After a pause, Uncle John said, “I caused this.” His voice sounded as ragged as Noah felt. “If I’d been more patient with you, made you feel wanted here, you wouldn’t have eloped. And if I’d come to the jail that night, you’d have seen Esther before her parents arrived. I contributed to all this.”
Uncle John’s admission satisfied whatever need for justice remained in Noah’s heart. “Esther probably has a nice husband and a family now. Maybe it all worked out for the best.”
Uncle John eyed Noah, questioning the comment. “For whom? I see pain in your eyes every time you mention Esther.”
Noah bit his upper lip and weighed the words he had thrown out to ease his uncle’s guilt, running through the chain of events that led to where he currently was. “I inflicted a lot of that on myself. I realize that now. I didn’t care about living that first year after I left.”
“What turned things around for you?”
“Esther did, in a way, and then there was a master carpenter in Myrtle Beach—a Mormon guy named Paul. He saved me, but I owe you some thanks too.”
“I’d like to hear what happened if you’ll tell me.”
Noah closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “It’s not a pretty story.”
“I don’t suppose it is, but I’d still like to hear it.”
Noah breathed in again and leaned against the truck fender as he organized his thoughts. “When I left the farm, I drove and drove until my car overheated. I was three miles from Myrtle Beach so I walked the rest of the way and bought a handful of pills from the first dealer who approached me. When I came out of my week-long fog, I was broke and homeless.”
“I survived that first year by taking odd jobs, but I was too wasted to hold on to any of them for long. After all the unanswered letters I’d written to Esther, one finally arrived from her. When I read it, I realized I didn’t deserve her. Maybe I never did, but I knew I had a choice to make—whether I wanted to live or die. I chose to live that day.”
Noah moved to the truck gate and sat down next to his uncle. “I needed money, and one of the construction companies was hiring day laborers to clean up around a site. I got hired for one day. To my surprise, work made me happier than panhandling, but they told me they didn’t need me back the next day.” He looked up at his uncle. “More than anything, I wanted them to ask me to stay on. That’s when I remembered something you told me, how the value of a worker is measured by the pride he takes in his work, so I told them I’d hang around and work for free until the job was done.”
The expectation that filled his uncle’s eyes warmed Noah.
“Did they hire you back?”
Noah smiled and nodded. “I’m still there. About a year later, Paul—the master carpenter I mentioned—saw me whittling during my breaks, so he took me under his wing and taught me basic carpentry. And I was good at it. He called it a natural gift because I could tell what a piece of wood could become. I still enjoy transforming something plain into something beautiful.” He blushed. “Anyway, it was what you taught me that got me the job. Thank you for that.”
Uncle John pursed his lips. “Thank you for telling me, but you’re the one who did the work. You’ve come a long way. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t,” he said softly. “I was still angry . . . and bitter about a lot of things.” A quick glance at his uncle made both men smile nervously. “Things started to change around the next Father’s Day. Paul asked me about my father. At first, I told him I didn’t have one, but I ended up telling him about Duey and all the crap he put Mom and me through.” Noah fumbled with his hands. “He said he was sorry. That I deserved better. Hearing that took a load of guilt off me.”
Noah slid off the gate and looked at John. “He tried to tell me about his relationship with God, and how He could help me be the father I deserved but never had, but I just cut him off. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t believe it. I flat out told him I hadn’t seen much evidence of a God or His supposed love, and that I didn’t need help being a father because there was no way I’d ever bring a child into this world. What he said next changed my life. Saved me, really.”
Uncle John’s eyes widened. “What was it?”
“He challenged me to make the world better.”
“Just like that?”
Noah bobbled his head and explained. “He told me to start helping others, and to make an effort to notice the good in the world more than the bad. He promised me that if I tried to leave things better than I found them, I would begin to see my own evidences of God and His love.”
John nodded as Noah spoke. “We reap what we sow. Yes, I also believe that.”
“I decided to give Paul’s advice a chance, and in a way, your advice came in handy again. I knew if I was going to do this, I needed to give it my best effort, so I joined AA and NA. They helped me sort things out. A lot of what happened in my life was out of my control, but they helped me identify what was, and take responsibility for it. Paul was my support until he and his family moved. That was tough, but I didn’t backslide. I still go to meetings occasionally, but only when I feel I’m losing my grip.”
“That took a lot of courage, Noah.”
“The hardest part is facing the people we’ve wronged, or who we feel have wronged us. After I saw my parents, there were only two people left on my list—you and Esther. I don’t think I’ll need to see her now. I think I can finally make peace with things.”
John pulled a handkerchief out and wiped his eyes. When the cloth was tucked away, he reached out and patted Noah’s shoulder. “You’re a good man.”
“I want to be.” Even he could hear the longing in his voice. “I don’t have a family to invest in, so I’ve been saving every extra penny for years so that, someday, when the right person or cause comes along, I’ll be able to do what Paul said—help someone else. That challenge has given me purpose. Especially this last year.”
John nodded, then said, “I wish I could magically restore all you’ve lost. Somehow I’ll find a way, but today, I’m afraid I’m coming to you to ask another favor. I’ve told you that I think Sarah and I need to hunker down. The problem is, Agnes relies heavily on Sarah.
