Grace in Autumn Read online

  Now Salt eased himself into a chair, once again considering the ramifications of his actions. If Social Services found the kids here, they’d have plenty to crow about. He was seventy years old, living in rustic conditions, and some would say a lighthouse wasn’t an appropriate home for children. But he would fight with every God-given breath to keep the children, regardless of red tape, rules, and regulations. Who better to raise a pair of kids than the grandfather who adored them?

  For three months now, he’d kept the children hidden in the lighthouse and ended each day with a muttered prayer that their presence would remain undetected. He knew they couldn’t hide here forever, but each day they lived under his roof meant one more day they lived in peace. With him they had food to eat and warm clothing. At night they said their prayers with him, and in the daytime they played with the puffins along the shoreline.

  But now Birdie Wester knew his secret. Trouble was comin’; time to batten down the hatches.

  Rising from his chair, he slid the door’s deadbolt into place, determined to lock the world out.

  Flat on his back beneath three antique quilts, Charles lay in the midst of a quiet so thick the only sound was the rhythm of Babette’s breathing. Despite her stillness and the dim outline of her back, he knew she wasn’t asleep, and he suspected she knew he knew. He wanted to talk, but the topic of Georgie’s puffin paintings would destroy the semblance of peace in their bedroom. Still, the matter hung in the air like a hatchet, a threat hanging over them all night until one of them acknowledged it.

  Finally, he broke the silence. “I can understand why you think the idea is silly,” he said, his words rumbling in the darkness. “That review is the most exaggerated and overblown piece of foolishness I’ve ever read. But shouldn’t we think a little more long term? If Georgie is as hot as everyone thinks he is, maybe we should take advantage of this moment. We have no way of knowing how long he’ll be interested in painting, so we can’t afford to waste this opportunity.”

  The mattress creaked as Babette rolled onto her back. “Strike while the iron is hot, you mean.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But they’re just childish paintings.”

  “They’re paying for your new roof, aren’t they?”

  For that Babette had no comeback. Charles had heard her on the phone with Handyman Roofing ten minutes after Bedell left, so that ninety-nine hundred dollars wouldn’t even have a chance to warm their pockets. Even after the sale of two paintings, they were in almost the same financial state they’d been in before the puffins—except now the roof wouldn’t leak on his new computer when it arrived.

  The room swelled with silence as the shadows shifted and she folded her hands across her chest. “What did you have in mind?” she finally asked.

  Turning onto his side, he propped his head on his hand. “Well, there’s Georgie’s college to consider. I figure we’ll need to set aside at least eighty thousand for that.”

  She groaned.

  “And more, if he wants to go to graduate school,” Charles continued in a rush. “Tuition is rising, and there’s no way to know how expensive things will be when he’s ready for the university.”

  “Eighty thousand?” Babette’s voice was whispery soft and tinged with tension. “That’s 5.3 puffin paintings.”

  Charles struggled to do the math in his head, but she’d always been faster with figures. “Well … eight puffins would see him through college and graduate school. And if we put the money in one of those special college accounts, it could earn tax-free interest while Georgie is growing up.”

  The sheets rustled slightly, and Charles knew Babette was probably clicking off objections on her fingertips. “Okay,” she said, “eight more puffins, then we’ll quit, okay? I really don’t feel good about this, Charles. I mean, that review won’t matter in the long term, considering that it was mostly a bunch of pompous professors trying to outtalk each other, but don’t you think they’ll feel foolish when they learn that Georgie is a little boy?” She sighed heavily. “I mean … what will the Globe print when the entire truth comes out?”

  “I don’t really care what anyone else thinks,” Charles answered, stiffening. “No one asked them to rattle off all that pretentious gobbledygook. If the art critics look foolish, it’s their own fault. Besides”—he gentled his tone and reached out to run a finger along her shoulder—“they’ll probably proclaim our son a genius if only to save face. Those kinds of people never admit they’re wrong.”

  She squirmed, but whether from his touch or the idea of selling more paintings, Charles couldn’t tell. “Still,” she said, “I’ll be relieved when it’s all over.”

