A Stranger's Gift (Women of Pinecraft) Read online

  © 2011 by Anna Schmidt

  Print ISBN 978-1-61626-234-1

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60742-562-5

  Kindle and Mobipocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-563-2

  All rights reserved. NO part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  For more information about Anna Schmidt, please access the author’s website at the following Internet address: www.booksbyanna.com

  Cover design: Kirk Douponce, Dogeared Design

  Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, OH 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Hurricane Hester Headed for Sarasota

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Two

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Three

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  Dedication/Acknowledgment

  Blessed are the poor in spirit:

  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  MATTHEW 5:3

  For Ella & Grace.

  For Ivan & Merle.

  And with special gratitude,

  this book is also dedicated to

  Doris, Rosanna & Tanya.

  Part One

  When your fear cometh as desolation,

  and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind …

  PROVERBS 1:27

  I went to the woods because I wished to live

  deliberately…and see if I could not learn

  what [life] had to teach us.

  HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN: LIFE IN THE WOODS

  HURRICANE HESTER HEADED FOR SARASOTA

  Monster hurricane expected to smash Gulf Coast Florida within forty-eight hours.

  Hurricane Hester is expected to make landfall by late Friday afternoon. The dangerous storm is predicted to bring potentially devastating storm surges and dangerous high winds well in excess of one hundred miles per hour. Home and business owners are urged to secure all property and prepare to move inland as soon as possible. Once the hurricane makes landfall, the storm is expected to weaken, but there remains the strong potential for heavy flooding and tornadoes. As a precaution, those residents living inland near any body of water including creeks and canals are advised to be prepared to evacuate and stay alert.

  Chapter 1

  Wisps of Hester Detlef’s ebony hair escaped her stiff mesh prayer covering, tickling her face as she unloaded boxes of canned goods from the back of a van. In the Mennonite and Amish community of Pinecraft, within the greater borders of Sarasota, several women had formed a kind of bucket line to pass the boxes to other women waiting at a line of tables set end to end along the protected walkway of the shopping mall. The increasingly strong wind whipped at the ankle-length skirts the women wore, reminding them that in spite of the blue skies, a hurricane lurked just a few miles offshore. Hester had just received news that the entire Gulf Coast, from Fort Myers north to Tampa–St. Petersburg, was under a hurricane watch—meaning that within the next thirty-six hours, it was entirely possible that the storm could move into their area. But with the predicted storm stalled several miles offshore, things could go either way. The hurricane might simply have paused to gather strength before moving east. Or it could weaken to a tropical storm that would bring heavy rains and some wind but nothing like the devastation that a category three or four hurricane might deliver.

  “Hester? Shouldn’t you let someone else handle this and see to more pressing matters?” Olive Crowder was a large-boned woman of indeterminate age with a permanent expression of disapproval etched into her face. She had never married, and her constant companion was her younger sister, Agnes, a gentle soul who seemed immune to Olive’s generally sour demeanor. The sisters were dedicated members of the conservative Mennonite congregation where Hester’s father, Arlen, served as senior minister. While women did not usually assume roles of appointed or elected leadership in their church, Olive came as close as any woman ever could to having declared herself an elder of the congregation—the gatekeeper for all things traditional.

  Often when Hester was in grade school and other girls were busy learning homemaking skills, she had tested her teachers with her questions about why certain things happened the way they did.

  “But why?” she would ask when the answer she got was dismissive or unsatisfactory.

  It was that insatiable curiosity coupled with her stubborn determination to explore as much of God’s world as possible that made her stand out in a community where sameness was not only preferred but also expected. It was that same insatiable curiosity that had brought her under the microscope of Olive Crowder’s concern.

  “Getting these food goods sorted and packed is a priority right now, Olive,” Hester said, forcing herself to smile.

  “Well, you know best, I suppose. After all, you are the lead volunteer for MCC in this area.”

  The Mennonite Central Committee—or MCC—was a national organization dedicated to offering disaster relief, community development, and international aid with no concern for whether or not those who received that aid were Mennonite. The mission of the organization was to build a worldwide community of people connected by their love and respect for God, each other, and all of God’s creation. Following her mother’s death, Hester had put her career as a registered nurse on hold indefinitely and volunteered to manage the agency’s work in and around Pinecraft.

