Sandy and Miriam cooked lunch in Sandy’s new kitchen—an honest-to-goodness farm meal, not one thing from a can. Amanda looked on from the couch, dazed by her good fortune.
After lunch, Ellis sat beside her on the couch, smoothing her hair. “We love you like you’re our own,” he said. “You know that don’t you.”
“I love you too, Ellis.”
“Come see us on Saturday mornings for blueberry pancakes, now, you hear.”
“First thing in the morning,” she promised.
They stood in the living room in a circle, everyone trying hard not to cry.
“Thank you,” Sandy said very quietly. “Thank you for helping our family heal.”
“We didn’t do a thing,” Miriam said. “You and Ralph are the brave ones. We’re so proud of you.”
Then Miriam and Ellis hugged them good-bye, climbed in their truck, drove a quarter mile down the road, and turned into their driveway. Ellis went out to his workshop in the barn and didn’t come out the rest of the day, but when he emerged a little after six, his spirits were up. “What say we drive over to Cartersburg for supper tonight? My treat.”
Their car was still in the shop, so they took Ellis’ pickup. They drove through town, past the meetinghouse, and turned at the Dairy Queen to catch Cartersburg Road, passing the library and Miss Rudy’s house.
It was a warm spring evening. The daffodils and tulips were in bloom around Miss Rudy’s porch. That morning, Ernie Matthews had carried her porch furniture up from the basement, hung her swing in front of the window, and positioned her rocker alongside the small table where she set her iced tea glass of a summer evening.
Miss Rudy was sitting on the swing, with Frank the secretary seated beside her.
“Would you look at that,” Ellis observed.
Miriam smiled and took his hand. “That’s springtime for you,” she said. “Love is in the air.”
Ellis inhaled deeply and, even over the odor normally associated with a livestock truck, he could smell the pleasant aroma of sweet romance.
“It surely is,” he said, taking her hand. “It surely is.”
About the Author
Philip Gulley is the author of Front Porch Tales, Porch Talk, and the acclaimed Harmony series, as well as the host of “Porch Talk with Phil Gulley” on the Indiana PBS affiliate WFYI television’s flagship show Across Indiana. He and his wife, Joan, live in Indiana with their sons, Spencer and Sam.
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ALSO BY PHILIP GULLEY
FICTION
Home to Harmony
Just Shy of Harmony
Christmas in Harmony
Signs and Wonders
Life Goes On
The Christmas Scrapbook
Almost Friends
NONFICTION
Front Porch Tales
Hometown Tales
For Everything a Season
If Grace Is True (with James Mulholland)
If God Is Love (with James Mulholland)
Copyright
A CHANGE OF HEART: A Harmony Novel. Copyright © 2005 by Philip Gulley. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition December 2007 ISBN 9780061740381
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