Love Is Patient and A Heart's Refuge (35 page)

Rick’s grip on her hand tightened. “I’m starting to believe that, Becky. I’m starting to see it more and more.” He twisted his head to look at her. “I’ve accused you of keeping yourself too busy, but maybe God needed me to slow down, too. Maybe he put me here to show me that He cares in other ways.”

Becky smiled and lifted his hand to her cheek. “Many other ways, Rick,” she said softly. “So go ahead and ask your questions. I think God wants to hear them.”

“Your grandmother said the same thing. She’s a neat person.”

“Do you have many memories of your own grandmother?”

“I never knew her. She died shortly after my mother was born.”

“What about your mother?”

“I have a few memories. Good ones mostly. When I couldn’t sleep, I would sneak to her room. She would tell me stories. Sing to me. I often fell asleep in her bed.”
A gentle smile curved his lips as his eyes took on a faraway look. “She was a loving mother.”

“How did she get along with your grandfather?”

Rick’s smile faded away and Becky regretted asking the question. “She tried to please him, but no matter what she did she couldn’t negate the huge mistake she had made by showing up on his doorstep unmarried and with a child. Grandfather never let her forget the shame she caused him. And of course, I was a constant reminder of that.” Rick’s light laugh was edged with bitterness. “So he shipped me off.”

“To boarding school.” Becky pulled her chair closer, inviting further confidences.

“A very good boarding school, mind you. After all, this was Colson Ethier and he did have his standards.”

“Did you see much of your grandfather?”

“On holidays. He’d give me the obligatory Christmas presents and he’d be around for Thanksgiving. But whenever I came home, he was entertaining other people. I spent more time with the housekeeper than with him.”

“Why would that be?” Becky remembered the sorrow in Colson Ethier’s voice when he stopped by her parents’ home. This didn’t fit with the picture Rick was giving her.

“I’m sure he was ashamed of me. My mother wasn’t married. She never did tell him who my father was.” Rick laid his head back against the chair. “He couldn’t figure out how to introduce me to his friends. I could tell he was incredibly awkward, so after a while, I stopped coming home for the holidays.”

Rick’s quiet monotone was meant to show Becky he
didn’t care, but beneath his words she heard a lingering pain. Her own heart contracted, thinking of a young boy, alone at Christmas, that most family time of the year.

And suddenly she understood. “Is it because of your mother that you want to write about Jake Groot?”

Rick’s jaw tensed and Becky knew she had hit upon the reason for his anger. “My mother was just like that woman that he had so casually dumped and left behind. And I’m like the child he doesn’t know.” Rick looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. “I’m the other side of the story, Becky. The unhappy ending. The kid without a father, left alone.”

Becky’s heart tore in two. “Were you very lonely?”

Rick sighed and dropped his head back, as if holding the anger up was too tiring. “At the risk of sounding maudlin, I feel like I’ve been lonely most of my life.” Then he glanced at her and the harsh planes of his features softened, his lips parted in a gentle smile. “But I don’t feel that way now.”

Hope lent her heart wings and Becky gave in to an urge and cupped his face in her hand. She held his gaze, her thumb gently stroking his cheek as her heart contracted with an emotion stronger, deeper, wilder than pity. An emotion that burrowed into the depths of her soul, born of moments, thoughts, conversations.

I love him.

The words drifted up from behind and settled into her heart, bittersweet and edged with sorrow.

Rick anchored her hand with his own against his cheek. “I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life, Becky. Running around. Looking in all the wrong places for the
wrong things. Now, I’m not so sure what I want anymore. I just know it’s not what I had. The only trouble is I don’t know where to start now.”

Becky heard his words. His sadness. She ignored her own pain to help him. Guide him.

“You can start with the Lord. He’s been the only constant in your life even if you haven’t always acknowledged Him.”

Rick smile was melancholy. “You really believe that?”

