CHAPTER 7

How did she ever get this old? It was criminal.

Nicole gazed into the bathroom mirror and stared at the old woman looking back at her. Inside she was still twenty-eight. Maybe not twenty-eight, but thirty-eight at the most.

Certainly not the eighty-eight years the calendar claimed.

At least she didn’t try to wear clothes made for women in their fifties. Not a chance. She stuck with the clothes styled for women in their forties. Because she could pull it off.

Nicole walked out into the hallway then into the kitchen where she eased into the oak chair next to the table in her breakfast nook and picked at a spot of strawberry jelly she’d missed the day before.

Had she given the chair to Corin too soon?

Maybe.

But when would the time have been right? If not now, when?

She had prayed for days, seeking confirmation this was the time, but the only answer was a hollow silence in her soul.

And why give it to Corin when Shasta was the logical choice, the one who seemed to need the chair more?

But while doubts skittered around the edges of her heart, deep down she knew what God had told her and she believed it. Corin was the one. He was older.

She shook her shoulders as if to throw off any last vestiges of doubt that might try to imbed their claws in her faith and rip it away. Of course he was old enough.

She was much younger than him when she’d been given the chair. And more foolish. She laughed. Certainly more foolish. But God had seen her through it. And He would see Corin through his leg of this never-ending journey. She would finish the race strong and then trust that Corin would continue on.

The clock on her wall above the table chimed eleven o’clock. Not much time before the day was done. How much time did she have left on this earth? Years? Days? It didn’t matter. His will would be accomplished.

She reached for the picture of Corin that sat in the middle of her breakfast table and turned the photo over. Summer 1996. His hair was longer and there were no lines in his face yet. But he didn’t look much different now fifteen years later. There was strength behind his eyes. And fear. The fear she had watched him struggle with most of his life. The fear she would ask him about when the time was right.

Soon she’d reveal herself to him. Not all, but enough. As much as he needed.

Was he strong enough to face the trial coming his way? Was his fear too great for him to break through to the other side?

She stood a moment later and pulled the worn leather-bound journal off the bookshelf lining the walls of the nook, sat again, and started to write.

Half an hour later she shelved the journal and patted it twice before turning and walking out of the kitchen.

The journal would be his someday. Lord willing.