Ray leaned against the deck railing beside Ginger and watched the waves crash against the rocky shore beyond the trees. The woman beside him held more fascination for him than the beauty of the island—which was considerable here on Kauai’s northernmost tip.
The late afternoon sunlight turned stray strands of Ginger’s short, wavy hair into smoking flames. He was the moth.
“Ginger,” he said softly, “you look lost in thought.”
She nodded, still watching those waves. “You know how, back in the days of the wild, wild West, pioneers in a wagon train banded together for safety on their trip? And they circled the wagons when threatened?”
Ray thought about Rick Fenrow and understood what she meant. “Even when some of those wagoners might have been adversaries and set sparks off one another during the trek west?”
“Even then,” she said.
“But then maybe they discovered that there’s safety in numbers, and the enemy wasn’t who they perceived it to be in the first place.”
“I don’t see you as my enemy, Ray.”
He smiled. “Since when?”
“I never should have. I know who the real enemy is on this trip. Rick Fenrow destroys lives, not just careers.”
Ray winced.
“Okay, I didn’t mean…let me rephrase that,” she said. “I wasn’t—”
“Too late. Ginger, I didn’t ever want to—”
“I know.” She reached out and took his hand.
It startled him, but he certainly wouldn’t protest.
“I had a heart-to-heart with God about my response to your presence on this trip,” she said. “I behaved like a spoiled child, and I set a blasphemous example for the children to see.”
He quirked a brow at her “Blasphemous? Where on earth did you come up with that? Unfortunate, maybe, or crude, but I wouldn’t call it blasphemous.”
She gave him a wry look and tried to pull her hand away.
He held it fast. “You’re not a spoiled child, Ginger. You’re a woman who has strong opinions, and you’re a wonderful example for the children.”
For a moment, she studied the waves, then she looked up at him. “In that case, don’t you think I’m mature enough to know the truth behind the changes you made last year?”
“You’re mature enough.” With slow, deliberate movements, he raised her hand and traced the outlines of her fingers. “I think maybe the problem has been my own lack of maturity.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said in a flat tone.
He looked down into those beautiful, guileless eyes, and felt such an ache of remorse. He had treated her like a child last year. Who could wonder at her anger?
Yet, there was hope. Last year the truth might have injured her far worse than it would now, with some time for memories to fade, and attachments to loosen their hold.
“What is it, Ray?”
He swallowed, then drew her to two deck chairs that had a perfect view of the blue horizon over the treetops. “Have a seat.”
She did as she was asked for, perhaps, the first time on this trip, and he was forced, at last, to release her hand.
She settled beside him. As if bracing for what might be coming, she leaned back in the chair and gazed into the distance. “I should have realized from the beginning that you had a good reason for what you did.” She looked up at him, then back at the ocean. “I knew your heart, Ray. But I felt so…rejected.”
“Believe me, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“So why don’t you tell me the truth?”
He sighed. He could do this. It was time. He would tell her the whole truth.
Ginger felt as if she was nearing the end of a free fall, and she was about to splatter on the ground. But she’d asked for this moment for too long. What could be worse than what she’d already believed to be true?
A muscle worked in Ray’s jaw, a sure sign of tension.
He cleared his throat. “I received an anonymous call last February from someone warning me that your life might be in danger.”
She caught her breath, unable to conceal her shock. “My life? In Belarus?”
He nodded.
She swallowed. “That kind of thing happened from time to time. That’s why you brought me back to Missouri? Ray, missionaries face danger like that every day. There were other lives besides mine at stake. And there were souls at stake. You didn’t think I could handle that news?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t even sure I could handle it. I was frantic. I considered shutting down the clinic completely, or turning it over to the Belarusians and pulling out the entire American staff.”
She straightened in her chair. “Of course you couldn’t do that! Think how many people were dependent on that clinic. They need—”
“I found out who made the call.” His voice suddenly softened.
