Kendall just stared for a moment, then moved to Sophie’s desk. It was even cleaner than hers, the usual detritus of inspiration photos and fabric samples transferred to the pinboards behind her desk.
Who had kidnapped Sophie and replaced her with a pod person while she was gone? Who was this organized dynamo?
Out of curiosity, she clicked Sophie’s mouse to bring up the computer monitor, and it opened without a password. It was just the two of them, so they’d never felt the need to protect their computers. The screen opened to a drafting program showing a floor plan: the mid-mod that Sophie had taken on last month. Kendall realized that she’d never checked on how the project was going or asked if Sophie needed any help. She clicked the 3D button that would show her the animation of what the finished project was going to look like.
And drew in a breath.
It was completely different from what Kendall would have done, but that was part of the wonder of it. Having spent so much of her career specializing in restoration, she would have been tempted to create a faithful representation of the house’s 1960s identity. But Sophie had almost gone the opposite direction. Mid-century pieces mixed with sleek contemporary furniture and stately antiques. A clean-lined mid-mod sofa sat over a muted Persian rug before a white enamel Danish coffee table, Saarinen-style. And in a choice that seemed shocking but worked amazingly well, the entire room was papered in a muted yet dramatic wallpaper.
It was lovely.
Kendall plopped into Sophie’s chair, suddenly struck with a mix of shock and guilt. She’d completely underestimated her assistant. Not her assistant anymore, her design partner. She’d thought she was mentoring Sophie, but really, she’d been holding her back.
Only then did Kendall see the blinking light on the office phone that indicated a message on their main business line. She punched Speaker and then the message light. It dialed into the voice mail and then began to play.
“Hello, this message is for Sophie Daniels. My name is Roberta Lyons. I’m a friend of the Thomases; you’re currently redoing their home in Long Beach? I would love to talk to you about a remodel project in my own home here in Glendale. It’s a mid-mod as well, though certainly not as important as theirs, but I love the direction . . .”
Kendall punched a button to save the message as unread and then clicked off the phone. It looked like Sophie was making a name for herself. She waited for the expected feeling of jealousy, of hurt, but curiously, she felt nothing but a vague sense of pride. It was time Sophie got recognition for her work. She had obviously not only kept the place running while Kendall was gone, but she’d brought in three new jobs for the firm. Maybe they didn’t need the sale of the Jasper Lake homes to keep their spot here in Pasadena after all. The new clients would go a long way toward solvency.
But once the thought of Jasper Lake was in her head, it was hard to dismiss. After spending time in Connie Green’s house and then the Novaks’, the big, beautiful house that surrounded her now, which had once felt so familiar, felt like . . . just a house. A house that had sheltered her, provided her a home base and a living, given her something to call her own, but an ordinary structure all the same.
She pushed herself off Sophie’s chair, feeling unaccountably restless, and headed down the hallway to her bedroom. Surely what she was feeling now was just a knee-jerk reaction to all the change, all the revelations she’d experienced. It was like the culture shock she experienced every time she traveled to Europe and again when she returned to the United States. A recognition of all the things she took for granted and a realization that there were things in both places she’d missed.
Occasionally there were people she’d miss too.
Kendall sighed and unzipped her duffel bag, then pulled out the papers she’d slipped into the zippered lining. The packet from the PI, the letters between Connie and Carrie. She traded her jeans and sweater for a pair of joggers and a tank top and climbed beneath the fluffy comforter on her bed, draping it over her crossed legs. And then she started sorting out the paperwork in front of her.
After a few minutes, she realized she was forming a timeline, looking for something. Looking for what, she didn’t know. The revelations surrounding her abandonment softened her bad memories but didn’t eliminate them. They didn’t erase decades of feeling unloved, unwanted, unmoored. The desire to have a family of her own, who actually belonged to her, instead of being assigned to her. The fact that, unbeknownst to herself, she’d been striving and working and searching for who she actually was, always trying to prove that she was more than just an orphan shuttled between foster homes with all her worldly possessions in a black plastic trash bag.
But when she looked at it objectively, laid out in front of her in paperwork and photos, her life didn’t appear as unmoored or random as it had felt at the time, even the recent developments. If she had learned all this even a few years back, would she have been prepared to accept it? Or would she, with her always closed-off heart, have dismissed anything having to do with the people she thought had hurt her?
Without truly realizing what she was doing, she picked up her cell phone and dialed.
Gabe picked up on the second ring, his voice surprised. No, shocked. “Kendall! I didn’t expect to hear from you. Is everything all right?”
She fell back against her pillow, tears pricking her eyes. Until now, she hadn’t realized how much she was going to miss him, how much she wanted to hear his voice. Regardless of what had happened between them that single night, he’d become a friend, someone she truly cared about, whose opinion mattered to her. And she realized that she didn’t know how to answer his question. “I don’t know.”
