The Wonder of You (24 page)

Uh . . . “Me either?”

“With the standing block chop, the goal is to cut away the scarf on each side until the block is severed. You’re in luck because technique and skill trump brute strength. I won two years ago, was runner-up the year before that. Seth, he’s all about the brawn in this event.”

He gestured to the ax. “That’s called a racing ax. It’s lighter than a regular ax and razor sharp. And
 
—” he smiled
 
—“it was my father’s.”

Nothing like holding the legacy of two generations in his hand. The hickory handle fit into Roark’s grip, and Darek showed him how to put both hands together at the end of the handle. Then he demonstrated his stance. “Everyone is different. Some like the wide stance; others like a narrower stance. I like to keep it wide so I can utilize the power in my legs and hips. Keep your knee back a bit so you can use your weight to distribute the power.” He took the ax, demonstrated the upswing.

The ax struck deep, smooth as butter into the wood. Darek stepped up, grabbed a marker, and drew four equidistant lines on the log. Then he drew an oval, centered on each side. “This is your scarf, where you’ll be chopping. These lines help you set your feet. If you line up exactly the same on both sides, you should have an even chop. This stance will also protect your leg in case you skid your ax down the stump.”

He demonstrated again, standing in position. “Now, the bigger the arc, the harder the hit. You want to reach back as far as you can, keeping your eyes on your target. If you’re casting a down hit, you let gravity do the work. Once it hits, pull the ax out, let it fall to the ground, then loop it back up and strike again. Think of a circle motion. When you’re striking an up hit, think of the ax like a pendulum. You’ll hit, pull it out, let it fall, then bring it back in
nearly the same place. You’ll repeat this technique for both sides until the block is chopped in half.

“You want to bend your legs into the up hit, stand tall for a down hit, getting above the block and using your shoulders to power into the strike.”

He handed the ax to Roark, who positioned his feet, then brought the ax down. It sat in the groove, about half as much as Darek’s strike.

“Don’t be afraid to really hit it,” Darek said. “We’re sort of conditioned here in the States, and maybe even Britain, to pull our punches. You don’t have to do that when you’re power chopping. Give it all you’ve got. I usually start with about four up hits, then two down hits, and I keep that rhythm as hard as I can, as fast as I can. It’s fun.”

Fun? Maybe it was as Roark threw his shoulders into the next hit. Chips flew as he sank the ax deep, then yanked it out. The rush of adrenaline burned through muscles he’d forgotten existed. “This could get tiring.”

“Good thing you have almost three weeks.” Darek stepped up to the wood again and explained the art of cutting scarfs, the way the underhand cuts should carve out trapezoid chips. “But the most important thing is to nail the technique before you work on speed.”

Roark tried the underhand cut. Realized that it took a bit more finesse to aim the ax in the right slice. “You can feel the weight of the ax head engage about halfway through the swing,” he said, giving it another go.

“That’s a good sign. Means you’re doing it right. Now, when you feel that weight, add a little whip action with your wrists and it’ll sink even deeper.”

He tried it, the ax sinking to the head. Darek made a noise of
approval. “By george, I think he’s got it. Give it a few more goes; then I’ll teach you about covering your corners.”

The wood came off in twenty-four blows, the top skidding into the gravel. Roark set the ax down, breathing hard.

“Not bad,” Darek said, reaching for another block. “If you can get it off in twelve, you’ll have a contending time.”

He helped Roark mark the wood, then sat on the bed of his pickup and directed, corrected, and encouraged as Roark attacked the block. “Nineteen. Better.”

The chops echoed through the pine trees into the sweet summer air. Roark’s hands burned, his shoulders cramping with the upper hits. He set the ax down again and took a breath.

Darek dug a cold can of Coke out of the cooler in the truck. He tossed the can to Roark, who opened it and drank deeply as Darek lifted another block.