She studied his expression. “Okay.”
“Nicolai.”
She caught her breath, feeling a stab of anguish. One of her children? “Which one? Nick or Colya?” She had given those two boys nicknames when they first came to the clinic because they were both named Nicolai.
“He had blond hair and blue eyes and was skinny as a fence post,” Ray said.
“That would be Colya.” She felt another squeeze of anguish. She couldn’t suppress the tears that sprang to her eyes. Charming, friendly Colya, who had always been so eager to please, so affectionate. “He threatened my…my life?”
“He warned me that your life might be in danger. Big difference.”
The anguish eased. Not her Colya, then. Thank you, Jesus. Colya was one of the kids who had spent so much time hanging around the clinic, helping out with odd jobs and translations. Even as a ten-year-old, he knew enough English to translate for her when she was still learning Russian.
“But why didn’t he tell me?” she asked. “I could have dealt with it.”
“No, you couldn’t.” Ray’s voice sharpened. “He knew if he told you about it, you’d come right out and confront the culprit, and he was afraid for his own life, as well as yours.”
“He told you that?”
“In person, when I flew to Minsk.”
“With my replacement?”
“No, I flew out myself before I would risk the life of any replacement.”
“When did you do that?”
“As soon as you arrived home. I used your heart arrhythmia as an excuse to get you back home so I could investigate the threat,” he said. “I wanted to handle it as quietly as possible.”
She felt another emotion coming into play. Utter humiliation. Because she had a reputation for not keeping her mouth shut, Ray had been forced to go behind her back? And Colya had done so, as well?
“I know I’m not the most cautious person on the mission field,” she said. “And I’ve never been subtle with my opinions, but—”
“You are who you are, Ginger, and no one would want you any other way. However, I couldn’t take that chance, either as your director, or as someone who cares very much for you.”
She clasped her hands together and stared down at them. “Who threatened me?”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “Sergei.”
She sprang to her feet, returned to the deck railing and gripped it tightly. “No.”
“You know how close Colya was to him. I had a bad feeling about it as soon as I got the call.”
“Isn’t it possible Colya might have been exaggerating a little? Sergei had a bad temper, and said things in the heat of anger that he didn’t really—”
“Don’t excuse his behavior. What happened between you and Sergei last winter that made him so angry? And why didn’t you tell me about it? Colya didn’t know, and Sergei wouldn’t tell him.”
Oh, yes. Last winter. Maybe she hadn’t handled that as well as she’d thought. “I caught him early one morning in the clinic, trying to break into the drug cabinet. I gave him a firm talking-to, and he responded with childish bravado. I banned him from the clinic for two weeks, and thought that was the end of it. When he came back he apologized. I hugged him and invited him to dinner and thought things were fine.”
“Not the most insightful thing you’ve ever done,” Ray said. “Colya told me Sergei had been talking wildly one night after he’d drank a half bottle of vodka, and he betrayed thoughts about murdering you.”
Ginger felt a renewed stab of pain, sharp and wicked. “I can’t believe Sergei would ever have followed through with any of his threats.”
“Exactly. That’s why I brought you home, because you wouldn’t have believed it, and would have made things worse if I’d told you.”
She heard him get up, and he joined her at the railing.
“I also knew that if you had realized what was going on last year, you’d have been devastated,” he said.
“But I was.” She looked up at him.
“I realize that.”
“Those boys were the ones I felt I had betrayed when I didn’t get to return to Belarus.”
“I believed it would be better for you to be angry with me for a while than to be hurt by Sergei’s deception and hatred.”
She felt tears sting her eyes. After all this time, all this blame she’d placed on Ray, and she had been wrong.
And how could Sergei have felt that way about her? She’d loved those boys, taken them into her home, time after time, when their own parents were busy working. She had fed them, given them motherly advice. Yes, she’d been firm with them, but no more so than she’d been with her own children.
“Sergei has since been in trouble with the police, Ginger,” Ray said. “He’s in prison now.”