Agnes’s only family is Tayte, a granddaughter who lives in Miami. The two hardly know each other, and Sarah has her doubts that Tayte can handle Agnes’s problems and that farm. I was wondering if you’d take Agnes and her farm on for a while. I’ll pay you a salary to work there and get things under control while Agnes’s attorney helps Tayte figure out what to do for the long term. We still want you to stay here with us, but with the strain of my health, it would be a blessing to both of us if Sarah knew Agnes had some help right now.”
Something about being needed, a once undesirable situation, now appealed to Noah. “Sure, Uncle John. I’d like to do that.”
Chapter 8
Noah watched Sarah’s sad transformation as she faced the truth about John’s health. She did her best to conceal her mood, pasting on smiles, and keeping herself in constant motion. But in the moments when she thought she was alone, when she was sure John couldn’t see her, Noah saw the new set of features worry had etched upon her face—a taut mouth, eyes pressed into slivers, and a chin that pulled the remainder of her face into a slouch. She reminded Noah of his mother. He knew that face. It was the face of despair.
Even though the nursery that bought the majority of Uncle John’s inventory handled the transfer of the plants and trees to their location, closing the business down still created added work. The unsold stock and the family’s animals still needed tending, and maintenance was required on the equipment before it was stored. Noah spent the next few days helping Marty with those tasks before turning his attention to Agnes’s place.
John pulled him away for an hour or so each day, walking him through what remained of the nursery, teaching him about the different trees and telling him stories about the early days of his business. In return, Noah discussed the wood each tree produce
d and how to read its grain, which revealed what each cut was meant to become. His uncle listened with admiration equal to that which Noah paid to him. They were becoming colleagues, friends, equals.
They stole away one afternoon to play with the old Shopsmith, cutting intricately angled pieces for Noah’s frames. As they worked, they talked about cars and trucks, fishing, and the music they each preferred, and John shared stories about growing up in Baltimore with Noah’s mother.
On some evenings, Noah joined his uncle and aunt in a board game or watched TV. Uncle John’s evenings started ending earlier until dinner was followed quickly by preparations for bed. Noah accompanied Sarah to Agnes’s for a time, and then the day came when he was ready to replace her.
Noah followed Sarah in the old green farm truck. When they arrived, no introductions were needed. Agnes not only remembered Noah but hurried to him with arms open and a wide grin, all but ignoring Sarah’s goodbye.
“Agnes . . .” Sarah stood within the confines of her open door as she called to the woman. “I won’t be here for a while, but Noah will come every day to help you.”
“Every day?” Agnes clapped her hands. “We will be fine. I will take good care of him.”
As Sarah backed her car out of the farmyard, Noah wished there was more he could do to ease the burdens weighing her down. He turned his attention to honoring his promise to mend the farm of the French octogenarian who wrapped her arm python-like around his.
His old anxieties about touch ratcheted up, so he searched for a plausible distraction to unreel Agnes. “Introduce me to your animals again, Agnes, and teach me how to care for them.”
Agnes’s eyes lit up anew. “My babies. Yes, we should visit them.”
Noah noted how she struggled with some of their names again, even finding it difficult to remember what they were, covering her lapses with phrases such as, “He is a . . . well . . . he eez a very bad . . . You probably know what he eez.” Noah noticed how her French tones increased with her anxiety.
Noah rubbed the animal’s ear saying, “So, you’re a very bad steer, eh?” Agnes picked up the cue without offense and perked right up.
“Yes! He eez a very, very bad steer, but Momma loves him anyway, eh?”
On and on they went, with Agnes enjoying the company and Noah collecting data on how best to help her. As he attended to little chores she assigned him, he watched her, observing how she scanned each room as she entered, focusing on certain familiar objects, like antiques that she had likely grown up with, as if they centered her. It quickly became clear that one area of her house disturbed her. Each time she walked past the second floor stairwell, she clutched at the bulge under her shirt, and either rushed by or slid past, pressing herself against the opposite wall. Noah wondered where that stairwell led, and what about that space frightened her so, but it was a question saved for another day.
As the afternoon wore on to evening, he noted how she relied on her alarm watch, which chimed out the hours, points in time attached to items on her schedule. When three chimes sounded, she made a pot of peppermint tea and rested for an hour. At four o’clock she rose and tended to the afternoon feeding. At five o’clock she fussed because the task of picking burrs from Lancelot’s tail put her behind on her schedule, delaying supper preparation, which should have begun at five. At six o’clock she abruptly left her pot of soup to light a candle in the front window.
“Can I do that for you, Agnes?”
She wagged a finger in Noah’s direction. “Every day at six o’clock, I light my candle. More than sixty years now.”
“That’s a lot of candles.”
The comment made her pause for a moment, and then she roared with laughter. “Yes, it is! That’s why I always keep a good supply.”
There was no hesitation as she moved to a drawer in an antique chest located in the parlor and opened it. A box held seven short, white pillar candles and a box of matches. She struck one match and lit the partially burned candle in the window.
