Heart's Safe Passage by Laurie Alice Eakes

Author:Laurie Alice Eakes [Eakes, Laurie Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042040, FIC042030, FIC027050
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

During her apprenticeship with Tabitha, Phoebe had seen a concussion like Mel’s. A farmer putting a new roof on his barn after a storm had slipped and fallen. The wife had called in Tabitha as the nearest person with any medical knowledge. Although she had applied cold compresses and tried to keep him from starving by spooning drops of broth into his mouth at regular intervals, no one could help the man. He needed a physician, but the nearest one resided twenty miles away and couldn’t leave his patients to tend to one man, who was likely to die anyway.

And he had. One night he simply stopped breathing.

Phoebe sat beside the bunk, holding Mel’s limp hand and stroking Fiona, who curled up beside her young master, keeping guard on Mel and refusing to leave for any reason. Phoebe prayed for Mel not to suffer a fate similar to that man. She was a mere child. A disobedient one, as she shouldn’t have been in the rigging at all. But she was also warm and amusing, smart and loving.

“And if she dies, Lord,” Phoebe murmured in the silent cabin, “Rafe will never trust in you or believe You love him.”

Worse, Rafe thought he was being punished, perhaps for his quest for revenge. Phoebe wasn’t certain, though, since he’d said nothing about abandoning his plans to destroy James Brock. The brig remained on her course. The sliced line had been repaired. Rafe was testing all of the lines for soundness after sitting beside his daughter’s bed for nearly six hours without a break in the tedium.

Phoebe moved in and out of the cabin, resettling Belinda in Mel’s box of a cabin, making sure everyone, including Rafe, had a decent noontime meal. Phoebe listened for complaints from Belinda, a dozen responses gathered on her tongue to shut up the younger woman, but that hadn’t been necessary. Belinda simply took her sewing on deck, and when the skies clouded and threatened rain, she retired to the stern cabin, where she sat sewing and gazing out of the windows. Phoebe hoped she was praying too, praying for Mel, praying for Rafe.

“But why would you use this child to punish him? And his wife. Dear God—” Words failed Phoebe. She didn’t know what to say, what she was saying.

She knew that Rafe needed to trust God regardless of what happened to Mel. But as she sat by the child’s bed hour after hour with no change in her breathing, not a hint of movement, Phoebe felt a quaking in her middle—the shaking of her own faith.

She shot to her feet and paced the bit of open space in the cabin. God had a purpose in everything. Everything worked together for good for those who loved the Lord and were called according to His purpose. But what of those who rejected God? Surely this couldn’t happen simply because Rafe was bent on his own revenge and not trusting in God to take care of James Brock in this life or the next.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.