She felt her face crumple. “Oh, Ray.”
He took her into his arms and held her while she soaked the front of his shirt with tears and a good portion of her makeup.
“That poor, struggling child! I’ve known him since he was eight.”
“I know,” he soothed.
“He lived with his mother and a bully of an older brother.”
“That’s what Colya told me,” Ray said.
“When things got too hard to deal with at home—which they often did—he came to the clinic, or to my apartment over the clinic.”
“You did everything you could for him,” Ray assured her, his deep voice wrapping its comfort—its forgiveness—around her.
All remaining bitterness drained from her, and she allowed herself to grieve her loss, this time without anger. Where had she gone wrong with Sergei? And how could she have handled the situation so that the whole mission clinic wouldn’t have been in danger of being shut down, or the Americans sent home?
“All these years,” she said, “I thought that if I loved enough, gave enough of myself, forgave enough and tried hard enough, things would always work out.”
“How do you know they haven’t?”
She frowned. “They obviously haven’t for Sergei.”
“I don’t think God’s finished with him yet,” Ray said.
“I thought I was running a successful program over there, and that God was blessing it.”
“He is, and you set the foundation for that. Look at all who’ve been helped.”
“I didn’t take the opposition into account,” she said. “God can bless, but people can make bad choices.”
“God’s blessings have a way of diversifying with the choices people make, Ginger. Actually, it’s been my experience that sometimes, under the most opposition, God’s blessings multiply exponentially. You may see your return home from Belarus as a failure, but I see it as an opportunity for you to lay a future foundation.”
“That’s all well and good, but what about Sergei? Things certainly didn’t turn out for him.”
“You sowed a lot of seeds with him. Now it’s time to let others do the gardening and reaping.”
She sighed. Now he was trying to make her feel better. “I’m so sorry, Ray. After all our years of friendship, how could I have doubted your heart? I knew you better than that.”
“And I should have been honest with you from the beginning,” he said. “Maybe that speaks of my own inability to trust.”
“But you were probably right not to.”
He leaned back and gazed at her. His own dark blue eyes filled with sudden amusement. He broke into a smile and drew back. “We could each recite a long list of regrets, couldn’t we?”
“I know I could.”
“But the past is just that. It’s over. Let’s learn from it and go on.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”
He cocked his head to the side and smiled slightly. “You really want to know what I think?”
She nodded.
The smile widened. “I’m glad you asked. There’s something I’ve wanted to do for years.” He cupped her cheek with his hand, and before she realized what he had in mind, he lowered his head and pressed his lips gently to hers.
Startled, she caught her breath and jerked back. “Ray?”
“Hey, lovebirds!” called Larry from the top of the steps. “Hate to interrupt things, but I’ve got some good news.”
Ginger stepped away from Ray, heart pounding, stunned by his kiss, and her immediate, shocked response.
“Got word from the police in Lihue,” Larry said. “They have a suspect in custody who matches Fenrow’s description.”
“They have Fenrow?” Ray exclaimed.
Larry nodded. “They got a tip from someone at the hotel that he was hanging around the fourth floor hallway, and didn’t have any reason to be there.” He punched his fist into the air. “I think we’ve got our man! I’m on my way there to make sure.”
Ray laughed. “Want me to come with you?”
Larry turned to retreat down the stairs. “Not on your life. Go ahead and return to what you were doing. Don’t let me stand in the way of romance. Graham and Willow are coming with me, and as soon as we ID Fenrow, they’re going to rent another car and take off for a few days as originally planned.”
“What about the storm tonight?” Ray called after him.
“I don’t think they’ll get out in it, do you? I’ll be back before it hits.” He chuckled all the way down the stairs.
Ginger grabbed Ray in a bear hug, and this time, when he kissed her, she returned his passion with all the enthusiasm with which she had hurled her anger. Their trip wouldn’t be ruined, after all.