“Please don’t run, Heather.”

Michael watched Heather flinch. He’d said those words to her before, and on the steps of this very church. He’d gotten a face full of flowers—her wedding bouquet—the last time. This time he got much worse.

Heather turned and looked him straight in the eye. In that moment he saw unmasked all the hurt and disappointment she had carried with her all these years.

“Please, Heather.” He came down one step, and then another, his hand extended. “Please stay. And then we can—”

What? Take up their lives where they left off? With her looking to the wrong people and places for happiness? And him, wishing she’d just once look at him, really look at him and see how much he loved her?

After the Storm:

A Kansas community unites to rebuild

Healing the Boss’s Heart—Valerie Hansen

July 2009

Marrying Minister Right—Annie Jones

August 2009

Rekindled Hearts—Brenda Minton

September 2009

The Matchmaking Pact—Carolyne Aarsen

October 2009

A Family for Thanksgiving—Patricia Davids

November 2009

Jingle Bell Babies—Kathryn Springer

December 2009

ANNIE JONES

Winner of the Holt Medallion for Southern Themed Fiction and the Houston Chronicle’s Best Christian Fiction Author of 1999, Annie Jones grew up in a family that loved to laugh, eat and talk—often all at the same time. They instilled in her the gift of sharing through words and humor, and the confidence to go after her heart’s desire (and to act fast if she wanted the last chicken leg). A former social worker, she feels called to be a “voice for the voiceless” and has carried that calling into her writing by creating characters often overlooked in our fast-paced culture—from seventy-somethings who still have a zest for life to women over thirty with big mouths and hearts to match. Having moved thirteen times during her marriage, she is currently living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Marrying Minister Right
Annie Jones

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Annie Jones for her contribution to the After the Storm miniseries

Therefore put on the full armor of God,

so that when the day of evil comes, you may

be able to stand your ground, and after you have

done everything, to stand.

—Ephesians 6:13

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Questions for Discussion

Prologue

July 10

10:00 p.m.

Wichita, Kansas

“That’s it! I am officially changing my name.”

The old door to the main office of Helping Hands Christian Charity slammed, echoing through the darkened hallway. The charity’s founder and long-time director pushed her straight light brown hair off her shoulders and stared at her name printed in gold on the frosted glass. “I am no longer Heather Waters.”

Mary Kate Madison, her assistant, marched onward flicking off lights as she headed down the hallway. She raised her voice to be heard over the drone of the TV in the lobby, calling back, “Not this again.”

“From this point on, I am going by what everybody and their dog seems to know me as.” The thin soles of Heather’s three-year-old, faux-leather bargain pumps kept a quick rhythm on the scuffed linoleum floor. “Heather Willya!”

“Did you say Heather Will You?” Mary Kate asked as she charged on ahead of her boss.

“Will ya,” she corrected above the hum of the TV in the lobby. “As in Heather, will ya sign these forms? Heather, will ya see if you can find a few more dollars for this cause or that? Heather, will ya juggle your schedule to host an important meeting of the Interfaith Community Needs Assessment Council?”

“You love being counted on and we all know it.” Mary Kate, who at twenty-three was five years younger than Heather but still tended to play mother hen, clucked her tongue as she reached the well-lit and finally vacant lobby. In the doorway she pivoted and held up her hand. “Oh, wait. Check the doors to make sure they’re locked as you come down the hallway, if you don’t mind, will you?”

“That’s Ms. Willya to you!” Heather called back. She rattled a doorknob, found it secure and moved on. “All is as it should be. Everything is safe and secure and we can trust—”

“Hey, didn’t you come from High Plains?” Mary Kate cut her off.

“High Plains?” Heather stopped in her tracks. “Why do you ask?”

Mary Kate pointed to the TV hung high in the lobby.

“An F3-level tornado devastated the small community of High Plains, Kansas, yesterday evening,” the TV announcer was saying.

“What?” Heather stepped forward. She’d been so busy with work that she hadn’t heard any news all day.

“The destruction is widespread,” the announcer went on. “Emergency crews are on the scene. We are still waiting to see if there are any deaths or serious injuries.”

Dead or injured? In High Plains? Heather staggered forward toward the small, flickering screen. A knot tightened in her stomach.

“You grew up there, right?” Her assistant looked from the broadcast to Heather then back to the broadcast.

“Yes, it’s…” A place she had not visited or even so much as driven through since she had left it behind a decade ago. Heather couldn’t imagine rubble where once had stood homes and businesses.

To her surprise, an aching sense of the familiar washed over her. The threat of tears blurred her vision. “It’s home.”

All her life that was all she had wanted. A real home. Her mother tried so hard to make one for their family. But no amount of love and kindness on her part had made it happen. Nothing either of them did could make Heather’s father love her.

“At present the town is using High Plains Christian Church, which escaped virtually unscathed in the storm, as a base of operations.”

The image of the simple old white church flashed on the screen and the world seemed to spin backward through time. Her cheeks flashed hot. Her knees wobbled for only a moment before she took a deep breath and shut her eyes to steady herself.

The day she left High Plains for good, never looking back, she was supposed to have been married in that very church. As long as she lived she would never forget opening the envelope in the sanctuary where she had spent so many joyous days of her life. In that envelope, delivered by a private investigator hired by her fiancé’s family, she found a truth her mother had taken to her grave. Edward Waters was not her biological father.

And John Parker, son of the wealthiest family to ever live in High Plains, wanted nothing more to do with her. There would be no marriage. For only a moment Heather had blamed the private investigator’s report. But young as she was, she wasn’t foolish enough to think that in this day and age someone would refuse to marry a person because of her lineage. No, Heather now understood why Edward Waters never would love her and that, despite his many youthful professions, John Parker had never really loved her.