“No electric candles for you?”
She turned and offered him a look a sage would offer an ignorant pupil. Without her saying a word, he knew such a modification would be completely unacceptable.
A splash and sizzle sounded from the kitchen. Both of them hurried to find Agnes’s pot of cream of broccoli soup boiling over and down the front of her stove. Smoke and steam rose to the ceiling, spreading across the room. While Noah turned the flame off, Agnes hopped nervously from foot to foot as if unsure how to proceed. Without thinking, she grabbed the pot to pull it off the burner, sloshing boiling soup all over her arm.
She responded with little more than a quiet gasp, but Noah knew she was badly burned. He led her to the sink and began running cold water over the wound to wash the boiling soup away. “Stand here. Agnes, do you have a first aid kit?”
“Get me a potato, there under the sink.”
“A potato?” he argued as he stepped away. “We need a first aid kit!”
“A potato! A potato! Under ze zink! And bring a sharp paring knife from ze drawer.”
Agnes’s frazzled, French-intoned, whine turned to steeled determination, which showed in the hard set of her mouth. Just as when she lit her candles, Noah knew she was muscling through a memory. Trusting her, he followed her directions and fetched the items.
She struggled to cut the potato as the ache from the burn became more apparent.
“Let me help you,” he said, taking the items from her.
“Halve ze potato and scrape ze knife over it to shred it. Then place ze mash on my burns.”
Over and over, he scraped the knife across the potato’s flesh, gathering the pulp and spreading it across the angry red burns. He no sooner filled one area with cool, white mash when the pulp on another section turned pinkish gray, signaling that it was time to replace it with fresh potato. He worked for more than an hour, scraping through three tubers before Agnes declared that, despite the redness and blistering, the pain was now bearable. She relaxed and smiled.
“See? The Lord provides His own remedies.”
“I still think you should be seen by a doctor. That looks pretty bad.”
“I’ve had much worse.”
“I’ve never heard of using a potato on a burn.”
Agnes leaned back, cradling her arm. “My mother taught me. During the war, we had so little to tend to the wounded in our town. There were so many injured with burns and worse. Potatoes were our food and our medicine.”
Noah knew there was much more to Agnes than he yet understood. “Teach me, Agnes. I’d like to learn from you.”
She winked and wagged her finger at him again. “I will teach you many things, Noah.”
He looked at the burnt stove top, with soup now dried from the appliance’s front to along the floor. He winced. It would take some doing to clean the mess. He wondered how often such things happened and more importantly, how many times Agnes had been injured because of it. Her memory loss was not just an annoyance. It was now a danger.
Chapter 9
The egg timer in the bathroom went off, signaling the end of Tayte’s three-minute teeth-brushing routine. She spit in the sink, rinsed her mouth three times, and gargled with mouthwash, before resetting the timer to begin her face-cleansing routine. When she was finished she removed the towel from her head, allowing the wet strands to tumble down as she walked to the kitchen counter. One hand ran a comb through her dark mane while the other prepared a protein shake.
The phone buzzed on the counter. Tayte glanced at it and grimaced. Tyler was already beginning the morning ritual of calls and daily planning. She ignored the phone and moved out to the small veranda. By most measurements, she was living the dream, a twenty-four-year-old working artist who supplemented her royalty income by pulling a three-hour security shift each night on a roving, professional golfer’s estate. The pay wasn’t great, but the job provided her with a tiny, two-room cottage overlooking the beauty of Biscayne Bay. So, why wasn’t she happy?
The phone buzzed again, and again, Tayte ignored it. It was Tuesday, May first, the wind down of Tyler’s semester, but he’d still have a class or two. The only purpose his pseudo education served was to provide his parents some suitable explanation for their entitled youngest son’s inability to choose a career. How did he explain it to her? Oh yes . . . He was researching his interests. Some life. At least she would have a few hours before he arrived.
Another wave of guilt swept over her. Tyler might be shallow, but he was honest about who and what he was. She knew she couldn’t say the same. Tayte regretted succumbing to that moment’s emptiness after her parents’ funeral when she accepted Tyler’s romantic overtures. Now they were in a “relationship,” something she was neither good at nor comfortable with.
The TV buzzed with an infomercial for a durable toolbox filled with seven multipurpose, do-it-all tools. Tayte gravitated to the flat screen as she drank her protein shake, seeing similarities between herself and the box—attractive, tough, impermeable, and locked up. On first inspection she presented well, but unlike that box filled with all its marvelous surprises, she knew she was empty inside, a hollow shell without substance.
Would Tyler have pursued her if he knew who she really was, a girl who rarely bathed or brushed her teeth until her eighth summer when she was finally taught the basics of hygiene? She wondered if flirtatious men would work so hard to get a smile from her if they knew she hadn’t seen a dentist until she was thirteen, when the pain and smell from her cavity-riddled teeth caused a school nurse to finally intervene and force her parents to get her care.
She groaned, remembering the relapse that followed after that eighth summer—the embarrassment of puberty, those months when she didn’t have regular access to a shower, toothpaste, sanitary items, or deodorant. She closed her eyes against the memories.
A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET Page 9