To Heal A Heart (Love Inspired) (15 page)

“It was good of you to come to see us off,” she said after taking a moment to further compose herself. “I know you’re busy.”

“You didn’t imagine that I would let you leave without saying goodbye, surely. After all, I was the first to welcome you to Dallas. I reserve the right to be the last to let you go home to Houston again.”

“Houston isn’t home,” she said, echoing the earlier thought.

“No? Where is, then? You said the same about Thailand once, as I recall.”

Home is wherever you are, she thought, but she wasn’t brash enough to say it aloud. Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, however, for he quickly looked away.

“Have you seen Melissa and Scott today?” he asked, casually changing the subject.

She shook her head and targeted her gaze on the path that her feet followed by rote. “I said my goodbyes to them yesterday, and I don’t want to have to do it again.”

“I understand.”

Trying to think her way through to any loose ends, she suddenly remembered something. “You never told me about the doctor’s case.”

“It’s not resolved yet. Any time you get the State Department involved, you can expect a lengthy litigation, but I suspect it will come out all right in the end. Meanwhile, my client’s been offered a job in hospital administration. It’s not what he really should be doing, but at least it’s medicine.”

“Will you tell him that I’m praying for him?” Piper asked impulsively, and was rewarded with a warm smile.

“I’ll be glad to. You’re not alone in that, by the way. My mother’s rallied a veritable army of prayer warriors on his behalf, and frankly, Dad was instrumental in getting him that job.”

“I didn’t expect less,” Piper told him truthfully, but then she stopped and looked up at him. “About your parents, Mitch. I don’t know what you’ve told them.”

“Everything,” he said flatly. “I always do.” His lips quirked. “Eventually.”

Her brow furrowed. “I hope they don’t think—”

“They think their prayers for you have been answered,” he interrupted softly. “Not that they, we, won’t be praying for you in the future. We most assuredly will.”

She looked up at him helplessly, trying to tell him with her eyes what she dared not put into words. Finally she tried to say what he hadn’t really let her say so far.

“Mitch, I owe you so much.”

“Now, now, none of that.”

“No, please, it’s important that you let me say this.”

He dropped his gaze, but then he nodded. “All right.”

“When I first met you,” she began, “I sensed…well, that you were a danger to me, or rather to my very carefully constructed house of cards.”

“Piper, please believe me,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” she hastily assured him, squeezing his arm. “Just the opposite. You saved me from myself.” He was shaking his head, but she pressed the point. “Mitch, I was running blind, and I was headed straight for a brick wall, and you were the one person who saw the signs, the one person uniquely qualified to see them.”

“But that’s just it, honey. God engineered this thing. I didn’t go looking for you. He shoved me right into your path.”

“I know that, and I’m not diminishing His hand in this, but you were willing, Mitch. You
are
willing to be used by God. Thank you. Not just for myself but on behalf of all those who are blessed by your willingness to let God work through you.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. He even seemed a little embarrassed by it. She took pity on him. Going up on tiptoe, she wrapped her free arm around him, pulling his head down to hers, and kissed his cheek.

They stood locked in an awkward embrace for long moments before he whispered, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Heartened, Piper pulled back in order to search his face, but he wouldn’t quite meet her gaze. “Mitch,” she began urgently, “you once said that you loved me. If you still—”

He pressed a finger to her lips, cutting off the flow of words. “This is best, Piper. You have to go with Gordon. You can’t be thinking of anything right now but of getting through to the other side.”

“The other side?”

He dropped both hands to her shoulders, cupping the tops of her arms. “Grief is like a deep, dark canyon. You know in the twenty-third Psalm where it talks about the valley of the shadow of death? Well, I think that’s talking about grief, the shadow that falls on us all when someone we love no longer inhabits this world with us. It’s like walking through a dark, scary canyon all alone without any idea where we’re going, but God is always right there with us, and if we just keep going, just keep working our way through, we’ll come out on the other side and once more find that our cups are overflowing with blessings. I’ve done all I can to point you in the right direction, sweetheart. Now it’s up to you to take the hand that God is offering and let Him guide you through to the other side.”

Piper gulped, knowing that he was right, and nodded her understanding. “I will, but Mitch, what if, when I get there, what if…”
You’re not
were the words she couldn’t say.

He met her gaze and held it with his. “Only God knows where you’ll come out, Piper. If I did know, I’d try to find a way to be there.”

