Chapter Sixteen
“Today is Sunday,” Rachel said.
Adam, who had just finished grooming Chestnut, started and looked over his shoulder. He hadn’t heard her come into the stable. He’d been so caught up in what he was doing that he’d missed the sound of her footsteps, the soft crunch of hay as she moved.
She was standing in the open doorway, the sun behind her lighting her up and bringing out subtle red highlights in her hair that he had never noticed before.
She wore a finer dress than any he had ever seen on her, though it was still plain—this one was of a yellow linen rather than her usual muslin, and someone had sewn eyelet lace around the collar.
Her hair was neatly tied at the back of her head.
“So it is,” he observed, turning back toward the horse. Though his grooming was finished, he ran the brush over Chestnut’s flank a few more times to give himself something to do.
“I want to go to church,” Rachel said.
His stomach dropped. Her voice had been firm, intense, as though she expected argument and wasn’t going to accept it. He didn’t look back at her. He walked the brush over to the wall and hung it on its hook. “You know I don’t go to church.”
“And you should do whatever you’d like. I’m not in charge of you. But I want to go to church, and I want to bring Mason with me.”
“No,” Adam said. His voice sounded cold in his own ears. “Absolutely not.”
“Adam, if you don’t have a relationship with God, that’s your concern.” She met his cool tone with one of her own. “But you have no right to decide for the boy. He should be brought up in the church. He should have the chance to know God—to know Jesus.”
Adam finally turned to her, folding his arms across his chest. He regarded her, trying not to show any expression on his face—he was afraid that if he did, the expression that would emerge would be anger.
I can’t be angry with her. She’s just trying to go to church. It’s just…why does she have to involve Mason?
“You don’t have the right to decide for him either,” he said, his tone flat. “If you want to go to church, you can go. I’ll even take you. But what Mason does…that isn’t up to you.” He brushed his hands off on his pants and walked toward her, meaning to edge past her and out of the stable.
But she stood her ground. “If it’s up to neither of us, then it’s up to Mason,” she said. “And he has to be the one to decide, so you should let me ask him. If he wants to go, you must allow me to take him.”
“And what do you think he’s going to say?
” He shook his head, letting his arms fall to his sides.
“At this hour on a Sunday, he’s likely to still be in bed.
Do you want to wake him and ask him whether he would like to get up and attend church?
Do you think there’s any chance at all he says yes to that?
Because I don’t. And you’ll have woken him for nothing. ”
She narrowed her eyes, but perhaps she understood that he was right.
At any rate, she didn’t argue. “Very well,” she said, her voice tight.
“Since you were kind enough to offer it, I’ll take you up on a ride to church this week.
You need not attend with me, and I won’t trouble Mason either.
But since we agree that he should make his own decision about it, I will ask him before next Sunday.
And if he agrees to come with me then, you will take us both. ”
Adam didn’t relish being told what to do on his own ranch, but at the same time, there was something alluring about Rachel when she was so determined to have things her own way.
It reminded him of the woman he had first met when he had come to her home looking for a schoolteacher—the woman who had argued with him in the yard. She was so strong-willed.
She’s a good person to bring up Mason. He needs someone strong like this—someone who can set rules and expect them to be followed. He needs a firm hand.
And who knew—maybe church would even be a good thing for Mason.
Adam’s difficulties with God were his own, but he couldn’t deny that church would give structure.
Being there every Sunday would force Mason to integrate himself into his community and to behave well.
It was very difficult to picture him getting into fights with Pastor William looking on.
“All right,” he agreed. “That all seems reasonable to me. You can discuss with Mason what the two of you are going to do next week. And for this week—yes, I will take you into town.”
Her whole face lit up. Her eyes went wide, and she stood a little taller. “You will?”
“I said I would.” So she wasn’t so confident after all. “Go and wait by the house. I’ll prepare a wagon, and we’ll be off.”
***
Fifteen minutes later, they were on the road, driving into town.
It was a beautiful day, with not a cloud in the sky.
The sun was shining, but not aggressively, and Rachel had tipped her face back to greet it.
Her eyes were closed, and Adam noticed for the first time that her lashes were so long they brushed her cheek.
What would it feel like to brush his thumb across those lashes?
Soft, he thought—feathery, like touching a paintbrush.
He cleared his throat and looked back at the road.
“I love when the weather is clear like this on a Sunday,” Rachel murmured. “It feels as if God is smiling down on me. Do you feel anything like that, Adam? I know you’re not a believer, but when the weather is like this, do you ever feel a connection to the divine?”
“Weather is just weather,” Adam said gruffly. “No, I don’t think it has anything to do with God’s moods. And I don’t think clear weather is always good, either. The ranch needs rain to thrive. Why isn’t rain God smiling down on us?”
She sat up straighter and opened her eyes, pivoting on the seat to look at him.