Her world had fallen apart that day and she had crumbled with it. She had come so far since that wretched day. Yet this awful reminder of her hometown proved to her that she may have moved away, but she had not wholly moved on.

“Built in 1859, the church remains much as it did then, a beacon to those in need.” The reporter spoke with a cultivated calm that belied the tragedy of the situation. “We interviewed the minister from the church earlier today and here’s what he had to say.”

Heather raised her hand to block the screen from her view. “I’ll look this up online later tonight. It’s just horrible but…it really doesn’t have anything to do with me anymore. It’s not like I even know anyone there any—”

Just then, between her splayed fingers, she caught a glimpse of a broad-shouldered man with wavy dark brown hair. He looked rumpled but in charge.

“Michael.” Heather dropped her hand to her throat and fought to drag in a breath deep enough to allow her to speak above a dry, shocked whisper.

The years had treated him kindly. Given him fullness in the face and the beginning of lines fanning out from his startlingly blue eyes. Still, there was no mistaking him. “Michael Garrison.”

“You know him?” Mary Kate’s head whipped around.

The picture began to break up.

“I’m sorry,” the news anchor came back. “We seem to have lost that connection. We’ll go back to it after this message.”

Heather exhaled slowly, her eyes on the TV where moments ago she had confronted her past. “Yeah, I know him. Or knew him. That is…I thought I knew him.”

The Three Amigos. Everyone in town had called Michael, her and John Parker that from the time they had all been the lousiest players on a fairly lousy Little League team. They had formed a bond then—John, “Take-A-Hike Mike,” so called because the only way he could get on base was to get hit by the ball and get a walk; and “Heather Duster.” She threw herself into every base, trying too hard, wanting it too badly. Needing to prove she could do it, she would dive headlong, gritting her teeth and sliding with all her heart.

“You can never tell where Heather is standing until the dust settles,” the coach would say.

From grade school through high school, nothing could separate the trio. Until one day during the summer between their junior and senior years. That was the summer that John Parker kissed Heather. Suddenly, three became a crowd. Michael hadn’t seemed to mind; he wanted the best for his friends, he had said. He wanted them to be happy.

That’s what he had said.

“So you do know him, or what?”

“I know him.” Heather nodded, her eyes on the screen waiting to see if they would return to the story shortly. “The last time I saw the man, I threw my wedding bouquet in his face.”

“You were going to marry him?” Mary Kate stabbed her finger at the TV.

“No, he was just—” A friend? A friend would never have done what Michael Garrison had done. In many ways, his role in what happened that day had hurt Heather more than John’s. She knew why John couldn’t go through with the marriage. Even though she still chafed at the way he had handled it, she had found a grudging respect for the fact that he hadn’t gone forward with wedding vows he knew he could not honor for a lifetime. But Michael? Why had he gone along with it, allowed her public humiliation and done nothing to stop it? That, she could never understand. “Michael Garrison was just a—”

“Tell us, Reverend Garrison, what can people watching do to help?” The news correspondent had come back on. He thrust the mic into the bleary-eyed, disheveled minister’s face.

Such a good face. Heather could still see the kindness and commitment in the way he stood firm among the chaos and destruction. In the fact that he looked as though he had not rested since the storm had hit. In the fact that he was willing to speak on behalf of those who could not, at the moment, speak for themselves, with no regard for his own needs.

“Reverend Garrison,” she murmured, shaking her head. Michael had always talked about entering the ministry, but she had never heard if he had actually followed through on that.

He stroked the stubby shadow of bristles along his jaw. When she had last seen him, he’d hardly been shaving at all. He had been so young then. They all had been.

“For the time being we have most of the basics covered,” he said.

His hoarse voice tripped over her weary nerves the way she imagined a thumb would strum over the taut strings of a guitar, leaving them vibrating. The news churned up a sudden clash of emotions, leaving her feeling raw.

“This is not something that will be a quick or easy fix.” He shifted his weight. Tugged at his collar. Cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the media attention. Still, he understood how important it was to get the message out, to speak for the people and the town he so loved. “We have a lot of damage, the full extent of which we still don’t know. We have a fund set up through a local bank for contributions. So to anyone who wants to help that way, we’d appreciate it.”

“Done,” Heather said softly even as Mary Kate lunged for a pen and paper to jot down the information scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

“Should I write a request for a check from the board or send something from the floating fund?” Mary Kate asked above the scratching of her pen on the pad.

“Neither,” Heather said. “I’ll make a personal donation and solicit others on their behalf.”

It was her calling to do for other people the things she had never been able to do for her own parents—give them a chance to heal their differences, to stay together and be a real family.

“And, of course, we could use your prayers,” Michael concluded.

“Also done.” Heather pressed her lips together, drew in a deep breath and finally looked away.

That was all she could do right now. Her father was ill; she couldn’t leave town. Helping Hands Christian Charity was not designed, nor was it equipped, to rush in and give aid in emergency situations like this. She had an obligation to the people who donated to the organization to adhere to their mission. Still, she would do all she could personally to help the town she still loved, even if it had not seemed to love her back.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?” the reporter pressed on. “Anything more people can do to make a difference?”

For a second there was only silence.

Heather took the slip of paper from Mary Kate and did not look up. She did not need to see the man to know he was stroking his hand back through his hair, rubbing his chin and generally stalling for time. It was a habit he’d had since Little League. Always wanting to be sure he did and said the right thing, wanting to be conscious of other people’s feelings. That was why, when he had completely disregarded her feelings on the biggest day of her life, it had wounded her so deeply.

She would send money to the town and certainly pray for all of them, but that was all she would do. All she could do.

“There is one more thing,” Michael finally spoke up. “There are some tourist cottages by the river, a whole row of them.”

Heather tensed.

“I, uh, I used to know the owner,” Mike went on. “Well, uh, the owner’s daughter, actually.”

A shiver went down her spine.

