Woodlands (9 page)

“Is that right?”

Leah nodded.

“And how did people react?”

“Everyone was talking about it and coming up with all these ridiculous speculations as to whom the Glenbrooke Zorro could be. I felt like telling some of the people at work that it was me, just so they would stop with the dumb guesses. I don’t know if they would have believed me. Your great-uncle was one of the
candidates. They said Franklin inherited a fortune from Cameron Madison and used his riches to help others.”

“Was that in the paper?” Seth said, leaning forward.

“No, it was just what people said at work and at the grocery store. You and I both know your great-uncle is far from wealthy.”

“Right,” Seth said quickly.

“It was terrible around work and church for a couple of weeks,” Leah continued. “Everyone assumed the phantom was a male. And then people started writing letters to the editor. You wouldn’t have believed it. Actually, I kept some of the letters.” Leah rose and went over to a bookshelf in the corner and picked up a photo box. She pulled out a few pictures and some newspaper clippings.

“Look at this one.”

Seth read it aloud. “Dear Glenbrooke Zorro, Please bring me $447 so I can have my terrible leaking kitchen sink fixed. It keeps me awake at night.”

He looked up. “Did you give her the $447?”

“No, I didn’t do anything. I found out later that a guy from our church went over and fixed it for her for free.”

“Cool,” Seth said with a smile. “What’s this one?” He read another newspaper clipping. “Dear Glenbrooke Zorro, I am a fifty-two-year-old gentleman through and through. I’m hoping you can send me a new wife.” Seth burst out laughing.

Leah pointed to the clipping. “Read the rest of it.”

“She must be a nonsmoker who likes to cook and do crossword puzzles. My preferences on height are over 5′6″; weight, under 130 pounds; brown hair and green eyes. No visible scars and no pets. Please have her contact me at the P.O. box number listed below. With appreciation, Mr. X.”

Seth shook his head. “Mr. X. Now there’s a real clever guy for you. Did he get his ideal wife?”

“Who knows!” Leah said. “I had nothing to do with it. I’m not Santa Claus. Or the Tooth Fairy. I’m not even Zorro! Wasn’t Zorro a sword fighter? What does that have to do with giving?”

“What happened with all these letters?” Seth asked.

“I guess when none of their expectations from the Glenbrooke Zorro were fulfilled, they gave up. The letters to the editor dropped off after about two weeks.”

“But you went back to giving.”

“Eventually.”

“May I make an observation here?” Seth asked.

Leah laughed. “As opposed to keeping your opinion to yourself as you’ve been doing the rest of this evening?”

Seth gave an open-armed shrug. “What can I say? I tend to be opinionated.”

“Oh, really?”

“And it’s my opinion that you have the gift of giving. Or maybe the gift of service. It’s definitely a spiritual gift when you feel compelled to continue even though it isn’t as easy or as uncomplicated as when you started.”

Leah asked Seth what his spiritual gift was and that prompted a discussion on their spiritual journeys for the next hour. Leah found that she and Seth had similar backgrounds. Both of them were raised going to church and made decisions to ask Jesus into their hearts when they were in grade school. Seth described himself as being in a growing season in his relationship with the Lord. He paused, looking at Leah gently, as if waiting for her to express her view of her current walk with Christ.

“For me, everything with God has been the same for a long time,” Leah said. “He’s there, I’m here. I don’t ask much of him. He doesn’t seem to be asking too much of me. I think everything is okay.” She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. Seth was, in every way, right there with her.

“I’ll tell you something,” Seth said. “We all go through different
seasons in relationships. Including our relationship with God. Things are rarely what we imagine them to be; our understanding is too limited.”

Leah nodded.

“I say that because you definitely weren’t what I imagined.”

Leah waited for an explanation.

