By eight o’clock, Vita had showered and dressed and made her way to the swing in the back garden. She sipped at her second cup of coffee and watched two squirrels chasing up and down an oak tree, chittering to each other and making grand swooping jumps from limb to limb, almost as if they could fly.
The morning sun cast an ethereal light over the grass, the willow tree, the purple irises in the flower bed against the far wall. The sight stirred something in Vita. She had the sensation of being lighter, younger, more agile, as if freed from some invisible burden, and she was finally able to put words to a perception that had been working its way into her mind. Saint Francis had been right—all creation was kin. Brother squirrel, sister iris, father sunlight, mother willow—a family.
And Vita Kirk belonged.
She wasn’t certain how to categorize this new perspective that had come upon her. Metamorphosis? Transfiguration? Resurrection? None of the words quite fit, yet Vita knew she was changed. Everything looked different, felt different. The fragrance of spring blossoms seemed sharper, the colors more vibrant, her vision more focused. As if she had stumbled through life in a nearsighted blur and just received her first pair of glasses.
She leaned back in the swing, relishing the warmth of sunlight on her face, and shut her eyes. For a long time she sat there, as the light through her eyelids created a road map of blood vessels against her retina. Then a shadow stepped between Vita and the sun. She looked up, raised a hand to shade her eyes. A man.
She couldn’t see his face clearly, silhouetted as he was against the light, but his blondish-brown hair ruffled in the breeze, and he was smiling.
Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Maybe it was his smile, or the unassuming way he stood there, waiting for her to speak.
But for a split second, Vita was convinced that the man who stood before her was— Jacob Stillwater, in the flesh.
The figure moved out of the sunlight and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Good morning, Vita. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Hap Reardon. Vita stared at him as he settled himself into the swing next to her and stretched his legs out. He was wearing neatly pressed khaki slacks, a white oxford shirt, and brown loafers with tassels on the tops. She had never noticed before what a nice smile he had, or the faint hint of a dimple in his left cheek.
She had always been too eager to get away from him to observe much about him at all, in fact. Now she saw that he had clear blue eyes and little crow’s-feet, and just the beginnings of a receding hairline. He looked almost . . . attractive, in a soft, middle-aged sort of way. And he did indeed bear a resemblance to Jacob Stillwater.
She met his gaze and discovered a curious expression on his face.
“Is something wrong, Vita? You’re looking at me as if I just beamed down from another planet.”
Vita blinked. “Sorry, Hap. I was just, well, thinking.” She gathered herself together and tried to remember her manners.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
He glanced at his watch. “I’d love one, but I don’t think we have time. We ought to be going.”
“Going?” she stammered. “Going where?”
He threw back his head and laughed—a hearty, melodic sound.
“You haven’t listened to your messages, have you?” Hap ran a finger down the crease of his trousers. “I should have guessed. I knew you were busy this week, trying to get some work done on the Alaska project, and with keeping Gordy and Mary V on top of everything else, well—”
Vita’s mind raced. How on earth could Hap Reardon know about her deadline for the Alaska book? She had never spoken the first word to him about her writing projects, not that she could recall. And the twins? He spoke their names as if he knew them, as if they were all old friends.
“I left a couple of messages, and even came by the other day.
But when I saw Mary Kate’s Volvo parked out front, I figured you had your hands full. And I kept getting your machine, so it was clear you had the phone turned off. I know how forgetful you become when you’re working, honey, but you really ought to check your messages once in a while.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “You promised to go with me to the estate auction in Brevard, remember? And then afterward we’re scheduled to have dinner with my mother. She’s really looking forward to meeting you.” He smiled into her eyes. “If you’re too swamped to go, I’ll understand, but—”
Vita shook her head. Honey? Memories began to crowd in upon her, misty images of time spent with him—a drive to Black Mountain to scout out antique stores, a candlelight dinner, a walk in the rain.
She pulled herself together and managed to stammer, “No, no. Of course not. I—” Vita looked down at what she was wearing— blue jeans and a burgundy turtleneck sweater with tennis shoes. “Just give me a couple of minutes to change—”
“I’d never dream of asking you to change.” Hap stood to his feet, extended a hand in her direction, and chuckled. “Although you might want to work on that absent-mindedness thing.”
Walk the path God sets before you, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. Vita smiled up at him and took his hand. “OK, let me just get my purse and keys,” she said, “and we’ll be on our way.”
They chose the scenic route, a twenty-five mile trip that wound along Crab Creek Road from Flat Rock to the picturesque little college town of Brevard, sheltered at the edge of the Pisgah National Forest. Hap drove, skillfully maneuvering the big white van with Pastimes painted in purple on both sides. Vita was grateful not to be behind the wheel; if it had been up to her, they probably would have ended up lost in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, or stranded in some holler right out of Deliverance, where the locals still made moonshine and ran off the “furriners” with a double-barreled shotgun.
