High Plains Hearts (42 page)

But that was just fancy. It was the wind bending the trees, and the soft murmurs were only the leaves as the autumn-night breeze snatched them from the trees and flung them into the sky for one last splendid flight before settling to the ground.

This was her favorite time of year, and she had nearly missed it entirely because she had been so caught up in her problems.

Time didn’t stop for her. It marched right on, and she hadn’t heard the lesson of the trees.
Move on, too
, the trees were saying to her.
Bend to His will as we do to the wind’s
.

She had a clarity of vision now that she had never had before. The world was not as confusing as it had been, now that she could see it.

The Nanny Group—it all made sense.

Her mind worked it through, piece by piece.

She had been used as an arm of the truth. Through every bit of the circumstances of the Nanny Group, from the moment of that initial discovery of the altered voucher to the understanding she’d just received, the momentum had been toward the truth.

What had happened to her was almost incidental when seen in that light. Through the movement of her life, she had begun the long process of not only bringing Douglas Newton to justice, but stopping a destructive process that would eventually have killed a deserving organization, the Nanny Group. Now the Nanny Group, for all its difficulties, would be stronger and able to serve those in need even better.

And Ric—his faith had been tested again and again. Had he been found wanting in the Lord’s eyes?

No. There had to be another reason, and it would not be hers to know. Ric was the one who had to understand it. Her role in it was to be beside him, as he was beside her, and stand when he was weak, comfort when he was weary, uphold when he faltered.

It wasn’t hers to carry. It was God’s.

The realization brightened her heart.

“He’ll take it if I share it with Him,” she mused out loud. “God is always ready.”

Ric came into the kitchen. “Lily, did you say something?”

She turned to him, the still-empty coffeepot forgotten in her hands.

“Ric, I feel as if a load has been lifted from my soul. God has heard my prayer.”

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I can feel it, too.”

He took the coffeepot from her hands. “Here, I think I’d better do this.”

As he found a filter and measured the grounds into the basket, he continued, “Just because we prayed and we have a good feeling about it, that doesn’t mean God is going to make things go our way.”

“A bicycle prayer,” Lily said.

“A bicycle prayer? What does that mean?”

“Oh, that’s from Todd, of course. He explained to me that I wasn’t supposed to pray for a new bicycle because that isn’t what prayer is all about.”

A smile played over Ric’s face. “Were you trying to pray for a bicycle?”

She shook her head and laughed. “If I were praying for transportation, I’d select something with a motor and four wheels and a heater, thank you very much. No, this was a bit more general than that.”

“I remember the lesson. He must have gotten that from Shiloh,” Ric said. “It was one of those ‘Which would you pray for?’ exercises, and as I recall, a bicycle was one of the choices.”

“Todd said no, I hope.”

He grinned. “I think he had the right answer, sure. A few of the kids said no, they wouldn’t pray for a bicycle, and just as I was feeling rather smug about having taught the lesson so well, I found out it was because they already had one.”

“There’s nothing to teach you humility like a child,” Lily agreed.

“True. Anyway, we have to face the fact that at any moment we may get another surprise, and we need to remember to keep sharing it with God.”

“And it’s not going to go away overnight. Those memories are still there,” she said. “And I don’t know if I want them to go away entirely because they’re there, in place, as a learning tool for me.”

He nodded. “Good point. They do serve a purpose, although we may not like to acknowledge it.”

He poured the water into the pot and switched on the brewer. Soon the warm aroma of coffee filled the small kitchen.

“I really do believe in the power of prayer,” Ric said as the coffeemaker perked its way through its brewing cycle.

“Plus, think about what God has done with trouble in the world. Look at how He’s reworked this—the flood, the problems rising from the Nanny Group, the situation with Victoria Campbell—somehow it’s converged and become something wonderful: the day care.”

Ric poured her a fresh cup of coffee, but she left it untouched on the counter.

“You know what else I realized tonight?” Lily went on. “I don’t have to shoulder it alone any longer. I mean, I sort of knew it all along, but now I really know. With the cross, He took my burden. He carried all of that with Him to the hill.”

He didn’t answer at first. And somehow, Lily knew that more than one prayer had been answered.

“The burden is lighter when two or more share it,” he said softly.

“Somehow, I think, it had to be you,” she added thoughtfully. “Does it seem to you that our meeting was part of His plan?”

“Nothing happens by accident,” he said. “Nothing. Not even this.”

He took her in his arms, and there, in the church kitchen and in the glorious presence of God and all His angels, he kissed her.

Two lips pressing against each other. It was a simple act. There was nothing in it at all to account for the sudden weakness in Lily’s knees, or her unexplained inability to stand up on her own power, or the singing that resounded in her ears.

Nothing, perhaps, except that it was so long awaited, this kiss, and it was so absolutely, so totally, so incredibly right.

There was promise implicit in this kiss. This man cherished her—she knew that—and he cherished her son. But above all, he cherished their Lord. He would never do anything to hurt her or Todd.

It was a precious point of contact, this kiss. She wanted it to last forever, into the eternity it held forth as a covenant.

They parted, and Lily smiled at Ric.