“God is a father who doesn’t forget you. He’s numbered the hairs on your head.” Becky reached past him and took the Bible off his bedside stand, pleased to see pieces of paper sticking out in various places. She turned to Psalm 139 and started reading. “‘O Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar…’” She read on, gaining her strength and conviction from what she read. “‘…If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast…’” She looked up to see Rick’s reaction. He had laid his head down on the back of the chair, his eyes closed. When she stopped, he frowned and she continued on to the end.

“See, Rick, nothing can escape God’s thoughts or concerns,” she said softly, closing the Bible. “Not time or place or person.”

Quiet pressed between them and Becky wisely said no more. Rick had to be convinced on his own.

“I read an interesting piece last night,” Rick said finally. “Job asking God questions. Then God spoke to
Job out of the whirlwind and threw a few questions of His own around. Made me realize what a puny creature I am. How unworthy I am.” His laugh was a soft sound clean of his usual irony. “You’ve helped me back, Becky. You’ve given me more than I can ever tell you.” Rick tried to reach up to touch her, then winced in pain. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t say that, Rick. We deserve nothing. Everything we have is a gift. I’m not better, but I am connected to a source stronger and deeper than me.”

“Like a tree planted by the stream. The minister spoke on Psalm 1 the last time I was in church.” He held her gaze, his own expression serious and Becky felt as if she were getting pulled into the very essence of him.

She didn’t want to leave. She had other things she wanted to ask him, other things she wanted to say. But her own emotions were too uncertain. It seemed the closer they grew together, the more afraid she became. The more vulnerable she became.

Could she let him go when the time came? Would it be sooner than she thought?

A light cough behind her made her spin around. Rick’s grandfather stood in the doorway, his coat folded carefully over one arm, his eyes on Rick.

She felt as if she were balancing on a precipice. She didn’t want to leave Rick with his grandfather, the man who didn’t appreciate his grandson. She didn’t want Colson to take Rick away. Not now. Not when she felt as if things were moving in a positive direction.

Help me to let go, Lord. Help me to think of what’s best for him.

“Will you come by tomorrow?” Rick asked.

Becky only nodded as a knot of sorrow thickened her throat. At the doorway, she glanced back. Rick was still looking at her.

And she sent up a quick prayer for the grandfather and the grandson.

Rick’s wrist was throbbing and it hurt to breathe. He should ring for the nurse to come and help him back into bed, but pride kept him in his chair. He preferred to face his grandfather sitting rather than lying down.

Colson sat down in the chair Becky had just vacated and laid his coat on his lap, fussing with the lapels, looking anywhere but at his grandson.

“I came as soon as I heard about the accident,” Colson said after clearing his throat. “You were unconscious the first time I visited.”

“Becky told me you came.” He angled his chin toward the fruit basket. Leanne and Colette had opened it and helped themselves at his invitation. “Thanks for the basket.”

“Yes, well, it is the thought, of course. Doesn’t look like you’re in much shape to eat hard fruit.” Colson smoothed his hand over his coat, then looked up at Rick. “How are you feeling?”

“Stiff and sore. The doc says I’ll probably be out in a couple of days.” Rick shifted his position, pain shot through his chest and he sucked in a quick breath through clenched teeth.

“Do you want me to ring for the nurse?”

Rick waved his offer away as he rode out the pain.

The usual awkward silence dropped between them like a chasm. Rick couldn’t help but compare this visit to the one with Becky’s family. Words and laughter flew around them like birds. It was never still, never quiet.

Now he could hear the swish of nurses’ feet on the floors outside his room, the murmured conversation that took place at the nurses’ desk, the creaky clank of a cart pushed down the hallway.

Colson cleared his throat, his fingers toying restlessly with a button on his coat. “So how is the magazine going?”

“It’s going okay.” Which was a lie, but he wasn’t going to tell his grandfather the truth. He still had time to turn the magazine around. Time to get himself out of his grandfather’s snare. He wished he had never taken Colson up on his challenge.

Even as the thought formed, he knew it wasn’t true. If he hadn’t come out here he wouldn’t have met Becky.

“That Becky girl seems like a nice person. Are you two getting along a little better?”

“Yes, actually. We’ve found a way to work together.”

