Darkness had settled around camp, and he still wasn’t home yet. We all anxiously lifted our eyes to the hills around us, searching, all the while pretending like we weren’t. For a second, the thought crossed my mind that he wasn’t coming back, and I quickly admonished myself for living in such fear. The voice of fear was one of the hardest voices to squelch in my spiritual journey, rearing its ugly head whenever I thought I’d gotten rid of it for good.

Willow sought me out as soon as we had gathered around the fire. No matter what happened, each day ended with a fire gathering. “I’m so nervous. What if something happened to him?” she whispered, so nobody else would hear, since fear was contagious. “There are so many bears out in those woods. I just keep picturing him out there bleeding to death from being attacked. Did you ever see that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he gets into a fight with that huge bear? What was it called?” She raised her arms and pretended to be a bear.

I giggled at how ridiculous she looked. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Anyway, that’s all I keep picturing.”

The energy around the fire was nervous and tense, like it was whenever we were waiting for Ray to return. We were never the same when he wasn’t with us. Beth was describing a way she’d found to decrease the flour we needed for bread when she stopped midsentence and yelled, “There he is!” as she pointed to a figure moving through the clearing.

You couldn’t make out any of his features, but there was no mistaking Ray’s gait, and nobody besides him would be traipsing out in the forest at this time of night. We jumped up. Someone took off running toward him, and before I knew what was happening I was being carried along with the group. We picked up speed as we went, laughing and giggling like schoolchildren being released at recess. We swarmed him and passed him around the group, hugging and kissing him and each other. Nervous chatter followed us back to the fire. We all took up the positions we’d been in before, eager to hear what he had to say, hoping he wouldn’t wait until the morning to share it with us.

“Are you thirsty? Can I get you something to drink?” Bekah asked. Even though her belly swelled with pregnancy, she never tired of helping others. We had tried to get her to rest once it was clear what was going on with her, but she never would. The pregnancy had come as a huge surprise, since nobody knew she and Sam had been hooking up.