In Search of Eden (42 page)

Miranda cried then for her mother and was sorry for her own hatefulness. Joseph took her hand again, and they stood there until she felt finished.

The drive home was silent. When they pulled up in front of the funeral home, Joseph unloaded the cooler and walked her upstairs to the door of the apartment.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice sounding small to her ears. “I can't imagine what it would have been like without you.”

His face was serious. “You're welcome. I was glad to do it.”

She didn't want to be alone, but she couldn't talk, either. Finally she said good-night. He gave her hand a final squeeze and, after a last searching look, left her.

She closed the door, then went to the little window and stared out, not seeing anything but the past. Remembering and understanding. So much made sense now. About her mother and her aunt. Even about her father, who must have realized Noreen's heart could not receive him.

But something bothered her, too. Was this where she had gotten the distance, the emotional coldness that allowed her to leave without good-byes? That made her shut people out before they became indispensable? Had Beck passed that on to her? She did not want to be like Beck. She did not want his blood in her veins. She tried to remember what Mrs. Tallert had said. It had
been comforting, but it eluded her now. She wished she had some proof, something real before her eyes that would remind her that goodness could come out of her, that she wasn't doomed or too far gone to redeem.

There came a tapping on the door. She drew her eyes back from the gaping stare and focused them. She shook her head and went to answer it.

“Who's there?” she asked.

“It's Eden,” a voice answered.

Miranda opened the door and looked down. It was Eden, all right. She was wearing shorts and flip-flops, scratching one leg with the other foot. In her hands she carried her two-way radio, a grocery sack, and her sleeping bag and pillow. On her back was her pack. Miranda stared, puzzled.

“Uncle Joseph brought me. He said you could use some company, and Grandma said it was all right. She sent over some dinner and some brownies. I brought my scrapbook and my stories,” she hurried on. “I'm working on a new plot about Annie Oakley and some train robbers. Grady helped start it today, but you could help finish. If you want to. I mean, if you want me to stay. Uncle Joseph is waiting in case you'd rather I didn't.”

And suddenly there was no sweeter sight than the freckled face surrounded by thick brown cowlicks. She threw open the door. “Of course I want you,” she said. “Come in.”

Eden grinned, then turned and looked down over her shoulder. She made an okay sign with her thumb and forefinger.

Miranda followed her eyes. Joseph sat there in the truck, lights on, watching. She smiled and held up a hand in thanks. He nodded and drove away, and as Eden stepped inside, Miranda closed the door behind her.

chapter
43

R
uth couldn't interest Joseph in Sunday dinner. He went to work directly after church, hot on the trail of the Irish Travelers. There had been another sighting of them yesterday evening, but he'd been gone somewhere. Somewhere with Miranda, according to Eden and Grady, who had been spying on them at the farmers' market. Ruth usually disliked for him to miss Sunday dinner, but she had to admit she wasn't entirely disappointed he would be occupied today. It would give her an opportunity to talk to Johnny Adair about the campground. She felt a slight twinge of guilt for keeping the project a secret from Joseph, not to mention her trusting Johnny Adair at all. But she knew what Joseph would say, and she felt that in this case he was entirely wrong. Ruth could look into a person's eyes and tell if they were honest or not. And when she looked into Mr. Adair's eyes, she saw who he was, who he could become.

She phoned him after church and made arrangements to meet him at the camp at suppertime.

“Then allow me to introduce you to my barbeque skills,” he said. “I've got some ribs that will be wonderful on the grill.”

The plans were made. Grady showed up on his bike a little
later, and he and Eden went off and did whatever Eden did with her stacks of Wanted posters and her notebook. Ruth was less worried about her granddaughter now that Grady was along. He seemed to have a calming influence, or perhaps it was just harder for Eden to follow every impulse when she had to at least take the time to instruct Grady on what she had in mind. Those two were well suited to each other, she thought, and she gave a secret smile and an inward prayer of thanks. It was almost as if it had been planned.

