Broken Things to Mend Read online

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Author’s Message

  More Power of the Matchmaker

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Karey White

  Celia is in desperate need of a change--a change of scenery, a change of pace, and a complete redo of all relationships. Not knowing what else to do, she opens a map, closes her eyes, and lets fate decide her future. Then she packs her meager belongings and buys a one-way ticket to a little town on the fringes of Oregon's Deschutes National Forest called Sisters. She's wanted a family for years. Will she find one in Sisters?

  What Celia doesn't plan to find is a strange Chinese woman whose meddling ways keep throwing her in the path of a handsome, but reserved, forest ranger. But no matter how kind or dependable Silas seems to be, there are some things in Celia's past that neither of them can escape, and this time, the damage might be too much to mend.

  Broken Things to Mend

  Copyright © 2016 Karey White

  Cover Design by Rachael Anderson

  Cover Photography by Natasha Kimball

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. The opinions and views expressed herein belong solely to the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-941898-09-3

  Published by Orange Door Press

  For the lonely who are tempted to give up.

  Don’t do it.

  Hang on to hope.

  1982

  “No, no, Mr. Toller. You missed the road.” Pearl turned in the seat of Jack’s classic International pickup and pointed back at the road they’d passed.

  “Pearl, it’s getting late and I’ve got almost a hundred math tests to grade tonight.” Jack sounded impatient and Pearl could tell he’d had enough of this wild goose chase of a night. But that was too bad. She needed him to go back and turn down that road.

  After tonight he’d be happy he had listened to the old Chinese lunch lady.

  “Go back now. Turn down that road.” Pearl’s words sounded frantic, her accent more pronounced. Jack ignored her and kept driving. “I said go back. You must listen to me, young man. Go back now.” She emphasized every word with a staccato swat on his arm. She may have been a tiny woman, but she wasn’t afraid to give him orders.

  Jack slowed the pickup and pulled onto the gravel shoulder of the road. “We’ve been driving for more than an hour, and so far you haven’t shown me anything remarkable. I don’t even know what you’re looking for. I have hours of work ahead of me, it’s after nine, and I need to get home.” Jack turned in his seat and studied Pearl’s face. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

  Pearl ignored the question and turned in her seat to look back at the road they had missed. The antique comb that held up her dark hair caught the light of the dashboard. She slowly turned back around and lowered her voice. “You must trust me. Go back to that road.”

  She had doubted that Jack would listen to her in the first place. He had looked surprised when, a little after seven, he’d opened his front door to see the new lunch lady from Sisters High School. He’d only said a few words to her since school had started, and that had been when he arranged to pay for the lunch of a student whose father had lost his job. Standing there on his front porch, she had asked him to take her for a quick drive. There was something important she needed to show him. Had she not been a tiny, old, Chinese woman, he probably would have shut the door on her, but Pearl knew she seemed harmless, and she could tell he was curious. Now for almost ninety minutes Jack had been driving Pearl up and down the country roads between Bend and Sisters, while she waited for a warm tingling in her fingers and toes.

  Now she had the feeling and Jack wanted to quit. Why was it so hard for some people to let her help them? Why did so many have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their good fortune?

  When Pearl spoke again, her voice was calm and determined. “That’s the road. Go back to that road, Mr. Toller. You’ll see.”

  Jack sighed, put the pickup in gear, and completed a three-point turn. “I told you to call me Jack. And this is the last road I’m driving down tonight. If whatever you’re wanting to show me isn’t on this road, you’re out of luck.”

  Jack saw Pearl’s satisfied smile in the lights from the dashboard. She nodded and patted his arm, gently now. “This is it. You’ll see.”

  Jack turned down the road Pearl had pointed out. It was a narrow two-lane, its surface tar and gravel instead of the blacktop they’d just left. He wasn’t sure where it led, but he was sure it was taking him farther away from Sisters and the algebra tests waiting for his attention.

  Pearl leaned forward in her seat, peering out the windshield. The headlights illuminated the deserted road. Silhouettes of tall pines rose ominously on either side of them. Pearl shivered, in spite of the warmth in her hands and feet, and she knew she couldn’t let Jack abandon this outing.

  They followed a bend in the road, then Jack slowed the pickup. “What the devil?” he said under his breath. Pearl relaxed into the back of the seat, suddenly tired. An attractive woman stepped around the open hood of a Chrysler Cordoba. She held her hand over her eyes, trying to see beyond the glare of the pickup’s headlights. “Did you know she was here?” Jack sounded incredulous.

  “You should go help her,” Pearl said and closed her eyes. “I’ll wait here.”

