Leaves of Hope (9 page)

“Good, strong tea at The Running Footman, as well,” he continued, propelling Beth out the office door toward the elevators as he talked. “We supply them, of course. Wilson Teas—Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Assam, Ceylon, only the finest. Did you know footmen used to run ahead of carriages in order to clear the streets of the poor and vulgar? The aristocracy didn’t want to look at commoners. Too distressing. That’s how the pub got its name.”

“I don’t want to go to a pub,” Beth protested as he steered her into an elevator. “I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Nor do I. Vile habit. There’s no need to drink anything at a British pub. Think of it as a café. Or, in America, a diner. That’s the ticket—we’re off to a diner.”

“Listen, Mr. Wilson, I need to get back to my hotel. I can’t eat lunch with you.”

“Why not? Another appointment? Or am I being boorish again?”

She crossed her arms as the elevator descended. “I need to be alone, that’s all. I have to think.”

“Think aloud. Talking, it’s called.”

“Mr. Wilson—”

“Miles.”

“This is not amusing. Not to me.”

“I’m well aware of that. I overheard your conversation in the Nairobi airport, remember? Half of it, anyway. Not a terribly pleasant memory, if you must know. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t speak to you until the plane was landing. Thought I shouldn’t interfere. But now that I’ve gone and muddled myself in your affairs, the least I can do is take you to lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Besides, there’s something I want to ask you.”

Even though she knew it was a mistake, Beth accompanied him down the sidewalk. “Business?”

“Perhaps. Wilson Teas does move people around quite a bit. But I was thinking of something a bit more personal. Information.”

“About me? No way.”

“Me, actually. My past.”

“I have nothing to tell you, Miles. There’s no Thomas Wood in your past. I couldn’t possibly have any information for you.”

He came to a stop at The Running Footman and held out his hand to usher her inside. “You’re wrong on that account, Ms. Lowell.”

She paused beneath the pub’s creaky sign. “What are you talking about?”

“I may not have a Thomas Wood in my past,” he said, his blue eyes fastened on hers. “But I’ve other things you might be able to help me sort out.”

“Me?”

“You and Saint Paul.”

Four days! Four whole days, and not a word.

Jan ran her index finger across the tip of a pink pastel crayon. It wasn’t the right shade. Too light. Almost silly in its saccharine giddiness.

The child in the photograph clipped to Jan’s easel had only the faintest stain of rose in her cheeks. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, olive skin, long black lashes. In her pink dress with its lace collar, the six-year-old stared solemnly at the camera. If Jan could pencil in a caption above the photograph, it would read: “I hate this dress. How soon can I put on my jeans and climb a tree?”

Oh, Beth. Letting out a deep breath, Jan reached for her glass of lemonade. What was a mother to do? A twenty-five-year-old daughter couldn’t be bribed back into the family. Or punished for wandering away. Or scolded for finding her own life far from home.

Jan had spent eighteen years preparing Beth for independence. More than anything else, a mother wanted a daughter to build a successful life of her own. So why didn’t it feel better? Why did this terrible absence feel like estrangement, as though an uncrossable rift were slowly but surely widening between them?

Picking through her collection of broken and worn pastel crayons, Jan realized she was never going to find the right shade of pink for Beth’s cheeks. Throughout the child’s life, her mother had tried to paint, mold and transform her into a vision of sugary cotton candy. Jan had wanted a baby with pudgy arms that reached for a warm hug. She’d longed for a little girl who would skip through the yard, plucking flowers as her curls danced around her shoulders. She’d wished for a shy teenager standing before a mirror as her mother pinned up her hair for the prom. Pink dresses. Pink ribbons. Pink cheeks.

It was all Thomas’s fault. He had endowed his daughter with skin that tanned too easily, erasing all traces of the rosebud beauty for which her mother had ached. Beth had her father’s deep brown eyes and sober stare. She had his nose, long and straight and perfect. Not a curve in sight. No dimples. Inquisitiveness rather than sparkle. Nothing that said sugar and spice.

