Hearts at Home Page 7

  Edith made a face at that comment, but Bea didn’t see it. Just as well—Bea was only blowing off steam.

  Smiling, she tried to steer the conversation into another channel. “Do you really think Annie will sell the house?”

  Bea sighed. “I don’t think she wants to live here— never has. Olympia always said Annie couldn’t wait to graduate and leave the island. She’s got her own life now, a new boyfriend, a good job—why would she want to come back here?”

  Edith shook her head. Tragedy had touched them all in the last few months, but Annie had been the hardest hit. Would she sell the house and wash her hands of Heavenly Daze altogether? Edith hoped not. Annie was family, and the family had lost too many members lately.

  With her arms crossed and her heart heavy, Annie stood in the doorway of her aunt’s bedroom. The white counterpane lay smooth upon the bed, with only a slight indentation to mark the place Olympia had lain for so many years. An arrangement of silk lilacs on the nightstand cast soft shadows on the worn Bible her aunt had read every evening before falling asleep. The words gave her comfort, she always said, when the worries of life threatened to keep her awake.

  Feeling like a trespasser, Annie crossed the threshold and moved to the cedar chest at the end of the bed. To prepare for his funeral address, Pastor Winslow had asked for a few clippings or something that might provide insight into Olympia’s youth. Annie knew very little about her aunt’s younger days, for the woman had been well into her forties when Annie had arrived at Frenchman’s Fairest. Edmund Junior had been a senior in college at the time, so Edmund, Olympia, and Caleb alone had faced dealing with a frightened, grieving seven-year-old… .

  Shoving the sad memories away, Annie lifted the lid of the chest and breathed in the scents of cedar, mothballs, and wool. A stack of sweaters lay uppermost in the trunk, but after setting them on the bed she saw a green scrapbook. Relieved, she lifted it out, then sat cross-legged on the floor and began to turn the yellowed pages.

  A firm, younger hand had written My Life on the front page with blue ink—a fountain pen, from the looks of it. Amused by the thought of Olympia as a young girl, Annie turned the page and found black and white snapshots much like those she’d seen in the photograph album Caleb had brought down Saturday night. But these weren’t photos of a baby—they were pictures of a young and pretty Olympia on the arm of a tall, handsome, and much older man—Edmund Shots in younger days.

  Annie whistled with a new appreciation for the family history. Olympia had always said her marriage caused a scandal in the family, and now Annie could understand why. The age difference was noticeable.

  The scrapbook held other pictures—the young couple with their new baby boy, that same boy in a baseball uniform, then in a cap, gown, and honors regalia, graduating from Yale Law School. Sprinkled among the boy pictures, Annie found photos of a skinny little girl peering around the corner of the house, one arm wrapped around a scrawny kitten, the other clinging tight to Caleb’s hand. Several pictures featured Olympia standing or sitting beside the little girl, but never touching her.

  Annie felt her heart contract as grief rose within her, black and cold. In every picture of her and Olympia, concern and care were etched into the older woman’s face, while the little girl just looked … lost.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself, Annie.”

  She jumped when Caleb’s voice broke the silence. Turning, she saw him standing in the doorway, a look of compassion on his face.

  “I just—I was looking for something to help the pastor.”

  “I know. But I saw your expression just now. You must never feel guilty for coming into Olympia’s and Edmund’s life. They loved you, dear heart, even if your arrival was a surprise.”

  As Caleb came into the room, Annie turned another page and found herself staring at several faded real estate brochures. “Live in Sunny Bradenton,” one of them proclaimed, while another advertised a development on Captiva Island.

  “What are these?” She picked one up and smiled at the dated drawing of a little girl in pigtails on the beach. “I never knew Aunt Olympia liked Florida.”

  Caleb sat on the edge of the bed. “In the fall of ’80 or ’81, when Edmund Junior went away to school, Olympia and Edmund toyed with the idea of selling the house and moving south. Edmund was going to work in a bank down there, and Olympia was looking forward to the sunshine. If I remember correctly, they even put Frenchman’s Fairest on the market. The place was in better shape then—they would have made a tidy profit. They were all set to move.”

  “What happened?”

