Finding Hope (12 page)

“Yeah, right,” she said skeptically. “I'm sure
that's
the reason. Because you'd never do anything out of the goodness of your heart, would you?”

“I thought we'd established the fact that I don't
have
a heart,” he said.

“Somehow you have failed to convince me. Give it up, Charlie.”

He actually smiled at that.

Hope made a dive for her purse. “I almost forgot,” she said eagerly. “I have something for you.” With a thrill of pleasure she handed him a small white box.

He lifted the lid. The box held a long braided chain made of sterling silver. He pulled it out and examined the pendant that hung from it, an exquisitely detailed silver eagle.

Hope had seen it a month ago in a display case at her favorite Christian bookstore, and she had known immediately that she had to have it for Charles. The price had stunned her, but she cheerfully made several small sacrifices and just yesterday she had marched back into the store, money in hand.

Charles turned troubled eyes to her. “Oh, Hope. You can't afford presents like this.”

“I had to pinch some pennies,” she said truthfully, “but I wanted you to have it. I thought you might wear it while you're in Mexico.”

“Sure, I'll wear it all the time,” he promised, fingering the outstretched wings of the eagle. “It's nice.”

“It's just a reminder that I'll be praying for you constantly. The eagle is a reference to a Bible verse about strength.”

“Which verse?”

“Isaiah 40:31. ‘But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.'”

He smiled. “You'll be praying that I won't grow weary?”

As she nodded he slipped the chain over his head, allowing the eagle to hang outside the vee neck of his dark blue scrub shirt. “Thank you. I like it.” He inclined his head, not looking at her. “Now say the verse one more time and I'll remember.”

He listened intently as she repeated it. “You think it means nothing to me,” he said slowly. “But it does, because it matters so much to you.” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Hope, I wish I could be a Christian for your sake. I know it would ease your mind.”

Her heart was too full to allow any response but shimmering eyes. He was so close—why couldn't he just give in to God?

He laid a warm hand against her cheek. “It's going to be the longest three weeks of my life. Thank you for coming last night. I liked knowing you were here.”

She managed to nod. As she did, the hand on her cheek moved slightly and his thumb brushed one corner of her mouth. His mouth opened suddenly, as if he would speak, but he didn't. He swayed towards her, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he would kiss her.

As much as she wanted it, that couldn't happen between them. She backed away, smiling bravely. She picked up her picnic basket and her purse, and left him.

 

Hope dropped her car keys on the kitchen table and reached for Bob's leash. She wanted to sit down and cry, but her pet had been alone all night and he needed to be walked and fed. She went through those motions and then she was finally free to fling herself onto her bed and sob into a pillow.

It had happened. The thing her father and Pastor Bill and even Claire had warned her about. Could she bear it?

She had to. She was the only one he'd talk to, the only one he'd listen to. He'd come so far; she couldn't give up on him now. Common sense told her to back away, protect her heart, but she knew that whatever it cost her, she would stick by him.

She didn't know how long she'd be able to keep her secret. He might have guessed already. But now she had three weeks to pull herself together.

She sat up and reached for the Bible on her bedside table. For more than an hour she read and prayed, then the phone rang.

“Hope, it's Tom.”

She smiled. “Your brother's been gone for less than two hours. Isn't it a little soon for you to be checking up on me?”

He chuckled softly, but there was a wistful note in his voice. Hope's own troubles were forgotten as concern for Tom squeezed her heart. “What's wrong?” she asked urgently.

It was a moment before he answered. “Hope, I'd really like to talk to you about something,” he began slowly. “You're the only Christian I know, and I have some questions. About God.”

Her favorite topic of conversation. “I'm free right now,” she replied eagerly. “Come over and have a cup of tea.”

When Tom arrived, he seemed agitated and a little embarrassed. Hope noticed that he carried a Bible, but she said nothing about it. She led him to the kitchen and made light conversation as she prepared a bracing pot of Irish Breakfast tea. Then she set a plate of oatmeal cookies on the table and poured the tea, smiling encouragement at Tom.

He shook his head and made a soft sound of amusement. “It's not difficult to understand why Trey spends
so much time here. But what
is
it about you, Hope? What's the magic?”

She smiled, pleased that he had asked. “I hope you see a glimmer of God's love in me. What did you want to talk about, Tom?”

Resting his elbows on the table, his left hand clasped around his right, Tom leaned his chin on his hands. “Today's my tenth wedding anniversary,” he said quietly, not looking at Hope. In an unconscious gesture that tore at her heart, he leaned his face forwards until his lips rested against his gold wedding band.

“Oh, Tom. I'm so sorry.”

“I couldn't sleep last night,” he said with obvious difficulty. “So I went through some of her things.” He sighed, reached for the Bible and pushed it across the table to Hope. “I found this.”

