Stranger's Gift (14 page)

“How would you do that?”

Zeke shrugged. “There's always a boat around, down at the bay.”

“Look, I think you've got the wrong idea about me. I mean, I appreciate your interest and the offer to help, but …”

“Relax, dude. We're not talking about stealing a boat. Sarasota's a friendly town. I know people who know people, and, well, from time to time we do favors for each other. You know Margery Barker?”

“We've met,” John replied cautiously.

“Thought so. Margie knows everything there is to know about anyone and anything having to do with the bay.” He polished off the rest of his water and then stuck the bottle out into the rain to let it refill with the runoff from the awning. “She'd help us with getting a boat.”

“Thanks. I'll think about it.” John found the entire discussion uncomfortable and decided to change the subject. “Are you Mennonite or Amish, Zeke?”

To his surprise, Zeke seemed to accept the abrupt shift in topics as normal. “Neither,” he replied. “Used to be Catholic.” He laughed at some private joke and then added, “Can you see me as an altar boy?”

John could not help smiling. “Not really,” he admitted.

The two men sat together in the silence of comrades for several minutes. They watched the rain dripping off the awning and studied the restless sky.

“Looks like Ma Nature's not done with us yet,” Zeke commented with a nod toward the west.

“Maybe we should get back,” John suggested. “There are people who worry about you.”

Zeke turned his gaze to John. “And you?”

John shrugged and got to his feet. “You coming?” He jumped down from the loading dock and started back across the vacant lot.

Zeke drained his water bottle, then once again refilled it under a rivulet of rain running off the awning before heading in the opposite direction. “Got to go get my guitar—music soothes the restless and the terrified,” he said with a wink. “You let me know if you change your mind about that boat.”

John nodded. “Thanks,” he called out as the homeless man headed around the side of the deserted warehouse. “How will I contact you?” he added, realizing that Zeke hardly seemed the sort to carry around a cell phone.

“I'll find you and check in.” He slid past a barricade intended to keep people from trespassing inside the deserted building and disappeared into the shadows. “No worries,” he called out, the words echoing in the empty structure.

John wished he could agree with that statement.

S
amuel Brubaker liked Hester well enough. She was a hardworking woman who clearly took to heart her devotion to serving others. She was also a good homemaker. The house she shared with her father was spotless. She was an excellent cook. She certainly was an attractive woman. And yet the truth of the matter was that she made him uneasy. She had a gravity about her that should have impressed him, he supposed, and he respected that side of her. But what seemed to him to be missing was some semblance of softness, of lightheartedness. Some evidence that she found joy in her life.

He was younger than she was by two years, and somehow he always felt as if he should defer to her greater wisdom and maturity. She seemed more like a teacher he'd had in elementary school than a woman he might consider a friend, or a wife. He'd tried to convince himself that it was because she was the daughter of a minister, but back home in Pennsylvania, he'd been friends with the daughters of his minister, and they had been nothing like Hester.

On the other hand, she would make an excellent mother for his children. She would know exactly how to instill the respect for others and the love of God that he had always hoped to find in a mate. Samuel himself tended toward softheartedness when it came to children. His nieces and nephews adored him because—to the consternation of his sisters and brothers—he almost always sided with the youngsters. That would not do when he had children of his own. Discipline was key to living the plain life.

He watched Hester as she moved among the crowds of people driven from their homes by the flooding creek, now waiting for permission to take one of the cots that had been brought to the church in case of an overflow at the shelters. She offered them a kind of quiet comfort that she rarely displayed when she was handing out assignments in her volunteer role. She cradled a baby and placed a caressing palm on the tangled hair of a toddler crying over some missing toy. And all the while she knelt next to a woman who looked ready to pass out from fear and exhaustion.

“She's a wonder—our Hester,” a woman's voice commented from behind him. When he turned, the young woman he'd seen in church and around Pinecraft was passing out bottles of drinking water. She thrust a bottle of water into his hand. “Here, you look like you could use some.” She wore a captivating smile, a white prayer covering gone limp in the rain and humidity, and the unmistakable scars of having been badly burned in a fire.

She pulled an overturned milk crate next to him and plopped down as she opened a second bottle of water and took a long drink. “Hester was the first person I saw after the fire,” she continued as if she and Samuel had been engaged in conversation for hours. She absently fingered the purplish stains on her neck. He saw that they also covered her forearms, the backs of her hands, and what he could see of her ankles. “She was the one who had to tell me my parents and siblings had all died, and that I was the only survivor.”

It occurred to him that she had simply assumed, perhaps from long experience, that his first questions would be about the burns. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he murmured, then quickly corrected himself, “Losses.”

The young woman glanced down. “God's will. Hester says there's a lesson to be learned from whatever happens, and just because we can't figure it out right away doesn't mean there's no good reason.”

She turned to face him squarely and smiled. That smile in combination with the deep violet of her eyes took his breath away. “I'm Rosalyn, by the way. Can I get you something to eat?”

Samuel shook his head, still dumbfounded by the unexpected beauty of her smile. “Samuel Brubaker,” he said, “from Pennsylvania.”

