Ben found Moriah later, on the roof of Cabin Four, pounding nails into shingles with much more force than necessary.
“I drove Jack home,” he called up to her.
She sunk a nail.
“We cleaned the rest of the trash out of the house.”
She sunk another one.
“Can you hear what I’m saying?”
“Make yourself useful, Ben. Bring me up some more nails.”
Ben found a box of unopened nails lying near the house’s foundation. He grabbed them and mounted the ladder.
“Did you hear anything I said?” He poked his head over the edge of the roof.
“I heard.” She furiously pounded two more nails into the gray shingles then tossed the used-up empty box to the ground and motioned for him to come the rest of the way up.
Ben crept across the roof to sit beside her.
“Nice place.” He laid the fresh box of nails on the roof near her feet, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally brain him with the hammer. “You come here often?”
Moriah slid him an angry glance, grabbed some nails, held them between her lips, and started nailing again.
Ben wasn't entirely certain he was safe up here with her so angry, so he scooted away and prepared to descend.
“Please don’t go,” Moriah mumbled around a mouthful of nails.
Ben contemplated the risk, then he scooted close and tried to comfort her by patting her on the back.
“You’ll get used to him being around,” he said. “Nicolas might even be useful. Maybe you won’t have to work so hard if he’s helping at the resort.”
“Seriously?” Moriah spit the nails into her hand. “Can you picture Nicolas crawling underneath one of the cabins to fix the plumbing? Or unplugging a toilet? Or doing anything useful?”
“He certainly knows how to deliver a baby and rake gravel,” Ben said. “You have to give him that. And he makes your aunt happy.”
It really wasn't all that bad, he thought, sitting on top of a roof in Canada in the spring sunshine with a beautiful woman. She smelled faintly of sun and strawberry shampoo. Things could be worse. He could be Jack, for instance.
Speaking of which, he had good news that might cheer her up.
“I told Jack he could ride with us to church next week.”
She pulled away to stare at him.
“Jack agreed to go to church?”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised. Jack's a great guy, but he hates church.”
“Yes, he made that clear, but he’s not a great guy, Moriah. He's an angry drunk. How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. He used to drink when he was younger, but when he fell in love with Alicia, that all changed. I wonder what set him off?”
“Apparently, he hasn’t had a lot of work lately. He broke his promise to her, had some beer with some friends. She found out and got upset, and then he got upset. Then she left, and instead of going after her, he made the brilliant decision to binge.”
“How on earth did you talk him into going to church?”
“I kind of made it a prerequisite of getting the job. Plus, I told him if he wants to work for us for the summer, I’ll need proof he’s going to AA every week.”
“You blackmailed him into staying sober by offering a job.” She laughed. “That’s not fair.”
“Of course, it isn’t. But whatever works.” Ben was silent for a moment, thinking and remembering. “Did he ever hit Alicia or the baby?”
“Not to my knowledge. Jack’s more likely to take it out on things.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw him put his fist through a windshield once.”
“Whose windshield?”
“His own.”
“Good for him!” Ben said.
“Seriously?”
“I think Jack might be a lot like my Dad used to be,” Ben said, “except Dad sometimes hit people instead of things.”
Moriah caught her breath at this revelation. “Your dad hit you?”
“Sometimes.” His eyes were on the horizon, remembering. “Sometimes he hit me a lot.”
She turned her face toward his as the meaning of his words sunk in. “I’m sorry, Ben. I always figured you must have had a great father.”
“I did. He was a great father eventually. But we had a pretty rough patch there for a while.”
“What happened?”
“I told you about Mom dying when I was little?” He took a deep breath. “Dad didn’t deal well with losing her. He couldn’t get used to having me around instead of her. I think he must have started drinking, at first, to anesthetize his grief. Nicest person in the world when he was sober, but oh man, was he ever a mean drunk!”
“You’re telling me the Petras I remember trying to protect me during the massacre was a mean drunk?”
“He was for at least part of my childhood. If Dad hadn’t followed me into an empty church when I was trying to hide from him one Saturday night, I'd probably be ten times worse off now than Jack ever thought of being.”
“But he stopped hurting you?”
“Finally. He got sober, realized what he was doing, and got help. He didn’t have a choice.” Ben chuckled. “The preacher threatened to whip him if he didn’t.”
“The preacher threatened him?”
“Paul Bascomb. He had a very short fuse when it came to dads who hurt their kids.”
The memory washed over him, and it was as though he were there again—shivering, terrified, a little boy trying to make himself into a very small ball.
“Tell me.”
Moriah’s voice was so gentle; he wondered if this was the same woman who had been taking her anger out on nails a few moments earlier.
“There was an old church near our house that always kept its doors unlocked,” he said. “Sometimes I would go there to hide. That’s what I was doing when the new preacher found me. He saw me hiding beneath a pew, saw how terrified I was, and barely had time to process it all before Dad hit the door and came roaring in. I knew I was in for the beating of my life because, not only was Dad a mad drunk, he hated preachers and churches.”
“What happened?”
“The most amazing thing. The preacher put his body between me and my dad and told him that he’d better not lay a hand on me.”
“And your father listened to him?”
“Of course not. Dad loved a good fight, especially when he was drunk. He figured a preacher would be an easy knockout.”
“Was he?”
“Nope.” Ben grinned. “Dad had big hands, and he was very strong. I think he could have cold-cocked an elephant with those fists. He went after Brother Bascomb like an enraged bull, and even though I was just a little boy, I knew at that moment the preacher was going to die and I felt sorry for him.”
“What happened?”
“Dad charged the preacher, and a second later, my dad was lying flat on his back, looking up at the ceiling.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope.” Ben laughed. “Brother Bascomb had taught self-defense in the military before he became a preacher. Dad hardly knew what hit him.”
