After the Rains (22 page)

She’d never been afraid with her daddy by her side.

When had it all ended? When had they become strangers—or worse, enemies? She winced as the echoes of her own voice rang in her ears.
“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my father.”

Oh, Lord. I don’t want to leave with things like this between us. Help me make things right
.

She went to her bed and dropped to her knees beside it. Bowing over the brightly flowered comforter, she poured her heart out to the one Father whose love she was discovering never felt divided or uncertain. “Lord, sometimes I think I’m a hopeless, mixed-up mess. Please be with me as I go off to college. I’m … I’m kind of scared, Lord. And Father, please help me work things out with Daddy before I go.” Tears wet her cheeks as she prayed, “I can’t stand thinking of leaving with things the way they are between us right now. But I don’t know what to do.”

As if in instantaneous answer to her prayer, there was a tentative knock and the door swung open. “Hey, what else needs to go in the car, Nat—” Her father stopped short, seeing her on her knees. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he muttered, sounding almost embarrassed.

She brushed at her tears with the back of her hand, but before she had time to get to her feet, he dropped to his own knees on the floor beside her. He placed a strong arm around her shoulders, and the love in his voice
when he spoke her name covered her like a warm quilt. “Natalie? What’s wrong, honey? Is everything okay?”

She nodded her head against his chest. Now that he was here beside her, comforting her, she truly did feel as though things would be okay.

“Oh, man,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m sure going to miss my girl.”

She turned and buried her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Daddy …”

“It’s been a rough year, hasn’t it?”

She could only nod again and soak the front of his shirt with her tears.

Silently, he rocked her back and forth, the way he had when she was little, with a scraped knee or a stubbed toe. After a while, he pulled her up to sit on the edge of her bed beside him. Again, he put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Nattie, I’m— I’m sorry if I haven’t been—”

“Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry too.”

“Let’s”—he swallowed hard—“let’s just forget all the bad stuff. We’ve got an awful lot of good stuff to remember, don’t you think?”

She pulled away and looked up into his face, nodding solemnly. There was no denying the love she saw in his eyes. It filled her to the core.

“Remember that time Rufus knocked you into the creek?” he asked, a mischievous glint coming to his eye. It was a story that had been told fifty times through the years.

“Yeah,” she said. “You laughed so hard I thought you were going to fall in too.” She looked up at him and grinned through her tears. “It would have served you right if you had.”

“Hey, watch it,” he said, but his voice was so tender it made her ache.

They talked then, remembering the good times, the happier days before things had gone sour. There was contrition in the remembering—unspoken, yet as clear as though it had been given voice.

Finally he put a hand on her head. “Can I send you off with a prayer?” he asked.

Natalie nodded, tears springing to her eyes again.

Daddy took her hand and slid again to his knees, bowing over the bed. She followed, willingly, sinking to the floor beside him.

“Lord Jesus, thank you,” he said. His voice wavered and cracked, and
something twisted in Natalie’s heart. “Thank you for putting this girl in my life. Thank you for the privilege of being her father all these years. I know— I know it’s not one I deserved, or ever managed to earn, Father, but I thank you just the same. Help us to forgive each other. Help us to stay close even though we’ll be far apart—” Natalie felt her big, strong daddy tremble beside her, and the silence seemed interminable. When Cole Hunter spoke again his voice steady, his plea to heaven fervent and honest. “Keep us close, Lord. Put your angels around Natalie and bring her back for a visit with her ol’ dad every once in a while.”

Natalie could hear the smile in his words, and she couldn’t help smiling too.

“And Father God,” he continued, serious again, “I know you have a wonderful plan mapped out for Nattie’s life. Reveal it to her in your perfect time, Lord. Amen.”

Her throat was so full of sadness and joy it was painful. And yet it was the sweetest ache she’d ever known. Natalie opened her mouth, but she couldn’t croak a word. In the depths of her heart, she echoed the pleas of the man who knelt beside her. And she clung, as though drowning, to the raft of his prayers.

T
RUENO:
T
HUNDER

Eighteen

N
atalie hoisted her knapsack onto one shoulder and studied the sign, then looked down at the directory in her hands. Her psychology class was supposed to meet in one of the ballrooms in the student union this morning to hear a guest lecturer. But the banquet rooms were empty, lights out, molded plastic chairs turned upside down atop dozens of long tables. She looked at the sign on the wall by the wide doors again and double-checked the paper the professor had handed out. She was definitely in the right place.

In the middle of a Tuesday morning, the union was crawling with students. They streamed by Natalie as though she were a rock in a raging river current. Most of the students seemed to saunter with the confident nonchalance of upperclassmen, but here and there Natalie could pick out other freshmen in the crowd. They were the ones dressed a little too nicely, carrying backpacks that were a little too new and neatly organized, and swinging their heads from side to side, desperately looking for their destinations.

Natalie sighed and stood in the flow of bodies, trying to decide what to do. Her class must have been cancelled. Maybe the speaker hadn’t shown up. She hoped that was it, or this would make the second time she’d missed a lecture in this class. And the semester was barely three weeks old. Oh well, she thought, she may as well head back to the dorm. Heaven knew she had plenty of homework to do.

She whirled around, and her backpack sailed away from her shoulder, hitting a tall, athletically built student square in the chest.

Natalie gasped, then put her hands to her face when she saw that he was on crutches. “Oh no!” She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “I am so sorry! Are you all right?”

“Holy cow! Natalie Camfield? What in blazes are
you
doing here?”

She looked up into the twinkling eyes of Evan Greenway. “Evan! Oh, I’m so glad it was only you.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” he laughed wryly.