“When I was at my great-uncle’s last weekend, he said I should meet you because I’d find you ‘delightful.’ That was his word. Delightful. He said, ‘For twenty years she’s been bringing me flowers on May Day.’ With all those clues, I thought for sure this delightful woman he adored must be at least sixty, maybe seventy years old. Especially when he said your name was ‘Leah.’ ”

Leah felt herself drawing inward.

“Hey, I’m trying to compliment you here. I’m saying you weren’t an old lady like I thought you would be. Why did you pull back?”

Leah waved her hand for him to disregard her actions. “It was nothing.”

“You’re not a very good liar, you know. Obviously it was something. What did I say?”

Leah was beginning to learn that if this man wanted to drag the truth out of her, he could be rather convincing. She saw little point in trying to cover up what she felt.

“It wasn’t anything you said. I mean, it was, but you didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just my name. I’ve never liked my name. And when you said that Leah sounded like the name of someone who was sixty, well, that’s what I was reacting to.”

Seth sat back and didn’t say anything for a moment. He sipped his coffee and seemed to be considering Leah. She felt as if he were looking at her the way a painter sizes up his subject before attempting to tackle the task of transposing one reality into another form.

“The name Leah comes from the Bible, doesn’t it?” Seth asked.

“Yes,” Leah said sharply.

“So does my name.”

“But Seth was a Bible hero, wasn’t he?” Leah said.

“I suppose. He was Adam and Eve’s third son. The blessing of God was on Seth and not on Cain. And of course, Abel was murdered. That left Seth to carry on the godly heritage. What do you know about the Leah in the Bible?”

“Enough,” Leah said flatly.

“Tell me. I don’t remember.”

“Her father tricked Jacob into marrying her first, instead of Rachel, the one Jacob really loved.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all I know about her.” Leah didn’t want to quote the verse that prompted her name, but it was fresh in her mind. The pain from it must have shown on her face because Seth reached over and took her hand. The gesture surprised her yet she didn’t pull away as she had when he had taken her hand to check for doggy teeth marks.

The tender look on his tanned face reflected sincerity. “If you don’t like the name Leah, then how about if I just call you George?”

Something inside Leah broke, and she burst into tears.

A
nd then what happened?” Jessica asked Leah. The two of them were in the far corner of Jessica’s huge backyard the next morning, tucking Easter eggs into the tufts of grass.

“I bawled like a baby for two minutes straight, and then I somehow turned off the tears. He said he should get going, and I apologized for falling apart. Of course he told me not to worry about it. Then he left, and I sat up half the night worrying about it.”

Leah bent down, leaving a blue-and-green-striped egg next to a clump of wild daffodils. “I’m telling you, I was scared. I can’t remember ever crying like that. And never in front of someone I hardly knew, all because he held my hand and called me, ‘George.’ Do you think I need counseling, Jess?”

Jessica left the last of her eggs and plucked several fresh, yellow daffodils. She linked her arm through Leah’s, and the two women headed toward the house across the newly mowed, spring grass.

“I think the same thing I told you at church last night,” Jessica said after a pause. “God has scooped you up and plopped you into a pocket of grace. You can’t exactly control what happens.”

“That’s for sure,” Leah said, gazing at the pastel streamers and balloons that adorned the back deck of Kyle and Jessica’s Victorian home. Tall, canvas umbrellas were opened above the two patio tables. Curls of smoke rose from the covered barbecue where Kyle was cooking the first group of the two hundred shish kebabs Leah had helped him assemble earlier that morning.

“It’s not as if I had control of my life before, but now I can’t predict how I’m going to react!” Leah let go of Jessica’s arm so she could pick up the tennis ball at her feet and toss it to one of the golden retriever puppies. Travis was keeping them corralled in the sandy play area under the jungle gym. Jessica and Leah hung back from the house and play area to finish their conversation.

“At least before in my life,” Leah continued, “I knew what was expected of me, and I always did my best to fulfill those expectations. For years my life was on a controlled, tight schedule. Now, everything is tumbled around. I can’t depend on myself for anything!”