  Before the words finished echoing in the room, Annie knew the answer. Her parents had died in ’82, killed in a plane crash as her father attempted to land on the Ogunquit airstrip. Shortly after the accident, she had arrived at Frenchman’s Fairest.

  Caleb’s eyes warmed slightly, and the hint of a smile acknowledged the success of her reasoning. “Your mother and father were coming to pay Olympia and Edmund a farewell visit when the plane went down. After that, Olympia said she couldn’t leave. She always said Heavenly Daze was the best place on earth to raise a child, and she didn’t want to raise Ferrell’s daughter in Floridy. She said you’d be freckled as a guinea hen if you grew up down there.”

  Annie lifted the brochure again, regarding it in a new light. “They gave up their dream … for me?”

  “They were happy to do it, especially when they fell in love with you. So you shouldn’t feel at all guilty about it.”

  Annie closed her eyes as a fresh onslaught of tears threatened to destroy her makeup. Seems all she’d done over the last twenty-four hours was cry. The island women had done their best to comfort her, but they’d wept, too, all of them boo-hooing over things they wished they’d told Olympia and things they regretted having said.

  Edith Wickam had been the most helpful. With Annie’s input, she’d outlined a dignified procedure for the funeral. Knowing Olympia’s fondness for history and her place in the Heavenly Daze lineage, Edith planned to summon all the townspeople to the ferry dock at 3 PM, just as the sun would begin to dip toward the western horizon. A special boat would bring Olympia’s casket (a nice oak model, lined with white satin) from Ogunquit, then a team of pallbearers would guide the casket onto a trolley and roll it to Frenchman’s Fairest. Olympia would lie in her own parlor while the townsfolk paid their respects, then she’d ride to the church for the funeral service. After the service, when everyone in town had had another chance to say their farewells, the pallbearers would wheel her back down to the dock for another trip to Ogunquit.

  Annie knew Olympia had probably wanted to ride to church in her horse-drawn carriage, but Blaze, the old horse, had died right after Thanksgiving. Even if they’d had a horse, the carriage was a two-seater and couldn’t handle a casket.

  “I can just hear Olympia complaining about us putting too many miles on her coffin,” Edith had whispered, the corners of her eyes crinkling with gentle humor. “Truth is, I think she’d like the idea of riding in a procession around town. As long as it doesn’t get tacky, we’ll be fine.”

  A conversation with the director of the funeral home had convinced Annie that Olympia would have to travel back to Ogunquit Tuesday evening. Though she had a space reserved by Edmund’s side in the cemetery behind the Heavenly Daze Community Church, nothing short of an early spring thaw would permit the men to dig in the frozen earth. “Backhoes aren’t all that expensive to rent, but transporting one to Heavenly Daze might be costly with the ferry not running,” the funeral director had told Annie. “And I don’t think you want Mrs. de Cuvier lying in your parlor until April. So we’ll bring her back here until warmer weather permits a proper burial.”

  After a quick glance at Olympia’s checkbook, Annie had decided that the more dignified option was also the more economical one. Neither she nor Olympia had money enough to transport and rent a backhoe, and the mortician assured her he wouldn’t charge extra to hold the body until springtime. “We d
o it all the time,” he told Annie. “We just add a discreet line to the funeral program to let folks know that internment will occur in the spring.”

  And so the last details were finalized. After the funeral, Olympia’s pallbearers—Floyd Lansdown, Abner Smith, Charles Graham, Buddy Franklin, Russell Higgs, and Zuriel Smith—would wheel her back down to the dock, return the casket to the funeral home boat, and send her back to the mainland. Edith had thought it would be nice if the women carried flowers to toss into the sea as the boat sped away, so Annie had ordered three dozen red roses from the Ogunquit florist. They would arrive on the same boat bringing Olympia this afternoon.

  “Red roses in February,” Annie murmured, thinking of her depleted checkbook. “They cost a fortune this close to Valentine’s Day.”

  But she’d paid for the flowers in advance, counting them as a necessary part of the funeral expenses. She’d tried to book the Wells Episcopal Boys’ Choir to sing at the service, but their director flatly told her that no parent in his or her right mind would pull a boy out of school, place him on Crazy Odell Butcher’s boat, and send him out to sea in February to sing at a stranger’s funeral. “I don’t care if the lady was descended from George Washington,” he snapped. “We’re not coming.”

