Love In a Distant Land: Rachel Marie Series Book One

  Copyright © 2015 David B. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0692584609

  ISBN-13: 978-0692584606

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means--electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other--except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published in association with Big Umbrella Resources,

  11125 Campus Street, Loma Linda, CA 92354

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my parents, whose decision to serve Christ in Thailand opened up an amazing new world for my brothers and me. That lifelong adventure has led to all those you will find in this book and the sequels to follow.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Working on the Rachel Marie series these past several years has been a rich blessing to me, and I pray your soul will be encouraged as well. A project like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and I first want to heed Matthew 5:16 and pass along any praise or positive feedback to the Lord who inspires all of our Christian efforts.

  I also am grateful to my reading committee for their astute suggestions and gracious criticisms. A special vote of thanks to Roy Ice, who saw the gospel potential for this book series and agreed to adopt it into the Big Umbrella Resources family. Lisa and I are wonderfully nourished by our involvement with such a thriving faith community as Loma Linda University Church.

  I’m especially honored to pay tribute to my own parents, Kenneth and Jean Smith, along with the vibrant, self-sacrificing family of missionaries who populated Bangkok in the 1960s, when I was a grade-school kid at Mission Hospital. These visionary, wide-eyed young couples (Mom and Dad were 28 when they took a freighter to the boondocks of Chiang Mai) created a unique society that put its indelible stamp on all of us who experienced Asian life in obedience to the gospel commission. Today Thailand is populated with literally thousands of Christians whose lives changed because our missionary parents made a courageous choice to obey the call. Here’s just a partial list of that wonderful generation of believers:

  Aitken, Anholm, Crawford, Crider, Damron, Doran, Ekvall, Falconbridge, Feltus, Green, Harris, Jennings, Ketting, Kopitzke, Lacey, Lamberton, Lambeth, Ludington, Nelson, Ordelheide, Pudewell, Smith (D. K. and E. B.), Sprengel, Thompson, Tyler, Webster, Wick, Weisseman.

  All of us at BigUmbrella.tv would be most grateful for your feedback and continued support. If you enjoyed Love in a Distant Land, please feel encouraged to post a review with Amazon, so other readers will consider sampling the Rachel Marie series as well.

  You can also find a listing of David’s other writing projects at www.davidbsmithbooks.com.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VOCABULARY GUIDE

  PROLOGUE

  The windshield had an odd crack in the corner, shaped almost like a duck with that bulge and the tiny head. But it always looked like a duck, every time she went on this ride, and Rachel Marie felt her stomach do a somersault as she peered at the glass with the fracture and the crusted water-drops and tree leaves stuck in the little space between the hood and the windshield.

  The driver reached out and nudged the radio volume down. “You like music?”

  She shook her head. Actually, she and Bucky liked singing along with his favorite CDs; he would crank up the stereo way loud and then they would have contests. Okay, R.M., who can sing louder, you or me? But she didn’t feel like talking about songs with this man.

  “Just a few minutes now and we’ll get to where your mom is. I’m sure everything’s all right,” he added. It was meant to be soothing, but somehow his words made her feel nervous instead.

  Don’t ever ride in a car with strangers. Mommy had said it a hundred times. Never, never, never, sweetheart. But this was different; at least, she sure hoped so. This man with the sweatshirt and baseball hat had told her it was an emergency. Someone had hit Mommy’s car; the police asked him to bring Rachel Marie over to the shop where it was being fixed. So that wasn’t exactly riding with strangers. Plus his sweater had a picture of a cute puppy on the front. Still, they’d been in this blue car for a long time, and after pulling away from Beecher Christian School this police helper had gotten right on the freeway. That was kind of weird too, since Rachel Marie and her folks only lived two miles from school.

  She felt bad about not saying goodbye to Belle, her best friend. They’d been playing on the teeter-totter, laughing whenever the bottom person went thwang against the cement base. But then Belle had to run inside and go potty. It was right after that when the man came and told her about Mommy’s car and the broken fender and how he was supposed to take her.

  So this is okay. But . . . um . . . I guess he is kind of a stranger. Mommy didn’t mean this, did she? A strange tightness, childish dread spelled out in crayon and a first-grader’s vocabulary, began to seep through her skin. She could almost feel her heart pounding against the seatbelt. “Are we almost there?”

  “Just a bit longer. Your mom said it’d be okay to stop and get something to eat first. Since it might take a while before you guys get home. Do you like milkshakes? Boy, I sure do.”

  It was just then when she managed to glance down onto the floor mats of the blue car. There was a big kind of coffee stain on it, so the gray rug was almost a yucky kind of black. And right next to the blotch, a couple of inches below her tennis shoes, was a stack of magazines. The man was whistling something quietly to himself, the notes coming through his thin mustache, and Rachel Marie could tell her bad feeling was getting worse. Okay, this man said he was nice, that he was helping. But the top magazine had a picture of a naked lady on it. She had really big hair, but she was pulling her shirt way up and it was showing everything.

