Finders Keepers (15 page)

“No, no, Nick, it’s not the Bible. Sweetie, listen to me …”

“Hey, Nick,” Zachary spoke up. “How about you and I head down to Boompah’s store and pick out a new vase for Grace’s front hall? We’ll get some flowers to put in it, too. I noticed some pink ones growing in the mansion’s front yard.”

“Dianthus,” Elizabeth said. “Grace loved them.”

“How about it, Nick? I’ve got the key to the Corner Market right here in my pocket.”

The child’s shoulders sagged, and he rubbed his fist hard into one eye. “But don’t fight with my mommy anymore, OK?”

“OK.”

“You promise?”

Zachary let out a breath, remembering the huge stumbling block that had just been rolled across his path. “I’ll do my best, Nick.”

“Zachary.” Elizabeth laid her hand on his arm as he stood. “Please try to understand about the charter. Phil’s only doing what he thinks is right for the town.”

“Phil wants to freeze me out.” He took Nick’s hand and headed for the door. “The two of you may manage to put my plans on ice. But I’m not the kind of man who can be kept down for long, Elizabeth. No one’s ever made me surrender—and no one ever will.”

As he and Nick walked out of the antiques shop, Zachary pushed up the umbrella until it clicked open. The little boy turned and waved at his mother through the window. His small face was still pale, his green eyes luminous.

“Surrender is like ‘All to Jesus I Surrender,’” Nick said. “We sing that song in church, and I think if you don’t ever surrender, you’re going to make God very sad, Zachary. He wants to give you the presents, but he can’t if you don’t surrender to him.”

“Presents?” Zachary focused on the sidewalk, his heart heavy. “What presents are you talking about, Nick?”

“‘All to Jesus I surrender,’” Nick sang, “‘all to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him, in his presents daily live.’ If you surrender, you get the presents, see? You get Jesus to live in your heart every day. Also, you get food to eat, a bed to sleep in, a mommy to love you, and maybe you could even get me to be your very own son. Don’t you think you should surrender, Zachary? I think it would be a good idea.”

Zachary nodded. Yes, it might be a good idea. It just might.

“Boompah! You’re here!” Nick pushed through the front door of the Corner Market and raced across the gray linoleum floor. “You came back! You didn’t die!”

Zachary shook the raindrops off his umbrella as Nick threw his arms around the old man, who was seated on a wooden chair behind his cash register. “We came here to get a flower vase, Zachary and me,” the boy continued breathlessly. “Zachary has the key in his pocket, and we thought you still would be sick in your bed, but you’re not. Are you well? Is your back better?”

“Better, ja.” Boompah gave Nick’s hair a rub. “And you, my little one? How is Nikolai?”

“It’s raining, and we didn’t have school today.”

“Now they call off the school for rain?” Zachary smiled as Boompah shook his head. He didn’t feel like tackling the concept of Memorial Day with the irrepressible child. “These days, they are such weaklings, these modern people,” Boompah continued. “I used to ride a horse five miles to school, do you know? And sometimes the snow is up to the horse’s stomach. Rain? Bah!”

“I threw up at school one time,” Nick confided. “My stomach hurt a lot.”

“Nick, why don’t you pick out a vase?” Zachary asked, diverting the trend of the conversation as he had seen Elizabeth do so many times. “They’re right over there by the school supplies.”

“You know my store well now, my friend! Come sit, sit!” Boompah took Zachary’s hand in both of his and urged him onto the neighboring chair. “I thank you for stepping into my shoes when I was sick. Now I think I am much better. The doctor says maybe was a little problem with my kidneys. Still is hard to stand up long times, but I need to work. Is my only way to make money, you know? And Ruby McCann needs her milk. Soft bones.”

“Osteoporosis.”

“She’s terrified of it. Ach, getting old is no ball of wax, my son. But you? You’re still young and handsome and smart. You have your whole life ahead. How does your business go? How do you and Elizabeth get along these days? And what are you going to do with all this life God has given you?”

“Business is good. Elizabeth … I don’t know.” Zachary linked his fingers together loosely and studied a crack in the linoleum. “I’m going to spend my life fighting, I guess. Fighting for what I want—the way I always have.” Then he recalled the words of Nick’s song. “Or I could surrender. I could give up the battle and let God take over. Surrender my dreams. Surrender my whole future.”

“Surrender is defeat?”

“Seems that way.”

“You think so? Did Jesus not say the first shall be last, and the last shall be first?”

“I never understood what that meant.”

“Means if you surrender, you win the battle.” Boompah took a cherry-flavored sucker from his shirt pocket and passed it to Zachary. He unwrapped a lemon sucker and popped it into his mouth. “Let me ask you this question, my boy. In this battle you are fighting, is it better to try to be the general yourself—or to give the leadership to someone who is smarter, more powerful, and braver than you? Which way are you more sure to win?”

Zachary shrugged. “You’re saying I should surrender the leadership but not give up the fight?” “Never give up the battle. Onward Christian soldiers, the hymn says. Ach, the battle is all around us, and the force of evil is very great. Myself, I would rather yield to the greatest leader of all creation than try to fight alone.”

Zachary looked up as Nick approached, bearing a large glass vase. “This is not as pretty as the old blue one Grace had,” he said. “This one is new and ugly.”

He set it on the counter and frowned. Zachary picked up the cheap vase and turned it around in his hands. “But what’s the battle?” he asked Boompah. “Is it a fight to keep the mansion for myself? Is it a war against the town of Ambleside? Is it a skirmish against Phil Fox and his loyal troops?”