Hope couldn't hide the moisture in her eyes, but Tom's were shimmering, too. Sending up a silent prayer for guidance, she bit her lip and waited.

“Near the end of her life Susan was very interested in this Bible,” Tom continued. “She was always reading it and listening to religious programs on the radio. When she tried to talk to me about what she was learning, I cut her off.” With one finger he absently traced the ear-shaped handle of his teacup. “I was just too upset about losing her to talk about the afterlife.” He looked up, meeting Hope's teary eyes. “Can you understand that?”

“Of course I can.” Hope put her hand on his.

“But I loved her so much.” His voice broke. “I just can't believe I was that selfish. I wish I had let her talk about what was so much on her mind.”

Hope squeezed his hand and gave him a compassionate look that said he need not be ashamed of his tears. “That was grief, Tom. Susan must have understood that.”

“Maybe you're right. She understood everything.”

“Can I do anything for you, Tom?” Hope placed her free hand on the Bible.

His eyes followed her movement. “This morning I found that she had written things in that Bible. It almost looks as though she was trying to leave messages for me. A road map to follow so I can find her again. Could that be it, do you think?”

Hope's heart pounded as she opened the Bible and leafed through it. She turned several pages, reading margin notes that had been written in a small, neat, rounded hand, and she rejoiced. A woman gone for three years reached out to Hope, spoke to her heart. They were sisters.

It wasn't easy to speak past the huge lump in her throat. “This is very wonderful to me,” she said slowly. “The way you and Charlie talk about Susan, I have regretted not being able to know her. What this Bible tells me is that I
will
know her one day, in heaven. Susan was a born-again believer, Tom. Didn't you know?”

“I don't really know what that means,” he confessed raggedly. “Can you explain it to me, Hope?”

She fought to keep her voice steady. “Let's start with one of the verses Susan underlined. Will you read it out loud? Right here,” she said, pointing. “John 3:16.”

Tom leaned forwards and began to read the life-changing words, “For God so loved the world…”

“C
harlie? I can barely hear you.” Hope pressed the telephone hard against her ear and strained to hear past the wild crackling on the line.

“Hope, we've…bad connection…raining hard here, and…calling from…in the mountains…hear me now?”

Sort of. She closed her eyes and listened harder. “Yes, go ahead. What's wrong?”

He'd been in Mexico for two weeks, and she had no idea why he was calling. Concern pulled her eyebrows together as she concentrated on his voice. There was something in it that she couldn't make out. Shoulders hunched, she gripped the phone with both hands, as if that would pull him closer.

“…so many wonderful…going on here…Hope, something amazing is…I don't understand it, but… Can you hear me?”

Her heart raced. “Say it again, Charlie.”

“Hope, keep praying for…I just…and everything…so please keep praying, okay?”

“Yes! Of course I'm praying! Are you all right, Charlie?”

“Yes, but I…going extremely well here and we…to another village… Hope, it's so strange and wonderful! I wish…be here to see it for yourself.”

Wonderful. Something was strange and wonderful. The work was going well and he was excited. He wanted her to pray. Oh, she could do
that!

“Charlie, I can't understand you very well, but it sounds like exciting things are happening there. I'm so pleased for you! I can't wait to hear all about it.”

“Yes, it is exciting…wait to tell you about…you next week, okay? I have to get off now, but I just…hear your voice, Hope.”

The line was dead, so she put the phone down. She tried to fill in the blanks, make sense of what she'd heard. Then she bowed her head and poured out her heart to God.

 

As he had the week before, Tom picked up Hope on Sunday morning and drove her to church. He'd met her Sunday school teacher and several of her friends, but both Pastor Bill and Claire had been absent the previous Sunday. This morning Hope was eager to have them meet Tom.

After the service she introduced him to the pastor, explaining that Tom was Charles's brother and that he had just become a Christian. Pastor Bill shook Tom's hand warmly, thumped him on the back and asked whether he needed any kind of help.

“I need all kinds of help,” said Tom genuinely. “Your sermon this morning answered a lot of questions, but I have plenty more.”

Pastor Bill pulled a business card out of his pocket and
pressed it into Tom's hand. “You call me tomorrow,” he said, “and we'll have coffee sometime this week.”

Hope glowed with pleasure as Tom thanked the pastor and promised to call.

“I pray for your brother,” said Pastor Bill.

Tom lowered his gaze and nodded. “Thank you,” he said in a husky voice. “He's a better man than anyone realizes.”

“Oh, I think Hope realizes it,” said the pastor, smiling as he peered at her over his eyeglasses. “She's constantly pestering me to keep Dr. Hartman at the top of my prayer list.”

Other people were clamoring for the pastor's attention, so he shook Tom's hand again and excused himself.

