Beyond the Storm: Quilts of Love Series (6 page)

1:00 p.m.

J
ustin leaned against the door of his truck as he finished jotting a list of supplies he needed to bring with him on Monday. He was checking it for anything he may have forgotten when a distant rumble had him looking up. It wasn’t the sound a jet would make. If the sky hadn’t been cloudless, he’d have thought it was thunder.
Didn’t you have to have clouds to make thunder?
There were no clouds, but the sky had taken on a sickly color. As if it were pale and sweating. Feverish. Dying. The air, the sky, the sound . . . everything felt terminal.

He wondered how Rawhide was doing and figured he’d better head home, let him out, and make sure he had plenty of water. Danny had talked Justin into taking the dog after he’d seen him featured on a morning news show. Poor, mangy old Rawhide was allergic to everything and had chewed his hind end half off. Jokingly, Justin had called him “Rawhide from Rawston” when he first got a good look at the mixed breed dog, and the name had stuck.

A quick glance at his watch told him he had just enough time to take an icy, refreshing shower, play with Rawhide, and eat some lunch before he had to head back to the lumberyard and take over for Danny. He ducked back inside to let Bob Ray know he was going to head out.

“Okay,” Bob Ray grunted from where he lay at the bench press, straining against some massive weights that rattled at the ends of his bar. After his last rep, he shoved the bar into its holder and sat up. “I’m headin’ out in a few minutes, myself. Gotta put in a shift out at Low Places later.”

“Gonna arrest anyone?” Justin joshed.

“No dancing tonight.” Bob Ray grinned. “I’m just going to be stocking the bar and some other grunt work.” He lay back down and prepared to lift another set of vein-popping reps. “See you Monday.”

3:00 p.m.

Heather paused at the mailbox. The poor thing listed slightly toward the road, as if it yearned to follow the outgoing mail. Not that she blamed it. The flat, dusty, broken-down Barnaby Estates was the last place she’d have thought they’d ever call home. Everyone called it “Beer-belly Estates,” which she had to admit fit. Aging single- and double-wide trailers were crowded side-by-side, sharing the shade of an occasional tree. Driveways were crammed with junk and junker cars and even junkier washing machines and junkyard dogs that were chained to stakes in the dirt. Heather guessed it was just a step above prison, or maybe hell, but she and Bob Ray could afford the rent and, at this point, that’s all that mattered. When she reached inside the mailbox, the usual stack of bills awaited her perusal. Bills, and of course, junk mail. All of it advertising stuff she and Bob Ray could never buy. Looked like there was a $29.99 deal for cable TV this month. She’d love to have that. Anything to break up the tedium of sitting all day in the single-wide with Robbie.

Heather’s parents were still pretty glacial regarding her “shame,” and had refused to grace her with a visit, let alone a handout. The message was clear. Mrs.
Persona Non Grata
and her baby would sully their upscale digs, and they wouldn’t be caught dead here at Gap-tooth Gulch. Though, she had to admit, her mom had started to thaw recently. They’d run into each other at the grocery store on Heather’s side of town several weeks ago, and Mom hadn’t been able to stop staring at Robbie. Her mother’s smile had been more than a little wobbly, and she’d fingered Robbie’s sticky hands with a look that spoke of deep regret. It had been a sweet, fleeting moment, and Heather was homesick for two days after. What had Mom been doing, shopping over here on this side of the tracks? Had she been watching them? Did Daddy know?

Heather had been dying for news but had been too proud to ask, and her mother had been too stubborn to tell. But she wondered just the same.

With a sigh, she tucked the mail under her arm and headed back to the house. It seemed to her that the sky was starting to look pretty weird. There was an almost yellowish cast to the light, giving her an eerie feeling deep in her bones. The trailer park, usually alive with dogs barking and the steady whine of grasshoppers, was oddly silent, too. The screen door slammed shut behind her, and instantly, she knew that Robbie was up from his nap and up to no good. “Robbie?” She could hear a steady stream of water rushing in the bathroom.

“Uh-oh!” he shouted.

