From Roots to Sky
Books by Amanda Dykes
Yours Is the Night
Set the Stars Alight
Whose Waves These Are
NOVELLAS
Up from the Sea from Love at Last:
Three Historical Romance Novellas of Love in Days Gone By
From Roots to Sky from The Kissing Tree:
Four Novellas Rooted in Timeless Love
© 2020 by Amanda Joy Dykes
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2498-6
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
The author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency.
To all whose homes are havens of
hope, life, and refuge.
Contents
Cover
Books by Amanda Dykes
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Epilogue
Sneak Peek of Yours Is the Night
About the Author
Back Ad
God places the lonely in families;
he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.
Psalm 68:6
Prologue
DECEMBER 24, 1944
BATTLE OF THE BULGE
Dear Hannah.” Luke’s hands shook as he spoke the words and tried to form the letters on a torn paper sack. His breath puffed into the dark night, then dissipated into stars above, the sound of shells and shots ringing in the distance.
“Concentrate.” The word escaped raggedly. If that was what he sounded like, he must look worse than the piles of rubble peppering this landscape. Having your plane shot down in battle and falling from the sky into waves of snowy drifts would do that to a guy, he guessed.
He glanced around, confirming yet again that he was alone. Had been alone in the plane, as its lone pilot. So much was a blur—but yes, that part was clear.
Lights danced into his wobbly consciousness. A tiny Belgian village on Christmas Eve. Home fires burning, soft carols filling homes and chapels, and here he sat, half buried in snow with at least one broken leg and a smattering of other splintered maladies inside, leaning up against his impossibly cold plane. Or what was left of it. The remains of an old stone barn sat a stone’s throw away, its bent weathervane sprouting crookedly from the ground, creaking its own Christmas melody into the night. Its off-key groan, pitiful as it was, seemed to speak hope to him.
“Concentrate.” Again, through gritted teeth. He gripped the pencil and willed it to move. He may not be able to drag himself to safety. He might well die this night. But he would fight for his life with the weapons he had: pencil, paper, and a pen pal he’d never met, halfway across the world in Texas.
Where it was warm.
He fisted the pencil and forced his hand to form shaky letters. If he did not move, he would close his eyes. If he closed his eyes, he would sleep. If he slept, he would die.
D-E-A-R
H-A-N-N-A-H
The cold burned colder in the blur in his mind. He dug through the mire of his thoughts to the nearest clear memory. Danny Garland, tossing that ridiculous half grin at him before he’d left for duty six months back. Throwing him his notebook. “Hey,” he’d said. “You write to my sister while I’m out. Keep sending her those drawings—just till I get back.”
He had never come back. So Luke Hampstead, whose own last letter received had been of the “Dear John” variety, took up writing to a stranger in Texas . . . and kept it up when her brother no longer could, his life claimed by the war.
And now she would get him through this cold. Please, God . . .
He had never written her much in the chatty way. Only technical notes explaining his sketches, to keep her brother’s promise. But now . . .
“H-h-h-how are you?” He breathed the words, small talk freezing into ice and dropping to the ground. It figured. He never was good at small talk. He wrote the words anyway to the tune of shellfire and distant caroling.
It went on this way for hours, on into the silence. Fighting back the creeping fingers of cold with the warm promise of golden Texas light. When dawn crept over the jagged-tree horizon of the Ardennes Forest, Luke Hampstead beheld three impossible things . . . and laughed the prayer of a man so grateful his words had long, long run out.
The first impossible thing: his letter. Which he had labored over with more dedication and concentration than he could ever remember pouring into a single effort in his entire life . . . was a meager few sentences long, looked like a kid had written it, and bore the ramblings of a man convinced of his own demise. This pitiful excuse for a letter was what he’d exhausted his entire being to write?
The second impossible thing: his breath. Coming in shorter, quicker beats now—but coming still, its puffs illuminated by a sun he’d thought he’d never see again. He was alive.
And the third impossible, beautiful thing: a man and woman in humble farmhouse garb, running up the hill toward him with what looked to be a homemade stretcher. Gesturing back at a chimney, smoke curling out, with cinnamon on the air. The woman uttering something in Dutch to the man. “Leven. Leven.” Muttering urgent and low, like a prayer, then leaning in to hear his breath. Declaring, “Leven—Life! Amen. You are alive!”