“Then what?”
“After several more attempts to win the fight and several more times finding himself on his back, Dad got the message. He’d finally met a man he couldn’t whip. The first, actually. Strangely enough, the respect he gained for the preacher that evening made him agree to get help. The preacher took me home to his family for a while, until Dad sobered up and made good on his promise.”
“Why didn’t the preacher just call Children’s Aid?”
“You’d have to have known the man. It wasn’t his way. He did things himself. And it worked. Dad started going to Alcoholics Anonymous, while meeting with Bascomb every week. One Sunday—I’ll never forget this—I was sitting beside the preacher’s wife, chewing on a stick of Juicy Fruit gum she had given me, and suddenly, here came my Dad, lumbering down the aisle. Only this time, he wasn’t angry; he was sobbing. I’d never even seen him cry before. He changed his life that Sunday morning, gave it over to God, and never looked back.”
“Never?”
“Nope. Not that I ever knew, and I probably would have known.”
“So, there’s hope for Jack?”
“There’s hope for anyone.”
“So how did he end up working at a clinic in the jungle?”
“He saw an article in National Geographic about a place called Machu-Pichu. That’s a city famous for its ancient rock dwellings on a mountain in South America. As a stone mason, he became fascinated with the place. He wanted to study the techniques they used in ancient times. Finally, he went on a trip just to see it for himself. Kind of a reward, he said, to commemorate five years of sobriety.”
“I’ve never heard of the place.”
“A lot of people go there every year. I’ve been, too. I think you have to be a stonemason to truly appreciate it. Anyway, while he was there, he met a woman. She was a doctor, a missionary taking a little vacation from a clinic in the Amazon. When he called and told me about her, I was happy he had met someone. She sounded nice. My uncle had moved to the U.S., and I was living with him while Dad was away. I daydreamed that, maybe someday, Dad would bring home a mom for me.”
“Did they get married?”
“No. I gathered from the letters he sent he had hopes they would, but she thought they needed more time together before taking such a big step. When he discovered there were others on their way to help build an addition to her small clinic, he volunteered to help. It was a win-win situation, he said. More time with her, and a way to pay God back for some of his bad years. After he got sober, my dad spent his few remaining years trying to make up for all the damage he had caused.”
“And now you’re translating the Bible for the exact same tribe that killed your dad.”
“Yes.”
“I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. I admire what you are doing, but I don’t think I have it in me to forgive to that extent.”
“Let me try to explain how it feels to me.” Ben pointed out toward the lake. “Do you see your lighthouse standing out there?”
“You mean Nicolas’s lighthouse?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“Right.”
“Of course, I see it. I’ve seen it every day of my life.”
“How many ships do you suppose it saved during the years it was in service?”
“Hundreds,” Moriah said, “maybe thousands.”
“How many lives?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there were records kept of the wrecks and the people dredged out of the water, but it would be impossible to know all the ships and people who simply sailed safely on by. Why?”
“My life as a young boy was a nightmare, Moriah. Then everything changed. A light came on in the darkness of our house, much like the light your family kept going in that light tower for so many years. God’s message changed my father completely and kept us from crashing into the rocks and sinking. It turned him from being a tortured animal that lashed out at everyone to being a man with joy and purpose. He became the father I’d dreamed of, a man who was kind to me all the time. Suddenly, I felt safe with him. More than safe. I felt protected. Something like that has a profound impact on a kid.”
“I can understand why.”
“There was one night, soon after he turned his life around, he borrowed a hymn book from the church. He sat by my bed with it and sang all the words to Amazing Grace. He had a good, deep voice. I was eight years old, and it became his nightly lullaby to me. He told me the words were talking about someone like him.”
Ben stretched his hands out in front of him and flexed them.
“My father had big hands. Mine are a lot like them. I watched him take down men twice his size in bar brawls. I was so afraid of those hands. And then, suddenly, through the grace of God, those hands combed my hair and washed my face, tucked me in, and held hymnbooks so that he could sing to me at night. I was twelve when he went to South America. My uncle, with whom I lived, was a lot older than my father, and his house was gloomy, but I went to school every day the proudest kid in that school. I told everyone my dad was a missionary, and they believed me because he sent me things from Brazil that my teacher displayed on a special shelf.”
“But he never came back.”
“He never came back. I cried for a while after he died and begged my uncle to let me go to him. I couldn’t believe he was actually gone. When I was older, I still wanted to go to him, but in a different way. I studied hard, got a degree in linguistics, and found the tribe he was working with when he died. I figured, if God’s word could turn a man like him into the man he became, it could change the hearts of the people who had killed him.”
“Does Nicolas know all this?”
“No. Funny thing, if Dad and his mom had lived, we probably would have become stepbrothers. That’s created a small bond between us, but I’ve not talked to him about my dad.”
“Why not?”
“Partly because it’s none of his business, partly because Nicolas is not the easiest man to talk to. I think that’s one of the reasons he loves your aunt so much. They created a relationship when they were children that I don’t think he’s ever experienced with anyone else. He struck me as a very lonely, cold man the first time I met him. Since being here with Katherine, he’s already different, happier.”
“If they get married, I bet I’m going to have to live under the same roof with that man.” There was sadness in Moriah’s voice.
“You could come to the Yahnowa village with me, instead,” he teased. “You could build me a new hut. I really need a new hut.”
“What you need to do is help me finish this roof, so I’ll be free to start work on the lighthouse.”
“True. I’ll help you. Then I need to start pulling a sermon together.”
“A sermon?” Moriah asked. “Why?”
“While you were up here nailing shingles like you were killing snakes, your minister came around and asked me to speak for church next week.”
“That should be interesting.”
“I know.” Ben said. “I can hardly wait to find out what I’m going to say.”