Mother's Promise (40 page)

Ben had helped Zeke and Darcy finish clearing the table, and still there had been no sign of Sally or Sharon or Malcolm. Angie had come downstairs to report that Sally was resting and it was probably best if everyone else left. She had picked up Sally's glove with two fingers and handed it to Zeke. “Get rid of this thing, son, and then please take me home. I'm suddenly too exhausted to drive myself.”

To Ben's surprise Darcy had offered to follow Angie and Zeke in her car so that she could give Zeke a ride back. Once they all left, Ben was alone in the spacious downstairs of his sister's house.

He wandered from room to room, window to window, pausing to look out toward the guesthouse. He wondered what Rachel was saying to her son. Would she punish the boy or, like so many parents that Ben had encountered in his practice, insist that her child had done no wrong? That he was in fact the victim of the bully Derek Piper. For Ben had no doubt that it was the Piper kid who was behind this whole business.

From the day that Sally had beaten him for the position of pitcher on the team, he had set out to get his revenge. He was a first-class bully. Of course, he had learned from the best. Ben recalled Malcolm's tales of Derek's father terrorizing weaker students—including Zeke—when the two of them had been in high school together.

He considered going over to the Piper house and confronting Derek. But what good would that do? He glanced out the window. It was dusk now, and he saw Rachel coming through the gardens on her way up to the house. He thought about how he'd wanted this day to go—how he had planned to find some time when the two of them could talk, how he had wanted to tell her that his feelings for her were complicated but undeniable.

Moving out to the lanai, he stood in the shadows and waited for her. The last rays of the sun cast her features in shadow, but he did not need to see her face to know that she was as filled with misery as he was. His anger had dissipated. Now in its place he felt only sadness and regret for what the day might have been.

He opened the side door for her. “Rachel,” he said.

“Is Darcy still here?” she asked.

It was the very last thing he had expected. “No. She went with Zeke to drive Angie home.”

Rachel nodded, her eyes downcast. “Then I would like to speak with Sharon and Malcolm if they are available.”

“They are with Sally. If you've come to apologize for what Justin—”

“My son will seek their forgiveness,” she said.

“Then what? You certainly have nothing to apologize for, and right now the last thing they need—”

“I have come to let your sister know that Justin and I will be moving out on Saturday, and I wanted to offer my resignation to Darcy and Malcolm.”

“You're giving up and going back to Ohio?”

“If we need to, Justin and I can stay with Hester and John until I can determine what is best. In the meantime I will enroll Justin in the Mennonite school in Pinecraft.”

“You've decided all of this in the last hour?”

She looked at him then. A half smile played across her lips. “I have made many mistakes since coming here. Most of all I have placed my only child in a position where he was so afraid—and felt so alone—that he has lost his way. We both have.”

Suddenly the understanding that she planned to simply walk out of his life—out of all their lives—hit him. And as angry as he was with Justin for whatever part he'd played in the horrid prank, the idea that he might never have contact with Rachel again was unthinkable.

“Don't you think you're overreacting here?” He seemed incapable of keeping the anger from his voice.

Her eyes flashed, but she did not raise her voice in response. “I am doing what is best for my son.”

“And what about you? What about us? Rachel, I have feelings for you that go beyond … that could grow into …”

She placed her fingers on his lips, silencing him. “It has been an emotional day for everyone, Ben. Please don't speak of things that are impossible. It only makes this more difficult.” She turned then and started back down the path. “If you would please tell Sharon and Malcolm why I stopped by,” she said as she walked away. “Thank you, Ben.” She stopped and looked back at him. “For everything.”

It took him less than a second to realize that somehow he had to stop her. As she walked away he ran to catch up with her, caught her arm, and spun her so that she was close enough to kiss. “Don't you realize that I am falling in love with you, Rachel?”

She did not try to pull away from him. Instead she pushed a lock of his hair back from his forehead. “I know that feeling as well, but we are the adults here, Ben. It is not our wants and needs that are at stake here. Justin …”

“Justin is twelve. He'll get over this.”

“When I moved him from the only home he's ever known to here, I made a promise to my son, and I will honor that promise. As for you and … as for us …” Her fingers lingered, curled around the lock of his hair. He pulled her closer.

“Tell me why this has to be impossible,” he said.

“You know why as well as I do, Ben. You place most of your faith in facts—what you can see and prove. I am a woman whose whole life is rooted in faith. Tell me how that can work?” She pulled away then. “The mistake I made in taking the position at the hospital was to put my need to escape a life that I hardly recognized anymore ahead of everything else. I thrust Justin into a world that was so very different from the one he knows. I only pray that I can remedy that so that in a couple of years when his time comes to be baptized and take his place as a member of the church, he will have found his way again.”

Ben was fresh out of arguments. The light from Sally's bedroom window spilled across the lawn. Rachel was right of course. In fact, she had proven her case so well that he could find no fault with it. “For a woman who makes decisions on faith, you sure can come up with a convincing argument.”