If this wasn’t heaven, it sure felt like it. And if this wasn’t heaven . . . he sure had a lot of life left to live. And a letter to deliver . . . and a promise yet to keep.
one
MAY 1945
OAK SPRINGS, TEXAS
The farm truck that had picked him up somewhere on the road from College Station, Texas, groaned a metallic farewell. A cloud of dust and wayward bits of straw engulfed Luke. They billowed and settled, revealing a main street approximately twenty strides long with a looming gray water tower standing at the end. Oak Springs Welcomes You, it read in large painted letters, and looked for all the world like an overgrown tin man standing guard over the yellow brick road. Only instead of yellow bricks, it was sidewalk-lined asphalt with a lone blue model A pickup truck parked in perfect parallel with the curb.
“No place on earth like Oak Springs,” Danny had said.
“Really, Danny? Looks like you landed me in Oz.” Luke wished he could sock his friend on the shoulder right about now.
Unfolding his map, he looked from this spot—so small it wasn’t even named in writing—to the place he was headed for: New York. People’s hopes were high that the war would end soon, and the world of air travel was on the brink of big changes . . . changes he would be a part of. An honorable discharge followed by a long and confining rehabilitation, in which he nearly went mad, had set him ready to be back in the sky in a matter of months. This time, blazing the postwar trail in commercial flights, bringing war-weary Americans to places over the sea once more. Please, God.
Traveling to New York via Colorado with a detour to Oak Springs, Texas, may not have been the most expedient choice. And his wallet was nearly caving in on itself with emptiness because of it. But he had a delivery to make, and it was one that he’d agreed in his soul had to be made in person. Hannah Garland had saved his life, though she didn’t know it, and this one small thing was the least he could do to close this chapter of his life. Judging by the size of this town, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one woman. He had her address, of course, but no knowledge of where in this town or its reaches it might be.
He approached the first in a row of brick storefronts—Tom’s Diner. His stomach growled at the thought of a plate of steaming breakfast, though it was well past dinner, as proved by the locked door handle. Be back at sunup, the note on the door said.
Across the way, a tall brick theater with light-studded letters dubbing it the Orpheum Cinema touted in rounded black letters upon its marquis that Meet Me in St. Louis would open there this evening.
He passed a few other storefronts—Nettie’s Notions, its window display featuring fabric bolts lined up like so many books. The Chili Parlor, the air lingering with spices of cayenne and onion making its Closed sign a special brand of cruel. And the Ice Cream Emporium, where a lone busboy swept up the gleaming wooden floor inside.
Faint whistling sounded, and a
man whittling in a rocking chair a few doors down gave a wave. His denim jeans were dusty and his plaid shirt had seen some trials in its day, but they suited the man and his entire come-sit-awhile demeanor just fine. “Howdy, soldier,” he said, chewing on a long piece of straw. “Not from around here, are ya?”
Luke slung his kit bag over his shoulder and approached, taking the man’s proffered hand.
“No, sir, I’m not.” He wasn’t exactly a soldier, either, but didn’t want to correct a perfect stranger. His uniform made him conspicuous out here, he’d realized on the journey. But that empty wallet—it didn’t have any hidden stores for purchasing extra clothes. He had a few civvies, but they were worn and dusty from travel, and this delivery deserved every ounce of respect he could muster in his meager possessions.
The man squinted at him past bushy dark brows, inviting more of an answer.
“I’m looking for someone, actually. A Miss Hannah Garland. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find her?”
“Hannah Garland.” The man repeated the name as if it were the most perplexing thing on this green earth. “Now, what’ll you be wanting with Hannah Garland?”
Luke removed his hat, holding it to his stomach. “I knew her brother, Danny,” he said. “I just came to . . . to . . .” To what? Offer condolences? Which he’d already done by mail, when they’d first started writing. Deliver a letter on a paper-sack scrap that looked like a tot had written it? Which he could’ve done just as easily by mail.
He didn’t know quite how to explain to a stranger what he was doing here. Which was ironic, since Hannah Garland herself was essentially a stranger to him, too.
“Never you mind,” the man said, and the tangle of words fell away from Luke, as they always did when he got tongue-tied. “You might check inside,” he said. “They’re still open and might know Hannah’s whereabouts. Hard to keep track of that one.” He chuckled, shaking his head.
Luke studied the man, trying to grasp his meaning. The way Danny had talked about his older sister, she was a steady sort of presence who kept to home, holding down the fort there on the farm and keeping things running. He’d gathered from her letters that she was highly intelligent, and the sketches she had shared proved to be the careful work of someone extremely level-headed. The work of a mature soul, in both mind and body. Danny had always spoken of her with great respect.
“Yes, sir,” Luke said at last, and turned to go in the door indicated. Bresden’s Feed and Dime, the sign said, and a cardboard cutout of a man grinning over his tray of green-tinted 7Up bottles welcomed him inside. A bell jingled, and the warm scents of beeswax and sorghum-sweetened horse grain filled the place.
“Come on in,” a voice said, its source darting behind the storeroom door. “Got your snaffle bits up here, Jerry.”