  “There’s something else we should think about”— Charles brought his hand up to the soft curve of her cheek—“our retirement. In eighteen years Georgie will be out on his own, and we’ll still be relatively young—in our midfifties. Do you want to spend the rest of your life here, shoveling snow and repairing the roof, or would you like to move to Florida and relax in the sunshine? If Georgie painted only a few more paintings, we could invest the money and have plenty to retire on by the time he’s through college and grad school.”

  A short silence followed, in which his words seemed to hang in the darkness as if for inspection, then Babette said, “That’s a lot of paintings, Charles. If we’re going to retire that early, we’d need at least a million dollars in investments. And you can’t ignore the financial risk—the markets go up and down, and who knows what the future will bring—”

  “You can figure it out.” He moved closer, cupping her face. “You always do, honey.”

  And then, before she could object further, he kissed her into silence.

  Chapter Six

  On Friday morning, while the crew from Handyman Roofing stomped and hammered overhead, Babette sat at her kitchen desk, a collection of papers spread in front of her. After researching various mutual funds, investment strategies, and college savings programs, she had designed a Graham Family Financial Plan:

  Goals: Puffin paintings required at 15K each:

  G’s college and grad school 8

  Emergency cushion 1

  New golf cart .1

  New clothes for 16.6 years 1

  Retirement fund 66.666666

  TOTAL: 76.766666 puffins 77 Puffin Paintings!

  She rechecked her figures, then held up her steno pad and studied the numbers. Her goals list contained nothing extravagant or unreasonable—Georgie’s college education was important, as was their emergency fund. They needed a golf cart, which would be far less expensive than buying a car like people on the mainland, and she hadn’t gone overboard on her clothing allowance, figuring that one painting alone could clothe the three of them for 16.6 years—nearly long enough to get Georgie through school.

  Her retirement plan resulted from simple and sound financial planning. Everyone knew you couldn’t depend upon Social Security to provide for retirement, so they’d have to fund their own golden years in Florida. A neat little townhouse in St. Petersburg, with a community tennis court and a view of the beach at sunset—surely that wasn’t too much to expect from a retirement plan. The puffin paintings would provide investment capital up front; the rest of their nest egg would come from interest accumulated over the years.

  She dropped the steno pad and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Her plan made sense. The thought of selling seventy-seven additional puffins made her dizzy at first, but a quick call to Pierce Bedell had set her mind at ease. Like every trend, he told her, the puffin craze would start slow and rise in a bell curve, then taper off. Because all trends rose and fell in such a predictable pattern, they had to get out as many puffins as soon as possible. Seventy-seven original Georgie puffins would not saturate the market, far from it. In fact, Bedell assured her, if the pictures continued to attract attention, he might be able to license one of the more popular paintings and sell a series of prints. “Imagine,” Bedell said, his voice filling Babette’s ears and imaginatio
n, “Georgie’s puffins could soon be selling in every Wal-Mart in America. Then we will be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams.”

  For an instant Babette was tempted to ask exactly how wealthy Bedell intended to become, then she bit her lip. On her desk lay a copy of the contract he had faxed that morning. In solid black letters the contract stated that “Babette and Charles Graham, legal guardians and representatives of Georgie Graham, agree to deliver ____ original puffin paintings to Pierce Bedell, art dealer, for $15,000 each, to be paid upon delivery of the paintings. In the event they can not provide the aforementioned number of paintings within a six-month period, the contract will be canceled and all moneys for undelivered paintings returned.”

  Babette lifted her pen and wrote “77” in the blank space. Georgie could create that many paintings; she’d seen him paint half a dozen in an afternoon. She wouldn’t even need six months. If Georgie were properly motivated, she could deliver seventy-seven paintings before Christmas. After Bedell had accepted them, she and Charles and Georgie could relax and enjoy the most prosperous Christmas they’d ever known.