The tension his grandfather usually generated in him slipped away at the thought of Becky. She was a strength to him—he who never thought he needed strength. She had become so much a part of him, he didn’t know what he was going to do when he had to leave.

“I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” Colson confessed, looking away from Rick. “Much more adept at business negotiations where the facts are laid out.” He
stopped, cleared his throat again. “I’ve not done right by you. I know that.”

Rick said nothing, allowing his grandfather to navigate this new territory on his own. Truth was, Rick didn’t know himself where Colson hoped to end up.

“When I heard about your accident, I knew I had to come. To talk to you.”

He was quiet a moment and Rick kept silent.

“For the past few years, I’ve been trying to find out how to fix this,” Colson said quietly. Then, to Rick’s surprise, Colson laid his narrow hand on his arm and squeezed lightly. “Fix the mistakes with your mother.”

“What mistakes, Grandfather?” Anger edged Rick’s voice. “The only mistake my mother made was to fall in love with the wrong man. And maybe the next one was to come to you for help. You were ashamed of us.”

Colson nodded and withdrew his hand. “That is the unvarnished truth. I was ashamed. At first.”

“Was that why we had our own wing in the house?”

Colson stood and hung his coat over the back of the chair. “Your mother wanted it that way. And, I have to confess, I didn’t argue with her. It was shame, hers and mine, that kept you there. When she died, I thought God had punished me for what I had done to her.” He shook his head. “The mistakes I spoke of were the ones I made with your mother. I had done things so wrongly.”

“What do you mean?”

Colson slipped his hands in the front pockets of his suit pants, his back to Rick. “When her mother died, your grandmother, I was overcome with grief. It hurt so much and I didn’t want your mother to feel the same
pain. I let her do what she wanted. Let her run around. She was a wild child and after a while I didn’t know how to control her.” He shrugged his shoulders and shot a pained glance back over his shoulder at Rick. “When I finally realized I should do something about it, it was too late. We fought over one of her many boyfriends. She left and only contacted me when she needed money. Four years later she came back with you. She didn’t know who your father was. That was why I could never find him like you had asked me to.”

As he spoke, Rick felt his tender dreams of his mother shifting, being brought out into the harsh light of reality. His grandfather was not a sentimental person, indeed he was starkly proud of his honesty. He could no more lie than a raindrop could fall upward. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked. “I didn’t know this about my mother.”

“When did we ever talk?” Colson turned to face Rick, the light over Rick’s bed casting harsh shadows over his sharp features. “I only knew that you loved your mother. She changed so much after you were born. Before she died, she said she found the Lord. Which I was thankful for. I also knew that I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes I had made with her. So I sent you away. I entrusted your care to professionals who knew better than I did how to take care of you.”

“But you were still ashamed of me.”

Colson shook his head. “At first. Yes. And in my mind the only way I knew to erase the stigma of your birth was to give you the best I could. And to try to keep
myself out of your life so you wouldn’t turn out like your mother had.” Colson drew his hand over his face, his eyes closed. “I didn’t know what to do with you, but for many years I have not been ashamed of you, Rick. Quite the contrary.”

“Did you ever love me?”

Colson kept his hand in place like a shield and Rick felt a lingering, twisted pain borne of many older ones.

“I loved you to the best of my ability,” Colson said finally, his voice muffled. “I was not a good father. I didn’t think I deserved to be a grandfather. But yes, I loved you.” He lowered his hand. “I will always love you.”

And as he did, Rick caught the silvery glint of tears in his grandfather’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Rick,” Colson said, making no move to erase the rivulets of moisture running down his wrinkled cheeks. “I know I did wrong by you. That’s why I sent you here. Atonement. You’d been running around the world, not settling down. I couldn’t give you family. Community. I knew the Ellison family would take you in. Through them I hoped you would see what a family was like. How it can work.”

Rick felt his anger slide away as he thought of Becky and her family.

“So the magazine wasn’t really all that important.”

Colson shook his head slowly. “It was a means to an end. A challenge I knew I could give you that would keep you in one place for a while.”