Home another way, p.1
Home Another Way, page 1
Advance Praise for Home Another Way
“The people of Jonah are flawed and complicated, and Parrish allows readers to savor every moment of genuine, hard-earned human connection. With its vast array of richly imagined characters, its humor and its substance, this debut is sure to resonate with a wide and appreciative audience.”
Publishers Weekly
“In a poignant tale that wraps around your heart, Christa Parrish brings faith home to the hearts of all of us—genuine, abiding faith that can only be found in the trenches of life. Her warts-and-all characters remind us of what the Christian life is really all about.”
Michele Huey—columnist, author, radio host of God, Me &a Cup of Tea
“Realistic, and compelling, Christa Parrish‘s Home Another Way brings a magnetic new voice to the market that holds you fast and opens your world. I read it in one sitting. Christa Parrish is here to stay!”
Virelle Kidder—conference speaker and author of six books, including Meet Me at the Well, and The Best Life Ain’t Easy
“Readers, get ready. This is the voice Christian fiction has been waiting for. In her debut novel, Christa Parrish breaks the ice with a story that is bold in character and rich in relationships. Like Sarah, I found myself melting, page after page, warmed by the glow of God’s grace.”
Allison Pittman—author of the Crossroads of Grace series, including With Endless Sight
“There’s a bit of Sarah Graham in each of us: angry, defensive, and flat-out scared. In Home Another Way, Christa Parrish takes Sarah up a mountain and through a desert. Her fresh, direct voice draws us in, and gives us hope that we too can learn to listen and forgive. Leave room on your bookshelf. We’ll be hearing a lot more from Christa—and loving every word.”
Melanie Rigney—Writer’s Digest magazine, former editor
“Christa Parrish has packed an epic’s worth of realism and grace into powerful pages you won’t stop turning. You are likely to be as changed at the end as Sarah Graham herself. Isn’t that what great fiction is about?”
Nancy Rue—best-selling fiction author
CHRISTA PARRISH
HOME
ANOTHER
WAY
Home Another Way
Copyright © 2008
Christa Parrish
Cover design by Studio Gearbox
Cover photography by Chloe Dulude/Veer
Author photograph by Wendy Voorhis
Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parrish, Christa.
Home another way / Christa Parrish.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7642-0523-1 (pbk.)
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Forgiveness—
Fiction. 4. Villages—Fiction. 5. New York (State)—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3616.A76835H66 2008
813'.6—dc22
2008028098
* * *
For Evelyn and Laura,
as He draws you to Him
A past winner of Associated Press awards for her journalism,Christa Parrish now teaches literature and writing to high school students, is a homeschool mom, and lives near Saratoga Springs, New York. This is her first novel.
www.christaparrish.com
Books by
Christa Parrish
Home Another Way
Watch Over Me
TABLE OF CONTENT
chapter ONE
chapter TWO
chapter THREE
chapter FOUR
chapter FIVE
chapter SIX
chapter SEVEN
chapter EIGHT
chapter NINE
chapter TEN
chapter ELEVEN
chapter TWELVE
chapter THIRTEEN
chapter FOURTEEN
chapter FIFTEEN
chapter SIXTEEN
chapter SEVENTEEN
chapter EIGHTEEN
chapter NINETEEN
chapter TWENTY
chapter TWENTY-ONE
chapter TWENTY-TWO
chapter TWENTY-THREE
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
chapter TWENTY-FIVE
chapter TWENTY-SIX
chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
chapter TWENTY-NINE
chapter THIRTY
chapter THIETY-ONE
chapter THERTY-TWO
chapter THERTY-THREE
chapter THERTY-FOUR
chapter THIRTY-FIVE
chapter THIRTY-SIX
chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
chapter THIRTY-NINE
chapter FORTY
chapter FORTY-ONE
chapter FORTY-TWO
chapter FORTY-THREE
chapter FOURTY-FOUR
chapter FORTY-FIVE
chapter FORTY-SIX
chapter FORTY-SEVEN
chapter FORTY-EIGHT
Acknowledgments
chapter ONE
I had twenty-three borrowed dollars in my pocket, and the deed to a house in a town I couldn’t find on any map. How long ago had I stopped at that gas station to ask for directions? It seemed like hours. The attendant had pointed to the top of the mountain and said, “Keep going up.”
So I drove until the sun wilted into the horizon, dropping behind rows of shaggy, towering evergreens. Brown leaves skittered across the road; I swerved around them more than once, mistaking them for toads, or chickadees. Deer-crossing signs blazed yellow in my headlights around each turn. Snow appeared, as if growing from the ground. The windows began to fog.
I should have turned around before starting this absurd quest for—what? Revenge? Retribution? Whatever it was, a certain romanticism had crept into the ordeal—being on the road, alone, with just my thoughts and a cooler of Diet Coke. I always imagined myself the tragic heroine. That, and I had absolutely nowhere else to go.
