CHAPTER 43

Corin stood in the back of his store shelving a new shipment of lamps when the bell on the front door announced the arrival of the last person he ever excepted to spill a shadow across his oak floor.

“Hello?” a voice from the front called out.

A voice he’d heard forever.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Was it him? Had to be.

Corin jogged to the front, skidded to a stop at the end of the aisle, scanned the front of the store, and his pulse spiked. There. Right inside the front door. It was Dominique Shasta Roscoe.

His brother had hated the name Dom or Dominique from the moment he could talk. At eight years old he held up a can of his favorite drink at a family picnic—black cherry Shasta pop—and announced from that moment on his name was Shasta.

Corin stared at his brother for what seemed like ten minutes.

“Surprised to see me, bro?” Shasta tilted his head back and to the side.

Shasta’s dark brown hair was shorter than he’d ever seen it. It was almost a buzz cut. And his face was thin. “Utterly.” Surprise, fear, excitement all rushed through Corin’s brain like a flash flood.

Shasta punched the throttle on his wheelchair with his chin and surged toward him, the electric wheelchair shuddering as he bumped over the uneven wood floor.

“I need to get that floor smoothed out.”

“Why? Do you get a lot of incapacitated customers?”

Corin didn’t know how to respond and said nothing.

Shasta stopped five feet away and stared at Corin. “I’m surprised I’m here too.” His gaze moved slowly around the store. “How is business?”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’ll come back.”

Shasta nodded and the silence between them grew louder. Corin looked at his hands, then back to his brother. “I hope so.”

Another segment of silence.

“Robin tells me you’re dating a nice gal. Tori, is it?”

“Yeah.” Corin rubbed his eyes with the tips of his thumbs. The conversation was straight out of Insipid Talks for Any Occasion. “We could probably make small talk for the next two hours, but I’m not really up for it.”

“In other words, why am I here?”

“I think I know why you’re here. But I have no clue what changed your mind.”

“I’m here to go for a ride I’ll never forget.”

“But what changed your mind?”

“You did.”

“Not when we were on the phone.”

“No. After.” Shasta wheeled his chair another foot closer to Corin. “What I had to face after we talked was the fact you’d been healed. Not someone else. Any other person I couldn’t believe, but you, I do. And no, it wasn’t a physical healing, but you’ve fought your claustrophobia most of your life. If it’s gone, some type of miracle happened to you. If there’s any chance of a miracle happening to me, I have to take it. For Robin. For Sawyer.”

Shasta whirled and faced the front door as if to say that conversation was over.

“But not for you and me.”

Shasta didn’t turn back. When he spoke his voice was subdued. “No.”

Corin pressed a knuckle into his chin. Shasta wasn’t here to start building a bridge between them. He wasn’t even willing to look at a set of plans. And there was nothing Corin could do to force his brother to put on a construction hat.

But if Shasta was healed . . .

Movement outside his front window drew his attention. Robin paced next to the elevator lift built into their red van, looking almost as thin as Shasta. Probably on a continual stress diet taking care of Sawyer and Shasta. She glanced everywhere except into the store.

It didn’t surprise him.

She would do anything asked of her to help restore his relationship with Shasta, but if he knew his sister-in-law—and he did—she wouldn’t pry into what kind of verbal volley was going on inside the store.

“The chair isn’t here.” Corin turned back to Shasta. “Do you think Robin would mind swapping vehicles with me for a few hours while we take yours to my house?”

“Nope.”

When they reached Robin she grabbed Corin in a fierce hug and whispered, “I’ve prayed for this. I told you to never give up hope.”

Corin hadn’t almost given it up. He’d given up completely, but now it returned, full force, and was giving him a bigger rush than he’d ever had shattering the edges of his extreme-sports adventures.

It didn’t matter that Shasta was still icing him out of any chance at restoring their friendship. Within forty minutes his brother would sit in the chair.

And Corin would believe in Shasta being healed.