For a brief moment her heart soared. “Oh, Mitch.”

“But that may not be what God has in mind,” he warned. “You have to know that and accept it.”

“Have you?” she asked, her tremulous voice just a little above a whisper.

“I’m trying,” he answered in kind.

There was nothing else, then. As much as she might want Mitch to ask her to stay, neither of them could be disobedient to God in this. She closed her eyes and burrowed once more into his arms, her head upon his shoulder.

“I love you, too,” she whispered in such a small voice that he couldn’t possibly have heard. It was an honor to say it, though, to give the thought free rein finally.

Gordon broke them apart by clearing his throat.

“You about ready there, sis?”

She dashed hot tears from her eyes and turned to face him with as much determination as she could muster.

“Ready.”

She went swiftly to let herself into the car while he shook hands and exchanged quiet words with Mitch. Gazing at him through the windshield, she lifted a hand in reluctant farewell, but Mitch just stood there with his hands in his pockets while Gordon settled himself behind the steering wheel, started the sedan and shifted the transmission into gear. Without warning, Gordon sent the car swiftly backward into the street, taking advantage of a break in traffic, and then he shifted again, starting them forward even as he turned the wheel sharply to the right.

Piper closed her eyes to keep from looking back. Tears leaked from beneath them, and she knew with sad resignation that they weren’t going to stop any time soon.

N
ovember in Houston was a lovely time. While most of the rest of the country lived in the sleepy barrenness of the end of autumn, the Houston area basked in mellow sunshine and shirt-sleeve temperatures. Without the vicious heat of summertime to boil the humidity into steam, the dampness seemed verdant rather than wilting and carried with it a real sense of the ocean, though the Gulf Coast lay almost an hour farther south. It had always been Piper’s favorite time to live in Houston, but she cared little for it this year.

Asia was not there to enjoy it with the family, and so it was less enjoyable. It was the same with everything. No day was quite what it would have been if he had been there to share it. No activity, however mundane, felt as it once had. The harsh fact that Asia had been but never would be again part of the physical picture colored every memory.

Yet, little by little, a different joy began to bind the family together, the joy of having known and nurtured Asia Wynne.

Another joy was also growing. It grew with Thai, matured as he did, blossomed as he did, tentatively at first, the bud of possibility closing tight whenever a shadow passed but furling open a little more every time the sun shone. It began to reveal itself in an opulent rose of surpassing beauty.

Asia had once taken the lead in church youth activities, had once been the most comfortable to stand and pray aloud, to talk about God’s goodness and love. But Asia had not known what Thai now knew, the all-encompassing richness of God’s forgiveness. Asia had not needed such forgiveness in his short life. His personality and his predisposition had not required such largesse from the God Who loved and treasured him. Thai’s did, and the more God poured out His forgiveness, love and strength, the more Thai soaked it up.

“He’ll take the pulpit one day and put me deep in the shadow,” Gordon commented one Sunday after a youth worship service at which Thai had spoken.

“Both of us,” Ransome agreed. “I see a powerful evangelism developing there.”

“God has purpose for each of us,” Charlotte observed sagely, “and fulfilling His purpose is satisfaction enough.”

Piper agreed wholeheartedly, and yet her own purpose eluded her.

“Be patient,” her sister-in-law, Jeanette, advised. “God’s timing is perfect, you know.”

She did know. How could she doubt? And yet, worry did intrude upon the process—often at first, then less as time went by and November yielded its beauty to the soggy chill of December.

The family pressed her not to work, and she really had no urgent reason to, at least not right away. She’d moved in with her parents and was enjoying just being their daughter again. Almost immediately upon her return, she’d leased her house to a young couple expecting their first child, and the rental payment covered the small mortgage with plenty to spare for her personal needs. Plus, she still had some savings, despite having had to make both the rent on her apartment and the mortgage on her little house. She’d never tried to replace her car.

She could afford to take her time deciding what to do next, what she was meant to do next, and yet she couldn’t quite escape an uncomfortable feeling of suspended animation. It was as if her life were on hold.

As the determination to survive and heal took root and began to outpace grief, the latter began to shrivel and wither. And still Piper didn’t know what her purpose was. She considered again the possibility of getting her master’s degree. Houston boasted some fine programs, but it was the nursing school of the Texas Women’s University of Dallas that drew her. She put off registering, uncertain about her own motivations. Mitch was in Dallas, and she hadn’t heard a single word from him since she’d left there.

