The calf jerked and emitted a tiny bleat. Joy exploded in Eve’s chest like a Roman candle going off on the Fourth of July. A happy laugh burst from her lips as unashamed tears streamed down her cheeks. She lifted her face to meet John’s widening grin and felt a connection as real and strong as if they’d embraced. For a long moment they sat amid the barn’s muck gazing into each other’s eyes, their hearts in complete harmony. No words were needed. Within the span of a few short minutes, they’d gone together from the depths of grief and despair at losing Ginger, to the heights of joy at the realization that her calf would live.
John leaned over the now twitching and bleating calf, and for one heart-stopping moment, Eve thought he might kiss her. Instead he stood, breaking the spell, then reached down and helped Eve to her feet. He turned and looked at Ginger’s still form, his expression somber. “I’ll need to get the milker to extract the colostrum. We’ll have to bottle-feed it to the calf if she’s to have any chance of thriving.” He tossed the last few words over his shoulder as he bounded out of the stall toward the interior of the barn.
Eve shifted her gaze from John’s retreating back at the dead cow, her earlier joy wilting into sadness. Sympathy and grief welled up in her chest, accompanied by a surprising twinge of guilt. She’d promised the cow all would be well, and now it lay lifeless.
A soft bleat from the corner of the stall drew her attention to the orphaned calf trembling in its straw nest. A wave of anger rolled over her, washing away all other emotions. Clara had prayed that Ginger be safely delivered of her calf and yet God—if there was a God—had turned a deaf ear to her pleas. The same God had allowed the train wreck that had stolen Eve’s memory, taken Elmer Trowbridge’s leg, and snuffed out a dozen lives.
John’s abrupt return yanked Eve from her bitter muse. Laden with a bucket, short lengths of rubber hose, and a wooden contraption consisting of a seat and foot rests, John walked to Ginger and went to work attaching the hoses to the dead cow’s udders.
The calf’s pitiful cries filled Eve with compassion, and she hurried to the infant animal’s side. “Poor baby.” She patted the little heifer’s still-damp hair. “I’m sorry about your mama, but don’t cry. John and I will take care of you.” She looked across the stall at John seated on the wooden contraption he had attached with the hoses to Ginger. As he pumped the treadles with his feet, bluish-white milk splat from the hoses into a bucket fixed at the front of the milking machine. After a few minutes work, he stopped and poured some of the milk into a waiting glass bottle, which he topped with a rubber finger-shaped lid.
John carried the large bottle of milk to where Eve sat with the calf and held it out to her. “Would you like to feed her?”
The offer caught Eve off guard. Her immediate hesitation quickly melted into a desire to comfort the motherless calf, and she nodded. “I’m not sure how well I’ll do, but I’d like to try.”
John wasn’t sure what had prompted him to ask Eve if she’d like to feed the calf. Something about the sight of her curled up beside the quivering baby heifer had entirely beguiled him.
He handed her the bottle, then helped her press the rubber nipple to the calf’s mouth. With one lick of its pink tongue, the calf tasted the milk and began nursing in earnest.
“Look, she’s doing it!” Eve turned a beaming face up to John, and his heart jolted. A riot of red-gold curls framed her rosy cheeks, petal-pink lips, and eyes the color of a clear autumn sky. Her beauty snatched the breath from his lungs as if he’d been punched in the midsection. How easy it would be to fall in love with her. Easy and stupid.
It took him a moment to recover sufficient air to reply. “Yes. I think she’ll make it.” He let go of the bottle, fearing she’d notice his hands shaking. All the while, his gaze remained fixed on the lovely picture she presented. “What should we name her? Ginger Junior, maybe?”
Eve’s delicate forehead crinkled in thought. “Her color is closer to cinnamon than ginger.” She angled another devastating smile at him. “Yes, I think her name should be Cinnamon.”
Holding tight to the bottle being jerked up and down by the hungry calf, Eve glanced at the dead cow, and her smile faded. “What will you do with Ginger?”
