“Your father was a good man,” he added. “It hurt all of us to lose him. He was one of the best emergency-room doctors we ever had in Jacobs County, even though he was only able to work for a few months before his illness forced him to quit.”

She smiled sadly. “It was a hard way to go, for a doctor,” she replied. “He knew all about his prognosis and he explained to me how things would be. He said if he hadn’t been so stubborn, if he’d had the tests sooner, they might have caught the cancer in time.”

“Young lady,” Jake said softly, “things happen the way they’re meant to. There’s a plan to everything that happens in life, even if we don’t see it.”

“That’s what I think, too. Thank you for talking to her,” she added hesitantly. “She wouldn’t let me learn how to drive, and Dad was too sick to teach me. I don’t really think she’d let me borrow the car, even if I could drive. She wouldn’t get up early for anything, especially on a Sunday. So I had no way to get to church. I’ve missed it.”

“I wish you’d talked to me sooner,” he said, and smiled. “Never mind. Things happen in their own time.”

She looked up into his blue eyes. “Does it...get better? Life, I mean?” she asked with the misery of someone who’d landed in a hard place and saw no way out.

He drew in a long breath. “You’ll soon have more control over the things that happen to you,” he replied. “Life is a test, Michelle. We walk through fire. But there are rewards. Every pain brings a pleasure.”

“Thanks.”

He chuckled. “Don’t let her get you down.”

“I’m trying.”

“And if you need help, don’t hold back.” His eyes narrowed and there was something a little chilling in them. “I have yet to meet a person who frightens me.”

She burst out laughing. “I noticed. She’s a horror, but she was really nice to you!”

“Sensible people are.” He smiled like an angel. “See you.”

He went down the steps two at a time. He was a tall man, very fit, and he walked with a very odd gait, light and almost soundless, as he went to his car. The vehicle wasn’t new, but it had some kind of big engine in it. He started it and wheeled out into the road with a skill and smoothness that she envied. She wondered if she’d ever learn to drive.

She went back into the house, resigned to several minutes of absolute misery.

“You set that man on me!” Roberta raged. “You went over my head when I told you I didn’t want you to bother with that stupid church stuff!”