“These cottages survived in pretty good shape. They aren’t luxury accommodations by any means, but for families who have nowhere else to turn, who want to stay together in High Plains, they could become a real, if temporary, home.”

“Home,” she whispered again. She spun around and searched first the background of High Plains behind Michael, then the man’s face. He had practically just spelled out Heather’s personal mission statement. She fought back the tears for the second time tonight.

“If anyone knows how to get in touch with any member of the Waters family, or if any of them hear this interview…”

She could not go to High Plains herself right now. She could not send money from her charity without going through a time-consuming process. But she could do this. She could answer Michael Garrison’s plea to help keep the families of High Plains together. She could grant permission on her father’s behalf for the use of the cottages.

Doing so would mean that, at some point, she’d have to go back to that town to deal with the cottages in person. She shut her eyes. Would it really be so bad? She needed to check on her father and could easily let him know what she had done. He might not be happy with her acting on his behalf, but he hadn’t been feeling well for some time. Nothing had been done with those cottages for so long, he would likely be glad to pass their responsibility on to her.

“Heather, will you help us out if you can?” Michael finally asked outright.

“Is he talking to you?” Mary Kate’s eyes grew wide.

“Yes.” He was talking to her. As an old friend. As a man of God. Perhaps even as a nudge from God. “Mary Kate, make the call and tell Michael Garrison they can use the cottages. I’ll get it cleared through my father.”

“What if he asks to speak to you?” Mary Kate had already picked up the handset, her hand hovering above the keypad on the phone.

“He had his chance to speak to me ten years ago and he kept quiet,” she said softly.

“What? You really want me to tell him that?”

Heather blinked and came back to the present. “No. No, of course not. Tell him…” She looked out at her car next to Mary Kate’s in the dark and otherwise empty parking lot. “Tell him I have a lot of personal and work-related issues colliding right now, but I will come to High Plains as soon as I can, to do whatever I can.”

“When?” Mary Kate wanted to know.

Heather rubbed her eyes. They felt as though she had been in a sandstorm, tired, burning, as if they could use a good cry. She exhaled. Crying didn’t accomplish anything. Action did. “Just tell him I’ll be in High Plains when the dust settles. He’ll understand.”

With that she dug her cell phone from her bag to call her father, only then seeing multiple missed calls all from the same unknown number.

“Michael?” she whispered. Her pulse thumped in her temples and her hand shook as she punched in the code to retrieve the first message. But it wasn’t Michael.

“Ms. Waters, this is Galichia Heart Hospital. Your father was brought in a half hour ago. He’s been asking us to get in touch with you. Please get back to us as soon as you can.”

Chapter One

Dust. The Holy Bible tells us God created human life out of dust and that in time we would all return to it.

Almost a full month after the tornado had ripped through his town, Michael Garrison felt as if everything he owned, wore or ate was still covered with the stuff. Whole neighborhoods now seemed like little more than dump heaps and sandlots. In so many places the storm had stripped away not only grass and trees but also much of the topsoil. Some of the old-timers likened it to a small-scale dust bowl.

His scuffed and battered tennis shoes kicked particles from the church’s maroon-colored carpet even as he pushed the vacuum cleaner back and forth. The aging machine whirred loudly, practically wheezing and gasping for breath.

“Hang in there just a little longer, baby. We can’t afford a new broom right now, much less a vacuum.” He dragged it back across a spot he’d gone over…and over…and over before. “If you stay with me until we’ve got some sense of normalcy around here again…”

The engine sputtered.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He kicked the off switch at the base of the old-fashioned upright to turn the thing off. “Normalcy may be asking for way too much these days.”

“You’re talking to the vacuum cleaner now?” His niece, dressed in a lavender shirt and overalls, her light brown hair in braids, poked her head in the door. At just five foot one and wearing the deceptively sweet and modest outfit that she had complained about all morning, she looked even younger than her fourteen years.

Michael squeezed his eyes shut and raised his head to call back to her, “Talking to inanimate objects gives me practice for talking to people who never listen. Like my niece, whom I asked to go to the store to get us sodas about three minutes ago.”

“I’m going, I’m going, all right? I just—”

“Whatever they have will be fine.” He cut her off before she could launch into another list of excuses why she shouldn’t have to go out in the heat. “Or if you want to stay here, you can vacuum and I’ll go get us something cold to drink.”

“Vacuum? With that antique?” She crinkled up her nose. “My mom never makes me do that stuff. I don’t even know how. Besides, I think that thing is actually making the carpet dirtier.”

“Don’t you listen to her, old girl.” He patted the bulging cloth bag on the old upright and was rewarded with a cloud of ultrafine powdery dust.

Avery laughed.

He liked hearing her laugh. She’d had a hard year and didn’t laugh nearly as much as he thought a kid her age should. So he played up the scene for her enjoyment, waving his hands, pretending to stagger around unable to see, coughing.

More girlish laughter.

Spinning around, he grinned to himself. Sunlight streamed in around him. The play of shadows and light against one another made a spotlight in which specks and dots sparkled.

“I’ll be back when the dust settles.” The message Heather Waters had sent echoed in his thoughts again, as it had many times in the last four weeks.

He watched the residue drip and drift and glitter in the sunbeam for a moment. He gritted his teeth to stave off the pangs of unresolved emotions twisting in his gut. If Heather held true to her word, he might never see her again.

Hadn’t he resigned himself to that fate ten years ago? He had kept his thoughts and feelings to himself, wanting only her happiness, when the only girl he had ever really loved wanted to marry John Parker. And then when that girl had fled from this church, hurt and humiliated by John leaving her at the altar, he had let her go because it was best for her and, in the long run, for him.

Now he had to do that again. He had too much work to do, too many people counting on him to allow himself the luxury of being distracted by something that could never be.