Claire approached and gave Hope a friendly hug. “Who's your new bud?” she asked, smiling in Tom's direction.

Hope introduced him, and the three chatted for a few minutes before Claire looked at her watch. “Hey, we'd better get going,” she said. “What are we doing today?”

Hope was blank. “Doing?”

“It's your workday,” Claire reminded her. “We changed it, remember? Because of my vacation. Did you really forget?”

She really
had
forgotten. And she had just agreed to have lunch with Tom. She apologized to him.

“No problem,” he said easily. “Let's make it dinner.”

“This is an all-day thing,” Hope said. “I'm sorry, Tom.”

He appealed to Claire. “So, what is this ‘workday' that I'm being stood up for?”

Claire turned her thousand-watt smile on him and Hope, whose arm was loosely linked through Tom's, felt him twitch as though he had just received a small elec
trical shock. “I dare you to come with us and find out,” Claire challenged.

As Tom returned Claire's smile it occurred to Hope that he might soon be ready to take off his wedding ring. His face reminded her of the way Bob looked whenever she opened a box of doggy treats: definitely interested, but trying hard to hide it.

“I happen to be free,” Tom replied casually.

“Great.” Claire looked at Hope. “I'll get Barb. We've got our clothes, so we'll change at your house. And if you guys aren't starving, why don't we work for an hour and then make a hamburger run?”

 

On their way home, Hope explained to Tom that the monthly “workday” had started as a ministry to her friend Barb Connors. Married at twenty-one, Barb had been widowed when an industrial accident killed her husband just three years later. Wanting to help in some practical way, Hope and Claire had gone to their friend's house one Sunday after church. While Claire did some minor maintenance on Barb's car, Hope mowed the lawn. Then they washed windows and did several smaller chores. At the end of the day they made a huge salad, grilled some steaks and dined by candlelight on Barb's tiny patio.

They'd done it twice more after that, and it did wonders for their grieving friend's spirits. But Barb wanted to return the favor. She insisted that Claire and Hope, both single women living alone, could use workdays of their own.

“We decided to do it the first Sunday afternoon of every month,” Hope told Tom. “After each of us has had her turn in the rotation we choose someone else, usually an old widow, and give her a workday. So every four months it's my turn again. We have a lot of fun
together and we get a lot accomplished, too,” she concluded. “If you want to laugh at us, go ahead. But if you stay, you're going to work.”

“I'll work,” Tom said cheerfully. “I have my gym bag with me, so I can change. I don't know how to fix leaky faucets, but I can cut grass and things like that.”

Hope couldn't resist ribbing him. “Now where would a rich boy like you have learned how to push a lawnmower?”

He smiled enigmatically, his attention on the road as he pulled over to allow a fire truck to pass him. Momentarily stopped, he turned towards Hope, pulling his dark sunglasses low on his nose and peering over them. Somehow he managed to look comical and devastatingly handsome at the same time. “New Jersey,” he answered.

She flashed him an impudent grin. “No.”

He winked at her. “Yes.”

The sunglasses were pushed back up and he tossed his head in a way that suggested he was proud to be a member of that bourgeois brotherhood, the Men Who Cut Grass. “I get over to see Susan's folks a couple of times a year,” he explained as he pulled back onto the road. “Their backyard is nearly half an acre.”

Hope liked it that he was still visiting his former in-laws. But that was Tom Hartman. And Susan's people were probably more to him than his own parents had ever been, anyway.

She looked out her window. There was a sweetness in Tom—and in Charles, although it was much less obvious—that Hope just couldn't explain. Where had it come from?

It must have arisen from their devotion to each other, she mused. Charles had always looked after his brother and Tom, for his part, had always believed the sun rose and set on “Trey.” It both wounded and warmed Hope's
tender heart to know that when no adult had stepped forwards to accept the job, the Hartman boys had nurtured each other.

But she didn't want to think sad thoughts on such a pretty summer day. Today Tom had ditched his sedate BMW for his sports car, a zippy little Italian number in screaming yellow, and Hope was determined to enjoy the ride. First she slipped off her shoes, then she pinched the back of Tom's hand as it rested on the gearshift. “Music,” she commanded. “Loud.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said instantly, reaching for the controls.

They arrived at Hope's house just ahead of Barb and Claire. As Hope climbed out of Tom's car, Claire leaped out of Barb's, slammed the door and waved energetically. “Hope!” she squealed. “You got to ride in a Lamborghini!”

Hope shrugged at her, then turned to Tom. “Did they really name a car after pasta?”

“Hope, it's ‘Lamborghini,' not ‘linguini,'” he said, rolling his eyes skyward. “Is your friend a car nut?” Tom seemed unable to take his eyes off Claire as she reached for something in the trunk of Barb's car.