  “After all,” Olive continued, “Emma has gone straight to the shelters to oversee the work there.”

  Emma Keller had once been Hester’s closest friend, but the two of them had grown apart after Hester decided to attend nursing school in Illinois. Emma now held the position of local leader of the more conservative Christian Aid Ministries. CAM was the agency that Olive—not to mention several other members of Arlen Detlef’s congregation—had suggested might be a more appropriate venue from which a conservative minister’s daughter might pursue her desire to serve.

  “I understand your concern, Olive, and believe me, I would really love to be able to be in more than one place at the same time. So I am truly grateful that Emma and others have taken on other projects like preparing the shelters.” Hester turned back to her work. “With everyone doing their part, we should have things pretty well covered.”

  Olive stood rooted to her spot in the line of volunteers scowling down at Hester until Hester noticed that others were beginning to wonder what was going on. “Besides, Emma and I will both be attending the volunteer organizational meeti
ng at command central later this morning, so I’ll be sure to check in with her then. In the meantime, if you wouldn’t mind …” She handed a box of canned goods to Olive and nodded toward the woman waiting to receive them and pass them on. Olive’s lips thinned into a sharp straight line. “Just because you see this as your little hurricane, Hester, it would behoove—”

  “My little hurricane?”

  “Ja. Hurricane Hester,” Olive replied and then turned back to her work.

  Certainly Hester could see the irony of a hurricane with her name. Even before she’d learned that this season’s eighth hurricane was to bear her name, others had compared her can-do personality to the massive fury of a hurricane. She certainly did not aspire to be linked to something so destructive, but she had to admit that once she latched on to a cause that she believed in, there was no stopping her.

  As soon as the van was unloaded and the women began filling smaller cartons with a selection of canned goods, Hester retrieved her bicycle from behind the distribution center. Promising to return as soon as possible, she pedaled off toward downtown Sarasota. At the corner of Highway 41 and Bahia Vista, she waited for the light to change, tapping one foot on the ground as she balanced her bike. Her foot tapping was not an indication of impatience. She was simply filled with energy, ready to face whatever Mother Nature might bring in the hours and days ahead. Hester Detlef was like a warrior prepared to go into combat.

  She couldn’t help but smile at that thought. Her Mennonite faith had taught her to be peace loving and to avoid conflict, but there was indeed a battle coming in the form of a hurricane that bore her name. The only question was where the storm would focus the brunt of its attack.

  Hester had lived her entire life in this area, and she knew that the city of Sarasota with Pinecraft in its midst was an unlikely target. Protected by a line of barrier islands, the mainland rarely suffered a direct hit. Most hurricanes weakened over land so that by the time the storm passed over the islands and reached the mainland, it would likely be demoted to a tropical storm. And because the Amish/Mennonite community lay another five miles inland, it was even less likely that her friends and neighbors would suffer direct damage. But Pinecraft’s position on Philippi Creek always carried the threat of flooding. If the hurricane hit shore from a certain direction, it could push waters inland, and she and her neighbors living along the creek would be forced to move to shelters. Whatever the storm’s path, it was due to make its move within the next thirty-six hours.

  The light changed, and she pedaled on. Down Bahia Vista to Orange Avenue, past the beautiful Selby Botanical Gardens and around the curve where the road ran parallel to the bay. How she loved this part of the city. As a girl, when her friends were busy tending kitchen gardens or joining their mothers for quilting bees, Hester would slip away to wade in the calm clear waters of the bay.

  She never tired of observing the wonders of sea life she saw there—jellyfish and sea anemones that looked like transparent floating flowers and the occasional and rare live horse conch, its outer shell black and almost indistinguishable from the beds of oyster shells that at low tide clacked like castanets. Sometimes as she waded through ankle-deep clear water, she would spot a flash of orange as vivid as the skin of a tangerine and would carefully turn the blackened conch shell over to reveal the strikingly colorful animal coiled inside. To this day, seeing a seashell that still housed a crab or sea animal made her smile and, as the old adage stated, was all the assurance she needed that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. But she had no time for wading this day. She was already late for her meeting.

  John Steiner leaned in closer to the battery-powered radio on the kitchen counter as it crackled and wheezed out the latest weather update. “…Hurricane watch …Prepare for evacuation of barrier islands and bay-front homes and businesses….”