“Okay, how about I go for sodas and you do something else to pitch in around here?” He wasn’t letting the girl slip free of taking some responsibility for basic chores.

“I said I’d get the sodas.” She gave a huff.

Michael tugged free the hem of the well-worn multicolored T-shirt he had pulled from the pile of donated clothes. He’d tried to make sure Avery had clean laundry, but neglected to do the same for himself. He wiped his brow, then took a moment to look over the sanctuary.

It was a simple design. High, wooden ceilings with sturdy support beams arching upward. The style, he’d always been told, was meant to mimic the inside of a boat to remind them always that they were to be fishers of men.

He studied the long, tall, stained-glass windows, glowing in shades of red, blue, yellow and purple. Years ago their insurance company had required them to be encased in protective safety glass. That and the sturdy boat-bottom design had protected the sanctuary from all but cosmetic damage.

But not from dust and dirt and even trash that still blew through the streets and gathered like fallen leaves in corners and along curbs all over town.

“And I will get the sodas, if you want me to or whatever, but…” Avery launched into yet another excuse for her not having done as she was asked.

“No.” Michael sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ll go. Why don’t you—”

“Why don’t you tell me why you didn’t go when I asked, Avery?” She spoke in a low voice, a booming imitation of him with one thumb hooked in the strap of her overalls.

In the next moment, she turned her shoulders, folded her hands in front of her and spoke in a soft, sweet voice. “I’m trying, Uncle Michael. Why won’t you listen to me?”

Back to the imitation of him, she blustered, “That’s because I’m a big grump like I’ve been all week, Avery. In fact, I’m so grumpy lately I’ve had to resort to talking to my cleaning supplies.”

“Says the girl talking to herself,” Michael muttered, even as he chuckled softly and began rolling the cord of the vacuum. “Guess we’re all on edge a little lately. Kind of in a transition period, not really sure what to do or what will happen next.”

“Well, maybe the person who’s looking around out here can help with that.” Avery pushed the door open and stood back.

“Heather?” Michael took a step forward.

“Wow. You do have dust in your eyes if you think…” Avery looked at him slyly. “Hey, that’s who you wish it was, isn’t it?”

“No, no. She wouldn’t…I don’t have any reason to…” He looked up at the altar and sighed. “Yes. Yes, I’ve sort of been keeping an eye out for her to come back.”

Avery rolled her eyes the way young girls do at someone old, in this case twenty-eight years old, like Michael. She clearly thought him totally inept when it came to relationships with members of the opposite sex. “Well, until she does—”

“Yeah, I know.” Michael put his hand up to forestall some cutting remark from the girl. His sister, Avery’s mom, had struggled with the girl always having a flip answer for everything. Michael hoped to defuse that a bit by taking the fun and shock value out of her smart comebacks by beating her to the punch line. “Until Heather comes back I can always talk to my vacuum cleaner.”

“I was going to say you should talk to this guy who’s been hanging around the lobby the last few minutes.”

“Oh. Uh…a guy, huh?” Michael cleared his throat. He really wished he had that cold drink right now. “Who is he? What does he want?”

“Reverend Garrison?” A man who looked like he saw the world through numbers on the other side of thick but new glasses, barged in past Avery.

Michael came down the aisle and shook his hand. “Michael Garrison.”

“Paisley,” he said.

Michael glanced down at his grubby shirt and jeans. “Tie-dyed, actually.”

“No, my name is Paisley. I’m here for the…the…” He reared back as if to give out with a great, whooshing sneeze.

Michael stepped back.

Nothing happened. The man cleared his throat and finished. “Temp job.”

“Temp?” Michael shook his head. “I don’t know who gave the idea that we’re hiring, even on a temp basis, but—”

“No, no. I’m an intake worker for a social service agency in Manhattan, and they are loaning me out for a few days. I was supposed to meet someone with a private organization looking for a place to set up a base of operations.”

“Not anyone from our church,” Michael assured him.

“Is it a lady someone?” Avery came into the sanctuary, took a seat in the last row, leaned both elbows on the pew in front of her and rested her chin in her hands.

“Yes, actually it is.” He squinted at Avery as if sizing her up. “I got to town early so I’ve been going around to places I thought she might go. It’s a Christian charity so I thought, you know, churches.” He sort of wrinkled his nose as he said it.

Michael didn’t know if the man was showing contempt or felt another sneeze coming on.

“Ask him,” Avery mouthed as she pointed to the man heading for the door.

Michael shook his head. Avery was trying to make more out of this than it merited. Besides, Michael didn’t want to know if Heather was in town or not. It didn’t matter either way. He had his work to do and she had hers.

Mr. Paisley reached the door, paused and looked up.

This time to emphasize the urgency of her silent demand, Avery stood and gestured with both hands. Michael replied with his own emphatic gesture, slashing his hand across his throat to tell her to cut it out. He shook his head again.

The door creaked open.

“Heather Waters,” Avery shouted just as the man crossed the threshold into the lobby.

“What?” He caught the door before it could swing shut and stared at the teen.

In a frantic, full-body gesture, Michael swung his arms out, brought them in across his body, then out again as though trying to signal an oncoming train to hit the brakes.

“The, um, someone you’re looking for?” Avery glanced Michael’s way, rolled her eyes and totally ignored his wishes. “Is her name Heather Waters?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. Do either of you have any idea how I can find her here in town?”

Heather. In town.

Michael dropped his hands to his sides. “No. I have no idea where she is. I doubt she’d seek me out.”

“But he wants her to!” Avery called out even as the man nodded and went back out the door.

“Avery, that’s enough,” Michael snapped.

“What’s the big deal? You’re single. My mom always says, ‘Michael’s a minister, he’s not a monk.’ She says she wishes you’d find a nice girl but you’re too hung up on some girl who…” The girl’s jaw dropped. She jumped up from the pew so fast she knocked a hymnal from the rack. “No way!”