Heather began to run. “Robbie? What on earth?” Water was flowing down the hallway now. A guttural growl filled her throat. She should have known better than to stand there and shoot the breeze with old lady Carmichael before she headed to get the mail, but she’d so longed for a touch of adult conversation—no matter how addled—that she’d tarried.

“Uh-oh,” Robbie repeated. He cast her a delighted smile as she rounded the corner into the bathroom. It looked like he’d filled the toilet with several rolls of toilet paper and some toys and towels, and then tried his hand at flushing them away. When that had grown tedious, he’d turned to the tub, and it, too, was overflowing.

“Robbie, oh, Robbie. No, son. This is a big no-no.” Huge no-no.

“No!” Robbie shouted. “No, no!”

“That’s right, little man.” Dropping the mail in the sink, she shut off the tub’s faucet, pulled the stack of soggy towels away from the drain, and turned her attention to the toilet. She didn’t have a clue, so she shut the lid, grabbed Robbie, and headed for the kitchen to call Bob Ray.

Didn’t it just figure that no one had seen him at The Pump. She sighed and reached for her phone book. She scanned the list of handy people she knew—who also gave a rat’s hindquarters about her and Bob Ray—and came up with Danny Strohacker. Danny would know what to do.

Once she’d explained the situation, Danny chuckled. “Oh, boy. I’m gonna be having these kinds of problems myself here real soon, huh? Okay, first off, don’t panic. On the wall, behind the toilet, there are two shutoff valves. Go twist ’em until the water stops. I’ll swing by later with a snake for the toilet and a shop vac and some fans and stuff, and I’ll get the toilet unplugged and your floors dried out.”

“But don’t you have to go to Southshire tonight?”

“Yeah, but it’s only . . . 3:30 now, and getting you squared away shouldn’t take long. I’ll finish up a quick delivery and then head by the lumberyard to pick up the stuff I’ll need and—”

“Danny, no. This is too much.” Heather was beginning to feel guilty about pulling him away from his special evening. And Jen had told her how excited he was about seeing pictures of his baby boy.

“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Jen won’t mind. She’s got stuff to do at her job anyway. I’ll let her know that I’ll be swinging by your place in say . . . an hour and a half or so. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Okay.” Where would she go? Bob Ray had their piece-of-junk car. She had the 1973 single-wide “Challenger” style mobile home. Never could figure out what the “mobile” part was supposed to mean. The old girl was anything but mobile. It was, however, decades into some serious “challenges.”

Everything leaked or sagged or stunk. The carpet was so horrendous that Heather had to spread sheets across the living room floor so that Robbie could stay clean. On most days, she sat on a broken-down divan in the living room, texting an old friend about her miseries. Not that Sophia could do anything about her woes from her college dorm room, but it felt good to vent just the same. Sophia had urged her to pack up and leave Bob Ray more than once. And she would have, too. Except for the night of what she thought of as her “miracle.” Something strange and wonderful had changed her attitude about a lot of stuff.

Robbie had been only a couple weeks old and colicky. It was late. Close to midnight. Bob Ray still wasn’t home, which was fine, because, hey, Heather was no longer at the end of her rope. Oh, no. Nope. She’d fallen clean off the rope, and the rope had slipped away to tie itself into a noose. While she contemplated the sweet relief that ending her life would no doubt give, she just sat there, holding her son and wailing right along with him. And the more she cried, the larger the self-pity grew.

Nobody cared. Seriously. No. Body. Cared. Her mother and father didn’t care. She’d been unable to live up to the expectations of their legalistic religion, and they felt obligated to teach her a lesson. Bob Ray didn’t give a hoot. She was a wife and mother, not the centerfold material that he helped sculpt down at the gym.

Even God didn’t care. And she told him. Loudly. “You don’t
care!”
she’d burst out between great heaving sobs. “I don’t get it!” Face contorted with anger, she’d thrown back her head and implored the ceiling. “Why do You love
everyone
but me? Why do You curse me? Why do You hate me? Why don’t You ever,
ever
talk to me? Can You hear me at all?” Her voice grew snarky, filled with all the vitriol of too much responsibility and not enough help or sleep. “I hear all those people at church saying, ‘Oh God gave me a word about this, or God told me to do that,’ but You won’t ever talk to me! You
hate
me!”