On the ride out to Corin’s, silence was in much greater abundance than conversation but he didn’t mind. It was a chance to talk with God.

Look, God, I don’t know how to pray and I don’t care. I hope You don’t care either. I have to assume You helped set up the circumstances to get Shasta to my store. So if that’s true and You’re part of this . . . just don’t let me down, okay? Don’t let him down.

Heal him, please? Restore us to the way we were before. I want him back.

A peace settled on Corin he’d never felt before.

He glanced at his brother. His brother. Riding alongside him in a car. How long since that had happened? The day of Shasta’s accident, of course. One drive toward disaster, the next drive toward possible restoration.

But what if there was no restoration? What then? Corin tried to push the thought from his mind but it pounded back like the elastic cord on one of his bungee jumps.

C’mon, God, this has to work.

When they reached the house, Shasta’s lift lowered him to the driveway. “I moved the chair from my basement to a hidden bunker I built back when I was making serious bank. It’s a place for priceless artifacts I want kept absolutely safe. No one knows about it and I had to put it in a place where no one would find it. It’s about fifty yards behind the house over rough terrain, which means I’ll have to carry you.”

“Fine,” Shasta said, but he didn’t look at Corin.

“Ready?”

Shasta nodded, his eyes dead. “Sure.”

He hoisted Shasta out of his chair and almost dropped him a moment later from shock. So thin. More bones than flesh. He couldn’t weigh more than 115 pounds. Didn’t he eat?

“Am I doing this right?”

“It doesn’t hurt. No feeling from the neck down, remember?”

“But still—”

“I’ll survive. My physical therapists thrash me much harder than you will. I haven’t turned completely into china yet, and you’re much gentler than a bull.”

When they reached the bunker Corin set Shasta next to an aspen tree next to the entrance and pushed the remote in his pocket. A section of the earth slid back to reveal a narrow set of stairs descending underground.

He tromped down the stairs, opened the bunker door, scrambled back up to Shasta, and picked him up. “It’s going to be different this time.” The words slipped out of Corin’s mouth before he could stop them. He’d inadvertently let his hope spill out and splash all over Shasta.

He guessed hope was pressing in on his brother as well, but Shasta was probably resisting. Too much pain, too many times of trying when the healing didn’t happen.

Corin carried Shasta down into the room and set him in a kitchen chair five feet from the chair.

Shasta gazed at the chair for a long time saying nothing. Finally he said, “So this is the miracle maker.”

“I hope so.” Corin eased over and touched the back of the chair. Nothing. “Are you ready?”

“Sure.”

Corin lifted his brother and set him on the chair like he was placing a baby into his mother’s arms for the first time.

“You’ll need to hold me, keep me from falling over.”

“Of course.” Corin held his brother’s shoulders and closed his eyes.

There was nothing to say, no instructions to give.

Ten minutes later Shasta said, “How do I know when it’s long enough?”

“I don’t know.” Corin sighed. “Do you feel anything?”

“No.”

Shasta’s voice wasn’t sad, wasn’t hopeful, wasn’t anything.

“Believe with me, Shasta. Think of the deepest thing you want.”

Shasta’s raspy breathing was the only noise in the room for the next three minutes.

“Anything?” Corin asked.

“Nothing.” Shasta coughed. “What should be happening?”

“It’s been different each time.” Please, God, heal him.

Corin didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. Where was the peace and the lights and the warmth?

Ten minutes later Corin carried his brother out of the bunker at his request, across the lawn, and put him in Shasta’s red van. They didn’t speak on the way back to Corin’s shop.

Before he and Robin drove away, Corin stood at the passenger side window trying to find the right words. “The healings have all come after sitting in the chair, not at the time the people sat.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll call me if anything happens?”

“Of course.” Shasta squinted up at him. “You’ll be the first.”

Would God come through? No idea.

But as the van pulled away Corin couldn’t shake the feeling that was the last time he’d talk to his brother for another age.