The Prayer Box, page 1
Advance Praise for The Prayer Box
“I am in awe of Lisa Wingate’s talent. She strikes the heart and turns my gaze toward heaven’s door. The Prayer Box is a masterpiece of story and skill.”
DEBBIE MACOMBER, New York Times bestselling author
“The Prayer Box is Lisa Wingate’s best work so far! It’s a charming book that transcends simple hope and healing while capturing the heart of the reader. Tandi’s story is an enchanting take on family ties, redemption, and allowing oneself to be swept up into a river of grace regardless of one’s past. And in the end, perhaps it’s also a testament to the fact that maybe, sometimes, you really can go home again.”
KAREN WHITE, New York Times bestselling author of The Time Between
“Lisa Wingate writes with grace, beauty, and so much heart.”
SARAH JIO, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Camellia
“The Prayer Box is a beautiful and compelling story about the gentle waters of grace that ripple through our lives, bubbling up in the most unexpected places and bringing a sense of calm and purpose where once there was fear and anguish.”
GLENN DROMGOOLE, Abilene Reporter-News and Texas Reads
“Tenderly woven. Skillfully threaded. A grab-your-heart story about faith, the healing power of love, and how both are often found in unlikely places.”
CHARLES MARTIN, New York Times bestselling author of Unwritten
“Lisa Wingate is a remarkably gifted storyteller. Her novels both captivate and cradle you, and The Prayer Box is Lisa at her finest. Tandi’s extraordinary journey of healing and hope on Hatteras Island is a mesmerizing thrill and a joy you’ll want to savor. However, beware—you will not be able to put this story down!”
BETH WEBB HART, bestselling author of Moon Over Edisto
“Secrets from the past unfold in surprising and transformative ways. The Prayer Box is a beautifully written story that will be remembered and cherished long after the last page is turned.”
AMY HILL HEARTH, New York Times bestselling author of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years
“Lisa Wingate has a gift with words—her vivid prose brings each page to life.”
DARIEN GEE, nationwide bestselling author of The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society
“The Prayer Box is a beautiful, lyrical story of two women looking for peace, wholeness, and purpose. Wingate weaves hope and truth amid their brokenness and pain. The story is a reminder we are not alone and God is always with us.”
RACHEL HAUCK, author of Once Upon a Prince and The Wedding Dress
“The Prayer Box is classic Lisa Wingate fiction—on steroids! Old prayers live again and a flawed main character steals into our hearts and makes us care.”
SHELLIE RUSHING TOMLINSON, belle of all things southern and author of Sue Ellen’s Girl Ain’t Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy!
“The Prayer Box had me caught up from beginning to the final page. Readers will be transported into the story through Lisa’s visceral storytelling talents. I couldn’t put it down, but hated for it to end.”
BONNIE MULLENS, The McGregor Mirror (McGregor, Texas)
“Lisa Wingate knows how to hold our interest and uplift our hearts with words. This novel will inspire you to pray with pen in hand.”
RACHEL OLSEN, author of It’s No Secret, coauthor of My One Word: Change Your Life With Just One Word
Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.
Visit Lisa Wingate’s website at www.lisawingate.com.
TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
The Prayer Box
Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Wingate. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph taken by Stephen Vosloo. Copyright © by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Designed by Beth Sparkman
Edited by Sarah Mason
Published in association with Folio Literary Management, LLC, 630 9th Avenue, Suite 1101, New York, NY 10036.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.
The Prayer Box is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wingate, Lisa.
The prayer box / Lisa Wingate.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4143-8825-0 (hc) — ISBN 978-1-4143-8688-1 (sc)
I. Title.
PS3573.I53165P73 2013
813'.54—dc23 2013013769
ISBN 978-1-4143-8863-2 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-8721-5 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4143-8864-9 (Apple)
Build: 2013-12-11 10:56:17
To the two adorable boys
who have become incredible men:
I’d stand over your little beds
and brush kisses against your foreheads again,
if I could.
But since that would look strange at this point,
I’ll settle for leaving a kiss on this paper,
with only words.
Wherever the currents may take you,
Mom loves you to the end of the ocean and back.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
A Preview of The Story Keeper
A Preview of The Sea Glass Sisters
A Note from the Author
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Acknowledgments
IF THIS BOOK WERE A SHIP, it would have a very diverse crew. If you’ve been on that crew, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, just in case I forget to call one of you to muster here. So many people pour themselves into the making of a book before it is a book.
First of all, to my treasured friend Ed Stevens, thank you for suggesting that the Outer Banks would be an excellent place to set a novel, and then for sending me pictures and information until I couldn’t resist doing it. Thank you also to Shannon and Wick for opening your amazing Outer Banks home to our research crew during the development phase. What an amazing gift. Everyone should have the chance to walk the shores on the Outer Banks for days on end.
