excerpt
She bent her back to the task again, covering the seeds she had just
planted with the rich loose loam. As she worked she let her thoughts
drift. As usual they returned, like a dog gnawing on a bone, to both
Rachael and Millie Harper. Tyne had tried, over and over, to leave
them in God’s hands. But time after time, she had taken them back
to worry over them herself, as if she could do better than God could
in making things right for them.
She felt a sudden longing to talk to the one friend who had been
her closest confidante since the day they entered nurses’ training
almost twenty years earlier. Maureen Hall, better known as Moe to
her classmates, continued to be a constant in Tyne’s life, although the
years had separated them in distance. Moe and her husband Ken lived
in the city of Calgary, where they operated their own thriving plumbing
business. Moe had left her work in the pediatric department of
the Holy Cross Hospital before giving birth to her first child. Now
Ken and Moe had two – Elizabeth and Brian – and Tyne wished the
families could get together more often.
She decided she would call Moe tonight when the kids had gone
to bed, and the house was quiet. By that time, she suspected, the Hall
household would have settled down as well.
Again she glanced at her watch. It was almost half past three and
the girls should be coming down the lane at any moment. She had
expected Rachael to hurry the twins on their way when they saw the
threatening sky. The older girl was as aware as anyone of the fury of a
prairie storm, and Tyne trusted her to be responsible.
Gathering her tools, she threw them in the wheelbarrow just as
the sky lit up with a fork of lightning. As she hurried to the garden
shed, she looked towards the lane. Relief flooded over her when she
saw Susie and Katie streaking towards the house almost as fast as the
lightning bolt. A thunderous roar overhead put even more wings to
their small feet.
Manolis Aligizakis 