Heaven Sent Rain (19 page)

Garret said firmly, “Jonah! Look at me!”

Jonah dropped his arms and did as told. Garret pointed at poor Mutt. “See, you scared her.” His voice had gentled and his hand had found its way to Jonah’s shoulder.

Jonah flung himself across the space and gathered Mutt into his arms. Still shivering, she licked the tears from his face and tried to clean his ears. “I’m sorry, Mutt! I’m sorry.” He cried into her fur.

Dinah stared from the boy to the man, who was kneeling beside Jonah and Mutt now and talking softly. Then he gathered the boy and dog into his arms and held them both. Just held them. Huge hands pressed dog and boy against himself.

Jonah melted against the man, sobbing wildly.

Her stupid outburst had tipped off Jonah’s. Dinah closed her eyes and sank back against the wall. Failed again.

She watched the three over there in the corner. Maybe there was more to this man than she had thought. If he could calm this horribly wounded little boy like this, he couldn’t be all bad. Grief did strange things to people sometimes, as she well knew. She’d not had a dog to kiss her tears away; instead she had had Gramma Grace. All Jonah had was Mutt and Dinah. And, right now, a man who doctored animals.

How could she possibly ever be or become what Jonah so desperately needed?

H
ey, Garret!”

The call stopped him in the hall between the sanctuary and the church kitchen. He turned. “Hey, Gil, good to see you.”

Gil stopped right beside him and leaned in. “How’s the classroom fund coming along?”

“We need about another three.”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand. Got a couple of people still undecided as to their donation amount.”

Gil nodded, his shiny bald spot catching the light. “I see. Wife and I talked it over. Two thousand is about the max we can do right now.”

Garret clapped him on the upper arm. “Thanks, buddy. You just made my life easier.”

Together the two men entered the classroom, where John greeted them before they located seats. Danny stopped beside Garret’s shoulder. “I can’t believe it, planning board okayed it without any problem. Not sure if they realized all it was or not, but fine by me. If this is God going before us, I’d like Him as a business partner anytime.”

“Just ask Him. We’re about there on the money. Only about a thousand short for the whole project.”

“Good. I have one other job to finish up, so we can start on this first thing Wednesday. Hopefully we can have the beams up and wiring in before the weekend. Won’t be too pretty in here, but progress is rarely pretty.”

Class was good, but then it was always good.

After class, John stopped him. “You doing the lunch gig today?”

“Sorry. Command performance at my mother’s house. You need something?”

“I have to be out of town next week and I wondered if you would take over the class.”

“Ah.” Garret reminded his mouth to close. “I’m not a Bible teacher, John. In fact I’m not a teacher of any kind.”

“Not what I heard.”

“That goofy caricature gig for the kids? That’s not a Bible study.”
And they weren’t adults.

“You told a Bible story using your marker pens and a pad of paper.”

“Yeah, but…”

“How about doing the same for the adults? I’ve had a parent or two mention that idea. I think it would be great.”

Garret swallowed. Kids were one thing; he loved entertaining children, but not adults.

“You think on it. I’ll call you this evening.”

“No pressure or anything, right?”

“Wrong. Big pressure. If this trip were not an emergency, I’d have given you weeks to prepare.”

“And have a nervous breakdown.”

He argued with God all through the service, but at no point did he hear “Since you really don’t want to, you don’t have to.” Instead, the idea of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son whipped through his mind, turned around, and returned to take up residence. On the way out, he nodded to John. Might as well give up now, for God did not seem to want to let him off the hook. After all, it was only for an hour.

He dropped by home to check on his friends and decided to take the dogs with him. His three-year-old nephew, Peter, loved the doggies. He had the dogs in the car when he remembered the newspaper article he’d seen that morning about Scoparia, some product everyone was talking about that Dinah Taylor’s company made. Another trip back into the house to dig out the piece in this Sunday’s “Home and Health” section. By the time he got on the road, he was running late. Was this getting to be a habit or something? When his mother said one o’clock, the food would be on the table at one-oh-one.

Scoparia. Dinah Taylor. He couldn’t get away from those two, Jonah and Dinah. And Mutt. That beleaguered little boy, stuck with a woman who knew absolutely nothing about either dogs or boys. At all.

So what
did
she know about, if anything? Bigshot CEO, in a position to boss everyone around, and, probably like most CEOs, didn’t actually know squat. Was she hired in from outside? Had she come up through the ranks? Had she slept with someone to—
Shut yo mouth, boy! That is totally Unchristian!
Yeah, well, he’d had his education about women CEOs and his fill of them, too. Big trouble, the whole lot of them.

