Home Song

by Thomas Kinkade

  “If it’s marriage and children you want, it’s not too late for you,” he added quietly. “You’re only what—forty? Forty-one?”

  “Forty-two,” she corrected him.

  He shrugged. “Women are having babies these days at your age and older all the time. And there are many ways to have a family. All things are possible for God, you know. You must never underestimate Him.”

  Emily couldn’t answer. Was that what she really wanted, all this time, and had been denying herself? Pushing it away, because she felt so undeserving and scared?

  She would need time to absorb all this, to consider Reverend Ben’s advice, especially his words about forgiveness. But as she turned to him again, she did feel much better. Ready at least to get off the bench and return to work.

  She stood up and looked down at him. He regarded her with deep concern.

  “Have I helped at all?” he asked.

  “Yes, very much.” She gave a deep nod. “I’m going to think about what you’ve said, Reverend.”

  “Yes, think about it. Pray about it, too,” he added. “Hold on to your faith, Emily. God is always there for you. Let Him help you figure this out, for once and for all.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS NEARLY FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the sun was still bright and strong, Luke noticed as he drove his 4Runner down the sandy road that led to Durham Point Beach. It was an uncommonly long beach for this part of New England. He had always loved the way it looked at this time of day with its high, cliff-like dunes and the wide flat shoreline at low tide. The smooth wet sand took on a silvery sheen in the afternoon sun. He could remember running backward across it to spy on his own footsteps when he was a kid, amazed at how quickly they vanished with the next wave that rolled in.

  The beach was practically empty, too. The kids from the program would have it all to themselves. And there would be no potential for “incidents” with villagers who opposed the project.

  “Okay, we’re here, guys,” he said, coming to a full stop. Without another word, the three teenagers who sat in the backseat pulled open the doors, jumped out, and ran toward the shoreline. A van driven by one of the group’s counselors, Paul Delgado, pulled up alongside Luke’s 4Runner. The doors of the van slid open, and the rest of the group ran out to join their friends.

  Calling out and waving their arms and hands, tugging off sneakers and socks while still in motion, the crew was quite a sight. Luke laughed out loud as he walked around his truck to meet Paul and the other counselor, Leah.

  “I must be getting old. I can barely remember having that much energy,” Luke marveled.

  “They’ve been dying to get to this beach,” Leah said.

  “But I think it was a good thing to save it until the end of the week. A reward for all their hard work,” Paul added.

  “I need one, too,” Luke said. “Why don’t you take them for a walk to the lighthouse? It’s really a sight. I’ll hang out here and get the food ready.”

  “Good plan,” Paul replied as he trudged toward the kids through the sand beside Leah. “They’ll be bugging us about dinner in no time,” he predicted. “I hope we brought enough.”

  “Me, too,” Luke said. The only real challenge so far this week was having enough food on hand. The group of teens seemed to eat endlessly. Luke knew he was the same way at that age, but watching it every day was still amazing. Today, to be safe, he had packed enough to feed a small army—hamburgers, hot dogs, pickle chips, rolls, potato chips, soda, juice, ice cream, and cookies, plus yogurt, carrot sticks, and granola bars.

  He flipped open the tailgate and pulled out the bag of charcoal and blankets. Then stood back, shocked.

  Where was the cooler? He stared at the empty cargo area and slapped his head with his hand. What a dummy. How could I forget the food?

  He slammed the tailgate closed and stepped out in front of the truck, cupping his hands around his mouth to shout. “Hey, Paul, I have to go back. I forgot the food! Can you believe it?”

  Paul nodded and waved at him. “Okay, man. See you later.”

  Luke jumped back in his truck and swung out of the parking lot. It was a short drive back to the cottages, walking distance really, if you were in the mood. He always walked it when he was a kid—a quick trip down to the beach in the morning and a slow, itchy walk home, feeling sunburned, his clothes full of sand.