“She’ll have to be butchered. I have a couple neighbors who I think would be happy to help and share in the meat.” In truth, John suspected that none of the meat would stay on the farm, doubting that Aunt Clara could bring herself to cook and eat her favorite cow. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”
Eve visibly stiffened, and her somber expression turned almost angry. Easing the bottle from Cinnamon’s mouth, she handed it to John. “Seems to me that lately God’s been doing a lot more taking away then giving.” Despite the July heat, her cold glare and brittle tone chilled John like a blast of winter wind. A tinge of sarcasm crept into her voice. “I’ll inform Clara that, as you say, God has both given and taken away. I’ll tell her that while the names have changed, the total on her balance sheet remains the same.”
Watching Eve’s rod-straight back as she strode from the stall, John felt his heart break. How could he convince her of God’s love and mercy after the tragedies she’d experienced during the last three weeks—the only time of which she had any memory?
As July gave way to August, the answer to that question remained elusive. While Eve seemed happy on the farm, pouring most of her time into caring for Cinnamon, whom John had successfully placed with another cow that had recently lost a twin calf, her disinterest in anything associated with God persisted. Her polite silence during prayers and daily scripture reading couldn’t mask her unease with those elements of worship. Though she attended church each Sunday with him, Aunt Clara, and Matthew, her fidgety, distracted demeanor at services suggested that her attendance had more to do with not disappointing Aunt Clara than with worshiping God.
That after more than a month of daily Christian influence Eve’s attitude remained one of resignation rather than reverence maddened John. More troubling, the last comment she’d made before stalking from the barn following Cinnamon’s birth slinked again from the recesses of his mind to gnaw at his suspicions about Eve’s identity. Her use of the term balance sheet hadn’t struck him as significant at the time, but after turning it over and over in his mind, he couldn’t help but deduce that she’d had some experience in bookkeeping: another clue that suggested she might be the fugitive bank embezzler.
Regardless of the warning signs screaming at him of the danger in allowing his affection for Eve to grow, it had done just that. Her every look, every smile set his heart galloping. More than once, he’d had to walk away from her so he wouldn’t take her in his arms and kiss her. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” The scripture from 2 Corinthians convicted him of his growing feelings for the woman sitting beside him on the wagon seat this second Sunday of August.
“Hyaa!” The frustration building in John’s chest shot to his arms, and he slapped the reins down on the horse’s rump sharper than he’d intended, causing the horse to jump.
“John, not so hard!” Aunt Clara, sitting with Matthew on the seat behind, leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “We’re not in that big of a hurry, dear.” She gave his shoulder a pat that irked as much as her gentle chide. “We’ll not get to church at all if Bob bucks us out of the wagon.”
“Sorry, Aunt Clara.” John’s mumbled apology was quickly swallowed up by Matthew’s eager talk of the coming state fair.
“They’re givin’ cash prizes for livestock.” An audible hesitancy hobbled the excitement in the boy’s voice. His next words tiptoed out as if testing the air. “Thought maybe I could enter one of the cows. Everybody says we have the best Jerseys around.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Matthew.” Aunt Clara’s voice sagged with regret. “We don’t have a big herd. Can’t really afford to give up one of our milk cows for a week, especially since we lost Ginger. She was our best milker.”
At Matt’s disappointed sigh, John hoped to cheer the boy with a compromise. “What about one of the calves, Matt? They give cash prizes for calves, too.”
Matt perked up. “Yeah. We could take Cinnamon. What do ya think, Eve?”
John couldn’t help smiling at Matt’s inquiry. Everyone considered Cinnamon Eve’s calf.
“Oh, I’d like that.” Eve’s bright voice warmed John’s heart, which melted when a tinge of worry crept in. “I’d love to enter her in the fair if you don’t think she’s too young, John.” She put her hand on his arm, setting his heart to hammering.
“She’d only have to be there the day of the judging, so as long as either you or Matt stayed with her, I think she should do fine.” He gave her a smile which she rewarded with one of her own, turning his racing heart over.
Careful, John. Careful.
Turning his attention back to the road ahead, John clenched his teeth, knowing the feelings exploding in his chest had already rendered the warning blaring in his head futile.
“He leadeth me, O blessed thought!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
What-e’re I do, where-e’re I be,
Still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me.”
Generally Eve mouthed the words in the hymnals, giving them little or no thought. Today, this one found its way into her consciousness. Did God indeed lead people? She glanced down the pew at the people beside her. John, Clara, and Matthew thought so. Had God led her to this place? If so, to what purpose?