His blue eyes, as clear and bright as heaven itself, rested on her face as if memorizing it.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she responded. “For a while I worried that it might never happen, that I would have to go through my entire life without a kiss from you.”

He ran one finger over her lips. “Perish the thought. Whenever you want a kiss, Lily Chamberlain, all you have to do is ask.”

“I’m asking.”

Their lips met again, and the sweetness of it all renewed itself.

She leaned into him, and he into her, and for the moment they were one.

This love, and it was indeed love, was special, a sacred reward from God.

The love she had known with Barry was holy, too, and she would treasure it and its product, Todd, for as long as she lived. But it had been so terribly foreshortened with his accident, and all she had known was the first bloom of their love.

This love—this love would linger. It would be tested and grow stronger. It would stumble and maybe fall, but it would rise again and be whole. Nothing could stop them. Nothing at all.

Not even the voice of her son as he padded up behind them in his bare feet.

“Eeew,” Todd said. “Cooties.”

Ric sat with the members of the Parenting with Christ group. There were four couples attending now, and earlier in the week he’d had inquiries from two more families who were interested in joining them.

“How are you all feeling?” he asked. “You know, as the seasons change and we head into winter, you’ll probably have some unexpected emotions. You’ll reach for the platter for the Thanksgiving turkey, and you’ll remind yourself that it’s gone. Christmas is going to be tough. Most of you, I’m sure, kept your ornaments and decorations downstairs.”

The couples looked at each other and nodded.

“This is our first Christmas with the twins,” Joy Alfson said. “So we’re going to start fresh. New traditions for the new family members.”

Another woman sighed. “I lost the little snowman my son Alex made me when he was three. It was so cute. He stuck together Ping-Pong balls and covered them with feathers. Why feathers, I don’t know, but it was the cutest thing. Of course the glue didn’t stick, and the Ping-Pong balls came apart, and the feathers fell off, but putting it back together each year was a tradition I’ll truly miss.”

“You know,” Ric said gently, “I don’t have children. I’m not married. But I’m here to offer the children’s side of this whole thing, if I can. Your son will mourn the loss of the snowman, that’s true. But I know Alex, and I’d say he has his eyes firmly on the future. That’s the way it is with children. They look forward.”

“So what are you trying to say?” Linus Alfson asked.

“Keep the traditions,” Rick said. “What you did together is more important than what you had. If you decorated the tree on Christmas Eve, then by all means, do it again. I have a suggestion here from a relief group that recommends each member of the family have an ornament especially for this year. It can be meaningful, or it can be simply appealing to them. But it should be theirs.”

Joy reached over and covered her husband’s hand with her own. “That’s a good idea. We are all starting again, not just the twins, and the ornaments could be the symbol of that.”

The group began to make plans to offer an ornament workshop the first week of Advent, and as their voices eagerly suggested the kinds of ornaments they could make and possible sponsors for the activity, Ric leaned back.

The healing had begun.

“I knew it, I just knew it!” Marnie burst out when Lily entered the office and smiled at Ric. “I saw it in your faces from the moment you walked in here, Lily. ‘Those two are meant for each other,’ I told myself. Yessir, that’s what I said, and that’s what I meant.”

Lily and Ric looked at each other and laughed.

“Marnie, I’d just stepped into the church and was dealing with a recalcitrant little boy who didn’t want to walk into a stinky old church, no way, no how.”

“I know.” Marnie beamed at her in pleased satisfaction.

“You weren’t there,” Ric said. “It was just the three of us.”

“I was watching from the window. I saw you get out of the car, Lily, and I looked down at Ric, and I saw this look of total meltdown on his face. He fell in love with you the first time he saw you.”

“I think you’re jumping the gun,” Lily said. “We haven’t even really dated yet, so bringing in, well, the L-word is, um, gee, premature,” she finished in a rush, horribly aware that she was blushing and totally unable to stop it.

Marnie shrugged. “Love is love. Sometimes it creeps up on you, and sometimes it just comes up and slugs you a good one.”

Ric looked at Lily. “I don’t know, Lily. This love business sounds pretty grim.”

She nodded. “All creeps and slugs. Yuck.”

A sound at the door made them all turn around. Victoria Campbell stood there.

“Come on in,” Lily said. “We’re just chatting about love and slugs and other creeps.”

“Really?” Victoria raised her eyebrows. “And why would you be talking about my ex-husband?”

“Oooh, low blow,” Ric said.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m teasing, of course. Max and I have an understanding now. I still don’t like it, but I can live with it.” She handed something to Ric. “This came in on my fax machine at Wedding Belles. I don’t know why except that maybe the creep, oops, I mean Max, put down the store’s fax number from habit when he was doing work for you all.”

“What is it?” Marnie asked, crowding in closer to get a better look at it, but Ric took it into his office and shut the door.

“I don’t know. I didn’t read it. Well, okay, I’m in a church so I have to tell the truth. I did read it, sort of. Just enough to know it wasn’t for me—it was for Lily.”

“Victoria Campbell, I’m going to throttle you one of these days,” Marnie threatened.

“Okay, okay. It’s about that Nanny Group thing. It looks like they’ve proven that Douglas Newton has dirty, dirty hands.”

“We knew it would work out,” Marnie said, beaming happily. “Right, Lily?”