Joy in His Heart (13 page)

As always, Brian’s kindness made her throat ache and her eyes burn. This was getting dangerous. “We haven’t been friends for a long time.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. Then he made it even more dangerous. “I still want to be your friend, Joy, but I think I want a lot more, too.”

She shook her head again. “I can’t be what you need. I don’t see how, Brian.”

He sighed. “I’m not sure I do, either. But I don’t think we ever forgot each other. I don’t think the anger would still have been between us when we started this trip if we had. And I also think the Lord had a message for us in all this. I think it’s why we’re here.”

She tried to glare at him but couldn’t muster any anger. Not when he sounded so convinced that the Lord had been working in their lives. But she wasn’t entirely convinced, either. Did he really believe what he’d said? If so, he’d certainly changed his mind from the other day. “I thought you said we were here to rescue the kids. That we were thrown off course because we were meant to find them.”

“They could just as easily have been somewhere else if that was His only purpose. You could have insisted we go to Piseco to pick up a trained spotter. Go back further. Zack Stevens could have been the flight physician. Kip Webster could have stayed healthy one more day and been the Angel Flight pilot. I think the Lord is talking to us. I know He’s been talking to me.

“Why I teased you isn’t the only thing I’ve learned about myself these last days. We talked about why I didn’t marry Becca or Justine or Maria. I gave you a list of reasons why those relationships didn’t work out. Each one of them had qualities that are important to me. Yet those qualities drove me nuts in Justine and Maria and I couldn’t even force myself to love Becca, who was perfect for me on paper. The truth is, Joy, those relationships didn’t work out because they weren’t
you
—no
matter how perfectly they were suited to be a doctor’s wife.”

“Please don’t do this,” she begged, her voice shaking with the strain. “I can’t be what you want, Bri. Don’t you—” She looked into his eyes then, and stopped. She knew what was coming but she couldn’t bring herself to stop him from saying it. In some masochistic corner of her heart, she wanted to hear it once more.

Just one more time.

“Maybe I just want you to be
you.
Maybe that’s enough. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you, Joy.”

She looked at him, longing all but choking her. The firelight flickered over his chiseled features. She forced herself to be strong. “No. I wouldn’t be enough and you know it. We’d be fine together for a while, then you’d be sorry. You’d feel cheated and you’d resent the things I couldn’t give you. Please don’t do this. I can’t go there again. I can’t hope and have it fall apart again.” Exhaustion and sadness weighted on her heart like lead.

Just then Candy sat up screaming that a bear had come into the cave. Brian rushed across the cave to scoop her into his arms and assured her she’d just had a bad dream. Watching him, Joy’s heart broke that he wouldn’t be the father of her children. She held out her arms for him to settle the whimpering child in her lap when he returned.

“We need to get some sleep,” she said, exhausted but still fearful. Fearful of more than the cave, now. Fearful that if they didn’t get home soon he’d try to wear her down. Fearful that she’d weaken. Fearful of the heartbreak that was sure to follow.

Brian dropped his pack next to her, tossed a sleeping bag open on the ground and sat down on it. Then after leaning back against the pack, he gestured to her and hauled Candy into his lap. He looped an arm around Joy’s shoulder and urged her closer, then tucked her head under his chin. “Sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll keep watch. I won’t let anything crawl on you.” He grinned sadly. “Or eat either one of my girls.”

“I can’t be your girl, Brian, and you need sleep, too.”

He laid his index fingers on her lips. “Sh-sh. I was an intern. Lots of practice being awake nights. I’m good at it. Got an A in Sleep Deprivation 101.” He sighed. “Just go to sleep, honey. There’ll be plenty of time to talk tomorrow.”

Joy closed her eyes, praying they’d all get home safely—she and Brian with a minimum of heartache.

And that was imperative if she was going to survive with even a portion of her heart intact, because with every minute she spent with him, Joy became more and more brokenhearted that she was so wrong for him. It seemed a cruel reality that they couldn’t find a way to be together. Because, if in twelve years her feelings hadn’t died, she had no hope they ever would.