She’d written to him a few times, three to be exact, but when he hadn’t answered, she had stopped. From time to time she considered picking up the telephone, but in the end she couldn’t bring herself to do it. If he wasn’t in touch because he didn’t want to be, she’d rather not know. If it was for some other reason, she trusted that it was valid.

When she let herself, she was hurt by Mitch’s silence, but in truth, her focus remained on getting through what he’d identified as “the valley of the shadow of death.” The counseling had proven a great comfort and help, but lately in group session she found herself doing more ministering to others than being ministered to. That, she supposed correctly, was progress, but it did little to resolve her growing restlessness.

Christmas was difficult. The first Christmas without Asia was more a time of tears than merriment, and yet the
meaning
of Christmas seemed particularly poignant that year. Gordon and Jeanette gave Thai a special gift, his brother’s Bible. No one was surprised when he declared with quiet conviction that he would put it to good use. Later he confided privately to Piper, as Asia might once have done, that he had known for some time that God was calling him to ministry but that he’d refused to yield to that call until lately.

“I just didn’t want to do it,” he confessed with more quiet strength and forthrightness than any fourteen-year-old could naturally possess. “Then right after…I knew that I didn’t deserve a career in ministry.”

“No one does, Thai,” Piper pointed out gently.

He nodded. “I know, not on our own, but God can make us worthy through His grace and use us anyway if we let Him.”

“You’re exactly right,” she told him, thinking of Mitch, who had allowed God to use him even when the price must have seemed far too steep.

“You know what the other part of it was?” he asked sheepishly. “I mean, why I didn’t want to be in official ministry?”

“Why was that?”

“I didn’t want my kids to be preacher’s kids.”

She had to laugh. She put her arm around him, and they laughed about it together. “It’ll serve them right, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, probably. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“You know what they say about paying for your raising,” she teased, and they both sobered. Sometimes others paid, too.

“You know what I keep thinking, Aunt Pip?”

“What, honey?”

“That if God had said to Asia, ‘You have to do this for your brother,’ he’d have said, ‘Okay. Sure.’

“Oh, Thai,” she whispered, hugging him close, “what a gift that is, to know that he loved you that much!”

“Loves me,” Thai corrected with absolute conviction. “That’s the thing. Real love never dies.”

Real love never dies.
Real
love.

She later found herself thinking about that. Often. Usually when she thought of Mitch. But still the days passed without any communication from him.

The New Year came.

Thankfully, the event was not as somber as Christmas had been only a week earlier. It was as if the New Year brought with it a new era in all of their lives. Perhaps it was not entirely welcome, but all were willing to embrace it, knowing that was what Asia would want and expect of them.

Winter or what passed for it in Houston, Texas, had taken up residence, but the days seemed less gray to Piper, less shadowed. She began to think seriously of returning to work, her restlessness growing with the passage of time. She decided to tell the family when they gathered at Gordon and Jeanette’s on the first Sunday in February to mark her twenty-seventh birthday.

When she walked into the house that afternoon, accompanied by her parents, she found the place full of streamers and balloons. The whole family seemed in a truly festive mood, so much that she was happy to have given them a reason to celebrate. Jeanette had ordered a cake—Piper’s favorite, chocolate—and Charlotte had picked up the ice cream to go with it. As Charlotte handed over the round carton in the dining room, Jeanette took a look at the lid and remarked, “Pistachio. Asia would have loved that.”

“Hey!” Thai protested jokingly. “You couldn’t get my favorite?”

“I thought it was your favorite, too,” Ransome said, brow furrowing as he peeled off his jacket.

“It is,” Thai admitted with a grin. “You don’t expect me to always let Asia get top billing, do you? What kind of pesky kid brother would I be if I did that?”

“Oh, you!” Jeanette scolded fondly, chucking him under the chin. “Just for that, you have to bring in the plates and flatware that I left sitting on the kitchen counter.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Gordon protested. “Let’s not get the cart before the horse here. Piper has to open her presents first. Then I want to see twenty-seven candles on that cake and all of them lit.”

“Talk about taking the joy out of your birthday!” Piper protested.

“It only gets worse from here on, kiddo,” Gordon advised. He waved Jeanette toward the kitchen, saying, “Just put that ice cream in the freezer for now.”

“Oh, all right, spoilsport.”