“I said that’s enough.” He had dealt with far too much chaos these last few weeks. He did not need any more of it in his life, especially from an already-hard-to-handle teenager with a gleam in her eye and an impossible matchmaking scheme churning in her mind.

“But…but she’s the girl, isn’t she?” Avery pointed to the door. “You should go. She’s in town somewhere! You should go and find her and tell her—”

“She doesn’t want to hear anything from me.” Though Michael wasn’t sure why Heather felt the way she did, she had made herself perfectly clear. Michael had never wanted anything for Heather but her happiness.

If talking to him, or even just seeing him brought back old feelings that caused her pain, then Michael would do everything in his power to honor her wishes and make himself scarce around her.

“But if she needs a building as a base, maybe she could work out of the church. Then the two of you could—”

“There is no two of us. Don’t you get that, Avery?” He raised his voice to his niece in the house of the Lord. If just talking about Heather Waters did this to him, he was better off avoiding her anyway.

He clenched his jaw, then eased his breath out slowly. “I’m sorry. I…You were right when you said I’ve been really grumpy lately.”

“No problem,” she said quietly. But a quiet born of anger, embarrassment, injured feelings, not respect.

Not good, Michael thought. He had made so much progress bringing Avery out of her surly shell and now he had all but shoved her right back into it.

“Avery, I—”

“What did you want me to do around here?” She bent and picked up the hymnal and all but jammed it back in the rack.

“You can stay and go around the building picking up whatever the wind has blown in or…” He hesitated to send her out on a snack run now. One of her mother’s concerns was that as her defiance grew she’d decide to strike out on her own, or take off with some of her more questionable friends. “Or just put the vacuum away and make a couple of sandwiches in the church kitchen.”

She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “What? Am I grounded?”

Suddenly, even having her take the shortcut through the parking lot to the small parsonage felt risky. “No. You’re not grounded. I just think…” That he was in over his head dealing with a mouthy young teen with raging hormones and authority issues. “Look, just stay in the church while I go get us some sodas. Answer the phone. Take messages. I won’t be gone long.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” She turned, went to the door in a sulky huff, then looked back over her shoulder, and through clenched teeth added, “Ever.”

The door swung open and shut.

A burst of wind stirred the grit-filled air.

Michael shut his eyes intending to send up a prayer dart, a quick, focused plea for…

He needed guidance about Avery. He needed clear views and insight and the sort of inner peace that only comes from quiet contemplation. He needed to find a way to put the woman who had held his heart for more than a decade out of his thoughts for good.

“I need a cold soda,” he muttered. He opened his eyes and took a step, bumping into the old vacuum. Dust flew, dancing in the sunlight once more and leaving a film on his arms, shirt and jeans.

Life, Michael reminded himself, came from the dust. Which seemed very appropriate, because at the moment he felt like dirt.

Chapter Two

“You are the only person I know who takes time off from work to do some more work.”

“I’m not staying in High Plains. I have hotel reservations in Kansas City that they will only hold until 6:00 p.m. By tomorrow I’ll be shopping on the Plaza. Today I’m just stopping in for a few hours, maybe half a day, to check on the cabins. They are my responsibility now, you know.” Heather kept both hands on the steering wheel of the SUV that had come to her after her father’s death. She tried to keep talking and driving to a minimum but today she welcomed the company, though she could have done with a little less static from Mary Kate in her earpiece.

“Your dad has only been gone a few weeks, Heather.” Mary Kate seemed to need to remind Heather. “After all those days shuttling between work and caring for him in the hospital, you’ve had almost no time to grieve.”

“We each grieve in our own way, in our own time.” Heather had been grieving the absence of Edward Waters almost her entire life. In their last few days together, they had reached a resolution that was at least satisfying. Edward had let her know how much he appreciated her visits and she had thanked him for providing for her so comfortably as a child and for leaving her the bulk of his estate, including the cottages in High Plains. “I’ll have plenty of time for…for myself once I get the temporary intake worker set up here. I left High Plains a long time ago. There’s nothing to keep me here even a few hours longer than necessary.”

She went gliding past the cottages. Since she had agreed to meet the intake worker in town, she did not stop at her property. Though they had really begun to show their age, the cottages looked pretty good at first glance. Needed paint and some cosmetic shoring up, clearing away of dead brush, but otherwise, not bad.

As always the river that lay beyond them wound on in a swift, constant current. It served to remind her that life went on. God’s eye was on every living thing and even when things seemed out of control, He was always in charge. His will, His plan remained steadfast.

“Nothing for you in High Plains?” Mary Kate asked. “Are you sure? Not even that cutie-pie of a minister?”

Heather clenched her jaw and stared at the road. “I have no intention of even seeing Michael Garrison. Trust me.”

“Wow, Heather.” Without a tsk or a tut or a cluck, just a subtle shift in the tone of her voice, Mary Kate slid into mother-hen mode. “Isn’t it awfully hard to drive that way?”

Heather leaned forward, squinting at the horizon, not letting her assistant’s attitude intrude on the moment as she scanned the once-familiar road. She should have seen the first signs of High Plains by now. But all she saw was dirt—trash blowing about and the occasional downed tree.

Finally, she sighed, showing her impatience with her own faltering memory, which must have all but rewritten the landscape around her. She asked, “Drive what way?”

“With that big ol’ chip on your shoulder?”

“I don’t…I didn’t…You don’t understand. Michael was my friend since…”

She passed the spot where a sign that welcomed people to High Plains had once stood and saw only two posts thrusting up out of a concrete base. The posts were twisted and bent like the gnarled branches of a long-dead tree.

She was at the edge of town, where Main Street should have been populated with well-kept buildings and neatly groomed sidewalks. She turned her head to look at the park that lay between the cottages and the Old Town Hall.

