Take a Chance on Me(103)
Thirsty indeed. Claire didn’t know when she’d transitioned from the dream to reality, but she lay there in the darkness, the wan fingers of moonlight pressing in through the cabin curtains, across the tweed, plaid-patterned sofa, then across the floor to the recliner. Her grandmother’s voice faded with the dream.
Claire sat up and realized she’d fallen asleep in the recliner. In high school, how many times had she come home to see her grandfather asleep here, her grandmother on the sofa, knitting, waiting up for her?
She’d been thirsty after moving to Deep Haven from Bosnia. Thirsty for friends. Thirsty for safety. Thirsty to know that she could heal—that she would heal.
Claire got up, went to the bathroom. Her face felt sticky, puffy. She hadn’t remembered crying herself to sleep, but maybe. She didn’t have to turn on the light to know the layout of the room, the picture of her parents on the counter, the embroidered wall hanging of the John 15 verse—“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
She washed her hands, then made her way to her bedroom. Even once she moved into town after graduation, she’d spent many nights here, relishing her grandmother’s cooking, then nursing her in the days before she passed.
Claire lay on her quilt, the anger from the evening before now a distant echo inside. The spray of the lilac towering outside her window traced a shadow on the ceiling. The smell of smoke saturated the air—a faraway campfire, maybe.
She could almost hear Felicity’s laughter as she tucked in beside Claire on the double bed, whispering what-ifs about Darek. Felicity had loved the eldest Christiansen boy for so long, sometimes Claire wondered if Felicity became her friend just so she could get closer to him. But in those early days, Claire didn’t ask questions.
And then Jensen showed up in her life.
She could still see him, standing on her dock in his cutoffs, his shirt flapping in the wind, grinning at her.
How many times after Darek left and Felicity fell asleep by the campfire did Claire and Jensen wind down the night hours talking, their hands propping them up as they stared at the stars?
She’d loved Jensen since that first summer, maybe.
You do that. . . . Coax things back to life.
No, Jensen had coaxed her back to life. Jensen and her grandparents and even Felicity and Darek.
In fact, God had coaxed her back to life. With this place. With this life.
Maybe God was kind. Because in the aftermath of her devastation, He’d wrapped her in this safe place. With these safe people. And for ten years, she’d remained. Healed. Grown stronger.
Her words to Angie Michaels filtered back to her.
I’m not hurting them. I’m pruning them so they’ll grow better.
Maybe God had used these years to prune her, to heal her so she could bear fruit. She wasn’t a disappointment or a failure. She simply needed time to bloom.
She remembered what she’d told Jensen: I would love to open a nursery in town, maybe do private landscaping. Maybe Jensen hadn’t betrayed her. What if he’d helped set her free?
It didn’t mean that she could trust him, but perhaps she didn’t have to hate him. Three years of hating Jensen had eaten her alive.
She just had to let him go.
Because she was staying in Deep Haven. And maybe selling the house was for the best. She’d needed this place, but God had healed her. Strengthened her. And now He was giving her the chance to create something new—she could open her own nursery with the money her grandfather gave her. Turn the gardens of Deep Haven lush and beautiful.
Quietly coax things back to life.
Remain in Me and produce much fruit.
That command didn’t say leave. It said stay. And if God wasn’t sending her anywhere, then she didn’t have to go, right?
Claire rolled over, pulling the quilt over her. Maybe first she’d stay here a little longer, scouring up the courage to tell her parents.
“There’s only one answer, Darek.”
His father stood over the kitchen table, looking at the map Casper had rolled out, tracing the line of fire as relayed to Casper by Jed, still at the fire camp. He pointed to a pasture west of the Gibson place. “There’s a natural fire break here, but if the fire runs west of Evergreen Lake, what’s to keep it from turning south?” He looked at Darek, raised an eyebrow. “There’s no other choice.”
“Dad, if I don’t finish cutting this line around our property—”
“And let’s say you do. Then what? By the time you start working on the other line, the fire might be too large. You won’t be able to set a back burn in time. The fire will overrun the line and not stop until it hits Lake Superior. You need to start now and cut in to Thompson Lake. Then you and all the fire crews can concentrate on burning everything north, starving the fire before it gets to Deep Haven.”