Shaking her head at the unfinished portrait on the easel, Jan stood and padded barefoot into the kitchen. Bobby and Billy had been easy to capture on paper. She’d found the perfect photographs of them in her collection of albums. Her sons were little elves with fat cheeks and freckles and shocks of unruly hair. Bright blue eyes stared out from their portraits, now framed and awaiting a Christmas presentation.

John would have loved the pictures of his boys. Jan regretted that she’d spent so many years painting nothing but roses. These days, children seemed to be rolling out of her imagination as though she were the old woman who lived in a shoe. She could hardly keep up with them. They skipped stones on the lake, played in autumn leaves, held hands and giggled, tiptoed through dandelions, marveled at bumblebees. Sketches and fully executed portraits lay scattered everywhere in the room Jan was using as a studio. These unexpected children fluttered and floated and somersaulted right out of her mind and onto the paper nearly as fast as she could draw them. Truly, she had so many children, she didn’t know what to do!

All except Beth. The still, quiet, staring child in the pink dress looked accusingly at her mother day after day, as if to say, “You didn’t tell me about Thomas Wood, and so I won’t let you draw me.” Rebellious child. Resentful. Unforgiving. What was the point in being so hateful, Beth?

Jan took a handful of carrots from a bag in the refrigerator. As she munched, she debated making another phone call. London. At least she knew where that was. But what if Beth had left the city by now? What if she were somewhere over the Atlantic, sleeping in an airplane…her preferred womb?

Like Thomas, the child had always been restless. Eager to get on with life. In a hurry to move away. Always ready to leave at the first opportunity.

Well, Jan had learned you couldn’t have a happy life without a home. She had no doubt of this whatsoever.
Truly
content people resided in cottages or bungalows or low-slung ranch houses with three bedrooms, two baths and a walk-out basement. Snug homes that hugged and coddled their owners. The less satisfied built cold, massive monuments with too much space and not enough warmth—castles and palaces and 6,000-square-foot mansions. The absolutely miserable had nothing surrounding them at all, no place to call home. They slept in alleys, cardboard boxes, bus shelters. Rented one-room studio apartments. Lived on airplanes.

Returning to her easel, Jan took down the photograph of her daughter, slid it back into a portfolio and tied the ribbon around it. She removed the clips from the heavy paper onto which she had attempted—and repeatedly failed—to capture Beth. That was the problem. Beth didn’t want to be caught. Neither had her father. They wanted to run away, both of them. They were eager for escape, like butterflies in a jar.

Oh, far too much like butterflies. Beth and her birth father believed people could change themselves from fat, wobbly caterpillars nibbling at leaves into brilliant, fragile, fluttering winged creatures ever in search of the next bright blossom. Caterpillars were meant to change, Jan knew. But people weren’t.

She took out a fresh sheet of paper and clipped it to her easel. Children were allowed to grow up. But as adults, they ought to stay more or less the way they had been raised. Studying the blank white page, Jan saw Thomas’s face as he gazed at her that very last time. He had expected her to become a butterfly and glide away with him. He had truly believed she would take his hand and fly at his side like Wendy and Peter Pan on their way to adventures in Neverland. But Jan couldn’t do that. She was who she was. Small and quiet…and yes, even a little cowardly.

In the Nairobi airport, Beth had said she was running a race, like the Apostle Paul in the Bible. The girl intended to throw off every weight that tied her down. Did that mean she would abandon her own mother? That’s not what Christianity was all about! You didn’t go sprinting away helter-skelter, expecting other Christians to join you in a mad dash for the pearly gates. A good Christian followed the methodical plan set out in the Bible. Be good. Try not to sin. Raise your children with strong moral values. And go to church.

For a moment, Jan considered searching through her Bible for the verses her daughter had mentioned in their last conversation. How had Beth come up with those passages off the top of her head? And right there in the middle of some foreign airport!

Unfortunately, Jan didn’t know where she had put her Bible. It was probably still packed away in one of the boxes in the guest room. Since Beth’s visit, she couldn’t bring herself to go in there. Certainly none of the cartons had been opened. What if Jan accidentally found something else? Another reminder of Thomas…or John…or Beth…people who kept getting lost or running away or dying…

Closing her eyes, Jan fought the tears that welled up from down deep in her chest. Life wasn’t a race. And people weren’t supposed to change. Were they? She certainly didn’t want to do anything more extreme than moving from Tyler to Lake Palestine. That had been enough. More than enough. Now she had planted herself here, like the Peace Rose growing up the side of her deck. A lovely yellow and pink rose with roots down deep and velvety blossoms unfolding beneath the blue sky.