Claire
was
a car nut, and Hope had an idea. “Hey, Tom…”

“Uh…right here, honey,” he said absently. It was all Hope could do not to giggle at his obvious preoccupation with her beautiful friend.

“Remember you offered to let me drive your car?”

“Yeah,” he said easily. “Anytime you want.”

She gave him an appealing look. “Could Claire have my turn? She knows just everything about cars.”

Hope had never tried her hand at matchmaking, but this first attempt looked quite promising.

 

Hope unplugged the blow-dryer and dropped a kiss on Bob's well-groomed head. “There you go,” she said with satisfaction. “Now you look and smell better than I do.”

With his long tongue the dog gave her chin a quick, grateful swipe.

“You're welcome,” she said as she glanced at her watch. “Now we'd better get
me
cleaned up, or I'll be late for my visit with old Dr. Hartman.”

She hoped she would run into Charles's mother again today. She'd seen the woman twice since their argument, and Mrs. Hartman definitely seemed to be unbending. While she was not actually friendly, her demeanor towards Hope had been carefully polite.

Hope couldn't help but wonder what Charles had said to his mother to effect that change. But she had resolved to put the ugly incident behind her and smother Mrs. Hartman with kindness. Maybe one day the woman would forgive and forget.

Charles's grandfather was becoming more receptive to conversing about spiritual matters. When he expressed an interest in meeting Pastor Bill Barnes, Hope eagerly arranged for the pastor to pay him a visit. Tomorrow was the agreed-upon day.

Hope marveled at what the Lord was doing for the Hartmans. Tom had become a Christian, and surely Charles was close. Old Dr. Hartman seemed to be opening his heart, too, and Pastor Bill would know just how to talk to him. Mrs. Hartman was thawing towards Hope, and maybe one day they could be friends. So now Hope set her sights on Charles's father. She'd already begun praying for opportunities to see him and talk to him.

“Because You know, Lord,” she said aloud, “You might as well save the whole family while You're at it!”

 

If the first two weeks without Charles had crawled by, the last one moved even more slowly. Hope was thrilled when he called from the airport late on Sunday evening.

“Hope, I'm at O'Hare, waiting for my bag. Just wanted you to know I'm back. How about an early breakfast in the morning? I've got so much to tell you!”

“No—come right now,” she insisted. “I can't wait.”

When she opened her door a short while later, he surprised and delighted her by wrapping his arms around her and squeezing hard. “I missed you, kid,” he said fervently, resting his chin on top of her head. “I missed you every single day.”

He took a chair in the living room and Hope plopped happily onto the sofa. She grabbed a pillow because Bob was in the backyard and she needed something to hug. “Start with the night before you left,” she suggested. “What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?”

His eyes darkened with excitement. “I'll try to tell you what happened. A sixteen-year-old kid had a gunshot wound to the chest. I was tired, but I did my job, just like always—the adrenaline kicked in and I felt like a superhero. Things were going okay, but then we hit a snag and I started to worry. I glanced up to speak to someone and when I looked down again there was something strange about my hands. I felt—I don't know—detached from them. Like they weren't
my
hands at all.”

His voice trembled with emotion as he went on. “It was strange, I tell you. I didn't know what was happening. Hope, it had nothing to do with being tired. And I wasn't overdosed on caffeine, either. Afterwards I found an empty room and sat down to think. The next thing I knew, my head was in my hands and I was sobbing like a child. I don't even know why—the boy was fine.”

Joyful tears filled Hope's eyes and she did nothing to
hide them. She fingered the silky fringe on her pillow and waited for Charles to go on.

“After that I went to my office. I sat on the floor beside you and I was going to wake you. But you looked so peaceful, I couldn't do it. And I didn't know how to explain what had happened, anyway. So I laid my head on your pillow and fell asleep.”

Hope beamed at him. “And in the morning I told you I had prayed for you while you were operating.”

His head dipped as he swallowed. “Yes. And I began to think that I had been…touched…by God.”

Hope's breath caught in her throat. “You thought that?”

“Yes, I did. But it was so shocking, I couldn't allow myself to dwell on it. So I got on the plane, had a good sleep and then went to work in Mexico. And, Hope, everything we touched was golden. Every surgery was a success beyond what we believed possible. Everyone there commented that we'd never seen so many patients, never had that kind of success. One of the new guys was a Christian and he annoyed us more than once with his remarks about how God was ‘moving' among us. I tried to dismiss it, but I just couldn't get out of my mind what had happened that last night.”

Squeezing the pillow against her chest, Hope fought to slow her heartbeat and catch her breath. “Did it happen again, in Mexico? Is that what you were trying to tell me on the phone? I could barely make out what you were saying.”