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Pretty sure Cody is looking for you.
She wanted to ask Jack what he meant. How did he know what Cody was going through? He’d assumed Willow’s Haven was an orphanage. Had he been orphaned too? Was that why he’d decided to remove himself from society, remain holed up in middle-of-nowhere, Alabama?
“Bring him back tomorrow. Let me help.” His words were almost delivered as a command, and Elise wondered what kind of position of authority this guy held in the past that he believed people would do his bidding simply because he stated it.
Even so, she wanted to help Cody. Needed to. And the boy did seem drawn to this guy. Then again, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t drawn to him too. There was something about him...
She cleared her head, thought about what was best for her patient. “It’d be better if Cody came back on his own, instead of me trying to force him to do anything.”
“Okay. But I think he will.”
Elise nodded. Cody had been here twice in two days. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t make an effort to return again tomorrow. “I do too.”
He gave her a slight smile, as though pleased she gave the right answer, and, again, she wondered what kind of power this man had held—or still held—in his world. Showing her his phone, he added, “I’ll call you when he does.” Then he indicated the path behind Elise. “You should probably go before the rain.”
“What rain?” she asked, as a loud boom of thunder in the distance made her jump, and then a heavy drop of water plopped on her nose.
“I’ve always sensed when storms are coming.” His voice rumbled almost as fiercely as the sounds echoing from the dark clouds overhead.
“Call me if you see him again.” More drops plopped on her head, and she became aware of the musty odor and heaviness permeating the air. Then she turned and darted down the trail but chanced one more look over her shoulder to see Jack, standing in the rain, watching her disappear into the woods as if he wanted to make sure she made it back safely.
Why did she have the impulse to turn around, run the opposite direction...and make sure he found his way home too?
Chapter Two (#ulink_6c3cda38-4500-5087-9843-2ac6b0a7e68a)
Jack sat on the front steps of his cabin and watched the how-to video on his laptop. Before yesterday, he’d have sat inside to view the next steps involved in building a seven-drawer dresser, but now that he knew the boy he’d encountered actually existed, he didn’t want to miss his reappearance. In fact, he had a difficult time paying attention to the video, because he couldn’t keep his gaze from wandering to that spot in the woods where Cody had appeared.
And then Elise.
Throughout the night and most of today, he’d found himself thinking as much about the woman as the boy. Or more. He’d been impressed with her willingness to approach him, a stranger, in order to find and protect her son.
No, not her son, her patient. That had surprised him, the way she’d shown so much motherly instinct toward a child for which she shared no blood bond. A beautiful thing, really. In another place and time, he would’ve taken that exquisite situation, the layers of emotions, peeled them away from the surface and studied them, then analyzed the best way to portray a woman who cared so deeply on the big screen.
Gritting his teeth at the way his mind always went there, he stopped thinking about the large screens of the past and instead turned his attention to the small screen in front of him, the one showing a master woodworker describing how to build the drawers. But Jack hadn’t finished the frame, and he’d glazed over during the applicable part, his thoughts on the grieving boy and intriguing woman instead of his current task.
He restarted the last section of the video and watched it again. The simple action of repeating the segment brought back a memory of JJ, standing outside Hollywood’s ArcLight Cinemas at the prescreening of The Journey.
Dad, what happens when someone has to leave to go to the bathroom or something? How do they know what they missed without talking during the show?
Jack had laughed that the boy, only six or seven at the time, already knew the rules of silence during those screenings. Then he’d explained that most often the audience could determine what they’d missed by the foreshadowing layered throughout the earlier frames, or by the dialogue or actions in the scenes that followed. Or they could simply buy another ticket and see the movie again. That last portion of Jack’s answer had been overheard by a reporter and included in reviews about the film. JJ had been thrilled to have had a part in the written reviews.
And Jack had looked forward to the day when he’d see his son following in his footsteps.
Ready to begin working and get his mind off the past, he shut the computer. He’d watched the portion on building the frame several times already and knew he wouldn’t make it much further than that today.