  The thought of Christmas brought a wrinkle to her brow. Why not have a truly extravagant Christmas? They could close up the house and go to Florida—maybe take in Disney World and Clearwater Beach and the Kennedy Space Center. They’d fly down, spare no expense, and enjoy the first vacation they’d ever funded without painfully pinching pennies. Just one more puffin would pay for everything …

  She picked up her pen and adjusted the number. Seventy-eight puffins before Christmas. Georgie could do it. After all, he had her to help.

  Standing at the bakery window, Abner sipped from his coffee cup and watched as Buddy Franklin trudged down Main Street with a large gray mail sack over his right shoulder. Abner smiled at the young man’s plodding pace. Buddy never got in a hurry, usually taking twice as much time to accomplish a task than anyone else.

  A patient sort of lad.

  Ten minutes later Buddy arrived at the bakery, tracking mud across Abner’s clean linoleum.

  Squish, squish, squish.

  The mail sack hit the floor with a solid sound, then Buddy took a deep breath. “Mail.”

  Abner viewed the huge sack quizzically. “For Bea?”

  Buddy shrugged, red creeping up his narrow cheeks. “Ain’t she here?”

  Abner bent to open the sack. As mistress of the tiny post office, Bea usually received a single tray filled with mail on the noon ferry. Abner couldn’t recall her ever receiving an entire sack, so there had to be a mistake—

  He pulled out a handful of letters and examined the addresses. “Angel mail?”

  Buddy bent low, his face inches away from Abner’s. As Abner turned, their gazes collided.

  Buddy flashed a grin. “Cool, huh?”

  Cool, but disturbing, Abner decided as he climbed the steps of Heavenly Daze Community Church later that afternoon. When Bea saw the sack of mail—with every letter asking for a response—she’d thrown up her hands and told Birdie it would take a month to answer all those letters. “I may be an angel assistant,” she’d said, her head bobbing, “but I’m not superhuman. I can only write so fast.”

  Winded after his brisk walk, Abner sat down in the church vestibule to catch his breath. That’s where Gavriel found him, huffing and puffing under Winslow Wickam’s portrait.

  Tsking, Gavriel brought his hands to his trim waist. “Perhaps, brother Abner, you have been sampling your own cooking too often?”

  Blushing, Abner patted his ever-widening girth. “I fear you’re right, brother.”

  The angel captain, who materialized only when needed, sported a head of long white hair and eyes as rich as the chocolate Abner put in his cakes. Abner tended to think the senior angel possessed an unfair advantage—his mortal body didn’t have to endure as much as the others’. Of course, if the truth be told, Abner had forced his body to endure all sorts of delicious treats, sinfully rich cakes, scrumptious cookies, and oh, those spice pies he was baking for the holidays …

  But he’d come to the church on business.

  Standing, Abner gestured toward the quiet of the sanctuary, and Gavriel nodded. Once they were seated on a back pew, the two angels bowed their heads, communing with the Lord before they set about the business of speaking with each other.

  When they had finished their prayers, Gavriel leaned one arm on the pew back and turned to face his friend. “Is there a problem at the bakery?”

  Abner shook his head. “No, not the bakery. But it seems the post office is suddenly being deluged with ‘heavenly’ requests. Do you know anything about this?”

  Gavriel adopted a thoughtful expression. “I’m not aware of anything, and the Lord has given me no specific instruction in this area. What sort of requests are these?”

  Abner looked toward the window. “Some are amusing, but most are heartbreaking. So far all the letters have come from children who are desperately seeking hope. In today’s mail I read a couple of pleas for baby brothers and sisters and a dozen appeals for daddies to come home. There was one from a six-year-old looking for his lost canary, another begging that his severed leg be restored so he could play baseball. Bea and Birdie are doing their best to keep up with the volume, but if it keeps coming by the bagful, well, I don’t know if they can do it. Heavenly Daze barely qualifies as a post office. If this angel mail keeps up, Bea will have to hire outside help.”

  Gavriel stroked his chin. “Apparently there is a reason for the increased activity—spiritual interest, perhaps? Then again, perhaps people are beginning to confuse Heavenly Daze with the North Pole.”