  Every once in a while there was something about a match that stayed with Pearl and ate at her like a flat-headed borer beetle gnawing away at the leaves of a sycamore. Jack and Sharon were one of those matches. Pearl had already moved to Lake Oswego when they married, but over the next few years, the Tollers often came to her mind.

  Almost nine years after their wedding, she felt compelled to drive over five hours from Seattle, where she had successfully matched seven couples and was scheming to match a particularly stubborn woman with a wonderful, if slightly home
ly, man. Sharon had been thrilled that Pearl would stop by as she was “driving through.” They went to lunch at BJ’s and talked for over an hour. Sharon had told her they’d been trying for years to start a family and how desperately they hoped it would someday happen. Pearl didn’t tell her it already had.

  Eight and a half months later, Pearl went to the library and looked up the birth announcements for Sisters, Oregon. Sure enough, Jack and Sharon had welcomed a baby boy, Silas James Toller.

  Seven years later, Pearl was walking through a park in Northern California, timing a fabricated fall so that the two kind souls who would be closest to help her would be Mindy and Chip. They didn’t know each other—yet—but someday they’d tell their children they met helping a clumsy, old, Chinese woman when she sprained her ankle. A cloud passed over the sun, and a cold dread swirled around Pearl, blowing the images of Jack and Sharon’s faces into her mind. Ten minutes later, she limped away from a chatting Mindy and Chip and found a quiet corner. A couple of phone calls later, she was on the road to Sisters.

  Pearl sat in the back of the church as people walked by the two coffins. Her heart ached for the abbreviated lives of Jack and Sharon, but that wasn’t why she was here. Before the service started, Jack’s sister Nancy walked to the front of the chapel, holding the hand of a little, sandy-haired boy. They stood together as the coffins were closed, then turned to take their seats on the front row. Across the congregation of friends and family, Nancy caught sight of Pearl. She settled Silas beside another woman and walked back to where Pearl was sitting.

  “Please don’t leave when this is over,” Nancy whispered to Pearl. “I’d like Silas to meet the woman who brought his parents together.”

  That was the day Silas met Pearl. Aunt Nancy would tell him the story many times but it would be seventeen years before Silas would meet the old Chinese woman again.

  When other passengers asked Celia what was taking her to Sisters, Oregon, she lied.

  “I have family there,” she told the grandmother who sat down beside her at a stop outside of Chicago.

  “Oh good. I was hoping you weren’t one of those free spirits who think this is a good way to see the country. Nuts if you ask me.” She twirled the fingers of her wrinkled, blue-veined hand by her ear in the universal “crazy” sign. “It’s not safe for a young lady to travel alone, especially if you don’t have anyone waiting at the station for you. I’d hate for someone to take advantage of you.”

  Celia didn’t tell her that someone already had.

  The grandmother slept most of the way to Bloomington, her purse clutched tightly on her lap. When they pulled up to the bus stop, she leaned across Celia and waved out the window to a young mother with two small children. “That’s my grandson’s wife. She takes such good care of me when I visit her. You’d think I was her very own grandma.”

  Celia watched the young woman guide her children to the front of the bus, envious of the excitement on everyone’s faces. Before she stood to greet her family, the woman patted Celia’s arm. “Be careful, dear, and don’t talk to strangers.”

  A knot formed in Celia’s throat as the old woman opened her arms to the waiting family.

  To the bedraggled young mother who boarded the bus in Booneville, Missouri, Celia said, “I’m visiting a roommate from college.” The mother, barely older than Celia’s twenty years, looked wistful at the thought of carefree, college days. She bounced her fussy baby in her lap as the bus moved toward Salina, Kansas, where she would meet her husband who worked on an oil rig. Somewhere near St. Joseph, the young mother asked Celia to hold her baby while she went to the back of the bus to “take a leak.” When she returned to her seat thirty-five minutes later, Celia had soothed the baby boy to sleep.

  “How’d you do that?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “Maybe you should keep him. He likes you better’n he likes me.”

  “No, he really doesn’t. I can’t keep him,” Celia said, as though the woman had been serious. She carefully handed the baby back to his mother and turned toward the window to discourage further conversation.

  “Wave goodbye to your new friend,” the young mother said, wagging her baby’s hand as she moved to the front of the bus in Salina.

  It was almost midnight when a man boarded the Greyhound in Denver and took the seat next to her. His caustic cologne fought valiantly to mask the smell of cigarettes and unbathed body. He waited until the city lights no longer illuminated the interior of the bus before he leaned across the armrest and suggested that with the low lights and sleeping passengers, they could have themselves a little fun.

  “I’m going to visit my husband,” Celia said, and edged closer to the window to put more space between them.

  The man leaned far enough into Celia’s seat for his arm to touch hers. “Husband, huh? Maybe he should put a ring on that pretty little finger of yours before he lets you outa his sight. Or maybe there ain’t no ring after all.”