As she sniffled back tears, a child’s face suddenly peered around the thorny stem of a rose bush in Jan’s mind. A pink-cheeked little girl with golden curls and lace ruffles on her sleeves. She fixed her gaze on Jan, the blue eyes twinkling and the plump little lips drawn into a teasing smile. It was as if the child were begging to be captured. Pleading to be transformed from a thought into one of the soft, smudgy, winsome portraits that lay about in the studio.

Roses and pretty little girls…Jan picked up the pink pastel crayon that had been so wrong before, and she began to sketch.

“Y
our brother was right. You’re awful.” Beth sat on a hard oak chair trying to read the menu in the gloomy light of The Running Footman. “I should have trusted my instincts in the Nairobi airport.”

“To run?” Miles Wilson asked. “It usually takes a slightly longer acquaintance with me before a woman heeds her desperate urge to flee.”

“You had your feet on my suitcase. Muddy boots, no less.”

“Dried mud.”

“Big difference.” She looked up at him. “So,
jackets
are baked potatoes? You sure about that?”

“Would I lead you astray?”

Beth shook her head in disbelief at the man’s cockiness as a waitress took their orders for two baked potatoes and two cups of tea. Darjeeling. This was not at all what she should be doing, Beth realized all over again. She needed to be back in her hotel room sorting through her feelings about the very much alive Thomas Wood. Who was married. And lived in India.

“Darjeeling?” she asked. “Where is it exactly?”

“Top of the world. Another hill station retreat, much like Nuwara Eliya, established during the golden years of the British Empire specifically for the pleasure of the Colonial elite. It sits at just above two thousand meters—that’s seven thousand feet to you Yanks—the perfect elevation to grow some of the most expensive tea in the world. Lucky for us. In the mid-1800s, the Viceroys of India would move their families to Darjeeling at the first drop of monsoon rain.”

“How long do the rains last?”

“June to September. Unfortunately, that’s when the Himalayan mountains are obscured by clouds, and the rain is so heavy it can wash away the roads. The best time to visit Darjeeling is early summer.”

“Now?”

“Between April and mid-June. And then it’s good again between September and November. In winter, it’s much colder than one would think for India. But, of course, Darjeeling sits right up against the lower slopes of the mountains. Fantastic view of Mount Kanchenjunga from Tiger Hill, and on a clear day, one can often see Mount Everest. Shall we go together, Ms. Lowell?”

Beth gaped at him as the waitress set steaming baked potatoes and white teacups on the table. A pot of Darjeeling tea, a pitcher of milk and a cup of sugar cubes took up the rest of the space on the small round oak tabletop. Around them, people were milling about—men and women in business suits mostly, standing at the bar or seated at tables, eating their lunches and chatting.

“I’m not going to Darjeeling with
you,
” Beth said, stabbing her fork into the potato. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Who better? I’ll think of a vital reason for Malcolm to send me packing. Shouldn’t be too difficult. There’s always something awry at one of our estates. Labor uprisings. Pests or blights. Someone skimming the books. Machinery breakdowns. We’ll fly into Calcutta and then make the short hop to Bagdogra airport near Siliguri. A Wilson Teas man will meet us and drive us the three hours uphill to Darjeeling. Simple enough. I’ll put you into one of the guesthouses, show you about the estate and when you’re ready, I’ll introduce you to Mr. Wood.”

As Miles outlined this absurd plan, both Beth’s brain and her nose were quickly clogging up from the pall of cigarette smoke in the pub. She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Miles was crazy. Impossible that she would actually consider going to India to meet her father. Thomas Wood. The man had not existed for twenty-five years. Then he came to life in a rose-strewn teapot, died in a tsunami and now lived again on a Darjeeling tea estate with his Indian wife. It was too much. Yet Miles was dangling the idea before her, tempting her, pressing her toward a moment that might be the worst of her whole life. Or the best.

