The Hope of Refuge (27 page)

She stared at him. “You heard what they wanted?”

He drew water from the tap and set the glass on the table near her. “Ya.”

“You have a full-time job. It’s already a huge cut into your time to chauffeur us back and forth. How could I ask you for more?”

“You could ask me to help you find someone.” His curt tone didn’t seem to faze her.

She took a sip and leaned against the counter, seeming neither angry nor stressed. At this moment he’d give her his house if she’d open up and help him understand her. She wanted to make that money. He knew she did. It’d mean the start of independence for her and Lori. Why was she still afraid of him?

Frustrated with her, he couldn’t keep his silence any longer. “Fine. I’ll help. Thank you for asking.”

“You?”

“You don’t have to sound so confident in my abilities.”

“But you already have a job.”

“Actually, I’m off for a while.”

“Off?” Lines of uncertainty creased her brows. “And you’re willing to paint a house while you’re on vacation?” The confusion on her face faded. “Oh.”

“What
oh
?”

“If you help me do this, I can get out of here sooner. That’s worth painting during your vacation.” She looked pleased with herself, and he wasn’t going to correct her.

“Here’s the deal. I’ll be your employee for a week, do everything you need. But you have to answer one question.”

“Depends on the question.”

“Words like
stubborn
and
mulelike
aren’t strong enough to describe you.”

She laughed softly. “Hey, your beliefs can’t be turned off and on at will. When you have to be stubborn to survive, it becomes a part of you. And then you’re its slave.”

He wondered if she had any clue how much some of her thinking followed the teachings of God. “You were screaming at me in your sleep. What’d I do in the dream?”

Her fingers moved over her lips, across her cheek, and back again.

“I just want to know so I can help.”

She opened her mouth three times before words squeaked out. “I was blindfolded, and you were leading me somewhere. When we got there, you told me to take off the blindfold because you had something special waiting.” She placed the glass on the table. “This is silly. I’m going to bed.”

He shrugged. “Fine. Go to bed.” He wouldn’t be out-stubborned by a woman—a featherweight at that.

She huffed. “There was a hot-air balloon with a basket. You talked me into getting in it. It went up and up. Everything below was gorgeous, and I felt free. Then I noticed a rope attached to the bottom of the basket. The end of it dangled inside a black hole that kept expanding, but with every inch of growth, it made the basket shudder and begin to unravel. I screamed for you to help me.” She sighed. “The bottom fell out of the basket, and I woke right before I hit the ground.”

Ephraim’s heart thudded.

“Happy now?”

He shook his head. “I won’t lead you to a place where the weight of the world can be defied only to watch you fall.”

“It was a stupid dream.”

“Or maybe it’s your greatest fears surfacing while you sleep—fear of trusting a man, fear that when troubles come, no one can help you.”

She lifted the glass, took a sip, and set it down. Then she shifted from one foot to the other, but she didn’t respond to what he’d said. She pointed to the Bible. “That says some really odd stuff.”

His mother had bought him an English version of the Bible when he was a teen. Reading a German Bible had been difficult, and she’d wanted to make it easier for him to turn to God’s Word if he ever had a mind to. At the time he hadn’t considered it much of a gift, but it’d grown to mean a lot to him.

“Ya, it does.”

“You think so too?”

“Sure. Everyone does. Parts of it are thousands of years old. If you and I have trouble understanding each other because of cultural differences, imagine if we weren’t from the same generation and country or if we didn’t speak the same language.”

“Do you honestly believe there’s a God?”

“Ya. And I believe He sent His Son Jesus and that He left His Spirit to help guide us.”

“My mother believed in God. In his own way Johnny did too.”

“His own way?”

She shrugged. “The diner he managed was open seven days a week, so going to church was out. I never saw him read a Bible, but sometimes I’d see him praying—not just at mealtime, but walking the floors, talking out loud to God. A lot of it seemed to be for me and Lori.” She moved to the Bible and smoothed her fingers across the page. “I can see why people would want to believe in something stronger than themselves.”

In spite of wanting to open a discussion on this topic, he decided to say nothing rather than the wrong thing. She didn’t know it, but God was having a conversation with her.

She closed the Bible and pushed it away. “If you can be there for me for another week, maybe two, that’s all I need.” She ran her fingertips across her lips. “Can you?”

It was as if she’d calculated how much inner strength he had to continue helping her, and all she could come up with was a week’s worth, possibly two. “Yes. I promise you that much.”

She nodded, but he didn’t think she believed him.

Ephraim ran the paint roller up and down the Garretts’ bedroom wall, listening to Cara and Lori in the next room.

Cara had begun to open up a little, even dared to ask a few questions about his beliefs. He’d started to tell her about her roots half a dozen times, but it seemed that sharing eternal truths was more important than factual ones, especially since the ones based on her mother were sure to cause pain and provide no answers. She thought her mother had been in Dry Lake to visit friends. And for whatever reason, her family’s
friend
never came for her at the bus station. He hated how betrayed she’d feel when she learned the truth and realized he’d known everything all along. But to tell her too soon would take so many things from her, especially if she reacted like he figured and bolted—never to be seen or heard from again. But holding on to the secret sometimes made him feel as if the smithy was shoeing his insides.

He dipped the roller into the oversize bucket and carefully loaded it with paint before applying it to the wall. He had no doubts that the news of who she was had reached the Riehls. They knew she was staying at Ephraim s, but not one of them had come by to see her.

