The Wonder of You (34 page)

Probably it always would.

What a fool he’d been to think he could outrun God. To believe that finally God had turned his direction with the face of forgiveness or even mercy.

His family legacy decreed the truth. A man didn’t walk away from God’s call without repercussions.

Roark had known it was early when his uncle Donovan answered while eating his morning grapefruit. Aunt Gisela hummed in the background, joining him when Roark started with “I’m coming home.”

She’d always treated him like a son. And she gave him the sympathy a son should have. “She doesn’t deserve you, Roark. I’ve always thought that.”

He didn’t argue, despite the truth. “I know it’s probably too late
 
—”

“The board has preliminarily approved Ethan to take over. But come home and we’ll sort it.”

“I don’t care what I do, Uncle. I’ll be a bellboy. I’m just . . . I’m done.”

“Jolly good news, Roark, even if it has been painful. It takes a few lemons to find the right one.” He kissed Gisela, who smiled. “When will you be back?”

“I have to give Kathy notice, so it might be a couple days or more.”

“Smashing. Cheerio.”

As it was, Kathy had let him go without a fuss. He’d put in a call to Jensen, gotten his voice mail, debated calling Darek, and
decided against it. So he’d booked his flight, packed up, cleaned his flat, given the key to Kathy, and left.

Old habits. He fell into them easily. Leave; don’t look back.

Except this time it hurt to breathe.

He slowed as he came down the hill, the aerial bridge in the Duluth harbor shiny in the night. The city served as a sort of corridor to the rest of civilization, the world beyond the enclave of the forests of northern Minnesota.

Next to him on the seat, his phone buzzed. He slowed, then pulled into an overlook and picked it up. “Hello?”

“I dearly hope that Amelia is with you.”

Darek? “What are you talking about? No, of course she’s not with me.”

“She’s missing. She left this morning to take some pictures and hasn’t returned. We have no idea where she might be.”

It took a second for the words to register. “What do you mean,
missing
?”

“She took the Evergreen truck, and we’ve looked all over town, in all the places she likes to shoot pictures. Even called her friends. She’s . . . vanished. We had our family campfire and she never showed. We’d hoped she was with you.”

He’d hoped she was with him too. He glanced at the time. After 9 p.m. “I’m in Duluth.”

“What?” And then Darek sighed. “Okay. I get it. Really. I had just hoped that . . .”

Roark said nothing, watching the lights of a laker anchored offshore, like eyes in the darkness.

“Listen, I know it looks like she said yes to Seth
 
—”

“Leave it, Darek. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be there shortly.”

“You’re two hours
 
—”

But Roark hung up on him. He turned his Focus around.

An hour and a half later, he pulled behind the Java Cup, where Darek told him Seb and the EMS workers had assembled. Cars and trucks, parked at crazy angles, overflowed the lot. As Roark walked into the building, he locked eyes with Pastor Dan, giving a briefing at the front of the packed room.

Darek, John, and Max sat together at a table, dressed for the search with headlamps, rain jackets, backpacks. A water bottle hung from a loop of Darek’s pack, connected with a carabiner. A blanket stuck out from the top.

When Darek motioned him over, Roark sidled up behind him, listening to Dan.

“We’re not sure where to look. We know she went out to photograph
 
—she took her equipment with her. Grace and Ingrid seem to think she went inland, although it’s anyone’s guess. Right now, we’re looking for the green Evergreen Resort pickup. It’s getting late, so our best bet is to drive the back roads, see if we can spot her, hope she’s hunkered down someplace for the night. But there’s a lot of territory out there, so we’ll have to split up.”

Dan handed out maps, search grids. “I’ve separated us into teams. Seth, you and your group head east, on the county roads. Darek, you and your family head up the Gunflint Trail. We have others searching farther west.”

Nearby, Seth shook his head, seeming not to care that Roark had walked in. He muttered to his friend, “There are thousands of miles of back roads. We’re never going to find her. It would take an army, and we don’t have the resources for that.”

Roark leaned over to Darek. “What does he mean, we don’t have resources?”

“Searches cost money, lots of it, and we’re a small town. We can’t afford airplanes and SAR dog teams.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need them,” John said.

