Good Hope Road

Table of Contents

 

 

“A story at once gentle and powerful about the very old and the very young, about the young woman who loves them all. In Kate, Lisa Wingate has created a wonderful character.”

—Luanne Rice,
New York Times
bestselling author of
True Blue

 

“Wingate’s touching story of love and faith proves the old adage that we should take time to smell the roses and try to put our modern problems in perspective.”

—
Booklist

 

“Stop what you are doing and experience
Tending Roses
. . . a rich story of family and faith.”

—Lynne Hinton

 

“You can’t put it down without . . . taking a good look at your own life and how misplaced priorities might have led to missed opportunities.
Tending Roses
is an excellent read for any season, a celebration of the power of love.”

—
El Paso Times

 

“This novel’s strength is its believable characters . . . Many readers will see themselves in Kate, who is so wrapped up in her own problems that she fails to see the worries of others.”

—
American Profiles Weekly Magazine

 

“Get your tissues or handkerchief ready. You’re going to need them when you read Lisa Wingate’s book
Tending Roses.
Your emotions will run the gamut from laughing loudly to shedding tears as you read the story.”

—
McAlester News-Capital & Democrat

NAL Accent

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

First Printing, April

Copyright © Lisa Wingate, 2003

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: Wingate, Lisa.

Good Hope Road / Lisa Wingate p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-11868-9

1. Women—Middle West—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3. Middle Wsst—Fiction. 4. Tornadoes—Fiction. I. Title.

 

PS3623.I66 G’.6—dc21 2002033812

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, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

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To my grandparents
Elvera and Norm,
Who made us believe
In love at first sight,
Who showed us young folks
How to dance a soft shoe,
Who taught us that
True love lasts a lifetime,
And beyond. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

On any journey, it is the unplanned happenings that make the trip unique. The past year since the publication of
Tending Roses
has been a jump completely off the map. I have so many times been helped along by the grace of friends, the kindness of strangers, and the guidance of those who knew the world of book publishing much better than I did. I could write a volume about the good deeds and happenstances that have led to the publication of this second book,
Good Hope Road.
But that is another story, so I will settle for this quick list of wonderful people to whom I am indebted for many reasons.

My thoughts, prayers, thanks, and gratitude go out to the many readers of
Tending Roses
who took the time to write letters and e-mails, to share emotions, struggles, prayers, encouragement, and to share the book with others. There are no words to express what your letters meant and what your recommendations meant to the success of the book. I am honored beyond measure, and truly blessed.

My heartfelt thanks go out to friends who helped with the research and editing of
Good Hope Road
—in particular Amanda Carter, for incredible proofreading; to Dr. Phil Webb and Pam Slagle, for invaluable medical consultation, and for not slapping me when I confessed that, what I know about emergency medical treatment, I learned from watching soap operas. Thank you also to my treasured friend and favorite computer girl, Mandy Koger, for using your talent and expertise to create the Web site,
www.LisaWingate.com
.

My gratitude once again goes out to my wonderful agents, past and present, Lisa Hagan of Paraview, and Claudia Cross of Sterling Lord (Literistic). Thank you for holding my hand, yanking it when needed, and guiding me through the strange and awesome publishing process. Thank you also to the fantastic staff at New American Library, and especially to my editor, Ellen Edwards.

Thank you to all the booksellers, librarians, and book clubs who have so graciously invited me for book signings and speeches for
Tending Roses.
My gratitude also to all of the newspaper and television personnel who gave coverage to the book and to the story behind it. You have made this year everything I hoped for, and more than I ever dreamed. Special thanks to those booksellers who devotedly recommended and shelved
Tending Roses,
including Michelle, Lavone, Verna, Sharon, and many more, but especially Christopher Cleveland, for being the first bookseller to read a premarket copy of
Tending Roses
and telling me there was a big audience out there for the book. What an incredible kindness that was.

Last, thank you to my family, to my aunts, uncles, brothers, parents, and grandparents on both sides for helping to drum up publicity, for housing me when I came for book signings and speeches, and for each buying at least one copy of the book. Sometimes it helps to come from a big family!

My love and thanks also, and as always, to my husband and my two sons. You are my heartbeat, the three of you, the answer to my prayers, the thing I treasure most. How blessed we are to have each other.

 

 

T
here is a moth in a cocoon outside the window. It has been there for months, twisted by the wind, dampened by the rain, a reminder that the windowframes should have been cleaned and painted last fall. It is spring, and there is a tiny hole in the end of the cocoon, a small probe pushing through, sawing back and forth, struggling to free the creature inside.

The moth has labored for hours, and only now has it pushed two legs through the hole. Inside in the darkness, does it know why it must struggle? Somewhere in the mass of cells and neurons that make up its tiny body, is it aware that the struggle is God’s way of pumping fluid into its wings? If not for the struggle, it would come into the world with a swollen body and flightless wings. It would be a creature without strength, unable to fulfill its purpose.

I wonder if it can sense the warmth of my hand on the other side of the glass as night falls and another spring storm blows in.

On nights like this, I do not sleep. I sit awake and listen as the storms howl through the valley. Like the moth, I have emerged in a place that was once beyond my imagining.

Outside, I hear a gust of wind, and I remember. I remember where I have come from, and it is as if every blessing in my life has been showered anew around me.

I fall to my knees, and I thank God for everything. Even for the wind. For the fragments of my life that survived it, and the fragments that didn’t, and the things that were changed forever. . . .

 

On the afternoon of July 29, the entire town of Poetry, Missouri, was cast to the wind. The town rained down around me for what seemed like an eternity as the tornado receded into the sky and disappeared, spitting out what was left of Poetry.

I stood watching, thinking it was the most horrible, awesome sight I had ever seen, unlike anything I had experienced in my twenty-one years of living. If Daddy had been home he would have yelled at me for not having sense enough to go to the cellar. But once you start watching something so enormous and so vile, it pulls you in just as surely as if you were caught in the vortex itself. I don’t know what it is that makes people want to look into the face of evil. . . .

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” I remember saying. My mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Only a few minutes before, I had been fixing dinner for Daddy and my younger brother, Nate, listening to an old Bob Wills record, and wondering if the coming storm would bring rain. I was thinking about leaving again—having that fantasy where I packed Mama’s old suitcase and went . . . somewhere. The dream always came wrapped in a tissue-paper layer of guilt, so that I couldn’t see the contents clearly. Perhaps that was a merciful thing, because I knew Daddy and Nate couldn’t get by without me.

I heard branches slapping against the house as if the oak tree knew about the dream and was angry. Outside the window, a car sped by, a black Mercedes going too fast on the gravel, like it was running from something. It fishtailed back and forth on the curve, throwing rocks against the yard fence before it straightened and rushed onward.