Redemption (45 page)

Where it would always be.

She forced her emotions into check. “When do you go back?”

“I took a week off. If it’s okay, I thought I might help you get settled or something.” He grinned. “You know, leap tall buildings, change diapers, that sort of thing.”

She smiled, sad and thoughtful, and glanced at the plush toy eagle, the one Tim had bought before he was killed, nestled at the foot of Jessie’s hospital crib. He should have been here, should have been sitting across from her holding their daughter, cooing at her.

Kari closed her eyes for a moment. Somehow, someway, Tim
was
there, smiling down at them from his place in heaven, his place of redemption.

The thought filled her with equal parts of peace and pain. “Tim was so excited about the baby. We were learning. . . .”

Ryan had no answer, just listened. Watched her face. Waited for her to say more.

All she could manage was small talk. “I’m keeping the house.” She gazed briefly at little Jessie. “I’ll stay at my parents’ for a few weeks, but when I’m back on my feet, the baby and I will go home.”

Ryan leaned forward in the padded hospital chair, carefully balancing the sleeping child. “It’ll take time. Getting on with life again.”

She sniffed. “Yes.”

His eyes grew dim, glazed with things he wasn’t saying, feelings he knew better than to express. He blinked and the moment passed.

“Well, Kari girl—” he gave her a half-smile—“the way I see it, you could use a friend. Someone to listen and take walks with. Maybe hold the bottle when you’re feeling tired.” He shrugged. “At least until I leave.”

A dozen questions came to her mind at the possibility, but the lump in her throat was too thick to voice them all. Instead, she smiled through her tears and asked the only one that mattered. “Then what?”

Ryan reached out and gently massaged the tips of her fingers. “I’ll always be a phone call away. Whenever you need me, Kari. No matter how many miles are between us, I’ll be here for you.”

Kari waited a moment, studying him, feeling safe and protected as she always did with him. “I’d like that.”

She pictured the coming days—she and her daughter going home to the temporary nursery set up at her parents’ house, having Ryan stop in to visit and watching him hold Jessie, sharing these tender next few days with him.

Saying good-bye at the end of the week.

She locked eyes with him, remembering the passages of time they’d walked through together. All her life she’d been saying good-bye to Ryan Taylor. This would be just one more.

She sighed.

As with so many times before, there was no way to predict what tomorrow held for either of them. In some ways they’d come full circle. And though they might not see each other again for a month or even a year, Ryan was right. He would be there for her.

And somehow . . . somehow for today that would be enough.

More about the Baxter family!

Please turn this page for a bonus excerpt from

REMEMBER

the second book in the

REDEMPTION SERIES

by Karen Kingsbury with Gary Smalley

Chapter One

Dr. John Baxter received news of the fire the moment he arrived at St. Anne’s Hospital that afternoon. An emergency-room nurse flagged him down on his way back from rounds, her face stricken.

“Stay nearby; we might need you. An apartment complex is burning to the ground. A couple of families trapped inside. At least two fatalities. And we’re already shorthanded.”

John felt the familiar rush of adrenaline that came with working around disaster. He filled in only occasionally at the hospital emergency room—in the summers when he didn’t have classes to teach, or when a disaster of some sort demanded extra personnel. But for him the excitement of ER medicine never lessened. It was as quick and consuming now as it had ever been.

He glanced at the others making preparations and then back to the nurse. “What happened?” Already sirens were blaring across Bloomington.

The nurse shook her head. “No one’s sure. They’re still working the blaze. They lost track of two men, firefighters.” She paused. “Everyone’s fearing the worst.”

Firefighters?
John’s heart sank to his waist.

He followed her into the back, where a flurry of medical personnel were preparing for the first victims. “Did you get their names? The missing men?”

The nurse stopped and turned around. “It’s Engine 211. That’s all we’ve got so far.”

John felt the blood drain from his face as he launched into silent, fervent prayer. He prayed for the people fighting the fire and the families trapped inside—and for the missing men of Engine 211.

He pictured them lost in an inferno, risking their lives to save mothers and fathers and children. He imagined them buried beneath burning rubble or cut off from all communications with their chief.

Then he prayed for one of Engine 211’s men in particular. A strapping young man who had loved John Baxter’s middle daughter, Ashley, since the two of them were teenagers.

The money was running out.

That was the main reason Ashley Baxter was out looking for a job on that beautiful summer morning—the type of blue-skied, flower-bursting day perfect for creating art.

The settlement from her car accident four years ago was almost gone, and though she’d paid cash for her house, she and little Cole still needed money to live on—at least until her paintings began to sell.

Ashley sighed and ran her hand through her short-cropped, dark hair. She studied the ad in the paper once more:

Care worker for adult group home. Some medical training preferred. Salary and benefits.

As mundane as it sounded, it might be just the job she wanted. She’d checked with her father and found out that caregiver pay tended to be barely above minimum wage. She’d be working mostly with Alzheimer’s patients—people with dementia or other age-related illnesses, folks unable to survive on their own. She would have wrinkled bodies to tend, hairy chins to wipe, and most likely diapers to change. The job wasn’t glamorous.