In fact, it seemed that way about a lot of things in their lives right now. Even though she knew Miranda did not share her faith, Ruth had the feeling that God was at work. She could see it in Miranda's face as they sat together in church, and Eden had told her that Miranda had been talking with Pastor Hector. And Joseph seemed to be mellowing. In fact, she thought those two were good for each other now that the initial sparks had flown. Time would tell.

David and Sarah were the faith test right now. There was always at least one thing in her life about which Ruth must simply believe. Whenever she thought of David and Sarah, she prayed and she trusted. That was all she could do, but she told herself it was enough.

She passed the afternoon baking a cake and quilting, a rare opportunity for her these last months. She finished piecing the Mariner's Compass and sewed on the sashing and borders and pinned it together with the batting and backing. Now it was ready to quilt. She would take it upstairs and begin that process tomorrow.

By suppertime Eden and Grady were cleaned up somewhat and loaded into the car, along with a sack of sweet corn Ruth had gotten at the farmers' market and the chocolate cake she had made that afternoon. They drove to the camp. The children immediately ran off yelling, and Ruth looked around in wonder.

The porch on the lodge had been replaced, as had the roof supports. The lawn had been mowed; the fragrance of the freshly
cut grass was as sweet as perfume. The old roof had been taken off the chapel and new plywood nailed down. She looked closer and saw that the windows in both buildings had been reglazed. Then she saw Johnny walking up the hill toward her.

“I'm wanting to start the new roof next, and then I need to see about jacking up the foundation of the lodge and shoring up the floor joists,” he said as he approached.

“I can't believe all you've accomplished,” Ruth said, her eyes tearing up. “This is more than I ever imagined.” She sat down on the porch steps and looked out over the lake, and she was seeing the crowds of children whose lives had been changed here. “This has been a holy place,” she murmured.

Johnny looked sober. “I can feel that as I work here,” he said.

Then Ruth knew as clearly as she'd ever known anything in her life that this was what God wanted. For this place to be restored. She had a picture in her mind of new crowds of children jostling and shouting in the lake, sitting in the chapel, and clattering in the dining hall. She knew it no matter what her son might say. And she had a clear feeling that Johnny Adair was to be an integral part of the plan.

“I want you to finish fixing this place up, Johnny,” she said, looking directly into his face.

He gave her an uncomfortable look. “Ruth, the work I've done so far I could do alone, and it's been fairly inexpensive. To do more will involve other people and more money.”

“I want to do it,” she repeated. “I've got a lot of equity in my house and in this land. I'll take out a line of credit to pay for it.”

He looked doubtful. “And then what?”

“You could stay here,” she said. “Between your construction skills and my experience, we could run it. And you and I would be in ministry again. Doing something of eternal value.”

She expected him to withdraw from her wild suggestion, but he did not. His face grew wistful and he looked out over the lake as if he, too, were seeing crowds of children and another kind of life for himself.

“That sounds sweet,” he said. “Like a sweet dream.”

“It doesn't have to be a dream. It can be reality.”

He sighed, then turned to her with a glint in his eye. “Well, then, you're going to need bigger work done than porches and windows. You'll need wiring, plumbing, foundation work. I can get some of my friends to do it at cut rates, but I'll need to be your designated contractor.”

“Fine,” she said.

“You're sure you want to do this?” he said.

She thought of her money, sitting in the bank, buried instead of doing what it was intended to do. “Yes,” she said. “I'm sure.”

“I'll arrange for the subcontractors, then,” he said, “and get the papers drawn up.”

She took out her checkbook. “How much have you spent here?”

“No,” he said. “I absolutely refuse.”

They quibbled back and forth for a while. She finally wrote him a check for five hundred dollars, which he said was too much.

“Use it to buy new materials for the new projects, then. Now, I'm hungry. Let's get those ribs going.”

“They're browning even as we speak,” he said.

“I brought some things to go along,” she said. “Some corn and a cake.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” He smiled.

They ate. They chatted. After the delicious supper, Johnny made a fire in the fire pit, and the children roasted marshmallows. He disappeared inside the camper and returned with a violin case.