It wasn’t as if he was in a rush to build everything for the cabin, anyway. Jack had no idea what he’d do next, after making all of his own furniture. But he’d find some way to pass the time. Something to learn. Something to do. Some manner to push through the eternity of days God probably had planned for him. Days without his wife and children. Days to remember what he’d had, and what he’d lost.
For some reason, a vision of Elise, her mouth agape as she tried to understand why he hadn’t notified anyone about seeing Cody, flashed through his mind. He wondered if she had children of her own. She appeared to be about his age, thirty-two, or a little younger. Late twenties or early thirties. And very attractive. He’d thought about that several times since yesterday too. Her heart-shaped mouth, dark chocolate eyes, flushed cheeks. Those rose-tinted cheeks, however, were probably more a result of her shock at learning he’d seen Cody the day before and hadn’t called anyone.
There was something fascinating about a woman fiercely protecting her own.
He huffed out a breath. It didn’t feel right thinking of her as attractive, or fascinating, or anything else. He’d loved Laney and didn’t plan to care about anyone that way again. It hurt too much when God took her away. Even so, he couldn’t stop glancing at the end of the trail and wondering if Elise would return.
Standing, he moved to the piece of mahogany already positioned for sanding on his sawhorses and prepared to uncover the beauty that would form the top of the dresser. Surely that would keep his mind off things he shouldn’t be thinking.
He eyed the expensive piece of wood and wondered if he could do it justice. Typically, Jack didn’t attempt anything he couldn’t do well. Laney had often joked that she hadn’t found an aspect of life where he didn’t excel.
“You never saw me try to build furniture, did you?” he asked, though Laney certainly wasn’t around to hear.
Jack’s heart thudded in his chest. She’d have gotten a kick out of seeing him talk to himself, as well as watching him try to learn the mechanics of carpentry.
His father was a carpenter.
Elise’s words trickled through his thoughts, reminding him of the boy who’d also lost his entire family.
Jack couldn’t deny that he wanted to see Cody again. Nor could he deny that he wanted to see Elise again too. But he’d come here to get away from memories of the past, and a woman who cared so deeply, as well as a traumatized boy who desperately needed help, wouldn’t do anything to keep those memories at bay. However, Jack’s desire to reach out to a youngster struggling with the same grief that pierced his senses outweighed his instinct to protect his heart from more pain. He hadn’t lied to Elise; he wanted—needed—to help the kid. But helping Cody would be near impossible if the boy wouldn’t stick around long enough to interact with Jack.
He decided to replace thoughts of Elise and Cody with his concentration on the task at hand. Besides, the dresser would never get finished if he simply stood here looking at the woods all day watching for two people who might never return. He’d come here for peace, for solitude. He shouldn’t want visitors.
He shouldn’t.
Jack breathed in the distinctive scent of sawdust and turned his attention to the mahogany. Before coming here, he’d never thought about the process of building furniture, but since he started, he couldn’t help but notice the parallels of creating a functional piece from mere wood and the Creation. God had crafted something beautiful out of nothing.
Jack’s mind tripped over an idea, where a furniture builder spent hours upon hours generating a prized masterpiece, pouring his heart and soul into something that would stand the test of time, but the piece has no idea about its maker. The product of the creation has no appreciation for the love and care that went into its very existence.
Or does it?
As he gently sanded and slowly exposed the beauty of the wood grain, Jack honed the idea.
What would happen if, by the passing of the beloved piece of furniture from one generation to the next, a story unfolded about the love of that original creator displayed to each of his descendants, as long as the generations remembered him, appreciated him and made an effort to pass on his legacy? The depth of the love would only intensify and increase as generation after generation cared for its existence, protected it with their heart and soul.
How would audiences best relate to the scenario?
Jack played with thought after thought, idea after idea, until hours had passed. And then he realized he’d sanded the same spot for way too long, and the wood was no longer a piece of beauty. The marred blemish claimed all attention, extinguishing the perfection surrounding the scar.
Why were eyes always drawn to the flaw?
This would never be a piece to pass down to generations. He’d ruined it. Because he hadn’t been paying attention. Frustrated, he picked up the once expensive piece of wood, now worthless, and hurled it aside with gusto.
