Remember (46 page)

Something about Laura Jo’s death made her long for Landon even more than usual. His year in New York had just begun, and already it felt as though he’d fallen off the face of the earth. He hadn’t called, but that didn’t surprise her. He had much to learn in New York and a schedule that would keep him almost constantly on the run.

Ashley headed into the living room and flipped through a scrapbook she kept on her coffee table. Halfway through she found the picture she was looking for. It was of Landon in his uniform, holding a beaming Cole on his hip. Ashley had taken the photo one day late last summer just after Landon had started back to work. Before September 11. She and Cole had stopped by the fire station for a visit, and she’d taken her camera along.

Now she looked closely into the photo, staring at Landon’s eyes. Even in the snapshot, she could see they were deep and full of goodness. Were those the eyes that would haunt her when she was old?

Her gaze moved onto Cole, her precious sunbeam. How happy he looked in Landon’s arms, how natural and right. Would the three of them ever be together?

Be with them both, God. Watch over Landon in New York. Keep your hand on my Cole as he grows. And if it’s your will, please bring us back together again someday.

It was late, but there was only one thing Ashley wanted to do, one thing that could allow her to vent the feelings welling within her. She crossed over to her studio, pulled out her paints, and propped up the picture of Landon and Cole beside the easel where she could see it. Then she began to paint, creating an image of the two people she loved most with emotions that lay deeper than the Grand Canyon. With each stroke, she felt herself painting their faces across the canvas of her soul, where she could see them even decades from now.

One day—no matter what happened between them in the future—she would give this piece to Landon. She would let him know it was her best painting ever, the work she was born to create.

Not because she’d grown as an artist, but because Landon had led her back to God. And God, in all his grace and mercy, had done two very miraculous things with the events of the past year.

He’d taught her the importance of having something to remember, a saddle to shine. Then he’d done something she hadn’t thought possible.

He had taught her to love again.

More about the Baxter family!

Please turn this page for a bonus excerpt from

RETURN

the third book in the

REDEMPTION SERIES

by Karen Kingsbury with Gary Smalley

Chapter One

Reagan Decker’s hands shook as she picked up the telephone and dialed.

The number was so familiar once, back in a time that seemed forever ago, before her world tilted hard off its axis and stayed that way.

She waited, her heart pounding in her throat.

One ring . . .

What will I say? How will they take the news?

Two rings . . .

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Baxter?” Reagan froze.

“Yes?” A slight pause. “Can I help you?”

“Uh . . .”
She doesn’t recognize my voice. I must be crazy to call after so long
. “This is Reagan. Reagan Decker.”

“Reagan . . . my goodness. It’s . . . been a long time, dear.”

Luke’s mother sounded strange, as though the mention of Reagan’s name had cast a shadow over the moment. Reagan considered saying a quick few words and then getting off. But that would never do. This was a call she’d had to make for one reason alone.

She couldn’t hide from Luke Baxter forever.

“Mrs. Baxter, I need to talk to Luke, please.” Reagan squeezed her eyes shut. A year earlier she’d been quick-witted and outgoing, but not anymore. The spark was gone from her voice. Luke’s mother had to notice. She drew a determined breath. “I have something to tell him.”

* * *

His past had sprouted legs and was chasing him.

That had to be it. Luke had no other way to describe the breathless anxiety marking so much of his time. Sometimes he could almost hear footsteps pounding the ground behind him, and on days like that he would even turn around. As though he might see a person or a being, whatever was after him. But no one was ever there.

The feeling was always accompanied by memories, so Luke finally convinced himself the thing chasing him was nothing more ominous than his past.

A past that colored today and tomorrow and kept him inches ahead of a suffocating fog, a fog in which his new freethinking life was all but impossible.

At first the feeling had hit him every few days, but now it was almost constant. This morning it was worse than ever. Throughout Economics and Political Science and now in Modern History, it made Luke so restless he couldn’t concentrate.

The professor was diagramming something on the board, but all Luke could see were images of himself and his family the last time they’d been together before September 11. Little Maddie holding her hands up to him. “Swing me, Uncle Luke, swing me.” His parents arm in arm in the background. “How’s school, Luke? Have you heard from Reagan?”

With broad strokes, the professor ran his eraser over the board, and the images in Luke’s head disappeared. The man turned to the class and started talking, but Luke heard Reagan’s voice instead, the way he’d heard it that awful night when everything changed forever.

“It’s okay, Luke; I’ll call him back tomorrow . . . it’s okay . . .”

But she never had the chance.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut. He was ready to move on, right? Wasn’t that what he’d been telling himself? Then why were these memories dogging him so? With all the freethinking he’d been doing, all the clubs and organizations Lori had introduced him to, he should be consumed with life as it
was
. Not as it had been.

The professor changed his tone. He was saying something about foreign arms deals, but Luke wasn’t paying attention. A conversation kept playing in his head, the one he’d had with his mother a few weeks ago.

“You think you have it all figured out, Luke, but the Hound of Heaven isn’t going to let you go this easily.”

“The Hound of Heaven?” Luke hadn’t even tried to hide his frustration. His mother knew how he felt about God, so why couldn’t she let it go?

“The Spirit of God, Luke.” Her voice held no apologies. “When someone strays from the Lord, it’s usually the Spirit, the Hound of Heaven, that hunts him down and brings him back.”

