In Search of Eden (46 page)

“Where's David, dear?” Ruth asked her daughter-in-law.

“The last time I saw him he was out in the garden with Eden,” Sarah said; then after another strained smile, she excused herself.

Ruth exchanged glances with Miranda but said nothing. “Let's see if we can find him,” she said, and just then Eden came in.

“Miranda!” Eden gave her a hug.

Miranda squeezed her back. “Hey, kid, how are you doing?”

“Good,” she said heartily.

Miranda was ashamed that she felt a loss. She rebuked herself for her selfishness.

“Grandma,” Eden said, “Dad asked if he could have a glass of iced tea.”

“Certainly. Why don't you make it for him, dear? I'm going to take Miranda out and introduce her.”

As they walked out the back door and toward the pergola, Miranda tried to coach herself so she wouldn't stumble.
Don't look at the wheelchair,
she repeated to herself.
Don't look at his legs. Look at his face. Take his hand. Treat him as you would anyone else. Don't think about his past with Joseph. Don't think about anything but the conversation you're having right now.

They approached the bricked patio where he was sitting. Miranda could see the back of his chair. His hair was still long, falling down into his collar. She and Ruth walked around, and she put a
smile on her face. He looked older and more tired than the man she had watched speak so eloquently this morning. His face had new lines and he was thin, painfully so. She wondered again if he still believed God was good despite the devastation that had been wreaked on his own life.

“I understand you've been a friend to my daughter,” he said gently after they were introduced, reaching for her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Thank you.”

“It wasn't hard to do,” Miranda said. “She's a wonderful girl.”

“Grandma!” Eden called. “Telephone.”

“Excuse me,” Ruth said.

“Please, sit down,” David invited, so she took a chair.

“I watched one of your conferences on DVD this morning,” she said. “It was very . . . interesting.”

He smiled and looked at her with interest then, and his face regained a tiny shade of animation. “A very noncommittal word. What about it bothered you?”

“I wouldn't say bothered.” She searched her mind for the right word. “Confused would be more accurate.”

“About?”

She tried to put it into words, then shook her head a little. “I guess about the whole idea that there's a grand plan. There seems to be so much . . . I don't know . . .
randomness
in the world. Sometimes I wonder why things happen the way they do.” She was thinking about her mother and Beck Maddux and her baby.

David nodded thoughtfully and glanced down at his chair.

She felt a wash of shame. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't think.”

“Don't think I haven't gone down that road myself,” he said gently. “I've asked the questions, too.”

“Have you found any answers?”

He shrugged. “I stopped for coffee after I left. What if I hadn't? I pulled off the highway and made a phone call. What if I had driven straight through? I got lost and had to ask for directions. What if I'd looked the airport up on MapQuest before I
left home like my wife told me to? Any one of those things could have caused me to miss that SUV. Did God ordain it? Is it a result of an evil force at work in the world? Or was it simply an accident?” He shook his head. “I don't know and it doesn't help me to wonder. It happened,” he said. “It is what it is.”

“What about God?”

“What about Him?”

“Aren't your feelings hurt?” It hadn't been her intention to phrase the question that way, but now that she'd said it, it was exactly what she wanted to ask.

“Yes. That's a good way to put it. I think they are. Deeply. But I also have to believe He loves me and has a plan He's working out for good.” He seemed as if he really meant it. Miranda felt deep compassion for him and not a little amazement. “What about you?” he asked, bringing her to attention.

“What
about
me?”

“Where are you on your spiritual journey?”

The same question the pastor had asked her that night so long ago in Minnesota. She tried to come up with an answer now. She thought back on the talks she'd had with Pastor Hector, the people she had met. She thought of her mother and her father and her baby, and she remembered the feeling she'd had in the motel that night when she'd first arrived here and had prayed. The feeling that God was with her, guiding her. She remembered Mr. Cooper and his prayer for her, and she had the feeling somehow that she was walking along a path that had been prepared and laid out for her in advance. “I think I'm being pursued,” she said and felt a little awe as she said it.

