Redemption Series: Redemption Part 24

Why was he looking at her that way? "Talking?"

"About what happened that day." He reached out and wiped at a tear making its way down her cheek. "Even if we can't go back, I want you to know what really happened."

Kari nodded, terrified that somehow Ryan might have an explanation for what took place that far-off day. And if he did ... if the only reason the two of them weren't together today was some mistake ...

She couldn't bear to think about it.

He led her back to their seats. Then without waiting another moment, with a firm hold on her hand and an even firmer one on her heart, Ryan Taylor began to tell her a story she'd never heard before.

One that, had she heard it sooner, would have changed the course of her life.

207 CHAPTER nineteen

Elizabeth SAT ON THE LIVING-ROOM floor across from little Cole, helping him work a jigsaw puzzle. "Look for the edge pieces, honey." She held up a straight-edged piece. "Like this. We have to find these first."

John entered the room with two steaming cups of mint tea. Apple pie was baking in the oven, and the aromas mixed in a way that filled their home with warmth and peace. In the background, Kathy Troccoli sang about beauty for ashes. And as Elizabeth worked on the puzzle with her grandson, she realized her earlier fears were gone. In their place was a holy a.s.surance that somehow everything would work out.

The troubles with Brooke and Peter. The trials with Ashley. Her own health. And even the alarming fact that Kari and Ryan had been together all day. None of it seemed overwhelming now.

John's story had done it, of course-the way he wove Scripture into their conversation. That explained the peaceful feeling she'd had ever since. G.o.d had calmed the sea before, and he would do it again-whether it raged inside her heart or all around her.

208.

"Did Ashley say when she'd be back?" John sat in the closest chair and rested the hot mug on his knee.

"Cole's spending the night." She gave John a knowing look, then smiled at the little boy. "Five more minutes, and it's bedtime, okay, pumpkin?"

Cole nodded. "I get to sleep over, right, Grammy? That's what my mommy said."

"Yep, in your special bed. Billy Bear's already up there waiting for you."

"Know what I dreamed about, Grammy?" "What, honey?"

"I was making the hugest sand castle in the whole, wide world, and all the sudden a big shark came right up on the beach. Only know what, Grammy?"

"What?" Elizabeth made her eyes big.

"He was a nice shark, and he sat down beside me and helped me make the sand castle, and it was the bestest one I ever made." The story went on to involve a variety of sea creatures and sudden storms and magic treasure. Elizabeth remembered that they had watched a nature special together a few days earlier. She marveled at how everything the little boy saw or heard became part of his reality.

"And know what happened then, Grammy?" Cole gathered himself to a standing position. He raised his hands high over his head. "A big, tall daddy came out of the water and walked up to me. He told me he'd been gone a really lot of time, but now he wasn't going away anymore. And he said he loved me more than even the bestest little boys all over the whole wide world."

Elizabeth blinked back tears and worked to find her voice. "That's wonderful, sweetheart."

They finished their puzzle, and Elizabeth and John walked the child upstairs.

"Can you carry me, Papa?" Cole reached his little-boy hands up to John, and Elizabeth's heart melted. At times like these it nearly strangled her to imagine Ashley's boy growing up without a father.

209 John scooped him up. "You're my boy, Cole. Always and forever."

Cole responded by laying his head on John's shoulder and wrapping his chubby arms around his neck. "I wish I could sleep over every night."

Elizabeth trailed behind, blinking back tears as she watched her husband kiss the child's cheek.

John's voice was choked when he answered, "Me, too, son. Me too."

They prayed together, tucked Billy Bear in beside Cole, and left with promises of pancakes in the morning. When they were downstairs, Elizabeth walked to the front room and stared out the window.

John was at her side instantly. "They'll be back soon." She smiled. "How do you know which one it is tonight?" "It's Kari. She's had the number-one worry spot for a while now."

Her head tilted back against his chest. "But it could be Ashley."

"True." "Or both of them." "Absolutely." "Actually, I was thinking about Cole."

Elizabeth felt her smile fade. She turned as John wrapped his arms around her. "It breaks my heart to see him growing up without a dad."

John kissed the top of her head. "He's such a great little guy." "You know why, don't you?" She leaned up and wondered again at the depth of love she felt for John Baxter, a love that grew with each pa.s.sing year as if there were no limits to how she could feel about him.

