it all. It was never easy. Of course Malcolm wouldn’t pick up the phone. He’d probably moved to Alaska. In which case she and the girl would pack up their things and get out of this homeless shelter on the first available bus back to the meeting point.
“Ross Malcolm, please,” she repeated.
“He’s not here. Can I take a message?”
“But he works there, correct?”
“Correct. He’s out of town. Can I help you?”
She sighed. One step forward, two steps back. “No. Can you give me a number where I can reach him?”
“Who is this?”
She hesitated. Best to go with the truth, now that she’d finally found someone who seemed to know something.
“I’m a friend of the family. I’m trying to get in touch with him.”
There was a pause. “If you give me your number I’ll have him call you,” the man called Harper said with equal parts cordiality and caution.
“If you would just tell me where he is, I’ve got news for him. About his daughter.”
“Daughter?”
The man sounded so flummoxed that Miriam gave up. “Yes, daughter. Condemn that man, I’ve tracked him all over the state and I’m done trying. You tell Ross Malcolm that Annie’s dead, and if he cares about the girl, he’d better get himself back here.”
She banged the receiver down on yet another pay phone, this one in the hallway of the shelter, and resisted the urge to shriek with frustration. Moses was so right. The government were all about hiding and obfuscation and preventing honest people from doing the right thing.
It wasn’t until she’d returned to the cots assigned to her and the girl that she realized she’d hung up before telling the Harper man where or who she was.
Just as well. Let Ross Malcolm try and find her for a change.
Chapter Five
“He asked you out?” Claire breathed in fascinated horror. “A real biker?”
Julia bent at the waist and began to brush her hair. “As real as they get.” The image of Ross Malcolm riding that machine past the bookshop was etched on her mind as permanently as the rhyme on Linda Bell’s fridge magnet. “How many bikers can there be in Hamilton Falls?”
“Not very many. This is a four-wheel-drive town if ever I saw one. So what did you do?”
“Do?” Julia straightened and flipped her hair down her back. Claire, standing at the mirror, tucked a few wayward strands into her own neatly braided bun. “I said no, of course. What do you think?”
“Well, of course you said no,” Claire said, lifting her chin to adjust the bow of her black silk blouse. “What I meant was, did he give you any trouble?”
“No. Just tried to talk me out of it. Good grief, Claire, there must be a thousand worldly girls in this town. Why couldn’t he pick on one of them instead of bothering me?” She took up a combat position in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to surprise her unruly red curls into a roll like Madeleine’s. She never stopped hoping that a few obedient hair genes might have been distributed to her as well. A modest, godly hair style—or the lack thereof—was the biggest cross she had to bear.
Claire met Julia’s eyes in the mirror. “Maybe he’s searching. Maybe he sees something in you that he wouldn’t find in a worldly girl.”
“Oh, my,” Julia murmured weakly. The roll sprang out from under her fingers and unwound itself down her back. He’d said he’d lost his wife. His eyes had confirmed it. Had she really been so self-centered that she’d mistaken a cry for help for interest in herself? She closed her eyes in shame.
“I’ve had total strangers walk up to me in the street and ask what I stood for,” Claire went on, pretending not to notice. “Don’t you think you should give him a chance?”
Nobody ever asked her things like that, but when she did get the chance, she’d blown it. “You think I should have gone out with him. What would the Shepherd say?” She gave up on the roll and began the same old boring French braid.
“Julia, for goodness’ sake, it was only coffee. It wasn’t like he asked you to something that would jeopardize your soul, like a movie or a dance.”
“But still…Elder’s Sister-in-law Spotted in Café with Biker. Try explaining that one to dear Alma Woods. She’d think I was condemned for sure. Not that she doesn’t think that now.”
“I know. I wore heels last Sunday and you should have heard her. But really, you wouldn’t need to explain a thing if it meant he came to Mission.”
This conversation was getting completely out of hand. “Speaking of which,” Julia said, snapping a covered elastic around the tail end of the braid with a sound of finality, “we’d better get going. Mission starts in twenty minutes.”
On Sunday evenings, Melchizedek presided at the hall, spreading the word of God to Stranger and Elect alike. As they walked in, Julia spotted Owen and Madeleine already in the front row.
“Madeleine is such an example,” Claire whispered to her. “Her service to God always comes first, doesn’t it?” The first Sunday after Ryan had been admitted to hospital, Julia had been prepared to take her sister’s place at the old upright piano for the hymns, thinking that Madeleine would be unable to do it. She’d even gone so far as to sit in the front row, closest to the instrument. But Madeleine, putting her own emotion aside for the sake of service to her Lord, had walked to the front and played as flawlessly as ever, even on “Suffer the Little Children.” And Julia’s gesture of help to her grieving sister had gone unnoticed. Which was just as well, Julia reminded herself. The sacrifices God valued most were performed in secret, anyway.
She and Claire seated themselves three-quarters of the way back with the young people. Julia barely had time to put her purse under her seat when Derrick sidled into the row from the other side and took the empty seat beside her. As Melchizedek announced the first hymn, she quietly put her hymnbook on the floor next to her purse and allowed Derrick to hold his for her.
No wonder everyone thought they were going to announce their engagement any day. Couples who were going together might sit side by side in Mission, but only the ones who were “serious” actually shared a hymnbook. If she wasn’t serious about him, she should never have allowed him to do it the first time. If she was, she should stop being so difficult and tell him so.
Unbidden, the image of Ross Malcolm rose up before her, all silver and shadow and pain. She couldn’t imagine a greater contrast to the man beside her. Derrick, his clean, gentle hands holding the hymnbook, was a true sheep, obedient and innocent. Ross? He was like a wolf, slipping from light into darkness and back again, stalking her for who knew what reason.
Or maybe she did know the reason. Julia bowed her head, convicted in her heart of her own guilt. She hadn’t opened her heart to the promptings of the Spirit when Ross Malcolm spoke to her. She had ignored his pain and thought only of herself.
Well, she was listening now. When you heard God’s
