“To the Phillips neighborhood.” He held out his hands, as if the answer lay in his palms. “I live in Minneapolis, 2135 Franklin Avenue.” He looked at her, and this time a streak of fear lined his eyes. “I’m a youth pastor. Didn’t you know that? This is only a summertime gig. My full-time ministry is with Christian Fellowship Center in downtown Minneapolis.”
21
Noah watched Anne at dinner with deepening foreboding. A chilly wave had swept over the woman he’d held in his arms earlier this afternoon, turning her frosty and distant.
And it had happened right before his eyes. Anne had pulled away, finished packing her backpack in rigid silence.
He felt as if a part of his chest had been ripped open. He didn’t—couldn’t bear to—think that she’d backed away because of his confession. His history. Hadn’t she said she’d understood? He’d believed the compassion in her eyes.
Perhaps too easily.
He managed to choke down a bite of garlic bread before his throat thickened. Of course his past mattered. An ex-con. Any decent woman in her right mind would run for the hills. He couldn’t blame her for being human. Or smart. But she’d left a gaping, ragged wound right in the center of his chest.
“My tent is packed and raring to go.” Ross sat beside him, his plate piled with spaghetti. “The guys can’t wait.”
“And I guess you’re loading up?” Noah nodded toward Ross’s mountain of food.
“Hey, man, I know what you’re feeding us on the trail—army MREs. Those things are made for prisoners of war, at best.”
“I got a deal. Besides, they’re light to carry and they’ll fill your stomach.”
“Yeah—fill us with gut-rot.” Ross grinned at Katie, who winked at him from across the table.
Noah wondered suddenly, if he’d missed something.
“What route did the park service approve for us?” Katie pushed away her spaghetti and poked her spoon into the cherry Jell-O, grimacing slightly.
“The Rose Lake–Pigeon River route. We’ll have to travel in two groups . . . the guys in one party and the ladies in another, but we’ll take the same course. Up through Bearskin Lake, overnight on Rose, a day climbing and hanging out in Partridge Falls, then over the long portage to Rove, through Waptap and along the border lakes to the Pigeon River.”
Ross had put down his fork. He stared at Noah as if he’d just told them they were about to scale Kilimanjaro. “Noah, I know we mapped this all out months ago, but now that it’s here, I wonder if that’s way too much for these kids. They can barely paddle. Do you think they’re ready for a sixty-mile trip?”
“We have ten days. That’s six miles a day.”
“With kids who freak every time they hear a mosquito buzz by their ear.” Katie leaned forward and purposely kept her voice low. “Are you sure we’re not jumping in over our heads?”
Anne’s warning rang through his skull: Bad idea. Trouble lurks in the forest, Noah, and these kids are going to find it. Getting these kids into God’s creation to face their mortality might be exactly what they needed to push them over the edge and help them see their need for a Savior. But was he pushing too hard, too fast? Just because immersion in the wilderness had worked on him didn’t mean it was a sure remedy.
“I think we’ll be fine.” He twirled his fork into his spaghetti, round and round. Katie’s silence amid the chatter of twenty campers spoke volumes. “If we have to, we’ll pull out at South Fowl. I’ll have my cell phone and Dan said he’d pick us up anytime. We’ll be fine.”
Ross raised his eyebrows. “Okay, boss, you know best.”
Noah tried to agree with a smile, but a flint of panic rose and pierced his confidence. Maybe Katie’s and Anne’s words were right on target. He shoved his plate of food away. He looked down the table at Darrin, verbally sparring with George, who sat across from him. Both had rolled up the right arm of their T-shirts. . . .
Anger flared in Noah’s chest. Gang signals . . . People signals. Vice Lord signals. Obviously Darrin had taken Noah’s revelation to heart and given himself permission to follow in Noah’s treacherous footsteps. The food soured in Noah’s stomach. Yeah, he’d been a great leader. Obviously making a gigantic impact in these kids’ lives.
