Changes of Heart (9 page)

The ringing of the telephone brought Maggie out of her reverie. She tossed a Milk-Bone to Sunday and hurried into the kitchen. The phone had startled her; it hadn’t been ringing much lately. She’d sold the horses she needed to sell, keeping only Happy, Dusty, and Dancer. Rebel, a barrel-racing gelding she’d been training for over two years, had gone to a sister barrel racer who made a cash offer
Maggie found impossible to refuse, although she hated to part with the horse.

Ellie Traynor’s voice was immediately identifiable, her warmth and caring almost as apparent over fiber-optic lines as they were in person. “It’s good to hear your voice,” Ellie said. “It’s been way too long, honey, and that’s my fault. But so much has been going on here. How are you doing?”

Maggie paused for a moment and then gave her practiced response. “I’m OK. A day at a time, you know? But I’m doing fine.”

“Sure you are, Maggie—just like I’m entering steer wrestling at your next rodeo.”

“Ellie...”

“No, honey, don’t ‘Ellie’ me. I need you to stop by this morning. It’s important.” There’d been a not-so-subtle shift in Ellie’s voice. She rarely gave orders or made personal demands on her friends or members of her husband’s congregation, but this was both, and Maggie realized that.

“Do I need to change clothes? Otherwise I can leave immediately.”

“Heavens no—come on ahead. I’ll put on some of that English breakfast tea you like right now.”

Maggie’s four-year-old Chevy pickup coughed a bit when she first started it, but after a few moments, the idle settled down and the big V-8 rumbled smoothly. She glanced at the odometer. Eighty-eight thousand miles, a good part of it hard duty hauling a horse and trailer.
’Bout time for a tune-up
. She smirked.
Not with seventeen dollars in my checking account, though. The work can wait for a bit—it’ll have to
.

Helmut and Ellie Traynor’s home looked exactly like what a pastor and his wife’s home should look like: small, neat, welcoming, with well-tended flower boxes on the front porch and a small but closely mown and healthy lawn on either side of the freshly swept sidewalk. The cottage was like Ellie herself, aging gracefully but showing the years and proud of them, still strong and able to nurture and protect anyone in need of shelter and warmth, be it from the elements or from physical or emotional pain.

Ellie opened the door before Maggie could use the little brass knocker, and the women embraced. “Come in, come in,” Ellie said, smiling. “Let’s go to the kitchen. The tea’s ready and waiting.”

Sunlight poured into the small kitchen through immaculate windows with homemade gingham curtains. “This is such a delightful room,” Maggie said. “If Norman Rockwell were to paint the kitchen that everyone had or wished they had during their childhood, this would be the one he’d use for a model.”

The older woman smiled. “When we moved in, there was an icebox—and we had ice delivered twice a week. There was a hand pump in the sink, and during the driest summers I built up my arm muscles flailing the handle to draw up enough water to do dishes.” She looked around herself. “I think I like the electric refrigerator and water pump much better. Still, the old memories are good to have.”

Ellie poured tea from a ceramic pot into the two cups she’d already placed in saucers on the table. Maggie watched
her friend’s hands, aware of the brown liver spots and the almost imperceptible tremble she’d never noticed before.

Ellie sat down across from the younger woman and sipped her tea. “How’re you doing, Maggie? Will you talk with me? Can I share your hardship with you?”

Maggie twisted the paper napkin from beside her cup into a knot on her lap, her palms suddenly damp. “Soon, I think, but not just now, Ellie. I’m moving ahead most days—I really am—but... well...”

Ellie sighed. “One thing I’ve learned through all my years as a minister’s wife is patience, Maggie. I’ve learned it—but I’m still not very good at it. I’ve prayed for you and about you every day since Rich died. In my arrogance, I questioned the Lord—badgered him, actually—demanding that he put his hand on your shoulder, give you the relief that you need, hold you in his warmth.”

“Ellie...”

