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A few minutes later, he felt more than heard Ruthie get up from the couch beside him and pace the floor. Before that she’d been staring at her lap, her lips moving in silent prayer. He doubted her heartfelt pleas would do Sobo any good, but if the lifelong ritual brought Ruthie comfort, that was all that mattered.
“Pop’s been gone a long time.” Concern laced her smooth voice. “I thought all they had to do was wheel Sobo to the in-patient floor and Pop would come tell us her room number. They could have moved her to Tokyo and back by now.”
He dropped his arm and sat upright. “They probably have to hook her up to drips and get her settled first. That always takes time.”
Ruthie stopped pacing and returned to the seat beside him. “I’m glad you came for me,” she said without looking at him. “Sobo and Pop mean a lot to me.”
He studied her while she toyed with an old-fashioned amethyst ring on her right hand. Her left hand remained bare, leading him to wonder who she might be dating now. Although his grandparents occasionally mentioned her in passing, they always steered clear of information that might be too personal...or too painful.
“I know,” he said softly. “And you mean a lot to them.”
With her hazel gaze fixed on him, her steady assessment seemed to be more in response to what he didn’t say than what actually came out of his mouth. To be fair to her, though, he wouldn’t tell her the rest...that she also meant a lot to him.
Even if it was the truth.
He wished he could believe again. It would be so much simpler if he did. But after being abandoned by God during his time of greatest need—an event that had resulted in the death of a young man who’d counted on him and God for protection—Gray saw no point in pretending. And he refused to lie to Ruthie by letting her think he still believed. Why couldn’t he be like other guys? Just tell a girl what she wanted to hear and reap the benefits of her affection. He could have easily continued on with their marriage plans and let her comfort him through the grief he’d endured in that hellish place called Afghanistan. But that wouldn’t have been fair to her. And his daddy hadn’t raised him that way.
Gray had been barely five years old when his father had pulled him aside prior to deployment to Saudi Arabia, explaining that during his absence Gray was to serve as the man of the family. “Your job is to take care of the people you love,” he’d said with great seriousness. “Look after your mother and sister, even when you’d rather play with your race cars.”
His father was retired from the army now and working in a civilian job, but Gray still carried the responsibility—the duty—to protect the ones he loved. Though he may have failed on occasion, it wasn’t from lack of trying. His mouth tightened. There was one person he would never fail. No matter what it took, he’d protect her to the very best of his ability.
He’d never dreamed, though, that taking care of Ruthie would mean having to give her up.
* * *
In Naoko’s room, Ruthie greeted Gray’s parents and his sister, Catie, with hugs, then took a seat on the deep windowsill to leave room for the others. Gray sidled around to Ruthie’s side of the bed and stood beside her. It was weird how his calm presence made her feel that all would turn out well.
Naoko’s pulmonologist came in, listened to her lungs and proceeded to fill the family in on her condition.
“It’s not unusual for patients to develop a thrombus after a hip fracture.” The blond-haired doctor’s shirt gapped at the neck, around which a tie had been tightened to take up the slack. He appeared to be just out of medical school, but he sounded very knowledgeable as he explained the risk from the clot that had developed near Naoko’s surgery site. “A thrombus is a fancy word for blood clot. If it travels to the lungs, then it’s called a pulmonary embolism, which is what we’re concerned about right now.”
Gray leaned forward and touched his grandmother’s hand. “I thought the heparin she’s been taking since surgery was supposed to prevent it.”
“That was the hope, but it looks like she’ll need something stronger to dissolve the clot. There are some side effects from the stronger medication, but surgery to remove the thrombus is even riskier. So we’re going to keep her for several days to watch and wait for it to dissolve.”
Ruthie’s heart sank. She could read between those lines. It would be touch and go for the next few days until she was out of harm’s way.
“No worries,” Naoko said, her voice tired from the strain of her ordeal. Her skin, normally a warm amber color, now held a grayish cast. Her fingers closed around her grandson’s hand, and she pointed at the ceiling. “I am in God’s hands. He will get me through.”
Ruthie gave a silent prayer of thanks that Naoko was still with them. She had no doubt God had been with her all along. Her condition could have become much worse. Naoko wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she would receive the benefit of the prayers of her and the family—most of the family—and the church.
She wondered whether Naoko’s words were intended to assure the family or herself. Their effect on Gray, however, was clear. A muscle twitched along his temple, and he extended his hand to the doctor.