A long pause from the other end of the line. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She pulled the comforter up to her shoulders and rolled over as she pressed the phone to her ear, almost completely buried beneath her covers. “Do you believe everything happens for a reason?”
“Like, do I believe everything that happens is meant to be?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
He took a moment to answer. “Not really. I mean, I believe in a grand plan. But I also think we make our own role in it through our choices. I’ve made bad decisions that took me way off course. I’ve done things that I knew were wrong, or at least that I knew weren’t good for me, and I’ve had to deal with the consequences.”
“But you do believe there’s a grand plan. You think there’s a God up there pulling the strings.”
His voice softened. “You know I do, though I wouldn’t say pulling the strings. I’d say gently guiding and nudging. Where’s this coming from, Kendall?”
She swallowed hard. “I visited my foster parents today.”
“You did? How did that go?”
She realized that she hadn’t thanked him for hiring the PI yet, but that would have to wait. She wasn’t ready to derail their current conversation, not when she was still desperately seeking an answer to a question she couldn’t yet fully form. “It was good, actually. And bad. I realized that my memories of my childhood weren’t completely accurate.”
“Oh? In a bad way or a good way?”
“I just saw everything through the lens of my own trauma. When I went back, I remembered all the good things they did for me. The normalcy I had for eight years.”
“They were good foster parents after all, then.”
“They were good parents, period.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I didn’t realize how much I’d hurt them by rejecting their love.”
“You were a kid, Kendall. A kid who went through something incredibly traumatic, followed by all that uncertainty and shuffling around in the system.”
“But I did eventually land somewhere good. And it’s thanks to them that I was able to grow up and become a productive adult, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.”
“And now you’re feeling guilty for that?”
Kendall licked her lips, almost afraid to voice the though
ts bouncing around her head. “It’s just that . . . if I was so wrong about them, what else was I wrong about?”
Gabe’s voice turned cautious. “Like what?”
“Like . . .” She almost couldn’t voice the words. “Like about God.”
She heard Gabe exhale and it struck jitters in her stomach, not unlike what she’d felt before she made the decision to kiss him. What was he thinking? Would he make fun of her? Did he think this was just a way to get him to talk to her again? A way for them to be together?
That thought hadn’t occurred to her until now, and she pushed it away. Even she knew this question was way more important than a guy.
Finally Gabe said, “I can only tell you my experience, Kendall. You know I was angry at my parents because of what happened, and I was angry at God, too. I wanted nothing to do with Him, especially considering my mom was supposed to be a Christian, then had an affair with a married man and lied about it for a decade. I let the problems with her relationship with God affect my relationship with Him.”
“So how did you get past it?” Kendall asked. “What was the tipping point?” She couldn’t believe these words were coming out of her mouth, but she really wanted to know.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t one big thing. I guess it was just seeing how my grandparents believed. And believe it or not, your grandmother. I can only think that she learned her lesson after what happened with your mom, because she was all about grace and God forgiving our mistakes and the weakness of our faith. And I just kind of realized . . . that God had been waiting for me to come around. Patiently. Not forcing anything.”
“Huh.” Kendall found she couldn’t say anything more eloquent, her mind spinning too fast.
“Kendall, talk to me. You can tell me anything, you know. We can still be friends, regardless of what else we might have been.”
Those words gave her a heart cramp. What else they might have been. No, she couldn’t go there right now. And Gabe was maybe the only person who could understand how she was feeling, what she was wrestling with.
“I guess . . . I’ve always blamed God for what happened to me. Like, He was sleeping on the job and He let me down. And I don’t think I’ll ever understand how He could let both my parents be killed in car accidents just a couple of years apart. You’ve probably got a better chance of being hit by lightning than that happening.”
Gabe made a sound that could have been agreement or just acknowledgment, but she took it as support.
“But when I look back . . . a lot of positive things happened that were equally implausible. I got taken in by a really good couple who tried their best to mitigate all my trauma, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. And then ‘chance’ took me to the design school, where I found my new career. And then by more chance, I found my mentor. And opened my own place. Found a partner . . . who, by the way, has done a better job running the business while I was gone than I’ve ever done . . . And then just when I was maybe ready to hear it, I uncovered all this. I met you.” She chewed her lip. “What if that wasn’t all by coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidence or chance, Kendall. I only believe in consequences of our actions and God’s providence. And thank God that a lot of the time His providence overrides our stupid decisions.”
His wry tone made her laugh, unexpectedly. “That would be comforting if it’s true.”
“It is true, Kendall. I know it. I’ve experienced it. And you forgot one more bit of supposed chance. It’s not just your life wrapped up in this timeline. I found out about your house reverting to the county right as I took office a couple of months ago. Which only happened because I lost my job . . . which, quite frankly, felt like the worst thing that could happen to me at the time. Had that not unraveled an entire chain of events, would you even be asking these questions?”
