When You Believe (19 page)

The dogs had already gone out; Lydia could hear them baying to the west. When she appeared, they stared at her. “What are
you doing out here?”

The woman stepped out in front of her. “I went to get her. I want her to try and find Jamie.”

Lydia said it so softly that not any of them could hear her. “I don’t think I can.”

“No sense hanging all your hopes on that,” another officer said over her. “That’s just some Shadrach legend. Things like that
don’t happen around this place anymore.”

“Please,” the lady whispered to Lydia. “Don’t listen to them.”

As Lydia stepped toward an opening in the trees, the woman started to follow her. So did several other people who, for all
their arguing against what she could do, seemed oddly interested in the direction she wanted to go. All she really wanted
to do was hurry away from them.

She stopped. “I have to go by myself if I’m going to do this.”

“We’ve all read that article in the paper, Miss Porter. You had your father with you before.”

She ignored them, thinking only how impossible this was, and was gone. The trees closed in around her like a tunnel, the leathery
curls of leaves unfurling beneath her feet. And with each step she took, it seemed like she stepped further and further toward
something she didn’t understand, further toward something that she wondered if she could trust.
Oh Father Oh Father Oh Father.

The sounds of the dogs faded further to her left. The hawthorn and the jack oak brambles began to tug like an anxious child
at her feet.

All these things people expect of me. I’m so tired of disappointing everybody.

She walked without knowing where she was going. She walked without hearing a word. At last, out of breath, she stopped and
hung her head, supporting herself against a shagbark trunk.
Oh, Lord. I’m so tired of trying to find you.

For a moment, she glanced behind her, thinking she should give up and go back. She wanted to run back to everyone and say,
no no no,
but just then she caught a faint scent of something sweet, oranges, tangy and fresh, like springtime instead of fall. When
she turned toward the depths of the trees, a shadow flitted through them.

“Hello?” Of course, she thought, it could have been a bird. “Hey?” She tried to think of the child’s name. “Are you here?”
Then she remembered it. “Jamie?” Perhaps she should have brought the little girl’s mother with her. Anyone that young could
be afraid, hearing a stranger calling her name.

You’re looking past me, Lydia. Did you know that?

“Jamie? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Then Lydia heard the breeze behind her before she felt it, watched it tumble toward her through the crowns of the sycamores.
Leaves dislodged and began to sift down around her shoulders. And, as she stepped through them, it seemed as if they almost
had a voice.

How I delight in your pursuit of me. But you’re looking at me the human way, Lyddie, as if you have to convince me to care,
as if you have to struggle to make me hear you.

She moved on, climbing over a rotten stump, coming into a clearing. “Which direction?” She didn’t even realize she was asking
it out loud. “Which one?”

I chose you before the foundation of the earth. I planned great and marvelous works for you to do. My son died so that I might
hear your beloved whisper, that you might follow me along every trail, that you might go where I am.

It was such an odd feeling, this sensation that she must be following something, only she didn’t know what it could be. A
child wouldn’t move this quickly.

To her right came the familiar lapping sounds of water but, as she peered through the limbs, she saw only sky. She had left
the Brownbranch, the steel, cold mirror, a long way below. It amazed her how such a gentle rippling sound could carry this
far uphill.

Lydia went another way, hedging toward the north, ducking her head so as not to bump it on low-lying branches. Here she found
a high ridge where the ground leveled off. The undergrowth opened a little; it wasn’t as thick here. “Jamie?”

She should have brought a radio or something. She’d been crazy to run off so fast and not figure out a way to communicate
with them. Crazy. They’d probably already found the child, Jamie, or whatever-her-name-was anyway; everybody down there was
probably celebrating and laughing, because Lydia Porter was still thrashing around up there, and she had no way to know.

Why should she be heading up a rise like this, looking for a child that could barely walk?

What sort of mother would bring a child camping, and leave it alone while she took a nap?

What sort of heavenly Father would leave anyone lost when they needed the most to find Him?

Oh Father . . .

It wasn’t any use. She couldn’t do this.

She sat down on a rock and waited. And waited. Waited more. Her bottom grew sore, as the sun ducked behind a western hill.

That you might follow me… That you might go where I am . . .

Lydia stood, dusted off the seat of her pants. Unwilling to stop trying, she made broader and broader circles, calling, waiting,
searching, listening. But nothing. She’d try a different place. No sense being up here anymore. She started back down and,
as she did, she began to hear the lake again, and the dogs, and the sounds of people calling for a child.
Another sad story,
she thought.
Another broken, awful, unexplainable thing happening in the world.

That’s when her foot kicked something hidden beneath the leaves. She bent to pick it up. It was a toddler’s toy, a plastic
face with a sleeping cap and lime-green segments, the thing that helped a child when it was afraid of the dark. A Glo-Worm.

She squeezed the toy’s body and the face lit brightly in the waning forest light. It hadn’t been here long enough to even
get soiled. The battery still burned fresh.

Lydia held the thing up and questioned the merry eyes, the broad, silly grin. “What’s happened here, you,” she demanded of
Glo-Worm. “Because I know you could tell me.” She swung in a broad circle, looking again. She had just decided to cry out
the girl’s name when something stopped her.

Clarity.
Peace.
Her instincts did not just suggest she do this thing; they demanded it. Lydia surveyed the trees around her, chose a stout,
loose-limbed hickory. She tied her Nikes tighter and began to climb.

After she reached a good height she did not have to search long. There, five paces off to her left, she glimpsed a flash of
small, red pants. Jamie had curled herself up in the rootwell of a sycamore.

For one brief, spellbinding moment, Lydia was terrified that the child had fallen or gotten injured. But she held her own
breath for three beats, four, and listened.

Yes, sound does travel uphill.

