Amongst The Flames: A Contemporary Christian Romance (Embers and Ashes Book 1) (18 page)
Read Amongst The Flames: A Contemporary Christian Romance (Embers and Ashes Book 1) Online
Authors: T.K. Chapin
Sneak Peek – The Perfect Cast
Each of us has moments of impact in life. Sometimes it’s in the form of
love
, and sometimes in the form of
sadness
. It is in these times that our world changes forever. They shape us, they define us, and they transform us from the people we once were into the people we now are.
The summer before my senior year of high school is one that will live with me forever. My parents’ relationship was on the rocks, my brother was more annoying than ever, and I was forced to leave the world I loved and cared about in Seattle. A summer of change, a summer of growth, and a summer I’ll never forget.
Jess leaned her head against the passenger side window as she stared out into the endless fields of wheat and corn. She felt like an alien in a foreign land, as it looked nothing like the comfort of her home back in Seattle.
She was convinced her friends were lucky to not have a mother who insisted on whisking them away to spend the
entirety
of their
summer out in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington. She would have been fine with a weekend visit, but the entire summer at Grandpa’s? That was a bit uncalled for, and downright wrong. Her mother said the trip was so Jess and her brother Henry could spend time with her grandpa Roy, but Jess had no interest in doing any such thing.
On the car ride to Grandpa’s farm to be dropped off and abandoned, Jess became increasingly annoyed with her mother. Continually, her mother would glance over at Jess, looking for conversation. Ignoring her mom’s attempts to make eye contact with her, Jess kept her eyes locked and staring out the window. Every minute, and every second of the car ride, Jess spent wishing the summer away.
After her mother took the exit off the freeway that led out to the farm, a loud pop came from the driver side tire and brought the car to a grinding halt. Her mom was flustered, and quickly got out of the car to investigate the damage. Henry, Jess’s obnoxious and know-it-all ten-year-old brother, leaned between the seats and glanced out the windshield at their mom.
“Stop being so annoying,” Jess said, pushing his face back between the seats. He sat back and then began to reach for the door. Jess looked back at him and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to help Mom.”
“Ha. You can’t help her; you don’t know how to change a tire.”
“Well, I am going to
try
.” Henry climbed out of the car and shut it forcefully. Jess didn’t want this summer to exist and it hadn’t even yet begun. If only she could fast forward, and her senior year of high school could start, she’d be happy. But that wasn’t the case; there was no remote control for her life. Instead, the next two and half months were going to consist of being stuck out on a smelly farm with Henry and her grandpa. She couldn’t stand more than a few minutes with her brother, and being stuck in a house with no cable and
him
? That was a surefire sign that one of them wasn’t making it home alive. Watching her mother stare blankly at the car, unsure of what to do, Jess laughed a little to herself.
If you wouldn’t have left Dad, you
would have avoided this predicament.
Her dad knew how to fix everything. Whether it was a flat tire, a problematic science project or her fishing pole, her dad was always there for her no matter what. That was up until her mother walked out on him, and screwed everybody’s life up. He left out of the country on a three month hiatus. Jess figured he had a broken heart and just needed the time away to process her mom leaving him in the dust.
Henry stood outside the car next to his mother, looking intently at the tire. Accidently catching eye contact with her mother, Jess rolled her eyes. Henry had been trying to take over as the
man of the house
ever since the split. It was cute at first, even to Jess, but his rule of male superiority became rather old quickly when Henry began telling Jess not to speak to her mother harshly and to pick up her dirty laundry. Taking the opportunity to cut into her mom, Jess rolled down her window. “Why don’t you call Grandpa? Oh, that’s right… he’s probably outside and doesn’t have a cell phone… but even if he did, he wouldn’t have reception.”
“Don’t start with me, Jess.” Her mother scowled at her. Jess watched as her mother turned away from the car and spotted a rickety, broken down general store just up the road.
Her mom began to walk along the side of the road with Henry. Jess didn’t care that she wasn’t invited on the family trek along the road. It was far too hot to walk anywhere, plus she preferred the coolness of the air conditioning. She wanted to enjoy the small luxury of air conditioning before getting to her grandpa’s, where she knew there was sure to be nothing outside of box fans.