  “I lost it,” Celia said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her panic.

  “Uh huh. I’ll bet you did.” His voice was no longer flirty and suggestive, but hard and mean.

  Celia reached for her belongings beneath the seat in front of her and stood. “Could you excuse me?” Her voice shook as she clutched her backpack and stepped around him. She hated that her legs brushed against his knees. Celia took an empty seat closer to the driver. She remained awake throughout the night, afraid the man might follow her.

  No one sat beside Celia from Laramie to Burley, Idaho, where a blonde woman with two-inch, dark roots boarded the bus. She surveyed the other passengers for several seconds then settled into the seat next to Celia. She turned her red-rimmed eyes and bruised cheek away and opened a book. When she hadn’t turned a single page between Burley and Boise, Celia knew the book was an excuse not to engage in conversation.

  The book hadn’t been necessary.

  Celia stared out at the sand-colored land dotted with sagebrush and thought of the framed Ten Commandments that had hung in the living room of Jed and Myra Hundley’s house, her second foster home. Since she was lying about herself instead of bearing false witness against her neighbor, would God give her a pass? Probably not.

  Celia had been sitting in the church youth circle when a cute boy had leaned over and asked why she was staying with the Hundley’s. “Myra’s my aunt,” Celia had lied. The boy’s mom asked Myra about it in a phone call the next day, and in turn, Myra had asked Celia.

  “I didn’t want to tell him I was a foster kid.”

  Myra had put her arm around Celia’s shoulders. “I can understand that, but God doesn’t say ‘tell the truth unless it’s embarrassing.’ He loves the truth and he hates a lie. It’s important to him because he is the author of all truth. Do you understand?”

  Celia had nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she understood. Why would God care if she wasn’t hurting anyone? Why would he want everyone to know what a freak she was?

  Celia had been placed with the Hundley’s a few weeks before she turned thirteen, and even though they were still getting acquainted, Myra had made Celia a birthday cake, the first one of her life. It had been covered with little blue forget-me-nots because “no one should be forgotten on their birthday.”

  The Hundley’s attended church every week, and the first thing they bought Celia was a dress, so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in the Lord’s house. It was a yellow dress with tiny white flowers and a lace collar. It was the prettiest thing Celia had ever worn, and it was the reason Celia still loved the color yellow.

  The second thing they bought her was her own Bible. It even had Celia Edwards engraved on the front in gold. Every evening, after supper, Jed led them in Bible study and family prayer. Myra taught Celia how to pray, so she could take her turn, reminding her to be grateful.

  “You know you have a lot to be thankful for, don’t you?” Myra asked.

  Celia shrugged.

  “Honey, you have a smart mind. I saw the re
port cards in your file. Almost all A’s. And with so much going on in your life, too. And you should be thankful for your bravery. You’ve got all kinds of courage. Mrs. Dimper told me how you took care of your mom while she was sick, and how you called 9-1-1, and how you held your mother’s hand so she wouldn’t be afraid.”

  Why did everyone talk about her mother being sick? She wasn’t sick. She was a junkie. If she was going to die, why couldn’t it have been from a heart attack or cancer destroying her insides instead of a needle in her arm and her nose constantly bleeding? Why couldn’t it have been some heartless disease that stole her away instead of her mother choosing drugs instead of her daughter?

  Celia didn’t like to think about that awful night—her mother’s hand gripping hers so tightly she could feel the bones rubbing together, the red and blue lights making frantic patterns on the dingy walls, strangers poking more holes in her mother’s arm and pounding her chest as they asked Celia what her mother had taken. Celia didn’t know.

  “Get the girl outta here,” someone had said. At first an officer who was chomping loudly on her gum gently pulled her by the arm, but when Celia wouldn’t let go of her mother’s now flaccid hand, the woman gave her arm a painful yank.

  “You’ve got to come with me. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay,” she said through gritted teeth. Celia could see the piece of gum wedged between her teeth at the corner of her mouth and knew everything would not be okay.

  Maybe she had been brave, but it was difficult for Celia to be grateful for anything that happened that night.

  Myra had taught Celia about gardening, and together they had cared for a little vegetable garden in the back yard because “planting a garden is a sure way to show God you have faith in him.” She lived with the Hundley’s for almost two years. They had treated Celia with kindness, and she had dreamed of someday becoming their real daughter. She imagined Jed and Myra giving her a new Bible. This time the name on the front would be Celia Hundley instead of Celia Edwards.

  Celia had cried herself to sleep for weeks when they had tearfully told her Jed was being forced to transfer to Atlanta, and by law, they couldn’t take her with them.