  Rachel Marie didn’t want to cry, but as she jerked her head away from the bad magazine and tried to see where she was, all at once there was nothing around but freeway and other cars and big trucks going a long ways away. She didn’t recognize the school or the church where she went every weekend with Mommy and Bucky. There weren’t any of her friends living around here. There was a big mall coming up but it didn’t have a J. C. Penney’s like the one back in Hampton Beach.

  “You’re sure a pretty girl,” the man said now in a voice that was trying to be gentle. “It may be a little while before we see your mom, but that’s okay. Waiting around to get a car fixed is really boring. But hey, let’s get that milkshake first. Then we’ll just see what else is fun to do.”

  Rachel Marie awakened with a start, and couldn’t be sure if she might actually have screamed out loud. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus. Not again, Lord. Her pillow was wet with tears and she turned over, feeling her stomach lurch. The la
st time she’d had this dream, she’d had to bolt for the bathroom in order to heave up her supper.

  Sixteen years of safety and her dad’s strong, protective arms had never been enough to erase the recurring nightmare. Am I going to puke my guts out? Again? She laid there in the choking darkness, now a grown woman, and it was all she could do to keep from dashing to the front door just to check the bolts.

  With nerveless fingers, Rachel Marie flipped on the lamp next to her bed and peered at the digital clock. Not quite four in the morning. Barely coherent enough to add three hours of time zones, she grabbed her phone and dialed her big brother. It took two rings before he came on the line. “Holy cow, Rachel Marie. Are you okay? It’s the middle of the night for you.”

  “I had that dream again,” she blurted out before dissolving into sobs. “Oh my God. It was so terrifying.”

  “Wow.” It was all Bucky could manage. “Same as the other times?”

  “Yeah. We’re in the car; I’m freaking out. I don’t know if I messed up–don’t ride with strangers, but I’m only six and don’t know. And just the minute I figure out, I messed up; this guy’s a predator, then I wake up and my heart rate’s up at two hundred.”

  “I’m so sorry, sweetie. You think you’re going to go see what’s-her-name again? Dr. Winthrop?”

  “I don’t know what good more therapy does. This nightmare just comes back when things are a mess for me, and right now things are pretty much caving in.”

  “I know you’re upright about being pink-slipped. What else?”

  “Just . . . well, everything. My best friend’s barely holding on with uterine cancer. And I’m marching toward the wedding chapel with a really great guy who looks like a GQ cover but will never ever be a soul mate—in terms of Jesus and all that. And I don’t have the guts to admit it to myself.”

  “Sounds like you just did.”

  “That’s with you. Next time I see him, I already know all my big resolutions will just melt away.”

  There was an uneasy pause. “I don’t know what to tell you, R.M. It was just a dream. You know that.”

  Yeah.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was organized bedlam in her classroom, and Rachel Marie good-naturedly let the volume fizz over. After all, graduation was in two days and her kids’ grades were off the charts. With all the California standards already met, she’d nudged her brainiacs one bonus unit ahead in math and was teaching them how to combine exponents. Now they were doing a “Beat the Leader” PowerPoint game, trying to knock Esme off her perch.

  “Miss Stone, we haven’t done fraction powers!” Erick moaned.

  “So what? What’s a half plus two thirds?”

  “Um . . . three fifths?”

  “You’re killing me. You never heard of an LCD before? That’s it! Guys lose!”

  The boys clumped back to their seats muttering dark threats at Erick. Rachel Marie mused to herself that if fruits and vegetables were handy, he might well have been showered like in the old days of vaudeville. “That’s okay. But next time, try a common denominator of six, will you? Yikes.”

  Erick feigned repentance and Rachel Marie snapped her fingers, motioning for everybody to begin packing up for closing bell.

  She was just settling down to read through a string of emails when there was a shy rustle. “Oh. Rico, sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Miss Stone, you are okay?” Her reverie was broken as she glanced up. A slight Hispanic boy, his innocent eyes wide with concern, stood next to her desktop computer and grasped his late English paper.

  Rachel Marie smiled. “Sure, Rico. I’m good. Why do you ask me that?”

  “We have such fun,” he observed, handing her the assignment. “But sometimes when I look, I think you seem to be thinking something kind of sad.”

  A lump came into her throat. Lord Jesus, thank you for these amazing kids. “You know, I have been just a little sad,” she admitted. “I have a friend who is sick and so I worry about her sometimes.”

  “Is she a teacher like you?”

  “Huh uh. She’s a lawyer. But one of my best friends in college. Her name’s Jisoo.”

  “Oh.” The boy hesitated. “Miss Stone. My mom and me, we can pray for your friend.”

  She felt a flood of gratitude. Despite the reality that this was a sterile and secular state-funded institution, it was wonderful when a tender blessing like Rico’s prayers slipped through the cracks in the wall of separation. “Sweetheart, that would be mucho wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Do you pray, Miss Stone?”

