? Sounds like a blast, right?”

  Snickers sounded around the room.

  “Now the walls of Jerusalem had been toppled at this point, and this distressed Nehemiah greatly. So he petitioned the king to let him go and rebuild the walls, which he did—in 52 days.” He looked down at Caleb and squinted. “Caleb, how long is 52 days?”

  “Not quite two months.”

  “Right. So Nehemiah rebuilt a whole city wall in not quite two months. Pretty remarkable feat, wouldn’t you say?” He looked over to their side. “Eric, you’re an engineer in Raleigh, right?”

  Next to her, Eric nodded. “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “And you’re working on some pretty big projects right now, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Rebuilding bridges in Greensboro.”

  “So out of curiosity. How long does it take to rebuild a bridge?”

  “Start to finish?” Eric asked. “Well, from the first planning stages, we’ve been working on the one we just finished for about two years now.”

  “Two years,” the pastor said. “With heavy equipment to help, I presume.”

  “Absolutely.”

  The pastor nodded. “So 52 days to rebuild a whole city wall using no heavy equipment sounds almost… impossible?”

  “If the walls were very big, yeah.”

  “Impossible.” The pastor’s gaze skipped back out to the others. “Would you all agree with me that God, our God, the Almighty Father God is a God of the impossible?”

  Heads nodded.

  “I would agree with you, and when God does the impossible, we call it a…?”

  “Miracle,” several people said.

  “Right. A miracle. And when God does miracles in the Bible, have you ever noticed how far in advance He has planned them? Look at Joseph who got thrown down a well, sold into slavery, thrown into prison, just so he could become Pharaoh’s right hand man and save Israel. When we trace things back, what we often see is that God has been at work in a situation for years and years, setting it up so His glory can come to pass.” He took a breath. “So here’s Nehemiah. He’s been making sure the king’s not being poisoned for quite some time, and because the king is probably grateful for this service, he grants Nehemiah permission to rebuild the wall. That, right there, was probably a miracle in and of itself. But then the story goes on. Nehemiah didn’t have heavy equipment or years to get this to work. In fact, they were being bombarded and threatened from every side by the enemies of Jerusalem. Hear me now because this is important. What Nehemiah did was he convinced the people of Jerusalem to help him build the wall, but they didn’t just show up for a few hours a day and put in some time. No, his plan was that they would each build the wall in front of their own house. The truly inspired part of this story is that God inspires people, each of us, to build the wall, to do the things in our little world, and joining them together, miracles happen. Working together, we can build a wall or rebuild a community as we found out this past year.

  “With some help after Gabriel came through, we each worked on our neighborhood, our street, our buildings, our block, and together, we rebuilt our own ‘wall.’ My question this morning, my challenge is this. We’ve seen with our own eyes what we can do if we work together. What could we do if we took that same spirit and put it t
o work on other projects? If each of us took full responsibility for our part and we worked together, what miracles could God make happen in this world? I, for one, would love for us to find out.”

  After the service, Dani stood with Eric and Jaden and let her hand stay in his all the way out into the aisle where he greeted Luke and the others on their way out. Following them with Jaden at her side, her gaze chanced across the church where she saw her grandmother who looked across at her and smiled though it was soft and timid, an acknowledgement that Dani probably wouldn’t want to be seen with her “here.”

  Reaching down, Dani snagged Jaden’s hand. “Come on, baby girl. Let’s go say hi to Grandma.”

  They were only part way to her when Jaden broke free and ran to her great grandmother who opened her arms and gathered her in.

  “Grandma!”

  “Ja-den! Honey child! Well, you look positively stunning this morning.”

  “Look, Grandma. Look at my purse.” Jaden held out the little, raggedy purse she had managed with Emily’s help to put together the day before.

  “Why, my stars, Miss Jaden! I believe that is the prettiest purse I ever did see.”

  Walking up to them, Dani put her hand out for what she thought would be a pat on the back but immediately turned into a true and genuine hug from her grandmother.

  “My! My! My!” her grandmother said never really letting go of her. “Look at my beautiful granddaughter and my gorgeous great granddaughter.” She stepped back with tears in her eyes. “Your granddaddy would be popping his buttons to see the two of you like this today.”

  “Grandma,” Jaden said, her eyes going big, “you said about me coming back again sometime. I can bring some of the other things we made, and if you want, you can have one to keep.”

  However, her grandmother’s face lost some of its brightness. “Well, child, now I would love to have you all, but…”

  Instantly Dani knew what her grandmother was doing—saving her from having to tell Jaden no. A pile of rubble flashed through her mind, and regret filled her heart. She lifted her chin, fighting not to cry. It was time to start rebuilding the wall for her family. “If you’d like, I could cook for us, for… you,” Dani said. “We could stop at the store and pick up some groceries on the way over it you want.”

  Surprise. Confusion. Tortured acquiesce. They each crossed her grandmother’s face one right after the other. “Oh.” The knowing, accepting smile on her grandmother’s face tore Dani’s heart out. How had she been so callous to the woman? “I know you all have more important things to be doing than coming to see me.”

  It was then that Dani’s heart clicked into place and held. Just like Eric had said, God was her center, but her family trumped everything else. Not even her own stubborn, pig-headed wrongness was going to stand in her way of fixing what had been broken for so long. She stepped over and gave her grandmother a hug that seemed to surprise the woman. “There is nothing more important that we could be doing than coming over to see you. Now how does enchiladas sound?” She tightened the hug and shook her grandmother a bit. “I can’t cook worth beans, but Eric makes a mean enchilada dish. I think I can convince him to feed us.”

