Fearless Hope: A Novel (6 page)

It had been many years since he’d gone to St. Patrick’s, but she continued to go weekly. He had once asked her why she went when she wasn’t even Catholic.

“There are places on earth that feel holier than others,” she had said. “Some people feel inspired by the Grand Canyon, or in a great redwood forest, or standing beside the ocean. For me . . . it’s right here in the middle of the city.” She had glanced up. “These beautiful, soaring ceilings, these gorgeous stained-glass windows. The quiet. The candles. It feels holy to me, and healing.”

Then she’d tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and they had walked out. She always stopped, held her head high, and breathed deeply when they emerged from the church. It was her way of preparing herself for another week of putting criminals behind bars, or keeping innocent people free.

He thought about that conversation now as he stood, alone in the echoing stillness of the old house. It, too, felt holy to him . . . and healing. It felt like he belonged here.

Coming here might not be the magic cure he needed to get over this emotional bump in the road that was keeping him from writing well, but it felt good to be here, and for now that was enough.

•  •  •

Over the next few days, he furnished his rooms with the solid Amish-made furniture he had admired on his first trip. Lehman’s delivered a propane stove and refrigerator. Verla’s husband showed him how to light the gaslights. He picked up utilitarian dishes and linens at Walmart.

Within a week, everything necessary to basic living was in place. Kerosene lamps on the tables; firewood bought cheaply from an Amish teenager who was selling it door-to-door from a horse-drawn wagon. The boy’s name was Simon, a good-natured young man who stacked it neatly behind the house at no extra cost.

“I used to work for the man who lived here before you,” Simon said while waiting in the kitchen for Logan to get the cash to pay him. “I helped him put up hay in the summers. He was a
gut
man.”

Even after he was paid, Simon did not seem in a hurry to leave. Logan noticed him eyeing some day-old doughnuts left out on the table.

“Would you like some doughnuts?” he offered. “I’m afraid they’re a little stale. I was planning to throw them out.”

Simon fell upon them as though he had not eaten in days. Of course, teenage boys tended to get hungry easily, but still, he ate as though he was starved.

“Would you like some coffee?” Logan asked. “It’s left over from this morning.”

Simon nodded and took another huge bite of doughnut, practically swallowing it whole.

With no microwave, Logan heated the coffee up on the stove. It was boiling hot when he served it, but Simon slurped it down anyway. Then he stared longingly at the last two doughnuts.

“Please,” Logan said. “Help yourself. I don’t plan to eat them.”

He did not have to ask twice.

Slightly unnerved by the boy’s hunger, he added an extra ten dollars to the small amount Simon had charged.

“For stacking it,” he explained. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“But you fed me,” Simon protested.

“That’s okay.” To his own surprise, he found himself adding, “If you get hungry again, you’re welcome to come back.”

“Thank you!”

In his opinion, Simon’s gratitude was more heartfelt than a half dozen stale doughnuts warranted, but Logan liked the boy and hoped he’d stop by again.

He was finding it hard to live for even a week with nothing but isolation and silence. He had worked so hard for so long that it felt strange not to be sitting down at his computer every morning. It felt even stranger not to check email or fuel other social media outlets with his words. Marla had strictly forbidden him to even use his smartphone unless it was to contact her or his mother.

“Take time off,” she had said. “Like Harry advised. Then knock ’em dead with this next book.”

The problem, he was finding out, was he didn’t know what to
do
with himself if he wasn’t writing.

He had thrown himself into his career so totally and obsessively for so long that he had no hobbies and, although in possession of many acquaintances, he had virtually no close friends.

Logan cast about in his mind, trying to come up with something to occupy his time, and chose something so uncharacteristic that Marla would have been shocked. He decided his house needed to look more like a home and spent several more days
doing little except roaming around the area shopping for things that were not at all necessary, but that he just
liked
.