Except what if they did? Because according to Roark’s calculations, the night temps dropped to the fifties, even the forties in June in northern Minnesota, and who knew if wolves or bears or . . . ? Well, he didn’t exactly want to let his imagination run, but what if Amelia was hurt?

Yeah, they needed armies. Squadrons of airplanes, if the search went into daylight, and all the SAR canines he could find.

“This is not hard,” Roark said. He stalked outside, pulling out his cell phone.

Amelia was going to die in the woods, and no one would find her body. Ever.

Unless they decided to go blueberry hunting in the clearing overlooking beautiful Twin Pine Lake, exactly twelve miles northwest of her house, on the back roads where the gravel pit turned in and the caribou hiking trail led to the Twin Pine Point lookout.

Or maybe they could simply look for the carrion, the crows filleting her body.

Nice, Amelia. But she couldn’t help the thoughts of doom as she curled up in the darkness, staring at the faint light filtering through the ravine into which she’d fallen. Taken a header, really. The crevasse smelled rank, as if she might not have been the first to fall
 
—and perish
 
—in this gully. She’d landed so hard in the hidden ravine that she blacked out, and when she came to, the pain could double her over. In her ribs, her wrist, her knee.

She managed to push herself upright, the world churning
around her, and felt her head, where a bump rose above her hairline. Her fingers came away sticky and wet.

She crumpled back down, trying not to panic. Piecing it all together.

She’d been running for the trailhead. It happened so fast, the entire thing was a blur. She must have set some sort of land speed record as she sailed over the ground, through the brambles of blueberry bushes, away, just
away
from the rearing black bear.

A rearing
mama
bear . . . and her babies. Two cubs chomping down on the blueberry plants in the clearing. Ingrid’s favorite blueberry-picking spot and, of course, the best place to capture black bears.

Also known as Amelia’s award-winning shot.

She’d found a perch upwind
 
—a novice mistake in the woods, brought about by the fact that she’d been waiting for so long, the wind had shifted. That, and the distraction of a very vivid image of Roark, chasing her down the dock, his words churning in her mind.

I am the man you suppose me to be. But how exactly did you imagine I’d work the truth into the conversation?

Not a good defense, and she’d told him that. Now as she fingered her wrist, deciding it must be broken, she could admit that maybe the fact of his wealth
would
have changed her. She did look at him differently. Which frankly wasn’t fair.

It didn’t matter anyway because he’d already left Deep Haven.

And she was going to die in this ravine.

Alone. Her stupid self, trying to be amazing.

She’d found her camera in the darkness, not far away, and miraculously, it had survived the crash. Now she aimed it at the heavens, took a shot of the moon and stars, barely denting the
blackness of the ravine. Tears wet her cheeks as she reviewed the photo.

She began to click back through all the places she’d captured. Or rather, people. Roark birling and a couple of Seth too, during his hot saw. Darek and Roark working together, a clear sign of her family’s acceptance. Tiger and Ivy and the baby. The sailboat and the beautiful sunset, right before everything changed.

In that perfect moment, she’d felt as if she stood on the edge of her still-unseen future, Roark beside her, a hum of expectancy under her skin.

In fact, she knew the feeling: a stirring of something more, a taste of the epic, a glorious anticipation of the view just beyond the horizon. She’d felt it when she’d left for Prague.

Where sadly it had vanished.

Strangely, however, when Roark showed up on her doorstep, it seemed to reignite.

In fact, even now, she could taste it.

Wetness fell into her ears.

She kept scrolling back to shots of the lodge, her mother and Grace in the kitchen, Yulia in her apron, grinning as she licked a cookie beater.

Then the sunrise wedding. The family holding a picture of missing Caleb. Barb’s soft voice.
It wasn’t until I said yes, not knowing how I might find the strength, that I recognized Jesus holding me in the middle of the storm.

She flipped to the next picture: Esther and Mark kissing.

She had no doubt that God had sent Roark to Prague to save her. To hold her in the middle of her storm. But what if He’d also sent her to Roark?

What if Roark wasn’t the answer but a piece of a bigger picture
of what God wanted for her? And likewise, what God wanted for Roark?