But “up here” seemed to have four different directions, for the way the figure darted out of the storeroom, stuck a paper bag up in the air near the front of the store, ducked behind the counter to retrieve something, bumped her kerchief-covered head on the way back up, and was gone again in a flash.
He made his way to the front counter, which bore scratches and dings in its dark stain from decades upon decades of grain sacks and coin payments.
Reaching it, and with no sign of the proprietress, he cleared his throat. No response.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hey, Jerry, just take ’em. I’ll add ’em to your tab.”
“I, um . . .”
The kerchiefed figure emerged, bright cornflower-blue eyes glued to a paper she carried as she snapped a measuring tape absently in her other hand. Young—perhaps midtwenties—she wore denim overalls over a blue-and-white checked shirt like a modern-day Dorothy. She looked about as befuddled as if she’d just landed in Oz, too. That makes two of us, he thought.
She nearly bumped into the post between them, her hair gold as the wheat fields, a loose curl brushing her delicate chin.
“Watch out for the—” he started to say, but she dodged it without looking up.
“But that won’t work,” she mumbled to herself, tapping the paper with her thumb. “Assuming the width is twenty-six feet, then scaling it down to a quarter of the size would be . . .”
“Six and a half feet,” Luke said, at the same time as she.
“Right.” She slapped the paper on the counter. “Which won’t work with the current dimensions of the—” She snapped her attention up, as if realizing for the first time that she wasn’t alone.
“You’re not Jerry,” she said.
“No, ma’am.”
“Jerry doesn’t do numbers,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He didn’t know Jerry, but he wasn’t about to argue with the narrowed eyes that seemed to be doing ten thousand calculations a minute as she looked him over, uniform and all, as the color suddenly went from her face. She gulped.
“Closed,” she said, in nearly a whisper.
“I’m sorry?”
“We’re—we’re closed.” She scratched her head, flustered. Looked at the clock. Stacked her paper on top of ten others like it, each one worn but kept with care. She gathered them up, crossing her arms over her heart with them held close.
“Great gumdrops, I lost track of the time. Pete’ll have my hide for closin’ late again.”
Grabbing the paper bag containing the snaffle bits, she lifted the hinged portion of the counter, ducking beneath to come out and show the way to the door. When she reached it, she paused with her hand on the knob and turned to face him full-on. He paused, too, hat in hand. “If you could just tell me where to find—”
She backed up a smidge, eyes on his uniform again, and nearly toppled a display of Murphy’s Oil Soap bottles behind her. He dove to catch the wire rack before it hit the ground, realizing he’d braced her elbow, too, steadying her. He froze, and so did she. Silence ticked between them. As he took a step back and withdrew his hand to regain a gentlemanly distance, she rolled her shoulders forward as if to settle something within herself. At their feet lay her beloved papers, and Luke stooped to gather them.
Hastily she joined him, scurrying with lightning speed and pressing the papers close to herself once more, this time with corners pointed every which way and the crinkle of paper filling the space between them. She stuck out the paper bag to him and opened the door, practically pushing him out.
“But these aren’t my—”
She pulled the last remaining paper from his grip, with a quick smile said, “Thank you, sir,” and shut the door. But not before he glimpsed the stick-straight etching on the paper. His thoughts slammed as worlds collided.
That—that was his drawing.
One—or one of the many, rather—that he’d sent to Hannah Garland.
If the ridiculously straight lines and too-sharp angles didn’t give it away, his trademark signature in the bottom right corner did: Keep well, Hannah.
He never signed it sincerely. Too many people signed letters that way and didn’t mean it. He should know.
Echoes of the jangling bell laughed at him right along with the man in the rocking chair.
“Find what you were looking for?” the man said.
He glanced through the glass door at the whirlwind of a woman flitting about, turning off lights. She looked away at rapid-fire speed the one time she glanced over her shoulder at him. If this was Oz . . . was she Dorothy or the tornado?
“Y-yes,” he said slowly. “I believe I have.” And she was not at all what he’d expected. “But I’ll have to try again tomorrow, I think.”
“You think,” the man said, and laughed deeply. “Tell you a secret, son. There’s a time for thinkin’, and a time for actin’, and many a fool get the two mixed up.”
“That may well be, sir, but I’m afraid today is not my day for acting. Is there an inn or a boardinghouse here?”
A fresh wave of laughter from the man was less than comforting. “Sure is,” he said. “Down the road a piece. Take a right at the windmill. Keep going toward the big tree. You’ll see it. Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” he said, the paper bag crinkling in his arms and reminding him of its presence. With the store dark as night behind them now, he had no chance of returning the snaffle bits to tornado girl. “Do you know a Jerry?”