She hid her eyes beneath the visor of her hand. “That didn’t come out right. I just meant, I’m glad it wasn’t—”

“Glad it wasn’t a complete stranger you almost steamrolled?” he teased.

“Oh, you know what I mean. I am so sorry,” she moaned again. “Are you all right … really?”

“I’m fine … really.” Smiling, he playfully mimicked her tone of voice.

She reached out and put a hand on one of his crutches. “Is this still from … the wreck?”

He nodded. “How are you?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

She dipped her head. “It has been a long time. I wasn’t even sure if you’d—well, if you’d finished school.”

Evan had not received his diploma with their class. In fact, as far as she knew, he had not been back to Bristol at all after the accident.

“Oh, yeah,” he said now. “I graduated. I actually got better grades my last semester—in the hospital—than I ever got when I was healthy. I had plenty of time to study.”

“I heard you had several surgeries.”

“Five to be exact.”

“Wow. Are you done now? Is this it?” She indicated his crutches again.

“Probably.” He lifted the cuff of his wide-leg jeans to reveal a short cast. “I’m supposed to get this off in a couple of weeks, and they’ll see where I am then. But I think I’m good to go.”

“I’m glad.” Natalie suddenly felt awkward with Evan. Seeing him here brought the accident back as freshly as if it had happened yesterday. She felt as though they had unfinished business between them.

In spite of that, she couldn’t help but notice that Evan looked wonderful. Aside from the crutches he leaned on, he looked healthy and muscular. His skin was tanned, and his brown hair flaunted highlights that looked as if they’d been put there by the sun. Most noticeable of all, his eyes seemed to hold a glint of something that Natalie hadn’t seen there. Not the rebellious edge they’d possessed before. Something good.

“You look great, Evan. Really great.”

“Thanks,” he beamed. “So do you. It’s good to see somebody from home.” He looked at his watch. “Hey, are you busy? You want to get some lunch?”

She laughed nervously. “At ten-thirty?”

“Well, okay then … something to drink?”

She scrambled to think of an out, then realized she didn’t want an excuse. “Sure, why not,” she decided, tilting her head toward the empty ballroom. “I’m going to flunk out of this class anyway, since I can’t ever seem to find where they meet.”

He laughed and steered her toward the open stairway that led to the food court on the first floor. They melted into the flow of the crowd, talking over the din. “So what’s your major?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she laughed. “Do you know what you want to do?”

He dipped his head. “I’m thinking about physical therapy. I got a lot of experience at it over the last few months,” he said with a shy grin.

“That’s wonderful, Evan. Really great.” She turned serious. “It—it was hard, wasn’t it? The whole accident …”

He just nodded, and his thoughts seemed far away. She understood. Her mind wanted to travel the same direction. But she shook it off.

“I heard your folks moved to Kansas City?”

“It was just easier, I guess. They were going up there all the time anyway—to see me in the hospital.”

“Weren’t you in a hospital in Wichita?”

“Yes, at first. To be honest I barely remember that part. They moved me to Kansas City for a couple of the later surgeries and the physical therapy.”

“Oh,” she said, not wanting this conversation to carry her where it seemed to be leading. “So are you in the dorms?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m in Haymaker.”

“You’re kidding? I’m in Ford.” The two dorms were adjacent to each other on the northeast end of the sprawling campus.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Great! Maybe we’ll see each other around.”

She followed him through the line at the coffee shop in the union. Evan ordered a Coke, while Natalie got coffee.

“How can you stand that stuff?” he asked her, wrinkling his nose at her cup.

She giggled. “To be honest, I can’t. But isn’t that one of the first things you’re supposed to learn in college? I thought Coffee Drinking 101 was a freshman requirement. I mean, how else are we supposed to get through all the late-night-cramming-for-finals stuff?” She took a deliberate sip. “They say it’s an acquired taste—”

Immediately the words brought back stark memories of another night that they’d discussed acquired tastes in beverages.

They sat in awkward silence for a while, watching the busy parade of students that filed through the wide corridors of the union. After a few minutes, Evan got up to refill his Coke at the fountain. When he came back he was smiling.

“What?” she asked, curious.

“I was just thinking how funny it is that I ran into you.”

“Funny?”

“Well, strange funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I”—he rubbed his hands together—“I guess all along I kind of thought I was getting away from Bristol, and—everything that happened there. By going to Kansas City and then coming here, you know? And here, the first thing I do is run into you … practically the first week of school. I just think it’s kind of interesting.”

She tilted her head and wrinkled her brow, entreating a further explanation. He looked at her for a long minute. She could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. He took a deep breath. “Nattie, I don’t know how bad you were hurt in the accident—or how you’ve handled everything since then. I know you and Sara Dever were like this”—he clasped his hands tightly together, demonstrating—“so I’m guessing it was pretty tough on you. But even if you were hurt as seriously as I was—injured, I mean— I’m guessing that the physical part has been nothing compared to the … emotional junk.”

She nodded slowly, thinking of what to say. “Evan … I don’t know if you know that I … well, I got a DUI for the accident.” She stirred her coffee, not meeting his gaze.

“I heard that. I’m sorry. To tell you the truth, I wish I would have gotten one.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“What I really wish is that it’d never happened, that I’d never been there. But since I was—well, I deserved a DUI too.”

“But you weren’t driving.”

“I let Brian drive. ‘Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,’ ” he quoted the public service announcement.

Natalie smiled wryly. “And friends don’t get behind the wheel—drunk—with their best friend in the passenger seat.” She was surprised that she could say it without emotion. In all the months since the accident, she had never spoken the truth so forthrightly to another human being. It felt good to admit it. And it felt especially good to talk to someone who had been there, who truly knew what it had been like.