“Oh, you're going to play for us,” Ruth exclaimed, delighted. Even Grady and Eden stopped their antics long enough to listen.

He took out the violin and adjusted the strings, rosined the bow, then lifted it to his chin and played. He began with “Turkey in the Straw.” He was a magnificent violinist—“fiddle player,” he corrected her when she complimented him. He followed with the “Orange Blossom Special,” making all the train noises with
the fiddle, to their delight. He quieted them with “Amazing Grace” and finished with “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” the last notes quivering with emotion.

Ruth was silent afterward. The children went to steal a few more minutes of play.

“You know Him, don't you?” Ruth asked quietly.

Johnny gave a twisted smile. “We used to be on speaking terms. I'm not sure anymore.”

“He'll never walk away from you,” Ruth said.

“I know that,” he said.

“May I pray for you?” she asked quietly.

Johnny looked surprised, then troubled.

“It's all right if you'd rather not,” she said.

“No. I'd like to pray with you,” Johnny said.

Ruth closed her eyes and cleared her mind of the distractions of the day. “Thank you, Father,” she said softly, “for my brother Johnny. Thank you for his life. For his quiet faithfulness. Thank you for his loving heart and his desire to see your will accomplished for himself and his son and for the others that you will touch through him. I pray that your mighty hand would rest upon him.” She hesitated, waiting for more, but that was all. “Amen,” she said.

She looked up, but instead of the peaceful expression she'd expected to see on his face, she was surprised to find him looking even more troubled than before. It would seem her words had not comforted him at all.

chapter
44

B
y the middle of the next week Miranda had recovered somewhat from the trip to West Virginia. The emotional impact had been so great that she had needed a few days before she could begin to sort out the information the visit had garnered. There was really only one lead that might help her in her quest to know who her mother would have trusted with the baby. On Wednesday during her break she called Mrs. Tallert and asked for the name of the minister who had pastored the church at Thurmond where Noreen and Bobbie had gone.

“It was a Baptist church,” Mrs. Tallert said. “Pastor's name was . . . let me think . . . yes, it was Webb.”

On her lunch hour she went to the library and found that there were hundreds of Webbs in West Virginia. She called the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists and got lucky when the woman she spoke to gave her the pastor's full name and the location of his last church assignment. Harold Webb had last pastored Calvary Hill Baptist Church in Mingo County.

She had returned to work and could barely stand it until her afternoon break. She stood now on the sidewalk with her cell phone outside the Hasty Taste, the hot, humid summer
enveloping her, and felt a chill as the secretary of that church said yes, she knew Pastor Webb and yes, she knew where he was.

“He's living in the Baptist rest home in Bluefield,” she said. “He's in poor health, but his mind is good.”

Miranda's hands were shaking as she hung up the phone and went back inside the Hasty Taste to finish her shift.

“You look like you seen a ghost,” Venita said when she went inside.

“Not yet, but I'm getting close,” she answered cryptically and made plans to travel back to West Virginia as soon as her shift was through.

Miranda left for Bluefield at two o'clock. She didn't bother to change clothes, just got into the car and left after hastily printing out MapQuest directions on the library computer. She felt vaguely guilty not inviting Joseph along or at least telling him where she was going, but he would be at work. Besides, this really was her quest. Joseph wouldn't always be around to hold her hand. And this, she reminded herself, was the reason she had come. Not to meet Joseph. Not to play with Eden. Not to pretend that Ruth was her mother to or serve pancakes and eggs at the Hasty Taste. She had come to find her baby, and this was the next step.

The trip to Bluefield was uneventful and without the dark drama of the other two trips. The town was just on the West Virginia/Virginia border, not far and deep in the woods. She drove for an hour and a half, then followed the MapQuest directions to the rest home. It was a nice brick building, sprawled on a good-sized lot with well-manicured grounds. She parked the car and went in, signed the guest book, then asked for Reverend Webb. The receptionist gave her the room number, and she walked down the corridors as directed.