“Ah. The Hound of Heaven is after you.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“‘I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; / I fled Him, down the arches of the years; / I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; / and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.'”

“A poem?” she asked.

He nodded and smiled. “Very badly recited, but, yes, it's a poem.”

She smiled and considered what he had said. It was like the Hound of Heaven had been pursuing her with careful, studied persistence. “Yes. The Hound of Heaven is after me.”

He looked at her kindly, the light still there, she could see, but burning very low.

“Will you let Him catch you?” he asked.

She thought, then leaned toward him to answer when voices interrupted.

Hector was here, and Henry and Vi. They leaned and hugged him, and Vi stroked his face. There were tears and kisses. Eden came with his tea, set it on the table, then stood at Miranda's side, and Miranda put her arm around Eden's shoulders. She looked at Eden's face as Eden watched her father, and there was concern mixed with the joy. Her happiness and security were fragile, Miranda could see. A stiff wind could capsize the ship.

“My dad's gonna be all right,” she said, and it was obviously a question rather than a statement.

“Your dad is a wonderful man,” Miranda said, meaning it from her heart. “His Jesus is helping him.”

Had she said that? She was surprised, but Eden was comforted. The words seemed to bring her great joy. She threw her arms around Miranda's waist and squeezed. Miranda kissed her head and looked up to see Sarah watching them, obvious pain on her face.

“Joseph is on his way,” she said. “Ruth wanted me to tell you.”

Miranda nodded, embarrassed, feeling suddenly as if she had walked into a maze of relationships and divided loyalties and had complicated them further. She gave Eden a final pat, and the girl went over to stand beside her father.

“Don't hover, Eden,” Sarah said sharply. “Give him room to breathe.”

“She's all right,” David answered, giving his wife a warning look.

Vi rescued her. “Miranda, would you come out and help me bring in my pies?”

She hurried to help, and by the time they'd transferred the four pies, Joseph was pulling into the driveway. Miranda fairly flew out to meet him.

He came around the truck, smiling, and took her hand. “Well, that's a nice welcome.”

She smiled brightly. He gave her a wise look. “Is it that bad in there?”

“It's . . . strange.”

He nodded. “Welcome to my world.”

She said nothing more, even though she wanted to tell him all about it.

“Shall we go in?” he asked.

She nodded and they walked in together.

Things were better when dinner was served. Carol Jean arrived. The table was loaded with delicious-looking food, and finally they were all sitting down, a spot cleared for David's chair. They prayed. They ate. Miranda answered questions and made conversation. She watched Eden hang on her father and ignore her mother. She watched Joseph sit stiffly and saw the pain on Ruth's face. It was then that she realized something. Through the years she had thought her own family unique in their brokenness. Now she saw that they were not. And she knew then with certainty that if she could peer into Hector's past and into Vi and Henry's and even into Ruth's, she would find disappointment and failure there, too.

After supper she and Sarah were left alone together. Vi and Henry and Carol Jean had gone home. Joseph was finishing up a game of Rook with Hector and Eden and David. Ruth was doing the dishes and refused her help. “Go sit down and talk to
Sarah,” she said, then whispered confidentially, “She could use some cheering up.”

So Miranda had dutifully walked into the family room and sat down on the flowered sofa. Sarah looked up from the game show she was watching and turned off the television.

“You don't have to do that on my account.”

“That's all right,” she said, smiling stiffly. “I shouldn't watch so much. I got into the habit at the hospital. There wasn't anything else to do. Some of the other wives there did needlework, but I've never been good at it. How about you?” she asked.

Miranda felt sorry for her. She was obviously trying very hard to make conversation when she'd probably much rather be alone. “Some,” she answered. Now did not seem the right time to talk about her hobbies. “I'm hoping to take one of Ruth's quilting classes. She taught me how to make a block, but I'm afraid that's as far as I've gotten.”

Sarah smiled. “Ruth's a very talented and capable woman. She makes everything look easy.”