Freed from having to give her attention to the road before them, Vita spent most of the drive in silence, listening to Hap talk about his work and sorting through fresh memories that continued to work their way into her consciousness.
“The wonderful thing about antiques,” he was saying, “is not only their appreciating monetary value, but their intrinsic worth as icons of history. Sometimes I wish antiques could talk. What valuable lessons we might learn from them! I like to think that each one has its own story—a tale of ordinary people, maybe, finding their way to extraordinary courage and faith.”
“Like the Treasure Box,” Vita murmured.
“Exactly like the Treasure Box. Now, there’s a piece that has a story to tell.”
If you only knew, she thought to herself.
Hap turned in her direction and grinned. “It’s virtually a miracle, the way some of these things endure—passed from hand to hand, coming down from one generation to the next, carrying decades, sometimes even centuries of history along with them.
Don’t you think the fellow who made that box—probably in England, over a hundred years ago—would be fascinated to find out how it came to rest in the mountains of western North Carolina?” He let out a wistful sigh. “Just proves that we never know how far our influence might travel, or who our lives will touch.”
Vita gazed at his profile—a broad forehead, a nose turned up slightly at the tip, just the hint of a weakening chin. A clean-shaven, boyish face, not devastatingly handsome by conventional standards, and yet there was something intensely likable about him.
The answer came to her in the present and was called up from the past simultaneously: his imagination, his creativity. Yes, that was it. Hap Reardon had a wonderful way of . . . of thinking. A way of embracing the magic and mystery—the wonder—of everyday life. Vita paused in thought, distracted by a momentary image of Hap walking with her, hand in hand, through the woods, stopping every step or two to bend over and examine a wildflower, or to identify the song of some invisible bird in the trees. He was—her mental thesaurus struggled for the right adjective, but all she could come up with was good. A good man. An uncomplicated man, sensitive, compassionate, self-aware. A man at peace with himself and his life. A man who found delight in simple things. A man of faithfulness and integrity.
And a man she would never get bored with.
Vita’s rational brain put on the brakes so hard she could feel the whiplash inside her skull. Wait a minute. Was she actually thinking of a future with Hap Reardon? Impossible. Ridiculous.
Utterly unthinkable, and yet— Yet it was true. Like a file photograph slowly downloading into her memory, the picture materialized: the two of them, at an overlook up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, on a blanket under the stars. Chilled to the bone and shivering in the night air, laughing about the insanity of a midnight picnic at this time of year.
Hap taking her hand, gazing into her eyes.
Vita took in a ragged breath, and from somewhere deep within her she felt it. Love. Welling up in her so that she could barely contain it, battering at her in powerful waves, drowning her in its liquid warmth. She panicked, and went under.
It felt like death, like birth. Every nerve ending in Vita’s body flamed with an incendiary sweetness, a phoenix-fire that conceived new life in the ashes even as it incinerated the old in a molten blaze of glory. The rational part of her brain cautioned her to stay back, to keep her distance; this conflagration could sear the soul and char the heart into a molten lump of lead. But the warning came too late. The heat was too intense, too compelling. Shrugging off the final layers of her carefully crafted armor, Vita Kirk reached out toward the fire.
Hap turned when her hand touched his arm, and their eyes met. “What?”
Vita stalled. “I—I—” She managed a wan smile. “I love you, that’s all.”
His grin widened, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb.
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
That was it. Nothing remarkable or earth-shattering. Simply the most natural, most comfortable of interchanges between two people in love.
By the time they pulled away from the auction site and headed for Hap’s mother’s house, the big white panel van was full. Vita had claimed a small inlaid walnut table for herself; the rest would go to the shop.
Vita had no idea how Hap intended to cram all he had bought into that crowded little space, but she had to admit he was good at his chosen profession. He had spent less than a thousand dollars, and the carved cherry rice bed alone—a double-size fourposter— was worth more than that. All told, he would probably quadruple his investment on the haul he had made today.
She had watched him, fascinated, as he prowled up and down the aisles examining various items at the estate auction. The old woman who had died had evidently been something of a pack rat; in addition to the usual assortment of furniture, tools, and household appliances, there were a dozen or more flatbed trailers piled with boxes. On one flat, they found cheap stainless steel tableware alongside priceless sterling silver; on another, a hideous lamp—a buffalo with a clock in its belly, topped with a cowhide shade—in the same box with an unobtrusive but elegant little Tiffany.
Hap knew his business. He went around pulling out drawers, checking dovetails, examining hardware, explaining to Vita why this piece was authentic and valuable, while that one was a reproduction. By the time the auction started, he had made a list of what he wanted and the maximum price he would pay. Vita had a hard time keeping up with the rapid-fire pace of the bidding, but twice Hap caught the auctioneer pulling bids out of the trees— pretending to acknowledge a bidder in the back of the crowd and then upping the price on the basis of that phantom bid. Very graciously, and without malice, Hap asked for an identification of the competitor, and the auctioneer apologized, saving face by saying he mistakenly interpreted a movement in the back as a valid bid.