I knew I was supposed to do something, that God was calling me to something bigger.
Roark’s words, but she lingered on them. What if God was still calling him?

I think perhaps, finally, God has given me another chance, because why else would He put you in my life, send me to this backwoods hamlet, but to tell me I can start over?

Amelia bit her lip, found it fat and caked with blood. She trembled, hearing her mother’s voice.
It’s not about what looks logical. Or even what’s in your heart. Amelia
 
—what do you hear God telling you?

Roark. It had always been Roark, a man who desperately wanted to follow God but feared he’d lost his chance.

Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed him away. When I asked You to decide, I should have listened not to my heart or my fears, but to You.

He’d asked her to love His Jonah back to his true calling.

Her
true calling.

Suddenly it all came into focus.

Amelia hadn’t
failed
in Prague. She’d simply smacked face-to-face with the truth. She’d always seen herself as that Bible smuggler, brave and adventurous. And maybe she would be. But she couldn’t do it alone. She’d gone to Prague brimming with her own confidence, her own strength, and fallen hard.

So God had sent Roark, His emissary, to show her the truth: she was never alone. Maybe she no longer had Seth. Or Roark. But she didn’t need them to be brave.

She simply had to look at Jesus. Who would show up. Who had always shown up.

Who, really, had never been away from her.

Amelia put the camera down and leaned back. The cool air in the ravine seeped over her body, had already started to turn her feet, her knee, mercifully numb.

Don’t sleep.
The thought ran over her, through her.
Don’t sleep.

She stared at the stars, which seemed to gather above her, winking.

The song arrived without effort, filling her head, as if a divine hand had pressed Play, and the words nourished her as the night deepened.

“Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
 
—Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”

A
S DAWN CRESTED
over Evergreen Lake, the gold rays leaking into the gray swell of darkness, Roark tried not to let his hope fade with the night.

Base camp had been set up at Evergreen Resort, where teams might assemble and fan out, based on Amelia’s projected path of travel. Darek and John had just returned, having driven a scenic road that overlooked a nearby waterfall. Meanwhile, others had checked out all the campsites, lakeshore landings, and even a few nearby hiking trails.

However, in the darkness, who knew what they’d missed. Sun would burn off the pervasive chill that embedded the night and give rescuers keener vision.

Roark wore his leather jacket, had changed into jeans and his
trainers and donned the cap Darek let him wear, but a shiver still blew through him, finding his bones.

Please, let her have survived the night.

He knew exactly who he wanted to beseech, but as the hours grew long, fury had banked his words.

Why, oh, why, couldn’t he learn?

God hadn’t sent Roark to Deep Haven to set him free, but to torture him. He’d never escape the belly of the whale.

Not even his vast resources seemed enough to pull him free.

During the night, he’d hired a fleet of private search planes to scan the back roads, the lakeshores. He’d hired search-and-rescue teams, sent them out with their dogs. And he’d taken out a PSA over the radio and local television station, alerting the public to her disappearance and asking for volunteers.

People began to arrive in the wee hours, and now the entire county seemed to have mustered up to find Amelia.

However, he’d started to realize that he could blow through millions at this effort and never find her.

Worse, God knew where she was
 
—but wasn’t telling.

“We have five private planes landing at the Deep Haven airport, and Dan is giving them search grids,” Seth said, coming up to Roark in the parking lot of the resort, wearing an orange-and-gray rescue jacket.

Somehow, in the middle of the night, Roark’s animosity toward the man had perished. He didn’t care who Amelia chose.

As long as she was alive to choose.

“Jake is searching this quadrant here.” Seth indicated the northwest lake area.

“What about the volunteers?”

“We’ve split them up, and they’re driving every road in the county.”

“And beyond?”

“We’ll spread out if we need to, but I can’t help feeling that she’s nearby. Just . . .” Seth turned away as if hiding a rush of emotions.

“You really love her,” Roark said quietly to Seth.

Seth looked at him. Frowned. “Yeah. She’s my entire life
 
—has been for years.”

Roark nodded. “We’ll find her.”

Seth drew in a long breath, folded the map. Shoved it into his pocket. “For the record, thank you for this. I know you love her too.”

“I do.”

