Stranger's Gift (26 page)

“I am happy.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Well, I mean, lately there's been a lot for me to do, and—”

“And yet you keep adding to that pile—now you're trying to make the world better for homeless people. It's like you're always running from one project to the next. Where in all of that is there time for you?”

“That
is
me,” she replied, hating the defensive edge that crept into her voice. She stood up and threw their trash into the container near the car. “We should get back. Dad will worry.”

In the silence that cloaked their drive back to her father's house, Hester had thought about Samuel's comment about wanting her to be happy. And lying awake now, she thought about the lie she had told in declaring that she was.

I
n the week after John rescued Zeke, a few other homeless men whom Zeke had brought with him from time to time showed up to help John get the first floor of the house back in good enough shape that he could move from the packinghouse to the main house. He could hardly believe that he was finally able to enjoy breakfast at his own table in his restored kitchen after his first night back in the main house. The first floor had been scoured of mold and silt, and the space was protected by one of the signature blue tarps that dotted the landscape where roofs had been ripped away all up and down the coast. Margery had given him a single bed complete with mattress and linens that she claimed to have no use for, and Rosalyn had sent him dishes and pots and pans from the thrift shop.

“Housewarming present,” Samuel had told him when he protested.

For the first time in weeks he felt something like hope that things just might work out for him. And not wanting anything to disturb this idyllic moment, he decided to ignore the approach of a car, the slam of a door, and the muffled voices followed by the sound of the car leaving, and the rhythmic click of hard-soled shoes climbing the steps to his door.

There was a knock. A pause. A repeated knock. And then a pounding. “I know you're in there, John Steiner. Now open up.”

The last person John thought he would see standing at his makeshift front door was his aunt. Congresswoman Elizabeth Carter-Thompson from the great state of Virginia was dressed in a hot pink designer suit and four-inch stiletto heels. She also wore a ridiculously floppy straw hat that matched her suit and completely hid her platinum hair except for the wisps of bangs.

“How did you get here?” John asked as soon as he recovered from the initial shock of seeing her. The real question he'd meant to ask was, “What are you doing here?”

“I came by covered wagon,” she quipped as she glanced back at the cab already headed back to town. “Now please tell me you have air-conditioning, or failing that, a bucket of ice and a gallon of sweet tea.”

“No air-conditioning,” he said, stepping aside so she could enter what there was of the house. “No ice. But there is tea, and I have sugar.”

She pulled off the hat and glanced at her surroundings. “Primitive,” she said in the same polite tone she might have told someone else that their home was charming.

“We had this little storm pass through,” John replied, falling easily into the banter that he had shared with her throughout their lives. “Perhaps you heard about it?”

“Thus my visit. I'm here on what we politicians laughingly call a fact-finding tour. Seems to me the facts are pretty straightforward and we could have read all about them in the reports sent by the FEMA reps.” She fanned herself with his copy of
Walden
, then glanced at the cover. “Oh, please do not tell me you are still on this mission.” She was almost pleading with him as she continued fanning herself. He set a glass of tea in front of her and pushed the sugar bowl across the scarred table.

“It's hardly a mission. It's an experiment. It was for Thoreau, and it is for me.”

“How about a life?” She shoveled three heaping teaspoons of sugar into the tea and stirred. “Ever consider going after one of those?”

He gestured to the space around them as if to say,
For the time being, this is my life
. Liz's answer was to laugh, snorting tea out her nose in the process. “I don't know who you think you're fooling, John, but this is me. I know you, and I know why you are doing this.” She stood up and strolled around the kitchen. “This is your version of sackcloth and ashes. This is not a life. This is penance, and I am here to tell you that my dear sister, your beloved mother, would be downright horrified.”

John opened his mouth to say something, anything, to forestall the lecture he knew she'd been working on through all the weeks that he had not been in contact. But she was not to be denied.

“You want to honor Rachel's memory? Good for you, but this is not the way to go about that. You know it and I know it. Holing up here like some hermit …” she muttered.

“My mother chose a plain life,” he reminded her.

“In a community surrounded by dear friends and family, shared way too briefly with a husband who adored her and a son who gave her more joy than most of us know in a lifetime.” She ticked off each item with her long manicured nails. “For you to abandon that community, those people, that life, to hide away here like some wounded puppy, borders on blasphemy.”

All he needed to do was lift one eyebrow at her to remind her of the circumstances under which he had come to Florida.

“Oh, right. Rachel died and then you got yourself banned or shunned or excommunicated, whatever the term is. Well, so what? Life on this planet is tough, thus the promise of a better afterlife. The key is to make something of this life while you have time. My sister ran out of time to do all the good she set out to do, but I would be willing to bet my next election that she died thinking that you would carry on where she'd left off.”

John had had enough. “She died because of me,” he reminded her.

Liz placed her hand on his back and abandoned her soapbox voice. “She died in your arms. You were the last person she saw, the last voice she heard, the last conscious thought she had.”

The silence between them was punctuated by the slow, steady drip of the faucet. Liz took a long swallow of her tea, and John pushed himself onto a countertop.

“Why do you think she stayed?” he asked. “I mean after Dad died. She could have just walked away. After all, she wasn't born Amish. It would have been so much easier for her to return east to the life she had known as a child, the life she shared with you and your parents.”

