Tomorrow's Sun (26 page)

What’s the mantra for this, Vanessa?
Focus on the moment. Live in the present. Nothing in her bag of emotion-stabilizing tricks fit. She needed to get out of the moment.
Happy place! That’s it. Ocean breeze, sand in my toes, Coppertone, surfers skimming the
—

“Crab dip.” Jake’s elbow nudged her off the beach. “Mom made that. Did you taste it?”

“No. Not yet.”
Though it wouldn’t be hard to come by here in my happy beach place
. “I made the broccoli salad.”

“You’re amazing.”

“Because I can chop broccoli?”

“Because you can chop broccoli, bake cookies, morph into a butterfly, and transform my cranky niece all in the same day.” He nodded toward a bench swing Lexi shared with another girl about the same age. “She might not have acted like she was having fun, but it turned her day around.”

Emily’s chin dipped. Her head tilted. The butterfly comment slipped to the back of the queue. “We had a great time. Did she give you the idea she—”

“Emily!” Tina waved through roast pork steam. “Come meet my man.”

She introduced Colt, a large man with a miniature pitchfork in one hand and foot-long knife in the other. Emily wondered if he knew she’d been curled in a corner of the dining room the day he’d delivered her air conditioner. Tina sashayed around the table and took her by the arm. “Whew, it’s hot by that thing. There are so many people I want to introduce you to. Have you met Sherry and Rod or—”

Jake stuck his hand in front of Tina’s face. “Stop. Look down.”

Tina complied.

“What do you see?”

“Plates. Food. Oh. Bet you guys would like to eat.”

“Yes, we would.” He planted a noisy kiss on Tina’s cheek. “Wonderful party. As soon as we’re—”

“Is this her?” A little woman appeared behind Tina, hugging a book the size of an unabridged dictionary. She directed her gaze at Emily. “You’re the one who bought Grace Ostermann’s house, aren’t you? I’m Dorothy Willett, president of the Historical Society. You go ahead and eat and then come find me. I’ve got some things to show you that I hope you’ll find fascinating.”

“How can I eat when you leave me hanging like that?”

Wise eyes crinkling, Dorothy Willett smiled and turned away then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Have you heard the ghosts yet?”

Jake swung his leg over the bench and leaned across the picnic table. “You haven’t, have you?”

Emily’s hair fluttered against her cheek as she sat down. His opinion about short hair on women was rapidly changing. She tucked it behind her ear, revealing a tiny square emerald on her earlobe. “I haven’t what?”

“Heard the ghosts.”

She laughed. “Only in the letters.”

“What’s in them? Learn anything?”

Emily looked down at her plate and picked up a piece of cheese. Her fingernails were painted a pale blue. “I’m waiting”—her chin lifted—“to read them with you.”

“I …” There had been a beginning, middle, and end to the sentence when it formed in his head. Where had it gone? “Thank you.”

“You found them. It’s only fair that we read them together.”

“No quotes from ancient myths this time, I promise.”

She answered with a half smile. “No drama scenes, I promise.”

Jake rested his fork on his plate. “You’ve been through a lot. I can only guess—”

“Cob!”

Topher’s bullhorn voice carried across the barn. In a red plaid shirt and a white Stetson, he strode toward them like Paul Bunyan.

“Topher!”

Loose cannon, headed this way. There’d be no more referring to his time at Emily’s as “the Foster job” after this. The eyebrow gymnastics zeroing in on Emily didn’t bode well. Thankfully her back was turned to the approaching giant.

But something had caused a sudden change in her expression. Was it the weird glow from the little white lights overhead, or did the color just fade from her face?

Lasering a look he hoped conveyed “Keep your trap shut about the girl,” Jake waved. “Emily, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This is Christopher Hansen. He’ll be doing a lot of the drywalling at your place, unless you change your mind after tonight.”

Emily offered a weak smile. She looked as if the ghosts they’d just been talking about danced along the barn walls. Topher shook the table when he plunked down next to Jake. “Glad to meet you, Em—” His black-bearded chin dropped. “Emily?
The
Emily? Cob, you been holding out on me?”

Enough with the theatrics. Whatever he was up to, it wasn’t good. Jake turned from Topher’s bizarre grin to Emily’s frighteningly pale, wide-eyed face. What in the world was going on?

Topher doffed his hat like Hoss in an old
Bonanza
rerun. “Soooo glad to see you again.” He picked up her hand and pressed his lips to it.

“What the …?” Jake’s fingers curled into his palms.
Hands off my lady
.

A massive hand clapped his shoulder. “My Emily’s back and you don’t even tell me?”

