The Forgiving Hour (20 page)

“Dave Porter was a devoted husband to Wanda,” a man said.

But he lied and cheated on my mom.

“Though he hadn’t lived here many years, he quickly became a trusted and upstanding member of the community.”

But he left my mom in debt and never paid child support.

A wave of sadness washed over him. A sadness for all the might-have-beens that would never be. He’d spent a lot of years being angry and bitter, and it was only thanks to God that he’d moved beyond those emotions. He’d forgiven his dad, but he wished he could have loved him as well.

Now it was too late.

“Good-bye,” he whispered, pausing for a moment before adding, “Dad.”

He looked up at the cloudless blue sky. Soaring on an updraft was a hawk, its wings spread wide. And like that bird soaring overhead, he felt himself set free from an old hurt he hadn’t even realized was binding him. Maybe that was part of the reason for being there today. Maybe it was simply to call Dave Porter
Dad
one last time.

When the graveside service was over, Dakota lingered until the crowd of mourners had thinned, and then he made his way toward his father’s widow. Wanda Porter, a plain, plump woman with mousy brown hair, took hold of his hand, looking up at him with grief-filled eyes.

“Thank you for coming, Dakota.”

He nodded.

“It would have meant so much to your father to have you here.”

Again, he nodded, not knowing what to say.

“Are you certain you can’t come back to the house? You and your friend are welcome to stay with me instead of at the motel. I have a guest bedroom as well as a Hide-A-Bed sofa in the den.”

“Sorry. John and I both have to get back to our jobs.” He squeezed her hand. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’ll have my memories of your father to sustain me.”

Dakota wished he could say the same. There were few memories, and most of those were tinged with unhappiness.

“Dakota?” Wanda said softly, drawing him back to the present. “I hope you’ll come to see me again, I’d like to tell you about my husband. We were only married three years, but I think he must have been quite different from the man you remember.” Her words echoed his earlier thoughts.

“Yeah, I think he must’ve been.” Impulsively, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“If he’d had a little more time, I think he would have called you himself.” Her eyes welled with tears. “He had many regrets.”

Dakota discovered he couldn’t form a cohesive reply, so he simply nodded. Then he turned and strode toward John, who was waiting beside the car.

“Claire?”

She looked up and suddenly realized Jack Moncur had been talking to her for several moments without her hearing him. “Sorry, Jack. What did you say?”

“I was asking about the Rinker closing. Have the papers arrived?”

“No. I’ll call the title company right now.”

He frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She reached for the phone. “Just a little distracted. Everything’s fine.”

Obviously, her longtime friend and boss wasn’t fooled, but he let it go. “Let me know when those papers arrive,” he said, then disappeared down the office hallway.

Claire finished the call, ascertaining that the courier service would be delivering the needed documents soon. She buzzed Jack in his office and relayed the information. But the moment she pushed the intercom button again, turning it off, her thoughts returned to her son. Dakota had called an hour before to say he and John were headed back to Boise.

“I’ll call you as soon as I get to my place,” he’d told her, “no matter how late it is.” He knew her well, knew she would want him to call even if it was after midnight.

She hadn’t asked him about the funeral, about his father or his father’s widow. She hadn’t asked if he’d found himself with a sibling or two. She hadn’t asked any of the things she’d obsessed about for the past twenty-four hours. She was fairly certain she didn’t want to know the answers.

Once again someone speaking her name interrupted her musings. This time it was Alana who stepped into her office. As usual, Claire’s best friend, dressed in a chic Donna Karan outfit and wearing tiny diamond earrings glittering on her lobes, looked like a fashion plate.

“I was hoping I’d catch you here,” Alana said as she settled onto the chair opposite Claire. “I need a favor.”

“Sure.” Her answer came quickly and easily. After all, Jack and Alana had done her many favors over the years. “What is it?”

“I’m giving a dinner party for some business associates of Jack’s tomorrow night. They’re coming in from Seattle. I’m short one person. Will you fill out my table?”

“I take it the odd person” — her pun was intended —” is a single man.”

“Of course.”

“Promise me you’re not matchmaking.”

“I promise.” Alana crossed her heart, but there was a teasing twinkle in her eyes all the same. “Strictly business.”

She suspected it wasn’t
strictly
business. Her friend was a diehard romantic who couldn’t bear to see Claire still single after all these years. She’d made numerous attempts to pair her up with one man or another.