The thought of Cara finding that out hurt, and he longed to protect her from it. But if she stayed around long enough, he hoped the community would choose to do the right thing and stop ignoring her. They were trained to shut out the world and all its trappings, but sometimes, in trying to avoid ungodliness, they shut out the wrong things. Warming up to the idea of Malinda’s daughter returning would take time, especially since she’d been seen wearing unacceptable clothing and short hair, living in a barn, and dancing inside his home.

But if they’d ever give her a chance, they’d see a remarkable person.

Cara’s soft voice caught his attention as she chuckled about something. Five days of working twelve to fourteen hours, and he wanted more. More laughter, more sharing of lunches under the shade tree, more working until midnight, and more times of talking softly while drinking their first cup of coffee each morning.

Carrying the roller with him, he moved through the hallway. The Garretts had fully accepted the Howards’ recommendation of Cara. Before they left for vacation, they’d given her a key to the house and permission to empty their belongings out of the closets so she could paint them. He stopped outside the family room. Cara propped her hands on her hips. The new overalls she’d bought in town last Saturday and washed umpteen times in his wringer washer before wearing them once were now covered in paint. She took long strides through the room.

“Walking,” Lori said.

“You tried that one already. Come on, kid, use your imagination.” She moved her hips slowly. “Give me a good synonym for what I’m doing.”

“Tripping”.

“Tripping?” Cara laughed. “Remember the words in the book we read last night? How about swaggering or sashaying.”

Ephraim cleared his throat. “Or shuffling like an old lady?”

She wheeled around, a look of surprise in her eyes before she shook the paintbrush at him. “Is that bedroom finished?”

“No ma’am.”

“Then I suggest you shuffle back in there before I sashay over and whack you upside your Peeping Tom head.”

He stood his ground. “I think the title of boss has gone to your swaggering head.”

Lori giggled. “Earlier she tried to make me learn about idioms.”

Oh, I agree. Everyone needs to be warned about idiots.”

“‘From,” Cara fussed, threatening him again with the loaded paintbrush, “idioms, not idiots.”

“Where’d you learn about idioms?”

“Ninth-grade grammar. Clearly it wasn’t your favorite subject like it was mine. An idiom is a type of phrase, as in ‘I walk all over you.’”

“I’ll say it again; this boss thing has gone to your head.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Get back to work.”

He shook his head. “It’s Friday afternoon. We’ve done enough. We’ll be finished tomorrow and have everything back in place before the Garretts get home.”

“I don’t know.”

During the nights, while he slept at his house, she’d stayed here at the Garretts, sleeping a little before getting up to prepare the next room to be painted. She’d emptied closets, applied painter’s tape, and edged paint along the ceilings, baseboards, and corners. When he arrived, the room was ready to be rolled. “You’ve stayed here all week. You need to spend tonight at my place, where you’ll actually sleep. And I’m making ice cream again.”

Lori started dancing around the room. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“If you can get your mother to leave work, that is.”

“You’re using my child’s love of ice cream to manipulate me.” Cara held the paintbrush under his chin like a sword. “You cheat.”

“Yep, and I win too.”

She laughed. “Fine. After we rinse out the brushes and rollers, we’ll leave.”

“Nope, we’ll put them in a bucket of water and take them with us. I’ll rinse them out later.”

She frowned and huffed and then left the room, mumbling under her breath. After being around her all week, he knew her venting and teasing were rolled into one. He found it amusing. He’d caught glimpses this week of the woman she was when life offered a bit of security and dignity. Now he understood why he’d waited for her to return to Dry Lake. Why he’d gone to New York in hopes of seeing her. He’d never had a friendship like hers. He couldn’t define it, but it seemed she carried magical powers to remove the calluses from his heart and cause him to see life in a refreshing way.

Lori tugged on his pants. “‘From?”

He ruffled her hair. “Is that ice cream calling your name?”

She nodded. “And the puppy’s name too.”

“Guess you better go get him from the backyard and put him in the wagon.”

He went to the bedroom and placed the roller in the paint tray beside the bucket. He’d never considered it important for a woman to be able to earn money, to have that same sense of power he got from running the cabinetry shop. He’d been a fool in that, and he wondered what else he’d been wrong about all his life.

He heard her moving about in the kitchen and went to join her.

She glanced up while rubbing her lower back. “Grilled cheese tonight okay?”

He nodded, wishing he had a better stove. Aside from breakfast food, there weren’t many dishes he could prepare on the stove either. It worked decently enough, and he had other reasons for owning it, but cooking on it hadn’t been important. Before the shunning he ate half his lunch and supper meals at his Daed’s place, and Deborah provided him with the other half.

His Daed needed him to share a meal at his table as often as he could. It gave them time to talk business and relieved his Daed from the guilt of requiring so much help. Concern flickered through him as thoughts of his Daed, family, and the business pushed to the forefront again. He missed sitting around the supper table with his family, but it hadn’t left a hole inside him like he thought it would.

Cara snapped her fingers, a lopsided smile on her face. “Do I have to lug the buckets of water with rollers and brushes out to the wagon myself?”

“Sorry.”

It didn’t take long before he was loading the last of the items into the wagon. Cara locked the house and then placed her backpack on the floorboard. She stretched her back several times, clearly achy and stiff.

“Ephraim, who’s that?” She nodded at the buggy stopped on the side of the road ahead of them.

He glanced that way and saw Rueben Lantz. “Anna Mary’s Daed.”

“Oh. I guess that explains why he’s been watching me.”

“You think he’s been keeping an eye on you?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe it isn’t you he’s watching. Maybe he doesn’t trust me.” Unfortunately, right now Ephraim didn’t blame him. He never thought he’d feel such a bond to any woman he’d known for only a couple of weeks. Still, it wasn’t romantic feelings. Cara was a friend, and that word had taken on new meaning lately.