Seth held out his hand, and Roark shook it, then let him go as he picked up a radio to check in with the teams.

Roark walked over to Darek, who cupped his hands around a mug of coffee his mother had brought out to him. “Where to next?”

“I don’t know. I’ve talked to my mom, trying to figure out their last conversation. She said it was mostly about you. Whether Amelia would forgive you.”

Roark couldn’t hear this. Not now. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t think she went to your apartment or even something silly like drove to Duluth to catch you, do you?”

“Do you really think she’d do that?”

Darek shoved a hand into his pocket. “No. She’s . . . she’s a Christiansen. Might suffer from a few pride issues.”

“Don’t we all.” Roark glanced away from him toward where Ingrid was wandering down the dock.

Something he couldn’t name seemed to nudge him to follow. Maybe it did matter what Amelia had said.

He followed Ingrid to the dock slowly, watching as she sat on the end, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The action
seemed so private, he nearly stopped. Would have if she hadn’t turned suddenly as if he’d made a sound.

“Roark.”

“Sorry; I
 
—”

“Come.” She patted the space beside her, and he obeyed.

He sat, his feet just above the water, and watched the mist rise off the lake. A water bug dragged a trail along the surface of the water.

Ingrid’s hand touched his and squeezed.

A crazy burning filled his eyes. “I just feel so helpless,” he said and tried not to hate himself for the way his voice wrecked at the end.

“We’re not helpless. We’re waiting. She went out to take that last photo, and while we don’t know where she is, God does. He sees our girl, and He’ll take care of her.”

“I wish I could believe that. I
would
believe that if it weren’t for the fact that this is my fault.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“It’s because . . . I love her. And whoever I love, God takes away. Wherever I go, He sends a storm, and the only way to escape it is for me to run. Keep running. God is again reminding me I failed Him.”

“That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard and a lie from the pit of hell.”

Huh?

He tried to pull his hand away, but she held on. “Satan wants you to believe God is vindictive and cruel. God is just, yes, but He tempers that with love. The Bible talks over and over about how He stays His hand, how He gives His servants chance after chance. It’s our pride that makes us believe God’s favor depends on us, on our actions. If that were true, that would make God an equation
 
—we obey; thus, He must love us. Or even that God does 90 percent of the work of salvation and we have to put in our 10 percent to reap
the fruit. But God is above the equation of our minds. He loves us simply because He finds joy in loving us. And no amount of our running, our disobedience, our mistakes will keep that love from us. God requires nothing from us but to turn and embrace Him.”

She still had ahold of his hand. “I don’t know why you believe you are not worthy of God’s favor, but I might remind you that God’s blessings fall on the wicked and the righteous alike. It’s our response
 
—our embrace or our rejection of those blessings
 
—that determines whether they bear fruit in our lives. Yes, you can walk away from God. But He will never walk away from you.”

She cupped his hand with her other. “You know what I see, Roark? A good man with a servant’s heart. The problem is that you want to serve God without having to interact with Him. I think you are deeply angry at God, and instead of blaming Him, you’ve blamed yourself. Told yourself that you’re not worth God’s favor. You want to be a good man, but your wounds keep you from trusting God. From receiving His grace. It’s time to turn around, receive the grace God wants to give you.”

Ingrid lifted her face to the morning, closed her eyes. “‘In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.’”

Roark recognized the passage, heard his father’s voice, picked up the verse from memory. “‘I said, “I have been banished from your sight . . .”’”

Ingrid gave him a soft smile. “‘But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.’”

She let go of his hand and got up. To his surprise, she pressed a kiss to his head, then walked away. However, she stopped at the end of the dock.

“Jonah’s prayer, in the belly of the whale. It’s never too late to say yes to God.”

Roark turned back to the lake, his breath caught in his chest.

Never too late . . .

He’d spent his entire life looking at God through the lens of his parents’ deaths, the last few years seeing God as an avenger, thanks to the hotel fire.

But what if God hadn’t forsaken him?

God requires nothing from us but to turn and embrace Him.

His breath grew ragged, his jaw tight.

Please.
He let the word break free inside, tried again.
Please, oh, God, help me not to cling to my pain, but to reach for grace. Save me from myself.