He had hoped to make her smile. Instead she looked up at the stars. “I wish you happiness, Ben, or if not happiness at least peace—contentment.”

The light in Sally's room went out, and a moment later Ben heard Sharon and Malcolm talking quietly as they came downstairs. Rachel had also heard them, and in her hesitation he saw that she was considering going back inside the house to meet with them.

“Let me tell them,” Ben said. “It'll be best that way.”

Rachel nodded and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. Without another word, she walked back toward the guesthouse, the thorns of the rosebushes tugging at her ankle-length skirt as she went.

A thin stream of light shone from under Justin's door. Rachel knocked and then entered the small bedroom. Justin was sitting against the headboard of the single bed, still wearing his best clothes.

“Are you hungry?”

He shook his head, watching her closely, no doubt trying to figure out what might be coming next. She sat on the side of the bed and took his hand between both of hers.

“Pray with me, Justin.” She closed her eyes and poured all of her energy into entreating God to help them both find their way. On her way up to the Shepherds' house she had been so certain of her plan. She had called Hester and told her the whole story, and her friend had agreed that if necessary she and Justin could come stay with them until they could rent a cottage in Pinecraft.

“But leaving your job when you're so close to getting your license?” Hester had protested.

“I'll finish the work I need for certification, Hester. But my job and studies are the two things that have taken me away from Justin when he needed me most. I can find work, and I've saved enough to cover our other needs until then.”

Together they had come up with a plan that would work for getting Justin to and from the Mennonite school while Rachel looked for steady work and a house to rent in Pinecraft. After she hung up, Rachel had stood for a long moment, the phone still in her hand. How she would miss the hospital and Eileen and Pastor Paul and especially the children and their parents.

She had fallen into the trap of thinking of her needs and ambitions, and it was time to remedy that. The temptation to feel sorry for herself in having to give up all she had worked so hard to achieve was all the impetus she needed to head for the Shepherds' house immediately and make sure they knew that she and Justin would vacate the guesthouse by Saturday.

But when she had run into Ben she had come so very close to changing her mind. The very suggestion that he might have feelings for her that went beyond mere friendship had almost been her undoing. But surely his declaration had arisen from his desperation to stop her from leaving the hospital. Ben could not love her—he barely knew her. She had no doubt that he truly believed that his feelings for her went beyond simple friendship, but what he felt for her was not love. And what she felt for him—what had been growing inside her these last weeks—that was only more evidence of how she had gotten so caught up in the ways of these outsiders that she had lost her way. With God's forgiveness and guidance there was still time to put such feelings to rest and concentrate on building the life she'd promised Justin they would find in Florida. The simple life that did not stray beyond the teachings of their faith.

So she bowed her head and closed her eyes and thanked God for pulling her back from the precipice of her selfishness. Oh, she had told herself that the hours she had given to work and study had been for Justin. But the truth was that she had enjoyed the work, the camaraderie with her coworkers, the knowledge that she could make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall,”
she thought. But it was Justin who had suffered the fall. She opened her eyes and looked up at Justin, cupping his cheek tenderly. She realized that she was crying and that his eyes were filled with tears that he was fighting hard to hold back.

“I'm so sorry, Mom,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “For the way I talked to you before. For what I did to Sally, for …”

“I forgive you and, knowing Sally, in time she will as well. But you must think of how best to seek her forgiveness, Justin. Whatever part you had in this business, you wronged her.”

“I know.” His voice choked and he looked away. “Dad would be so ashamed of me,” he whispered.

“He would be disappointed in both of us, but he would know that in the end we will make this right.”

Justin looked at her with such trust and hope that her heart overflowed with love for him. “Justin, I have thought about what you said, and you are right. When we left Ohio I made you a promise, a promise I have not kept.”

“You've really tried,” Justin protested. “I know you have.”

“Tried and failed. I got all caught up in their world, Justin, never pausing to consider what really mattered—you. I have come to understand that the path I chose is not the path that God had for us.”

“I don't want to go back to Ohio.”

Rachel smiled. “Good. Neither do I. So for now here is what we will do….”

As she explained her plan, Justin's eyes cleared and she saw in the place of his tears a look of hope that was a welcome relief from the furtive glances filled with doubt that he'd given her these last weeks. Seeing that gave her the courage to believe that she was finally making the right decision. And it was at that moment that she heard the familiar roar of Ben's sports car driving away.

“Well, that was certainly an interesting day,” Darcy said after she and Zeke had taken his mom home. She was driving Zeke back to his sister's so he could pick up the van from the fruit co-op that he'd driven there earlier. Ever since they'd said good night to Zeke's mom he'd not said a word. “I'm sure Sally will rally, but I don't know…. It's just so hard.”

“It's hard to fathom the damage a bully can do,” Zeke said as he stared out the side window.