“Excuse me,” he said to Katie, Ross, or whoever cared as they shoveled food into their mouths. “I have to get ready for Soul Talk.” He grabbed his plate and climbed off the bench before his face could betray his gut-wrenching sense of failure. Sliding his plate across the counter to Granny D., he barely heard her offer him a cookie. No, he couldn’t eat another thing. Not with his stomach roiling.
He didn’t even look at Anne as he passed her table. The death of their brief, glorious romance was another wretched testament to his pathetic attempts to escape his upbringing.
He’d been the utmost of fools to believe a man of his background could not only change the hearts and minds of desperate kids, but also win the heart of a lady like Anne. Thankfully, he’d never confessed that they’d met before, that he’d been the catalyst of her nightmares. Never confessed the way he felt about her, the way he couldn’t get through a minute without her fringing his mind. That somehow she’d taken up occupancy in his heart.
This afternoon, as she’d looked him in the eyes and thanked him for pouring out his ugly history, he’d put definition to his feelings that seemed to overwhelm him. He loved her. He loved her for her smile and her laughter. For her courage and her commitment to dreams that weren’t hers. He’d wanted to dive into the fairy tale she’d created for them this afternoon. Wanted to sweep his feisty beauty into his arms and tell her he loved her. And then, as if realization had a thirty-second delay, he saw her eyes change and in them he’d become not Prince Charming . . . but a beast.
He should have known that he hadn’t a prayer of burying his heritage. That reality made him weak with grief.
Down . . . down . . . down he went, in way over his head. And drowning fast.
Anne watched Noah stride out of the lodge, saw the sickly hue on his face, and fought a wave of heartache. She wanted to bounce off her bench and run after him, to take him in her arms and tell him that whatever the problem, they’d face it together.
Where? Here in Deep Haven? The horrific news that his future awaited him in Minneapolis made her want to crawl under the table and sob.
A team of wild elephants couldn’t drag her south. Never. Her peace was in Deep Haven, not in Minneapolis, and nothing short of hog-tying and gagging her would get her to return to her old stomping—no, running—ground.
Besides, she hadn’t come to Deep Haven looking for love. She’d been content to dream about the mystery man who fringed her memories. She’d choose peace over love any day, month, or year. Hadn’t her mother’s experience taught her that much? MaryAnn Lundstrom had loved her husband so much she’d given up her home, her teaching career, her life to follow him into ministry. She remained there three years after his death, spooning out chicken soup to the homeless.
Not Anne. She didn’t care if it ripped her heart right out of her chest and left her cold and hollow for eternity. She would not let a man drag her back into that prison. Anne clenched her jaw and forced herself to finish her spaghetti.
She spent the next hour helping Granny D. in the kitchen, then wandered down to the campfire to catch the tail end of Soul Talk. Noah had morphed from the slump-shouldered man she’d seen shuffle out of the lodge into camp director with a passion. She steeled her heart against the way Noah explained the story of the Prodigal Son. Why did he have to be so charismatic, compassion and verve lighting his eyes, his strong hands drawing the story? Even the way he moved, with energy and excitement, barraged the emotional walls she’d spent the past hour trying to fortify.
She avoided him like poison ivy when the group headed back to their tents. Memories of the campfire pit called to her—a sultry voice reminding her of sitting in its magical embrace with the woods perfuming the air, a gorgeous man beside her, sometimes holding
her hand. She fought the emotional ambush as she did her rounds.
Stopping at Melinda’s tent, she checked on the girls, then made a cursory check outside Ross’s and then Bucko’s tent before heading over to Katie’s group for the night. She’d begun to relish the evening chats with Katie’s group.
Shelly, the young lady who’d been sucked into George’s charisma, had turned out to be a delightful teenager with luminous brown eyes, a smile that lit up a room, and a feisty spirit hungering after truth. When Anne pulled up the flap and entered the musty tent, alive with flashlights striping the canvas walls, Shelly was quizzing Katie about God’s goodness in the face of evil.