“Thank you for all you’ve done so far, Doctor.”
They followed him into the hall and lingered together after the doctor left. Ruthie wanted to reassure Gray that, as Naoko had said, she was in God’s hands. “Everyone who knows Sobo—and many who don’t—will be praying for her,” she said, laying a hand on his thick arm. “She’s a strong woman, and God’s healing touch will help her recover.”
Gray turned his gaze away from her. “I’d rather count on the skill of the doctor and the medicine she’s receiving. That’s what will save her.”
Ruthie reacted as if she’d been punched in the gut. In a manner of speaking, she had been. Church had been an important part of their upbringing, both hers and Gray’s. Whenever healing occurred, it was understood that although physicians and medications were valuable tools in the process, true healing ultimately came from God. He was the one who gave the doctors wisdom and enabled the medicines to work. To deny God’s role in Sobo’s recovery sounded to her ears as if Gray was offering his loved one up to the whims of chance and limited earthly abilities.
“Then I suppose we have all the bases covered,” she said, letting him know without arguing the point that although he dismissed all but what he could see with his own eyes, she and the rest of the family would continue to put their faith in prayer.
He must certainly know, without her saying so, that God was the great healer. What he didn’t know was that for the past four years she had prayed every day for God to heal Gray’s shaken faith. Once her prayers were answered and Gray opened his heart enough to let God back in, she would ask God to make room in there for her, as well.
Chapter Two
“Thanks for your help yesterday, Paisley. I don’t know what I would have done without you and Savannah pitching in to keep Gleanings open while I was at the hospital.” Ruthie took a seat at the counter in Milk & Honey and gently pushed aside a ceramic Peter Rabbit to make room for her elbows.
Paisley moved behind the counter and flipped the switch to backlight what she called her higgledy-piggledy wall...shelves divided into cubes and filled with various sorts of teapots, spoon collections, antique cups, honeypots, snow globes and porcelain crumpet baskets. A British transplant, Paisley loved sharing bits of her homeland with customers.
In the seating area behind Ruthie, tables were given the illusion of privacy by separating them with low shelves strategically filled with packets of flavored teas, jars of jam, notecards, knickknacks, tea cozies and anything British to entice diners to take home a little memento of their Milk & Honey experience. Over to the side of the store, tucked away in locked display cases, were the real treasures—silver tea sets, rare water pitchers and ornate sugar bowls. The more unusual the better, and if the piece had an interesting story behind it, better still.
On the opposite side of the dining counter, Paisley lit the fire under a cast-iron skillet and set a glass of orange juice in front of Ruthie.
“No problem. I was happy to help,” Paisley replied. Her accent always sounded so elegant and cultured. It was a huge draw for the customers. She refilled the coffee cup of an older gentleman sporting a white handlebar mustache and handed Ruthie a sheet featuring this week’s specials. “We sold a few of Mr. Bristow’s gewgaws yesterday, and a lovely Asian lady was quite excited about a quaint little Japanese doll she found.”
The kissing dolls. Ruthie hadn’t planned to keep them, but neither had she anticipated their sale would hit her so hard in the solar plexus.
“That’s great,” she said, her voice not quite matching Paisley’s enthusiasm. “Was it Chou from the Tokyo Market down the street? Sobo loves to shop there.”
“No, I’ve seen this lady a couple of times before, so I assume she’s local, but I don’t know who she is. Speaking of Mrs. Bristow, what’s the latest on her status?”
Ruthie gave her a full update with the unfortunate news that the redness and swelling on Naoko’s leg showed no improvement.
“She’ll be fine,” her friend reassured. Taking advantage of the momentary lull, she poured herself a cup of tea and flashed a guilty grin before she snitched one of the biscotti from the tin. “The whole church is praying for her. And besides, she’s a tough lady. Remember the time when we were in university, and she climbed up on the roof of our house to replace some shingles?”
“Pop was furious when he found out. He kept going on about her falling and possibly getting a concussion.” Ruthie took a sip of her freshly squeezed juice. “Come to think of it, that was his same concern when she fell off the rose trellis a couple of days ago. He kept telling her, ‘Thank God you didn’t crack your head.’”
“It’s sweet, actually. He’s madly protective of her.”