As if reading Claire’s mind, Alana said, “It isn’t as if Dakota isn’t grown. He’s gone from home. You don’t have to worry about an evil stepfather.”

“Alana.”

“Well, isn’t that the excuse you used to use?”

“It wasn’t an excuse.”

Her friend dismissed her comment with a wave of her hand. “One bad apple doesn’t mean the whole barrel is rotten. You might find a real hero if you’d just open your eyes.”

“You’ve been reading historical romance novels again. I can tell.”

Alana stood. “And you’re changing the subject.” She smiled. “Dinner is at six-thirty, so please arrive by six o’clock. And wear that pretty black dress of yours, will you? It’s smashing with your blond hair.”

She was right. Matchmaking. “Whoever he is, I won’t be interested. Just remember I told you so.”

“We’ll see,” her friend answered breezily before leaving.

As fate would have it, Sara didn’t have to worry about how going back to school would affect her relationship with Vince Lewis. That very same evening, when he came over for a barbecue in the apartment complex common area, he announced that he was being transferred to Atlanta within the month.

She halfway expected him to suggest she go with him.

He didn’t.

Then she waited to feel disappointment.

She didn’t.

“I’ll miss our tennis games,” he told her.

“Me too.” She motioned for him to have a seat on the couch. “I’ve got news of my own. I’m going back to school. Just nights, but I’ve decided I want to get a business degree.” She sat beside him.

“Good for you. I think that’s a great idea.”

“I was going over the information when you got here. I’ve got one year of college behind me already.” She felt her earlier excitement bubbling up inside again. “I think if I applied myself and took classes in the summer, too, I could get my degree in four years.”

Vince took hold of both of Sara’s hands and squeezed them. “I know you can do it. Will you send me an invitation to your graduation?”

“You bet.” But deep inside, she suspected they would have lost track of each other by then.

Who knew where either of them would be four or five years from now?

Claire answered after the first ring, and Dakota knew she’d been sitting next to the phone, waiting for his call.

“Hi, Mom. It’s me. We’re back, safe and sound.”

“Thank goodness.”

“We made good time.”

“I’m glad John could go with you. Be sure to thank Maury for letting you boys use his car. I’d have worried myself sick if you’d driven that clunker of yours.”

“I’ll thank him.”

“Do you have to work tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Eight o’clock.”

“Then I’d better let you get some sleep.”

Ask me what happened, Mom. Let’s talk, get it out in the open, then release it once and for all.

“I’m glad you’re home, honey.”

“Mom —”

“I love you.”

He sighed. “I love you too.”

“Good night.”

“Night, Mom.”

A moment of silence, then the other end of the line went dead.

Dakota gently placed the phone in its cradle. He’d been praying for his mom for nearly five years. At first, he’d expected God to work an immediate miracle in her heart. After all, once he’d found Jesus, he couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see the truth too. But she couldn’t see. The miracle hadn’t happened. Not yet. If anything, she’d grown even more resistant with the passage of time.

I desire all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth.

“I know, Father,” he said, his gaze still locked on the telephone. “So when’s it going to happen?”

My son, there’s an appointed time for everything. Wait upon Me.

Patience, Dakota silently confessed, had never been one of his strong suits.

The golden days of summer marched onward. Long days that teased Boise residents with a breath of coolness in the mornings, then turned blistering hot beneath a relentless afternoon sun. The foothills to the north of the city turned brown. Newscasters warned of the fire danger; people made it a habit to check the sky for telltale signs of smoke drifting above the pine-covered mountain peaks. The reservoirs slowly emptied their contents, leaving boaters anxious about the demise of their favorite summer pastime. The Boise River ran low; more than one person taking a lazy float in an inner tube suffered a broken tailbone when they hit submerged boulders. Drought became an all-too-common topic of conversation. Not only between farmers but also between servers and customers in restaurants and between total strangers waiting at bus stops.

Feeling separated from her son emotionally as well as physically — a separation for which she was to blame but seemed unable to alter—Claire tried to fill the void in her life with busyness. She worked long hours at the office. She accepted more invitations to Alana’s dinner parties and met a surprising array of single men. She joined a health club and worked out, losing five pounds and improving muscle tone and endurance. She gardened, and her skin took on a bronzed hue. She went to art-house movies, and she read big blockbuster novels and tell-all celebrity books.