“Perhaps it is,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“After all, we need everything in its time, don’t we?
We do need rain to water the crops and the animals, but if it rained all the time, the land would be ruined. Rain and sun, each in turn.”
“So why should either be God smiling on you? If we need both?”
She laughed. “You ask good questions. Maybe both are God smiling on us. Maybe all of Creation is God pouring out His love for us.” She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again, she was more serious. “That’s how I feel about it, anyway.”
It wasn’t a good answer. She was talking about weather, but he didn’t think that was what she was really getting at. “What you’re really saying was that God deals out good things and bad, and all of them are reflections of His love,” he said, his voice low.
She looked at him. “Are you angry?”
“Not angry,” he said. “But I don’t believe that. What about death? When someone dies, how can that be good? How can that be God showing love? Rain, yes—it makes things grow. But death is just death.”
Rachel smoothed her hands over her skirts. “Then God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”
“The flood?”
She nodded. “I’ve always liked that story,” she mused.
“When I was younger, I thought it was just a tale of a rainstorm, but I don’t think that now.
When I read Genesis, when I read about Noah, I remember this moment of destruction, and I notice the fact that everything beautiful around me came in the aftermath of that.
That moment had to happen to give us this one. It’s all connected.”
“This is really what you think?” He looked at her. Her face was relaxed, at peace—she was even smiling slightly. “You think good things can’t happen without bad?”
“I think it’s something that seems harsh and terrible, but when harsh, terrible things happen…
good things can grow from them. That’s all.
” She bit her lip. “My life hasn’t always been easy.
My father…he was the best friend I ever had.
My family was so lovely, and I thought we were all happy.
But then my father betrayed my mother and left us, and my mother disappeared into herself.
That was a kind of death. And yet, had those things not happened, I wouldn’t have met… Mason.”
For a moment he’d been sure she was about to say I wouldn’t have met you. And indeed, there was a hot flush on her cheek, as if she had held something back.
“Your mother…she hasn’t always been that way, then?” He was intent on making things less uncomfortable.
Her blush faded slightly, but she cast her eyes downward, hanging her head. “She was once vibrant and full of life,” she said softly. “And I knew she loved me more than anything in the world. Something about my father’s betrayal broke her, but more than that…it was Nathan.”
Tension seemed to swirl around them at the mention of that name. Adam couldn’t have said for certain whether it came from her or from him—it might have been both. “Nathan was the one who changed her, then?”
“It was his cruelty. The way he treated us.” She swallowed audibly. “Nathan never raised a hand to me, but he was callous and cruel, forcing me to serve him as a maid. He never cared for me as a daughter.”
“That’s abhorrent. That he would come into your home and force you to serve him…” It sickened him even to think of a younger Rachel having her life swept away like that, stolen from her by a man who presumed that everything and everyone was put there to serve him.
“He was a very selfish man. Is a very selfish man.”
“Yes. I can see that.”
“And as for my mother…I don’t know what he did to her behind closed doors.
All I know is that since their marriage, she’s been a shade of the woman she once was.
There was a time once when I know she would have moved heaven and earth to protect me, but she’s never tried to prevent Nathan from making my life worse. ”
A shiver ran through her.
Anger flared within Adam, hot and sudden and difficult to control. He remembered the red-cheeked man with the rotund figure and the constant sneer on his face, and suddenly he wanted to go right back to Nathan Foster’s house and give him a lesson on what befell men who were cruel to women.
He took a deep breath. Doing so would only make trouble for Rachel, and that was the last thing he wanted.
But he couldn’t keep himself from reaching over to her and resting a hand, briefly, on top of hers.
“I’m sorry,” he managed. “It’s terrible that you suffered through all that.” The anger was audible in his voice—it was shorter and sharper than his normal speaking tone, and he did his best to regulate it. “I’m glad you’re out of that house.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” She looked over at him, her face open and earnest. “I’ve suffered loss.
Pain. But God is building something for me in the ashes of that, because I’ve found my way to a better life—one where I’m starting to be happy.
And I know that as long as I continue to put my trust in Him, God will continue to send blessings my way. ”
She turned to face the road and closed her eyes again, tipping her face back up to the sunshine.
Adam just couldn’t believe what he had heard. After all she had been through, she was willing to tell herself it had been for the best? That it was God’s way of leading her to better things?
She wasn’t a fool. He had known her long enough to realize that. If this was what she believed…she had thought about it. And if it gave her peace, Adam didn’t want to argue with the idea or tell her that he thought she was wrong.
But it didn’t sit right.
All the bad things that had happened to her—were they necessary? Couldn’t she have found the life she was living now without all those things happening? Why would God make a person walk through torment to reach something good?
No, I just can’t believe it. When I look at everything that has happened in my own life—yes, I’ve overcome hardship, but none of that has made me any better. I’ve simply survived.
I can’t believe what Rachel does.