The Snow Angel (24 page)

A sound like a sob broke loose from deep in Sarah’s throat, and she pulled me into another bone-crushing hug. “I pray for you,” she said against my hair. “Every day. And I won’t stop. You’re strong and amazing … I just know you’re going to come out on the other side of this refined like gold.”

I tried to whisper my thanks, but I couldn’t speak around the heavy stone in my chest.

“I love you, Rachel. I’m so glad you’re my friend.”

“Me, too.” It was the most I could get out.

We pulled apart then, knowing that this would not be the last time that we saw each other. Not by a long shot. I started making my way back to the car, but when I was a few paces away from Sarah I remembered something and turned back.

“Will you do something for me?” I asked.

“Anything.”

“Keep an eye on Cyrus.”

Sarah’s forehead creased at my unusual request. “I don’t understand.”

“Someone once told me that everyone deserves to be loved.”

She bit her lip and shook her head a bit as if she couldn’t quite get her mind around my appeal. After a second she caught my eye. Nodded. “Even the unlovable?” she asked.

“Maybe especially them.”

The farm was only a five-minute drive from the Ever-ton city limits, so I didn’t expect Max to be there when I pulled up at the back door of Eden Custom Tailoring. But his car was parked sideways in the alley, and the steel door was propped open. Golden light spilled across the deep snow, making the tracks that were left by his boots look like bottomless, shadowy craters.

“I want to come, too,” Lily said as I put the SUV in park.

“Of course you can. You should have a chance to say …” But I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word good-bye.

We both climbed out and waded through the snow to the door. Max was bustling around inside, lifting boxes into a pile that he had begun to stack beside the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping inside the warm room and stomping the snow off my boots. It didn’t hit me until after the question was out of my mouth that I should have greeted him with a hello. Maybe, “Merry Christmas.” Anything other than the thoughtless query I blurted out. But he appeared so busy, so intent on whatever it was he was doing.

Max didn’t seem to mind my rudeness. “Rachel.” A smile creased his face as he settled the box he had been holding and crossed the room to give me a hug. He turned to Lily and held out his arms. She ran into them.

“Sarah told you?” I asked.

Max had ignored my first question, but he nodded in response to my second. “She told me enough. It’s time for you to go.”

“I’m scared,” I admitted, casting a furtive glance at Lily. I didn’t want her to know just how uncertain I was about the path we found ourselves on, but I needed Max’s counsel more than I needed to keep up appearances. “I don’t know where to go. I was thinking of heading south …”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Max said with a secret smile.

It was then that I realized Max’s eyes were sparkling in spite of the tense situation. I glanced around, wondering what was different in his store. Why he looked so pleased with himself.

“Where are Elena’s fabrics?” I asked slowly. I took a few steps farther into the room and spun in a circle. Everything was gone. The silks and satins, the long lengths of organza, and even all the wools and tweeds that Max had used for his expensive suits. The shop was entirely bare.

“They’re ready for you,” he said indicating the stacks of boxes. “The contents are listed on the outside of each, and the Juki 8300 is packed away in its original box. Thread and needles, scissors, et cetera, are all in a separate Rubbermaid.”

My mouth opened and closed, making little sounds that I had no control over whatsoever. Finally, I got hold of myself. “That sewing machine is worth eight hundred dollars,” I reminded him. “And all that fabric … There must have been thousands of dollars worth of fabric left in your store.”

“It’s all yours.” Max looked so happy he could hardly contain himself. “I’ve been packing for weeks. Most of it we’ll have to ship, of course, but you can take a few of the boxes now.”

“But—”

Max held up his hands to stop me. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Rachel. If you don’t want to sew for a living, you don’t have to. You can sell the fabrics and the machine and invest in whatever you want. But if you want to take the name of Eden Custom Tailoring—and keep
my clients—I bequeath the shop and all that comes with it to you. Good thing it’s a portable profession. And, by the way, a profitable one.”

“You’re giving us Eden?” Lily squeaked.

“Lock, stock, and barrel.” Max caught my eye and winked. “It’s always been yours anyway. Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

“Max …” I faltered, my heart so full of all that was his gift that there was no room for words, for anything other than gratitude.

“Oh,” he thrust a finger in the air. “I almost forgot.” Max hurried out of the storeroom and I could hear him rummaging around in the workroom desk. Within a minute he found what he was looking for and rushed back to hand it to me with a flourish.

The envelope was nondescript and labeled with nothing more than my name, front and center. But it was thick, and as I slid a finger under the flap I had a premonition of what was inside.

“I can’t accept this,” I exhaled, all the air in my lungs whooshing out of me in one long breath. I tried to hand the envelope back to Max, but he thrust his hands in his pockets and laughed like a little boy.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “It’s yours. All of it.”

There was a stack of bills inside the envelope, and when I flicked my fingers over the neat, green edges I realized
that they were in denominations varying from twenty to one hundred dollars. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough for hotels and food, gas to wherever it was we were going.

“That’s just a portion of it,” Max said, nodding at the envelope. “The rest is deposited in a bank account in your name. The account number and information are all written on the inside flap of the envelope.”

I looked and sure enough, there was a series of numbers neatly written below the name and address of a bank in Flagstaff, Arizona. But before I could wonder at the location of the bank, I saw the amount that had been deposited: nine thousand dollars.

