Healing Tides (17 page)
Authors: Lois Richer
T
he wedding of Drs. Jared Steele and GloryAnn Cranbrook took place in Tiska at the end of June, when the sun forgot to go to sleep and the cold white world withdrew to make room for new life.
The bride wore a traditional Inuit wedding costume. So did her friends and the little boy who preceded the wedding party down the aisle. Chuckles erupted when Bennie explained exactly how Arctic wildflowers should be scattered.
Pono gave the bride away while Kahlia tended Bennie. Harmon and Elizabeth ensured all the guests enjoyed a sumptuous buffet.
A second wedding took place a week later, at Agapé’s beach. The bride wore a plain white silk dress that grazed her bare toes. The groom sported a colorful Hawaiian shirt identical to Bennie’s. Glory chose Elizabeth and Leilani as attendants. Bennie stood by Jared.
The entire hospital was invited to a traditional luau feast.
It was after dark, while the music still whispered on the wind and the children were coaxed to their beds, that Jared and Glory finally left the party. They were in their car ready to drive away when Elizabeth appeared.
“I have a gift for you.”
“Elizabeth, you’ve already given us so much. We can’t accept anything more.”
“It’s not from me,” she explained. “You’ll have to come with me to see it.”
So they followed her to Sister Phil’s cottage. A painting sat on the sofa.
“She did it herself. She made me promise that when you got married, I’d give it to you.”
“She knew?” Glory traced the top half of the painting, her fingertips grazing over silvery white mounds of snow bowing to the midnight-blue of an Arctic night.
“She knew.” Jared smiled at the bottom scene of a beach, “their” beach, peeking through the fronds of a palm tree while whitecaps rippled over the sea beyond.
“There’s a note,” Elizabeth explained. She held out a sheet of paper on which a faint spidery hand had written.
God created individuals with special abilities not to further their own plans, but to make His plan complete. When you can’t hear His voice, trust His heart.
They turned to thank her but Elizabeth had left them alone.
“We’ll build our home around it,” Glory whispered as she leaned her head against his shoulder and remembered the wonderful woman who’d started the legacy they would now continue.
“God and His will,” Jared agreed. “What could be better?”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1298-9
HEALING TIDES
Copyright © 2008 by Lois M. Richer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Steeple Hill Books.
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