111 
Grandma Maggie’s Embrace

The moment Maggie saw her visitors, she stood up in the midst of her garden. When she realized Amanda was with them, she began nodding to herself. “I should have known it, Lord,” she said quietly. “Now I know what you were saying this morning. I don’t know why it wasn’t the first thing to come to my mind. I suppose I’m getting a bit thickheaded in my old age.”

She walked forward, tears already on their way. Again Amanda leapt from the carriage before it had stopped and ran forward. Amanda went straight to her arms and was swallowed in the grandmotherly embrace.

“I am so sorry about Bobby,” said Amanda softly. “I only learned of it a short while ago.”

“My season of heartbreak is past,” said Maggie. “I am now able to rejoice that the dear man’s in his new home. So don’t be sad for me.—Oh,” she said, now stepping back to arm’s length as she held Amanda’s shoulders and gazed upon her, “just look at you. It so gladdens my heart to see you, Amanda dear! I have prayed for you night and day all these years.”

“I know you have, Maggie,” said Amanda, “and for the first time in my life I can tell you how appreciative I am that you and dear Bobby didn’t give up praying for me. I was very stubborn, but I am finally home. Thanks to the prayers of all of you who kept loving me.”

Catharine and Jocelyn now came forward, and additional greetings and hugs, kisses and tears innumerable followed.

“Oh, but my heart is sore for the three of you,” said Maggie, looking at each of her visitors with such depths of compassion. “My Bobby lived a full life and was ready to go, but poor Master Charles and Master George—”

Maggie’s voice caught in her throat. The three gathered around her, the bereaved offering comfort to their friend. After a few tearful moments in a fourway embrace on the edge of Maggie’s garden, they gradually moved apart. Then at last did a few smiles slowly begin to brighten the Heathersleigh landscape.

“Come in . . . come in,” said Maggie. “We’ll have some tea. I want to hear all about my dear Amanda. I can hardly believe you are actually here, my dear! You have grown into a lovely woman indeed.”

The smile on Amanda’s face, and accompanying tears, was so different than any expression Maggie had seen on her countenance before. Amanda appeared years older, and, as much as might be said under these painful circumstances, more at peace with herself than Maggie had seen her.

Thirty minutes later, as Jocelyn sat watching Maggie, Amanda, and Catharine talking together around Maggie’s kitchen table for the first time ever like grandmother and two grown-up granddaughters, she quietly took in the features of her two daughters.

Maggie was right, thought Jocelyn—Amanda was indeed a woman now. The eyes of her motherhood could hardly fathom it. Though Catharine was larger than all three of them, at twenty she still displayed the signs of youth. Her animated gestures and boisterous laugh and infectious energy curiously reminded Jocelyn of Amanda as a girl. How strange, yet how marvelous, Jocelyn thought, that in a way they had reversed personalities. Now it was Amanda quietly watching, listening, and absorbing, while Catharine chattered freely away. It was Amanda who sat with face slowly moving back and forth, smiling and responding, yet more reluctant to speak than before, taking it all in with the eyes and ears of mature adulthood.

Amanda’s face had thinned, and both high cheekbones and jaw were more pronounced, lips, even in this difficult time, more inclined upward toward a smile than in past years, and evenly spaced white teeth not bashful to reveal themselves. The overall effect was of a woman’s not a girl’s face, and a pretty one, thought Jocelyn, thin and—strange as it was to think it—peaceful. Amanda’s brown hair, lightly curled, was shorter than her mother remembered it, framing a full forehead, whose lines revealed thought and intelligence at last pointed in the right directions. She looked out upon the world from green eyes that seemed somehow larger than before, and more perceptive and awake, as if searching for meaning. They bore just the hint of a few lines at their edges, showing that youth was giving way to maturity, lines that may have come to her eyes four or five years ahead of their time, but whose pain would do its work and thus serve her character well. She walked slowly now, not always rushing ahead, even hanging a step or two behind Catharine, displaying a new reticence of nature that became her with grace.

Jocelyn could hardly prevent tears at the sight. She had never known whether to hope for such a day, and now here it was. Her reverie was interrupted by the sounds of Amanda’s voice.

“As I see the two of you,” said Amanda to Catharine and Maggie, “talking about so many things and such good friends, I realize how much I have missed out on by being away all these years. I only wish . . .”

Her voice faltered. She stopped and looked away.

“Don’t fret, my dear,” said Maggie, reaching out and placing a warm hand on top of Amanda’s. “The Scriptures say that the Lord will return to us the years the locusts have eaten. I believe he will give those years back to you as well.”

“But—”

“Yes, I know we’ve suffered our losses. And our earthly eyes cannot see how good can come of it or how those years can possibly be restored. But the Lord will see to all that too.”

Dusk had begun to descend as Jocelyn and her two daughters rode back to the Hall several hours later. They had not been back for long when Timothy telephoned, saying he would be out to Devon the next day.