A movement to his right caught his attention, and he glanced up in time to see Cody retreating backward into the woods. How long had he been standing there while Jack lost himself in the plot? And in the pain of his past?
Jack had waited all day to see the boy, and now that he’d returned, he’d scared him away when he took his frustrations out on a piece of wood. “Cody?” Another urge to pray pushed forward, but he ignored it. “Why don’t you come here and see what I’m doing? I’m building—attempting to build—furniture. Working on a dresser.”
The boy wore a long-sleeved navy T-shirt with an old-fashioned red, white and blue Ford Mustang emblem on the front, jeans and tennis shoes, black with white soles and laces. His shoestrings weren’t tied, and Jack hoped he didn’t trip, but he also didn’t want to say anything about it. He wouldn’t do anything to threaten Cody’s slow, timid progression across the yard.
The boy scanned the area, particularly the sawhorses and tools, and then his attention moved to the discarded piece of wood. Veering to the left, he moved within a few feet of Jack in his quest to reach the mahogany. He was taller than Jack originally thought, thinner too, with long, lean fingers that cautiously reached toward the wood. He crouched beside the wide plank, then ran a palm reverently down its length.
Jack held his breath, waiting to see what the boy would do. Cody looked up, his eyes filled with pain, with a confusion Jack felt to his soul. Although he didn’t speak, no words were necessary. And another whisper of an idea flitted across his brain. What if an entire movie followed the chronicles of an autistic boy, a brilliant, grief-ravaged boy who refused to share his thoughts with a world that didn’t care.
But Jack cared.
And he felt the need to explain his actions to the distraught boy. “The wood is no longer any good. It’s my fault. I sanded it too much.”
Tears slid down Cody’s cheeks.
Jack wanted to show him how badly he felt for scaring him. He moved toward the boy...
And messed up again.
In an effort to keep Jack at bay, Cody fell backward, the white soles of his shoes flashing in the afternoon sunlight when he caught himself with his palms. Helpless to do anything but watch, Jack stood stone-still as Cody’s behind hit the ground and he scooted away like a trapped animal attempting to flee.
Jack knew better than to make any type of move toward the kid, so he remained where he stood and made his voice as calm as possible. “I won’t hurt you, Cody. I promise. I was just going to see if I could help.”
Dark eyebrows dipped as Cody shuffled away, the heels of his shoes pushing against loose leaves and dirt in his retreat. He shook his head, a dark wave of bangs shifting with the move, while his attention darted from Jack to the discarded mahogany and back again.
And then his confused expression landed on Jack’s thick beard.
Before Jack could say anything else, Cody scrambled to his feet and darted into the woods, disappearing down the path, while Jack ran a hand across the scruffy mess covering the lower half of his face.
* * *
Elise had made it about ten feet down the trail when she met Cody coming from the opposite direction. Conflicting emotions slammed her with his appearance. Happiness that he hadn’t stayed gone long and found his way back without problem, and disappointment that she hadn’t needed to go farther down the trail to find him, as in all the way to Jack’s cabin.
She had no doubt that Cody had been to his favorite spot, but unfortunately, his time away hadn’t produced a positive demeanor. His face was drawn and tense, eyes fixated beyond Elise as he brushed against her on the trail. “Cody?” She turned to follow him but stopped when her cell vibrated in her pocket.
Assuming she knew who was on the other end, she kept an eye on Cody as he headed toward his cabin and answered, “Hello?”
“He came back, but I scared him away.”
The frustration in Jack’s voice tugged at her heart. “What happened?”
A sharp intake of breath echoed through the line.
“Jack,” she said, “how did you scare him away? I need to know so I can help him.”
“At first, I thought it was the wood, but now I think it was the beard. Should’ve shaved it.” His words were delivered as if talking more to himself than to Elise.
Her eyes slid closed, and she gripped the phone, his behavior reminding her of so many conversations from the past, when she had to decipher what Anthony tried to say and fill in the missing pieces.
God, please, don’t let me get sucked into trying to fix another man.