Jessica chuckled. “You know that verse in Joel about how God says he will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten?”

Leah didn’t know that verse. “Are you trying to say my parents were locusts, and they ate up my best years?”

“Not exactly,” Jessica said gently. “I was wondering if in some way God was restoring to you the feelings and experiences you might have had over the last decade, but those years were taken up in your giving and caring for others. Maybe some of those feelings had to be placed on hold. You had to act
older than you were. You can be younger now.”

Leah looked at Jessica, trying to absorb what she was saying. “Could be,” Leah said with a sigh. “I don’t know.”

She paused to admire her friend in the shimmering brilliance of the late morning sunshine. Jessica wore a long, flowing, pastel pink-and-gray skirt with a matching pink sweater set. Her honeyblond hair was a darker shade than Leah’s was and longer. It billowed from beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat Jessica wore every year for the Easter egg hunt. The hat had a circle of silk flowers around the band, and pink satin ribbons raced down the back, almost to Jessica’s waist. It was the kind of hat that perfectly suited an Easter egg hunt, and it distinctly marked Jessica as the hostess of this grand event. Leah had on overalls and a plain white T-shirt because she knew she would be running in the grass with the little kids today. Leah didn’t even own anything as soft and feminine as the outfit Jessica had on.

“I can’t say I know exactly what God is doing in your life,” Jessica said.

“That makes two of us,” Leah muttered.

“But you know I’m always here for you, and I’m praying my little heart out.”

“I know,” Leah said. “And if you guys ever need anything, you know I’m here for you, too.”

“We know that. You have given so much to us and to others, Leah. I know God is going to give abundantly back to you. You can’t out-give God, you know. Maybe he’s giving you back some of your emotions.”

“And what exactly would someone like me do with more emotions?”

Jessica looked past Leah to the deck where Kyle had been stringing tiny white lights on the insides of the two patio umbrellas. Jessica stood there holding her fresh daffodils and
smiling past Leah in a way that highlighted the half-moon scar on her upper lip. “Oh, I can think of one direction you might want to toss some of those emotions.”

Leah turned and followed Jessica’s line of sight. There on the deck, next to Kyle, stood Seth, holding Bungee under his arm. He had on shorts and a white, knit shirt, which accentuated his bronzed skin.

Leaning closer to Jessica, Leah murmured, “Does that man have any idea how good he looks in shorts?”

Jessica laughed. “No, but I think you and your revived emotions might find a way to tell him!”

Leah worked hard not to burst out laughing. Instead, she waved at the guys, and they both waved back.

Just then a loud wail came from the upstairs open nursery window.

“Sounds like Sara woke up,” Jessica said.

“I’ll get her,” Leah volunteered.

“No, not this time. You have a guest to entertain.”

Before Jessica and Leah made it to the deck, Kyle had gone inside to answer his daughter’s cries. He had left Seth to turn the shish kebabs on the barbecue. Seth tied Bungee to the leg of a patio chair, and Jessica went to the play area to check on Travis, leaving Leah alone to greet Seth.

“How are you doing?” he asked before she was all the way up on the deck.

“Well. I’d like to apologize again for last night.”

“You know, I have a philosophy about tears,” Seth said. “Tears wash the windows of our souls, and afterward we can see ourselves more clearly.”

“That’s poetic,” Leah said, smiling at him.

He smiled back. “You like it? I just made it up. It’s yours.”

The back door opened, and two-year-old Emma paraded out in a white Easter dress with pink sash, white shoes, and
lacy anklets. On her head was a white straw Easter bonnet with an elastic string that tucked under her chin. She walked toward Leah as if she were the Princess of Just About Everything.

“Oh, look at you!” Leah said, putting her hands to her face with an exaggerated expression of amazement. “Who is this absolutely gorgeous little princess?”

Emma played right along, and with her chin in the air she said, “It’s me!”