The acorn didn’t fall very far from the Bristow tree. In that regard Gray was a lot like his grandfather. Ruthie mentally kicked herself for letting her attention drift back to the man who still held the pieces of her broken heart in his strong hands.
She must have cracked her own head to think that she could pray her former fiancé back to God and to herself. But if God didn’t give up on lost sheep, then she certainly wouldn’t give up on Gray.
She focused on the specials menu, then looked over at Mustache Man at the end of the counter, who was digging into a hearty English breakfast. “What he’s having looks good. Is that French toast?”
“Eggy bread? No.”
Ruthie had never heard the refined Paisley snort before. This was a first.
“It’s fried bread. I’ll do a nice British fry-up for you, complete with egg, bacon, sausage, tomato and a dab of beans.” She turned to the skillet and talked over her shoulder. “Now fess up. You’ve deliberately avoided telling me how you fared with Gray yesterday.”
So much for taking her mind off him. Ruthie shrugged. “There’s nothing to say. I’m not really sure what that was about, though. After these past six months avoiding each other, he suddenly wanted me at the hospital with him. Constantly.”
It had been nice to be close to him after all this time apart, but also stressful because there had been so much left unsaid between them.
She fought to keep her voice strong, to look at Paisley directly when all she wanted was to bury her head in her arms and cry like a baby. But she was stronger than that now. She could do this. With effort she could convince Paisley and her friends that she no longer felt anything for Gray. Convincing her own heart was another matter.
“But after he drove me home,” she continued, “he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
“Perhaps he wanted to kiss you goodbye and was just avoiding temptation.” Paisley pulled a batch of scones from the oven, topped one with clotted cream and jam, set it on a scalloped-edge plate and carried it to a pair of women laughing at a corner table.
Ruthie choked back a laugh at her friend’s comment. Big talk coming from a friend who studiously shied away from male attention. But then, Paisley had her reasons.
The minute they were alone again, Ruthie suggested, “Or maybe he didn’t want to lead me on. Not that I’d be interested, of course.”
“Of course.” For some reason, the Brits did sarcasm far better than Americans. It had to be the accent. Paisley deftly changed the subject. “I heard Gray is planning corporate security systems now. What do you say we have him put one in here?”
“What do you say we let him continue to avoid me?”
“He didn’t avoid you yesterday.”
“The same could be said of your police officer friend.”
Paisley set the fry-up in front of her and shot her a blue-eyed dagger. “Don’t try to make something out of nothing.”
Ruthie poked her fork at the delicious looking but heavy breakfast. “What do you put on fried bread?”
“Your teeth.”
The front door chimed, and Paisley turned back to the smoking fry pan. She switched on the vent to draw out some of the smoke. A second later red-and-yellow flames danced along the surface of the overheated oil.
“Oh, my!” Paisley turned in a circle, apparently in search of something to put out the fire.
Ruthie scooted off her stool and ran behind the counter to help. The customer from the end of the counter followed on her heels.
“Get the baking soda!” Paisley cried.
The man snatched a can of something from the prep table.
“No, not that!” Ruthie lunged to grab the can out of his hand, but before she could reach it, he threw the contents on the flames.
Whoof! The pan flared up in a miniature fireball, and baking powder poofed everywhere.
In a panic, Ruthie debated what to do first...tend to Paisley, whose blunt-cut brunette bangs now frizzled like tiny electrified wires, get the customer with the melting handlebar mustache out of the kitchen before he did further damage or try to extinguish the pan before it caught something else on fire. Before she could make a move, someone pushed past her, turned off the gas flames and deftly slid a lid over the hot pan.
Gray, their fast-thinking rescuer, turned on the water, doused clean dish towels with cold water, offered them to the threesome and suggested they hold the cooling cloths to their faces to take away the sting of the heat.
Paisley touched a hand to her cheek. “I don’t think I’m burned. Just a little warm.”
After a quick check of the customer revealed a slight redness near his lip where his mustache wax had melted, Gray turned to Ruthie. He grabbed her by the upper arms and studied her intensely. First her face, then down to her hands, which he turned over to check for burns. She’d been farther away from the fire when it flashed, so she hadn’t felt the effects of the heat. Yet even after he’d finished giving her the once-over, he held on. She wondered if he realized how tightly he gripped her upturned hands.
“Are you all right?” he asked, concern drawing a vertical line on his forehead.