  He smiled at the memory, feeling again that he did the right thing by coming here. Even by trying to start this center. When the kids arrived on Monday, he braced himself, expecting the worst. But nothing too bad had happened. Sara even reported that talk in the diner was starting to die down, though Charlie was doing his best to keep things stirred up.

  But Charlie had his own motives, and maybe people were starting to see that, Luke thought. Besides, now that the kids were actually in Cape Light, perhaps people realized that the reality of New Horizons wasn’t anywhere near as dire as Charlie Bates’s hysterical predictions. Sara had also told him she heard a group in the diner talking about his letter to the editor and sounding as if it had swayed them.

  As the signs for Cranberry Cottages came into view Luke checked his watch, wondering if Sara was home. Maybe he could convince her to go back to the beach with him.

  He drove down the gravel road to the cottages and parked his truck. He didn’t see Sara’s car, but he did notice Sam, struggling to get a long ladder into the bed of his truck.

  Luke walked over to help him. “Here, let me give you a hand.” Luke grabbed a step on the long ladder and pushed hard. “I thought you already left.”

  “I would have,” Sam said, “but I can’t find Digger. He was working on the cottage right next to me, then he wandered off again.”

  Luke stepped back and brushed off his hands. “Maybe he went clamming. It looked like low tide out there.”

  “Maybe he did,” Sam agreed, slamming his long metal toolbox into the truck bed. “He ought to have told me, though.”

  Luke was not surprised. When the clamming urge struck, Digger would look up suddenly, drop his tools, and walk right off the job. It was as if the old man mysteriously sensed just when the tide was low enough for good clamming. During the past week he had wandered off a few times without telling anybody. Sam was used to it but still got annoyed at times.

  “I didn’t see him walking on the Beach Road, though,” Luke remarked. “Maybe he went back to town?”

  Sam was about to reply when suddenly they heard shouting. It was the old fisherman, calling for help from the other side of the property.

  “Digger!” Sam said. With a look of alarm on his face, he started running.

  Luke followed, unmindful of the pain in his leg as he pushed himself to keep up.

  He soon caught sight of Digger, not far from Sara’s cottage, waving his arms and his jacket and shouting something unintelligible. At just about the same moment Luke realized he smelled smoke. He stopped in his tracks and gazed around, then spotted flames covering one wall of the cottage closest to Sara’s.

  Digger had turned around and was trying to beat out the flames with his jacket. Sam reached him first and pulled him back, but the old man was doubled over coughing and seemed unable to catch his breath.

  “I’m going to call the fire department!” Luke shouted. He burst into the nearest cottage, where a few of the kids were staying. He called in the fire, then grabbed a fire extinguisher from the kitchen wall on his way out.

  The pain from his leg had gone from a dull throbbing to an insistent stabbing, and Luke wanted desperately to rest it, but he refused to give in to his pain. Instead, he forced himself into a hobbling run and returned to the fire.

  He twisted open the fire extinguisher’s pin and directed the foam at the flames, hoping he could at least stop the fire from spreading.

  The foam helped a little, he saw, but he didn’t have enough of it. He needed serious reinforcements. A line of flames was creeping perilously close to Sara’s cottage. Where are the firefighte
rs? he wondered frantically, his ears straining for the sound of sirens.

  Sam had pulled Digger away from the heat and smoke, but the old man was still coughing heavily and struggling to get his breath.

  “Easy now,” Luke heard Sam say to him. “Just stay calm. Try not to talk—”

  But Digger shook his head, hacking as he struggled to say something. He gasped, pointing to Sara’s cottage.

  Luke turned just in time to see Sara running toward it. “Sara, no!” he shouted as she pushed open the door and ran inside. “Get out of there!”

  He dropped the extinguisher and ran after her. Was she crazy?

  Luke pushed her door aside, his heart sinking as thick, black smoke poured toward him. He couldn’t see a thing. He dropped to his knees and crawled through the dark cloud, the smoke stinging his eyes and throat. “Sara? Answer me, please!” he rasped.

