“Uh-oh. You know what they say, Ivy, love. Red in the morning, sailor’s warning.” She flicked on the television to see if the weatherman concurred with her assessment. Sure enough, evening thunderstorms were in the forecast.
“If big bad Harvey thinks he’s going to walk you home in a thunderstorm, he’s got another think coming.” She brushed the curl off Ivy’s forehead and gazed into her dark eyes. “So tell me, little one. Where do you live?”
Ivy stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry. Laughter tickled Pearl’s chest. “Learned a new trick, did we? Harvey teach you to answer like that?” She lifted the baby up on her shoulder, kissed her on the cheek, and inhaled her scent—a mixture of baby soap, pine, and another faint woodsy scent she couldn’t name. Almost like . . . campfire.
Surely not. But it did connect. The fact that he wouldn’t let her see where he lived. Because his home didn’t have walls?
She carried Ivy to the living room and sank into the upholstered rocker. Letting him be the temporary custodian for his sister’s baby for a couple weeks was one thing. But letting him keep a baby at a campsite as a permanent arrangement?
Pearl massaged her temples. What had she been thinking? She’d gotten so caught up in their routine over the past few weeks. She’d been so filled with happiness where there once had been emptiness that the fact that this arrangement wasn’t permanent had faded to a quiet buzz in the back of her mind. Ivy had a mother out there who had either willingly abandoned her daughter or had done so against her will. Something had to be done.
The doorbell jarred her from her circling thoughts.
Miriam stood on her doorstep, dressed in a pretty maroon wrap dress and high heels, her pocketbook clutched in her hands. “I wanted to, no, needed to talk to you. To explain about yesterday. May I come in?”
Pearl stepped aside. “Of course. Come in, dear. Coffee? Tea? What can I get you?”
Miriam leaned near the baby as she entered. Her voice soft and breathy. “Oh, she’s asleep.”
Pearl glanced down. So she was. All of Pearl’s frantic rocking had sent Ivy straight on to sleep whether her distracted caregiver noticed or not.
Miriam smiled. “There’s nothing more precious than a sleeping baby.”
The tenderness in her eyes tore Pearl’s heart. “She’s an absolute angel, this one. I should put her to bed. What can I bring you on the way back?”
“Coffee, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”
“Don’t be silly. No trouble at all. Make yourself at home there in the living room, and I’ll be back before you can say boo.”
Pearl padded back to her bedroom with Ivy. She hoped Thomas hadn’t pressed Miriam to come. After all, if anyone owed her an explanation, it was Thomas, not his wife. Miriam had never tried to be anyone she wasn’t.
At the sound of footsteps, Miriam jumped to her feet and placed the picture frame back on the side table where she’d picked it up from moments ago. Pearl tottered into the living room with a plate of sliced cream cake and two cups of coffee.
“Oh goodness, Pearl. Let me get that for you.”
She let her take the tray and motioned to the coffee table. “You didn’t have to get up, honey. I’m stronger than I look, even if my hands do get a bit shaky every now and then.”
Pearl inclined her head toward the picture frame. “That’s Elliot and my son, Marshall, on their last fishing trip. It’s one of my favorites.”
Miriam righted the photograph, and carefully turned it in the precise angle it had been before. “I can’t imagine how difficult this past year has been.”
Pearl’s response was halting, as though she weighed each word before it passed between her lips. “It’s been trying. But I find things greatly improved over the past few weeks with my new charge.”
“I can imagine. With a sweet baby around, it would be hard to feel anything but joy.” She took a sip of the perfectly brewed coffee and savored the rich flavor and warmth.
“Yes. The baby is a joy. But, dear, I was talking about Harvey.”
Miriam sputtered, nearly spitting coffee across Pearl’s living room. Harvey? The thirty-year-old man who could barely string three coherent words together without darting off? Who behaved as though it set his eyes on fire to make eye contact? That was who left Pearl filled with joy?
“You mean he helps around the house with the manual labor?” Her incredulity did funny things to the cadence of her voice.
“He does lend a helping hand, but that’s not what I meant. Having him around here is like . . . it’s like a new chance at motherhood. You see, my son was about Harvey’s age when he passed. Did Thomas tell you I was forty-one when Marshall was born? I had given up on having children years ago. I had wanted to adopt at one time, but my husband was never comfortable with the idea. It was more of a hush-hush thing back then. He knew a friend that was adopted and didn’t know until he was fifteen. He said his friend was never the same after he found out. So time went on and we found a way to be contented, the two of us.”
Something hot stabbed Miriam’s chest. That was her problem. Not knowing how to be content with her lot in life.
“My dear, there are all kinds of ways to be a mother. I used the mothering love God placed in my heart to love many a child in my Sunday school classes, or even to comfort a child I passed on the street who’d fallen and scraped their knee. Love is love. Nurturing is nurturing. It doesn’t take a blood relative. We’re all adopted into God’s family through Jesus. And I decided long ago that if it was good enough for God, it was good enough for me. So I set in my heart that I would love and mother anyone who crossed my path who needed that kind of love.”
Miriam worried her lip between her teeth, blinking away the moisture gathering in her eyes before Pearl noticed.
“What about you, my sweet Miriam? Why did you come here today? Surely not to hear an old lady ramble.”
Miriam choked on a sob. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I need a mother too.” The last of it came out as an embarrassing wail, but Pearl closed the distance between them and wrapped her in her arms. Miriam buried her face in Pearl’s shoulder. There was surprising strength found in those ropy arms.
When shuddering sobs and hiccups subsided, Miriam leaned back from the embrace and took the tissue Pearl held out. “Thomas is avoiding me.”
Pearl tilted her head. “I was under the impression he was going home to talk things out with you.”
Miriam shook her head. “It’s not like him at all. You know the verse about not letting the sun go down on your anger? It’s like it’s his life verse. And now he’s hiding instead of talking. Maybe I’ve pushed him further than he can handle. He’s only human, after all.”
“You’ve got one thing right. He’s human. I think he’s ashamed and knows there isn’t anything he can say to excuse himself.”
“All this time, he seemed so loving and supportive, but he was actually embarrassed of me.”
“I have my own theories, but it’s none of my business.”
“I don’t know what to do. To say.”
“Tell him you love him. No matter the mess between the two of you, you love him, and he loves you. And you both love the Lord. Start there and work onward. With those things in clear view, no mess is quite as complicated as it seems at the outset.”