Miranda agreed and wondered how it felt to Sarah to enter the family as she had and then try to follow in the footsteps of competent, kind Ruth.

“I imagine you're looking forward to getting back to your own home,” Miranda said, “to sleeping in your own bed.”

Sarah smiled but her eyes were veiled. “I am,” she said.

“I've enjoyed getting to know Eden,” Miranda said. “She's a wonderful girl. You must be very proud of her. She's so lively and full of creativity.”

“She is a wonderful girl,” Sarah said.

Everything seemed to have a subtext, an undercurrent. For now the tone was sadness. She was a woman of layers and moods, Miranda could see, and then she immediately rebuked herself. Sarah had been through horrors this past year. Anyone might have an emotional backlog after such an experience.

She tried one last time. “I know Eden is glad to have you here. She's missed you terribly.”

Sarah smiled, a bit bitterly. “She missed her father,” she said.

Miranda teetered then as she decided whether to let Sarah push her away or whether to keep trying.

“She missed you, too,” Miranda said, determining to be kind. “Every child wants their mother.”

Again Sarah gave her a look she couldn't read.

“Yes,” she said. “You're probably right.”

chapter
49

T
he next few weeks passed slowly for Miranda, probably since Eden was preoccupied with her father and no longer her constant companion. Miranda missed her, but the realization made her uncomfortable. She didn't like to become overly dependent on anyone for her happiness. They would inevitably leave, or she would, and then where would she be? But she had to admit she missed Eden's bubbling presence. She was energetic and creative and downright entertaining.

She saw Ruth a time or two. “Come and visit me,” Ruth invited, but Miranda thought of Sarah and David there, trying to knit their fractured family back together, and decided it would be better to wait.

She saw Joseph more frequently. They took walks and talked, and the more she knew about him, the more she respected him. She rode along with him to his work once on her day off, and she saw the passion he had for keeping the town calm and safe. She saw the open cases on his desk. And the closed ones. He had tracked down one bunch of Irish Travelers—arrested one Pete Sherlock and three of his sons. He showed her his life: where he went to grade school, high school. He introduced her to old
friends. She visited his home one Saturday, and he took her fishing, rafting on the river, and then they barbequed steaks. They hiked in the woods, and he showed her some elementary tracking principles. How to identify animals by the length and width of the tracks, the number of toes or claws, and whether or not there was a heel. He showed her how to tell whether the tracks were from a front leg or a back and how to determine the speed and type of gait.

“Follow the tracks, and you'll find out where the animal lives,” he said, “in a tree or burrow, the water or deep woods. That's another clue to identification. Follow the tracks long enough and well enough, and sooner or later you'll find the animal itself.”

She only wished the advice applied to people.

Joseph talked more about David, and she knew he had gone to visit his brother several times. “We've gotten so we can sit in the same room and not be tense,” Joseph said.

She felt hope that there would be complete reconciliation between them soon.

As the days passed she knew it was her turn. It was time for her to share her life with him. She made a start by fixing him a dinner in the tiny kitchen of her apartment. They ate picnic style on a blanket in the tiny backyard. A meager effort, but even so, she was afraid. She was beginning to feel her feet dragging when she walked, tangling around the roots that were beginning to tie her to Abingdon. Part of her wanted to cheer, to say,
Yes, this is where I will put down my roots. This is where I'll bear my fruit.
But another part that sounded like her mother asked her who she thought she was. Reminded her that if she stayed here, paradise would no longer be perfect.

She saw David and Sarah several times but never together. She crossed paths with Sarah once when she went to look for Eden at St. James on food bank day. The food bank was closed, though, and as Miranda sat on the church steps enjoying the sun, Sarah came out, eyes red, obviously having been crying. Miranda
assumed she'd been talking to Pastor Hector. She felt as if she were invading Sarah's privacy by witnessing it, but Sarah barely noticed her. Just said hello, then got into her car and drove away—not in the direction of Ruth's house.