Thank you to my research crew, Sharon Mannion and Teresa Loman. There’s nothing better than having just the right people to canvas the town and stroll the beach with. Over five thousand pictures and one giant box of shells tell the tale. What a trip that was! To my amazing Aunt Sandy, what can I say to fully encompass what you’ve done for this book? Without you, there would be no Sandy’s Seashell Shop. Thank you for lending your time and your talents, as well as your name. To all the local folks who helped us while we were in the Outer Banks—everyone from shop owners to members of the park service—we owe you a huge debt of gratitude and a massive hug the next time we visit. Thank you for answering all our questions and greeting us with the friendliness the Outer Banks is so famous for. I’ve never met nicer people anywhere.
My gratitude goes out, as always, to my beta reading crew. Aunt Sandy, we forgive you for clutching your heart and scaring us to death when you read the last scene of the book. You took a year off my life, but created an unforgettable moment . . . and a little inspiration for The Sea Glass Sisters novella. It’s amazing how things end up working out.
To my sweet family, you are such a blessing to me. Thank you for all the help you always provide on these literary endeavors and the encouragement you give me. Your love is the current beneath the boat. Without you, it would wander the world, lost indeed.
If family-love is the current beneath an author’s work, the members of the publishing crew are the riggers, climbing the masts and setting the sails and slathering pitch over all the leaky places. This project has been blessed with an incredibly dedicated, experienced, and hardworking crew. To everyone in the Ron Beers group who have not only taken such good care of this project, but encouraged me personally, I have no words to express what it means to have people come on board and instantly work so hard. Maggie Rowe, bless your sweet heart for opening your beautiful home for cover and video shoots. An immeasurable amount of gratitude also goes to Karen Watson, Jan Stob, Sarah Mason, Shaina Turner, and Babette Rea for believing so deeply in this project, for the hours devoted to it, and for being just plain awesome to work with. I never had a moment’s doubt that you were the right people to sail with on this voyage.
To the Tyndale design team and the sales and marketing teams, who bring books into the hands of readers, you guys rock. Thank you for guiding The Prayer Box so gently and enthusiastically to distant shores. To my agent, Claudia Cross, at Folio Literary Management, thank you for manning the deck with me and helping to steer this ship over these many years and many journeys.
Lastly, to reader friends, librarians, and bookstore buddies far and near, including the awesome ladies of the McGregor Tierra Literary Society who read the book early for a book club premiere video, I do not even have words for how much you mean to me. Your encouragement is priceless. Without those who lovingly read, recommend, and share these stories, my ships would sail to uninhabited worlds and lie fallow on the beaches. Not that lying on the beach is a bad thing, but it’s so much better when your friends are there too. Thank you for digging your toes into the sand with me for this story and many others over the years.
Beyond, beneath, and above all the other words of thanks to those who have sailed on this ship with me come a few last words that are the most important of all. Thank you to the Owner of the ocean. You are indeed a God of winds and tides. Thank you for the wind in my sails and the currents that have carried me to yet another story.
CHAPTER 1
WHEN TROUBLE BLOWS IN, my mind always reaches for a single, perfect day in Rodanthe. The memory falls over me like a blanket, a worn quilt of sand and sky, the fibers washed soft with time. I wrap it around myself, picture the house along the shore, its bones bare to the wind and the sun, the wooden shingles clinging loosely, sliding to the ground now and then, like scales from some mythical sea creature washed ashore. Overhead, a hurricane shutter dangles by one nail, rocking back and forth in the breeze, protecting an intact window on the third story. Gulls swoop in and out, landing on the salt-sprayed rafters—scavengers come to pick at the carcass left behind by the storm.
Years later, after the place was repaired, a production company filmed a movie there. A love story.
But to me, the story of that house, of Rodanthe, will always be the story of a day with my grandfather. A safe day.
When I squint long into the sun off the water, I can see him yet. He is a shadow, stooped and crooked in his overalls and the old plaid shirt with the pearl snaps. The heels of his worn work boots hang in the air as he balances on the third-floor joists, assessing the damage. Calculating everything it will take to fix the house for its owners.
He’s searching for something on his belt. In a minute, he’ll call down to me and ask for whatever he can’t find. Tandi, bring me that blue tape measure, or Tandi Jo, I need the green level, out in the truck. . . . I’ll fish objects from the toolbox and scamper upstairs, a little brown-haired girl anxious to please, hoping that while I’m up there, he’ll tell me some bit of a story. Here in this place where he was raised, he is filled with them. He wants me to know these islands of the Outer Banks, and I yearn to know them. Every inch. Every story. Every piece of the family my mother has both depended on and waged war with.
Despite the wreckage left behind by the storm, this place is heaven. Here, my father talks, my mother sings, and everything is, for once, calm. Day after day, for weeks. Here, we are all together in a decaying sixties-vintage trailer court while my father works construction jobs that my grandfather has sent his way. No one is slamming doors or walking out them. This place is magic—I know it.
