Abide With Me (17 page)

M
idway through her first date with Bill Sanderson, Andrea could not decide if their date was a smashing success or a dismal failure.

Instead of a picnic on the beach, they ate supper on a patch of grass behind a metal barrier along the shoulder of the freeway ten miles from Sea Gate, while waiting for road service to arrive and fix not one, but two, flat tires. Instead of watching the sun dip below the horizon, they had seen only the slow descent of the sun before it disappeared behind a billboard advertising, ironically, Captain Jeremy’s famous sunset cruises.

When they finally reached Sea Gate at nine-thirty, Bill drove directly to one of the two asphalt access roads that led to a sandy road to the beach, but he had to stop before the front tires left the asphalt. A heavy chain stretching
across the entrance blocked their access, and the sign hanging from the chain read:

Beach Closed To All Vehicles

Sea Gate Ord. No. 56713

He took one look at the sign, laughed and threw up his hands. “I give up. You know, I’ve had my fair share of dates over the past eight years, but I’ve never had one go so completely haywire, especially not a first date.”

She laughed with him. “This could be one for the Guinness Book of Records, if they have a category for first dates that went wrong.”

“Or a movie,
How to Make a Woman Lose Interest on a First Date.
Comedies always play well at the box office,” he suggested.

The fact that he had faced every problem tonight with good humor had done quite the opposite, as far as she was concerned. She found the prospect of spending a few more hours with him more than a little intriguing, much to her surprise. He was either one of those rare men who took life far less seriously than himself, or he was an eternal optimist, an even rarer breed of man.

“There’s a parking lot a block or so back. I can leave the Jeep there, and we can put this date to one final test by attempting to take a walk along the beach, or we can call it a rather forgettable night and head home. I’ll leave it up to you. I haven’t done so well making plans tonight.”

She stifled a yawn. He had not mentioned a third choice, simply resting on the beach, and she was loathe to admit that chemo, or more correctly, the side effects of yesterday’s chemo, tugged her leash again. “I’d love a walk,” she managed before the yawn finally escaped.

“A short one,” he cautioned. He slipped out of his seat belt, walked around the Jeep, and helped her get down. “Save your energy and wait here. I’ll park the Jeep and be back in three minutes.”

Before she could argue, he was backing the Jeep down the street. She watched him maneuver the Jeep into a tight spot, and she was not surprised to see him jog his way back. She zipped up her sweatshirt, but left the hood down for now. After he helped her duck beneath the chain, he handed her a flashlight. Laughing, she turned it on. “Tell me you were a Boy Scout.”

“Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Eagle Scout, thank you. I’m going to be working with the pastor and see if we can’t get a troop started in Welleswood.”

She sidestepped a huge rut in the roadway. “I told my sister I should bring a flashlight tonight, but I forgot. Thanks for remembering one for me, too.”

He stopped dead. “You told your sister about me?”

She did not need to turn and shine the flashlight on his face to know he was smiling. “Why not? Jenny’s my sister,” she said as she continued without him. “I only told her. I haven’t told Madge yet, but that will only be two people. You told half the town!”

He caught up with her in a few easy strides. “Are you angry?”

“Not really, but you have to understand something about living in a small town.”

He cringed. “Gossip?”

“That, too, but Welleswood probably isn’t like the other places you’ve lived. The twenty-first century may have dawned in bigger cities, but Welleswood is an old-
fashioned, small town that hasn’t figured that out yet. Folks here can be very…protective, especially when it comes to one of their own. You’re new to town. Or you will be, if you ever buy a house,” she explained as they walked side by side down the sandy road that ran through grassy dunes.

“I’m trying,” he argued.

This time, she stopped and waited until he turned around to walk back to her.

“I’ll try harder, I promise,” he said. “I’m not going to waste your time. As a matter of fact, there’s a house that faces the park that I like, and it’s probably going on the market soon.”

She furrowed her brow. “Which house?”

“Phil Yost’s. He’s thinking about retiring to Florida. I told him as soon as he was ready to call you first and me second. I’ve already seen the house inside and out. I’ll pay whatever you set as an asking price.”

