Whispers from Yesterday by Robin Lee Hatcher Page A

companion, You were more than my sister. You were my friend. Why have you deserted me?
    But God hasn’t deserted me. Even in my fear and uncertainty, I feel Him near, offering comfort and courage. In my weakness, He is strong. His strength is perfect and His grace is sufficient.
    Esther

ELEVEN
    Karen paced the tiny parlor of the ranch house. Every once in a while, she paused and looked toward the front door, wondering what was happening in the bunkhouse between Dusty and Hal. Then she started pacing again.
    “Sit down, dear,” her grandmother commanded gently. “Your worry will change nothing.”
    “How can you not worry?”
    “The Bible says, ‘And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?’ So that’s what I try to practice. Not to worry.”
    “And you succeed?”
    Sophia shook her head. “Not every time. But the older I get, the more often I’ve seen the hand of God miraculously change circumstances and bring good out of all kinds of disasters.”
    “Miracles.” Karen’s tone mocked the word. “You and Dusty talk like they happen every day.”
    “They do.”
    She whirled around, ready to tell her grandmother she was either senile or a fool. One or the other. But something in the elderly woman’s expression stopped her.
    Sophia’s smile was tender, the look in her eyes slightly distant, as if she could see something Karen couldn’t. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee,” she said softly, more to herself than to her granddaughter.
    “And you can be at peace over Junkman’s pregnant girlfriend? And what about her father? Did you see the way he treated her? He called her a tramp. She’s only fifteen, for crying out loud.”
    Sophia sighed. “Fifteen. That young. I’d hoped I was wrong.” She sighed again, then added, “I’m not saying the days ahead of us will be easy. There are consequences for all of our actions, for the foolish choices we make when we insist upon our own way. But that doesn’t mean God won’t be there with us. It doesn’t mean He won’t forgive us and meet us at the point of our need. Jesus loves us.”
    “Oh, honestly,” Karen muttered before striding out of the house.
    Billy, Noah, and Ted were standing in the corral; their gazes were turned toward the bunkhouse. For an instant, she considered joining them. Maybe she could put their minds at ease. But she quickly discarded that notion.
    How could she ease their minds when she couldn’t ease her own?
    She took off in the opposite direction, walking down the dirt drive toward the highway. Miracles … Perfect peace …
    Right. Like such things existed in this world.
    Jesus loves us, her grandmother had said, and there hadn’t been a shred of doubt in her statement.
    Karen halted in her tracks, looked upward, and cried, “If You love us, then prove it. Find a solution to Patty’s problem, if You can.”
    She half expected a bolt from heaven to strike her dead.
    It didn’t.
    Of course it didn’t. God wasn’t interested in their problems. They were going to have to muddle through this on their own. They? As in, us? As in, me, too?
    Karen groaned and resumed walking.
    This was not her problem, she reminded herself. This was their problem—Dusty’s and Sophia’s and Hal’s and Patty’s—but not hers. She wasn’t anybody’s counselor. She wasn’t anybody’s friend or mom or sister or aunt. She had no words of wisdom to dispense to others. She wasn’t responsible for anybody but herself.
    And she had plenty of trouble trying to cope with that.
    “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be involved in their lives or in their problems. I don’t want to live on this falling-down ranch. I hate the sagebrush and the bugs and the snakes and the dirt and the wind. I hate it all.”
    So why didn’t she swallow her tattered pride, pick up the phone, and throw herself on Mac’s mercy? If she told him how miserable she was, he would pay for her transportation