“Ach, the battle is much bigger than that. Those are small things—little grenades tossed by the enemy onto the field to distract you from the greater war all around. You know this war, Zachary Chalmers. You know it well.”

“Are you talking about the nachos again, Boompah?” Nick asked.

The old man took his sucker out of his mouth and gave the child a sticky kiss on the cheek. “I’m talking about the war of good against evil. The war of God against Satan. The war for the soul of every man. And that, my little Nikolai, is a battle much bigger than any battle ever fought against Hitler.”

“OK, but I don’t want to put Grace’s flowers into that ugly vase,” Nick said solemnly. “It won’t look right in her front hall.”

“You want we shall find a better vase for Grace’s flowers?” Boompah handed the child a wrapped sucker from his pocket. “Come then. I take you to the back rooms of my market, and I show you the treasures I brought all the way from the old country many years ago. There we find a vase for Grace’s flowers.”

Zachary stood. “I was hoping to get over to the mansion this afternoon. I need to take a look around.”

Boompah smiled around his sucker. “Ja, I know. You go, my son. I keep little Nikolai here with me. We will take a long journey to the land of our birth, he and I, and there we will see many treasures.”

“Elizabeth wants Nick back at her shop by five-thirty.”

“We do it, don’t worry. Go, go!”

Zachary picked up his umbrella and pushed through the door into the driving rain. As he splashed across the street and down the sidewalk toward Chalmers House, he considered the offer Boompah had held out to him. Surrender the leadership of your life. But hadn’t he done that years ago as a child? He was a believer already. He was a Christian, wasn’t he?

Elizabeth glanced up at the tall grandfather clock near the door. She rolled her eyes and switched off the last lamp in her shop. Leave it to Zachary Chalmers to mess things up. Now she’d have to tramp through the rain to the mansion to retrieve her son. The casserole she had made for Boompah was sitting in her oven, probably getting as dry as shoe leather. Every time she thought of the old man lying alone in that bed, her heart twisted. Was he growing better, as he claimed? Or was it possible his kidney infection might lead to something worse?

She drew a long umbrella from a nineteenth-century stand and stepped outside, pulling the door shut with a jingle of brass bells. It had been a busy day, and with Nick out of school, a tiring one. The child’s questions never ended, and his drive to insert himself into every situation exhausted her.

The gloomy weather didn’t help. Rain had increased from a mist in the morning to a drizzle by noon. Now it was an absolute torrent as it battered Elizabeth’s umbrella, gushed down gutters, and spilled into the streets. She leaped over a small gully that was carving a new path down Grace’s driveway. Under the protection of the deep front porch, she could see car lights guiding drivers home from work.

Thanks, Father, that I live behind my store,
she offered up as she pushed open the mansion’s front door and stepped into the gloom.
Thanks for blessings great and small.

She could see a light in the upper hallway, so she climbed the long staircase toward it. “Nick?” she called. “It’s almost six o’clock. We need to get over to Boompah’s house.”

“Nick’s not here, Elizabeth.” Zachary’s voice sounded oddly emotionless. “He’s with Boompah at the market.”

“Zachary?” Concerned, she walked the long hall, peering into every room. “Where are you?”

She turned a corner and caught a glimpse of something red at the far end of a narrow corridor. “I told you he’s not here,” Zachary said over the rumble of thunder. “Boompah promised to get him home on time.”

“What’s Boompah doing at the market? And what are you doing there in the dark?”

“I’m just sitting here, OK? If you don’t mind, I’d like a little privacy for once.”

She bristled. “Have I been bothering you?”

“This whole town has been bothering me. I can’t take a step without everybody tracking my footprints.”

Pausing, she studied the hunched figure seated at the bottom of the attic steps, his arms wrapped around a bulky red wool coat. “Is that Grace’s winter coat?”

“You tell me. I found it in the attic.”

She approached him. “Grace wasn’t able to get out much the last few years except for church, but I’d recognize that coat anywhere.”

“Then she’s the one who took me to the park when I was a kid. She’s the one who gave me Bobo.”

“Grace
gave you Bobo?” Elizabeth sank onto the dusty step beside him. “Wow. Do you remember her well?”

“No. She stopped coming to see me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Too busy, I guess.” He pushed the coat aside. “But I remembered her after all these years.”

“She must have remembered you, too. She gave you her house.” Elizabeth looked over his shoulder up the attic stairs. “Did you find anything else?”

“Not much. A couple of pairs of shoes. An old board game.” He stood. “Well, I guess you’ll be wanting to get Nick from the market.”

She remained seated. “Zachary, I want you to know that Phil Fox and I—”

“Skip it. Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. You and I … we were just starting to connect. That morning at the donut shop, I felt like we had an understanding.”

“What’s to understand? You and Phil are doing everything in your power to block me.”

“It’s not you personally. It’s just that we want to preserve Ambleside’s history.”

“Don’t give me that. I
personally
intend to take down this old house, so I
personally
am the enemy.” He leaned one hand on the door frame. “Look, Elizabeth, this is how it is. All my life I’ve believed in one thing. Tear down the old, and build the new. That’s how life taught me, right? The old family structure wasn’t working, so my parents put me out into the foster-care system to fend for myself. My heritage said education wasn’t important, but I fashioned two college degrees from the rubble of that old image. My father’s example taught me not to hold a job more than a few months, so I built myself a business that will withstand anything. That’s my experience and my motivation. I don’t dwell in the old; I get rid of it and build the new.”