Squinting, I saw a light ahead, attached to a worn, whale-shaped sign: THE JONAH INN
“Cute,” I mumbled, turning into the driveway.
There was a story in the Bible about Jonah. My grandmother, a bit of a religious fanatic, had taken particular delight in giant fish and prophets and the complete stupidity of some guy living three days up to his knees in gastric juices. I must have heard it fifty times. “You see, you must always do what God tells you to do,” she’d say. As a small child, I would nod and agree, and then ask for a cookie. Finally, when I was twelve, I demanded, “What about adultery? What about murder? What does God say about that?”
Grandmother’s eyes had bulged. “Who told you?”
“Aunt Ruth,” I said. “Don’t you think God wanted me to know the truth about my parents?”
Grandmother didn’t talk to me about the Bible anymore after that. She stopped talking to Ruth completely.
Lucky Aunt Ruth.
The inn’s gray clapboard siding flaked like dead skin onto the front porch. I hoped the bed had clean sheets.
The door unlocked, I entered to a bell chime. A sleepy voice called, “One minute.” I heard scuffling from the room to my left, and a woman limped out, hair the same sad color as the house. About fifty years old, she wore a too-big sweater with leather patches on the elbows, and thick fleece socks.
“This is mighty unexpected,” she said, but smiled.
“I can go somewhere else, if you’re not ready for guests.”
Silent a moment too long, the woman realized she was staring. “Sorry, dear. I’m just a little fuzzed up with sleep is all. There’s no place else to stay, except here.” Pulling a ledger from the desk by the front door, she asked, “What’s your name?”
“Sarah Graham.”
“You a skier, here visiting?”
I cleared my throat. “Just passing through.”
Under her flannel pajamas, the woman’s bony frame stiffened at my lie. She finished writing my name in the book, and handed me a dusty key.
“I’m Mary-Margaret Watson. Folks here call me Maggie. You’re welcome to do the same. That all you have, or do you need to go back out to your car?” She nodded toward my duffel bag.
“This is all I need tonight.”
“Okay, then. Follow me.”
The old stairs creaked in protest, unhappy to be bothered so late at night. Maggie opened the door to my room, pointed at another door just to the left. “That’s the bathroom. Towels a re in there. You’ll need to let the hot water run a bit.”
“Thank you.”
“Yup. Pick up the phone in the room if you need something. You’ll get me. Spare blankets are in the closet. Sleep tight,” she said, and then disappeared back down the stairs.
I felt oily. I hadn’t showered in three days but was too tired to clean up now. I didn’t even change my clothes—just shook off my shoes, turned on the bedside lamp long enough to find the extra blankets, and climbed into bed.
I forgot to check the sheets.
chapter TWO
Unable to sleep, Maggie listened to the floorboards crackle above her as Sarah tossed in the bed. Old houses, old bones, they’re the same. Her hips ached—pain fueled by the raw autumn night.
She reached for a blue glass jar on the nightstand, a salve that Aggie Standing mixed for all the stiff joints in town. There were many. She rubbed on the cream, smelling camphor and eucalyptus, a hint of lemon, a dash of witch hazel. Then she took four painkillers. She was only supposed to take two, but two didn’t do a darn thing.
Sinking back into the featherbed, she pulled her worn sweater tight around her spindly ribs and prayed silently for the pain to subside. Finally, the roar in her hips dimmed to a whimper.
Maggie had known it was Luke Petersen’s daughter as soon as the sleep cleared her head. It wasn’t so much how she looked, with hair the color of dried apricots and huge, dark eyes, but the way Sarah looked at her—still as a doe that smelled the hunter, but couldn’t quite see him through the trees. Her father, however, had come into Jonah wind-beaten and searching for peace. Sarah seemed to want a fight.
It was Luke’s sweater Maggie wore. He’d lent it to her one chilly night after church, and she never returned it. Day to day she told herself she just forgot, but on nights like tonight, when the pain made her honest, she admitted she kept it because it was his. For nine months, Luke had lived at the inn, until the ground thawed and he finished fixing up the house he bought. Maggie cooked for him, washed his socks and hemmed his pants, and talked with him late into the evenings. Folks had whispered in the beginning, but as they ate and shopped and worshipped with him, the rumors fell away, like woolen coats at spring’s first thaw. Luke grew into the town, as if he’d always lived in that little cabin two turnoffs past McMahon’s Sugar House, three-and-a-half miles down on the right.
She never expected to love him.
She never expected Sarah to show up in Jonah, at her inn.