"Why?" "Because he has you, of course." She smiled but knew he could read the seriousness in her voice. "I thank G.o.d he has you, John."

"Ashley tries."

210 Elizabeth smiled in a tired sort of way. "She has so much to learn about being a mother."

He nodded. "I watch Cole on the floor making puzzles and telling you his pretend stories about sharks and treasures and big, tall daddies, and I want to shake her and ask her, `Ashley, what are you doing tonight that could possibly be more important than being here with him?"'

Melody Blues was nearing the end of its first set at The Coffee House. Ashley Baxter and two of her friends sat at a back table, sipping mochas and comparing notes.

Her friends were nothing like her family, but they were loyal. And they didn't expect from Ashley anything that she wasn't willing to give. There was Anika, the Alaskan transplant who talked constantly about getting to New York and playing violin for a Broadway orchestra, and Billie, the art student who'd been saving for years to buy herself a summer in Europe. Since Ashley played the guitar and painted, the three of them fit well together. But beyond their shared artistic interests, they had something bigger in common.

Their discontentment with life.

Anika was twenty-three and divorced. Billie was living with a man twenty years her senior. And Ashley was pursued by a dozen guys every day but wanted nothing to do with any of them.

"Paris cured me of that," she'd told her friends. And though they didn't know the details, they were two of the only people on earth who had any idea at all of what she meant.

As far as Ashley was concerned, it was none of anyone's business what had happened in Paris the year she was twenty-one. Well, it was fairly obvious that Cole had happened that year, but she wasn't telling anything more. Her parents and siblings could ask all they wanted; she had no intention of dredging up the details. Not for them or anyone else.

211 "Hey, what's Cole doing tonight?" Anika caught Ashley's eye and stirred the whipped cream into her drink.

"The usual. Spoiled by Grandma from seven to eight. Spoiled by Grandpa from eight to nine." She smiled, but her eyes felt soaked in a sadness she didn't quite understand. "His favorite kind of night."

Anika nodded and stared at the band. "I should be home practicing. I'll never be famous if I spend every night listening to someone else make music."

She launched into a comparison of off-Broadway musicals versus Broadway ones, and though Billie was immediately caught up in the interchange, trading ambiguous terms and meaningless opinions, Ashley wasn't in the mood.

Melody Blues was one of her favorite local bands, and The Coffee House was a place that always seemed to expand her creativity. Normally, a night like this would leave her feeling she could paint the Sistine Chapel in an hour.

But tonight was different.

In fact, the last four times they'd gone out --whether here or dancing at Kaverns --she had left feeling empty and sad. As if something was missing from life, something she couldn't put into words. It wasn't Cole-although the fact that he had more fun spending a night with her parents than staying with her didn't help her feelings any.

It was deeper, far down inside her heart, as if she had a hole nothing could fill.

"You okay?" There was a break in the conversation, and Billie touched her elbow, her forehead wrinkled in concern. "You don't seem like yourself tonight."

Ashley shrugged. "I just don't feel right."

Anika leaned back in her chair, her head angled curiously. "There's a flu going around."

"No, it's not that."

Understanding dawned on Anika's face. "Paris?"

Ashley stirred her coffee and felt the sting of tears. Because of 212 Paris, she was sometimes seized by moments when she wanted to crawl into a hole in the bas.e.m.e.nt of her heart where no one could find her-not even these, her closest friends. But Paris wasn't the problem tonight. "I don't know what it is."

Melody Blues took a break, and Billie motioned to the other side of the coffee house. "Want to browse?"

Half the building was a bookstore, an eclectic mix of new and used tomes-mostly offbeat fiction, artsy how-to books, and various New Age t.i.tles. Customers drifted from one side to the other, finding books, taking them to the cafe, poring over them while sipping coffee and listening to music late into the night. Book purchases could be made until the two o'clock closing time.

Ashley shook her head. "You go ahead." Her friends finished their drinks and pushed back from the table. Ashley knew they might spend an hour or more looking at books, but that was okay. She welcomed the time alone.

A couple decked out in a kind of nouveau-hippie look-tie-dyed shirts, flowing gla.s.s beads, and leather-fringed pants- walked past and flashed her the peace symbol. She returned the same and smiled. Her parents would be deeply concerned to know she spent as much time as she did here, and they would be aghast to know she brought Cole sometimes. They were so straight, so-she searched for a word and thought of a hippie- era one her friends liked to use.

Establishment.