The Hound of Heaven, indeed.

As if God—if there
was
a God—would care enough about Luke Baxter to chase him. Luke tapped the eraser of his pencil on his notepad. No, that wasn’t why he felt this way. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the professor. What was the man babbling about? And why was everyone else taking notes?

A tingling worked its way down his spine, and he shifted in his desk.

Maybe it was culture shock. After a lifetime of holding to one set of beliefs, he’d done an about-face, and some kind of fallout was bound to come. That explained the pounding in his chest, the breathlessness that sometimes hit him square in the middle of a college lecture, and the constant stream of memories. Memories that had a vise grip on his mind and soul.

Sure, it was a setback. But no need to tell Lori. She’d only blame it on the mind control his family had held over him for so many years. And he didn’t care to discuss mind control with her. He didn’t like the way it sounded. For all their shortcomings, all their narrow-minded ways of thinking, his family had
not
performed mind control on him.

Not hardly.

He’d been a willing participant, and though their beliefs were off base, his family loved him back then. They loved him still. That much he was sure of. But he was just as sure that he wanted to move on, to explore a world without absolutes and—what was it Lori called it?—an antiquated morality system? Yes, he was ready to move away from that.

“Mr. Baxter, I expect you to answer me the first time I call on you.”

Luke jumped in his seat. Two students sitting near him stifled their snorts of laughter. “Excuse me, sir?”

“I
said—”
the professor’s voice dripped sarcasm—“perhaps you could explain the significance of specific arms deals made in the late seventies?”

“Yes, sir.” Luke did a desperate search of his mind and came up blank. His fingers trembled and he coughed to buy time. “Sir, I don’t have that information at this time.”

Another bout of muffled laughter.

“Very well, Mr. Baxter; then may I make a suggestion?” The professor lowered his glasses and peered hard at Luke.

“Yes, sir?” Luke’s throat was dry. It was all he could do to keep from running out of the room.

“Either get more sleep or get out of my Modern History class.” The man raised his voice. “Is that understood?”

Fire filled Luke’s cheeks. “Yes, sir.”

When class was over ten minutes later, Luke was one of the first to leave the room. Not only because he didn’t want any further discussion with the professor, but because he still needed to run, to keep moving away from whatever was chasing him. His past maybe, or his prior convictions. Perhaps his unfamiliarity with all he’d surrounded himself with.

But definitely not the Hound of Heaven.

A Word from Karen Kingsbury

Those of you who journeyed with us through book one,
Redemption,
know how this series got its start. When Gary Smalley contacted me about writing fiction with him, I was thrilled.

When he said, “Think series,” I went blank.

For weeks I prayed about the series idea, asking God to show me a group of plots that would best exemplify the kind of love taught and talked about by Gary Smalley and the staff at the Smalley Relationship Center.

Ideas would come, but they seemed too small for something as big and life-changing as the dream Gary and I had come to share.

Then one day I was on a flight home from Colorado Springs when God literally gave me the Redemption series—titles, plots, characters, themes, story lines. All of it poured out onto my notebook while goose bumps flashed up and down my spine.

The basic heart and direction of the series remain true to that early vision. However, as the Baxter family has come to life on the pages of these books, their problems have changed and adapted to fit their personalities, and certainly to fit the landscape of events happening around them.

We finished writing
Redemption
just about the time terrorists attacked American soil on September 11. Originally, that first book would have covered a time span that included that infamous day. Very quickly, the editors at Tyndale came together and agreed to make a change. Instead of ending in the spring of 2002,
Redemption
would end in the spring of 2001. And that set up the rich blend of tragedies and conflicts you just read about in book two,
Remember
.

What a privilege it was to write about a time that touched us all so deeply. The stories of loss and desperation that came from those events will forever be with all of us who witnessed them. Like you, I will always see the events of September 11 as clearly as I did that morning when I watched them unfold from my living-room sofa. What happened that day changed us all. It seems only right that it changed the Baxter family as well.

After Gary spent time helping people at Ground Zero, his insights and experiences opened many possibilities for our novel. Experiences with the people, places, sights, sounds, and smells of the cleanup effort in New York City. And insights into what it means to remember the important things in life.

I pray you saw the beauty of remembering at work as Kari worked through her grief and waited for God to lead her forward. Memories played a significant role in Ashley’s treatment of the Alzheimer’s patients and in Landon’s search for his missing friend. Something beautiful and rare happens when we allow memories of days gone by to teach us lessons for today.

I hope you will take from the pages of this book one of Gary Smalley’s teachings: the importance of remembering. Tuck it into your back pocket, and use it sometime soon in your own life. Certainly it will be a theme you see again as the Redemption series continues.

Some of the mysteries laid out in the first book have been solved now. You know that Kari and Ryan will marry soon and that Erin is open to working on her marriage. But what about Luke and Reagan? And what about Ashley and Landon? Will Landon ever move back to Bloomington? Will Brooke and Peter finally figure out what’s been troubling their small daughter or openly embrace their rekindled beliefs?

The Baxters are people like any of us. They live by faith, but they also stumble, and sometimes they stumble hard. As I mentioned before, the Redemption series will read like many of my other novels. The characters will be flawed and their problems the same kinds you and I face, despite our belief in God.