Heather took her foot off the gas pedal as the realization hit her. It was not her memory that had faded. She was seeing the first signs of High Plains, of what was left of High Plains. “Oh, Mary Kate. It’s gone.”

“The chip?”

“The town.” Heather managed only a whisper as she scanned the space from where the gazebo used to stand to the bare spot where the Old Town Hall, a symbol of the very heart of the community, had once stood. “I have to go, Mary Kate. I’ll call you later.”

If her assistant protested, Heather did not know. She took the earpiece off and tossed it onto the seat next to her.

She looked at the rubble, then toward the town stretched out along Main Street ahead of her. Here and there something remained seemingly untouched. Trash and leaves blew about, the empty sidewalks giving the place a sense of being neglected and abandoned.

She had thought she was prepared for what she would find, but she had not counted on the potent mix of sparseness and destruction and her own muddled emotions. Her eyes stung. She willed herself to stay strong and calm.

Never let them see you cry.

Tears did not change things. They had not made her father love her and they did not inspire confidence in people looking for reassurance in times of turmoil. These people had gone through enough without a weepy former local showing up and adding to it. She had to focus. She had to fix her mind on what had brought her here.

She lifted her eyes and caught a glimpse of High Plains Christian Church at the end of Main Street. Aside from a few odd-colored shingles, the obvious sign of patching on the roof, it looked just as it had that summer day ten years ago when she had run off and left…

“Michael?”

Loss and embarrassment, feelings she could not define and the memory of a happiness she had long forgotten came crashing in on Heather at just seeing Michael Garrison again.

She let the car roll to a stop as she concentrated on the lone figure walking along Main Street toward the church. If she had not seen him on the news the day after the twister, Heather doubted she would ever have imagined that the tall, broad-shouldered man in faded jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt could be the same kid who had taught her not to be afraid of a pop fly. Or the skinny teenager who had allowed her to be like a member of his family and thus learn the importance of one. She certainly wouldn’t have guessed it was the young man she had smacked in the face with a wedding bouquet.

Still a block away from the church, she watched the man in front pause and look up toward the steeple. Sunlight tipped his dark brown hair in golden highlights. He lifted his hand, the one not holding two cans of soda, to shade his face. He stood there a moment as if gathering strength. But for what?

Heather needed only to glance around her to have her answer. Michael Garrison loved High Plains. He loved his family, who had built so much of the town. She did not doubt that he loved his congregation. Right now, all the people Michael loved were trying to come to terms with the agony and confusion in the aftermath of this catastrophe. Of course the man needed strength.

What a blessing that he knew he could find it—from the Lord, first, but also from the town, from his family, from his congregation and from…

“Me.” Heather could all but see how Mary Kate would give her best “What am I going to do with you?” head shake at that. She didn’t care. She had come to High Plains to see if she could help, if there was anyone in need.

And she saw a need in Michael.

She directed the heavy SUV up the street. The sound of small rocks, twigs and debris crunching under the tires must have alerted Michael, because he turned and squinted in her direction. He did not seem to recognize her.

Butterflies dipped and dove in her stomach. She bit her lower lip to contain her smile at having the upper hand on her old friend. Her ex-friend, she corrected herself.

She took a deep breath and considered stepping on the gas and not slowing down, much less stopping. But when she got close enough to see his face, so warm and ready to greet whoever had come into his town, she let down her guard…and rolled down the window.

“Need a lift or you plan on staying true to your old nickname, Take-A-Hike Mike?”

“Take-A…” He squinted, stepped toward the SUV, then broke into a broad grin. “Heather? Heather Duster? Is that you?”

“I told you I’d be here when the dust settled.” She hit the electric door lock and it popped up. “Hop in.”

“I’m just going over to the church. Just about to grab a sandwich for lunch.” He gestured with the soda cans clasped in his strong grasp. “Hey, you should join us.”

“Us?” The single-syllable word hit Heather like a slap in the face. It had never dawned on Heather that Michael might be a part of an us now.

“My niece has been staying with me this summer. Avery? You remember Avery, don’t you?”

“Remember her?” Heather relaxed, though for the life of her she couldn’t imagine why thinking that Michael Garrison had a significant other in his life would make her tense. She laughed and scooted toward the passenger side to better talk to him. “I helped you babysit her when she was little. In fact, I drove you to your sister’s to do it because you didn’t have a car.”

“I was saving money for college. Besides, who needed a car when one of your best friends got the latest model for her sixteenth birthday?”

Heather ran her hand along the leather dashboard of the new SUV that had come to her as part of her inheritance and said softly, “A car was always easier to give than affection.”

Michael folded his arms on the open window and leaned in, all concern and kindness. “How is your father?”

“He died two weeks ago.” She hung her head for only a moment before looking at Michael again. “That’s why I couldn’t get to High Plains until now.”

“Heather, I am so sorry.” He reached out to her.

“It’s not…” She looked down at where his tanned and rugged hand grasped the pale, soft skin of her arm. His calluses and scars bore evidence of the kind of work he had been doing, that he had put his time, his effort, his very body out there to serve others. It humbled her, knowing she had spent most of the last year fund-raising, doing paperwork and dealing with her father’s last days as if it were just another item on her already crowded to-do list. The contrast struck her in more ways than one. “I appreciate your sympathy but I’m all right.”

“That’s good to know. Now tell me, are we all right?”

“We?” She looked up into his eyes. They were still blue. So very blue. In them shone depths of hope and faith and gentleness that Heather had never seen before.

She flexed her fingers and pursed her lips. Tell him you forgive him, her mind urged. But her mouth could not seem to form the words. She had trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone in her whole life. “Michael, I think you should know I’m only here for—”

“I just can’t work in this—” a man interjected, wiping his nose “—environment.”

“Hey, Mr. Paisley!” Michael stepped back and held his hand out to indicate Heather. “This is the lady you were looking for.”