He bought bright-colored hand-loomed throw rugs in craft stores in Berlin, and several huge, Amish-made baskets from a roadside stand, which he used as side tables. He bought peaceful landscape prints from a local photographer by the name of Doyle Yoder for his walls. At the pottery place he and Marla had visited, he bought a dozen hand-thrown pots. He stopped at a house advertising homemade quilts and looked through dozens sewn by an elderly Amish woman whose fingers, he noted, were knotted with arthritis. He wondered, as he purchased five of the finely made quilts, what it had cost her to make the tiny stitches.

Each item gave him a sense of satisfaction as he placed it in his house. He was no decorator, but he cherished the feeling of humanity with which he filled his home by purchasing things that local artisans had lovingly created.

The final touch involved combing antiques stores and rescuing dusty, forgotten books. Harry had suggested he read other people’s books, old books. He liked that idea. Old books, instead of trying to keep up with the latest bestseller, the latest copy of
Publishers Weekly
, or yet another research book.

The windows he left bare, except for piling stacks and stacks of old books upon the sills. It seemed odd not to have Marla, with her interior design expertise, here to help him, but in a way he was grateful that he was getting to create an environment that was all his own. The things he purchased felt right for this old house, and right for him.

In this way, he acquainted himself more intimately with the countryside and its people. Even though it was a constant battle, he kept his promise to Marla and did not drink or keep any alcohol in his home. Instead, he discovered overgrown paths on his land and took long walks whenever the desire to drink threatened
to overcome him. As he climbed the hills and explored the paths, he was astonished at how out of shape he had become. He also marveled that the very land itself seemed to welcome him—just as the old house had.

Today he was discovering that nearly all of Holmes County closed down on Sundays. The Amish restaurants, upon which he depended heavily for sustenance, were closed. Pretty much everything was closed. There was little to do on a Sunday in Amish country except to go to church, or visit with family and friends.

He had neither family nor friends living here, and he most certainly did not have a church.

Today he felt like a complete alien driving through the streets of Berlin, Ohio, with its shuttered windows and Closed signs on all the small businesses.

As he drove past one farm, he saw about forty black buggies parked outside in a pasture. Streaming from those buggies was a line of black-clad Amish men and women, along with many children. They were in family-type clusters, talking with one another as they walked together. He thought how close the friendships must be within this group of people who had probably gone to church together all their lives.

As he watched this, it hit him how terribly lonely he felt, and he suspected he had been lonely for a long time. As an only child, he had learned to keep the loneliness at bay by making up stories with which he kept himself entertained. As an adult he had continued to do so—and gotten paid for it.

His love for Ariela, and her love for him, had made the loneliness go away for a while. The day he met Ariela, he knew he had found his other half, the person who could fill all the empty spaces. With Marla—although he was grateful for her presence in his life—things were different.

He wished he had the right to stop, park, and walk into that
barn with that group of people. Had Marla known what he was thinking, she would have laughed and texted her friends about the latest funny “Logan story.” His fiancée seemed determined to present him to her friends as a rumpled, mildly attractive, absentminded writer. It had become a sort of shtick within her circle.

He slowed down as he passed the people going in to church. Then he turned around and pulled over at a wide place in the road. Just close enough that he could watch, far enough away not to be obtrusive.

In the distance, he saw a young woman with two children in tow. A little boy and girl. As she came closer, he saw a sadness in the woman’s face that caught at his heart. His writer’s mind wondered what tragedy might have happened to cause such sadness. There was no father within that small family group. Had he left her and the children? Had he died? Or was he simply at home ill? He felt a stab of empathy for the two children. There had been no father in his family group, either, when he and his mother had walked to church.