“I’m fine,” she said in a shaky voice, “but Paisley looks weird.”
Along with her bangs, Paisley’s eyebrow hairs had faded from dark brunette to pale brown and corkscrewed in all directions. Her cheeks and nose glowed a faint pink, but it wasn’t clear whether the color came from a burn or stress.
Savannah dashed over from Connecting Threads, her blond hair bouncing on her shoulders.
“I heard a loud whoosh clear across the store,” she said, “and when I looked over here, it seemed as though the whole place had gone up like a dried-out Christmas tree.”
While Savannah bustled from one friend to the other and then the older man, double-checking them for heretofore unnoticed signs of injury, Gray quietly herded the ensemble out of the kitchen.
“It’s a miracle no one was hurt,” Savannah declared. “God must have been watching over y’all.”
Gray fixed his gaze on Ruthie, his expression making it clear he would not be joining in the choruses of “praise God.”
“We need to talk,” he said.
* * *
While her friends cleaned up the kitchen, Ruthie followed Gray back to the Gleanings area. Several new finds awaited price tags, and boxes from the Bristow house still sat near the checkout counter where she had left them yesterday afternoon. There were not yet any customers at this early hour of the morning.
A terrible thought raced through her heart. “Sobo. Did the clot—?”
“She’s the same,” he said, moving his hands as if to erase whatever worry she might have. “It’s not about her.”
Relief flooded through her. But the troubled expression on Gray’s face killed the momentary reprieve. Were they finally going to confront the awkward elephant that had stood between them for the past four years? Worse, was he going to tell her he’d moved on and found someone else?
“It’s about Pop.”
Ruthie touched a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“No, not Pop, but his stuff. You haven’t already sold the things he brought in yesterday, have you?”
His dark brow furrowed together, and he jammed his hands into his jeans pockets in a sign that Ruthie had come to know meant something was bothering him. Apparently, this was about more than just a few collectible doodads.
“I don’t think so.” She looked inside the half dozen open boxes sitting on and beside the counter. “These haven’t been inventoried yet, but it looks like everything’s still here.”
She paused, remembering what Paisley had said about selling the kissing dolls. Had he come back for them? Did they hold the same meaning for him that they did for her?
“Oh, wait. There was one thing, a pair of knickknacks that used to sit on the piano.”
She watched him, but his intense gaze never flickered. He didn’t remember? Her heart sank a little.
He shook his head. “One of the boxes was full of military stuff from Pop’s service in Korea. Awards and medals, pictures, journals. Some keepsakes. He had set that box aside to put away but brought it to you by mistake.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”
They started with the stack beside the counter. Few of the contents matched the kinds of things Ruthie sold at Gleanings. She usually focused on antique or unusual one-of-a-kind items bought from estate sales and moving sales, but these would be sold on consignment for the Bristows. The idea had been to spare Pop the trouble of organizing a yard sale when he needed to take care of Sobo. He’d initially pushed aside the stored items in the spare bedroom to make room for Sobo’s rented hospital bed. But his wife’s Japanese decorating taste won out, and soon the room looked as sparse and clean as the rest of the house.
They went through the three stacked boxes of odds and ends first, then moved a fourth from the small pedestal table Pop had brought and set it on the counter. The tabletop’s inlaid design of golden-colored grain beckoned her to trace her fingers around the bent heads of barley.
She clearly remembered sitting at this table on the Bristows’ screened porch, playing Jenga with Gray and his younger sister while a warm summer breeze blew over the trio. Gray had stared intently at the stacked wooden blocks, determined to remove a piece without collapsing the precarious tower. Ruthie had laughed at his seriousness over the silly game, but he’d just refocused his concentration. With a hint of mischief guiding her actions, she’d touched her bare toes to the twisted barley pedestal and given it a nudge so slight the crashing of the tower could have easily been blamed on the breeze.
When his foot came down on hers, she’d suspected she’d been caught. Instead, he’d conceded defeat and promptly invited her to the Byrd Theatre for a 99-cent second-run movie. It was their first date, and he’d held her hand during the entire time the Wurlitzer organ played before the movie started. Ruthie had no memory of the movie, but she could still remember the exact feel of her hand in his, the calluses on his palm scratching her skin. Remembered wishing they hadn’t bought popcorn each time he let go to reach into the carton for a handful of the buttery stuff.
