Long Trail To Love, page 14
“Unless you’ve walked a mile in a man’s shoes, don’t fault him for stumbling when the path gets rocky?”
Nate chuckled in wry agreement. “Yeah, something like that.”
He felt better for having spoken, and the two men shared an understanding smile.
Fifteen
After a steep and rocky trek, Carly and the others made it to Shooting Star Shelter. Surprised to see another hiker there when the trail had seemed abandoned by all but them, they eagerly welcomed the older gentleman into their circle. From his radio, they learned that the man who’d murdered the two hikers had been found and brought into custody, and everyone rested easier that night. All except Carly.
She wandered the fringes of the camp to seek some solitude and realized with a wry twist that she missed the way Nate always found her. Taking a seat on the ground, she stared up at the starry sky, intent on spying out the constellations. Even they weren’t random but formed pictures, appearing to tell a story. She remembered how Sierra once said that God wrote His story in the heavens at the very dawn of creation. For a moment, Carly wondered about her ancient ancestor, chief to the Abenaki, and if he’d sat on this very mountain studying the stars, pondering their story.
She thought about her own story: abandoned, misplaced, ignored. Was it any wonder she felt separated from everyone else, that God wouldn’t want her either? Years ago, she had stopped feeling sorry for herself. She had attributed her break-downs with Nate to utter exhaustion. Yet while these weeks had broken her, they had helped build her up, too. The book Nate had given her. . .the words seemed to niggle inside whatever was left of Carly’s wall, urging her to come out from behind the old bitterness, the old pain, and to accept the teachings on the pages.
With absent movements, she shuffled the book’s edges with her fingers, listening to the pages riffle. She thought about the message the book held that made more sense than she would have believed possible; she thought about her friends who showed such courage through their problems and attributed their strength to their relationships with God; she thought about Nate, who’d become more than a friend and had been forthright in his answers, never pretending something he didn’t know. But most of all, she thought about what Jesus had said in Matthew when He instructed His disciples before He left them: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Nate felt it; Kim felt it; Jill felt it; Leslie felt it. All of them were assured of the message and harbored no doubt. They trusted God’s Word.
Jill told her last night that the Lord had never let her down, and when—just as a child who didn’t understand a parent’s decisions or rules—she felt God had failed her, He always comforted her, showing His love in different ways. Carly thought about what life might have been like if her mother hadn’t dumped her on Aunt Dorothy. She’d been raised without love but had never wanted for anything material. She’d been given a good education, along with her younger cousin. For the first time, Carly acknowledged that if her mother had kept her, she may have suffered a much worse existence than she had. Now she could see it was better for her that her childish prayer had never been answered.
How long she sat there before she heard footsteps, Carly didn’t know. Possibly hours.
Kim sat down beside her. “Is everything all right?” Her eyes were sleepy behind the glasses, and Carly realized the teenager must have just woken up. Once Kim had confided in her regarding a very personal matter; now Carly chose to do the same.
“Kim, how does one become a Christian?”
Taken aback, the girl blinked. “Well, um, okay. You pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart. And you should also ask Him to forgive you for your sins. That’s what I did.”
Heart pounding, Carly nodded. She needed no further contemplation. Ever since she’d sat down tonight, she’d known this moment had arrived. Tomorrow would take them to the end of the trail, but on this night, Carly decided to travel a new path to what she sensed would be the start of a lifelong adventure.
“Will you help me?”
At Carly’s soft question, Kim smiled and took hold of her hands as the group had always done before prayer; while above them, the stars glimmered in a peaceful sky, silently telling their Creator’s story.
❧
Nate spent most of his time at the hospital until the day of his father’s release; then he went home to sort out his own life. Looking around his shabby apartment, he realized his dad had been right. Nate was tired of Bridgedale, but he wasn’t sure where to go. Not Goosebury, that was a given.
As the weeks slid by, the pain of losing touch with Carly grew less intense. He still missed her and prayed for her, but he felt assured God would give him the strength needed to go on. He felt emotionally weary, like a survivor of a battle or as if he’d passed some sort of endurance test. In hindsight, that he had passed gave him relief. Twice, he almost e-mailed Ted to ask about Carly but resisted, deciding it better not to invite heartache or temptation back into his life.
The townspeople hadn’t changed their views toward him and his family, though their words and looks were less aggressive. His church seemed more sympathetic; and though he hadn’t spent time in outside activities with its members, tonight he planned to attend a singles’ dinner.
He looked over his stack of mail, curious when he saw a letter from Jill. He tore into it and withdrew a sheet of paper. On it were all the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of everyone who’d been in their hiking group, along with a brief note from Jill about how she thought it a good idea if they all stayed in touch.
Nate spotted Carly’s name immediately, followed by numbers that told how to reach her. He ran his finger along the line of them, finding that he had sudden trouble breathing, and he stared at the paper a long time. His hands shook as he crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it toward the wastebasket. Tossed it and missed.
Rather than pick it up, he grabbed his jacket and keys and left his apartment as though a fire alarm had gone off in the building as well as inside his brain.