By the time the last item was sold, Hap had acquired several fine pieces of furniture, and a truckload of stuff Vita thought worthless until he explained their value to her. Things like old comic books, a Betty Boop clock, a collection of advertising signs, and a contraption called a Whizzer Bike, which turned out to be a motorized bicycle, the earliest ancestor of the moped.
And if Vita thought she was impressed with Hap’s expertise in antiques, she found herself even more amazed with the way he dealt with people. There had been a little girl at the auction— eight or nine years old, perhaps—who was bidding against Hap on a box of assorted knickknacks. Hap won the bid at six dollars, but once he had the box in his possession, he motioned to Vita and sidled over to where the little girl was standing with her father.
“Hi,” he said gently. “My name’s Hap. Was there something particular in this box you were interested in?”
The girl was obviously fighting tears, but she bravely swallowed back her despondency. “Yes, sir. The little horse.”
Hap reached into the box and came up with a small bronze statue. “This one?”
“Yes, sir. But you got it fair and square.” She looked up at her father, who winked at her and nodded. “My dad taught me how to bid. And I couldn’t go over five dollars.”
“Yeah,” Hap said. “Your dad’s right; we all have to set limits on what we’re willing to spend. I’m an antique dealer, and I’ve been outbid on things I wanted lots of times.” He scratched his head. “This was going to go in my shop, but I’ll tell you what— I’ve got a lot of stuff to drag home, and this little horse is just weighing me down. You wouldn’t be interested in buying it, by any chance?”
Briefly the girl’s eyes lit up with anticipation, but then her face fell and she shook her head. “Like I said, I only have five dollars. It’s worth more than that.”
“It is,” Hap agreed. “But I’ve got other things to consider, such as space limitations and transportation costs and my over- head in the store. It might pay me just to go ahead and unload it while I’ve got a buyer.” He gave the girl a serious look. “How does three dollars sound?”
She cut a glance at her father, then nodded vigorously. “You’ve got a deal.”
The girl dug in her pockets and came up with two rumpled bills, three quarters, and a fistful of pennies. She handed the money over, took the little horse, and shook his hand, all business.
As Vita and Hap turned to leave, the girl’s father caught him by the sleeve. “Thank you,” he said.
“My pleasure.” Hap grinned at him. “It’s the most fun I’ve had all day.”
As Vita recalled the incident, she turned to Hap, who had just pulled the van into the driveway of a little white house.
“How much was that statue worth—the horse you gave to the little girl?”
“Not gave—sold,” he corrected with a chuckle. “I might have gotten forty or fifty dollars for it.” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Don’t tell my mother, OK? She already thinks I’m a miserable soft touch.”
“Soft touch, yes,” Vita answered. “Miserable, no.” She unbuckled her seat belt, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.
“You’re quite a man.”
“I’m just a sucker for a pretty girl, that’s all.” Hap’s ears reddened, and he ducked his head sheepishly.
Vita laughed. “Do we need to have a discussion about flirting?”
“I don’t think so.” He reached across the space between the bucket seats, took her hand, and stroked it lightly, tenderly. Vita’s rational mind set off an alarm that she was on dangerous ground, that she could get her heart broken, that it had happened before and could happen again. But she had never felt safer, or happier, or more loved than she felt at this moment.
He leaned forward. Vita shut her eyes, waiting for the kiss.
Five seconds. Ten. Nothing. Maybe he’s trying to work up his nerve, Vita thought. She kept her eyes closed and waited some more.
After about twenty seconds, she could stand it no longer. She slit one eyelid open and peeked.
Hap was snared sideways in the bucket seat, his left hip wedged under the steering wheel and his right pocket hung on the floorboard gearshift. He had been caught halfway to the kiss and was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.
“That’s what I get for trying to be romantic,” he said when he had regained his breath. “We’d better go in, or Mama will accuse us of necking in the car, and we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Hap’s mother’s home was one of those small, compact Grandma houses—white, with dark green shutters and a postage-stamp yard filled with multicolored annuals. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, Vita had the sensation of being transported back in time. The living room was furnished with maroon velvet furniture festooned with lace doilies and antimacassars. A large ornate candelabra dominated a baby grand piano crowded into the corner, and the dining room, an alcove separated from the living room by an oval archway, was pure Duncan Phyfe—a mahogany claw-foot table with six lyre-back chairs.
“You can see I come by my love of antiques honestly,” Hap whispered as he ushered her into the room. “Mother just doesn’t realize this house isn’t big enough to accommodate them all.” He raised his voice. “Mama? We’re here!”