That was it. Everything about her family was establishment. Especially their brand of religion-the kind of white-bread, narrow- minded, Bible-bound faith that Ashley had come to despise. She couldn't understand why Kari still bought into it.

Maybe that's what bothered her the most. The fact that her parents' faith seemed to have turned Kari into a robot.

When she and Kari were younger, Kari had been bigger than life to Ashley. Her older sister, beautiful and confident, dating easily the best-looking guy in all of Bloomington-at least that was how Ashley had seen Ryan Taylor back then.

213 When they were kids it all seemed so easy. They went to church and believed, and in return G.o.d took care of them and made sure everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

Paris had changed her thinking on that, and watching her sister give up any semblance of pride just to stick to some archaic rule about staying married no matter what.

Ashley stared at the melting whipped cream in her drink and swirled it slowly.

Could G.o.d really expect that kind of devotion? Even when Kari's husband was an unfaithful jerk?

Bells on the front door jangled, and Ashley looked up. As she did, her heart skipped a beat, and she had to set her cup down to keep from spilling its contents.

Landon Blake?

What in the world was he doing at an artsy cave like The Coffee House on a Sat.u.r.day night? And dressed in his firefighter's uniform, no less.

He didn't see her as he made his way between several tables to the take-out counter and ordered a drink.

Landon Blake ... Ashley's heart grew instantly softer. If Ryan Taylor was the best-looking guy in Bloomington, second place-without a doubt-belonged to the boy who had chased her since the first day of middle school. The boy who'd gone off to Texas to become a veterinarian-until he spent a semester of his junior year volunteering for the fire department.

Something must have happened that year, because he came home from college right afterward. He abandoned his dream of working with animals and instead joined the City of Bloomington Fire Department.

Other than that, little had changed about Landon.

He was still as gorgeous as ever, still a little too religious for her taste, still attending the big church across town and, according to everyone who knew him, still carrying a quiet torch for Ashley Baxter.

They'd been in the same Sunday school cla.s.s when they were kids, back when his family attended Clear Creek Community 214 Church. Every summer they had gone to the same camp on the same church bus and shared the same friends. All her life, in fact, everyone had expected her to marry Landon one day.

And all her life she'd been determined to prove them wrong. There had to be more to life than the predictability of spending a lifetime with someone like Landon.

Someone with whom she'd rarely have a surprising moment. The wildest thing he ever did was switch career goals halfway through college. Since then he'd been as predictable as winter. She could never be interested in Landon.

At least that's what she told her parents.

The truth was something she rarely admitted even to herself. The summer after his first year of college, Landon Blake had come home for two months, and Ashley had caught herself doing the very thing she'd promised never to do.

She was falling in love with him.

Just as her mother and father and everyone who knew them always thought she would, that summer she fell hard for the boy who'd always been there for her.

Ashley studied him now. Wasn't that the reason she'd gone to Paris in the first place, running scared from everything predictable and ordinary to a country where she could be someone no one knew? Wasn't that why she'd traded her safety and security for a chance to paint a masterpiece by starlight or stay up all night listening to the lap of a lake against foreign soil?

Still, the question remained.

If she'd been willing to work that hard to keep herself from falling for Landon, why now-years from those church-camp days-was her heart still moved by the sight of him?

She watched him order, watched the way the girl behind the counter blushed in his presence, and took in the fact that he had to be every bit of six feet four inches now. She saw it all as she waited for the inevitable.

He would see her. He always did.

Ever since their early teenage years, it hadn't mattered if they 215 were in church or a crowded cafeteria or at opposite sides of a local supermarket. If Landon Blake entered a place where Ashley Baxter was, he would find her.

Landon leaned against the counter and waited for the girl to fill his order. He slipped one hand casually into his pocket, and Ashley wondered if he bought coffee here often and whether he knew she was a regular. He turned and leaned against the counter, and almost immediately his eyes found hers.

Ashley hated the way her palms grew sweaty under his slow, easy smile. He made his way toward her, unrushed, moving with the grace of an athlete. His eyes held hers. When he reached her table, he sat down and looked at her for a long while before talking.

"Hi." He still had the same dimples that had set him apart as a schoolboy.

"Landon." She returned his smile. "What brings you here?" "Coffee." He c.o.c.ked his head and, though his tone was light, he looked further into her eyes than she was comfortable with. "Of course, if I'd known you were here, I would've come sooner."