  So Annie had borrowed a CD of the Vienna Boys’ Choir music from Micah. Perhaps the simple purity of their voices would make up for the missing musicians … because they were the best Annie could do. She just hoped she’d done enough.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that even now Olympia was looking down from heaven and judging her efforts.

  Olympia walked across a shimmering gold-green meadow with her spirit-hand in her grandfather’s. Though many things were still new to her, in some ways she felt as though she had resided in the wonderful place for years. She still found herself reaching up to scratch an incorporeal nose that did not actually itch, or reaching out to smooth insubstantial hair, but somehow she was adjusting to the fact that spiritual things were completely real, though intangible.

  Now, for instance, she knew that she held Jean Luc de Cuvier’s hand even though neither of them possessed fleshly fingers. To her spirit eyes her grandfather was young and strong, though if she had met him on the streets of Heavenly Daze she would have had a hard time guessing his age. Time meant nothing here, for eternity stretched before them.

  She smiled in the warmth of her grandfather’s love. “It’s so beautiful here.” She lifted her gaze to the meadow. The grass moved with the breath of a warm breeze, and a gentle chime tinkled through the air with each movement of the golden leaves.

  “How could it be anything else?” Jean Luc lifted his hand, where a graceful eagle circled overhead, then veered out of the way of a speeding angel. “The Creator makes everything beautiful, and heaven has never been corrupted by sin. But this is nothing compared to the new heaven and new earth we shall one day explore. All of creation, above and below us, is waiting for the time when God will redeem the planet. The old, corrupt things will pass away, and all things will be made new.” His smile brightened in intensity. “Then I shall once again hold your hand, and when I squeeze it, I’ll be holding flesh that will never grow old, never disease, never suffer the debilitating effects of time.”

  Olympia shook her head. “It boggles my brain just to think of it. I know God has a plan for the future, but Pastor Winslow always lost me when he started talking about Revelations and such. I had a hard enough time following him when he preached on the Minor Prophets.”

  Her grandfather laughed. “Those prophets, I understand, have a bit of a bone to pick with your Pastor Winslow. After he arrives, I hear Obadiah, Nahum, and Haggai plan to sit him down to clear up a few misconceptions.”

  Olympia chuckled, then gasped as a beautiful white stallion galloped into the meadow, then paused. His nostrils flared as he studied them, then the majestic creature whickered and cantered gracefully toward the trees at the edge of the grass.

  “I didn’t know there were animals here.”

  “Of course there are. All good, created things have a place in heaven. The prophets told us that the Lord would return to earth upon a white horse. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve just seen the honored animal himself.”

  From out of the woods at their right, an angel fluttered from the trees, his wings softly beating the air as he hovered a few feet away. He greeted them in the name of the Lord, then casually popped what looked like a snack cake into his mouth before moving on.

  “Grandfather, was that—no! They can’t have Little Debbies in heaven!”

  Jean Luc chortled. “Oh, Olympia, I’d forgotten what a charming child you are! No, my dear, the angels eat manna. It is the food of heaven, and they tell me it’s quite wonderful.” His voice grew wistful. “I look forward to eating it at the marriage supper of the Lamb, when we meet our heavenly bridegroom in our perfect resurrected bodies. There, my dear, we shall feast as never before!”

  They walked farther, saying nothing, but enjoying the fellowship of each other’s company. Olympia had no memories of her grandfather on earth; he had passed over when she was only two years old. She had never realized she’d be able to meet and know him … another unexpected benefit of heaven.

  They crested a small hill, then halted at the top. Below them, the grass stirred with more movement than usual. Though the babbling, happy sound of children’s voices tickled Olympia’s ear, she could see nothing.

  She squinted, trying to see what moved the rustling grasses. “What is that?”

  Her grandfather chuckled. “The children. Heaven is filled with them, and they’re hard to see because they’re so active. But if we move a little closer …”

  He lifted her then, apparently by the power of his thoughts, and within a moment Olympia found herself floating beside the flowing grasses. Her lips parted when her spirit eyes adjusted to the speed with which the children moved. There were a least a dozen playing here— beautiful youngsters whose spirits shone with life.