The elderly woman held up her hand, asking Maggie to wait. “That isn’t the way it’s done, honey. None of us as children of God have the right or the power to tell him how to run things.” She sighed again. “As I prayed last night, the Lord pushed me back into line, sort of. He told me that Maggie Locke is his daughter—his beloved child—and that he will do what is best for her, in his time and in his way.” She smiled then, and her eyes held with Maggie’s. “What he said, in essence, was this: ‘Look here, achy old woman who can remember her kindergarten teacher’s name but can’t recall if she took her medication five minutes ago, I’ll tend to my Maggie. I have grand and joyous plans for her.

I haven’t forgotten her, and I won’t forget her. Accept that, OK? Because frankly, you’re driving me batty with your mandates and imperatives. You haven’t doubted me before, old woman. Don’t doubt me in this.’” Ellie reached across the table to touch Maggie’s face. “Are we together here?”

“It’s not you, Ellie,” Maggie protested. “It’s... everything. Everything reminds me of him, and I dream of him fighting that airplane and calling out to me, and there isn’t another person in the world who understands that—the stupid, bitter helplessness and the loneliness.” Her words came in a hurried slew of emotion.

“Maggie,” Ellie said quietly, “I miss Helmut every day, just as you miss Richie. But I haven’t been alone since we buried Helmut. For a time, I thought I was—I felt as you do now. But I was wrong. The Lord was with me, just as he’s with you. He is with you, honey...”

Maggie felt the sun on the back of her neck from the window behind her, and the sensation confused her for a moment. She’d been somewhere inside Ellie’s words—a place where there was peace and faith in God and life was full and just and joyous.

Ellie sat back. “I’m leaving Coldwater, honey. I have Alzheimer’s and arthritis, and my heart’s failing, and I have to wrap my legs with stretch bandages every morning so I can stand up, and I’m tired. I’m going to Michigan to be with my sister. I’ll read books and drink tea and sleep in the morning and be a little old lady waiting for the Lord. But Maggie—you’ll remain in my heart and in my prayers. You must know that, and you must believe that.”

“I do—but your friends, Ellie. You can’t go away. You can’t leave us.” Maggie stopped to draw breath, and her heart clenched like a strong fist in her chest. “No—I mean... what I’m saying is... what about me, Ellie? I haven’t been able to confide in you yet, but I’ve always known you were here. Now...”

“Hush for a moment, Maggie. The search committee has found a real man of God. A minister who’ll fit here, a minister who believes what the Book says, and lives by it. His name is Ian Lane.”

“He won’t be Helmut, Ellie, and he won’t be you. Couldn’t you stay on and maybe cut back on what you do? It won’t be at all the same if you leave Coldwater. Everyone in the church, everyone in the town—”

“No,” Ellie interrupted, “and it shouldn’t be the same, Maggie—I’m ill and I’m old and everything has changed around me and I’ve remained the same, and now my memory is shot and my body is telling me to go out and shop for a shroud while I still know what the word means. I want this, honey—I want to be with my sister, where all I’ll have to plan ahead is whether we’ll have toasted cheese sandwiches or tuna salad for lunch, and my biggest problem will be whether I’ve fed Monica’s cats too much.”

“How bad is the Alzheimer’s, Ellie? How sick are you?”

Ellie stared off into space for a long moment, as if adding a long list of numbers in her mind. “You seem like a nice young lady,” she finally said. “I’m pleased to meet you. What’s your name?”

Maggie choked on her tea. “Stop that!” she demanded. “Your mind is sharper than a...”

“Than a marshmallow,” Ellie finished for her. “Here’s the prognosis, Maggie: I’m losing things, blocks of memory, daily. I have some sort of cardiac problem that makes my heart pound like a trip hammer, and that isn’t at all good at my age. And I’m tired, honey. Ian’s good—and he’s smart too—and he’s actually funny, which is an attribute so many young ministers don’t have. Promise me you’ll talk with him.”

“I don’t know. I still need some time. Can you accept that?”

“I can. Ian won’t be here for another six weeks. You can let him settle in a bit—a couple of weeks at the outside—and then call and make an appointment with him. Agreed, Maggie?”

Maggie nodded, again meeting Ellie’s eyes. “OK.”

