Healing Hearts

Liam hesitated. “Of course you are,” he finally said.

Drake clenched his fists. “God is in control,” he whispered.

Liam didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe in God. And Drake hadn’t told him that he thought he’d seen an angel as the bull had hit him. In that split second, his life had changed. In that moment he realized that God was real, that He did care. God had saved him from his past transgressions, had given him hope…and a new life.

Drake didn’t understand why but he did believe God had saved him from certain death.

“Why didn’t He save you from this then?” Liam asked quietly. Before Drake could reply, he added, “I’ve got to go.”

And that was that. Liam walked out on him.

“Oh!” Tessa said coming back. “He’s gone. Well, let’s go see the rest of the house, shall we? Kellie? Make yourself at home. I was going to put you in the main room but Hubert has made a mess of Mr. Slater’s room. So I’m going to put him in there, okay?”

“Sí, señorita,” she said, and started unloading dishes.

“Dishes?” Tessa asked, her voice rising a bit.

Kellie grinned. “I have my favorite dishes to cook with. I hope you do not mind I bring my own.”

Put that way, what could Tessa say? “Of course not. If anyone comes to the door while I’m settling Mr. Slater, would you please handle them?”

“Of course, Miss Stanridge.”

“Drake. How hard is that to remember?” he muttered to the woman as she started steering him through the quaint little house. The tapestry on the floor was thin with age, probably having come with the house, Drake thought, glancing at it as she wheeled him over it and past a rolltop desk.

The furniture looked old and worn in, comfortable, lived in, he thought, unlike the newer furniture they had in his house.

“Right now you’ll have to share the bathroom with the rest of us. It’s down this hall here. Under the stairs. My room is upstairs. The other room down this hall is the catchall room. Uninhabitable.”

He saw a toad, two turtles, a hamster and a lizard.

Yes, he thought, doing a double take of the monster that walked across the floor into the catchall room, which was certainly a lizard—of some sort. “You like animals,” he commented.

Tessa chuckled. “Oh, my yes. That’s my hobby. I collect them. Fix them up and eventually let them go, except for my pets.”

“Is the lizard a pet?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“Alfred? Oh, well, I baby-sit him. A trucker down the street—Mr. McHugh—he and his daughter truck together and when they’re gone they need someone to watch Alfred. It’s usually a couple of weeks a month. But Alfred is well behaved. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Just the dog?”

She chuckled. He liked the way the woman laughed. He’d never met Tessa Stanridge before. He didn’t have children. He’d been told she was one of the new teachers at their local elementary school. She and two others had come to Hill Creek in the last few years. The town was growing.

Hard to believe, but it was. More and more people were moving out here. Escaping the big city, he supposed. The one he used to fly to every couple of weeks.

Until his accident.

He liked the way the woman smelled, too. She didn’t smell like alcohol and soap or of sterile hospital equipment. She smelled fresh and…earthy. She swayed as she walked. She didn’t have that brisk walk like the one a nurse or doctor had.

She wasn’t all business.

She was pleasure.

The joy in her eyes, the way her cheeks turned pink, the way she stopped to say a word to each animal she passed, that soft gentle voice. It soothed him.

“Again, Mr. Sla—Drake, I have to apologize. I’m normally more organized….”