❧
“Rack ’em.” Sierra gave Bart a wicked grin as she rolled the eight ball down the table his way.
“That’s right. Rub it in,” he muttered.
Carly chuckled as she chalked her cue stick, bending over the table and poising herself to break for their second game against the guys. At the loud smack, the colored balls scattered, sinking a solid in the corner. She scoped out the table. “Three in the side, six in the corner,” she said before hitting the cue ball with expert precision. The red and green balls shot to their respective pockets.
“Good onya!” Jill cried.
“Well done,” Leslie agreed.
Carly again ran the table. Ted groaned, and Jill laughed.
“If you weren’t before, you blokes are sooo lost now,” she teased. “We have a pro on our side, and we’re going to cream you!”
Jill literally glowed. All in their group had been shocked and excited to hear upon their return to Goosebury that her bouts of illness had been due to being pregnant. Carly realized more than ever how God had protected her friend, since Jill had only endured minor falls on the trail.
“If only Nate were here,” Ted grumbled. “Talk about a pro; he was a pool shark in high school. We won many a game in those days.”
Upon hearing Nate’s name, Carly lost all concentration and missed her mark. The cue ball smacked into the wrong one and bounced off the rim, narrowly knocking the eight ball in the corner pocket and losing them the game.
“Careful, Carly,” Leslie said from her stool by the wet bar, where sodas and chips had been laid out.
“Too right,” Jill added.
Carly walked over to Leslie. “I slipped.” She shrugged.
“Yeah, and I bet I know why.” Leslie cast a look at Blaine, who stood busy, selecting a cue stick from a rack on the wall. “Jill told me about you and Nate. I’m not sure what surprised me more—that you fell so hard and so fast for him or that Nate was the guy I had a crush on in high school. We went to the same one, you know.”
“You never told me that.” Carly looked at Leslie, amazed. She had been four grades behind Leslie so had never known Leslie or her classmates.
“I didn’t know her Nate and my Nate were the same. Anyhow, it wasn’t something I wanted to broadcast. Nate and I were the innocent parties to the brunt of a practical joke set up to hurt me by another girl who liked him. Actually, just about every girl in high school liked him. It was a black day when his family moved from Goosebury.” Leslie laughed.
“I figured he was popular.” Carly watched Blaine take a shot, though her mind didn’t follow the game.
“Have you e-mailed him?”
“Why would I do that?”
“How about because you like him? And there are no longer any obstacles—” Leslie cut short her words, as if she shouldn’t have said what she did.
“Obstacles? What do you mean?”
Leslie wet her lips. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but now that you’re a Christian, you should know. The Bible warns us not to have a relationship with anyone who doesn’t share our faith—simply because it can pull us back and make us fall away from God. It’s not to be mean or anything, or like we think we’re better than others. We just have to be careful so as not to lose what we’ve found.”
Carly’s mind swam at Leslie’s words. She had thought that Nate hadn’t contacted her because he wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship; his farewell had been final enough. It had hurt, still hurt, but Carly was learning to accept it. Thinking back, she realized his distance and odd behavior came after she’d told him she didn’t believe in God. Now Jill’s remarks about a recent blunder and about her wanting Carly and Nate only to be “good mates” made sense, too.
She had come so far since that night. If she’d known about the peace and satisfaction that came once she accepted Christ, she might have searched for answers long ago. Then again, she’d always been pretty hard-nosed. It had taken quite a few knocks on the trail to shake her up enough to get her to listen.
“Oh!” Leslie pressed a hand to her distended stomach.
At her sharp exclamation, Blaine scratched, his cue stick skidding across the green felt and sending the eight ball into the corner pocket.
“Leslie?” He approached his wife, his face white.
She nodded with a small, scared smile. “It’s time.”
“But you’re not due for another two weeks.” Blaine looked as if he might pass out or be sick. He put a shaky hand to her back. “Maybe it’s just false labor pains, hon, like last time.”
Carly glanced down, noticing the material of Leslie’s brown jumper had darkened. “Not this time, Blaine. Her water just broke.”
Blaine’s face went almost gray. Everyone jumped into frenzied action, and somehow Blaine found the strength needed to keep it together and assist his wife upstairs and into their car. Jill called the doctor, and Carly took the house key Blaine pushed into her hand to go and grab Leslie’s things and bring them to the hospital, while Sierra called the church prayer team on her cell phone.
Once Carly made it to Blaine and Leslie’s house and found the already-packed case in the front room, she hurried back to her car. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she noticed Ted and Bart doing their level best to try to keep Blaine from losing it. She had a lot of time to think about all Leslie had revealed, and in between prayers for her friend, she made her decision.
Sixteen
The next morning, after a night of little sleep in an uncomfortable chair, Carly drove home, tired and cranky. She let herself in the front door.
“Where have you been all night?” Aunt Dorothy asked sternly. “Up to no good. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Then you would be dead.” Carly had noticed her cousin’s bike missing from the garage, so she felt it safe to speak. “I was at the hospital; Leslie went into labor last night and had a baby this morning—a girl. Seven pounds, eight ounces.” Carly delivered her words in a monotone, her thoughts jumping ahead. “Now I have a question I’d like answered.”
