The Rescue (5 page)

After lunch, Will braced himself to move the eagle into a traveling cage. He put on thick leather elbow-length gloves, wore eye protection, said a prayer, and opened the cage to hood the eagle. He let out a sigh of relief when the eagle didn’t attack him. He quickly grabbed its legs and moved it into a cage, locked it tightly, and carried the cage to his car. In his pocket was the address to the wildlife rehab center. He glanced at it. He noticed the name of the center was Plan B, which he thought was fittingly ironic for a rescue center.

When he arrived at the wildlife center, the receptionist told him to keep the eagle outside and wait for the handler. He stood by his car, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm, irritated that the wildlife center didn’t acknowledge that he was a licensed vet and knew what he was doing.

“I understand you have an eagle that needs a flight cage?”

He spun around, then did a double take, stunned. Standing in front of him was Jackie Colombo.
Jackie Colombo!
Will’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing here . . . ? Where have you been?”

Jackie looked equally amazed. “I had an accident at the vet clinic in Stoney Ridge and had to take a leave of absence for a while.”

“You vanished into thin air.”

She frowned. “I’m sorry. First, I had a hand injury—I was badly bitten by a pet raccoon while I was prepping it for surgery—and then discovered the raccoon was rabid. Long story short . . . my hand needed surgery and was bandaged up for a few weeks. And then the vet clinic was worried I would sue them because they neglected to make sure the raccoon was up to date with its shots—of course I wouldn’t sue, but they’re a little paranoid—so they gave me this ridiculous settlement if I promised I’d never speak to the press or to any attorney. I had to take a leave of absence until my hand healed. Next thing I knew, a friend who works at Plan B asked if I could help them out with a few things while I was on leave. So . . . here I am.”

Will was still dazed, trying to listen to her and still absorb the fact that she was standing right in front of him. He had found her! Over Jackie’s head, Will noticed the sign for the wildlife rehab center. P
LAN
B: A W
ILDLIFE
R
EHAB
C
ENTER
. He nearly burst out laughing. Mim Schrock had told him where Jackie was, weeks ago, and he didn’t put two and two together. Then something she said sunk in. “Rabies? You had rabies?”

“No symptoms. But of course I needed treatments.”

“Shots!” Will thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “The old treatment for rabies is fifteen shots to the stomach.” Luke, being a typical eleven-year-old, assumed shots meant gunshots.

She nodded. “Thankfully, the treatment is better now.” She grinned. “I’m all cured.” She glanced back at the Plan B entrance. “I find I’m liking this work much better than being in a clinic. Feels good to make a difference.”

“You stopped answering my emails.”

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It was hard to do anything with my hand. Then, I had so many emails piling up—hundreds of them—I just got overwhelmed and didn’t even try to go through them.” She looked at the ground. “I figured you would have accepted a fancy job somewhere.”

“Not so fancy. I’m in Stoney Ridge starting a wildlife bird rescue center. In fact, I’m in that very location you had suggested.”

“Yeah?” She grinned.

He took a step closer. “Yeah.”

For a while they just stood there, grinning at each other. Then the eagle started to shift impatiently in its cage and Will remembered why he had come. “I have a patient for you.” He reached down to pick up the eagle cage. “But before I forget, would you mind giving me your phone number?”

“Not at all.”

“And . . . what would you think of joining me and my eleven-year-old assistant on the Audubon Christmas Bird Count next week?”

Jackie smiled. “Why, I was planning to go on it myself.”

The next day, Jackie called Will to let him know the eagle was flying well and was cleared to return to the wild. On Saturday afternoon, Will and Luke picked up the eagle, and Jackie, from Plan B Wildlife Rehab Center and drove to the Inn at Eagle Hill close to sunset. They walked up to the ridge, the highest point. Luke spotted Mrs. Eagle flying over the creek. Will opened the cage, took the eagle out, holding tightly to it, then quickly pulled off its hood and set it free. The eagle took off, soaring down the ridge. Luke kept his binoculars peeled on Mrs. Eagle, while Jackie shielded her eyes from the sun and kept watch on Mr. Eagle.

Will looked at Luke and Jackie, and at the eagles soaring over Eagle Hill. He felt overwhelming gratitude well up in his heart, and he thanked God for this moment. He was a different person than when he had arrived. He thought he held his future tightly in his hands. Now, he held his hands, palms open, to God. He remembered that first cautious prayer when he arrived in Stoney Ridge, asking God to bless this endeavor. This morning, his prayer was to ask God to make him a blessing. Some might think it the same prayer, but to Will, it was entirely different.