But even that prayer felt so . . . selfish.

Instead . . .
Please, God, find Amelia. Keep her safe. Bring her back to us. Whatever You require of me, I will do. What I’ve vowed long ago I will make good. Please, just save her.

Just save her.

He sat at the end of the dock, watching the fog burn off, and in his memories, his father’s voice rose again. Solid, reading the Bible at their kitchen table by the wan glow of the light.

“The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever.”

Except no, that memory hadn’t been at the table in Russia, but at the beach house in Spain. His father praising God even after he had left his life’s calling.

Or had he? Maybe Roark needed a different lens.

“But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

“Roark!”

Darek’s voice, then footsteps thundering down the path. “Roark, they found the truck!”

Roark scrambled to his feet and sprinted to the house, where Darek had already climbed into his truck. Roark jumped into the cab. “Where is she?”

Darek rammed the truck into gear, backed it out. Roark saw John and Ingrid getting into their vehicle as they pulled out.

“A local called it in to the police station. Found the truck at a gravel pit about twelve miles from here. It’s near Twin Pine Point.” He glanced at Roark. “Bear country.”

Of course. She’d gone after the final photograph for the contest.

Which she never would have entered had it not been for him.

Please, God. Whatever You want of me
 
—for her.

Darek fishtailed his way to the gravel pit, kicking up a cloud of dust, Roark holding on, trying not to urge him faster. Finally they slid into the drive, where they found a rescue truck, two more vehicles, and a small band of volunteers.

And Amelia’s truck.

Roark barreled out of Darek’s truck before it stopped. John got out next to him, and Roark asked, “Where does this trail go?”

“There’s a small grouping of cabins not far from here, along Twin Pine Lake, and the upper path goes to an overlook.”

“She’s at the overlook,” Ingrid said. “It’s my favorite place to hunt for blueberries.”

She hadn’t finished speaking before Roark took off up the wide, grassy path. About a hundred yards in, it veered to the left, to a
cabin set back from the lake. He turned the other way, kept running, Darek on his heels.

The path spilled out into a wide clearing, filled with brambles of blueberry plants, fallen logs, and a clear view of Twin Pine Lake.

No sign of Amelia.

“Amelia!”

His voice dissipated in the air. “Spread out,” he said to Darek, and now John, Ingrid, and the other searchers.

They began to walk through the brambles. “Amelia!”

Trees edged the clearing, the perfect hiding place for wolves or bears.

“There’s fresh bear scat over here,” Darek said, about twenty feet away.

“I found her jacket!” Ingrid stood on a fallen tree. “And the grass is trampled. I’ll bet she was here, waiting . . .”

Roark glanced at Darek, then at Ingrid, then at the trail. “If she was sitting there, and a bear came ambling up . . . why didn’t she run down the trail?”

“Maybe there was something in her way,” Ingrid said. “Like a cub.”

“Where would she run?” He looked toward the edge of the field. To the cliff.

No. Please.

Darek seemed to have the same idea. He started off at a run. “Amelia!”

“Darek, stop!” This from John, who stood twenty feet ahead of them. “There’s a ravine here. It’s hidden in the brambles.” He walked along the edge away from them. “It gets wider.”

Roark approached the ravine, a narrow slit at the top of the field, growing wider as he ran along it. Thirty feet down maybe,
darkness gathered at the bottom, along with boulders and debris. More brambles jutted from the edges. “Amelia!”

He heard Darek calling, all of them peering into the shadowy slit.

“Here! There are broken branches!” John, peering over the edge, got on his knees.

Darek ran up beside him.

“Do you see her?” Roark jogged to the edge. Here, it seemed the bottom might be even farther, forty feet, a desperate distance to fall.
Oh, God, please . . .

“I’m going down there,” he said. “Darek, give me your rescue pack.” Blanket, water, flashlight, first aid. Of course, in his haste Roark had left his in the truck.

Darek shrugged it off.

“Are you sure? Maybe we should wait until the rescue squad gets here,” John said, but he lacked conviction.

Thank God
 
—really
 
—Roark had learned how to climb.

“Get the rescue squad!” He turned himself inward to the cliff, stepped down.