Woodlands

by Robin Jones Gunn

  Chapter Thirty-six

  What are you doing?” Leah asked Collin, as he closed the Mercedes’ trunk with her suitcase tucked inside.

  “I’m driving you to Hamilton.”

  “It’s four hours one way.”

  “I reserved a room for myself,” Collin said. “I’ll drive back in the morning. When you’re ready to come home in a few days, you can call me, and I’ll come pick you up. It’s not a problem, Leah.”

  Without protesting, Leah got in his car, and the two of them drove to the bank. The truth was, Leah didn’t know what to think of anything anymore. Her life had become a frantically twirling carousel, and all she could do was hold on tight as the ride went up and down and round and round faster and faster.

  Robert, the bank president, and two tellers who were still doing paperwork were the bank’s only occupants. Robert led Leah and Collin to the vault where Collin handed Leah the key and indicated he would wait for her in the bank’s lobby so she could open the box in private.

  Leah thought of how she would rather have waited until after her retreat at the hot springs to retrieve whatever was in the safe-deposit box. She wasn’t ready for any more surprises. For all she knew, a check for a million dollars drawn on a secret Swiss bank account could be waiting for her. Or two tickets to the movies.

  However, Collin was steering her life at the moment, and so she entered the bank vault holding in her hand the sum total of what she had inherited from Franklin Madison—a key.

  Robert took Leah’s key and used one of his own to open the door of the safe-deposit box. Inside was a long, metal box with a handle. Robert pulled out the box and handed it to her. “You can open it in this room here,” he said, pointing to a small private room she hadn’t noticed before. He then quietly left.

  As she opened the box’s lid, inside she saw a plain, eight-by-ten manila envelope, folded in half and wedged into the flat, narrow box. Leah lifted the envelope. It was fairly light. And thin. She pinched the metal tabs on the back and was about to open the envelope when something stopped her.

  She stood for a silent moment in the privacy of the room. I don’t want to know. Not yet. I want to give my heart a chance to settle.

  She folded the envelope and tucked it in her purse. As she walked back into the vault, Robert appeared and put the box into its slot, using his key and hers to lock it in place.

  “Everything okay?” Collin asked when she joined him in the bank lobby.

  Leah interpreted his question to mean, “What was in the box, and is there anything I should know about, now that I’m your attorney?”

  “Everything is fine. Thank you.”

  Collin and Leah thanked the bank president and walked to Collin’s Mercedes in silence.

  “Any surprises?” Collin asked, as he opened Leah’s car door for her.

  She slid in without answering.

  Collin got in and started the engine. “Not that you have to tell me. It is private, of course. You do know that I’m available if you need consultation on anything you found in the safe-deposit box. Franklin has turned out to be a man of surprises, and I want to make sure he didn’t overwhelm you with another one.”

  Leah smiled to herself. Collin’s voice carried the same tone of the little boy she had once left on the boulders at Heather Creek with his feet propped up.

  “Collin, I don’t know what was in the box.” Leah decided that honesty was the best way to handle his questions. Especially considering this web she found herself caught in.

  “It was empty?” Collin surmised.

  “No, there was an envelope. But I didn’t open it. I want to wait until after I’ve had time to clear my thoughts. I want to be prepared for whatever I find.”

  Collin nodded slowly, as he pulled the car onto the main highway. “Sounds wise.”

  For almost a mile neither of them spoke. Then Collin said, in the same tone as the freckled face boy Leah once had a crush on, “I suppose you’re one of those people who actually can wait until Christmas morning to open her presents.”

  “Of course,” Leah said. “Why? Can’t you?”

  “Nope. Never have been able to.” With a chuckle Collin added, “The first Christmas we were married, my wife put three presents under the tree a week before Christmas. First chance I had, I unwrapped all three, saw what they were, and taped them back up.”

  “Did you get caught?”