But even as she thought the words of the prayer, she found herself empathizing with the guy who had tried to help Cody and had come out short. “You said something about wood?”
“A piece of mahogany. I bought it for the top of the dresser, but then I got to sanding it and had my mind on—” another pause “—other things.”
Her counselor’s instinct pushed at her to ask about the “other things,” but her experience with Anthony held those words in check. She didn’t need to get too involved in Jack’s world. Didn’t want to find herself close enough to get hurt. She cleared her throat and prepared to tell him that she needed to see Cody, but his heavy sigh of discouragement forced her to continue the conversation until he found some form of comfort from his efforts to help her patient.
“You were sanding wood when he got there?” She visualized Cody happening upon Jack involved in the task and knew that he undoubtedly equated the man with some semblance of the carpenter who had raised him and loved him. But she didn’t know why that would have upset Cody. “Did it seem to bother him?”
“I wasn’t sanding when he got here. I’d gotten—” he sighed again, apparently searching for the right word “—irritated at myself for sanding the same spot too long and ruining the wood, and I was tossing it when Cody came through the woods.”
Elise pictured the scene more clearly now. Cody had gone searching for Jack, but instead of finding the quiet, rugged carpenter he’d encountered the past two days, he’d happened upon an aggravated man who, from the sound of things, took his frustration out on a piece of mahogany.
As far as Elise knew, Cody hadn’t been exposed to any form of abuse in his past, so she didn’t think he’d been scared that Jack would hurt him. However, Jack’s action triggered something, enough of a response that Cody had returned to Willow’s Haven.
“Seeing me throw the wood bothered him, but I think it was the beard that caused him to leave.” And again, he spoke more to himself than Elise.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then said, “The beard hasn’t bothered him before. Why do you think it did today?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty good at reading people, or at least I was when I was working. And he was bothered by the beard.”
When he was working. Elise wondered what the man did in the film industry, and how the guy could move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere without any apparent form of income. She started to ask, but then heard the whispers of warning in the back of her mind.
Getting too personal will make you care too much.
You have a patient with enough problems to keep you more than busy while you’re here. Don’t take on a man with issues too.
Protect your heart.
“Elise.”
The way he said her name let her know he was fully involved in the conversation now, and she found herself anxious to hear more.
Protect your heart.
“Yes?”
“We can help him.”
We? She closed her eyes, prayed for God to keep her from getting hurt...too much. Because she knew in her soul that Jack could hurt her, the same way she’d been hurt before.
A door slammed, and she opened her eyes to view Cody exiting his cabin, a big, tan canvas tote draped over his shoulder. He walked directly to her car, opened the passenger door and got in.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. She heard his frustrated, “Goodbye, Elise,” echo through the line and almost explained why she had to finish the conversation, but memories of the last man in her life gave her the courage to click the end button.
Plus, Cody sat waiting in her car.
Knowing he wouldn’t use words to let her know what he wanted, she dashed to her cabin, grabbed her keys, her purse and the flash cards she used to communicate with him, and then hurried to the driver’s side of the car.
He reached for the cards as soon as she climbed in, but Elise shook her head. “First I need to remind you that you shouldn’t have left without letting someone know.” She thumbed through the cards. “If you want to go for a hike, you show me this card.” She held up the picture of a guy wearing a dark green shirt, jeans and hiking boots. Yesterday, she’d have said the guy in the photo looked rugged and outdoorsy. But then she’d met Jack. In his sawdust-coated flannel shirt, jeans and boots, he had rugged and outdoorsy mastered.
Cody tapped his fingers together at his chest, a signal of his anxiety, and Elise shook the image of Jack away and pointed to the hiking guy on the card. “So you show me this card the next time you want to go see—The next time you want to go for a walk in the woods. Understand?”
He bobbed his head and reached again for the cards. This time, Elise released the deck.
Cody, used to this routine, flipped through the stack so rapidly that the snapping cardboard sounded like popcorn within the confines of her Honda.
In spite of her uneasiness with the way her mind kept drifting back to Jack, she kept her voice low and controlled when she spoke. “Where do you want to go, Cody?”