As she thought back over her life, all she could see was the enormous burden of trying to appease her parents and their merit-based religious views by being good. But as hard as she tried—she was never good enough, and they always . . .
always
let her know it.

By this point, she’d been shrieking and sobbing so hard, Robbie had stopped crying and was staring up at her. She’d wiped her nose on his blanket. “You don’t care about me. If You did, You’d give
me
a word. But You won’t. I’m nothing. I’m a
sinner!”
she’d jeered. “I give up. I give up . . . because You . . . don’t care. You don’t care. You don’t care about me.” Running out of steam, she sat rocking and repeating,
“You don’t care. You don’t care. You don’t care about me . . .”

Over and over she chanted, until Robbie’s pale pink eyelids slid closed, and she could see the blue veins moving as his eyes darted about, searching for the deep sleep of an exhausted infant. Finally, he grew heavy in her arms, and Heather staggered to his crib and put him down. She had to move a book out of the way to lay him flat. Strange, because she hadn’t left a book in his bed, and no one else had been in the house that day.

She knew that Jen had mailed it to her after Robbie was born, but she hadn’t had the time or energy to read it. The next day when she’d asked, Bob Ray claimed he hadn’t put it there, and she believed him because Bob Ray wasn’t much on reading. Once Robbie was settled, she took the book to her bed. It was a devotional. Like a journal with a verse-a-day to memorize and then some Scripture and encouragement stuff written underneath. Curiosity had her opening it to that day’s date. And there, she found the words that changed her forever:

Throw all your anxiety onto him, because he cares about you
(1 Peter 5:7).

She had gasped and sat up, wide-awake now. Not just because the verse hit her like a bolt of lightning between the eyes, but because the second half of each day’s devotion was divided into parts. Morning. Afternoon. Evening. And this verse had been for the evening. Incredulous, Heather had started to laugh, and she laughed until she cried deep, cleansing tears of sweet relief. Because those simple words were to her. Straight from God. He
cared
. God hadn’t forgotten her. He was there, just for her. Out of all the people on the planet, he was chatting with her. On that date and in that time zone. Her eyes devoured that afternoon’s devotion:

But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us
(Romans 5:8).

While she was yet a sinner, a failure, Christ died for her? How could that be? Sobs welled from the depths of her soul. Because she was a sinner, her entire family and most of her friends had abandoned her. And—the irony was impossible to miss—because she was a sinner, the Lord died for her, Heather Bancroft-Lathrop. This dawning illuminated a lifelong darkness that had held Heather captive. Sweet relief flooded her, and suddenly it no longer mattered what her parents thought.

In the days that followed, Heather found a group at Jen’s church that catered to married women and their struggles. That was where she had really gotten to know what a wonderful person Jen Strohacker was. Jen could have been mad about Heather not going through with her plans to let her and Dan adopt Robbie. But she wasn’t.

Instead, she offered to babysit sometimes and brought over care packages. Not just the stuff they needed around the house either, but personal, fun stuff, too. Girlie things like bath salts and hand lotion. Sometimes, Jen would stop by just to give Heather a word of encouragement. The woman, who couldn’t have a baby of her own after years of trying, came to encourage her. They’d formed a fast, mentor-style friendship, and Jen had taught Heather what it meant to lean on Jesus. So Heather clung to her faith believing that God would lead her not only through the valley of the shadow but also out the other end and into blue skies. If she cast her cares on Him, things would get better. They had to. Couldn’t get much worse.

4:00 p.m.

“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an up-to-the-minute storm warning with our head meteorologist Ron Donovan. Ron?”

“Yes, we’re getting reports that Lincoln County is experiencing some severe weather, which is manifesting itself in nonstop thunder and lightning strikes. We’re looking at a pretty high risk of fire; in fact, right now a small house is burning just south of Suffolk County. Also, if you’re headed out to Jefferson County, you might want to hold off. We’re getting reports of hailstones the size of golf balls right
now. If you look out the window, you can see the weather beginning to change locally. Keep it tuned here to 101.5 K-RAW for up-to-the-minute storm-tracker advisories and tornado watch reports. Right now all signs are pointing to severe storm activity arriving around 6 or 7 tonight.”