Rooms: A Novel (32 page)

Forever your great-uncle,

Archie

P.S. Some choices are irreversible and some cause irreversible change. Others are not and do not. Regarding Sarah, I have no answers. But we both know His will, and your destiny will not fail to be accomplished.

How did Archie know about Sarah? Right, what didn’t Rick tell Archie? Micah sat on his deck and turned the key in his hand over and over again wondering where Sarah was right now. And what time the Bank of Astoria opened. A quick visit to the Web told him 10:00.

He would be standing outside their door tomorrow at 9:59 a.m.

CHAPTER 45

He’d have answers in one minute and thirty-two seconds. Thirty-one. Thirty. At precisely 10:00 Micah pushed open the bank’s front door. It squealed like a pig at feeding time.

The Bank of Astoria was small but comfortable. There was a sitting area with cloth chairs to his right, a stand with a large stainless steel coffeepot and packets of Coffee-mate creamer to his left. Caffeine? No way. It would push him off the chart. The adrenaline in his veins had already given him the shakes. The key to his heart’s desire?
Bring it on, Archie.

“Looks like you could use some WD-40 on that door,” he said with a smile to an elderly lady behind the counter.

“May I help you?” She glared at him over the top of her tortoiseshell glasses.

“I’m here to look at a safety deposit box, thanks.” He pinched his lips together to stifle a laugh. “Here’s my key. The number is on it.”

“We know how these things work, sonny.”

He stayed silent as the Ice Queen shuffled over to a file cabinet and pulled the file on the box in question. When she came back, she had a new personality.

“Well, well, well. You must be Micah Taylor. Yes, yes, yes.” She turned to two bankers who sat at their desks ticking away on their computer keyboards. “It’s him. Micah Taylor is here. Right here! I told you he would show up, and now you all have to watch me fill my piggy bank.”

“You know me?”

The teller pranced toward the back of the bank with a dance step she probably did a good deal better thirty years earlier, too locked in to her jitterbug to answer his question.

A male employee that looked like Santa Claus with a buzz cut wandered over. “You’ll have to excuse Madge’s unorthodox bank behavior there.” He stretched his paisley suspenders, one thumb on each side, and continued. “You see, that safety deposit box has never been opened, and there is one, and only one, name authorized to use it. Of course that’s you.

“The box was first rented quite a few moons ago. Yes sirree Jim-Bob, it has gained quite a reputation over the years. We were given explicit instructions to do nothing with the box until you came and opened it, and we’ve all had a little bet going as to when—and frankly if—you’d ever show up. Madge had only ten more days for you to show before her guess was up, and since the cash prize to the winner has grown to a nice little chunk of change—good conservative bank investing over the course of seventeen years—you sure made her day just now.”

“You’ve had this thing for seventeen years?” Of course they had. Archie first rented the box back in 1992.

“Bank’s been bought out three times since the box was first registered, but it was prepaid for twenty-five years so it’s stayed put.”

Madge waltzed up to Micah with her eyebrows above the rims of her glasses, the smile still on her face, gold showing where she hadn’t brushed well enough when she was younger. “I have the box in the back in the private booths. Would you follow me, please?”

Micah was led into a tiny room with two booths. Madge gestured to the one on the left, and he stepped inside and pulled the curtain closed. The box sat in the center of the small desk.

He sat down and held his breath. This was it. Last contact with Archie. The final puzzle piece.

Micah inserted the key Madge had given him into the box and turned it, as if it were a Q-tip in a baby’s ear. It wouldn’t rotate. With slightly more effort the clasp opened with a light click. Part of him wanted to throw the lid back with abandon; another part didn’t want to open it at all. Rick was gone. So was Sarah and Seattle. Now Archie’s voice from the past was about to blink out.

He’d given up his world and gained his soul. There was no turning back. But where did it leave him? Cannon Beach without Rick and Sarah was poorly flavored. And there was the nagging question of income. He had little money left, and although the mortgage papers he’d gotten from Chris assured him the house and land were paid for, when tax time rolled around, he would need a hefty sum to cover a nine-thousand-square-foot home on the ocean.

A light tapping on the wall just outside his curtain startled Micah. He jerked upright and cracked his knee on the cubicle desk. “Yes?” He winced.