She wanted to ask him how he had managed to find out Mr. Yost was thinking of retiring and selling out when she had not heard a whisper about it, but decided to let it pass. “I know the house. It’s a lovely Victorian, but it should list for more than you told me you were prepared to pay.”

“But I should qualify, according to the mortgage company that did the prequalification, so that shouldn’t be a problem,” he countered as he led her to the top of the dunes.

The beach on the other side stretched a good fifty feet ahead before meeting the surf. When she switched off her flashlight, they were surrounded by darkness, save for the weak light of the moon and a few stars. She felt she had been pitched into a deep abyss, where she alone faced a bat
tle against the unseen enemy that had invaded her body. In the rest of the world, in the glare of lights behind her, most men and women lived normal lives without any of the fears that had stolen into her life.

Fatigued and daunted by the challenges she faced in the months ahead, she yawned again, but this time she made no attempt to hide it from him.

“Why don’t we just sit and enjoy the view?” he suggested.

Without argument, she sat down and crossed her legs. To her surprise, he sat down behind her. “Rest your back against mine. It’s a whole lot more comfortable.”

“Forever the Boy Scout,” she teased. When she leaned back against him, she uncrossed her legs and pulled her knees up. “That’s much better. Thanks.”

Anxious to steer the topic of conversation away from herself, she realized how little she really did know about him, especially the ordeal he had been through. “Have they caught the people who hijacked your truck?”

“It wasn’t my rig. It was a company rig, but no. Not that anyone’s told me.”

She shivered. “If that happened to me, I think I’d be scared…and worried they’d be trying to find me.”

“That would be easy enough for them to do, I guess, but they got what they wanted. They’re not all that interested in me anymore.”

“But you’re an eyewitness! You’d be able to identify them.”

He chuckled. “Not really, but if you ever see four figures standing next to an old brown van in the middle of a two-lane highway, miles from nowhere, who are dressed in SpongeBob SquarePants costumes, let me know.”

She giggled. “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t funny, but just imagining four adults dressed up like that goofy character and standing in the middle of a highway…” She giggled again.

“Don’t apologize. I laughed, too. They really caught me off guard. I thought maybe they had broken down on their way to a county fair or something, so I pulled over. I didn’t see their shotguns until it was too late to do much more than hand over my wallet and keys. They had it planned well. Two of them got into the rig and took off. The other two had me blindfolded and tied up in the back of their van before I realized I might not see another moonlit night like this one.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I would have been scared witless.”

“That about sums up how I felt.” He let out a deep breath. “When they finally hauled me out of the van, I thought they were going to shoot me, but I couldn’t remember a single prayer to say. When they tossed me into the air like a sack of garbage, I didn’t draw a breath until I landed. I hurt so bad I figured I couldn’t be dead. Then I heard a door slam and the van drove off. That’s when I started to believe I actually might see a night sky again, and I let the good Lord figure out how somebody was going to find me.”

She swallowed hard. “It took three or four days, didn’t it?”

He sighed, and she could hear him tossing one stone after another into the darkness beyond them. “About fifty hours, give or take, before a couple of teenagers on horseback showed up. I sure did mess up their plans. Apparently, some of the kids who lived on the ranches in the area used to meet at the abandoned line shack for a little ‘fun.’”

“I thought you said it was a farmhouse.”

He tossed another stone. “Nope. Just one room with four walls, a door and a broken window. I knew there had to be a window. I could feel the fresh air. I would have given anything to have worked off that blindfold, but they’d hog-tied me real tight. So there I lay, in absolute darkness, without a single star or a sliver of moon to remind me that even in a universe as vast as this one, God had a plan for me and He hadn’t forsaken me.”

“How did you survive? How did you not lose faith that you’d be found alive?” she murmured.