  Collin nodded and grinned. “And was she ever mad! Every year after that she hid my presents at her friend’s house and refused to bring the gifts home until Christmas morning. Christmas was her holiday, and she wasn’t going to let me spoil her fun.”

  Leah smiled and felt herself beginning to relax. “You must miss her a lot. Especially at Christmas.”

  Collin shot her a quick, startled look as if Leah had overstepped a boundary. “Yes,” he said. Then, with a lopsided tone to his voice, he added, “When do you miss your parents the most?”

  Leah had to think about that for a moment. “I’m not sure. For so many years my life revolved around being available to meet their needs. It might sound heartless, but I don’t miss that part. I miss funny little things like reading the Sunday comics together and the way my mom used to hum to herself when she was cooking dinner.”

  “The loss of special people in our lives changes us, doesn’t it?” Collin’s voice had switched back to the wise-advisor tone.

  Leah felt a tight lump in her throat. “Yes, it does.” She was thinking of Seth. Ever since he stepped into my life I was changing for the better. Was it all a hoax? How will I change now that he’s gone?

  They reached the freeway, and Collin headed north. “Would you mind, Leah, if I put on some music?”

  “No, please do.” She would be glad for the focus to be off their conversation. It felt as if she might lose her emotional equilibrium at any moment.

  Collin pressed a few buttons, and suddenly they were surrounded by the magnificent voice of an Italian tenor. Leah leaned back in the plush leather seat and closed her eyes. What filled her ears was the most romantic, heart-stirring music she had ever heard.

  And once again, the image of the gondola in Venice came to mind. Leah imagined she was settled in the soft cushions while the rich voice of this passionate Italian tenor sang over her. She didn’t have to steer or direct or decide which canal to go down. All she had to do was nestle in this pocket of grace.

  Casually opening one eye slightly, Leah glanced at Collin’s profile as he drove. Is he the gondolier I’ve been waiting for and dreaming of? Leah snapped her eyes shut. Where did that thought come from?

  A wave of confusion washed over her stronger than ever. She suddenly wasn’t sure why she was going anywhere with Collin Radcliffe. Leah wanted to rest in this pocket of grace, but somehow it wasn’t right.

  Collin shouldn’t be directing and controlling which way I go, should he?

  A sense of remorse over losing Seth hit her with force. Leah squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face to the window. While the Italian tenor sang his heart out, Leah cried silently, refusing to think of this exercise as “washing the windows of her soul.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  When Leah awoke the next morning in her luxurious room at Hamilton Hot Springs, she blinked several times to make sure this wasn’t part of a long, bizarre dream she had been floating in and out of. Even without her glasses on, she knew the fireplace set into the far wall was real. She could feel the extra fluffy down comforter. That was real, too. So was the silken, sheer canopy draped over the four-poster bed. She was at Hamilton Hot Springs, and there wasn’t a fleck of avocado green or harvest gold in sight. Franklin’s resort was a luxury spa.

  This was all so foreign. She might as well have been dropped on Mars. Leah had no idea what to do in this place. She decided to dress and go downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast. As she pulled her clothes from her suitcase, Leah remembered how smoothly everything had happened last night. Collin drove for several hours while
she silently cried herself to sleep under the spell of the Italian tenor’s luxurious sounds. When Collin stopped for gas, Leah woke, and they ate at a drive-through restaurant. The rest of the way they talked about sports, music, and Collin’s mother, who recently had sold one of her oil paintings to a museum in Minneapolis.

  Collin didn’t ask anything of Leah. He didn’t bring up the topic of the safe-deposit box. He didn’t talk business at all. After he saw Leah to her room at the resort, he said good night and asked her if she needed his number so she could call in a few days when she was ready to return home.

  Leah sheepishly had to admit that she didn’t have any of his business cards with her. Collin instantly produced a card from his pocket and disappeared down the hallway.

  As Leah dressed this morning, she guessed that Collin already had left to drive home. She supposed he hadn’t called her room to tell her he was leaving so that she could sleep in. It made her think of the sacrifices Collin was making on her behalf.