“Just making sure everything is going a-okay in there, Mr. Taylor.”

It was Granny Good-Grin.

“Fine. Thanks.”

He rubbed his knee as his eyes settled back on the box.

Might as well.

He opened it. An old manila envelope sat at the bottom. On top of it was a note from Archie. Micah lifted the card as if it were a butterfly’s wing.

Micah,

I thought you might like to have a reprint.

Archie

A fine layer of dust covered the envelope. Micah unwound the string sealing it, his palms sweaty. He turned it upside down. A photo and a key taped to a note card slid out. Micah stared at a copy of the picture he’d seen at Chris’s house. Chris, Archie, and Rick stood on a fishing boat, their arms around each other, grins splashed on their faces. This he would treasure.

Four lines were written on the note card:

A key to open heart’s desires,

Yours and those beyond,

Cords are cut and chains are broken,

When we live our calling strong.

Micah pulled the key off the card and examined it. “A key to open his heart’s desire.” Archie’s last letter had said the same thing. Micah hadn’t expected a literal key. One side had deep scratches. He looked closer. They weren’t scratches. They were words or numbers. Too small to make out but definitely writing.

He gathered up the treasures, said good-bye to Madge, and dashed down Main Street to find a magnifying glass. After buying one at Trinkets & Treasures, he sprinted to his car, got in, pulled out the key, and shoved it under the glass. The writing leaped out at him.

An address was engraved into the key in a soft, fluid script. He was dumbfounded.

The address was his own.

Then he felt it. A physical sensation this time. His world had shifted once again, even though from where he sat parked everything looked the same. The last vestiges of his Seattle existence had fallen away. He knew it. Only Cannon Beach and the unexplained parallel life remained.

Micah started his car and headed for home. He was so dazed it wasn’t till he shifted into third gear that he realized this wasn’t the BMW he’d gotten out of half an hour earlier but a Toyota Camry.

He took the corner into his driveway at twenty miles an hour. Adrenaline shot through his veins as his tires threw up a curtain of crushed gravel, and he slid toward the bank in front of his house. He slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt inches from the end of the driveway.

Streams of light poured through tiny openings in the fog bank above him, as if randomly sprinkled spotlights announced his arrival.

The house looked the same. But Micah knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

He got out and walked to the front door. The beat of his heart increased with each step forward.

The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw the change. The painting. It hung over the fireplace, three spotlights pouring down on it.

It was finished.

The last bit of sky and clouds had been filled in, and a lone seagull skimmed across the wind, its body in partial silhouette against the brilliance of the sun. The sand castle next to the little boy was finished, and the people along the left edge were complete as well. The figure walking out of the painting to the right was Rick. Of course.

But something else had changed. What? He had studied every intricacy of this painting. He knew every brushstroke, every nuance of color. It was subtle, or he would have seen it immediately. The change toyed with him, played in corners of his mind, dared him to discover what it was.

He paced in front of the painting, glanced away, glanced back, as if he could sneak up on the difference by turning his head fast enough.

Finally it clicked. There! A small black streak in the corner of the painting. He knew instantly it was the artist’s signature tucked in among azure and emerald waves. Finally. He would know who painted this masterpiece that had captured his heart. He eased toward the painting as if approaching too quickly might make the name vanish into the surf it rested on.

The signature was so small he had to get within inches of the canvas to see it. Before reading the name, he closed his eyes and laughed. All this buildup for a name he probably wouldn’t even recognize. Then he lifted his lids in slow motion. The name wasn’t difficult to read. But Micah only saw it for a few seconds before he slumped backward to the carpet, head in his hands. Archie had said his heart’s desire.

Astonishment filled him. It couldn’t be.

The final piece had fallen into place. The puzzle was complete.

He ran out onto his deck and shouted till his voice grew hoarse. “Yes!
Yes!”

||||||||

Moments later he remembered everything. Every scene from the last six years of his life melded into place. His old girlfriend Joan, the ankle injury, and every other detail.

For six years he’d starved while he painted ocean scenes all up and down the Oregon Coast—from Bandon to Florence to Newport. Getting better, selling a few paintings, galleries taking an interest, his reputation as an artist growing. And how one year ago he’d received a note down in Newport from his great-uncle Archie telling him he’d inherited a home on the Oregon Coast.

