High Plains Hearts (41 page)

Ric came over that night to join Lily and Todd for a picnic in the playground area.

“We do this when it’s hot,” she explained. “It’s more comfortable out here, and Todd likes the change of pace from the kitchen table. I love this time, what my mom always called ‘the cool of the evening.’ ”

As they sat on the blanket they’d spread out, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Ric reflected on how much she and Todd had integrated themselves into his life and how much he’d come to expect Todd’s cheerful voice and Lily’s light humor every day.

Todd couldn’t stop talking about kindergarten, which started next week. He was in the morning group, Lily explained, and since the school was only a block away, she planned to walk over each day at eleven thirty and bring him back to the church where he’d eat lunch and stay until she was finished for the day.

He and Lily had gone that afternoon for an orientation, and Todd was ready to spin off the planet with excitement.

“This weekend we have to buy crayons and a backpack and some pencils. You should see how many books there are! The teacher says we’re going to read them all, every single one of them! And there are puppets and—”

“Todd, mouth closed,” Lily said with a tolerant smile. “Eat, then talk, or vice versa. But not at the same time.”

Todd popped the last of his sandwich in his mouth and zoomed to the playground.

“The child never walks. Ever.” Lily smiled ruefully.

“Hey, Ric! Watch me!” Todd called from the top of the slide and then proceeded to launch himself down headfirst.

“That’s quite a trick, but I think we’d all be much happier if you’d go feet first,” Ric said with a chuckle.

“That’s for babies,” Todd called back. “Want to see me stand on top of the swing set? I think I can walk from one end to the other up there. Like a circus guy!”

He zoomed toward the swing set, but Ric leaped to his feet and intercepted him and brought him back to the blanket.

“When you are in the circus, then maybe, just maybe, your mom will let you do that, but don’t count on it. Your mom is a chicken.”

Todd made clucky sounds and then helped himself to another sandwich.

Ric had accompanied her to each of the interrogations and kept track of all that had been going on, but it had become more than that. He found himself there in ways totally unrelated to their jobs: helping Todd learn to shoot baskets with occasional accuracy, reaching the elusive jar from the high shelf in the kitchen, changing the oil in her car to save her a trip to the service station.

“Do you have any dreams for the future, Ric?” Lily asked.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. There’s nobody else here named Ric. I’m just wondering. This has all been about me and about the people here who have been impacted by the flood, and through it all, you’ve been helping other people get on with their lives so they can allow themselves to dream. But does Ric allow himself to dream?”

“Of course I do.”

“Just tell me to hush up if I’m being too pushy,” Lily said, pushing her hair back self-consciously. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

He lay on his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “I will tell you everything. What do you want to know?”

“Well, for one thing, why children’s ministry?”

“I made a commitment almost two years ago. I stood in an orphanage in Central America, in the midst of the worst conditions I’d ever seen, and I promised God that I would do two things when I returned. I promised God I would look after His children here and that I would use His financial blessings to help the orphanage.”

“I had no idea,” she said softly.

“I send a check every month to a friend who is still there, and he makes sure it gets used wisely.” His next words barely made it over the lump in his throat. “And one day I would like to adopt a child from there.”

“That would be a very lucky child indeed.” Lily reached over and touched his hand. “You’ll be a great father.”

Todd leaped over him and ran back to the playground.

Once the cloud of the Nanny Group fiasco was lifted, he was going to do it. He was going to let himself fall in love.

He looked over at Lily, cross-legged on the blanket and calling encouraging words to Todd, who was now trying to climb the rope ladder to the top. The late afternoon summer sunlight glinted across the scene, illuminating her with bright gold, and he knew it was too late.

He had already fallen.

The verdict came in bit by bit, not in one glorious swash.

The vouchers, it had been determined by one of the auditors, did not belong to the group that had run through the formal auditing done earlier in the year. Subtle differences in the paper identified those vouchers as counterfeit, and further, that they had been used as part of the embezzling scheme.

A handwriting analyst had filed an affidavit stating that the initials on the faked vouchers were likely not hers and further attested to the fact that major variances in the pressure exerted during typing indicated that Lily had not typed them, and that, in fact, a left-handed person had typed them.

“Douglas is left-handed,” Lily said as Ric read the report over her shoulder late one October afternoon.

“I didn’t know they could tell who did the typing, but maybe they can. It says ‘major variances.’ I wonder what that means,” Ric said.

“Well, I’ve seen him type. You’d think it was a personal thing with him. He attacks the typewriter so hard that sometimes I’d come to use it and the keys would be all jammed together. It’d take me about fifteen or twenty minutes to untangle them. I’ve seen a couple get fixed together, but never as many as with him.” She shuddered at the memory of his temper.

“Well, you’re pretty well cleared on the vouchers,” Ric said, sitting down in the visitor’s chair in her office. “That’s got to be a load off your mind.”

“I cannot begin to tell you how I feel. There’s more to come, I know, but I have to keep hope that if I’ve been cleared on that part of it, the rest has to follow soon, and I’ll be fully cleared. I just know I will.”