Those questions hung unanswered in Eve’s mind as the song’s next verse hit home:
“Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, o’re troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.”
The words deepest gloom brought visions of the aftermath of the train wreck that had deposited her here: screams of pain and grief, Elmer Trowbridge’s amputated limb, Eve’s own anguish over her lost past. Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom. Eden. This place had become her home, her sanctuary, and the Westons had become her family.
She looked past Clara and Matthew to John. Her angel-man. A beam of morning sun angled through a stained-glass window to light the back of his head, looking for all the world like a halo.
Eve’s heart throbbed. A desire to possess for herself the peace now resting on his handsome countenance gripped her. When Ginger died, John and Clara had accepted the loss as God’s will, choosing to focus instead on the blessing of Cinnamon’s birth. At the time, their accepting attitude had both frustrated and angered Eve. But now, drinking in the words of the hymn, the notion that a loving, caring God had a larger purpose for all that happened and was leading Eve by the hand through both “scenes of deepest gloom” as well as “where Eden’s bowers bloom” felt comforting.
“Content, what-ever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.”
Could Eve do that? Did she have the courage to put every part of her life into the hands of an unseen being?
Like a distant echo, faint words in her own voice formed in her mind: God, help me! While more a sense than a memory, the certainty that she’d once uttered that plea settled in her chest. And God had helped her. He’d sent her beautiful angel-man to rescue her and bring her into a safe, loving home. And yes, the cow Ginger had died, but her daughter lived, promising future milk production for the farm. Also, John and Clara had donated Ginger’s meat to the county poorhouse, helping to feed those who depended on that charity.
Noticing Eve’s gaze, John smiled, flooding her with warmth.
Eve’s answering smile blooming on her lips faded as she settled back against the pew. They hadn’t heard another word from Sheriff McCord since their visit to the school over a month ago. Most days Eve lived in the moment, enjoying life on the farm and helping to care for Cinnamon. But often in the predawn darkness, questions about her unknown past gathered around her like an ominous fog, jerking her awake in a breathless terror. Unsettling images would flash, then vanish—angry faces and the word BANK etched in stone. In those moments when she’d sit up in bed trembling and gasping for breath, her desire—no, her need for comfort became tangible. Despite her happy life here in Eden, she couldn’t escape the fact that an uncertain future dangled over her head like the sword of Damocles. At any moment, Sheriff McCord, a Pinkerton agent, or some other lawman could appear with a warrant for her arrest and whisk her off to some dingy jail cell.
“He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me,
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.”
Eve found herself joining in the refrain with full-throated enthusiasm. John and Clara’s calm assurance of God’s mercy began to make sense, and Eve wanted it. Today, instead of allowing her mind to wander, she listened to the minister’s sermon on the Holy Spirit, which he called the “Comforter.”
“ ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.… I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.’”
As the preacher read the words of Jesus from John 14, tears welled up in Eve’s eyes, and a desperate longing screamed from her heart. Peace and comfort. Since waking in that crumpled train car, she’d desired nothing more than a sense of peace and comfort. Whatever lay ahead, she wanted to never again feel lost and alone. Whether her future held the serenity of Eden’s bowers or the deepest gloom of a prison’s horrors, she wanted the assurance of the salvation and comfort Jesus promised.
“All that is required for you to have the peace of Christ’s salvation and the comfort that comes with that is to step forward today and accept it.”
At the preacher’s words, tears streamed down Eve’s face. She rose and squeezed past Clara, Matthew, and finally John to make her way down the center aisle.
Joy and astonishment vied for room in John’s chest as he watched Eve walk to the minister and make her declaration of faith. The scene before him blurred, and he had to clear his throat before he could join in singing the benediction hymn.
“God bless you, Eve.” The trite but heartfelt comment was all he could manage as he took her hand when a blubbering Aunt Clara finally released her from a smothering hug. Looking into Eve’s beautiful face, her huge blue eyes swimming with happy tears, the temptation to declare his love for her then and there tugged hard at John. A thin strand of reason restrained him. As joyous as her decision to join the family of God was, it didn’t erase the questions about her past.
The sight of an unsmiling Sid McCord making his way toward them at once alarmed John and validated his sobering thought.