Rooms: A Novel (14 page)

CHAPTER 22

Sarah strode across the sand at a brisk clip. It was her alone time, her God time. She wore two T-shirts and a hooded sweatshirt. Being hungry she could tolerate. Tired? Doable. But cold? No.

The tide chart said a sliver of gold light would peek over the eastern foothills at 5:48. Sarah looked at her watch. Four more minutes.

Her eyes opened and closed every four or five seconds in rhythm to the light melody sneaking out of her mouth. It was a time to sing, to think, to pray, to listen. It startled her when a voice slightly louder than the waves called out from behind her.

“I don’t see many people out here this early.”

She turned to see Rick twenty yards behind her. Sarah smiled. “That’s why I come this time of the day. No one to disturb the quiet. It’s a good time to connect with God. And you?”

“For the same reason.” He took half-a-dozen long, loping strides to join her.

The slightest hint of wind swirled, as if it couldn’t decide which direction to blow. Sarah turned her face to where in seconds the sun would crest the horizon and cast gold on the beach. She glanced at Rick. They went to the same church and talked, often at length, when she filled up her Subaru or when they bumped into each other in town. Yet the way Micah talked about Rick gave her a deeper, richer perspective on the mechanic, and she had enjoyed their little conversations more and more over the summer.

As they strolled down the beach, a wave broke free from the others and sprinted toward their shoes. They stepped back in unison, then watched the water recede into the sea.

“Can I ask you something a bit personal?” Rick said.

“Sure.”

“I was hoping we might have a conversation about our mutual friend.” Rick pulled off his Rams hat and rubbed his graying head.

“Micah?” Sarah’s face warmed, and she replied without looking at Rick.

“You thought I might be talking about someone else?” Rick laughed.

“No.”

“I care for him, Sarah. I’ve seen a lot like him over the years. But not a lot like him.”

“Care to explain?”

“Not really. You probably know what I mean.”

She knew exactly what he meant.

They walked out among three lone rocks the outgoing tide had left naked. Sarah bent down and touched the back of a burgundy-toned starfish that hid under an outcrop of rock.

“I see amazing gifts in him.” Sarah watched the sun sparkle on the waves. “I also see a man in chains of his own making, and he doesn’t even know he’s bound by them. Someone who deep down wants freedom. Who doesn’t know who he is. I see the man he could be. Most of all I see”—she looked up at Rick before finishing—“myself.”

“Before your injury.”

“Yes.”

The wind picked up and Rick zipped up his bottle green Windbreaker in protest.

“What do you see in him?” Sarah said.

“The same. So I’m praying for him. Being a friend. Jesus invited me into his life so I answered.”

They eased farther down the sand alone, only spotting an occasional early morning jogger.

“Can you trust me?” Rick asked softly.

She said nothing.

“You
can
trust me.”

“And if I do?”

“You’re asking yourself, ‘Could I fall in love with Micah?’ And you’re scared of getting hurt because of things you know.”

She turned away and begged the wind to dry her tears quickly. Love? How could he know that? Was it that obvious?

“You have to be strong, Sarah. Be true to what God has spoken to you about Micah. Don’t push it, but don’t hold back, either.”

Rick stopped walking. Sarah didn’t. How could Rick know what God told her? He probably wanted an indication that she’d heard him. She swallowed and put her head into the wind. She had heard. She had definitely heard.

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As she flipped through a mystery in the Cannon Beach Book Company late that afternoon, a muted voice behind her said, “While we don’t mind a small amount of browsing, we have a strictly enforced time limit on how long someone can look at the books without actually buying one.”

Sarah didn’t turn and said in mock whisper, “Then arrest me, and throw away the key.”

She turned to face Micah and tried to keep her heart from leaping ahead of her mind. It had been almost two weeks since they’d seen each other, and she admitted it—she missed him. Badly. She hadn’t returned his phone calls about the “praying for you for years” comment. What would she say? She couldn’t tell him. But she’d hoped to run into him every day since.

Sarah gazed into his baby-blue eyes and admitted Rick was right. Her feelings went deeper than missing. She was falling in love. A shopper next to them dropped her book, and Micah stooped to pick it up. It was a welcome distraction, giving Sarah a few more seconds to collect her thoughts.