“But she fell in love with Jacob. She chose to live his life, and she was so very happy living that life, John. It suited her. That's why she stayed. Thinking back on it, she was never comfortable in the life of a politician's granddaughter. She used to ask Grandpa Tom, ‘Why are those men taking our picture, Papa?' Me? I was always wondering why they
weren't
taking our picture more.”

John smiled as a memory flashed through his mind like the midday sun. “She used to tease Dad that she'd only married him and become plain to avoid the camera.”

Liz walked over to the door and then out into the yard. John followed her. He stood on the porch Zeke had helped him rebuild, watching her. Both of them were lost in the memory of a very special woman—her sister, his mother.

Then he heard the buzz of a motorboat approaching and prepared to introduce his aunt to Margery. It occurred to him that the two women would get along famously. Margery was something of a politician herself, not that she had ever seen her name on a ballot, but she certainly knew how to work the system when it suited her.

“Look who's back among the living,” Margery shouted as she pointed to the back of the boat where Zeke stood, poised to help her dock the boat. “He insisted on coming out here to give you a hand. Do not ask me to understand why he would turn down a—” When she spotted Liz in her pink suit, her mouth remained open, but no sound came out.

Liz had removed her shoes and now walked barefoot along the makeshift boardwalk that John had laid over the mud and silt down to the pier. “Hello,” she called. “I'm John's aunt Liz. I'm sure he's been singing my praises.” And as John had mentally predicted, Margery was immediately captivated. As apparently was Zeke. He gave her a mumbled greeting as he combed his hair back from his face with his fingers and then made his way toward the house, casting furtive glances back at her.

“You're looking better than you did the last time I saw you,” John said. He could not hide the relief he felt at seeing Zeke doing so well.

“And you're still the same scruffy guy I've been having to look at for weeks now,” Zeke replied as he perched on the edge of the porch and watched the two women. “That's your aunt, huh?”

“My mother's sister,” John said.

“She's definitely not
plain
, is she?”

“She's a congresswoman.”

“Well, I suppose that explains some of it,” Zeke said. “She staying long?”

John caught the drift of Zeke's question and laughed. “She's not staying here at all. She and her so-called ‘fact-finding committee' are probably booked at the Ritz-Carlton.”

“The people's tax dollars at work,” Zeke murmured.

“Your
tax dollars maybe. Anyway, since my mom died, Liz has taken it upon herself to watch over me.”

“She doesn't look old enough to be your mom.”

“No, Liz is closer in age to a cousin or big sister. Big gap between my mother and her, in years, not to mention personality.”

Zeke studied Liz for a long moment. “She's hot,” he said finally in a tone that declared an assessment had been made and this was the final verdict. Then he took a deep breath and surveyed the property. “Well, I can see you've been able to make some progress without me.” He glanced around. “So what's our plan?”

John had heard this question every time he'd been with Zeke. At first it had been “What's
your
plan?” But in the time they had worked together, it had become “What's
our
plan?”

“First we need to get my aunt back to town. Margery is already filling her head with her version of what I should and should not be doing.” He nodded toward the pier where the two women were deep in conversation, or rather Margery was talking nonstop, and Liz was nodding as she listened intently. Liz kept flicking a glance over to where John was sitting with Zeke and giving him her tight campaign smile. This was not a good thing. It meant that she was agreeing with Margery's assessment of how he should be conducting his life, and the last thing John needed was two women trying to mother him.

“Dad? I'll see you later. Grady and Amy are here,” Hester called out as she gathered her things and glanced out the window.

Her father lifted his bifocals to the top of his head and leaned back in his chair. “This meeting, Hester. What is it again?”

“It's not a meeting exactly,” she hedged, unwilling to admit that she was about to attend a reception for the visiting congressional committee at Sarasota's fanciest hotel. “It's more of a gathering.”

Arlen said nothing, just lifted one eyebrow skeptically.

“They just want to know how FEMA works with the various volunteer agencies, Dad. Since the oil spill and Katrina, they are looking at ways the agency might be more proactive.”

“Will Emma Keller be there?”

“I don't know for sure.”

Arlen caught her hand and held on. “Meaning you think probably not?”

She shrugged. “I'm doing this for Grady,” she said as if that explained everything.

“I should not need to remind you that it is not our way to get involved in these outside politics, Hester.”

“But it is our way to help a friend in need, and Grady can use our support to show those in authority that we respect the work he does here. With the baby coming and all, he really shouldn't have to worry unnecessarily about how others are judging his work.”

“Still, you don't have to go to this event. You could write a letter to these government people praising Grady's work. In fact, we could all sign it.”

“He's done a lot for Pinecraft, Dad. I think this is the least I can do,” Hester told him as she heard Grady lightly toot the horn of his car a second time. She flicked the porch light switch off and on to signal that she had heard him. “Besides, this committee is interested in hearing ideas for how to improve the coordination of disaster relief efforts. The president himself appointed them to this commission.”

“Impressive, but nevertheless, none of our business.” He squeezed Hester's fingers, then released them.

“Are you asking me not to go?”

“I am asking you to remember who you are, who
we
are.” He gently touched the ties of her prayer covering.

“I know all that, Dad.”