Her aunt’s facial muscles tensed.
“Why do you hate me so much?”
Aunt Dorothy closed her mouth, looking away. Hearing footsteps, Carly turned to look as her uncle came from the kitchen, his newspaper still in hand.
“Is it because I’m his daughter?”
Her aunt gave a sharp intake of breath, but her uncle’s expression told Carly what she needed to know. Shock, followed by a strange mix of remorse and relief gentled his brown eyes.
Carly gave a stiff nod. “I thought so.” Without another word, she trudged upstairs to her attic room.
She sat on the bed and stared at the wall, barely aware of the tap at her door. She turned to find it slowly opening, her uncle on the threshold. They stared at one another as the old-fashioned clock on her bedside table ticked away the seconds.
He stepped inside, looking awkward. “We thought it best not to tell you until you were grown. Later, we decided not to tell you at all.”
Numb, Carly hugged herself and nodded.
“We didn’t think Dorothy could have children; when your mother asked us to take you in, she agreed.”
“And you?” She nailed him with a look. “Did you even want me?”
“I caused so much pain to both Dorothy and your mom; I only wanted what was best for everyone involved.” He hesitated, then walked closer to sit down next to her. “But especially you. You were the innocent in all this.”
Carly snorted. “Not according to Aunt Dorothy!”
“She’s very bitter, and I honored her wish that you not be told. But Carly. . .” He moved as if he would take her hand, then sat back as if he’d changed his mind. “I have always cared and wanted what’s best for you. I know I’ve been stern with you and not the best of uncles—we don’t see eye to eye a lot of the time because we’re too much alike. But if I hadn’t cared about you all these years. . .”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.” Carly felt uneasy at this switch in their relationship, though she’d always suspected it.
He blew out a heavy breath. “That may be, but it’s something I should have said long ago. You’re special to me, Carly, my firstborn. I even had a hand in naming you, more or less.”
Carly wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold herself together and didn’t respond, hoping he would go away. Yet this had been something she’d always wanted, to know her father, to talk to him.
He must have read the pain-filled indecision on her face. “It appears to me this isn’t a good time, but now that you know the truth, we need to talk. We can go to Milton’s Pantry and discuss things over dinner this weekend.”
She had to know. “Were you ever planning to tell me the truth? Or would you have been content just to go on pretending you were my uncle?”
“As a matter of fact, Dorothy and I have argued about this for a long time. I felt you should know when you hit twenty-one, but I refrained from saying anything then. Now, at least that disagreement between us has been settled.”
“I don’t want Trina knowing.” Carly made the decision. She didn’t want her little cousin’s hatred, too.
He sighed. “Let’s just take this as it comes. This past hour has been full enough already.”
Carly nodded, watching distantly as he patted her hand, then rose and left the room. She swiped away the tears that dripped down her cheeks. Though she felt tired, she needed action, and she knew she would never be able to sleep.
Moving to her desk, Carly turned on her computer to check her e-mail. A brief, lighthearted post bursting with smiley faces, hearts, and dancing animated kittens and puppies came from Kim, and Carly smiled. When they’d crossed the Canadian border at the end of the trail, even as weary as all of them were, Kim had thrown off her backpack and done a series of cartwheels, exuberant that she’d made it to the end—that she’d lived out her dream.
Carly dashed off an equally silly reply to the teen’s post, sent it, and tapped her finger against the keyboard, deep in thought. Piercing the corner of her lip with her teeth, she looked at the folded page Jill had given her at church weeks earlier.
“Come on, Carly girl,” she muttered to herself. “Where’s your backbone? You just braved your aunt with a question that’s revolved inside your head for years and discovered the truth. This could never be as bad.”
She hoped.
Smoothing out the page, she spotted Nate’s address and began to type.
❧
Nate packed up the last of the moving cartons, glad to be getting out of the dump he’d called his apartment for a year. He was taking to the road, uncertain of his destination and planning to wing it. Once he found a place he liked, he might settle. He winced when the telephone rang—again—and Brittany left her sixth message. He’d met her at the singles’ dinner weeks earlier, had taken her out twice, but knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere and had tried to tell her so. But she wouldn’t listen. Nor, it seemed, would Susan, who now wanted back in his life and called just as often.
Glancing at his laptop, he wondered if he should boot up one final time and check his e-mail in case anyone had contacted him from the hiking group. He mocked himself.
“What for? You don’t need to hear from her; you don’t want to hear from her. Remember?” Besides, if she did contact him and he learned she still hadn’t found Christ, it might kill him. He wondered just how long it would take for these feelings to dissolve.
Spotting a library book he’d checked out during his quest of deciding where to go—one filled with information on Vermont’s towns—he groaned. He should drop it off before he forgot and maybe pick up a fast-food meal on the way. After all that packing, he was hungry.
Twenty minutes later, library book in hand, he approached the front desk. The young librarian smiled at him as he handed her the book.