Vita hadn’t been quite sure what she expected of Hap’s mother. Somewhere in the back of her mind, an undiscovered memory came to her aid: the woman was a seventy-nine-year-old widow who had given birth to her first and only child at the age of thirty-six. After seeing the house, Vita anticipated a frail, regal, birdlike lady with Victorian lace up to her chin and an effusion of silver-white hair piled high on her head. The person who emerged from the kitchen, however, couldn’t have been further from that image if she had deliberately aimed at its opposite. About five-four, with dazzling blue eyes and short hair in that platinum shade of blonde going to gray, she looked to be seventy-nine going on sixty. She wore faded blue jeans, a blue and purple striped rugby shirt, and Nike running shoes.
“Ah, Mama, there you are!” Hap went to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry we’re a bit late; the auction was a big one and went on longer than we thought.”
“That’s fine; I only got back from my tennis game an hour ago.” She gave Hap a poke in the ribs. “Hampton James Reardon,
Junior, where are your manners?”
Hap grimaced. “Oh. Right.” He pulled himself together and began a formal introduction. “Mother, I’d like you to meet Vita Kirk. Vita, my mother, Mrs.—”
“Oh, posh,” she interrupted. “Stop this nonsense.” She pushed him aside and hauled Vita into a hug worthy of a Kodiak bear. “I’m so glad to meet you, my dear.” She released Vita and cast an acid look in Hap’s direction. “Finally. I was beginning to suspect that Number One Son here had made you up entirely from his imagination.”
“I’m happy to meet you, too, Mrs. Reardon—”
“None of that ‘Mrs.’ business, now,” she interrupted with a wave of one hand. “I may be a certified antique, but I won’t have my son’s fiancée calling me ‘Mrs.’ as if I’m some prudish nineteenth-century dotter.”
Vita’s brain had flooded out on the word fiancée, and it took her a minute or two to pull in enough oxygen to get the engine running again.
“—Roe,” Mrs. Reardon was saying when Vita’s attention returned. “Please, call me Roe. All my friends do, and I want us to be friends. Good friends.”
“Yes. Roe. Thank you.” Vita’s mind spun. It was one thing to like Hap, to be friends with him, even, perhaps, to have romantic feelings for him. But marriage? Could she possibly have agreed to marry him?
Hap’s mother led them both back into the kitchen, all the while carrying on a spirited conversation with her son, but Vita couldn’t hear a word of it. Somehow, in the midst of her mental fog, Vita helped Roe get dinner put on the table, going through the motions like a wooden wind-up doll. An animated discussion about antiques and the auction and Hap’s plans for enlarging the shop swirled around her. Then they were sitting at the table—Hap at the head, his mother and Vita on either side. And Roe said, “Hap, would you like to say grace?”
Vita felt Hap’s hand close around hers and saw Roe reach across the table to complete the circle. Vita started to bow her head, but with a sidelong glance she saw that Hap had his eyes open, his gaze drifting from the food on the table to his mother’s face and then to hers. “God of the Universe,” he prayed, “you give us many gifts. The bounty of the land for our nourishment, the warmth of family, the joys of work and play. Thank you for all these blessings, for laughter, and for love.” He smiled in Vita’s direction. “Especially for love. May we ever live with a grateful heart. Amen.”
Vita felt something tear at the seams of her mind—not another small rip, but a violent pulling apart of the whole fabric of reality. The entire curtain rent in two, from top to bottom.
The darkness lifted, and from the depths of her soul came a shuddering, like an inner earthquake with Vita at its epicenter. On the outside, nothing had changed, but within, she sensed herself standing in the presence of some glorious celestial occurrence.
She had heard this prayer before, not once, but many times.
Jacob Stillwater’s prayer. The prayer that Hap had offered before every meal they had shared together. Hap didn’t remind Vita of Jacob because of similar physical characteristics. He reminded Vita of Jacob because of his soul.
Vita had once thought—a long time ago, it seemed—that if she could ever give her heart to any man again, it would be a man like Jacob Stillwater. Now that man sat next to her, holding her hand, and all the years of disillusionment and suspicion retreated into the background. It didn’t matter anymore that Gordon Locke had betrayed her, or that Derrick Knight had betrayed both Rachel and Cathleen. The pain and distrust she had harbored for so many years seemed but a distant storm dissipating on the far horizon.
Vita could feel the old memories getting weaker, losing their hold on her. She could still envision herself as angry, bitter, and isolated, but that person didn’t seem to have much to do with her anymore. She could recall being cynical and distrustful and having no patience whatsoever for anything that reeked of religion, but she could no longer quite remember why.
Her mind wrapped around the words of Hap’s prayer: Thank you for these blessings, for laughter, and for love. May we ever live with a grateful heart.
And her own soul responded: Amen.