  Reports from early that morning had the hurricane stalled offshore and unlikely to make landfall for another day or so. He had time. Time to board up the last of the windows. Time to double-check his emergency supplies. Time to cage the chickens and get them to safety. He would ride out the storm right here on the property into which he had sunk two years of his life and most of his money renovating.

  He ignored the warnings to move to higher ground. He wasn’t going anywhere. Since he’d moved to Florida, there had been other orders to evacuate, and they had all come to nothing. On one such occasion shortly after he’d moved in, John had complied only to find himself crowded into some shelter with hundreds of others. For his trouble, he had spent a miserable night among crying babies, unruly children allowed to roam free, and adults who did nothing but complain. He would not leave again.

  After nailing a piece of plywood over the last of the windows, he walked down to his pier and closed his eyes as the hot August wind buffeted his shirt and ruffled the red-blond hair on his forearms. It might have been any Florida summer day—hot, gusty winds from the west, humidity so thick it was like being draped in a towel soaked in hot bathwater, and a blinding sun set high in a relentlessly blue sky. It was hard to believe that in just a matter of hours this could all change to blackness and pounding waves and water walls that could topple trees and power lines, rip off roofs, and set mobile homes as well as cars and trucks afloat or flying through the air.

  John was surprised that what he was feeling wasn’t apprehension but rather anticipation. He was excited. He opened his eyes and saw his neighbor Margery Barker puttering his way in her small fishing boat.

  “Came to see if you’re ready,” she called, throwing him the rope to tie her boat up at his pier.

  The woman had a voice like a foghorn and the leathered skin of a native Floridian. She ran a fishing charter business about a quarter mile up Philippi Creek around the point from John’s place on Little Sarasota Bay. She’d taken it over from her husband after his death thirteen years earlier, and she’d been the first person John had met when he came to Florida. Without the slightest encouragement from John, she had designated herself his surrogate mother from that day to this. She meant well, but like him, she could be stubborn and refused to back down from her zealous campaign to get him involved in “community,” as she liked to call it.

  “All secured,” John replied, catching his end of the rope and looping it around a post. He jerked his head toward the house, its windows now shuttered with plywood.

  Margery had scrambled out of the boat and was standing on the pier surveying his house and the old packinghouse, her hands on her hips. “Looks good,” she said. “Where you gonna ride this thing out?”

  Her question annoyed John. The two of them had discussed this when the hurricane had first started to form. “Here,” he replied with a wave toward the house.

  Margery hooted. “Are you nuts or just plain naive?”

  Neither, John wanted to snap, but instead he bit his lip and glanced out across the bay to the inland shore of Siesta Key. He had learned quickly enough that it did no good to argue with Margery.

  “I guess that it’s unlikely you’ll take a direct hit,” she reasoned, more to herself than to him. “And I suppose if you’ve never been in one of these things, you can’t help but wonder what it’ll be like.”

  “I’ve been here through two hurricane seasons, Margery. That first year I even left for the shelter. I am not leaving again.”

  She frowned and then turned back to her boat and knelt down to retrieve two large containers of water. “I figured as much, so I brought you some extra supplies.”

  “I’ve got five jugs of drinking water,” John protested.

  “Well, you might just want to wash up a bit.” She sniffed the air around him. “Truth be told, you could do with a shower now.”

  “I’ve been working,” he protested, resisting the urge to tell her she didn’t smell like lavender water herself.

  Margery sighed. “You are a serious one, aren’t you, Johnny? After this storm blows through, we are going to have to find some way to get you to loosen up
, son.” She shook her head as if he were a lost cause and climbed back into her boat and unleashed it from the post. “I baked you some of those chocolate chip cookies you seem to like.” She tossed him a cookie tin and eased her boat away from his pier. “Stay high and dry,” she called as she rounded the point.

  John used the stubs of his fingernails to pry open the tin box and took out one cookie. He bit into it, savoring the taste—and with it the childhood memory of his mother’s baking. He hadn’t thought to ask where Margery planned to stay during the hurricane. The houseboat where she lived would not be much protection against the winds, and her bait shack was no sturdier than a beach shack. She’d probably head for one of the shelters. He suddenly felt guilty that she had wasted precious time coming to check on him. He stepped farther out onto the pier and shouted her name. “Be safe,” he yelled.