God was drawing Micah, leading him. But he still had to make the choice to follow or not, and it frightened her, because she could tell he was resisting God’s pull. Micah had even told her he was. So much of his heart was still wrapped up in Seattle. What if his final choice was not her and Cannon Beach?

“Hey, you, how’s life?” Micah stood and brushed a strand of her brown hair back from her face.

“Always fascinating. And you?”

“Same.” His warm eyes invited her, drew her in.

“Beach walk?”

“Sure.”

After reaching the beach, they headed north toward Ecola Creek. A mild wind tickled their faces as the sand squeaked under their feet, but the breeze had only a hint of coolness. The coastline was nearly empty. Three kites struggled to rise in the soft wind, and in the distance two young families poked in the tide pools at the base of Haystack Rock.

They ambled down the beach and talked about nothing. The waves lulled them into silence until Micah brought up the subject she didn’t know how to respond to.

“I need to ask you something. It’s not a big deal.” Micah kicked the sand. “Actually it is, but it’s a weird question, and I don’t know where to start.”

Here it comes. Sarah clenched her hands. She’d suspected he wouldn’t drop the question till he got an answer. “The beginning always lends clarity,” she finally answered, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

“When you came over for dinner, I said you were beautiful. Your answer flew by me at first, but the next day it smacked me like a wave in the face.”

She stared at the gray sand, her heart pounding. It wasn’t the question she expected. It was worse. Sarah knew exactly what he was about to ask. That night at dinner she’d let it slip. She thought she’d gotten away with it. Obviously not.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“It was your response to me saying ‘you’re beautiful.’ You remember?” Micah stopped walking.

She stopped as well, dropped her head, and pushed up a little mound of sand between her feet and Micah’s. “Let’s say I don’t.”

“You asked about Julie and me.”

Sarah nodded, watching the sand at her feet.

“I hadn’t told you her name.”

Sarah started walking again.

“How did you know her name was Julie?”

A tinge of warmth blossomed in her face. She felt Micah following her. A flock of gulls soared overhead and squawked at her—as if on cue—demanding she speak. But Micah broke the silence first.

“And the day we rode up to Indian Beach together? The ‘praying for me for years’ comment still has me curious, too.”

Great. A double shot of as-awkward-as-they-come questions. Sarah kept walking as she looked out over the gray waves toward Tillamook Rock Lighthouse sitting a mile offshore. To be that isolated right now would be heaven. She stopped but didn’t turn when she spoke. If there was any hope of a future with Micah, she had to tell him, but she didn’t have to watch his reaction to her outlandish reasons.

“Five years ago, right after I came to Cannon Beach, I stood alone at Hug Point and watched the sun drop into the ocean. This indescribable peace settled around me, and in that moment I felt like God told me something. Something I’ve believed at times with everything in me and other times thought I made up inside my own head.”

She hesitated. Should she drop it or plunge in all the way? She plunged. “He said one day I would fall in love with a man I barely knew down here in Cannon Beach. He’d be on a journey back to God and I’d be part of it. Then, clear as a flash of lightning against a black sky, I saw the name
Julie
in my mind. It didn’t take much to realize there would be a Julie somehow connected to this guy. So I’ve prayed for years . . .” She trailed off. What more could she say? Silence surrounded her as she steeled for Micah’s reaction. Had she said too much?

Since that dinner at his house, Sarah had known it was Micah. She was drawn in, without logic or explanation. Oh, the man he could be if he would choose life!

He was bright, funny, handsome. But what drew her was more. Deeper. It had God’s fingerprints on it. Rick said not to push it and not to hold back. Which one had she done by answering Micah’s question? She feared the former.

Tears pooled in her eyes as she stopped walking and fixed her gaze on the horizon where the ocean and the sky met. The waves were too loud to tell if Micah was still behind her or if he had walked silently away.

The next moment his arms slid around the sides of her waist from behind and pulled her back gently into his chest. He nuzzled her hair away from her cheek and kissed her there like the first ray of morning sun.

She turned, and this time his kiss was on her lips. Warm. Tender. Lingering. A long embrace followed that wrapped around her like a waterfall of comfort, drowning out the sound of the ocean, the wind, and everything else in her world. She was home.