She laughed and the sound was like music. “Well, Samuel Brubaker from Pennsylvania, glad to make your acquaintance.” She pushed herself to her feet. “How about giving me a hand over here? We've got about a bazillion cans of tuna we need to open and pass out to people—before they pass out from hunger,” she added and laughed again. “Get it? Pass out before they pass out?”

Hester heard Rosalyn's laughter and glanced up. Her friend was talking to Samuel, and he was grinning down at her, his eyes fairly dancing with interest, even attraction. Hester wondered at her own lack of jealousy. After all, in the weeks since Samuel's decision to stay on in Pinecraft, they had spent many evenings together in the company of her father or her grandmother. The four of them had played board games and worked in her mother's garden. And more often than not, Samuel came by to share breakfast with Hester and Arlen each morning before the two men headed off to Arlen's furniture store and workshop. Yes, over the short time he'd been in Pinecraft, Samuel had become like a member of the family, and yet …

He was handsome in a perennially boyish way, and he was kind and had a wonderful sense of humor. He complimented her cooking and admired her needlework even though Hester was well aware that in that arena she was not as gifted as most despite her mother's and grandmother's efforts to teach her. Surely when she saw him talking to another woman—flirting with her even—Hester should feel some twinge of alarm. Wasn't it normal to become somewhat territorial under such circumstances? So how come all she felt when she glanced up at the sound of Rosalyn's merry laughter was pleasure at seeing her friend so obviously enjoying herself?

“It's too soon,” she muttered. “Feelings will grow…in time.”

“I need to talk to you.”

Hester turned to find John Steiner standing across the table that was loaded with cases of canned tuna. He was scowling at her, which seemed to be his usual demeanor. She couldn't help but pity the poor woman who would one day end up married to this cantankerous, not to mention irritating, man.

“Herr Steiner,” she began.

“John,” he corrected automatically. “Look, what do you know about this Zeke character?”

Okay, she hadn't seen that coming. “Zeke? He's …” She narrowed her eyes and studied John. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to know my opinion of Zeke Shepherd?”

“All I want to know is whether or not I can trust the guy or if he's all talk.”

“Why?” she repeated, refusing to back down.

John let out a sigh of frustration. “It's a simple question, Hester. Can I trust the guy or not?”

Hester looked over to where Zeke had just made his way through the throngs of people and was now sitting cross-legged on the ground strumming his guitar and singing to a group of toddlers. “You tell me,” she said, nodding toward the scene.

She didn't miss the surprise in John's expression. “I thought he was still …” he muttered, then shook his head and turned his attention back to Hester. “Looks can be deceiving. Anyone can pull off an act when they've got kids around.”

“Even you, John Steiner?” She couldn't help it. There was something about the man that brought out a disturbing streak of impishness in her.

He frowned down at her. “Okay, so he's one of the good guys. Thanks.” He started toward Zeke, then turned back to her. “When do you think this rain might let up?”

“It's not raining at the moment,” Hester said.

“You know what I mean—clear skies?”

She shrugged. “Only God can answer that.”

“Best guess?”

Hester stepped out from under the arbor that protected a portion of the courtyard and scanned the sky. “There's some clearing there to the west. That's a good sign. Probably by morning we'll start to see the waters recede and the skies clear.” She let him take two steps before adding, “Why?”

“Just curious,” he said, his voice far too casual. After all, in the short time she'd known the man, he'd done little other than bark out demands or object to the instructions of others. This was not a man who casually asked about anything. He had a plan, and Hester was going to figure it out before he placed himself—and possibly Zeke—in more danger.

“We could use a hand passing out this food,” she called as he walked quickly away.

“Can't,” was his curt reply.

“Can't or won't?” Hester seethed through gritted teeth as she watched him disappear into the crowd.

By late the following day, the rain had stopped, and the skies had indeed started to clear. True to his word, Zeke managed to get a small fishing boat and meet John at the city's main marina. He fired up the motor, and the two men headed south through the mostly deserted waters of Sarasota Bay.

“I bunked on that boat for a while before I got set up in my place near the bridge,” Zeke said, nodding toward a battered old sailboat that was listing badly and had been marked with a neon orange tag warning the owners to move it or lose it. “Does no good to tag these things,” Zeke added. “They've been abandoned. Folks think having a boat is romantic. It's work is what it is, a lot of work.”

John let the man continue his monologue without comment. He was thinking about his property, about the last view he'd had of it from the air. Was it really as bad as it had seemed? Maybe not, given the scenery they were passing. The botanical gardens, for example, seemed to be in pretty good shape. Some wind damage to the structures and greenhouses plus flooding near the bay, but overall, the gardens looked to be reasonably intact. He allowed himself to hope.

Zeke guided the boat around a rookery where pelicans roosted by the dozen as if trying—like John—to decide their next move. Zeke steered on past the mouth of Philippi Creek. “Tricky here,” he muttered as he maneuvered the boat carefully around trees that had fallen into the water where the rush of water had eroded the shoreline. “You got a pier?”