Love Finds You at Home for Christmas (20 page)

This particular Wednesday morning as he stood on his deck, Jon was in a quandary. He had been since breakfast the day before at his mother's. Always abuzz with the latest news from Patsy's Kut and Kurl, where she got her hair done every week, Margaret had told him about the grand opening of Sophie's new café in the old Harbor House. He knew about it already, of course, but he hadn't mentioned the fact to his mother, nor that he contemplated going.

Jon paced. Should he go or should he not? Was there any harm in it? After all, they were still good friends, right? She might be expecting him. It was logical to think she might be. She knew he lived in River Bend, didn't she? But what if she wasn't expecting him? What if she hadn't even thought about him over the past ten years? Should he take his mother? No, too awkward. He couldn't ask one of his friends. What if they figured him out once they saw Sophie? Maybe he should just go by himself. Or maybe not at all. Maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing.

The phone rang and interrupted this mental dialogue. He poked his head through the open door and listened to the machine in case it was important.

“Jon? Oh Jonny Boy, are you there? Pick up.”

Recognizing his friend David's voice, Jon jogged to the phone. “Hey.”

A plastic-sounding voice. “Are you a homeowner? Is your house wood or aluminum? You have been selected—”

“David?”

David was the builder-turned-preacher who had helped Jon build his house.

Now he was imitating an old woman's voice. “Brother Jonny, could you come over right now? My cat Fluffy is up in a tree and I can't get her down. I know it's dinnertime, but—”

“And you wonder why I screen my calls?”

“Not really. You've about got me convinced to do it too. My wife's all for it. But I just can't get over the guilt factor that a preacher should actually be available to his parishioners. You know what I mean?”

“That depends on your definition of available.”

“Okay, thesaurus man. I'll think about that one. We can discuss it over lunch tomorrow.”

“Lunch? Don't you mean breakfast?”

“No, I mean lunch. We're changin' plans just for tomorrow. There's a new place openin' up. Jim and I decided we might as well see for ourselves what all of the fuss is about. He's callin' Danny. So what do you say? Meet us for lunch?”

“Um…”

“It's in that old Harbor House…the one Dr. James fixed up. I think it's his daughter that's runnin' the new joint. You ought to know her…I think she's about your age. Anyway, how about eleven? Maybe that way we can beat the noon crowd.”

Jon was silent.

“Jon? Is that all right? I mean, does that sound good?”

What could he say? “Uh, yeah. That's fine. See you there.”

“Okay, bye.”

They hung up, and simple as that, he was going.

Chapter Three

.................................

The tired evening sun reflected how Sophie felt as she dug deeper into the box.
I will finish this box or perish,
she thought, remembering a phrase from
Anne of Green Gables,
which had been her favorite movie as a child. Her fingers moved more carefully now, treading softly over what could be more broken glass.

The next framed picture she found was intact, but she felt her heart break into a thousand pieces when she looked at it. Her dad was holding up a stringer full of river catfish and grinning from ear to ear. The fish were heavy, and her finger traced the outline of his arm muscles, which were bulging under his white T-shirt. How many times had those strong arms enfolded her? Squeezed her in bear hugs that made her back pop? Scooped her up for a ride on his broad shoulders? Held her tight as they danced around the living room floor?

It was his arm she had leaned on as she walked down the aisle to marry Stephen. His arms that lifted to bless their union. And as she and Stephen walked away from him as man and wife, she'd had no idea how far that path would take her, and what—or whom—she'd lose along the way.

After the divorce, she had gone abroad, not knowing why. She just knew she didn't want to go home. So she wandered. She ended up in Italy, in a village called Vernazza, one of the Cinque Terre.

In Vernazza, Sophie found a measure of peace as she lay on its rocky beach and let the sun burn away her pain. She walked and prayed along the Via dell'Amore, going village to village and getting lost, then finding her way again. For money she worked in a trattoria on the water, serving wines from local grapes and fresh-baked bread with local olive oil. She lived in a little room above the trattoria.