B
rian held Joy in his arms for hours with Candy sandwiched between them. He spent the time tossing logs on the fire with his free hand. And thinking. He fantasized about how it would be if Candy were their child and this were just a normal family vacation. It was ironic that he’d had a dream about a family vacation at the start of the trip before ever meeting the child.

He’d discounted it then because he and Joy had still been at loggerheads, and he’d already learned of Joy’s dislike of camping—especially as a vacation. Now he knew why she’d felt that way and was glad for the trust she’d placed in him. Then the feeling faded. He might know her much better now but he still didn’t think there’d be any family vacations with her, camping or otherwise. She might have finally told him about her fears but there wasn’t much of a chance of them ever being a family.

Because she was afraid of trying to, or even hoping they could, work things out. The truth of how badly he’d
hurt her all those years ago had finally penetrated his thick skull. Joy, who seemed so fearless most of the time, was terrified of him and what another rejection from him could do to her. And he couldn’t even reassure her.

Because he wasn’t sure they had a chance, either.

Restless and needing more firewood, Brian eased first Joy then Candy onto the sleeping bags and covered them with a blanket. After adding enough wood to keep the fire going for an hour or two, he took the sleeping bag Candy had been using and the extra blanket and moved into the mouth of the cave. He looked out into the black night. It matched his mood to a T. The rain continued to fall in sheets, blown by fierce winds. The Lord had indeed been good to have kept them safe from the storm. But he felt battered just the same.

He loved her.

But do we try to mesh our lives when we want such different things from life?

Still, he had time to earn her trust and show her that he didn’t want to hurt her. That he just wanted to explore their feelings. Seek to find a way for them to be together.

It wasn’t as if rescue was imminent, he told himself. They still had to find the plane which—now that they’d somehow wound up on a terrace to nowhere, he realized—might be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Brian sighed and rolled on his side. It was probably hours till dawn so he might as well try to sleep. He still had time.

A blinding shaft of sunlight drilling through his eyelids woke Brian. But the sound of torrential rains still echoed into the cave entrance. It took a minute to get his synapses working. Before he could even move, though, he heard Adam snicker. Brian tossed the blanket off and sat up. He noticed the sleeping bag under him and grinned up at the kid. “You think this is funny?”

“You have to admit Candy goes with the Cinderella theme a whole lot better than you do.”

Brian pretended insult. “I’ll have you know I wear cartoon-character ties and scrubs all the time. Relaxes the little ones when I go to examine them.”

Adam theatrically melted onto on the cartoon-themed sleeping bag and fell into Brian. “I’m relaxed all right,” the pre-teen said and laughed. Then he glanced toward the meadow. “So what’s up with this? Where’s all the noise coming from? It’s not raining anymore.”

Brian clapped him on the back. “Let’s go find out. Just let me go toss some logs on the fire before we go exploring.”

“Done. Chad’s awake, too. Can he come?”

Brian nodded. “Sure. Grab your brother and I’ll meet you both outside.”

He stepped down into the beautiful morning still feeling a little disoriented even after viewing what all the noise was about. The sun was so bright he had to shade his eyes. The air was so clear it was as if the rain had scrubbed it clean. The scent of pine and an elusive aroma he couldn’t nail down floated in the air. Some
one could make a fortune if they could bottle it. He filled his lungs with it again and closed his eyes, silently reciting the prayer he had since that first day after the crash.
Thank You for this day, Lord. See us through it safely.

“We’re all set,” young Chad called as they tumbled out of the mouth of the cave entrance. “So what’s that noise?”

Brian grinned and stepped aside, gesturing toward the cliff at his back and the spectacular waterfall.

“Wow!” Chad shouted.

“Like, double wow!” the elder Fremont boy breathed reverently.

“I think if we walk to the edge of the meadow we’ll see something just as incredible. From what I could tell in the fog, I think this is a horseshoe-shaped canyon. We’re on one leg, the falls are on the opposite one. I’m not sure what’s below but we’re definitely still on the eastern side of the mountain.”