It wasn’t long before Mr. and Mrs. Eagle found each other and met in the sky. Their claws caught and they did a dance together, spiraling down, down, down toward the earth, then suddenly releasing and soaring back in the sky. Luke was worried they would hurt each other until Jackie explained it was a courting ritual. “They’re happy to be together again,” she said, giving Will a shy sideways glance.

Will grinned. Yes, they were.

1

T
he air had the sweet burn of frost. Long out of habit, even in the winter months, Rose Schrock woke before dawn to carve out a little time for herself before the day began. She liked the bitter cold, a cold that seemed to sharpen the stars in the wide Pennsylvania sky. Dawn was her favorite hour, a time when she felt most keenly aware of how fragile life truly was. Between one breath and the next, your whole world could change. Hers had.

On this morning, wrapped in her husband’s huge coat, she walked along the creek bordering the farm and climbed the hill. The thin February moon, low in the horizon, lit the sky but not the ground. Her golden retriever, Chase, trotted behind her, saluting trees along the path, baptizing each one as he went. When Rose reached the top of the hill, she sat with her back against a tree. In its awakening hour, the farm below seemed peaceful, lovely, calm. The birdsong symphony had just begun—something that always seemed like a miracle to Rose. How did that saying go? “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” And wasn’t that the truth?

Rose Schrock had been raised not to complain, so she didn’t, but the truth of the matter was, the last seven months had been the hardest stretch of her life: so many things had gone wrong that it was hard to know which trouble to pay attention to at any given time.

Her mother-in-law, Vera, assured her cheerfully that increase in trouble was something she had better get used to. “You can’t expect mercy.”

“I don’t expect it,” Rose had told Vera. “I just wish things would go wrong one at a time. That way I could handle them.”

Soon, she would need to head back down the hill and wake her boys. Her girls would already be stirring. They were unusually helpful and did whatever chores there were to do without being asked, whereas her two young sons were so sluggish in the morning that it took them half an hour just to get themselves dressed and downstairs. Before Rose left this quiet spot, she had something to do. To say. No, no. She had something to pray.

Lord,
I beg your pardon, but I am in a fix.
I’m about wrung out from all this, and it’s getting so I can barely tell which way is
up. I’ve got four fatherless children—five, if I
knew where that oldest boy had run off to—an
addle-minded mother-in-law, and barely thirty-six dollars
left in my pocket. I’m fresh out of backbone,
Lord. And near out of fight. Near out. Lord, if
you’d be so kind, look down here and let
me know what to do. I need a Plan B.

Rose waited quietly, hoping for a word from above, or maybe just an inkling. Reflecting, she decided it was funny how life could change so fast. She used to have so many plans. Now, her plans for the future were foggy at best. Years ago, money had been the last thing on her mind. Now it was all she thought about. Scarcely seven months ago, she had a husband. Now Dean was gone. A few years earlier, she hadn’t minded so much being with her mother-in-law. Not so much. Now she couldn’t think of anything worse.

Anything you want to say, Lord?
Any advice? A word
of wisdom?
Rose heard the gentle hoot of a screech owl, once, then twice. A rooster began to crow. That would be Harold, the loudest rooster in the county. The day would soon begin.

A moving bright light in the sky caught her eye. She watched for a moment, intrigued. Then, fascinated. It was a shooting star, darting over little Stoney Ridge in all its glory and majesty. Her jumbled thoughts gave way to a feeling of peace.

What a thing to see at a time when she needed it so badly!

Whenever Miriam had visited her grandmother’s farm, it had seemed like an adventure to adapt to the lifestyle of the Old Order Amish. But living someplace was different than visiting and Mim felt she came from a different world. She was raised in a Mennonite church in a large town in Pennsylvania—where her family had used electricity and drove a car. Here, it was quiet. No electricity, no car, not even normal lights. In the kitchen there was the kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling, which hissed and gave off a flat white light.

It was all different, all new to her. For a girl who didn’t like change, it was too much change, all at once. She wished life could just go back to the way it was. She felt sad at all she’d had and what was no longer.

Her eyes blew open.
Just like my grandmother,
she thought, shocked.
I am sounding just like my grandmother.
Whatever Mammi Vera had, it was catching!

Right then, she decided to start a list of things she liked about moving to Stoney Ridge. She scrambled off her bed and took out a clean sheet of paper from her desk drawer.