  He felt his way across the living room. The floor felt hot, and the smoke was getting thicker. It hurt to breathe. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going. But the one thing he knew was that he couldn’t leave her in here.

  Coughing, he made his way down the short hall toward her bedroom, then bumped against something—her body, stretched out on the bedroom floor. He knew he couldn’t risk standing up—the smoke would asphyxiate him and neither one of them would get out—so he grabbed hold of the collar of her shirt and, still crawling, began to drag her out of the cottage.

  She was dead weight, and the insistent pain in his leg intensified—shooting up his spine—as he struggled to get her outside. All he could think about was Sara. She didn’t make a sound, or react in any way. He wasn’t sure she was even breathing.

  God, no. Don’t let her die. Please help her, he silently prayed.

  He couldn’t see anything, so it was with a sense of shock that he felt a change in the temperature and realized he had reached the door. He gave Sara one last hard tug, and they both tumbled out into the cool air.

  For what seemed an endless moment, Luke doubled over coughing and retching. His eyes were tearing from the smoke. His throat felt as if it had been rubbed raw. But he got to his feet, lifted Sara into his arms, and carried her a safe distance from the fire.

  He laid her down on the ground and crouched beside her. Beneath the greasy smoke stains, her face was very pale. He quickly felt for her pulse. It was weak, but at least she had one.

  “Thank you, God,” he whispered. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Was she breathing? He leaned closer. Just barely. He tipped her head back and quickly began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  After three breaths he paused, waiting to see if she was breathing on her own. No, nothing. He felt his heart clench and started again. One, two, three, four, five more breaths. He waited.

  “Come on, Sara. Breathe. Please breathe,” he muttered, wanting to slap her lovely pale face back to consciousness. Or maybe just hold her and cry.

  He bent to her again. One, two, three . . .

  Then finally he felt her lungs fill on their own and pulled back. She moaned and tossed her head. Then her eyes opened, and she struggled to sit up, coughing.

  Luke put his arm around her. “Just relax. You’re okay. Don’t try to talk,” he told her, hugging her a bit closer.

  He heard the screaming sound of fire engines, coming down the Beach Road, toward the cottages.

  The first truck arrived and pulled up behind Sara’s cottage. A team of firefighters jumped off and began unreeling the long black hose. Moments later a thick jet of water streamed out, dousing the flames, but causing even more smoke to fill the air.

  Luke crouched down next to Sara, his arm still around her shoulders. “The ambulance is here,” he told her. “I’m going to get one of those guys to take a look at you.”

  Sam and the EMS crew had already started to tend to Digger. Sara looked over at them and shook her head and coughed again. “I’m okay. Really . . . sorry. That was dumb. . . .”

  “Dumb isn’t the word for it. Were you trying to kill yourself?” He tried not to shout at her. He gripped her arms, not knowing whether he wanted to shake her or hug her.

  “No!” she said, managing to sound indignant through a fit of coughing.

  But before he could ask her why she ran into the smoke-filled cottage, an EMS worker rushed over to them. “How are you doing?” he asked as he knelt down by Sara.

  “Okay . . . I think,” she answered, though the effort made her cough again.

  “Let’s see.” He fitted a stethoscope to his ears, then asked Sara to breathe while he listened to her lungs. He quickly fitted an oxygen mask over her face, which was attached to a small canister he carried. “Here, you need this. Try to relax and breathe normally.”

  “How is she?” Luke asked anxiously.

  “She’ll be okay. But she needs to go to the hospital so we can check her lungs and make sure there’s no damage from the smoke inhalation. You stay here with her a minute, and then we’ll get her into the ambulance,” he instructed.

  “No!” Sara sputtered, looking frightened. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “It’s okay,” Luke told her in a soothing voice. “They just want to check you out. I think it’s a good idea.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you the whole time, I promise.”

  Sara’s expression relaxed a little, and she nodded. But she also looked relieved that he’d promised to stay with her, he thought. Which was just as well. He met her gaze and held it. There was no way she was getting rid of him now.