“One other thing, honey,” Ellie said. “Are you aware that Danny Pulver is in love with you? And that he probably has been since before Richie died?”

Maggie shifted gears and steered her truck mechanically, barely aware of what she was doing. The smoky flavor of Ellie’s tea was unpleasant in her mouth, harsh and metallic. The natural summertime beauty of Montana was lost on her, the richness of colors and textures not only unappreciated but unseen.

“Are you aware that Danny Pulver is in love with you
?”
Ellie’s words played in Maggie’s mind like a cruel loop.
Kind, warm, caring Danny. How could I not have noticed? Isn’t a woman supposed to know—feel—this sort of thing? What about my female intuition
?

Although there was no traffic coming from either direction, Maggie automatically clicked on her signal to turn into the driveway of her ranch—and then canceled the signal abruptly. The vet’s black GMC was parked near the barn, and she saw Sunday dancing across the back lawn. Danny’s head turned at the sound of Maggie’s engine, but she was already accelerating, following the road away from her home.

What’s the matter with me
? she chided herself.
Running away from seeing Danny is stupid and childish and accomplishes nothing. But what could I possibly say to him if Ellie is right? And I know she’s right—what I was seeing in Danny’s eyes that I thought was a mixture of friendship and sympathy is much more than that. Why didn’t I see that
?

Maggie’s truck hit a pothole hard enough so that she was lifted off the seat by the impact. A glance at the speedometer told her she was going almost sixty-five on a secondary road that was dangerous at twenty miles per hour slower. She eased the toe of her boot off the accelerator until her speed dropped to forty.

I should’ve known about Danny’s feelings. But how could I? I was a tomboy—my life wrapped up in fast horses and barrel racing. I never even had a real boyfriend before Richie. My friends were gossiping about cute guys and going to dances and
parties while I smelled like a hay bale and was spending my time mucking out stalls. I never learned about men
.

There was a place—down an overgrown access road to a long defunct cattle operation—that Maggie had found on horseback shortly after she and Rich had bought their ranch. The pulpy, insect-ravaged condition of the leaning fence posts encompassing a large pasture spoke sadly of how long the place had been abandoned. The barbed wire, its spirit rusted away so that the once-sharp points fell to orange flakes and dust when a finger touched them, seemed to have given up when it no longer had any cattle to confine. The remains of a soddy—a simple, cavelike shelter carved into a hill—where the settlers had once lived had seemed a monument to the pioneer spirit to Maggie, and to Rich, when she’d brought him back to see the place.

There was a cemetery too, situated a mile or more from the crude home. Wooden crosses, long since driven to the ground by Montana winds and winters, had been scoured clean of whatever names and dates had been carved into them. One marker, however, was still legible, only because the letters had been chiseled into a flat piece of stone the size of a washboard. It read:

Baby

12-12-1869

Since the day she first saw the single word and the date, they had been etched in Maggie’s heart as deeply as they were into the stone. Back then—a mere couple of years
ago—Maggie hadn’t really experienced grief yet. She’d felt the terrible loss of Baby’s parents, but even that sensation had been foreign to her. Now, she believed, she could hold the hands of the man and the woman as a partner to them.

Maggie had a somewhat vague idea how to get to the old homestead from the road, and she knew that attempting to reach the place in her truck would be foolish. The arroyos were deep slashes that were often concealed by the rampant scrub growth, and the rocks and boulders would tear the undercarriage out of her vehicle before she’d gone a hundred yards.

Maggie parked well off the road and set out on foot, climbing a weeded rise. The slope wasn’t quite as benign as it had looked through the truck windshield, but the ground was studded with rocks, and the hardy short grass had a firm grip on the soil beneath it, making footing fairly secure. When she stopped to draw a breath about two-thirds of the way to the top, the heat became stifling, saunalike, and the air was as motionless as the inside of a crypt. She wiped the sheet of sweat from her forehead with her palm and shook the moisture from her hand. Then she started upward again, and this time her assault on the rise was an angry one, a fighting mad one, a battle against far more than a hill baking in the sun.