  A moment and her grandmother’s gaze came up to hers and held. Awe and hope radiated from it. “I’d love that.”

  They pulled up to her grandmother’s place laden with grocery bags.

  “Help,” Dani reminded Jaden who jumped out and headed for the door. “Come on. You can carry a bag.”

  Putting on her sad face, Jaden came dragging back down the walk.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Put the lip away.” Dani handed her a light bag. “Tell Grandma you brought her something special.”

  The smile was back.

  Dani retrieved a couple more bags and handed them to Eric. Her gaze tripped back behind her to the street they’d just come down. “Always interesting to come here.”

  His gaze went with hers. “Every time I come here, I remember that drawing in that book I read, the one Caleb gave me. It showed God’s grace reaching down from Heaven. The arm was called Mercy and the hand that took it from the waves was called Faith. The whole thing was called Hope. I think about that drawing every time I come here. It’s like God’s grace just forgot about this place or something.”

  Together they walked up to the door where her grandmother was already oohing and aahing over Jaden. Her smile radiated love when it got to them. “Oh, come in. Come in. They say it’s supposed to get chilly out there any minute now.”

  When her grandmother turned, Dani grinned and leaned into Eric. “Yeah, an arctic blast seems imminent.”

  He laughed as he reached up and held the door for her. “Well, I heard there was a hurricane that went through these parts not too long ago so you never know.”

  The afternoon spent with her grandmother was the easiest Sunday Dani could remember having. They cooked together, ate together, and even put a puzzle together on the coffee table with Jaden. True, by the time it was finished, there were multiple missing pieces, but Dani couldn’t even bring herself to care about that. Just spending time with them, building memories together, was a blessing enough.

  “Well, we’d better be getting on back to Raleigh,” Dani said at nearly six. “We’ve got school and work tomorrow.”

  “Oh, dear.” Her grandmother sighed. “I thought maybe you all would stay for supper. Why Eric cooked enough of those enchiladas to feed a whole army.”

  Eric looked at Dani, and she knew before the decision was made they were staying.

  “If you insist.”

  “You know,” Dani said as they headed back to Raleigh, her hand in Eric’s as he drove, “the week after this is Spring Break. I know we were going to go up to visit your mom, but I wasn’t thinking about Attabury being done by then. I wonder if she’d like to come down for the weekend and see the place.”

  “Don’t know. I could ask, but we won’t be staying there ourselves with the staging furniture in it.”

  “I know, but I’d like to share this with her if she’s interested.”

  Eric smiled and shook his head. “I love you, you know that?”

  “I think that love thing must be contagious,” she said with a grin, and he remembered without trying his comment about the live spark plug. Looking back out at the dark road stretched in front of them, she sighed. “Sure would be nice not to have to go back.” Her head swiveled so she was looking at him again. “You been praying?”

  “Every minute.”

  She nodded. “Me too.”

  Chapter 31

  On Monday afternoon, Eric was neck-deep in Phase 3 details when his cell phone rang on his desk. He had gotten better at not answering when others were in the room, but since he was all alone and frustrated, he took a look just in case it was Dani with breaking news. Instead, he found Greg’s name, and without hesitation, he swept it up and beeped it on. “Hey there, brother. What’s going on in your world?”

  “Okay, promise you aren’t going to kill me.”

  Eric laughed. “Uh. Oh. How bad is this?”

  “It might be nothing.”

  “I’m going to kill you over nothing?”

  Greg paused. “Well, it could be something too.”

  This laugh was even lighter as he pitched his pen to his desk. “Okay, you definitely have my attention. What’s up?”

  “Well, I had lunch with the boss today,” Greg said as if each word might in fact explode from its utterance. “My boss.”

  “Yeah…?”

  “And we got to talking about the crazy turnover rate we’ve had recently.”

  Puzzling over where this was going, Eric nodded. “Yeah?”

  “And, well, I kind of mentioned I might know somebody who might be interested…”

  Eric closed his eyes suddenly knowing exactly where this was going.

  “Now I didn’t make any promises,” Greg said quickly. “I just mentioned it, and Paul said I could tell you that you could send in a résumé, and he’d
definitely have a look. Now I know you’re just in the thinking stage of all of this.” The words rattled forward like an unstoppable locomotive. “And there really isn’t even an offer on the table, but if you and Dani are really thinking about making this move, and the job thing is the only thing holding you back…”

  Silence met the end of Greg’s words.

  “I know, I shouldn’t have said anything,” Greg finally said, and the remorse was evident in his voice.

  “No. No,” Eric said, sitting forward with a snap. “That’s okay. Really. I appreciate it.” When he looked down at his desk, the blueprints for Phase 3 stared up at him. Could he really leave this job for the unknown? Would he ever be that brave?

  “Well, you take some time to think about it,” Greg said. “Don’t do it on my account, but if it works, we’d love to have you.”

  “So Greg called this afternoon,” Eric said when they were cleaning up the supper dishes.

  “Oh, yeah? What’d he want?” She clanked two more plates into the washer.

  “Long story short, his company is looking for an engineer.”

  Her movements slowed though she didn’t look up at him. “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah. He said him and the boss were talking, and my name kind of came up.”

  She stopped and put both hands on the edge of the sink. Eric’s breathing stopped as well as he watched her, and a thousand excuses and rationalizations flashed into his mind.

  “What does the pay look like?” she asked, measuring her words with great care.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about any of that. He just said his boss said I could send a résumé over if I ever wanted to.”

  Letting out a short breath, she looked up at him, and he could see the hope in them she was desperately trying to hide. “What do you think? You think that might be something you’d be interested in?”