Lydia heard the melodic rhythm of a baby’s peaceful breathing, resting in sleep, unafraid.

THERE WOULD BE
, of course, another story in the newspaper.

It had been close to 6:00
P.M.
when she awakened the little girl and kept her smiling all the way to the campground with the Glo-Worm. After that, all Lydia
had wanted to do was get home.

Now she folded open the lid to the mailbox the way she did every night when she arrived, the way she did on any ordinary evening,
although this day did not feel like anything ordinary at all.

She sifted through the bills and the flyers, separating the personal envelopes from junk mail and bank statements. And, so
odd. Along with everything else, today seemed to be a day of letters. She found, when she thumbed through the envelopes, that
she’d gotten two of them.

Lichen Bridge, CT October 6

Our Dearest Lydia,

Haven’t heard from you in so long and your dad and I have been wondering what’s been going on in your life! Was so glad to
get the e-mail about you buying your plane tickets and everything being set for Christmas. You should see Dad, already being
excited about that. It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, and he comes in yesterday with a clock he bought at Wal-Mart that plays
Christmas carols every hour. Like those birds that chirp every hour, only this one plays songs. $24.99 for that thing, when
he wouldn’t buy a fishing license from Cy last time because the out-of-state day fee was too much. I get to hear “Joy to the
World” every day at three in the afternoon, and at three in the morning, although it has a sensor on it and, when there isn’t
any light, it plays much softer. Maybe it will run out of
batteries?!

So now you know how your father feels about you coming home.
T

Wanted to write and let you know about an odd thing that happened the other day. A woman came to our door and said she knows
you. Or that she knows
of
you, and she’d like to be in touch. I gave her your address before your father said it might not be the right thing to do.
I hope I wasn’t wrong?! Anyway, you may hear from her soon. She said she’d be ‘A Blast From Your Past.’ I think it’s got something
to do with homecoming at your own high school. Maybe she’s somebody you knew there? If it’s a problem I gave her your address,
then it’s my fault.

Until soon. I’m going to a class to learn how to e-mail. Right now, though, it’s faster to just write by hand.

Anything interesting happening with your students? You are a wonderful girl, sweetheart, and I know you are helping everybody
you meet. We have always been so proud of you.

We are both excited and intrigued about getting to meet your ‘friend.’ I think that’s why your father bought that clock, too.
He’s wondering if you might be bringing home a man?! (Although how Christmas carols in the night would help with that situation,
I don’t know.) You know I would never write and ask you these things! Marla Tompkins did stop me the other day at Pendergrass
to see if I had any grandchildren?! Of course she had pictures of hers. Why do people ask these nosy questions? One of her
grandchildren has very big ears but, you will be proud, I did not say a word about that, either.

With so much love,

Mother

Lydia couldn’t help it. Her heart went heavy again.

Things are so different than I had thought they would be. I had so many of my own plans.

She opened the second letter.

Lichen Bridge, CT October 7

Dear Miss Porter:

This may seem like an odd letter to you but I feel it is something I ought to do. I stopped by your parents’ house the other
day and your mother gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind my getting in touch.

My ex-husband, Clive Buckholtz, passed away several months ago and I have been asked to sort through his personal affects
for the family. I don’t know if you will remember Clive or not. He was known as Mr. Buckholtz and taught Junior English at
your school in Lichen Bridge. In with some of his more important papers and household ledgers, he kept an envelope with your
name on it.

I hope you don’t mind that I opened the envelope and looked inside. The only thing in the envelope was a test from his class.
It is an essay exam with in-depth questions about
Beowulf
. On this test you scored a moderate grade, a mid-B.

He left a note on top of the envelope that, should anything ever happen to him, I was to find you and make sure you had this
paper. Even his note, I’m afraid, was written a long time ago. I haven’t seen Clive in years. He had not taught in the public
schools since his retirement in 1991. I am staying at a rental cottage while in Lichen Bridge to finish sorting through these
things. Unfortunately, I do not have a phone. The rental office has one, but that is three miles up the road! If this old
test holds any significance to you, you may contact me at the return address below and I will send it to you posthaste. I
did not want to mail it out unless I was certain I had the correct Miss Lydia Porter. But, since I’ve talked to your mother,
I do think it’s you.

Respectfully,

Jolena Criggin (Formerly Buckholtz)

234 Plumb Hill Road

Straddle Ridge Rental Cottages

Lydia laid this in her lap without refolding it. She stared at it a long time. She realized that she needed to breathe.

. . . like a tree planted by the water . . .

It’s what we do with the unchangeable things that matters.
Isn’t that exactly what she’d said to Cassie Meade?

Beloved, don’t you see where I’ve been leading you?

Well.

Well.

Lydia folded the letter and placed it back inside its envelope. She dialed the Olins’ telephone number. Once connected, she
asked Tamara for permission to invite Shelby to travel along with her.

Oh, Lord. If you’d show me the difference between believing and knowing.

With all the help that she’d offered Shelby, maybe she hadn’t yet offered anything of her heart at all.

If you’re close to me, God.

If this is what you want from me . . .

The heavenly Father had just gotten more unpredictable than ever.

WEEKLY VISITATION
at the St. Clair County Jail began at seven Monday night. It lasted for two hours. Lydia had struggled across the parking
lot at Winn-Dixie, trying to make it there on time, with the wind so strong it had blown all the loose shopping carts backward.
Once she made it to Osceola, she pulled in to the jail lot off Chestnut Street, the Buick headlights catching pinstripes of
rain, and parked in the designated visitor space. She covered her head with the only thing available in her front seat, a
college admittance application from Bowling Green, and climbed out.

A cool rain had been drizzling all afternoon again, the typical weather pattern for autumn. The grounds back at the high school
looked more like a pig-wrestling arena than a place to play soccer.