She couldn’t do it. How would her mother feel if she found out! And Jan Lowell
would
find out. Beth had never been good at keeping secrets. Her mother had turned out to be an expert at secret-keeping.

Put that way, why should Beth care how her mom felt about her going to Darjeeling to meet Thomas Wood? So what if it hurt Jan? Look what the woman had done to her own daughter!

“You’ve gone away,” Miles said. “Thinking about your father?”

“I always say grace before a meal,” Beth announced as she set her napkin in her lap. “Excuse me for a moment.”

She bowed her head, trying to find a stillness within herself to approach her Heavenly Father. Mothers and fathers and brothers and arrogant tea executives. A confusing whirlwind. The words finally came.
Dear Lord, please make clear what You are trying to teach me. Please show me why You allowed Miles Wilson into my life, because he is incredibly irritating and pushy, and please guide me as I work my way to some kind of understanding about what to do with Thomas Wood. Thank You for this meal, Father, and help me not to choke on this stupid cigarette smoke. In the name of Your Son Jesus I pray. Amen.

It hadn’t been a very good prayer, but Beth hardly considered that an issue. Long ago, she had taken the Apostle Paul to heart when he told the Thessalonians to always keep on praying, pray without ceasing, never quit praying. Which meant that Beth more or less kept up a constant inner dialog with the Father, whether she was in a meeting, in the shower, thousands of miles above the earth in an airplane or sitting inside a smoky London pub.

Oh, sure, she tried to pause, bow her head, preface each prayer with praise and end by sealing it with the name of Christ. But most often, it didn’t work out that way. Her communications with the Lord usually were breathed up in quick, short, almost unworded impulses. And His messages to her came back in all sorts of nearly indefinable ways—the certain sense of His presence surrounding her and inside her, the sudden recollection of a verse of Scripture that fit the situation perfectly, the actions or words of someone nearby, an event that couldn’t be coincidence, an unexplained change of mood or an undeniable assurance that God was with her.

“Are we going to get on with it anytime soon?” Miles asked.

Beth realized she’d been staring at her baked potato for who knew how long. She blinked and lifted her head. “Sorry. I’m sort of in a daze. Sure, go ahead and eat.”

“I was waiting for the prayer.”

“I said it already.”

“I didn’t hear a word.”

“I wasn’t praying out loud.”

“How’s a bloke to know if a prayer’s begun or ended if nothing is actually said?”

“I was praying to God, Miles. And since His Spirit lives inside me, I’m not required to bring you in on the conversation.”

“I see. Well, then, on with the meal.” He cut into his potato, took a bite and regarded Beth as he chewed. Disconcerted, she took a sip of tea. Darjeeling really was a delicious strain. Light and almost flowery, it lifted her spirits immediately.

“Listen, I’m sorry for being short with you,” she told the man across the table. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness in wanting to take me to lunch. And even this idea of going with you to India—crazy though it is—is sweet in a weird sort of way. I don’t know why you’re being kind to me, but I’m grateful. The thing is, I need time alone to think. These past few weeks have been stressful for me.”

“You didn’t know about Thomas Wood until recently?”

“I found out when I was visiting my mother last month. She raised me to believe that her husband, John Lowell, was my father…and he was. He really was the best father. Dad was great. Of course, we had the normal conflicts through the years, but he loved me. I never had any doubt about that. He was everything a girl could want in a father. He took care of me. He listened to me. He loved my mother desperately.”

“Good thing, that.”

“Absolutely. We were a happy family. Dad was wonderful.”

“Was?”

“He died a few years ago. He had ALS…Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In America, it’s also known as Lou Gerhig’s disease, after a famous baseball player who died of it. It’s a motor neurone disease that causes degeneration throughout the brain and spinal cord—”

“I know exactly what it is,” Miles cut in. “Here in England, we call it Motor Neurone Disease or MND. I sit on the governing board of the British MND association. It’s an independent charity with a national office in Northampton.”

Beth set her cup down, missing the center of the saucer and nearly upsetting the whole thing. She couldn’t believe what Miles had just said. “You know about ALS? MND? But hardly anyone does. Why do you sit on the national board?”