Jess pulled her pair of ear buds out from the front pouch of her backpack and plugged them into her phone. Tapping into her music as she put the ear buds in, she set the playlist to shuffle. Staring back out her window, she noticed a cow feeding on a pile of hay through the pine trees, just over the other side of a barbed wire fence.
I really am in the middle of nowhere.
The blistering hot June sun shone brightly through the upper side of the barn and through the loft’s open doorway, illuminating the dust and alfalfa particles that were floating around in the air. Sitting on a hay bale in the upper loft of the barn, Roy watched as his nineteen-year-old farmhand Levi retrieved each bale of hay from the conveyor that sat at the loft’s doorway. Each bale of alfalfa weighed roughly ninety pounds; it was a bit heavier than the rest of the grass hay bales that were stored in the barn that year. Roy enjoyed watching his farmhand work. He felt that if he watched him enough, he might be able to rekindle some of the strength that he used to have in his youth.
While Roy was merely watching, that didn’t protect him from the loft’s warmth, and sweat quickly began to bead on his forehead. Reaching for his handkerchief from his back pocket, he brought it to his forehead and dabbed the sweat. Roy appreciated the help of Levi for the past year. Whether it was feeding and watering the cattle, fixing fences out in the fields, or shooting the coyotes that would come down from the hill and attack the cows, Levi was always there and always helping. He was the son of Floyd Nortaggen, the man who ran the dairy farm just a few miles up the road. If it wasn’t for Levi, Roy suspected he would have been forced to give up his farm and move into a retirement home. Roy knew retirement homes were places where people went to die, and he just wasn’t ready to die. And he didn’t want to die in a building full of people that he didn’t know; he wanted to die out on his farm, where he always felt he belonged.
“Before too long, I’ll need you to get up on the roof and get those shingles replaced. I’m afraid one good storm coming through this summer could ruin the hay.”
Levi glanced up at the roof as he sat on the final bale of hay he had stacked. Wiping away the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, he looked over to Roy. “I’m sure I could do that. How old are the shingles?”
A deep smile set into Roy’s face as he thought about when he and his father had built the barn back when he was just a boy. “It’s been forty years now.” His father had always taken a fancy to his older brother, but when his brother had gone away on a mission trip for the summer, his dad had relied on Roy for help with constructing the barn. Delighted, he’d spent the summer toiling in the heat with his dad. He helped lay the foundation, paint the barn and even helped put on the roof. Through sharing the heat of summer and sips of lemonade that his mother would bring out to them, Roy and his father grew close, and remained that way until his father’s death later in life.
“Forty years is a while… my dad re-shingled his barn after twenty.”
“Shingles usually last between twenty and thirty years.” Roy paused to let out a short laugh. “I’ve been pushing it for ten. Really should have done it last summer when I first started seeing the leaks, but I hadn’t the strength and was still too stubborn to accept your help around here.”
“I imagine it’s quite difficult to admit needing help. I don’t envy growing old –no offense.”
“None taken,” Roy replied, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of a car coming up the driveway over the bridge. “I believe my grandchildren have arrived.”
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Embers & Ashes Series
Up in Smoke
(Fall 2015)
After the Fire (Winter 2015)
Love’s Enduring Promise Series
The Perfect Cast
(Book 1) FREE
Finding Love
(Book 2)
Claire’s Hope
(Book 3)
Dylan’s Faith
(Book 4)
Stand Alones
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First and foremost, I want to thank God. God’s salvation through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us all the ability to have a personal relationship with the creator of the Universe.
I also want to thank my wife. She’s my muse and my inspiration. A wonderful wife, an amazing mother and the best person I have ever met. She’s great and has always stood by me with every decision I have made along life’s way.
I’d like to thank my editors and early readers for helping me along the way. I also want to thank all of my friends and extended family for the support. It’s a true blessing to have every person I know in my life.
T.K. CHAPIN
writes Christian Romance books designed to inspire and tug on your heart strings. He believes that telling stories of faith, love and family help build the faith of Christians and help non-believers see how God can work in the life of believers. He gives all credit for his writing and storytelling ability to God. The majority of the novels take place in and around Spokane Washington, his hometown. Chapin makes his home in the Pacific Northwest and has the pleasure of raising his daughter with his beautiful wife Crystal. To find out more about T.K. Chapin or his books, visit his website at
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