With Endless Sight (Crossroads of Grace, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: Crossroads of Grace

Pittman, Allison K. K.

 
9781601420121: With Endless Sight (Crossroads of Grace, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1601420129 ISBN 13: 9781601420121
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The satisfying conclusion to the Crossroads of Grace series, With Endless Sight offers a rich story of family, new beginnings, and the freedom that grace can bring.

Belleville, Illinois and Wyoming Territories, 1861

Behind every story of loss is the promise of grace...

Born into a life of privilege, fourteen-year-old Belinda never questions her security, even as she leaves Illinois with her family to discover new adventures in the Oregon Territory. But when disaster falls, Belinda is left wounded, weak, and alone. Her faith in God gives her the only strength she knows in a harsh new world.

Belinda’s journey takes her to a snow-covered mining camp and a red-roofed brothel in the Wyoming mountains, but not before she must spend a lonely winter with the man who took away the life she knew. Throughout the grief and hope of a strange land, Belinda must decide if her faith is big enough to allow her to forgive.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Allison Pittman is the award-winning author of Ten Thousand Charms and Speak Through the Wind. Before pursuing a career in writing, Allison spent seventeen years teaching high school English. Now a full-time writer, Allison serves as the director of her church’s Theater Arts Group ministry. She lives in Texas with her husband, Mike, and their sons.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I wasn’t asleep—wasn’t even pretending to be—when my cousin Phoebe slipped into my room. She settled on the edge of my mattress, creating such an imbalance that I rolled toward her, giggling as our bodies collided.

“Shh!” Phoebe hissed into the shadows. “Do you want to wake the whole house?”

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“Do you have everything?”

I nodded. She gripped my hand with her soft, pudgy one and led me across my own bedroom floor. I held my other hand in front of me, gingerly searching out the familiar obstacles, and stopped when my fingers brushed the corner of my bureau.

“Wait.” I slipped my hand from her grip and took hold of the brass pulls of the top drawer. It opened smoothly, silently—trademark of a quality piece of furniture, Mama said—and I had to stretch up to my tiptoes to feel inside.

Normally I would be sifting through rolled stockings, cotton chemises, and ruffled pantalets, but all of those things were packed away. Now the drawer was empty, and after just a few searching pats my fingers closed around the stump of a tallow candle and the gilded handle of the mirror I had received as part of a matching set for my twelfth birthday.

“Let’s go.”

When we came to the top of the stairs, I transferred the stub of candle into the hand that was holding the mirror and used the other to grip the banister. I’d been running up and down these stairs at least twenty times a day for most of my life, but never in the dark. I gripped the varnished wood—slick enough to slide on if Mama wasn’t around—and used my toes to search out the edge of each step before moving down.

Phoebe was behind me, breathing down my neck, occasionally tapping her knees into my spine to hurry me along. Once safely on the ground floor, she brushed past me and took the lead, her white gown iridescent in the night shadows of my family home. It never occurred to me at the time to wonder why I was following her, why she took the lead in navigating through our front parlor, our morning room, our receiving hall. I suppose her frequent visits—sometimes lasting for weeks on end—made her feel less like a guest than did my other cousins, who were all gathered in what used to be our formal dining room.

Where twelve perfectly carved and upholstered high-backed chairs once stood, a litter of bedrolls and blankets covered the floor. When Phoebe and I walked into the room, the bundles sprang to life, and six girls were on their feet, hair streaming unplaited down their backs. They burst into whispered anticipa-
tion, then exchanged even louder admonitions to be quiet until Phoebe had to raise her voice to achieve silence.

“Is everybody ready?” Phoebe said. “Do you have your candles?”

“Yes, yes!” they chorused, first quite loud, then softer in response to Phoebe’s scolding finger. They held out little stubs of tallow for Phoebe’s approval.

“Come on, then.”

The pack of little girls—the youngest, Anne, not quite eight years old—followed us out of the dining room and into the kitchen. I handed Phoebe the mirror and candle, reached into the box on the shelf above the stove and took out a match, and drew it swiftly across the striking surface attached to the wall. The sulfurous odor lent an additional air of mystery to our little adventure, and the girls let out a collective gasp and shiver at the ordinary spark and light. I touched the flame to the stub of candle Phoebe held, then brought the match to my lips to blow it out.

“No,” Phoebe said.

“You can light the other candles off this one.” I was not happy about being in a power struggle in front of these younger girls.

“Each candle must have its own flame.” Her voice took on a deep, earthy quality, and I could sense the excited shivers of my younger cousins.

“It’s going to burn my fingers.”

“Only if we waste time arguing about it.”

“So we’ll stop arguing.”

I gave a decisive snap of my wrist, extinguishing the flame. The only light in the kitchen came from the candle Phoebe held close to her face, her pale skin now ghostly, her blond hair transparent.

“You’re going to ruin everything.” She shouldered in close so the other cousins wouldn’t hear.

“We shouldn’t be doing this anyway, and you know it,” I said, matching her tone. “Mother would skin us all alive if she knew.”

“That’s why nobody is going to tell her.” She slowly turned and faced the group. “Nobody’s going to tell anyone.”

The cousins took a collective step back, twelve wide eyes nodding in pale faces. Then she turned directly to me. “Now, what can we use to break the mirror?”

“Isn’t that bad luck?”

“Only if you believe it is.”

“I got this for my birthday.”

Phoebe leaned in close. “Listen, Belinda, you chicken out on me now, and I’ll march right upstairs, wake your mother, and tell her this was all your idea.”

I snatched the candle out of her hand and used it to light my search for any leftover tea towel and some heavy utensil not yet confiscated by a needy neighbor. I quickly found a scrap of cloth crumpled on top of the counter and a rusty potato masher left to languish in a drawer.

I offered these to Phoebe, who took them with the solemn air of a presiding priestess. As the girls craned to see over her shoulder, she placed the mirror on the kitchen counter, covered it with the cloth, and broke the glass with one decisive whack of the potato peeler’s handle. We all jumped back at that moment, as if expecting the shards to fly straight into our faces, but surged forward again when Phoebe removed the towel to reveal the broken mirror.

She gingerly poked around and handed me the largest piece.

“For your soul and your soul mate,” Phoebe said in that eerie voice she had affected just for this evening. She repeated the gift and the incantation until each—even the youngest—held a sharp-sided piece.

“Now, whoever goes first will have to be very, very brave. I’m sixteen, the oldest, but I can’t go because I'm holding”—she looked at me—“the first flame.”

“So Belinda’s next,” my cousins chorused, pointing at me. “She’s thirteen!”

“No! I, um…I gave the sacrifice of the looking glass.” I tried to sound as eerily authoritative as Phoebe. “In fact, I can choose not to participate at all.”

Before Phoebe could argue, Ida—just a month younger than I—stepped forward, holding out her candle stub. “I’ll go.”

“Very well.” Phoebe squared herself in front of Ida. “But remember, you must follow the instructions exactly. First, light your candle.”

Ida touched the black wick of her tallow stub to the flame.

“You must stand on the top step with your back to the cellar and say, ‘I descend into the darkness to see the face of my true love.’ ”

We all shivered at the word darkness.

“Then,” Phoebe continued, “you walk down the steps backward to symbolize that you are able to trust yourself. You mustn’t try to steady your steps by clinging to the wall or else you will never fall in love. Hold the candle and mirror in front of you. Do not look down or your husband will find an early grave. Do not...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1601420129
ISBN 13 
9781601420121
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland