The Calling (15 page)

As usual, whenever she was with Danny, he said something that was so profound, so hard for her to grasp, that she found herself falling in love with him all over again. She tried to rein in her feelings and focus on the stars. Thinking about the stars sent her mind traveling to another baffling letter to Mrs. Miracle from this week’s mail pouch. She didn’t know how to solve this person’s problem:

Dear Mrs. Miracle,

Do you think life is fixed? Like the stars are fixed in the sky? My mother is in jail for shooting my father. I wish I could say I cared but I hardly remember either of them. My mother had all kinds of rage issues and my father was an alcoholic. Will I live the same kind of life that my parents did? It seems I already am. Sometimes, I get so angry . . . I want to hurt someone.

Signed,
Stuck

She had no idea how to answer Stuck’s letter. But . . . Danny, with his infinite wisdom, might know. “Do you think a person’s life is all his own to live? Or do you think that
the way he grows up, or the kinds of DNA he has, shapes a person’s life?”

“Nature versus nurture, you mean?”

She nodded.

“That is a conundrum.” He glanced at her. “Do you know what that means?”

“Of course. Of course I do!” She had no idea.

“It’s an interesting question. Nature certainly does play a role in the way a person thinks or behaves, just the same way your hair is dark and wavy like your mother’s.”

Mim’s hand flew to her prayer cap. He had noticed her hair?

“Certainly, there’s a nurture factor. If a person had never received love as a child, how could he grow up to know how to love?”

Maybe that was the problem with Stuck. It seemed as if she had never known love.

“That’s what makes it such a conundrum. A difficult problem to solve.”

Ah!
So that’s what conundrum meant.

“But you can’t leave out the most important factor: God. The Bible says we become a new creation.”

“Where? Where does it say that?”

“Second Corinthians 5:17.” He looked up at the sky as if he were reading the words written on the stars: “‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’” He started to fold up the telescope. It was time to head home. “So I guess the answer is that while some people might have a harder time than others to break patterns and habits, nothing is impossible for God.”

That was just the answer she needed for Stuck! She would write back this very night. She might even say a prayer for Stuck too. It had never occurred to Mim to pray for the letter writers. But Mrs. Miracle had never received a letter like Stuck’s, either.

Bethany was checking messages in the phone shanty when a battered old car coughed and sputtered its way up to the house and stopped. She thought it might be someone who was lost and needed directions, so she closed up the phone shanty and walked toward the car.

“Bethany!” the driver hollered.

Then there was her brother Tobe, of all people! Swooping toward her and picking her up in a bear hug. His face had matured a little in the . . . how long had it been? Ten months? No, closer to a year now.

“Oh Tobe,” she said, laughing, “I’m so glad to see you!”

Tobe’s attention shifted to the two little boys who were racing each other from the house to greet him. He opened his arms wide and scooped up Luke and Sammy as they barreled into him. “Who are these two giants? What happened to my little brothers?”

The boys squealed and hooted. “We have so much to show you and tell you!” Luke started, then the boys started talking at the same time, both at once, telling him bits and pieces of the news—only the news that pertained to them—the eagle pair that nested on a tree high above the creek, Galen’s horses, a new fishing hole Hank Lapp promised to show them before school started in August.

Tobe laughed his deep, hearty laugh, like nothing had
happened in the last year. “Where is Mim? And Rose and Mammi Vera?”

Bethany shooed the boys up to the house to find Mim to tell her that Tobe had come home. She filled the short span between the car and the house telling Tobe details about who was where and when and updating him about family news. “Mammi Vera had some surgery a few months ago. She’s doing better now. Not one hundred percent, but she’s much better than she was before the surgery.”

“Did they fix her crankiness?”

Bethany laughed and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Don’t say things like that out loud, even if you think it. But no, since you asked, she’s as cranky as ever.” They stopped at the porch steps and she took a minute to gaze at her brother. A year of living hand-to-mouth had taken a toll. He was thin, like he needed some good home cooking. A haircut too. His black hair fell in a glossy swath across his forehead. He had large hazel eyes that could be sympathetic or furious or inscrutable. His clothes were English—a washed-out T-shirt, khaki shorts, flip-flops. But when he grinned, he was the same old Tobe: amiable, funny, handsome, charming as ever.

She could hear the chickens fussing in the coop. Mim hadn’t fed them yet, Bethany could tell. “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

“Here and there.”

“I heard you were with Mom.”

He stopped abruptly, glanced at the house, then lowered his voice. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Jake Hertzler.”

Tobe’s eyes widened, and Bethany couldn’t quite tell what
was behind that—curiosity? No . . . no, it was alarm. “Jake is here?”

“Was. Gone now.”

So it
was
true. Jake Hertzler, Bethany’s ex-boyfriend (and her mind exaggerated the EX part), was the one who had told her Tobe had been with their mother, and he was full of lies. She wanted to know more, and yet she didn’t. Not yet. So she changed the subject. “You heard Dad passed, didn’t you?”

A flash of anger sparked in his eyes, then he softened. “Of course I heard.”

“But you couldn’t trouble yourself to come to his funeral?”

He stiffened. “Things aren’t as simple as you’d like to believe, Bethany.”

She let out a short, derisive laugh. “Shootfire! You can say that again. Like you showing up, out of the blue, after disappearing for a year without a trace.” She was pushing him too far and she knew it. She made her voice as gentle as she could manage. “What matters is that you’re home now, Tobe. I’m glad you’re here. I truly am.”

8

W
hen Rose and Mammi Vera arrived home from the Bent N’ Dent to find Tobe, sitting at the kitchen table like he always had done—one leg stretched out, one elbow resting on the back of the chair—Rose was so stunned she nearly dropped the groceries in her arms. She said she had never stopped praying that he would return home someday, but she didn’t know when that someday might ever come.

And Mammi Vera, why, she practically fainted at the sight of her favorite grandson. Wasn’t it a tonic for her? To have Tobe home—what better medicine could there be for someone recovering from a major surgery?

It wasn’t long before the house was a jumble of noise and confusion and happiness. As Tobe began to settle in to Eagle Hill, he looked more and more like his own rumpled self. Bethany was struck by how much he resembled their father—the same hair, black as starlings’ wings, and slender build. So much like their father that Bethany kept getting goosebumps on her arms.

In the midst of the reunion, Galen and Naomi came over to see what the commotion was all about. When Galen saw Tobe,
he shook his hand and welcomed him home. Galen’s voice was happy sounding, but his face was curious and stunned and then his eyes sought out Rose.

A little later, Bethany was getting butter out of the refrigerator for dinner. As Galen helped get a wooden salad bowl from an overhead kitchen cupboard, she heard him whisper to Rose, “So the prodigal has returned. What do you make of that?”

“I’m not sure what to think,” Rose whispered back. She picked up a garden carrot and cut the greens off, then started to peel it. “I really don’t.”

“Well, his coming will be good for Vera,” he said as he set the bowl next to her on the countertop.

Mammi Vera had been pleased to see Tobe, but the excitement exhausted her and Rose had tucked her straight into bed, promising her plenty of time for catch-up talks in the days ahead. She tried to keep everyone quiet, but Vera said not to bother. The sounds of family at the dinner table filled her with happiness.

That
, Bethany thought, was a wonder right there. Usually, Mammi Vera squawked at the boys to hush up during dinner.

During dinner, Bethany saw the look on Galen’s face go from puzzled to amused to wary when he noticed Tobe sit next to Naomi and strike up a conversation. Usually, Naomi was shy as a hummingbird, but she was all lit up as she talked to Tobe, giggly and sparkly. Galen looked at Rose, and lifted his eyebrows, and she did the same back.

Later, after Galen and Naomi had gone home and the boys had been sent to bed, Bethany and Rose put away the last of the dinner dishes and hung the wet dishrag over the faucet to dry. Rose turned and saw Tobe standing by the door, a
newspaper tucked under his arm. “I didn’t realize you and Naomi had known each other so well.”

So, Rose had noticed sparks flying too.

“The three of us—me and Beth and Naomi—we played together when we were younger.” Tobe’s mouth lifted in a grin. “Ain’t she turned into something sweet and fine?”

“Naomi?” Bethany had never thought of her friend like
that
. She’d always been frail, gentle Naomi. But Tobe was right—her gentleness gave her a certain appeal. And tonight, she was positively beaming.

“This inn you’ve started sure has gotten a lot of attention.” Tobe looked up. “Since when have you started calling the farm Eagle Hill?”

“Just a few months ago,” Rose said, “after we started the inn. It got its name because an eagle pair has a nest on the property. I’m sure Sammy and Luke will want to show it to you tomorrow.”

“First thing, they said.” He grinned. “I like the name. And I like the idea of turning the farm into a moneymaker.” He wandered over to the refrigerator, swung open the door, stood staring into it for a moment, then grabbed the milk, opened the container, and took a few swigs while holding the door open. “I read in the papers some news about miracles on the farm. That a lady’s cancer was cured. And someone else’s marriage was saved from divorce court. Is any of it true?”

Bethany saw her stepmother stiffen. Rose discouraged the inn’s reputation as a miracle maker.

“No, not really,” Rose said primly. “It was the same guest, Delia Stoltz. She had surgery for cancer before she arrived, so that was already cured. As for her marriage, well, I do think a miracle saved it. But it wasn’t because of the inn. It was God.”
She turned to Bethany. “I think it’s starting to stop—all that nonsense about miracles at the inn. Don’t you, Bethany?”

At the sink, Bethany stilled. How could she answer that without lying about Mrs. Miracle? Fortunately, Tobe didn’t wait for an answer.

“Rose, you’re looking at it all wrong. You can’t buy that kind of publicity for any money. You don’t want it to stop. That publicity will put the Inn at Eagle Hill on the map. People from all over the country will be coming to Stoney Ridge. Eating, shopping. Why, every business in downtown Stoney Ridge should be thanking you.”

Bethany looked at Rose and wondered what she was thinking, why she had such a serious look on her face. His measure of delight in the inn’s reputation seemed to push Rose in the other direction. Bethany had nearly forgotten how Tobe had always added some slight, raw element of strain to the family.

“Seems like this is a golden opportunity,” Tobe continued. “I think we could be taking better advantage of it.”

Rose had been spooning ground coffee into the coffeepot’s filter to ready it for tomorrow’s breakfast, but stopped abruptly at that comment and made an about-face. “You sounded like your father right then. It’s something he might have said.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

She turned back to finish spooning the coffee into the filter. “Tobe, he was always chasing rainbows.” Her voice was gentle, sad, but firm.