“You can tell that because the sun came right into the cave, right?” Adam asked.

“Exactly,” Brian said. “Now don’t walk too close to the edge,” he added and started walking toward the beautiful sight. Even Joy had to appreciate this kind of show. The two boys followed close on his heels toward the spectacular waterfall that cascaded over a tall cliff across the deep horseshoe canyon. Yesterday it had all been so veiled in fog that he couldn’t see the falls at the other side or, spreading out far below far to the right, the flooded valley floor.

“Wow!” Chad exclaimed again.

“I’ll say,” his brother agreed. “It’s a good thing we started out when we did.”

Brian sent a quick prayer of thanks winging upward for those few moments when that radio had worked, warning them of the impending weather, and added one more for guidance today. Chad went down on his knees then and crept closer to the edge.

“Watch that, son! With all this rain, the edge could be unstable and crumble the way that stream bank did to your friend Bobby.”

“Hey, is that the plane we’re looking for?” Chad called out and pointed over the edge at the cliff wall on the arch of the horseshoe.

Brian dropped to his knees and stretched out flat so he could safely look over the edge. And stared in horror. An image of Joy, limp and still and wedged in the cockpit of the little powder blue and white plane, flashed across his mind. He put his head down on his arm and closed his eyes, banishing the thought. She hadn’t tried to land it. She’d bailed out with him. Joy was sleeping in the cave—safe and out of danger.

He looked back at the wreckage. The front two-thirds of Joy’s Cessna was perched precariously on a wide ledge. The left wing had broken off and lay along the cliff over the fuselage. The tail section, wings and cloud logo scratched and bent, had become hung up farther down the craggy cliff on some trees that protruded from the rock. The waterfall thundered down the vertical cliff wall adjacent to where the plane had drilled into it.

Adam had joined him and all three of them observed the twisted wreckage in silence.

“You and Miss Joy were in that?” Adam asked, his voice full of fear.

“We sure were. Lightning went right on through the nose. She lost her electronics but kept the plane in the air until the engine lost its oil pressure. For a while after that, too. Long enough for us to bail out.”

“It’s pretty wrecked,” Chad said in a voice a bit higher than usual and of course a little louder because of the roar of the waterfall.

“It is that,” he said and let out a breath he’d forgotten he was holding. Brian felt sweat bead on his forehead. And she’d wanted to try to land somewhere. He shook his head banishing the horrifying vision once again.

“What’cha lookin’ at?” Candy chirped loudly from a position a bit higher off the ground near Brian’s knees.

Brian’s blood went cold and he jumped a foot. Without a thought he rolled to his back, grabbed her and pulled her onto his chest. She giggled, clearly not understanding the danger at all. “Oh, did you ever scare me,” Brian told her. He sat up with her and put her in the grass. “Crawl away from the cliff. It’s very dangerous here for you. In fact, let’s all get back from the edge. Is Joy still asleep?” he wanted to know as soon as he got to his feet.

Candy’s arms were anchored to her hips by her bunched fists. “Everybody else is sleeping. I got bored.”

Nothing new there. Candy got bored every two minutes it seemed. “Listen, guys, take Candy back and wake Joy. Send her out here to me. Okay?” He needed to tell her about the plane, but more pressing was his
need to see her. He just needed a few minutes to get hold of his feelings first.

The boys ran, swinging Candy by her arms between them. Happy just because it wasn’t raining and they’d had yet another adventure. Kids. They were so resilient it never ceased to amaze him, even though he saw it every day.

Every day. He did see it every day, but like a lot of things he had and didn’t have in his life, he’d begun to take it for granted. Like the smile of a healing girl. Like thank-you pictures drawn by a grateful boy.

Like loneliness.

He sighed. One foot in front of the other. Just get through the day. How long had he been doing that? No wonder getting marooned here with Joy hadn’t seemed all that bad until yesterday’s trek up the mountain. He wondered what he’d have done if Chad had not found the plane. Would he have waited a day—or two—before “noticing” it. If it weren’t for the people back in civilization who were worried about all of them, Brian knew he’d have been tempted.