As he bathed in the memories, the scenes and memories of his Seattle life faded. There had been another life, hadn’t there?

Yes, Seattle. He had lived there, worked there. Made money there? Yes, a lot. RimSoft. He’d been famous. He was sure all of those things were true. A few moments later he wasn’t. There were bits and pieces, scattered memories, puzzle pieces that even if they were all put together wouldn’t show him enough of the picture to remember it clearly. It didn’t matter.

He walked back inside and glanced down at the coffee table just inside the door. A worn magazine looked up at him:
Coast Life.
He picked it up, smiled, then gently laid it back down. He’d read about himself a little later.

Micah walked around the side of the house toward the top of the bluff. A small circle of ocean-smoothed stones formed a fire pit. He grabbed the kindling sitting next to it, and five minutes later crimson-and-gold flames shot toward the sky. It was an altar to the final disintegration of his old life and a celebration of the one just begun. He didn’t go inside till the last embers faded.

||||||||

That night sleep evaded him. He tried. Pushed Sarah from his mind thirty times an hour.

But it was futile.

Archie had said some things were irreversible. Others not. So which was Sarah? To give her up, stop loving her was like trying to stop the waves from crashing onto the shore.

His feelings of love for her pummeled him without a break. Relentless. But he didn’t want them to stop.

Tomorrow he would find her. He had to try one more time.

CHAPTER 46

Sarah asked herself for the twentieth time why she was going but didn’t turn the car around. By the time she reached Micah’s driveway, she had resigned herself to the task but was determined to make the visit as short as possible. Say what she had to and then leave forever.

She parked at the end of his drive and sat for ten minutes, her fingers the only part of her moving as she drummed them on her steering wheel. Most of her wanted to drive off and never look back. But a small place inside kept her from heading home. Besides, she had promised Rick.

She walked toward Micah’s house and saw him through a window. He sat in front of a painting of the ocean hanging over the fireplace. Gorgeous. A picture as captivating as she’d ever seen. As she studied it, Micah turned. Their eyes locked; neither moved. Then he disappeared from view, and the front door opened a few seconds later.

“Sarah.”

“Hi.”

Surprise flickered over his face but he didn’t speak. She wondered how to start and groped for words that wouldn’t give him false hope. “I’m here for one reason.”

Micah didn’t respond.

“I promised Rick I’d come.”

“Because he told you who he is.” Micah opened the door wider.

“Yes. And a few other things.”

“Come in?”

Sarah didn’t answer but stepped over the threshold and into the living room toward the painting. “I love this.”

“Thanks.” Micah smiled, a look of peace on his face. He closed the front door and motioned her toward the picture windows overlooking the ocean.

She stood in the center of the room, arms folded. “I know God can do amazing things, but I don’t believe we had a romance in another life. Wouldn’t I sense it or at least have some miniscule feeling it happened?”

Sarah was angry. Angry for being here. Angry that Micah had stolen away any chance at there being something between them with his bizarre behavior. Angry Rick had asked her to give Micah a second chance, knowing she wouldn’t refuse.

“You don’t have even a little bit of that feeling right now?”

It stopped her cold. The truth? She had felt something the second Micah stepped into Osburn’s ten nights ago. Something small but persistent saying they had a deeper connection than just one dinner together. But his weird performance next to the ice cream counter had crushed any hope of it being real. When it had turned bizarre, she forced any thought of a connection to the far reaches of her heart.

“What do you want, Micah?”

His eyes closed and his lips moved silently. Probably praying. After a few seconds he opened his eyes, and with penetrating confidence said, “I want the impossible. I want to take you into my heart.”

“Your what?” Sarah squeezed her arms tighter.

“If you knew my heart, you’d believe.”

Sarah didn’t answer. As strange as the statement was, the maniacal attitude she’d seen at Osburn’s was gone. His countenance had changed. A quiet confidence stood in sharp contrast to the image she’d seen the other night. The man in front of her knew who he was.

“I can’t convince you with words that we’ve had more of a history than you remember.” He turned to look at the waves. “I can only reveal my heart to you and then let you choose.”

“And how are you going to show me your heart?”

“I don’t know.” He looked up at the painting.