“Prayers, mostly. I had plenty of time to remember those.” He paused and his back grew rigid. “Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t just lie there, praying happily to while away the hours. It wasn’t…well, it wasn’t pretty, to be honest. I felt like I was tied to a pendulum. For a while, I’d be able to pray, confident He wouldn’t let me die. Then I’d swing into anger or despair. I’d yell and holler and demand to know why this had happened to me. Then I’d swing the other way again.” He grew silent for a moment. “I was in a local clinic for a few days before I could explain what had happened and they confirmed my identity. One of the doctors said I had probably been hallucinating a bit, but I think I just didn’t trust God like I thought I should have. It’s humbling, to say the least, but I knew if I survived, it was time to make some changes in my life.”

Andrea bowed her head and tucked her chin to her chest. He had described his struggle with faith and his struggle to survive in a way that touched the core of her own humbling attempts to keep her faith strong as she battled her unseen enemy: cancer. He may have been blindfolded dur
ing his ordeal and denied the opportunity to look at a night sky like the one overhead, but she had been too blinded by her fears to truly see the night sky as he had described it.

She tilted her face to the sky and opened her heart to the one person she knew who might understand and not judge her too harshly. “Living with cancer can be a lot like swinging on a pendulum,” she whispered, “but for me, it’s more like I’ve been hooked to a leash, a very short leash. When I can pray, when my faith is strong enough to really believe in God and trust Him to carry me through the next year, the leash is made of nothing but fragile roses and lilacs and God’s grace. I’m convinced the chemo will work and the cancer hasn’t spread. Other times, the leash is made of leather. It’s strong and it’s unbreakable. No matter how I pray or struggle, my faith is just beyond my reach, and I get angry. I hate this disease. I hate what it’s doing to my life. I hate that it took two of my sisters from me. I get afraid that God has forgotten me, that the chemo won’t work or that the cancer has spread and by the time the doctors find it, it’ll be too late.”

He did not respond, not for several long heartbeats, and she thought she might have made a mistake.

“How much do you know about stars?” he asked.

“Stars? As in astronomy? As in—”

“As in, can you look at the sky and identify the constellations like the Big Dipper or the Little Dipper?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t name more than those two, and I couldn’t find them in the sky if curing this cancer of mine depended on it.”

He got to his feet. “Good. Let me show them to you.” When she got to her feet, amazed that he could simply ig
nore the fact that she had poured her heart and soul out to him, he pointed to the moon. “Start there. You recognize the moon, right?”

“Yes, I know that’s the moon,” she replied. Apparently, he had not forgotten a thing since his scouting days, and he was more eager to show off his knowledge than commiserate with her troubles, a thought that soured her mood for the first time that night.

“Okay, now look a little to the left and scan the heavens. Can you find four stars grouped together that make a square or a rectangle?”

“I think I see four that sit like a corner on a square. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly. That’s called the Angel’s Window. Actually, there are several of them, but you just found the biggest one. If you ever need an angel to give you a little help, even if you just don’t want to feel alone, find four stars like this and pray. Your prayers will slip right through the Angel’s Window to heaven and straight to the first angel waiting in line, according to legend,” he added.

“Legend,” she repeated. She did not know much about constellations, but she knew enough to suspect he had invented that legend all by himself.

“Now look way to the south. That’s to your right.”

“Got it. Looking south.”

“There’s a constellation there called Mount Blessing. Can you see it?”

She squinted hard. While there were dozens of stars, none seemed to join together to shape a mountain or even a small hill. “Are you sure it’s there?”

“Look harder.”

“Sorry. I can’t see a mountain or a blessing, whatever that might look like.”

“That’s right,” he murmured. “That’s because you don’t find blessings hidden in a mountain in the sky. His blessings are here on earth or they’re tucked into your heart. The stars and the constellations are always there for you. Whenever you feel He’s forgotten you, just look up into the sky. He’s got thousands of reminders twinkling back at you.”

She moistened her lips. “You made that up, just like you made up the legend about the Angel’s Window.”

He let out a sigh. “No, credit for both should go to my wife. She had multiple sclerosis. This is what she taught me during those awful years when she was confined to a wheel-chair and then her deathbed,” he whispered. “I promised myself I would share what she had taught me when I met someone who needed to learn this, too.”