Her heart was pounding a little too hard now. “I guess not. I just . . . What do I do now?”
“Only you can answer that. Tell me one thing, Kendall. What do you know in your heart to be true? Not what you’ve been told or how you’ve protected yourself, but do you still believe everything in your life has happened by coincidence?”
A single tear breached her lower lashes and slid down her face. “I guess not.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
She knew, but she couldn’t say it. “It’s too late, Gabe. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”
“It’s never too late. God loves you, Kendall. He always has. He never stopped.”
The words, so close to what Bill had uttered mere hours before, stopped her in her tracks. “What did you just say?”
“God takes us as we are. Broken and confused and unfaithful and insecure. All we have to do is accept Him. Recognize that the emptiness we’re all trying to fill can only be taken up by Him. It’s why He sent His Son to be sacrificed. To build that bridge between us, across the chasm that our sin caused between us and God. It’s just our choice whether or not to walk over it.”
Kendall was crying for real now, and she didn’t even know why. She wanted so much to believe that what he said was true. That there had been, if not a purpose, at least a plan at work in her life. Someone guiding her steps. That she wasn’t as alone as she’d always believed.
But then, hadn’t that been what she’d thought about Bill and Nancy? That when she walked away, they were done with her, when in reality they were just waiting for her to come home? To accept the gift of being in their family?
Gabe made coming to God seem just as easy.
“What do I do?” she whispered.
“Believe,” Gabe said, his voice equally quiet. “It’s a choice, Kendall. To believe or not.”
And for the first time in her life, it felt like an easy choice.
“I choose to believe.”
Gabe exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath. “Then welcome to the family, Kendall.”
It was those words more than anything that broke her. She could do nothing but cry into the phone for long minutes, so long that she had to look at the screen to see if the call was still connected. She couldn’t find the words to express how she felt as everything she’d held in—loneliness and grief and fear—poured out of her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew Gabe must think she was crazy.
But he was still there.
When her tears were finally spent, it was his quiet voice on the line that brought her back. He talked to her about what her decision meant. Encouraged her to find a church with a pastor who could help guide her down the right path. To get her own Bible and read it. How many times had she wished for an instruction manual only to find out that one existed?
She thought it would take a while to be able to call herself a Christian, with all the emotions and bad memories loading that word. It was going to have to be enough to say she’d found God and she was getting to know Jesus. That was honest, at least.
It was early morning by the time she hung up the phone with Gabe, her heart aching and raw for reasons she couldn’t even explain. She’d thought when someone made a decision like this, it was all light from heaven and choirs singing and inexplicable joy. Not this raw, painful feeling that the things she’d always held close—her beliefs and her prejudice—were being ripped away and replaced with something new.
But maybe that’s what healing was like. She suddenly remembered the time she was thirteen and she’d dislocated her knee. It was so painful she didn’t want anyone to touch it, least of all the doctor. The process of putting it back in place was agonizing, but it was followed by relief. And then an ache as the swelling subsided and the joint got stronger again.
As hard and emotional as the experience felt, as she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep, there was relief.
Chapter Thirty-Six
GABE HUNG UP THE PHONE and sank back into the couch cushions, at once wrung out and completely wired. When Kendall had called, he’d certainly had no idea that she was wrestling with the ideas of God and salvation
. The whole time he had been talking, he’d had a running litany of prayer in the background that went something like: Please God, don’t let me lead her astray. Don’t let me screw her up. Give me the right words.
And God had answered apparently, because by the time they’d hung up, Kendall was a new person.
Fitz nudged his hand, an indication the dog didn’t appreciate that he’d stopped petting him, as he’d done for hours while talking to Kendall, an unconscious action. He chuckled and scratched the dog’s ears. “You attention fiend. Now you’re going to expect hours of doggy massage every night, aren’t you?”
The shifting of bushy eyebrows could have meant either “That’s not an option?” or confusion that he was even questioning the wisdom of the action.
After all the crying Kendall had done, she was likely sound asleep now. But Gabe had an idea that was not in the cards for him. He could think of only one thing.
The only barrier against them being together was gone.
And yet at the very thought of pursuing her romantically, he slammed into a big mental brick wall.
No.
God rarely was so clear with him, but there could be no questioning that answer.
Was that what this was all about? Was their friendship, their barely begun romance, merely a vehicle to bring Kendall to Christ? Was Gabe just a stop on whatever path God had intended for Kendall all the time? When she’d called, he’d been half-hoping she’d gotten home and realized that California wasn’t where she wanted to be, that she wanted to come back to Jasper Lake.
But now he couldn’t deny the possibility that none of it had been for his benefit, only for hers.
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