The question brought Anne back to the night Bertha had eaten her cabin to smithereens and she’d walked in on Noah the prowler. He’d frightened her, but in the sincerity of his apology, she’d seen the first hint of a man of honor beneath the garb of danger. And their conversation that night, as they’d stared into the sky, betrayed a man who walked in faith. Where is God in the dark moments, when our dreams crumble, when the worst happens?
Katie’s answer seemed apropos for Noah’s question. “His grace is sufficient, even for those dark moments.” Katie’s green eyes reflected a light not her own as she spoke softly to her group. Anne sat on the cot next to Shelly.
“But doesn’t God care when we suffer? Why doesn’t He stop it or protect us?” Shelly’s questions echoed Anne’s.
Anne quirked one eyebrow, held her breath.
“That is an excellent question,” Katie said. “Consider with me Jesus’ answer in John chapter 9. Jesus was walking along with His disciples, and they see this blind man. Of course, it’s the nature of people to want to know why something happens, so the disciples asked, ‘Teacher, why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?’” Katie leaned over and touched Shelly’s knee, then scanned the group with a searching gaze. “And Jesus said, ‘It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. He was born blind so the power of God could be seen in him.’
“Then Jesus healed the man. I think the important thing here is that we can’t always pin down reasons for tragedy. Life is tough—you know that. But every hard moment can be met by God, used by God. That’s the glory of it. We can ask why, but we may never find the answer. But we will find God if we turn to Him. In that surrender, He’ll turn the tragedy into something for His glory and your eternal good, according to His will.”
Anne hugged herself, blinking at Katie’s words.
Katie flipped through the Bible lying open in the pocket of her crossed legs. “‘O my people, trust in Him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him, for God is our refuge.’ That psalm was written by David, a king who was surrounded by his enemies. He knew where to turn for help, and he wasn’t afraid to cry out to God.” She closed her Bible and her gentle eyes found Shelly. “That’s your answer. Life is cruel, but God’s comfort is near, if you call out to Him. I don’t know why He allows horror, but I do know that He sends Himself, like a light in the darkness, searching to save us when life assaults us.”
Anne’s mind tracked back to three nights ago, when Noah had driven her out to the cliff to watch the lighthouse. The beam arched through the night, searching . . .
Suddenly, the analogy fit. And it hurt.
Where had His light been the night she’d been attacked? The cry of her bereft soul swelled through her, and she fought the primal urge to flee and hide from the fears stalking her.
Fears that denied her the pleasure of fully enjoying God’s blessings—now. Fears that meant she’d have to shove Noah out of her life if she wanted to survive.
Because if she couldn’t find peace in her past and see God’s hand in the darkness, how could she ever trust the Almighty for the shadowed future? Especially a future that meant joining Noah in his work among the riffraff of life. Outside her Deep Haven.
“Do you remember the prayer I taught you this morning?” Katie reached out her hands, locked them with the girls on either side of her. “Let’s say it together.”
Anne held Shelly’s hand, her raw emotions soothed by the soft, vibrant voices reciting a childhood prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
Tears gathered in the back of Anne’s throat. How long had it been since she felt that safe, soul-keeping embrace of her Savior?
Anne pushed to her feet, bid the girls good night, and wandered down to the campfire. The dim glow of the cinders barely pushed back the night, and it wasn’t until she neared the conclave that she saw Noah sitting just outside the ring of light. His head-bowed, hands-folded posture made her freeze.
He was praying. The sight of this street-raised man bent in petition before the Lord brought tears to her eyes. Noah loved God. Hadn’t she longed for a man who loved God above all else? But not if he dragged her right back into danger.
Anne steeled herself against a wave of heartache. Oh, she loved him. Loved him. As she watched him, saw him wipe his eyes, listened to him hum a faint melody, the realization burrowed deep. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. She’d fallen hopelessly, devastatingly, gloriously in love with Noah. She loved his zeal for life, his laughter, his teasing, his soul-deep eyes. She loved his wind-tangled black hair that made him look like a Wild West warrior.
She loved Noah Standing Bear more with each breath.
But she couldn’t be with him. Not when loving him meant facing her demons, abandoning her plans for a safe future.