Maggie reached over and set the alarm as her eyelids started to droop—not that, after all these years, she needed a clock to goad her out of bed. She would wake early to prepare a big breakfast, the kind she saved for Christmas mornings. She stirred love into those meals, and Sarah looked like she needed some of that something fierce.
chapter THREE
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke to sunlight carelessly passing through a frail paper window shade and jabbing at my eyes. I turned my head, stretched under the three layers of handmade quilts and glanced around the room. Pretty, but faded. Flowers dotted the wallpaper, pink and yellow. A few framed prints. No curtains. The clock read 2:14 p.m. I couldn’t believe I slept so long.
The air was cold against my face. I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I had to pee and my teeth felt slimy. Moving quickly, I grabbed my duffel and went into the bathroom.
I turned on the shower. It took five minutes for the water to warm up. While waiting, I brushed my teeth. The hot water soothed my car-weary muscles but didn’t last long. I toweled off and blew dry my long red hair, my grandmother’s tea-soaked voice echoing in my head. “Don’t go out with wet hair or you’ll catch pneumonia.”
Before going downstairs, I pulled the coverlet all the way down. The sheets were very white.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Maggie asked as I entered the front hall. She dusted the banister, the grandfather clock. “It’s a bit late for breakfast, but there’s French toast already made, and bacon and oatmeal. I can reheat it. Or I can make you a sandwich. You look like you need some stick-to-your-bones food.”
“No, thank you, Maggie.”
“Coffee?”
I pulled a well-creased envelope from my jeans, the one I’d ignored for the past eleven months. Fumbled to take the letter from it. “No, really, I’m fine. Could you just tell me how to get to 36 Main Street?”
“That’s heading into town. You want to take a left out of here and make your first left. The road’s steep and curvy, so you be careful. ’Bout three or so miles up, there’ll be a fork. Go right onto the paved road. That’s Main Street. You sure you don’t want something hot? It’s nippy out there. I can get you some coffee in one of those travel mugs.”
“No, thanks.”
As I stepped through the door, Maggie asked, “How long can I expect you here?”
“About a week.”
I took a left out of the driveway as instructed, and then another. The pavement narrowed and turned to potholes. I drove slowly, looking at the houses that lined the road. No, not houses. Trailers. Soup cans with wheels and broken fences in front. An old man sat on a front deck made of barn wood and old tires, cheek fat with chaw. A coatless woman came quickly from her home and scooped a toddler into her arms, his mouth ringed with red Kool-Aid.
I drove past the fork and into town before my windows fully defrosted. Not that it was much of a town. A half-mile of hunched wood buildings, with a few brick storefronts between. I found 36 in the middle, next to a log diner. A hand-lettered sign hung near the door:
Small Appliance Repair, Taxidermy,
Notary Public, Live Bait.
Inside, a beefy man leaned over a table, screwdriver in his teeth. He wore canvas overalls, straps unhooked and crammed into his back pockets. All sorts of appliances and other mechanical doodads cluttered the shop—blenders and toasters, lawn mowers, televisions and pieces. Heads hung on the wall. I counted nine deer, two moose, and a bear. Some game birds and small rodents posed dramatically on a glass counter, wings spread or teeth bared.
“You must be Sarah Graham,” the man said. “Only stranger to ever walk through my door.” He didn’t wait for a reply before straightening and pumping my hand in his, crunching my fingers. “Rich Portabella. Like the mushroom. Have a seat.”
Rich pulled a chair out from behind the counter. “Coffee?” he asked.
“No,” I said, handing him the letter he sent, and the deed. “I had an awful time finding this place. It’s not on any map.”
“Not on any recent map,” he corrected me. “A handful of years ago, the county powers that be decided Jonah was too small to be its own municipality. Too much trouble keeping it separate on the tax rolls, or some nonsense like that. So, they merged us with the town below. Technically, we’re Ogden. But no one around here thinks of us that way. We haven’t changed the name on anything.”
I sensed Rich the Mushroom could make small talk all day, so I asked, “What is there?”
“Of the estate? Well, the house, and everything in it. Quite a few books, I believe, furniture—”
“Money?” I interrupted.
“Some,” he said, rolling the word over in his mouth.
“What?”
“Why don’t we go see the house?”
“What does that mean?” I asked. My jaw tightened. After everything, I wouldn’t even get the money?
“The house, the house. I’ll drive. We’ll talk there,” Rich said, pulling on his coat, a fake-fur-lined parka. I wore a nylon windbreaker.
We climbed into an early-model Jeep with black vinyl seats. The cold seeped through the back of my jeans. Rich apologized for the broken heater, and then prattled on about birds and maple syrup, and his kids. I ignored him, seething, convinced I came all this way for nothing.
The house sat in the middle of a field, plain and lonely, with boarded windows.
“It’s been empty more than a year,” Rich said as he pulled up to the porch.
He unlocked the door and walked in, turning on the flashlight he brought with him. I peeked in from the bottom of the stairs. Sheets covered the furniture, ghosts of the past.
“You coming in?” Rich called.
