Clouds (23 page)

Shelly pulled out all the fancy hurricane candleholders and inserted fresh candles in them. She brought in an armful of cut evergreen sprigs to decorate the huge fireplace’s mantel in the lodge.

On her run to the store, Shelly picked up the honey and coffee creamers along with three boxes of Andes Mints, which she used as party favors by sprinkling them around the tables. A last minute search in the dusty storage closet produced several bags of silk flowers that Shelly rinsed off and laid out
to dry on the counter in the camp kitchen. Within twenty minutes she had whipped up a trailing ivy vine dotted with rosebuds, and five mixed bouquets that she arranged in some cheap glass vases the cook provided for her. The vine worked nicely down the side of the tea cart, and the bouquets were placed throughout the dining hall to add spots of color.

Shelly was lighting the last candle on the dining room tables when Emma Jane, the former camp hospitality coordinator, stepped into the room.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. Emma Jane was a large woman who wore her hair wound in a tight gray bun on the very top of her head. She was as fluffily round as a pillow and had always run the camp in an institutionalized, efficient manner. Having suffered a minor stroke a month earlier, she had been advised by her doctor to retire two years earlier than she had planned.

“We have a women’s group arriving any minute,” Shelly explained. “Looks pretty, doesn’t it? I wanted to make a nice first impression.”

“This isn’t how we do things here,” Emma Jane said. “Does Mr. Hadley know you’ve done all this?”

“No, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He has turned over a lot of the decision-making to me.”

Emma Jane grew red in the face. “I told him I’d be coming back to work as soon as I got better.”

Shelly didn’t know what to say. It wouldn’t do for the arriving conferees to be spectators to this conflict. “Why don’t we go in the kitchen,” Shelly suggested.

“I have to go to the lodge to start checking the campers in when they arrive.”

“Actually, we changed the procedure. The women will come here first and have dinner. Our guys will unload all the
suitcases off the buses and into the lodge for the conferees. Then the women will have an hour to check into their rooms before the evening meeting. It seemed a calmer way to start their retreat.”

Emma Jane looked flabbergasted.

“May I get you something to drink?” Shelly offered.

“No,” the woman snapped. “And don’t think I don’t know about your coffee baskets. You can’t fritter away the camp’s money like that, and you know it. You haven’t heard the last of this.” She turned and strode from the dining room with clomping steps.

As the side door slammed shut behind Emma Jane, the front doors of the dining room opened wide. The voices of many women suddenly filled the room. Shelly rushed to the door to welcome the ladies. “Please come in and make yourselves comfortable. Sit anywhere you like. Welcome. Hi, nice to have you. Come in, please.”

One of the camp maintenance guys had met the bus and had followed Shelly’s instructions, informing the women to proceed directly to the dining room.

“Well, look at this!” Shelly heard the women exclaim as they entered. “It looks as if they’re expecting company. It wasn’t like this at all last year. Do you think we’re in the right place?”

She kept smiling and greeting the guests, inwardly delighted that they liked the change in their camping experience. As soon as all the women were inside, a short, redheaded woman carrying a clipboard informed Shelly that she was in charge of this group and wanted to know what was going on.

“In the eight years our ladies have come here, we’ve never done it this way. We always check in first.”

Shelly smiled her comforting smile and said, “We thought it might be more relaxing for your ladies to come to dinner
first. Our staff will unload all the luggage from the buses. After dinner the women will have an hour to check in, and their luggage will be waiting for them in the lodge.”

A startled look of pleasant surprise came over the coordinator’s face. “How nice. We never thought of doing it that way.”

Over the speaker system, Shelly heard soft harp music begin to play. The women lowered their voices and settled around the dozens of round tables. The lights overhead were dimmed. Shelly turned toward the kitchen door to see her sister standing by the light switches, smiling and waving.

Since Mr. Hadley wasn’t there, Shelly stepped over to the microphone at the front of the dining hall. In her polished, flight attendant voice, she said, “Good evening, ladies. Welcome to Camp Autumn Brook. We realize you have your choice of camping facilities, and we appreciate your choosing to stay with us. To make your flight—” Shelly quickly caught herself, “… your stay more comfortable, we’ve rearranged the schedule slightly.”

Meredith caught Shelly’s eye and covered her mouth to show she was trying to hold back the giggles.

“Your luggage is being unloaded for you by our staff and will be available for you to pick up in the lodge after dinner. At that time you may also check in at the desk and receive your room key. We sincerely hope that you enjoy your visit. Dinner will be served momentarily.”

A slight rumble of voices was followed by a spontaneous round of applause. Shelly slipped into the kitchen, where Meredith caught her by the arms.

“You were terrific! A natural. Listen to them applaud. This is fantastic!”

“People like to be pampered, I tell you.”

“I guess they do,” Jack Hadley said, coming up beside Shelly and Meredith. “I came hoofing it over here to bawl you
out after what Emma Jane told me, but that would have been a mighty big mistake. You’re exactly what we need around here, Shelly. Please tell me you’ll come on full-time.”

“I don’t know,” Shelly said. “Right now we need to serve dinner while it’s still hot.”

“I’ll help,” Meredith said, grabbing a white apron off the hook by the door. “So will I,” Shelly said. “Hand me an apron.”

“Oh, why not,” Jack said. “Give me an apron, too, Meredith.”

With six servers working the dining room floor, the dinners were all served hot to the delighted women. Emma Jane used to have them line up cafeteria-style. This seemed to go nearly as fast and allowed the conferees a chance to relax.