She shouldn’t have let her heart get so far off its leash. She should have gritted her teeth and stuck to dreaming about the only perfect hero—the one who knew her darkest moments and carried her through them.
Yeah, right. The utter hopelessness of ever meeting that hero of a year ago nearly made her huff in incredulous despair. The worst part followed and hit her hard—even if she ever, by some stupendous miracle of the Almighty, met the man who’d saved her life, her heart was already taken. Noah had full, universal occupancy.
How utterly heart-wrenching was that?
She turned, desperate to sneak away . . . and stepped on a twig. It snapped like a security alarm reverberating through the halls of guilt. She stopped.
“Anne?”
She slowly turned back. He had raised his head, and the raw vulnerability in his eyes, as if he knew she’d seen him crying, shook her. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“It’s okay. I . . . uh . . . was praying.” He stood, shoved both hands into his pockets, and came near the fire. The glow barely dented the shadow around his face. “How are you? I mean . . . with us?”
How was she? How did she explain the despair blowing through her heart? How did she tell him that she loved him, that he seemed the fulfillment of all her wildest dreams?
And nightmares.
She wasn’t going back to the Phillips neighborhood, and Noah couldn’t guilt her, charm her, or bamboozle her into it. Even if she did feel utterly safe in his embrace.
She simply could not be with a man whose life’s ambition was to get tough and dirty with the elements of the inner city, who walked into the night . . . and asked her to follow.
Why did Noah have to commit his heart to the street? Couldn’t he stay here with her? Deep Haven had lost youth, didn’t it? Unless . . . he didn’t love her back. He had asked her to work for him—not to marry him. Big difference.
She backed away from him, nearly as afraid as when she’d faced her shooter. She wasn’t going to hang around to get wounded a second time.
“I have to go to bed. Early morning, you know.” She couldn’t look at his face, at those oh-so-soft eyes. She would simply reel in her heart and tuck it safely, bruised and battered, back in her chest. He would never know that, for the smallest blip of time, she’d found pure happiness in his arms.
He opened his mouth as if to protest, his face tight in a frown, but she held up a hand. “I don’t know, Noah. Just . . . st
ay away from me.”
Then she turned, and like she had so many times in the face of her nightmares, she fled.
22
It would be a glorious, God-breathed day if Anne allowed herself to look at the sky—a perfect azure, accessorized with fat cumulus bullied by a slight breeze. The sun fought for space and, when it won, it rained down a blast of pure, glorious warmth. It went right through Anne’s rain gear and warmed the cold places inside.
In Anne’s canoe, Latisha lay sprawled in the middle, on “duffing” duty for this lake, her cornrowed head against a Duluth pack as she soaked in the sun. Her dark skin shone like priceless topaz. Shelly, working the paddle in the bow, had her brown hair pulled back in an inverted ponytail, and Anne wondered how the girl couldn’t be freezing in a tank top and shorts. Anne felt chilled from the inside out, a phenomenon that had to do with the fact she was surrounded on all sides by water.
Still, it made her feel fresh and alive in a wild nature sort of way. Of course, it could be the aftereffects of sleeping while dangling between two trees—Noah’s brilliant solution to her “no bugs” and “no ground.” Swinging under the stars bundled in her sleeping bag, she had slept better the last two nights than she had in years. Even though she had yet to brave the morning plunge, she felt new and bright and whole when the dawn woke her with a warm kiss.
Perhaps, indeed, she’d found the peace she’d been searching for. Even the weight of doom had eased. She longed to be terribly wrong about her premonition of brewing trouble.
Noah sure seemed to be heading off disasters. He was militant about wearing life jackets and had made everyone put on enough mosquito repellent to kill a record infestation. Last night he’d paddled over from the guys’ campsite down the shore to check on the ladies.
She wouldn’t let him find a soft place in her heart to work his charm. Poor guy. He didn’t deserve the cold shoulder she’d given him. Her resolve almost crumbled when he’d handed her a nylon hammock, those gorgeous eyes saying so much more. What’s wrong, Anne?
Deep Haven [02] Tying the Knot Page 22