“Good! I…I…I quit!” He coughed, then gave a wave to Heather through the window. “I’m sorry, Ms. Waters, but I have allergies and that…that…that young lady…”

“Avery?” Michael frowned. “Avery did something to you?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but…” Paisley coughed then kept moving past them, calling after himself. “But I think that before you turn that young lady loose in your church with a vacuum again, you probably should instruct her that the dust is supposed to go into the bag, not spew out of it.”

“She was probably trying to help,” Michael said to Heather through slightly clenched teeth.

“But you can’t quit…if you run off I’ll have to…” Heather pushed open the passenger door and leaned out to call after the man, who was already fumbling to get into a small car parked at an odd angle along the devastated remnants of the street.

He got in and slammed the door. The engine started.

“Stay myself,” she murmured even as the man waved again and pulled away.

“Sorry about that.” Michael peered at her through the lowered window of the opened passenger door. He scratched his scalp, his head lowered just enough to hide his full expression, then his gaze flicked upward, finding her. His lips twitched. He did not look one bit sorry at all. “I’d have offered to run him down and tackle him. Get him in a hammerlock or…uh…throw a monkey wrench at him or…uh, give him a proper Bible thumping, but I don’t think it would have mattered.”

Heather sighed. She could make a joke about his poor athletic prowess but she just didn’t feel like laughing right now. She felt like…

She met Michael’s gaze.

Her breath caught in the back of her throat. Despite the August heat, her skin drew into a million tiny tingle bumps. She had no idea what that feeling winding around inside her was. Fear? Anger? Frustration? Joy?

Heather put her chilled fingertips against her collarbone and pressed her lips together. She could not identify her own reaction, but she did know that she was in a bind. Her temp worker had flaked out and it would take at least a couple of days to get a new one in.

“It’s good to see you, Heather. I really didn’t think you’d come back.”

She hadn’t. Not to stay.

“I have reservations at a hotel that…” She just could not finish that sentence. She could not look at the devastation in High Plains or face the dedication in Michael’s eyes and announce her intentions to go shopping on the Plaza.

Good and bad, this town and its people had given her her start. Couldn’t she give them twenty-four hours of her long-overdue time off?

The church’s bells rang out, making Michael jump. She supposed if he’d been another kind of man he’d have cussed a blue streak. Instead, he winced and ducked his head, his eyes scrunched shut.

“Problem?” she had to ask.

“Always.” He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on her as though nothing else in the world mattered. “But the good news in all this is that it’s brought an old friend back. I could sure use a friend right now. That’s gotta make things better, right?”

Decision time. Leave and put the town and Michael behind her. Or stay and take a chance at putting the past behind her and getting on with her life.

I need a friend right now. The sincerity of his words got to her. This wasn’t just another job for her charity, not just another case. This was her hometown. This was a man who had once been her teammate, her confidant, her friend.

“I don’t know if it will make things better, Michael, but I am here for the time being.” She could not promise to mend their friendship or anything more than this: “And I’ll stay until I can hire another worker to represent Helping Hands. I’ll do whatever I can for the town.”

“Great.”

The clanging bells interrupted them again. Michael jerked his head toward the church. “Let’s start by dealing with those bells.”

“It’s not an emergency, is it?” she asked over the slamming passenger door. “I assumed they were on a timer. Just a normal part of life here.”

“Then you assumed too much, my friend. There is no normal life around here these days. But I don’t think for a minute it’s a real emergency. At least not until I get my hands on that niece of mine.”

Chapter Three

When they reached the church, Michael dashed up the front stairs, taking them two at a time in his rush to get to his niece. Or maybe he did it, just a little, to show Heather that he wasn’t still that ungainly, hesitant kid she had once known.

Heather held back. She gave a quick glance in the direction of the river then down the street. “Maybe I should leave you to this while I go see how things are at the cottages.”

The bells stopped ringing.

Heather backed away.

“What? No.” Michael followed her lead, retracing his path until he had gone halfway back down the stairs. “Please, don’t run off.”

He’d said those words to her before, and on the steps of this very church. Then he’d gotten a face full of flowers. This time he got much worse.

Heather turned and looked him straight in the eye. In that moment he saw unmasked all the hurt and disappointment she had carried with her all these years.

For an instant his attention was divided. But only for a second. Many times a day Avery pulled something to demand his attention and he gave it to her. Heather, on the other hand, had stayed out of his life for far too long for him to simply let her slip away again.

“Please, Heather.” He came down one step and then another, his hand extended. “Please stay. This won’t take long and then we can—”

What? Take up their lives where they left off? With her turning to the wrong people and places for happiness? And him wishing she’d just once look at him, really look at him and see how much he loved her?

“Just…come inside. We’ll…take things from there,” he said softly.

Her whole body went straight and stiff. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. She tipped her head to one side and her hair swept over her shoulders.

Anxious. Uncertain. Agitated. Distressed.

Someone else might have used those kinds of words to describe how she looked just then. If asked, Michael would have said she looked…

“Amazing,” he muttered.

“What?” She tilted her head back and narrowed her eyes against the brightness of the August sun.

“To see you here after all this time. To have you back in High Plains and here at the church.” He took his eyes off her just long enough to glance up at the church doors, trying to urge her to come with him. “It’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?”

“Not exactly the word I’d use.” She shook her head then shut her eyes. “Besides, being at the church isn’t the same as…I don’t want to go in the sanctuary, Michael.”

“You what?”

“It’s silly, I know, after all these years.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze at last. “But I’m just not ready.”

“Okay. That’s okay. There’s no reason to go in the sanctuary now. The bells are controlled by a computer in the room right off the choir loft.” He stepped down again, his hand still out to her. “Of course if you don’t get over this anxiety by Sunday, you’ll miss out on hearing me preach.”