A moment later her tears spilled onto her cheeks. If only it could last.

CHAPTER 23

Over the next week Micah took Sarah on two mountain bike rides and out to dinner three times. They watched
Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca,
and
Pride & Prejudice
in his media room, followed each time by a walk on the beach and kisses that probably would have made anyone watching blush. He talked with her for hours about the house, not everything but enough to clear his head and hear her always-wise insights.

They talked more about their plan to do the STP bike race together next summer and maybe a triathlon as well. They definitely would hit the slopes as soon as Mount Bachelor opened their full set of chairlifts.

“You’ll make me look so bad on the snow,” Micah said as they strolled through the soft sand.

“Yep, I sure will.” Sarah laughed, grabbed him around the waist, and pulled him to the ground. “I’m kidding, it’s only July. There’s five months for me to teach you the secrets of skiing before we hit the snow.”

Was he in love? Not sure. But he was definitely in heavy, heavy like.

Although Sarah seemed to feel the same, there were times he spotted sadness in her eyes. Or fear. He couldn’t tell which. Maybe both. When he asked about it, she said it was nothing. He knew it wasn’t. And it felt like the sadness was directed at him.

But overall, by the time next Wednesday rolled off the calendar, he felt at peace. Nothing strange had happened in the house, and Shannon assured him daily that RimSoft was under control.

Maybe his life had stopped to catch its breath. Even Archie’s letter was positive and intriguing, in a good way.

July 22, 1991

Dear Micah,

I feel compelled, at this point in our journey together, to give notice of a particular room within your home. It is priceless and beyond the confines and restrictions of imagination. It is a room truly too wonderful for me to attempt description.

There is no need to try in any case, as I believe after reading this letter, you will find it soon. Remember the purpose of man: To know God intimately and enjoy Him forever.

In awe of the King,

Archie

P.S. Psalm 16:11: “You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”

Micah found the room just after seven o’clock that evening. The smell that came from under the door intoxicated him—a potent mixture of roses and apple trees in full bloom. Light streamed out from under the door and made the hallway dim by comparison.

There was no knob, so he reached out to push open the door. But before his hand touched the wood, he stopped. Heat or coolness—he couldn’t tell which—radiated off the door. He touched his finger to the wood and yanked it away. Was the door scorching or refreshingly cool?

He touched it again. Longer this time. It was cool, like an alpine lake on the hottest day of summer. Micah put his entire hand on the door, but he forgot to push as an overwhelming sensation engulfed him.

It felt like a waterfall bursting open in the middle of his soul, then racing to see which end of his body it would reach first. Neither won, as they tied in drenching him in a thundering wave of joy. He fell back from the door breathing hard.

Whatever was behind there could kill him. But he wasn’t sure he cared.

He eased forward, closed his eyes, placed his palm on the door again, and pushed. Once more wonder swept through him as the door moved inward, achingly slow. Then it stopped. He backed up and stared at where his hand had been. Where he’d pushed was a perfect imprint of his hand, an inch deep into the surface of the door. He could make out his fingerprints. As he stared, the imprint of his hand moved back into place.

Unreal.

His eyes dropped to the brilliant light that streamed out from under the door—almost liquid. He stepped backward, bumped into the wall behind him, and slid slowly down it. He watched the light till sleep stole over him. When he woke, the light was gone, and he tried pushing on the door again. Unyielding, ordinary wood. And it still wouldn’t open.

||||||||

On Saturday Sarah and Micah drove south to Heceta Head Lighthouse, took pictures, toured the Sea Lion Caves, and munched on fish ’n’ chips at Mo’s chowder house. Sunday was a bike ride down to Oswald West State Park, dinner and laughter that night at the Fireside with Rick, where for dessert the three of them demolished a chocolate torte in less than two minutes.

That night Micah sat on his deck and watched the stars vanish behind a shroud of clouds rolling in off the ocean. He closed his eyes and smiled. Heavy like was over. He’d fallen in love with more than just Cannon Beach. Sarah had taken up residence deep in his heart.

RimSoft’s stock had risen two points over the past two weeks, and e-mails between Julie and him—while not exactly warm—were polite.

But an e-mail arrived Sunday night that promised all in Seattle was not well.