  With bittersweet irony, Leah thought of the verse Seth had left on her windshield. The one she had thought was the valley of nuts. Leah was certain that if Collin hadn’t intervened, she would have tumbled into that valley of nuts by now.

  It was good to be here. Alone. Away from it all.

  Leah checked her purse to make sure the envelope from Franklin’s safe-deposit box was still there. She didn’t feel ready to open it. Not yet.

  Throwing a few things into the backpack she had brought with her, Leah decided to go for a walk. She stopped at the restaurant downstairs and asked if she could order a sandwich to go.

  “Certainly,” the hostess said. “Any particular kind of sandwich?”

  “Wheat bread, no meat, lots of lettuce and tomato.”

  “We have a vegetarian special on a toasted basil and garlic bagel,” the hostess offered.

  “Perfect. And whatever kind of juice you have that comes in a bottle.”

  As Leah waited on the bench just inside the restaurant, she thumbed through a brochure that described the various mineral pools at the Hamilton spa. She already could imagine how good those therapy pools were going to feel when she returned from her hike. On the backside of the brochure was a map of a two-mile loop that led through the woodlands down to a small lake.

  Leah took off on her hike with zest. Right away she noticed that she was hiking at a pace faster than she normally went. Her two hikes with Seth evidently had affected her hiking speed.

  How could I have allowed myself to so easily fall in love with Seth? Weren’t there hints along the way that he was setting me up?

  Leah couldn’t think of any. Everything about him had appeared genuine, even down to the lack of furniture in his apartment. She remembered the insurance papers Mary had showed her in Seth’s file that were all in Spanish. Those documents couldn’t have been false. Collin had suggested Seth had lied to her about being in Costa Rica, but Leah had seen the doctor’s report on letterhead from a Costa Rican hospital.

  Okay, so Seth isn’t a complete liar. He was in Costa Rica. But maybe Collin was right. Maybe Seth had to flee the country because of the drug charges.

  Leah picked up her pace as the trail led through an open meadow, laced with tiny blue wildflowers and tall white field daisies. They reminded her of the daisies Seth had given her last Friday, and how she had pushed him outside his own apartment and made him stand there, ringing the doorbell. Yesterday she had shoved the roses back at him. It occurred to Leah that both gestures were expressions of a woman who was trying to be in control. She winced; that wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be.

  Hiking past the meadow, Leah entered a cool, green woodland. With only the company of the sound of twigs crunching under her feet as she marched onward, Leah silently asked forgiveness again for trying to control her life instead of allowing God to be at the helm.

  Suddenly she stopped walking. She drew in a deep draught of the moist earth and the mossy trees. Woodlands were so soothing and restorative. The faint scent of wild violets rose to circle her, reminding her of the day Seth had held her in his arms in the woodland. She thought back on how he had talked of building a house on the very spot where the sun poured through the trees.

  And to think that Seth took me to the fifty acres of woodland that Franklin owned, and that he kissed me there, knowing all along the significance of that plot of earth we stood on. And yet he didn’t tell me. Did he really expect me to believe that our time together was more important than the information he had on the property and the will?

  Pushing herself onward, Leah thought about how she would include that bit of information in her next talk with Collin so he could use it in the case he would build against Seth.

  Am I sure I want to build a case against Seth?

  She knew Collin probably could win the case if she gave him the right information. Then all of Franklin’s money and land would revert to her.

  And then what? I build myself a castle in the woodland and live there all by myself for the rest of my life? What kind of reward is that?

  A wooden bench appeared on the trail ahead, just at the woods’ edge. Leah sat down so she could remove her shoe and shake out a pebble. The gesture reminded her again of Seth and their Easter morning hike.

  “Okay, enough of the memories of Seth!” she said aloud. Overhead several birds sang out, and Leah listened. Theirs was a song of springtime.

  See! The winter has past … the season of singing has come.