He wanted her to hear him preach. The thought was as close to vanity as Michael had ever had. He wanted the girl he had loved for so long, whom he would always love, to hear him do what God had called him to do.

“I won’t be here Sunday,” she said flatly.

Michael lowered his hand. “Oh.”

“But if you really want me to stay now, I guess I can come in and look around.” She gazed toward the cottages, her shoulders rose then fell and she turned to him and gave him a crooked smile. “I don’t suppose you have a place where I can set up a temporary office for my charity?”

“I don’t know what you’ll need, but feel free to see if there’s enough unoccupied space in the basement.” So maybe she wouldn’t stick around long enough to see him in the pulpit. Still, he had made a breakthrough.

He spread his hand on the wind-battered paint of the church’s outer door and pushed it open.

She followed him up the stairs, tucking a strand of her long hair delicately behind her ear as she looked down at her feet.

He grinned so broadly it actually made his cheeks ache, unable to take his eyes off her even as he held the door open. She passed through and he hurried forward to lead the way.

The walls around Heather Waters’s heart might not have come tumbling down but they had cracked. If she spent the day with him, he could show just how sorry he was for whatever he had done to hurt her. He could prove to her that he was a better man than the awkward, fumbling kid who—

“Oof!” The handle of the old vacuum gouged him right in the gut seconds before his momentum carried him headfirst over the mangy old thing.

His arms flailed. The soda cans slipped from his grasp. He kicked his leg to try to regain his balance. Bad idea.

His borrowed T-shirt ripped. One can of soda rolled off down the steps. The other bounced off the wall and began spewing a stream of foam high into the air. Michael took a full face-plant into the ever-filthy-from-the-tornado-aftermath carpet.

“Michael, are you all right?” Heather rushed toward him, her hands outstretched.

He was fine. Or as fine as any man could be under the circumstances. Still, he thought of groaning and playing up the injured angle in hopes that Heather might cradle his head in her lap, stroke his hair and tell him—

“It worked! I wasn’t sure it would, but look, here you are. It really worked!”

Michael looked up to find Avery standing over him, beaming with pure adolescent pride.

“What worked?” He pushed himself up to his elbows, then to a sitting position, then, clumsily and reluctantly, to his feet. He smacked dust from his shirt and grumbled. “Don’t tell me you set the vacuum cleaner—the vacuum I asked you to put away for me—here, then rang the bells knowing I’d come running and trip over it?”

“No.” She hesitated and Michael couldn’t read if that was because she was lying or because she was secretly wishing she had thought of a plan that clever. “Mr. Paisley had some kind of attack or something. He was coughing and saying he couldn’t breathe and he ran out the door.”

“Yeah, we already heard about you and Mr. Paisley and your attempt at reverse vacuum cleaning.” Michael considered giving the old vacuum a kick for emphasis but reined in the impulse in favor of showing Avery, and Heather, his calm, even-tempered, mature side.

“I didn’t attempt to clean anything.” Avery sneered. “I was putting the thing away. Like you told me to.”

“Oh, so that man’s choking and gasping was actually my fault?” Michael looked down, first at his tattered shirt then at the soda-soaked carpet and shook his head. “And the bell ringing? Am I accountable for that, too?”

“Well, if you’d gotten back with the drinks sooner…” She made a face. “Of course, now we don’t have any drinks at all.” She heaved a sigh. “Anyway, I figured somebody needed to know that that Paisley guy had hit the road so I rang the bells because I knew you’d come. You always come when there’s something that needs to be done, Uncle Michael. Even if what needs to be done is yelling at me! Especially if it’s yelling at me!”

Michael froze, his head still down, and chided himself for not putting it all together more quickly. What Avery had done, knowingly putting herself at risk of getting in trouble to help someone else, was, in its own odd way, a selfless act. Hardly the kind of thing the kid would have done just a few weeks ago. “Wow, Avery.”

“Wow, that was good, or wow, that was dumb?” she asked, her nose crinkled.

Before he could answer that, Heather stepped up and pitched in, righting the old vacuum as she gave Avery a nod of approval and said, “I think what you did was pretty ingenious.”

“Hear that, Uncle Michael?” The kid puffed out her chest and hooked her thumb in her overall strap again. “I’m a genius! Guess it runs in the family, huh?”

“Actually?” He stuck his fingers through the big hole torn in his loaner T-shirt and wriggled them. “I reacted kind of like a dope. Maybe genius is the kind of thing that skips a generation.”

“Like athletic ability?” Heather gave him a friendly nudge in the back before she turned her attention on Avery. “Your uncle never could get out of the way of anything. Not even a slow, high-arching softball thrown by a ten-year-old. He was clearly out of his league with this piece of sophisticated machinery.”

“That was then.” Michael pushed the vacuum against the wall then turned to face the pair so happy to give him good-natured grief. “This is—”

“Now let me get this straight.” Avery waved her hand to cut Michael off and focused her whole bright expression on Heather. “You knew Uncle Michael when…Hey! Are you her?”

“Her? Her, who?” Heather put her hands on her hips and planted herself between Avery and Michael. “Should I know what you’re talking about? Or rather, who you’re talking about?”

“The girl.” Avery said it in a way that only a young teen could. In a world-weary, acerbic tone, implying that it was so obvious she was embarrassed at having to articulate it even in this small way for him.

“That’s enough, Avery.” Mortified, Michael nabbed his niece gently but firmly by the arm and spun her around to point her toward the stairs that led to the basement. “Why don’t you go make lunch, as I asked before?”

“The more you try to get me out of the way, the more you might as well blast it from the bell tower yourself.” Avery did not budge. “This is the girl.”

Had he always been this conspicuous in his love for Heather? Suddenly he wondered if she had known all along and secretly felt sorry for him. Maybe that was why she had stayed away. Maybe that was why she seemed so reluctant to hang around now.

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