Gordon winked at a grinning Thai. “Just doing my duty as a pesky brother.”

Piper rolled her eyes and let herself be herded into the living room along with her parents. Gordon put her in the armchair, the “seat of honor,” as he termed it. Then the presents came out. As they piled the three small boxes, each accompanied by a card, in her lap, she made a halfhearted protest.

“You know you shouldn’t spend your money like this.”

“Then how should we be spending it?” Ransome wanted to know, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. She had worn her hair caught loosely at the nape of her neck with a barrette that he had specifically chosen as a Christmas gift for her, and she couldn’t help thinking to herself that life was good again.

They had come a long way together. Asia would always be missed, but only his physical presence was lacking. In spirit, he would always be with them, and one day he would welcome each of them into paradise, where they would be together for eternity. In truth, the family was closer now than they ever had been, and each of them had grown markedly in faith, especially Thai, but no more surely than she.

Her spirit had found the conduit of prayer again. Once, talking to God had been much like conversing with an old friend. Now her communication with the Almighty had deepened. When she went to her knees these days, even figuratively, she truly felt as if she stood before the mercy seat of the Most High God, and more often than not she found herself simply praising rather than petitioning Him.

She had much to be thankful for, including the gifts stacked in her lap.

“This one first,” Charlotte said, reaching for the bottom box. She pressed the small square box and its accompanying card into Piper’s hands.

Piper read the card first. Tears stood in her eyes by the time she finished, but they were glad tears and quickly blinked away even before she turned her attention to the box itself. Carefully, her anticipation growing, she picked at the seam in the paper. A metallic green, it was almost too pretty to tear, but in the end her enthusiasm won out and she wound up ripping it anyway. She lifted the lid on the white box and found a golden bracelet nestled on cotton inside. Several charms had been attached to it—symbols of her faith and profession and one that was engraved with the shape of a sandpiper and the word “Thailand.”

“Oh, it’s lovely!”

Her father rose to help her put it on. “Mother and I thought you might like it.”

She turned her face up for his kiss. “It’s beautiful, Dad. Thank you.” She fingered the round Thailand charm and sensed her mother’s hand. “Did you design this, Mom?”

Charlotte nodded and came forward to hug her. “It seemed appropriate.”

“It’s beautiful. I love it. Thank you.”

The next box was the smallest, another square, no more than an inch and a half across, if that. The sweet card attached was signed by her sister-in-law and brother. After reading the card, she slit the paper with a fingernail and peeled it back. Obviously the family had planned their gifts together, so she wasn’t surprised when she found another charm. This one had Asia’s picture inside a tiny frame. His smile seemed serene and pleased. The tears returned to her eyes.

“How special! What a wonderful gift. But now I must have charms with photos of all of you, too.”

“Ta-da!” Thai said, snatching the last box and handing it back to her.

“Really? That’s what this is?” she asked, eagerly shredding the paper. She opened the box to find six more charms, all identical except for the photos contained in each. One was empty—an extra, she supposed, in case she lost one of the others. “This is just perfect! Oh, I can’t thank you all enough.”

She opened her arms and her family engulfed her. Thai was on his knees in front of her, leaving her mother and sister-in-law to come at her from the sides and her father to bend over her chair from the back. Only Gordon hung back. After dispensing hugs to the others, she looked to him, puzzled at his seeming reluctance.

“Gordo?”

“Always jumping the gun,” he admonished teasingly. “You’re not through yet. You have another gift, a very special one.” Oddly, he seemed to choke up then. After clearing his throat, he managed to add, “You could say this one is from Asia.”

One hand rose to cover her heart, the other her mouth. Tears, still never far from the surface, gathered once more. “You’d better just tell me what it is first.”

“It’s not a what, my dear,” said her father.

She looked to him and saw the same light in his eyes as Gordon’s. “Not a
what?
” she repeated carefully.

“A
who,
” her mother said gently.

Piper studied her mother’s face for a moment, seeing a softness and understanding there that made her pulse speed up.

“That,” said a deep, much beloved voice, “would be me.”

Piper twisted around in the chair. Mitch stood in the center of the wide, arched doorway, looking a little uncomfortable, a smile on his face.

“Mitch!”

She literally launched herself across the room, her feet hardly touching the floor at all. He opened his arms and caught her, rocking slightly as her weight hit him. Chuckling, he held her tightly.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Mitch! You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here!”