  “Some of them lived only a short time on earth,” Jean Luc explained, “and some never even drew a breath. But the Creator, in love, brought them all home.”

  If she’d had physical eyes, Olympia knew she would have wept in a simple outpouring of emotion. She pressed her hand to her chest and swallowed hard—an old reflex that had not yet died—and met her grandfather’s gaze. “They are so sweet.”

  “Innocent,” he answered. “And millions of them dwell in this place. They come from every part of earth, from every country. No matter what their situation on earth, here they are tenderly welcomed and guarded by the Father’s angels.”

  Olympia halted in midstep, her hand slipping from her grandfather’s as the breeze ruffled the hem of her long white robe. “I can’t believe I was ever afraid to come here.” Her eyes met Jean Luc’s. “Why is that? I knew heaven was a wonderful place, but I was in no hurry to die.”

  “Perhaps that is why the Scriptures are silent about so many aspects of this place. Tell me, dear one—if you could push a button and transport all your loved ones to this place, would you do it?”

  “In a heartbeat.” She looked around. “Is there a button like that?”

  Her grandfather laughed. “No. Every human above the age of understanding still has to make his or her own reservation. And God has a plan for his people on earth— the world below is sort of like kindergarten, the place where we learn the basics of life and gain a smattering of wisdom. Living on earth is like riding a bike with training wheels—it’s here, in heaven, that we really learn how to live, and think, and explore.” He shrugged. “Heaven is the greatest adventure mankind will ever know, and this is just the beginning. There is so much more to come.”

  “I should have listened better,” Olympia whispered, addressing the Spirit of God. He was so close she could see the shimmer of his glory with every movement of the wind. He had been close on earth, too, dwelling in her frail frame, but most of the time her mind had been too clouded by earthly concerns
to be aware of his presence.

  Speechless with wonder, Olympia wrapped her translucent fingers around Jean Luc’s shimmering arm. “Tell me more,” she said. “We have time, don’t we?”

  “My dear Olympia, we have an eternity to share.”

  By 2:45, a decent crowd had gathered at the dock, though Annie had to peer through layers of winter wrappings to see who was who. Birdie and Bea were encased in scarves and matching wool coats; Vernie wore a navy blue ski mask through which her reddened eyes shone like weak flashlights. Stanley Bidderman stood loyally behind Vernie, probably the only man of Annie’s acquaintance who would allow his wife to wear such a getup to such a dignified occasion, but, then again, not many island men were trying to make up for twenty years of neglect.

  Charles and Babette stood beside the tiny clapboard ferry office, sheltering their son, Georgie, from the frigid wind, while Mike and Dana Klackenbush huddled with Buddy Franklin and Russell Higgs. Barbara, Russell’s wife, was tucked into bed at the bed-and-breakfast, still recovering from last month’s surgery.

  Floyd Lansdown stood at the end of the dock, and from where she waited Annie could hear him telling Micah that the town needed its own ferry so they wouldn’t have to depend upon Stroble or Crazy Odell. “Course, we need new rubber for the fire engine first,” he yelled, his voice carried by the wind. “But after that, a ferry should be our next priority.”

  At three o’clock, with no sign yet of the boat, Annie peered at the faces around her. Though the wind was brisk, no one was grumbling about having to stand out in the cold. The bright sun had brought the temperature up to thirty degrees, but as it inched toward the horizon the air would become frosty.

  Still she heard no complaints. Perhaps they were all thinking that stoic Olympia would have been the last to complain if she were waiting on one of them.

  Winslow and Edith stood with Cleta, all three of them wearing expressions of profound regret, while Annie waited with Caleb and Dr. Marc. She kept her face turned toward the restless sea, for every few minutes her chin quivered uncontrollably. To stanch the unpredictable geyser of tears, she forced herself to focus on trivial things—had she remembered to feed Tallulah? At the funeral tomorrow, would Micah think to plug in the CD player behind the church piano? The piano would hide the CD player so maybe no one would realize those pure boyish voices were not spilling down from an angel choir… .