  Sitting quietly for some time, Leah rehearsed the past month’s events. Yes, the winter season of her life had passed. Yes, she was close to the Lord again and feeling sensitive to his Spirit. Her heart felt clean. No unconfessed junk to clog it up.

  Yet I don’t feel right. This is supposed to be the season of singing, but I don’t have a song to sing. I want to enter into the season of Judah, of praise, like Leah in the Bible when she started to praise God instead of trying to prove herself, and yet I don’t know how to do that.

  Leah cleared her throat and attempted to sing. It was a noble effort, although not a successful one. She gave up and let the birds do the singing.

  By the time she reached the lake, she felt emotionally exhausted and more than ready for her lunch. Several ducks floated on the placid, blue-gray waters of the kidney-shaped body of water before her. One of them headed her way when he saw her sitting down with food in her hand. Leah tore off a pinch of her bagel and tossed it to the friendly local. That was all his cronies needed to feel they had been invited to a company picnic.

  With great honking and comical waddling, the army of freeloading ducks came after Leah. She relinquished the top half of her bagel, standing and tearing it up piece by piece. She tried to eat as much as she could while sharing the bottom of her falling apart sandwich. As soon as the bagel was gone, it began to rain.

  Without a single “thank you” honk, the line of waddling tails hotfooted it back into the lake and frolicked in the rain.

  Leah pulled down her baseball cap and began to tromp uphill in the rain. The hike back was much more difficult than the walk that had sloped downward to the lake. All the way, as she huffed along, she heard birds singing.

  Singing in the rain, she thought with a grin. Wish I could sing. I just don’t have a song. Maybe the season of singing hasn’t come to me yet. Why not? What’s missing?

  Leah stomped her boots on the front mat before entering the lobby of the resort. She was chilled and wet and eager to soak in one of the mineral pools. Hurrying to her room, she pulled on her bathing suit and covered up with the luxurious robe provided in her room. The elevator at the end of the hall took her to the mineral pools where a resort staff member offered her a towel and pointed out the specifics of each pool.

  Leah chose the bubbling hot tub of 103-degrees and slowly lowered herself into the inviting cauldron. All her tension melted, as instantly she was warmed and soothed after her hike in the rain.

  She didn’t want to think about anything. She wishe
d her mind could shut down and float for a while the way her body was floating in the relaxing spa. But jumbled thoughts kept popping up in her mind. Thoughts of Seth. Thoughts of Collin. Thoughts of Jessica’s description of being nestled in a pocket of grace.

  Leah’s eyelids flew open. Jessica! I called her lawyer yesterday, and he’s expecting me to call him back. Leah knew she didn’t have to call him, but she also knew it would nag at her since she had said she would. She would call and leave a message that she no longer needed a second opinion.

  Feeling sufficiently poached, Leah decided to get out of the steaming spa and ask the resort assistant on duty if she could use a phone in the pool area. She knew that if she got that call off her mind, she could relax some more.

  Rising from the hot mineral water, Leah was about to reach for her towel on a nearby lounge chair when someone held it out to her. She looked up to see Collin Radcliffe offering her the towel with a pleasant smile on his face.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  What are you doing here? I thought you had gone home.” Leah quickly wrapped the thick, white towel around herself.

  Collin shrugged. “When I woke up this morning, I thought about how long it’s been since I’ve given myself a vacation. So I made a few calls, did a little shopping for some clothes, and decided to take it easy for a day or two.” He was wearing a spa robe, and his hair was wet. “Have you tried the steam sauna yet? It’s exceptionally good for the sinuses.”

  Leah felt deceived. Collin had just as much right to be here as she did; yet her private space was being invaded. She didn’t know why she felt such a strong sense of distrust for Collin after all he had done for her, but she did.

  “No, I, ah …” Leah reached for her robe. “I haven’t been in the sauna yet, but I need to go back to my room right now.” She felt awkward admitting she was going to call another lawyer so she added, “I forgot to do something.”