“Your …?”
He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. Meanwhile, Emily seemed to have forgotten how to speak altogether. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s the one. For real, you don’t remember? You preached at her all night. The other chick got bored and left and I had to do something to rescue this one.” Topher’s stupid grin widened. “So I thought of the perfect thing.”

“Talked all night? I nev—” He stared at Emily’s mouth opening into a perfect oval. Just as both hands slid over her face, the oval warped into a smile. In that instant, Jacob Braden was fourteen again. A short, chubby kid on fire for the Lord. A kid who witnessed to any and everyone polite enough to not walk away. A kid who didn’t know his father had only three months to live, a kid a year away from a growth spurt that would propel him into sports and girls and away from God.

Topher’s Emily.

His best friend’s first kiss.

Fanning her face with a Dorito, Emily bit the corner of her lip and squinted at Jake. Looking at his friend was way too awkward. “You don’t look anything like you did back then. You were…”

“Fat.” Topher filled in the blank.

Emily laughed. If Jake was indeed the boy who brought her to her knees and prayed her to Jesus nineteen years ago, she had to agree. Cob. Short for Jacob. If she’d known his last name at the time, she’d forgotten it. “Braden” hadn’t rung any ancient bells. Unexpected tears prickled her eyes.

Jake’s warm hand covered the spot where she’d just gotten her second kiss from the guy next to him. “Are you okay?”

“You … prayed with me. You led me to the Lord.” A thought whispered in her mind.
Are you here to lead me back?

“I remember.” His voice slid over her like satin sheets. “But I don’t remember how we met.”

Topher laughed. “I’m takin’ the credit for that one. We were across the street from the Ostermann’s, riding dirt bikes in the field, and all of a sudden there’s two cute chicks standing in the road gawking at us.” He winked at Emily. “I killed my engine and yelled at Tubby here to stop, but he just kept going. He was totally oblivious to females back then. So I took it upon myself to welcome you ladies to the neighborhood.”

In spite of burning cheeks, Emily laughed. “You introduced yourself as Christopher and I was sure you said, ‘But you can call me Gopher.’”

“And you did, as I recall.”

As she bantered with Topher, she was only too aware of Jake’s stunned silence. After several minutes, Topher slapped the table. “Gotta get me some food while this all sinks in. I’ll be back.” He stood to a height much, much taller than he’d reached nineteen years ago. She hadn’t stood on tiptoes to reach his lips.

She remembered the blatant signals she’d sent that night by the fire, the tug-of-war as part of her mind hung on the chubby boy’s words, while the other part wished he’d stop talking so she could be alone with his friend. The thought made her shiver. Topher was probably a nice enough guy, but—

“He kissed you.” Jake stared at her with an indecipherable expression—part teasing, part accusing.

She wrinkled her nose. “That was a long, long time ago.”

“It wasn’t really fair, you know.”

“What wasn’t?”

“I present you with the keys to eternal life and he gets the kiss.”

Could her face get any hotter? What was she supposed to say to that?
You’re right
—
I’ll make it up to you?
“Um … You were right about the sauerkraut. It’s so much better than canned.”

He laughed. “Sorry. That was awkward. Isn’t it strange, though? That we’ve come full circle, meeting like this again?”

“Kind of makes you wonder.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“You think God planned for us to meet again?”

“Of course. The question is, why?” A shimmer of mischief hinted at something not so spiritual. “It just seems—”

“How’s the pig?” Tina plopped onto the bench next to Emily, her back to Jake, and nudged Emily’s shoulder.

“The food is wonderful. Thank you so much for inviting me.”

“Hey”—her head tipped back and her eyes rolled up as if trying to see behind her—“any friend of Jake’s is a friend of mine.”

With a slosh of beer, Topher set his plate and cup next to Jake and puckered his lips at Emily.

“Hey,” Tina whispered. “How’s the kiss-and-run plan coming along?”

Emily turned away from Topher’s puckered lips and laughed. “You have no idea.”

“The Shaws built your house in 1847, a year before Wisconsin was granted statehood.”

Dorothy Willett ran a bony finger along the bottom of a yellowed photograph.

Seated on the other side of Dorothy, Jake leaned over the photo album for a closer look. “I found that same picture on the Historical Society website.”

Dorothy nodded. “Of course, the house was more than fifty years old when this was taken.”

Emily stared at the sapling oak and the big white dog. “The Shaw family lived there until the 1940s, right?”

“Yes. Several generations.” Dorothy turned a page. “But there are indications that it was empty for several years before the war.”