And all for just a little more time with Joy.

But there were worried parents and other relatives and the plane was down there. And now he had to figure out a way to get to it. And disappointed though he was with the timing, he was grateful the Lord had sent them the message via the radio that they should move from their camp in the valley.

Brian wandered closer to the edge and glanced due east at the valley beyond the lower elevation’s tree canopy. He didn’t imagine the water in the valley was par
ticularly deep, but moving water didn’t need to be deep to be dangerous.

The upper cliff their cave had been carved from was part of the same formation that formed the deep, horseshoe-shaped, east-facing canyon. The waterfall flowed off the upper elevation that lay directly across the canyon from the meadow. It roared downward and into a deep pool, if the darkness of the water below was any indication. Though lower elevation trees hid a stream from view, Brian imagined the falls and pool eventually flowed into the stream they’d camped near.

He followed along the top of the lower cliff onto a crescent-shaped spit of land about twelve feet deep at its apex, but barely three feet deep at its beginning. It curved above the lower part of the canyon where the plane had come to rest. He scraped away a covering of pine needles and found the ground was hard-packed and more like granite dust than dirt. The needles had come from two pines that had rooted in the cliff face. They were the same kind as the ones holding the tail section suspended above the pool—the tail section where Joy had said the transponder could be found.

He heard her call his name from the meadow. “I’m here,” he called back. “Wait there.” He hastened around the narrow corner to her side. She stared at him, looking wary. Worried. And he knew it had nothing to do with the plane and everything to do with their conversation by the fire the night before.

There’s still time. Still hope. When we get home, we’ll work it out,
he told himself.

“Did the kids tell you?” he asked, needing to break the silence before it became strained.

She blinked and looked away. “That you’d found the plane? Yeah.” She looked out over the cannon. “This is the big gap I saw in the trees but I didn’t see the cliffs from that vantage point.” She turned and looked back at the meadow and groaned.

“Looks different from down here, I imagine,” he said, turning to look at the sunlit meadow behind them.

“Don’t you see? I could have landed in the meadow if I’d still been behind the controls.”

The image from earlier of her in that twisted hulk of metal and broken glass exploded in his brain. “Don’t, okay?” he snapped. “What is,
is.
No second-guessing God’s mercy.” Hand on her shoulder, Brian urged her to turn and walk toward the edge of the cliff. He didn’t need to touch her but couldn’t seem to help himself. He needed that physical connection to reassure himself that she was really there. Safe. Alive.

More confident of the ground’s stability after examining its foundation from the other wall, Brian pointed down and to his left toward the arch of the horseshoe. “I think you’re going to have to walk me through getting the transponder up and running.”

Joy, of course, couldn’t kneel with her knee so banged up. And since walking to the edge on unsteady limbs would have been dangerous, she tossed the crutch to the ground and sat down, albeit awkwardly. Then she rolled to her stomach and scooted to the edge. After peering over it, studying the wreckage for a long moment, she cleared her throat. “It must have come in
point-blank at the cliff. That’s why the nose is caved in so far and why the windshield is gone. The momentum would have pivoted it to the side that way. The wing would have sheared off and folded back as it slapped sideways into the wall. I’m guessing the stress just snapped the tail off and then it slid down to lodge in those trees.” She shook her head and looked like she was honestly tempted to cry. “At least you were insured, baby.”

“Joy?” Brian said to call her back as she continued to stare at the wreckage.

“I was thinking,” she said, her voice still far away, “did you ever notice how the stuff people leave on their plates goes from being food to garbage in the split second they put down their forks? The plane went from being an asset to trash just as fast.”

He cupped his hand on the back of her head. “I’m sorry. I know you hated to lose it but it wasn’t worth your life. Nothing is.”

“Except getting those kids home.”

Brian didn’t know what to say so he opted for being practical. “The transponder—”

It was her turn to point, but as she moved to look up at him he had to move his hand. Trying not to feel bereft he looked away from her beautiful face toward the tail section.

“See the stress fracture on the left horizontal stabilizer?” she asked.

“Say what?”