Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel by Ruth Glover Page A

one price of being in the ministry and going far from home that I hadn’t been prepared for.
    It is my intention to come to you very shortly. I’m sure Molly will understand . . . .

    Would she? Would Molly understand? Did anyone ever understand the delay of dreams coming true?
    Parker threw down the pen, put his face in his hands, and groaned. A double grief was heavy to bear: not only the loss of his father but the loss—in a way—of a wife. Who knew when the marriage would take place now?
    Molly had been patient during his personal battle against uncertainties concerning his “call”; she was patient during the delay until winter should be over and the parsonage put in livable condition.
    Parker thought now of a conversation they had had.
    “I’ll live there as it is,” she had maintained stoutly. “After all, my parents and many like them built structures not so different when they first came west. In fact, I’m told I lived in one—”
    “And that’s one reason I can’t move you back into one, Molly love. After years of work and sacrifice, you’ve finally gotten into a decent home. It wouldn’t be fair—”
    Molly, admittedly often short of patience, had made an impatient gesture. “Oh, Parker, those things don’t count, not if we can be together.”
    “I can’t give you much, Molly,” he had said, and he was infinitely more patient, “but I won’t move you into a shack. And that’s about what it is—crude, chinked, unpainted, small. Somehow, to me, it would put a shadow—maybe even a strain—on our happiness right from the beginning. It would be like being in a box together. In winter we wouldn’t even have the yard to stretch out into.” And Molly knew he spoke the truth.
    “A log house isn’t going to be any palace, heaven knows,” he had concluded, “but it will be much better than a shack.
    “Think what it would be like,” he had continued, “to set up tubs and do a laundry in that small space. Think what it would be like to string lines of clothes around in there.”
    It wasn’t just her own happiness Molly was thinking about. It troubled her, many a long winter evening, to think of Parker, alone and lonely, not a sound to break the heavy silence aside from his own hum or the crackle of the fire. More than one housebound settler, usually a woman, had gone stark, raving mad because of the isolation and the barrenness of days, trapped inside a small square of sod or of logs with nothing to do, no one to talk to for days, weeks, months at a time.
    But Molly—though her dearest dream and fondest hope was to be the wife of Parker Jones—knew when she was defeated, and she gave in with good grace.
    And now it appeared that she would be told the spring wedding was not to take place. Parker Jones envisioned staying at least six months with his mother and sister, getting things in order, settling them physically, financially, mentally for the absence of the men in their lives—their husband and father, their son and brother.
    And the Bliss church? Would it hold the position open for him? Would it agree to a substitute? And could one be obtained that easily—some student, perhaps, who was willing to take the time out of his preparation for the ministry to get in a little hands-on experience?
    No wonder the lonely silence was broken by the heavy sounds of Parker’s groaning.

    Picking up his pen, Parker finished his letter, assuring his mother of his presence very soon and that he would keep her informed of his plans.
    He turned to the mundane tasks at hand, clearing away the remains of his supper. Having learned from experience and knowing full well that uncared-for dirty dishes would be there to mock him in the morning, he filled a dishpan with hot waterfrom the stove’s reservoir, rubbed a little Fels Naptha onto a dishrag, and proceeded with his household tasks, proficiently if not happily.
    In the custom of the bush, he went to bed early; it saved coal oil. But before