There had been a beautiful simplicity about her life in Vernazza. An acceptance she felt among the people there, especially Mamma and Papà Gemme, who owned the trattoria. There was a wide range of children in their family, with three away in college and then the twins, who Papa winkingly said were a surprise. Valentina and Luca, who were eight, had charmed Sophie with their big brown eyes and golden hair, and she'd charmed them. At first they were shy with the strange American girl, but it wasn't long before they were running into the trattoria every day after school looking for her, begging her to take them down to the beach.

With a nod from Mamma they'd be off. The beach was just a few yards—though a treacherous few yards—from the trattoria. Sophie would help the twins climb down the small rocky ledge to the water, then stretch out on a flat boulder close by while they played and splashed in the sea. They liked to look for fish and shells and other wonders in the little tide pools that would come up between the big rocks that lined the shore. Every few minutes they'd shriek with delight at a discovery and demand that she come see their treasures. If she didn't come, they'd usually bring whatever it was to her, sometimes plopping it on her belly and laughing hysterically at her reaction. The innocence of the twins touched her. Sophie loved to close her eyes and listen to them laughing. It was a healing sound.

During slow times at the trattoria she would quiz them on their English, and they would quiz her in Italian. It was from them that she learned to say “sei bellisima,” “you are beautiful,” and “Dio è amore,” “God is love.” She loved the way they said thank you, as though everything was a gift of grace: “grazie.”

Mamma had taught her the secret of her wonderful pomodoro sauce. And Papà had taken her fishing in his rickety little boat, teaching her how to find the right fish in the right parts of the sea. They had caught some fantastic dinners. But the salty Mediterranean was too clear, too revealing for Sophie. Though it healed some of her wounds, it also forced her to see the truth. And the truth was that she couldn't stay there forever. In her deep heart's core, she wasn't home. Comfortable as it was for a while—even happy at some level—it was sort of like treading water. Her life was going nowhere.

And then the call came.

“Sophie?” She had been scared the instant she heard Tom's voice. They usually scheduled their calls.

“Tom?”

“Sophie, I don't know how to tell you this….” Tom had been crying. “Daddy died this morning. An hour ago…he was killed in a car crash. Can you get home?”

Sophie had felt the floor give way beneath her. She was falling. Some darkness in the center of the earth had opened, and its great throat was swallowing her down. She was blank. Shocked. Sick. Chilled to the bone. She dropped the phone, then scrambled to pick it up and hold it in her trembling fingers.

“How?”

“He was on a visit…on his way to see someone in the hospital…some trucker…we think…fell asleep and crossed over into Dad's lane and hit him. He was killed instantly.”

The flight from Florence had been pure hell. Never had time stood so still, never had she felt so far away from her own life. For the first time, it seemed, she could look at herself as though a mere observer and see that she was an utterly lost person. Bereft. Suspended in space. She was floating, devoid of meaning and purpose. Squandering her time. Without direction and without hope. Despair descended on her like a thick fog.

She had called Tom, and he and Madeline picked her up at the airport. Their eyes told a tale of tears, and their faces showed the strain of sleeplessness. They put their arms around her, and she fell into them. Holding each other, the tears flowed for them all. No one said anything. But it was comforting somehow just to be together and to share the awful load of grief. Even under that crushing weight, perhaps especially because of it, Sophie had been glad to be home.

* * * * *

Home. If there was one thing Sophie knew as she sat on the floor unpacking her box of broken memories, it was that it was good to be home.

She'd dreamed up the idea of a little café on her plane ride back to the States. There had been nothing she could really imagine herself doing in River Bend besides hanging around, visiting her family, as she'd done briefly at Christmas and Easter the last few years. She knew if she was going to stay, she had to do something, but what? What did she have to offer other than perhaps teaching music lessons? What was a degree in liberal arts going to do for her in River Bend?