  FRIDAY EVENING FOUND EMILY SITTING AT HER COMPUTER, WORKING ON A letter to the editor for the Messenger. She paused, reviewed what she’d written so far, then with a frustrated sweep of her mouse, erased all of it.

  This is going to be harder than I thought. Please God, she prayed silently, help me out here. Please send me the right words.

  She stared at the blank screen a long moment. Reverend Ben’s advice seemed to echo back at her. “Think with your heart, Emily, not just your head.”

  Okay, I get it. Maybe that’s what I have to do here. She raised her hands over the keyboard again, considering how to start.

  The phone rang then, breaking her concentration. Who could that be? There were just too many people she didn’t want to talk to right now. She reached over to turn the volume on the speaker down—and stopped as she heard the voice of the fire chief, Ed Rhinehardt.

  “I tried you at home and there was no answer, so I thought I’d leave a message here as well,” he said. “There’s been a fire at the Cranberry Cottages—”

  Emily grabbed the receiver. “I’m here,” she said. “What happened?”

  “We got a call about five o’clock. Sent out two trucks and the ambulance. The fire seems to have started in a pile of building supplies. It caught on one of the cottages but was contained pretty easily. We’re not sure of the cause yet. Lots of smoke, though.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” she cut in, thinking first of Sara. Then all those kids . . . and Luke McAllister, of course.

  “Luckily the place was practically empty—” Ed’s reply made her sigh with relief. “Everyone had gone off to the beach for a barbecue. Digger Hegman and Sam Morgan were still there, working. Luke McAllister called it in. Digger was the one who saw it first. They checked him at the hospital for smoke inhalation, but I think he’ll be all right.”

  “Thank God,” Emily said sincerely.

  “They brought Sara Franklin in, too,” he added, making Emily bolt up in her seat. “But I heard they looked her over and sent her home. It was just a precaution.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Emily still felt worried, though. She didn’t care if Sara was mad at her. As soon as she hung up with Ed, she would call Sara or maybe even go out to the cottages and see if anyone was there.

  “What are the damages? Is the place still livable?”

  “Not too bad,” Ed said. “I guess they’ll have a better idea tomorrow. I don’t thin
k anyone went back there tonight. Too much smoke. McAllister said they would find rooms for the night at a motel on the highway. They’re going to have a hard time cleaning up. A lot of lumber and roofing material was ruined—either burned or got doused. I don’t think any more work is going to go on up there for a while. Which may have been the idea,” he added thoughtfully.

  Emily knew exactly what he meant. This was more than a rock tossed through a windshield, and yet she couldn’t accept the idea that anyone in Cape Light would commit arson. Still, she knew what she had to do. “I’ll get a hold of Jim Sanborn,” she said. “I think we should all meet right now and talk about this.”

  “I had a feeling you would say that. Just give me a few minutes to get cleaned up. I’ll be right over.”

  Emily called the police chief at home and caught him at the dinner table. He hadn’t heard about the fire yet, but agreed that they had to meet immediately. “I was afraid something like this was going to happen,” he said right before he hung up.

  The two men arrived at her office at practically the same time. Ed quickly filled them in on what they knew so far about the fire’s origins. It wasn’t much.

  “By the time we put it out, it was too dark to really see anything,” Ed said. “We’ll start the investigation first thing in the morning. We have a guy on the squad who has a lot of experience with arson. I think we should team him up with one of your men,” he said to Chief Sanborn.

  It was the first time anyone in the room had mentioned the word arson, and Emily felt her heart sink at the implications.

  “I understand what you’re saying, and I know you have to investigate,” she said, “but I have to tell you that I can’t believe this fire was started deliberately. Charlie may have everyone all riled up and frightened about the New Horizons Center, but I just can’t see anyone here going to such extremes. The idea of someone from this town setting fire to the site—it’s unthinkable.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Ed Rhinehardt said. “And I’m very glad no one was hurt. Now we have to make sure that no one gets hurt in the future. So we’ll investigate this situation from top to bottom, and we’ll find out what really happened.”