And Jonah’s explosion. Garret understood that the extreme pressure on the little guy would blow his cork; in fact, it was a good thing. Let him vent. How often had explosions happened in his day? Did this Dinah woman even understand his need to act out the grief he could not articulate in words? Did she embrace him or yell at him? If the scene in Garret’s exam room was any indication, she just stood there with her mouth open. Bigshot CEO indeed.

A CEO that didn’t do dogs. Bah.

He’d have to X-ray Mutt to see how far along the puppies were. That would in large part determine their course of action.

And what exactly was this Scoparia? News articles claimed that Food for Life was billing it as a cure. The Food for Life website called it a dietary supplement; it said nothing about a cure for anything, but the papers were saying diabetes. When he looked for sales outlets he found nothing, so it was not out on the shelves yet.

He pulled into the familiar farm driveway and let the dogs out the back.

“Doggies!” Little Peter came bounding off the porch, fell flat on his face, squirmed to his feet, and ran over to Sam. The dog had just lifted his leg beside a tree and couldn’t escape the chubby little arms in time. Peter hugged him exuberantly. Soandso, who did not need a tree for anything, scampered off to relieve herself well away from Peter. Good thing his dogs were so good with little kids; with a mother and an uncle who were both veterinarians, Peter had inherited a double dose of love for animals and could get really enthusiastic.

Peter’s older brother, Mark, came running out but stopped on the porch when his dad called him from inside.

“Peter, go in and wash your hands. We’re eating.” Carolyne, who was Peter’s aunt and Garret’s elder sister, stepped down off the porch. She hugged Garret. “Do you have any idea what this is all about? Mom is acting a little weird and she isn’t telling me anything. That’s not like her.”

“Sort of. Let’s see what she has to say.” Garret held the door for her as they went inside.

“Dinner is on the table.” At fifty-eight, Edith Miller usually looked ten years younger. Today she looked every day of her age. Dark moons under her eyes, along with pale skin, and new lines between her eyebrows, made Garret wonder at the genuineness of her smile. He joined the others as they took their assigned places, his across from Hannah, with Peter and Mark on booster chairs to either side of him. His brother, David, had his hands full, with Sue working at the clinic while he managed their four kids. He was currently trying to convince their twin girls to stay seated at the end of the table.

When Hannah studied him questioningly, he shook his head in answer to her raised eyebrows. Hannah, married to a marine lieutenant stationed overseas for six more months, had no children. She said it gave her more time to be a good auntie.

Garret looked to his dad, Arnet, at the other end of the table. It took a lot to get beyond his calm, and today was obviously not crazy enough to do that. At least not yet.

“Shall we pray?” he said as the hubbub quieted. “Heavenly Father, we thank You for this food and our family. Thank You that we can be together and give us peace. Amen.”

The two little boys echoed their grandfather’s amen and giggled.

“Sorry, I’m late.” Garret’s baby sister, Becky, had been nursing their six-month-old baby girl. “She didn’t want to stop.” Baby sister? Becky was halfway through her twenties.

“You could have brought her out here.” Edith finally stopped bringing out filled serving dishes and sat.

“She’ll be asleep in a minute if she isn’t already.”

Everyone passed the bowls and platters, Garret dishing Peter’s plate and Mark’s according to the boys’ choices. “Lots of mashed ’tatoes. Grammy makes good mashed ’tatoes.”

“Grammy makes everything good.”

“We have apple pie for dessert,” Mark announced.

“But only if you clean your plate,” Garret countered.

“No, Grammy said I could have pie no matter what.”

Garret looked to his mother. “You said that?”

“Not quite.” But it did make her smile. Her grandsons could do no wrong.

After dessert, once the children were camped in front of a video, the dogs lying beside them, Hannah poured another round of coffee.

“All right, what’s going on?” She sat down and looked directly at her mother.

“I got some bad news at the doctor’s this week.” Edith sighed before looking up. She raised her hands. “No, no, not terribly bad, but I’m not happy about it.”

Dad chided, “Just tell them, dear. You’re making them think it’s worse than it is.”

“Yes. Yes. They told me that I will have to go on insulin. You know I can’t stand shots, let alone stabbing my finger so many times in a day. I just can’t do it.” A stubborn glint showed in her eyes. “I just won’t, that’s all.”