  “I don’t know how things like this get started.”

  “Often by eager retailers capitalizing on people’s needs.”

  “Needs?”

  “The need to believe in something greater than themselves. That’s why people turned the true story of Saint Nicholas into Santa Claus, a mythical demigod capable of fulfilling children’s greatest desires. People who believe themselves too old or too sophisticated for Santa beg angels to dole out favors like sticks of peppermint candy.”

  Abner shook his head. “There’s no need to go to extremes. People have only to ask the Father to meet their needs.”

  “Yes, but not every human knows the Lord as Father … and many who do have too much pride to bring their needs to him.” Gavriel’s eyes grew distant. “‘Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.’ It’s so simple, yet they do not act as if they believe it.” He lowered his gaze, refocusing on Abner. “I’m not sure what spurred this present surge in mail—probably a tidbit in some travel magazine. But Bea’s efforts are commendable, and perhaps the Lord wants the citizens of Heavenly Daze to help. In due time we will know.”

  “Of course.” Abner nodded. “And all things will work together for good. I’m not doubting; I was only curious.”

  “No harm in asking, Abner; the Father wants to share his heart with his servants. I would advise you to encourage Bea to continue her efforts. Meanwhile, I will speak to the Father about this strange situation and seek instruction.” His face lit with a smile. “Who knows? Perhaps Bea will have to petition the postmaster general for larger facilities in order to handle all the mail.”

  Abner chuckled. “I’ll continue to do all I can to assist Bea and Birdie. And the activity may stop as suddenly as it began. Thank you, Gavriel. I feel much better about the situation.”

  Gavriel reached out to touch Abner’s arm. Warmth, goodness, and joy surged between them. “It is my job, brother, and I am delighted to serve you. And I ask you to look for opportunities to serve the Grahams as well.”

  “The Grahams?” Abner frowned. “Is something wrong at their house? Babette and Georgie were in the bakery this week—”

  Gavriel stopped him. “Dark powers are at work, brother. Zuriel has asked for special prayer support at this time.”

  “Of course.”

  “And keep Salt Gribbon in your thoughts.”

  �
��The light keeper?” Abner knew Gavriel looked after Salt, but he rarely interceded in the old man’s life because Salt rarely asked for help. “Is there a problem at the lighthouse?”

  Gavriel sighed. “Always.”

  “Then I will pray—fervently.”

  Chapter Seven

  Flush with a sense of completion now that the house had a beautiful new roof, on Monday morning, November 12, Babette set up Georgie’s easel in the gallery, then pulled a large calendar from the desk and taped it to the French door. Beginning with the current date, she framed each Monday through Saturday with a bright red marker, purposely skipping Sundays and Thanksgiving. After all, no one should have to work on Sunday, and they all deserved a holiday.

  She drew the last box around Saturday, December 22, then looked over her work. Thirty-five bright red boxes shone on the glossy paper, so Georgie would have thirty-five days in which to create seventy-eight original puffins.

  She smiled when she heard the squeak of the stairs. “In here, Georgie,” she called, turning toward the foyer. Her son peered at her through the glass gallery door, his eyes puffy and his hair still tousled from sleep.

  “Whatcha doing, Mom?”

  “Come here, Son; I’ve got something to show you.”

  He shuffled forward, nearly dropping the ragged blankie in his right hand. He’d slept with that flannel blanket since infancy, and she’d never had the heart to suggest that he toss the tattered thing away. But now that he was about to enjoy his first real job, perhaps the blankie would go the way of his teddy bear and pacifier.

  “Look at this, Georgie.” She gestured toward the calendar, then knelt to meet him at eye level. “See these boxes on each date? Every day when you come home from kindergarten, the days marked in red are going to be workdays for you and me. We’re going to make some money, enough for a golf cart and some really important things. Then, after thirty-five workdays, we’re going to celebrate Christmas at Disney World in Florida.” She gave him the biggest grin she could muster. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”