The next words out of Sarah’s mouth shocked her. “But God knows.”

“What?” Micah turned. A faint smile appeared on his face.

Sarah didn’t answer. Her eyes were riveted on something to the left of where he stood. She spoke in a whisper. “When I had dinner with you here, that door was not there.”

“What door?”

“There. Right there.” She pointed to his left, and Micah turned to look.

It was normal height but twice the width of a standard door. An intoxicating aroma flowed from it. Like roses mixed with apple trees in full bloom. Light streamed from under it. The confused look on Micah’s face told her he didn’t see it.

“What door?” he repeated.

But in the moment he asked, his eyes danced, and she knew he could see it.

The door to his heart.

She reached for Micah’s hand, and together they walked forward. The door opened before they reached it, and she stepped through into what looked like liquid light. It was pure and piercing. Worries, pain, wounds, fear, all slipped off, consumed by the river of radiance.

A moment later they stood in a grove of trees. It was daytime—early morning by the look of it. Dew covered the grass, and the angle of the beams of light that streamed through the trees said the sun had only been up for moments. Beyond the forest swelled an ocean. But not the Pacific. This ocean was too blue, too big, the pounding emerald waves too full and rich, the foam at the top of the waves too white to be one of earth’s oceans.

So much passion and power. So much love she felt her heart would burst. The sounds, the light, everything said this was the place she’d been longing for all her life. She was in the presence of God.

“Where are we?”

“You know.”

“Your heart.”

Micah didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to.

An instant later a circular curtain of transparent light surrounded them, and Sarah gasped as vibrant images came to life on every inch of the curtain’s surface.

She watched herself in Osburn’s the day Micah and she met, then saw bike rides together, dinners, their hike up Humbug Mountain and up the Astoria Column. Their trips to Fort Stevens and excursions down to Manzanita, their first kiss, and even a few of their fights. Scene after scene from their months together.

She stared at him in astonishment.

Rick and Micah’s first meeting at Hug Point, his breakup with Julie, visiting the doctor about his ankle, almost drowning in his kayak.

She watched herself implore Micah not to go back to Seattle and him say it would be okay.

She remembered. All of it. Every moment they’d spent together. Her head sank into her hands. “I remember.” She turned to Micah. “You and me. I remember.” She moved toward him, tears in her eyes.

He drew her in tight.

The screen vanished, and they stood in a high mountain meadow; Indian paintbrush and Canterbury bellflowers swarmed through the tall grass. But the beauty paled in comparison to the Presence surrounding them.

Sarah buried her head in Micah’s shoulder and rested there, maybe for hours. Maybe years. It was a moment snatched from eternity.

||||||||

Micah had closed his eyes the moment Sarah and he embraced inside his heart. He opened them in bed, staring at his ceiling. He whipped off his covers and bolted upright.

It had to be more than a dream!

He pulled on a T-shirt and some sweatpants and raced for the front door. He yanked it open and sprinted down the driveway, ignoring the gravel cutting into his feet.

“No!”

There were no tire tracks where Sarah’s car might have left some. Lunging back into the house, Micah grabbed the phone and called her house, then Osburn’s. No answer at her house, and the girls at Osburn’s hadn’t seen her.

Setting down the phone, he let the sorrow come. He wandered over to the fireplace, sat down in front of it, and closed his eyes. “You are still Lord.”

When Micah opened his eyes minutes later, his gaze rose to the painting, and his breath caught. It had changed one final time. A figure had been added—a woman—walking straight toward his home. He leaped to his feet and sprang out onto his deck to search the beach.

Fifty yards away Sarah strolled toward him, hair flowing in the wind like a river, her radiant smile filling his world.

It wasn’t a dream.

The dream had just begun.

||||||||

A few days later Sarah and Micah sauntered among the bleached driftwood scattered along the beach, holding hands, neither of them speaking. The sun eased behind the clouds leaving a russet smear across the sky. They rounded the point just north of Micah’s home to the sound of pounding hammers.

A small house was coming into shape among a small grove of poplar trees. They squinted to see the name on the sign at the edge of the lot that would tell them the name of the builder. It was Hale & Sons Construction Co.

“Oh, my,” Sarah said. “Do you think they’re building—?”

“Yes.” Micah smiled. “I think they are.”