It occurred to him that the heroine in his latest novel, a psychiatrist who specialized in sociopathic behavior, needed to be made more multidimensional. Perhaps he should give her a deceased husband and two small children. That would ramp up the tension when her unhinged client turned into a midnight stalker. He grabbed his smartphone and recorded the idea before it could slip his mind. Perhaps he would give his heroine that innocent-but-sad expression the Amish woman wore. She drew even closer and he saw that she was quite beautiful in spite of wearing no makeup. Perhaps he would give the psychiatrist the same appearance. Could she have a devoutly religious background? He definitely didn’t want any more reviews accusing him of writing “cardboard characters.”

It was the first time he’d felt the tiniest spark of creativity
in weeks, and it flickered out way too soon. His thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his cell phone.

“So what are you doing today?” Marla said. “Playing cow chip bingo like I saw on TV?”

“Cow chip bingo?”

“It was on a program called
Amish Mafia
,” she said. “Have you seen it?”

“I don’t have a TV here, Marla,” he said. “You know that.”

“Sorry. I forgot. So, how
are
you doing over there in Amish land?”

“Fine.”

“You’re lying.”

She knew him entirely too well. “You’re right.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Tell me what you’ve gotten accomplished so far.”

Marla was a task-oriented person. He had discovered early on that if he didn’t have a task, she would assign him one.

“I’ve pretty much finished putting the house together.”

“Good for you!” The tone of her voice reminded him of a schoolteacher encouraging a kindergartner. “Have you done any writing?”

“Honestly? I’ve not written a word since I got here. I’m giving Harry’s advice a shot for a while.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but . . . how’s the drinking?”

“I made you a promise, Marla, and I’m keeping it.”

“Good boy!” Again with the encouraging teacher voice.

He appreciated her encouragement, but he felt a flicker of resentment. He was not a child.

“One of my friends asked me how you recharge your laptop and cell phone with no electricity? What should I tell her?”

“I’m not using my computer yet, but when I do, I’ll charge it with my car battery.”

She laughed. “I can just see you tromping outside in the rain some night when your laptop dies on you.”

“Verla says that’s how the Amish teenagers keep their cell phones charged, with a car battery.”

“You are living among such interesting people.”

“I think so,” he said.

“I was joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

After a few more comments, they hung up. There really wasn’t much more to say. In-depth conversations were not a big part of their relationship.

L
ogan awoke to the sound of a rooster crowing at the farm next door. He cracked open an eyelid. The sky was growing lighter, but it was barely dawn. This rude awakening, he had discovered, was going to happen every morning. He burrowed back down into his pillow, but the rooster was an insistent alarm clock that he could not shut off. He now knew from experience that he might as well give up.

A few minutes later, he was bundled in a sweater and jeans against the chill of an autumn morning, with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, sitting on a porch rocker. The sound of the rooster was no longer an irritation, but part of the joyful cacophony of the world around him awakening.

The mist-covered, rolling farmland was a feast to his eyes, and the covered porch felt like the arms of a good friend enfolding him. He settled back and allowed the peace of the place to seep into the raw cracks of his soul.

There was no doubt about it, he loved it here.

The coiled spring that seemed to be so tightly wound inside him felt as though it were loosening a little more each day. He’d slowly begun to cut down on his depression medication and was feeling no ill effects. Although it was still a struggle, especially
in the evenings, his desire for alcohol was diminishing with each day.

He had not experienced a feeling of peace this deep since before his wife had died.

Ariela would have loved it here, too.

He allowed the feeling of grief to linger only a moment before he gently put it aside. Ariela had been a generous person. She would want him to enjoy this lovely place with or without her.

It had been nearly a month, and he still had not overcome his inability to write again. It was the first true writer’s block he had ever experienced, and it was brutal. His New York editor contacted him to inquire how the book was coming, and was not amused by the news that he had chosen to bury himself here. He had built his career within easy reach of everyone who was anyone in the publishing business. He also had built a reputation for meeting deadlines on time with quality work. As Harry had pointed out during their lunch together, he had been the perfect, uncomplaining, writing machine, churning out bestseller after bestseller, until the perfect writing machine had broken down.