  She felt her heart lifting. “Are you kidding? I pray a bazillion times a day.”

  “You do?”

  Rachel Marie found herself actually giggling. “Mr. Rico, I pray for you every single day, that you’ll learn to spell the word separate correctly and put an ‘a’ in the middle instead of an ‘e.’ And that you’ll stop putting such silly LCD’s on your math papers.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m teasing you. Now hand me that paper and please don’t be late with homework again. Promise?”

  She sat in the pleasant mid-afternoon glow of an almost finished school year. Rookie season accomplished. Thirty-one kids all moving on to junior high. Sweet. And with all her grades entered into the district’s computer system, tonight looked like a cheerful bit of unwinding. Casual snacking and then some binge-watching on HBO.

  Rachel Marie packed up and was digging her keys out of the desk drawer when she heard the familiar tap-tap-tap of Carolyn’s stiletto heels. The principal was a gracious presence at Stephenson Middle School, professional but on a first-name basis with her entire team. “Rachel Marie, I’m glad I caught you.”

  “Sure.” She sank back down in her chair. “Just two days to go.”

  “I know.” The older woman seemed distracted. Graduation must be a ton of details, Rachel Marie thought.

  “I was hoping to dump this bad news in my own trash can,” Carolyn said without preamble. “‘Cause it’s so unfair it breaks my heart. But the teaching spot I thought I could maybe rescue for you just evaporated. I got an email and Kelly’s actually coming back after all.”

  “What? Isn’t she taking a year off for the baby?”

  “I guess she had a miscarriage. So that’s bad. Plus now we’re obliged to give her that last spare position. She’s got tons of seniority.”

  “Are you kidding me? So what you’re saying is, those pink slips you handed out are real.”

  Carolyn set her administrative binder down on a corner of her protégé’s desk. “I know I said it was fifty-fifty and that we were going to try real hard to bring you back. But way back during orientation we did tell all of you newbies the hard facts. This is just the way it’s being done now. Anybody under four years’ experience is going to get technically cut, and then district goes round and round, state finally sees how stinky it all is, they ease up and other school districts can rescue at least some of them. But the bad news is that the statewide discretionary funds got cut by 1.4%, so the ‘ease up’ part is probably dead now too. Which means almost nobody in your situation is going to find a spot. And I mean anywhere.” She shook her head dolefully. “Rachel Marie, you’re the best we’ve got here. And it absolutely just blows my mind that between union rules and the absurd way they do budgets, we’re going to lose a ringer like you’ve turned out to be. But I have zero say in the matter.”

  “I don’t get it. So all our hard work counts for nothing.”

  Clear back in March, Rachel Marie and her peers had fallen victim to the annual ritual: a wave of new arrivals all getting layoff notices despite rave performance reviews. All summer classroom rookies would have to send out updated résumés and scour So Cal district web sites for likely openings, sometimes an hour’s drive away over gridlocked L.A. freeways.

  “It’s a royal pain in the neck,” Carolyn conceded. “The way we jerk good teachers around makes me outrageously mad. But the brutal reality is that just about every first-y
ear teacher’s either going to have to go out of state, maybe to North Dakota where they’re hiring big time with the fracking boom . . . or take a year off and do something else. Which is so crazy I want to scream.”

  Her earlier sense of satisfaction replaced by a growing anger, Rachel Marie pushed her chair back, hard. “So I’m basically out on the street,” she snapped, knowing Carolyn would accept her spilled-over frustrations. “This is lovely.”

  “It’s a joke is what it is. I mean, our parents love you. Scores are solid. I come by here and it’s always just great inventive stuff. Classroom management–all good. You’re a superstar, and for the system to chew you up like this is a monstrosity. But all I can do is write you a killer recommendation letter in case you maybe want to head up to Seattle where your folks live and land a gig up that way. Then hope maybe a year from now the roulette wheel spins around and brings you back.” She paused. “I’m assuming you’d be willing to go down and teach third grade if they needed you. I’ve got a couple of contacts I can call. Over in Modesto.”

  Rachel Marie exhaled sharply. “I don’t know. I really like this age. Kids just on the verge of, you know. Puberty and all. It’s fun.”

  “And you’re so purely gifted at it.” Dr. Wooten reached over and offered Rachel Marie a tentative embrace. “Someone as good as you isn’t going to be out on the bread lines for long; I can promise you that.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “If I don’t see you before, we’ll cry on each other’s shoulders at graduation.”

  For some reason the last remark set Rachel Marie off and it was all she could do to smile through gritted teeth. Are you kidding me? I get canned, and now have to show up and make nice with district personnel all around? But she forced her resentment to the sidelines. In California’s slowly recovering economy, mass terminations were as much a part of the landscape as the Hollywood sign.

  She dragged herself out to the parking lot. Before flinging her briefcase into the back seat, she tugged her phone out. Stay sweet. Adrian’s not in love with the shrill other Rachel Marie. It took a couple of rings before he answered. “Hey, beautiful.”