“I agree,” he said. “It’ll be nice to have you out from under this cloud. Do you, um, think that you’re clear enough to consider, um …”

It was cute how he stammered his way through the sentence.

She took pity on him, but she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Ric, can I ask you something? It’s kind of personal, though.”

“Personal? Um, well, sure. Go ahead.”

“Ric, would you like to go out with me tonight?” At his look of surprise, she added, “Yes, sir, I’m asking you for a date.”

She’d never seen anyone blush so deeply. And then he said yes.

Todd stayed with Marnie and Sam to “help” at the Bright Spot. Lily tried not to imagine what kind of “help” he would offer.

The evening was enchanting. They returned to the Wildwood Inn, and their dinner conversation was light and carefree, not about anything in particular but truly about everything that mattered, like what her favorite flower was, what kind of music he liked, what games she had played as a child.

After dinner they went for a walk along the river. The moon was full, and it glimmered on the now-tamed river in a shimmering golden orb, with red and orange and topaz leaves drifting around it.

“It’s hard to believe that this river was once as wild as it was,” she said as they strolled along its edge. “I look at it now, and I can’t see it as something that would damage so many lives.”

“It’s taken awhile to get to the point where I trust it,” Ric responded. “But now it’s so calm and peaceful looking, it seems as if the flood never happened at all. It’s almost easy to believe that.”

“And I’m impressed at how people have come back after such a disaster. They have such strength.”

She shivered, and Ric took off his jacket and wrapped her in it.

“We should go back to the car,” he suggested, “before you get chilled.”

She looked up at him.

Maybe it was the moon. Maybe it was the crisp smell of autumn fires on the wind. Maybe it was the splendor of the maple trees.

Or maybe it was love.

R
ic fell asleep with a smile on his face, and he woke up with one, too. He smiled through his morning coffee, the bowl of cold cereal, and all the other morning rituals.

Lily. It was all Lily.

Did everyone feel this way when they were in love? Did every single moment of their lives revolve around the beloved, the way the earth orbits the sun?

It was a wonderful, heady feeling, but he needed to pull it together and get some work done. There was more to being the youth minister than worrying about the future of the day care.

He had programs to organize, most notably a Christmas pageant. It would have to be something that didn’t require great costuming efforts, since all their materials had ended up in sodden piles along the berm earlier in the year.

Maybe this would be the year to do a simple carol sing, along with Bible verses. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He recalled the intensity of some of the parents about who would be chosen as the stars of the shows—and who wouldn’t be chosen.

God didn’t choose some over the others. This might be a better way to celebrate His love, by having all the youngsters be stars. Shy or outgoing, every one of them would have the chance to shine in their own way.

The day care had grown more, thanks to a change in their licensing, and with more children—and thankfully, more helpers—there would be more balancing and juggling to include them, too.

Later today he’d have to get to the post office. A box of gifts was ready to be shipped to Central America.

This train of thought reminded him that the Parenting with Christ group was meeting in the afternoon, and he needed to prepare for that.

Being in love might be a glorious thing for poets, but it sure wreaked havoc on a minister’s schedule.

Lily stood outside the door of the day care, listening. Eileen began each day with the Lord’s Prayer, and although many of the words were beyond the children’s vocabulary, she was helping them understand.

She had been headed for the kitchen to get a fresh cup of coffee for Ric, but she’d stopped upon hearing Eileen’s voice.

Today Eileen was explaining to them what “trespasses” meant. Through the glass in the door, Lily could see that the day care leader had the line from the Lord’s Prayer on the chalkboard:
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
.

Being Christlike, she was explaining, meant that we needed to forgive those who had done something bad to us.

Forgiveness
. What a beautiful word.

Forgive the past. Forgive Douglas Newton. Forgive herself for ever doubting that God was in charge and that He was seeing her through this time of suffering and that He was always with her, as He always had been and always would be.

She ran into Ric’s office. “It happens, it truly happens,” she said in wonder as she sat in the chair next to him. “He takes away the pain.”

Ric nodded.

All of her worries evaporated as she gave herself to God and renewed her commitment to a life of His service.

“I’ve prayed for this before, but somehow this time something was different. I don’t know what it was. I wonder why God heard my prayer this time, but He didn’t before.”

“Oh, He heard it,” Ric responded. “And He’s been answering it, just as He’s been answering my prayers, but we can’t always discern His ways. We don’t always understand.”

“It’s very complicated,” she said, still feeling a bit overwhelmed.

It was almost too much to focus on at the moment, and she seized upon the first thing she noticed.

“Your coffee!” she said to Ric. “I forgot!”

She stood up and went into the kitchen, his cup in her hand.

Almost absentmindedly, she placed the cup on the counter, ignoring the splash on the white counter.

Why, she wondered, had God chosen to direct her life in this way? Surely she would have been serving His purpose in the Nanny Group had she stayed.

She picked up the empty coffeepot and looked out the window. She could see the trees that ringed the playground leaning toward each other, almost as if they were conferring with each other on this cool October evening. If she listened closely, she could hear their leafy whispers. What were they talking about? What were their secrets?