“Not a lot of chopping at that prep school you attended?” Darek said, affixing the block. He marked it, then grabbed the ax.

“Eton. And no. We did some outdoor survival, but no lumberjack games. Cricket. Polo. Yachting.”

Darek attacked the block and had chipped out half of it in six blows. “So where’d you learn first aid?”

“My gap year.” He watched as Darek attacked the other side. He had the block apart in five more blows. “I went to Uganda to work in a refugee camp. They needed so much help, I got a hands-on course in basic triage. And I did a lot of nursing.”

“Where did sailing and Kilimanjaro fit in?”

Darek set up another block, this time handing the ax to Roark.

He stood, sized up the log, considering how to answer Darek’s question. He’d sealed the past inside so long; maybe he’d let a little of it leak out. He drew in a breath and landed the upper
hits perfectly. “I needed some space after an accident in my hotel. People died, and it was my fault.”

He arched the down hit, and it slid into the wood with a satisfying thump over Darek’s silence behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder. Darek seemed to be considering his Coke can. He looked up, met Roark’s gaze. “Keep chopping.”

Oh. He threw himself into another chop. “I just . . . I needed to get away, so I started traveling.” He cut out the corners with the next upper hits, and a nice wedge of wood fell out.

“New Zealand is pretty far from Paris,” Darek said.

Roark didn’t add that his uncle had a hotel in Wellington. Instead he threw down another blow and sliced out a hefty wedge of wood, feeling strong. “It wasn’t far enough.” He moved to the opposite side. “I could still hear the screaming, smell the smoke.” Could still taste what his arrogance had wrought. Feel the futility of trying to outrun God’s wrath.

“I’m sorry. I know a little about trying to run away from mistakes,” Darek said quietly. “Although if it was truly your fault, you’d be in jail, right?”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. “Right. I suppose that’s a bit overstated.”

For some reason, the quiet exchange loosed something inside. He placed the next two cuts fast and hard, then added two down hits. “I eventually headed to Africa. Decided I’d climb a mountain.” He surveyed the wood, then swung down with everything inside him. The top spiraled off. He looked at Darek. “That didn’t quite work either. I came back to Europe and ended up in Prague.”

“Where you met Amelia.”

“Yes. And for the first time, it felt as though I could finally start over. Stop running.”

Darek crumpled his can. “Evergreen Resort is a good place to stop running.” He took the ax from Roark. “I should know.”

It was the second time he’d dropped a bread crumb Roark desperately wanted to follow. Instead he said, “Why are you helping me, Darek? It wasn’t too long ago you might have taken that ax to me.”

One side of Darek’s mouth curled. He looked at the ax as if he might still be considering it. “You’re right about the hovering. We spend a lot of time in this family meddling in each other’s lives.”

“Some would call that caring.”

“We do too, but the fact is, we know each other so well, it’s easy to be cemented in by the expectations of the family. Seth is that expectation. He’s been in Amelia’s life so long it seems only logical that she would settle down with him. But you . . . you’re unexpected. You . . . see her. Not the Amelia we expect her to be, but maybe the Amelia who has been trying to break free. My mother always says that my sister is trying to escape our shadow. I think, in Prague, she finally did. And you were part of that.”

He walked over to the stump. “Besides, seeing your devotion to Amelia has made me realize something. Seth is smitten with the idea of him and Amelia together.” He looked up and met Roark’s eyes. “You’re smitten with Amelia.”

Indeed.

“Wait until she finds out you’re taking on Seth.” Darek wore a strange grin. “I can’t wait to see her face.”

“We don’t have to tell her . . . yet.” Even as Roark said it, warning flares lit in the back of his head. Still, set against his other secrets . . .

“Oh, I love it. We’ll get you into shape, then surprise her.”

Roark wanted to rewind, recast his words. “Maybe
 
—”

“Listen, I think we’re done here. Why don’t you come back to the office and show me what you mean by reservation software. You can stick around for dinner.”