The compliments kept coming in, and Jack strutted around like a happy man. The women had spotted the coffee bar and were helping themselves to their choice of hot beverages. Everything ran right on schedule. The luggage was lined up neatly in the lodge, and Jack was in such high spirits he told Shelly he would check in the ladies.

Shelly and Meredith helped the kitchen staff clear the tables and put away the candleholders. “Back to routine tomorrow for breakfast?” Clyde, the cook, asked. “Or do you have some bright ideas about that, too?”

“No. For now we’ll stick with our usual format. Will you let me know if you think of anything that would be helpful to you?” Shelly gave Clyde a friendly hug. “Thanks for being so flexible and willing to make all these last-minute changes.”

“Anytime,” Clyde said. “You are going to replace Emma Jane, aren’t you?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Shelly said.

“You have my vote,” Clyde said. Coming from a somber man who usually said little, Shelly took that as a wonderful compliment.

“Is there any stroganoff left?” Meredith asked.

“Help yourselves,” Clyde said. “And to the apple pie, too.”

“This doesn’t taste like the camp food I remember eating when we used to come here as kids,” Meredith said.

“That’s because Clyde wasn’t the cook then, were you, Clyde?” Shelly said, flashing him a smile.

“I’ve only been here two years.”

“Well, I hope you stay another fifty. You’re the best.”

Clyde seemed to hold his head a little higher as he moved around Shelly and Meredith to start his kitchen cleanup. The two sisters sat on stools and ate their dinners off paper plates.

“I’m going to stick around to hear the speaker,” Meredith said when they had finished. “I met her at dinner, and I’ve read some of her books.”

“Do you think she might want to write a kids’ book for you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s not why I’m staying. I’d like to hear what she has to say. Do you want to stay, too?”

“I could. The only thing I didn’t do yet today is chop some kindling.”

“I did it,” Meredith said. “The exercise was just what I needed.”

Shelly couldn’t help but feel content. Here she was, enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime friendship with her younger sister, living in the cottage of her dreams, and finding her niche on staff at this camp. A small corner of her heart, where her treasure chest of love for Jonathan had once stood, still ached. But now nothing was left in that corner except air. It might be that way for quite a while. Shelly wondered if she could live with that. Was she one of those people who was better suited to remaining single? She didn’t know. And she didn’t feel she needed to know right now. Tonight it was enough to bask in the glow of her first success at Camp Autumn Brook.

The two women said good-bye to Clyde and headed across the grounds for the chapel. The snow had not come yet, but it was certainly cold enough for it. They walked fast, huddled close together with their hands in their pockets.

“Brrr!” Meredith exclaimed. “It’s going to be cold in our little nest when we finally do go home tonight.”

“Do you want to go now?” Shelly asked. “We can.”

“No, I really want to hear this woman speak.”

They sat in the chapel’s very last row and watched as the women came streaming in. They were all commenting on how cold it was outside and how good it felt to be in the warm chapel.

Shelly enjoyed being back in a place of worship. She had fallen out of the routine of going to church after she moved back to Seattle. At first she rebelled against her parents’ expectation that she go to church with them every Sunday the way she had while she was a child. In Pasadena, she had attended a large church with an active singles and career group. But her dad’s church was small and didn’t have a separate class for her age group, so she told her parents she was interested in finding her own church in Seattle.

She had never even visited any other churches because of her crazy schedule. Sunday needed to be a day of rest, and she felt that dressing up to go to church for an hour was anything but restful. Meredith went to a Saturday-evening service at a large contemporary church and had often urged Shelly to go with her, but Shelly never felt like attending.

Sitting here in the cozy chapel, Shelly was reminded of St. Annakapella in Germany. She didn’t know why she suddenly thought of that chapel except maybe because its door had been locked and she had never had the chance to see inside. She imagined it looked something like this chapel, with whitewashed walls that arched up to a point and a landing on which
the podium stood. Shelly pictured St. Annakapella having an altar where this chapel had a baptismal tank with a stained glass window behind it.

Then her thoughts floated over to Jonathan and the confrontation they had had on St. Annakapella’s steps. Because the backdrop was so dramatic, the encounter seemed more vivid in Shelly’s mind. Later she had thought of so many things she should have said. She still had so many unanswered questions.

The most important words had been said, though. They had both said they were sorry, and Shelly knew she had been freed by those words from Jonathan. She felt certain her words had freed him as well. Now they both could move on with their lives.

The meeting began with singing. Sweet, soprano voices filled the snug chapel, claiming, as one voice, “Father God, we adore you. There is no one else who compares with you. May your name be exalted in our presence. Come, dwell inside our hearts and make us new.”

For some reason, Shelly couldn’t sing. All she could do was cry.

Chapter Twenty-Three
 

M
eredith sang like an angel as she stood beside Shelly. Blinking quietly, Shelly tried to coax her emotions to behave. Finally she calmed them down by sitting with her eyes closed and listening to the songs the group sang. The praises echoed off the rounded ceiling and encircled the women, binding them together.

Then the speaker went up on the stage, and Shelly opened her eyes. She was surprised to see that the woman looked ordinary. Not that Shelly knew how an author should look, but since Meredith had wanted to meet this woman, Shelly had thought she would have a more dramatic appearance. The speaker’s voice was ordinary, too. As were her outfit and her hair. The woman prayed and then began her message.

There was nothing ordinary about her words.

The topic was one Shelly could have taught in her sleep: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, hiding from God because they had lost their innocence and were ashamed.

“I believe,” the speaker said, “that within the heart of every woman, the Lord God still comes, walking, as it were, in the cool of the evening. He knows exactly where we are. He knows everything that’s happened, and yet he still comes. And when he comes, he asks us the same question he asked Adam and Eve.”