“I’m on lots of boards. In England, we aristocrats lend our esteemed presence to all sorts of charities. You may recall that Diana, Princess of Wales, had her name linked to literally hundreds of them. It’s a way of doing our bit. And more to the point, a way of looking good. My father held the seat before me, and now I’ve got it.”

“Wait. You’re an aristocrat? What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, Malcolm and I have a title or two that we toss about on occasion. One can’t be in trade as many years as the Wilson family has and not come to the attention of some monarch or another. At any rate, MND is dreadful, and I’m sorry to hear your father suffered from it.”

“Thank you.” Beth gripped her paper napkin, suddenly and unexpectedly fighting tears. The grieving over her father had been protracted over the three long years of his decline. When he died, everyone who knew him felt a mix of terrible sorrow along with immense relief. The battle John Lowell fought had been hard and unbelievably strenuous, and it had sapped away every ounce of the man he once had been. Beth’s mother had hopelessly endured the agony of her husband’s disease at his side.

Now, sitting in a London pub far away from Jan Lowell, Beth regretted to the bottom of her heart that she hadn’t been a better daughter. It had been so hard to watch her father lose his abilities one by one. She had hated knowing that his mind was perfect—as brilliant and lucid as ever—inside that fragile, immobilized shell of a human body. And so, Beth had found reasons not to go home often. Each time she did see him, it hurt so much that she stayed away longer the next time. Until finally he went.

A thousand times she had wished she could bring him back. Not the silent, shriveled man, but the hearty father who had ridden her piggy-back on his shoulders and had taken her to the zoo to see the zebras and had taught her to love history. She missed her daddy so much.

But he, too, had been part of the conspiracy. Why had her parents lied about Thomas Wood? Why had there even been a Thomas Wood? It wasn’t right! It wasn’t fair! She didn’t want another father—a first father who had somehow preceded the one she had loved with all her little-girl heart.

“You don’t care for our jackets?” Miles reached across the table and prodded the edge of her uneaten potato. “Too dry?”

“Hey, you touched it with your fork!”

“I’m perfectly disease-free, I’ll have you know, though there might be a parasite or two floating about—left over from my childhood in the tropics. Occasionally, I think I might have a touch of malaria. But you won’t catch that from anything but a mosquito. Do give your jacket a try.”

“I’m not hungry. I’m just…” She pressed her lips together in an effort to force back the tide of emotion that swelled through her all over again.

“I realize you want to be going.” He studied her for a moment. “Do you want to know the part of your conversation with your mum that interested me the most?”

“You shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, Miles.”

“Boorish men do that. Nasty habit. It was the way you described your life. You told your mother you were running a race. You painted a picture of yourself that I couldn’t get out of my head. I saw you taking off everything, stripping yourself down—”

“Mr. Wilson!”

“Not like that. The baggage. The past problems, the secrets, the things most people lug around with them everywhere they go, not even knowing they have them. But you said you’d thrown all that off, and you were running unhindered toward the finish line. The idea of it fascinated me. I couldn’t get the picture out of my head. You, running that race.”

Beth looked into his blue eyes and realized that he meant what he was saying. For once, the uncouth, aggressive boor had taken a back seat to this earnest man who was telling the truth. He wanted to understand.

“Paul,” she told him. “The Apostle Paul. He used images of running, training and racing toward a finish line in his letters to the early Christians. I’m guessing he might have been an athlete.”

“How did you happen to have that Bible in your bag?”

“I carry it everywhere.” She reached down into her purse, pulled out the small leather-bound volume, set it on the table between them and flipped the onionskin pages. “Best guidebook you’ll ever find.”

“Better than Frommer’s?”

“This is the guide to
life.
”

“And you’ve got it memorized?”

“Hardly. But I know it. I use it like a radar screen to sift through everything coming at me. It helps me identify and filter out things I shouldn’t have in my life.”

He smiled. “Such as Brits with muddy boots?”

“You definitely lit up the screen. Major alert. Proceed with extreme caution.”

“That bad, am I? How do you know?”

“I don’t. I hardly know you. First impressions can be wrong, but in the airport you came across as incredibly self-centered. You needed a place to rest your boots, and my bag was handy. Didn’t matter how many times I asked you to move your feet, you always put them back.”