But Ashley didn’t mind. She had reasons for wanting the job. Since returning from her sojourn in Paris, everything about her life had changed. She was only twenty-five, but she felt years older, jaded and cynical. She rarely laughed, and she wasn’t the kind of mother Cole needed. Despite the heads she turned, she felt old and used up—even ugly.

Paris was partly to blame for who she had become. But much of it was due to all the running she had done since then. Running from her parents’ viewpoints, their tiresome religion, their attempts to mold her into a woman she could never be. And running from Landon Blake—from his subtle but persistent advances and the predictable lifestyle she’d be forced into if she ever fell in love with him.

Whatever the reason, she was aware that something tragic had happened to her heart in the four years since she had come home from Europe. It had grown cold—colder than the wind that whipped across Bloomington, Indiana, in mid-January. And that, in turn, was affecting her only true passion—her ability to paint. She still worked at it, still filled up canvases, but it had been years since she did anything truly remarkable.

Ashley turned off South Walnut and began searching for the address of the group home. In addition to bringing in a paycheck, working with old people might ward off the cold deep within her, might even melt the ice that had gathered around her soul over the years. She had always felt a kind of empathy for old folks, an understanding. Somehow they stirred a place in her heart that nothing else could touch.

She remembered driving through town a week ago and seeing two ancient women—hunched-over, gnarled old girls, probably in their nineties—walking arm in arm down the sidewalk. They had taken careful, measured steps, and when one started to slip, the other held her up.

Ashley had pulled over that afternoon and studied them from a distance, thinking they’d make a good subject for her next painting. Who were they, and what had they seen in their long lifetimes? Did they remember the tragedy of the
Titanic
? Had they lost sons in World War II—or had they themselves served somehow? Were the people they loved still alive or close enough to visit?

Had they been beautiful, flitting from one social event to another with a number of handsome boys calling after them? And did they grieve the way they’d become invisible—now that society no longer noticed them?

Ashley watched the women step carefully into an intersection and then freeze with fear when the light turned, catching them halfway across. An impatient driver laid on his horn, honking in sharp, staccato patterns. The expression on the women’s faces became nervous and then frantic. They hurried their feet, shuffling in such a way that they nearly fell. When they reached the other side, they stopped to catch their breath, and again Ashley wondered.

Was this all that was left for these ladies—angry drivers impatient with their slow steps and physical challenges? Was that all the attention they’d receive on a given day?

The most striking thing about the memory was that as the questions came, Ashley’s cheeks had grown wet. She popped down the visor and stared at her reflection. Something was happening to her that hadn’t happened in months. Years, even.

She was crying.

And that was when she had realized the depth of her problem. The fact was, her experiences had made her cynical. And if she was ever going to create unforgettable artwork, she needed something more than a canvas and a brush. She needed a heart, tender and broken, able to feel in ways she’d long since forgotten.

That afternoon as she watched the two old women, a thought occurred to Ashley. Perhaps she had unwittingly stumbled upon a way to regain the softness that had long ago died. If she wanted a changed heart, perhaps she need only spend time with the aged.

That’s why the ad in this morning’s paper was so appealing.

She drove slowly, scanning the addresses on the houses until she found the one she was looking for. Her interview was in five minutes. She pulled into the driveway, taking time to study the outside of the building. “Sunset Hills Adult Care Home” a sign read. The building was mostly brick, with a few small sections of beige siding and a roof both worn and sagging. The patch of grass in front was neatly manicured, shaded at the side by a couple of adolescent maple trees. A gathering of rosebushes struggled to produce a few red and yellow blossoms in front of a full-sized picture window to the right of the door. A wiry, gray-haired woman with loose skin stared out at her through the dusty glass, her eyes nervous and empty.

Ashley drew a deep breath and surveyed the place once more. It seemed nice enough, the type of facility that drew little or no attention and served its purpose well. What was it her father called homes like this one? She thought for a moment, and it came to her.

Heaven’s waiting rooms.

Sirens sounded in the distance, lots of them. Sirens usually meant one thing: it’d be a busy day for her father. And maybe Landon Blake. Ashley blocked out the sound and checked the mirror. Even she could see the twinlike resemblance between herself and Kari, her older sister. Other than Kari’s eyes, which were as brown as Ashley’s were blue, they were nearly identical.

But the resemblance stopped there.

Kari was good and pure and stoic, and even now—five months after the death of her husband, with a two-month-old baby to care for by herself—Kari could easily find a reason to smile, to believe the best about life and love.

And God, of course. Always God.

Ashley bit her lip and opened the car door. Determination mingled with the humid summer air as she grabbed her purse and headed up the walkway. With each step, she thought again of those two old ladies, how she had cried at their condition—lonely, isolated, and forgotten.

As Ashley reached the front door, a thought dawned on her. The reason the women had been able to warm the cold places in her heart was suddenly clear.

In all ways that mattered, she was just like them.

There was no way out.

Landon Blake was trapped on the second floor somewhere in the middle of the burning apartment complex. Searing walls of flames raged on either side of him and, for the first time since becoming a firefighter, Landon had lost track of the exits. Every door and window was framed in fire.