We walked in Rodanthe after assessing the house on the shore that day, Pap-pap’s hand rough-hewn against mine, his knobby driftwood fingers promising that everything broken can be fixed. We passed homes under repair, piles of soggy furniture and debris, the old Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, where the Salvation Army was handing out hot lunches in the parking lot.
Outside a boarded-up shop in the village, a shirtless guitar player with long blond dreadlocks winked and smiled at me. At twelve years old, I fluttered my gaze away and blushed, then braved another glance, a peculiar new electricity shivering through my body. Strumming his guitar, he tapped one ragged tennis shoe against a surfboard, reciting words more than singing them.
Ring the bells bold and strong
Let all the broken add their song
Inside the perfect shells is dim
It’s through the cracks, the light comes in. . . .
I’d forgotten those lines from the guitar player, until now.
The memory of them, of my grandfather’s strong hand holding mine, circled me as I stood on Iola Anne Poole’s porch. It was my first indication of a knowing, an undeniable sense that something inside the house had gone very wrong.
I pushed the door inward cautiously, admitting a slice of early sun and a whiff of breeze off Pamlico Sound. The entryway was old, tall, the walls white with heavy gold-leafed trim around rectangular panels. A fresh breeze skirted the shadows on mouse feet, too slight to displace the stale, musty smell of the house. The scent of a forgotten place. Instinct told me what I would find inside. You don’t forget the feeling of stepping through a door and understanding in some unexplainable way that death has walked in before you.
I hesitated on the threshold, options running through my mind and then giving way to a racing kind of craziness. Close the door. Call the police or . . . somebody. Let someone else take care of it.
You shouldn’t have touched the doorknob—now your fingerprints will be on it. What if the police think you did something to her? Innocent people are accused all the time, especially strangers in town. Strangers like you, who show up out of the blue and try to blend in . . .
What if people thought I was after the old woman’s money, trying to steal her valuables or find a hidden stash of cash? What if someone really had broken in to rob the place? It happened, even in idyllic locations like Hatteras Island. Massive vacation homes sat empty, and local boys with bad habits were looking for easy income. What if a thief had broken into the house thinking it was unoccupied, then realized too late that it wasn’t? Right now I could be contaminating the evidence.
Tandi Jo, sometimes I swear you haven’t got half a brain. The voice in my head sounded like my aunt Marney’s—harsh, irritated, thick with the Texas accent of my father’s family, impatient with flights of fancy, especially mine.
“Mrs. Poole?” I leaned close to the opening, trying to get a better view without touching anything else. “Iola Anne Poole? Are you in there? This is Tandi Reese. From the little rental cottage out front. . . . Can you hear me?”
Again, silence.
A whirlwind spun along the porch, sweeping up last year’s pine straw and dried live oak leaves. Loose strands of hair swirled over my eyes, and my thoughts tangled with it, my reflection melting against the waves of leaded glass—flyaway brown hair, nervous blue eyes, lips hanging slightly parted, uncertain.
What now? How in the world would I explain to people that it’d taken me days to notice there were no lights turning on and off in Iola Poole’s big Victorian house, no window heat-and-air units running at night when the spring chill gathered? I was living less than forty yards away. How could I not have noticed?
Maybe she was sleeping—having a midday nap—and by going inside, I’d scare her half to death. From what I could tell, my new landlady kept to herself. Other than groceries being delivered and the UPS and FedEx trucks coming with packages, the only signs of Iola Poole were the lights and the window units going off and on as she moved through the rooms at different times of day. I’d only caught sight of her a time or two since the kids and I had rolled into town with no more gas and no place else to go. We’d reached the last strip of land before you’d drive off into the Atlantic Ocean, which was just about as far as we could get from Dallas, Texas, and Trammel Clarke. I hadn’t even realized, until we’d crossed the North Carolina border, where I was headed or why. I was looking for a hiding place.
By our fourth day on Hatteras, I knew we wouldn’t get by with sleeping in the SUV at a campground much longer. People on an island notice things. When a real estate lady offered an off-season rental, cheap, I figured it was meant to be. We needed a good place more than anything.
Considering that we were into April now, and six weeks had passed since we’d moved into the cottage, and the rent was two weeks overdue, the last person I wanted to contact about Iola was the real estate agent who’d brought us here, Alice Faye Tucker.
Touching the door, I called into the entry hall again. “Iola Poole? Mrs. Poole? Are you in there?” Another gust of wind danced across the porch, scratching crape myrtle branches against gingerbread trim that seemed to be clinging by Confederate jasmine vines and dried paint rather than nails. The opening in the doorway widened on its own. Fear shimmied over my shoulders, tickling like the trace of a fingernail.