“Uh, I’ve been invited for dinner to Jensen and Claire’s.”

Darek considered him, wearing an enigmatic expression.

“What?”

“I just put it together. Jensen’s your inside man. The one who convinced you to return, got you a job, fixed you up at the Java Cup. I was trying to figure out how you two met.”

“I got my own job, thank you. But yeah, Jensen suggested that maybe your bark was worse than your bite.”

Darek shook his head, chuckling. “He was always for the underdog.”

“I’m not the . . .” Okay. “Maybe I am.” The thought stirred him. He’d never, ever, been the underdog.

It felt . . . empowering.

“But not for long.”

“No doubt.” Darek was standing there, not moving, staring at the wood.

“What?”

“By the way, I did the count.” He turned to Roark. “Eleven hits. Lucky, maybe, but with a little practice, you might just win this thing.”

Then he clamped Roark on the shoulder. “Maybe we’ll even let you stick around.”

“Yeah, well, I might even be willing to stay.”

Jace’s words bugged Max more than he wanted to admit.

Stop trying so hard not to be happy.

Fact was, he’d spent so many years angry, so many more trying to pretend he didn’t care about happiness, that when he finally found it . . . he simply didn’t know what to do with it. It felt unwieldy. And he couldn’t trust it.

Not with so much stacked against him.

Max touched his brakes as traffic slowed along the Superior lakeshore, just north of Duluth. Two hours out of Deep Haven, and the Memorial Day weekend traffic had jammed the highways, probably doubling a five-hour trip. Now, with the sun tucked in for the night, the moon rose to watch him over the inky waves of the lake.

Who would have thought that a guy with his quirks, emotional barricades, and dismal future would find a woman like Grace to marry him? To love him, until death
 
—his death
 
—would part them?

Yeah, if he stripped away the guilt, the fear, even the anger, he could find happiness. Joy.

It simply didn’t look like the version so many people dreamed of. A family, grandchildren, a fiftieth anniversary, fading into the sunset.

But hadn’t he learned that a happy ending didn’t have to contain the same ingredients as others had?

Traffic finally lurched to a stop. Ahead, he made out a construction traffic light, burning red as the road narrowed to one lane.

Start trusting the life God is giving you.

Grace. And, yes, her sweet, nurturing heart that wanted to love a child.

What if he gave that to her? She knew the consequences. If she wanted to adopt a child, perhaps that was a gift he could give her.

The line of oncoming traffic passed him, and the light changed.
He followed the traffic in front of him, inching along as they crossed through the construction zone.

That gift started with telling her parents they were married. Tonight. He wasn’t going to wait a second longer to declare to the world exactly how blessed he knew he was.

Just for fun, he turned to the Elvis station. Sang along. “‘When no one else can understand me . . .’”

He didn’t hear the text come in, only found it a half hour later as he stopped to refuel. Grace, asking when he might arrive.

He texted his dismal ETA and ran into the convenience store, grabbed some chips and a soda, then hit the road again.

To more construction zones, spent with the entirety of Minnesota, who’d decided to head north for the weekend. He finally hit the hill above Deep Haven close to midnight.

He stopped again before continuing north to Evergreen, before he lost cell service.
On my way. See you in ten.

When Grace didn’t text him back, he feared that maybe she’d gone to bed.

He pulled up to the quiet lodge, the parking lot jammed with SUVs, glad to see that finally, the resort had hit its stride with twelve cabins occupied. He found a spot in the grass, climbed out, stretched.

The moon hung full in the sky, the stars so brilliant he could pluck them from the heavens. The scent of pine hung in the air, reaped from the shoreline on the opposite side of the lake, and the finest hint of campfire smoke evidenced a recent Christiansen family s’more fest.

After a winter of traveling, fans, interviews, and pressure, yeah, he could easily dive into spending the summer helping around the resort, cooking with Grace, and learning to live happily ever after.