“I don’t get it,” I whispered.

“It’s the remaining balance of my suit account. The check came in last week. You deserve every penny of it, Rachel. You’ve earned it.”

Although I thought my tears had run dry, I found myself clinging to Max as I sobbed. At some point he held out an arm for Lily, and she snuggled right in between us, completing a trio that vacillated between laughter and tears. Eventually, Max gave me a fortifying squeeze and stepped back.

“My sister lives in Flagstaff, you know.” He nodded at the envelope and the unexpected address of the bank. “She’s expecting you. You don’t have to stay—in fact, you don’t have to go at all if you don’t want to. The money can
be transferred easily enough. But if you’d like, Meredith lives on a ranch just outside the city. It’s beautiful there. Warm. She’d love the company until you’ve got your feet underneath you.”

I was past the point of trying to assign words to everything I was thinking and feeling, so I caught Lily by the hand and shrugged one shoulder as if to say, “What do you think?”

“I’ve never been to Arizona,” she said seriously. “But Katie’s grandma lives there and she told me once that it smells like oranges. Does it smell like oranges?”

“The whole state,” Max assured her. “And Meredith has her own tree. A pair of them, actually. And a couple of lemon trees, too.”

Lily seemed to consider the possibility for a moment. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and nodded quickly, accepting our adventure with a courage that I couldn’t help but admire.

“Okay,” I said, laughter bubbling up inside me. “I guess we’re on our way to Arizona.”

“Perfect.” Max reached a hand toward Lily and rested his palm against her cheek. “You won’t have to wait until summer to wear your dress.”

“But we never even started it.” Lily shook her head.

“I think you and your mom will have plenty of time to sew something beautiful. You’ll have to send me pictures.”

We loaded the backseat and the storage compartment of the SUV from the floor to the roof with Max’s carefully packed boxes. Only minutes before I had felt like I was leaving everything I knew and loved behind, but Max’s indescribable gift had turned what felt like an exile into a grand adventure. We were taking a life with us. A wonderful life filled with meaning and possibility. Filled with hope.

But none of that negated the fact that it was hard to go, and after countless hugs and well wishes, Max had to shoo me and Lily out of his shop. I climbed reluctantly into the SUV and rolled down my window so that Max could lean in and give me last-minute instructions and directions. I thought we were finally ready to pull away when Max dug around in his pocket and produced a scrap of paper.

“There’s just one more thing,” he said, handing it to me.

And though I couldn’t imagine that there was more, as I unfolded the little square of paper I knew that he had saved the best gift for last.

“I never wanted to take the place of your father, Rachel.” Max gave my arm one last squeeze. “In fact, I always hoped that God would use me to lead you back to him.

I blinked at the address of a facility in a town less than an hour’s drive from Everton. The Heritage Home.

“After all this time …” I breathed.

My daddy was just down the road.

It was a pretty establishment. Crisp white with neat, black trim and a sweeping front porch that gave it the look of a plantation. I drove through the roundabout and parked in one of the empty spaces as close to the entrance as I could get. The snow seemed to be getting deeper by the minute, and I was starting to worry that we would get snowed in. This would have to be a short visit. Short and sweet. And yet, even as I resigned myself to a quick good-bye, a part of me trembled at the thought of being close enough to touch him. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let go.

“I don’t know what to expect,” I said, turning the SUV off and twisting in my seat to regard Lily. “I haven’t seen my father in over a decade. He could be sick or confused. He …” I trailed off, trying to imagine my father as the aged, decrepit man that I had just described. The image wouldn’t come into focus. I lifted a shoulder as if I could shrug off the sad likeness. “Maybe you should wait by the front desk.”

Lily’s eyes sparked at the suggestion. “Are you kidding me? This is what I wanted, remember? I’m going to meet my grandfather.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so excited to meet
him,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not like you grew up with wonderful stories of him or anything.”

The look on Lily’s face pulled me up short. She seemed genuinely confused. “All of your stories of him are wonderful, Mom. Don’t you see? He tried so hard. When he sewed your dress, when he bought you those cookies, when he played with you in the snow …” She laughed a little. “He didn’t necessarily get it right, but he must have cared about you a lot to try.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had never really considered the fact that my dad did provide for me. He tried to be a dad—to show me that he loved me. There was the time he bought a book on hair braiding and attempted to learn how to French braid my hair. He was all thumbs and ended up creating a tangled mess that required half a bottle of detangler to undo. And the time I asked him to pick up a tube of eyeliner for me. He came back from the pharmacy with five different packages—each one a different brand and hue because he wanted to get it just right. Once Dad brought me a kitten because he thought I would like the company, and when the sweet fuzzball ran away he spent hours wandering around outside with a flashlight whispering, “Here kitty, kitty,” into the dark. All at once a host of memories crowded and clamored for attention, and I put my hands to my head to press them back.

I had told Lily all about the quiet nights and the missed conversations, but the flip side of that particular coin was that my father worked very hard to give me a good life. When his body was weary and his spirit broken, he picked himself up every single day and gave himself over to a job that offered little more than a humble wage and the guarantee that he would be old before his time. I often thought my childhood was hard, but the truth was, I had wanted for nothing. My dad made sure of that.