“So, you are saying you have diabetes.” Carolyne stated rather than questioned and looked to Garret, who nodded. “Mom, the great majority of diabetics control their blood sugar with diet. You can—”

“The doctor says I’m too far along. Diet and exercise will help but I’ll need insulin too.”

Carolyne frowned. “Too far along? Haven’t you been getting annual physicals? Blood draws?”

“Why should I go to the doctor? I’ve been perfectly healthy.”

As the others bombarded their mother with questions, Garret sat strangely silent. This sounded much worse than he’d thought. She had been borderline diabetic for years, he knew, but she was active and fairly slim for her age. You don’t think about diabetes as a serious issue when the person is not overweight, or a smoker, or sedentary, or…

Or so stubborn? Stubborn was a family trait, that was for sure. And it sounded like stubbornness could cause her worse grief than a disease that was under control. When things had settled down, he laid the newspaper on the table. “Have you read this yet?”

Edith shook her head. “No. Is that today’s paper?”

“Yes. The ‘Home and Health’ section. A new product is being produced right here in Eastbrook and should be on the market fairly soon, called Scoparia.”

“Says here it is a dietary supplement, not a medication.” Becky looked up from reading the article. “And that in the tests and trials, some people are able to go off insulin.” She looked to Garret as she passed the paper to David. “But then it would be a drug.”

“The papers have been talking about its effect on diabetics. Nothing in the company’s literature or labeling says anything about diabetes. I did some research on it.”

“You think it’s real?”

“I heard about it, and I heard that the FDA is making noises about classifying it as a drug.” Carolyne shoved the paper aside. “Mom, if the doctor says you need insulin, you need insulin, and you’re just going to have to girl up and take it, whether you want to or not.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Now, Mother…”

Edith turned on her eldest daughter, her voice loud and gritty. “Don’t ‘Now, Mother’ me! I am healthy, other than this, and if I have to change my diet, all right, I will do that. Another thing I read said it can be controlled with exercise. So I’ll exercise more. But shots every day, all day? No!”

“They say diet and exercise reduce the problem; sometimes they’re not enough.” Arnet spoke softly, but they all knew there was steel under the gentleness.

“According to most medical sources, there is no real cure, just control and maintenance.” Garret hated to throw more fuel on the fire. But he knew what diabetes did to dogs. He hated to give that diagnosis to pet owners.

“Well, I didn’t invite you all here to order me around. I just wanted to say this once and be done with it.” Edith pushed to her feet. “I think I will go do the dishes.”

Garret watched her march out of the room. This sure wasn’t like their mother; was the disease making her cantankerous, too?

The girls scooped up serving dishes and followed her to the kitchen to help clean up, but there was none of the usual happy chatter amongst the women.

Carolyne stuck her head out the kitchen door. “Garret, I’m sending ham home with you. There’s a lot left over. Don’t forget and leave without it.”

Hannah called, “And sweet potatoes. Lot of them left, too.”

Garret sat looking at his father, wagging his head. His mom made mashed potatoes, sometimes sweet potatoes, but not both at once. There had been twice too much food on the table; she’d been cooking excessively, even for her. Nervousness? What other signs of her dread and fear had Garret missed because he wasn’t here to spot them? “Mom is usually so level-headed. Were you there when the doctor talked to her?”

“No. Wish I had been.” Dad studied his coffee mug.

“I’ll call the doctor tomorrow and talk to him. She still with Lucas?”

Dad nodded. “Let me know if you come up with anything.”

Everyone found excuses to leave earlier than usual. It was obvious that the dissension made them all uncomfortable. Their mother was not being the mother they knew, and no one voiced any ideas what to do about it.

As he gathered his dogs into the back of the car, Garret got his father aside. “What’s she like when we aren’t all here?”

“Crying, gets angry, calms down, gets mad again. The closets are all clean and well organized. Even the kitchen drawers. Lot of stuff went to a local thrift store our church helps support. She’s some upset now, but she’ll be okay.” He nodded. And nodded some more. “She’ll be okay.”

When Garret drove off, he wondered if his father was trying to convince him or himself. Or both.

Two people in two days throwing fits that were out of character. He was sure the other Jonah was the real boy, not the screaming, angry child he’d held in his arms. How to help Jonah? How to help his own mother? And what about Dinah? He’d seen her face yesterday, too.

The fear and confusion had been palpable. Successful business tycoon or not, she was one hurting human.
God, I know You have a plan, but since You put me in the middle of these situations, I’d appreciate at least a clue on how You want me to help; but no matter what, not make things worse.

And while You are at it, we do need another thousand for the remodel—at least
.