Somehow the thought of the yellow house came to her mind. Her mom and daddy had bought it one summer as an investment and a “ministry opportunity” when she was a child. She remembered the first time she saw it and how they laughed when she said it was a “broken house.” And so it was. But they had worked away steadily on it, doing most of the restoration themselves, and it had become a beautiful home. They renamed it the “Harbor House” and opened it as a bed-and-breakfast, drawing a few people a month as they passed through River Bend on their way to the wine country a few miles west.

It had a commercial kitchen, and her mother had used it for catering jobs and special events, like ladies' teas and wedding or baby showers and anniversaries. And occasionally a family, or perhaps a battered woman who had no place else to go, would shelter there for the night, or several nights, while the preacher and his wife attended to their needs before returning to their own home, the parsonage.

They had planned to live in the Harbor House and expand its ministry potential after Daddy retired and left the parsonage, but as things happened, they lived there only six months before her newly widowed mother moved in with Granny up on the mountain and the yellow house was empty. It would work for Sophie.

She picked through the rest of the box. There were a couple of old yearbooks from River Bend High School, where she'd been the homecoming queen. She leafed through one of them, reading a few corny entries her friends had written on the signature pages and finding her face and long hair with bangs plastered everywhere in a section under the heading “Who's Who?” Miss River Bend High School: Sophia Harper. Most Likely to Succeed: Sophia Harper. Class Favorite, Most Talented, Best All-Around: Sophia Harper. The list went on.

I'm certainly none of the above
, thought Sophie.
What about Biggest Loser?
The list didn't include categories for Divorcee or Wanderer either. Cursing herself for letting it matter even a little, she suddenly felt the impulse to flee her hometown.

Jon's picture on the same page caught her eye as he was voted Most Studious, Most Courteous, and with her, Best All-Around.
That's the truth
, she thought.
He's the best friend I ever had
.

She set the annuals to the side and reached into the box again. This time she pulled out her old Bible. It was in an easy-to-understand translation and had been a gift from her parents when she was a kid. Her dad had read it to her, cover to cover, one story at a time as he tucked her into bed. She could still hear the sound of his voice as he read and remembered how simple and coherent all of the stories had seemed to her then. In those days she could have told you almost anything about the Bible. But it had been a long time since she'd looked at it without pulling down the veil of doubt over her eyes. It wasn't simple anymore.

When did everything become so complicated?
But she had no answers, only more memories. A memory of the time Stephen sat across from her at that coffee shop in the Bay Area and told her he'd lost his belief in God. As unsettled as it had made her, she'd foolishly believed him when he said it didn't really matter. Their love, he said, was all that mattered.

In the end, however, Sophie's adventure in love outside of faith led to disaster. A few months later she found Stephen and another woman in bed together in their apartment. He had cried, said he was sorry, begged her not to leave, the works. But in that moment she had seen him for what he was. Stephen was an utterly lost person. And though she didn't know it then, leaving him was the first step Sophie made, herself, toward being found.

Sophie noticed a marker in the old Bible and turned to it. Someone (she?) had underlined the last part of Galatians 5:6: “…
all
we need is faith working through love.”

She took Spot outside and sat on the porch, watching him and pondering that thought. It was a lot different from Stephen's philosophy, and frankly, a lot different from hers. She didn't know exactly what she needed, but she didn't think faith would be enough. It never had been for her. Or had it?

Sophie couldn't remember. She was tired of thinking, and she had cheesecake to make. Spot came back up on the porch and led her to the door. They went inside, and after two long hours in the kitchen, Sophie finally turned out the light in the yellow house. Falling into bed, she snuggled underneath the covers with her dog, and slept.

Chapter Four

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When Jon arrived at Milton's at ten o'clock, the place was packed.

“Hey man!” Milton called when he stepped through the door. His smile looked like ivory piano keys set in an ebony grand. “Be right with ya!”