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The mere mention of Brian was enough to make Avery break out in sweat. “Maybe.” She cleared her throat and stooped to begin gathering the dropped magazines.
“Hmph.” Laz gave a disgusted huff. More like a snort. “Wal-l-l...if ya don’t wanna tell me, you don’t hafta. But you got the air of a gal who’s—” Laz searched for the right word—“who’s lookin’ for somethin.’”
Lookin’ for somethin.’How could he have read her that well? Suddenly Avery stood up. The words didn’t have time to be censored by her mind before they came out. “Laz, why did you come to the mountains?”
His brows knit together. “That’s my story, not yours, girl.”
“I know.” Avery’s breath caught in her throat. “I know, Laz. But—” she hesitated. How could she explain this? “I came to the mountains because I wanted away from the world.”
“Know that feeling right well.” It was after eight o’clock, yet he hadn’t made a move to turn the OPEN/CLOSED sign on the door. He leaned an elbow on the top of the rack and gave her his full attention.
“The world is a bad and ugly place, and I wanted away. I wanted to be somewhere safe where—where I could forget things.” Why was she telling him all this? Maybe because she saw her soul in his eyes.
“This is a good place for forgetting.” He stared into space for a moment. Then looked back at her. “A darn good place. The mountains swallow up the bad you’ve had.”
Yes. He was speaking her language now. “Laz, there were some—some people I wanted to forget. One of them I loved so much that it hurt too badly to remember.” She bit her lip, but the tears came anyway. She willed her voice to steady. “I left those people on the other side of the High Peaks. I came here to be—to not be hurt anymore.”
Laz’s eyes glistened with a compassion she could trust. “We’ve all done it.” He shrugged. “Only so much pain a body can take. This ole life, it don’t seem to know when you’ve reached that limit. Or care. And when you get to the wall, sometimes—” he looked out the window at the mountains, the early morning light glancing off his eyes—“sometimes you gotta go up.”
“I did.” Avery’s voice quivered with the intensity of the statement. “El Shaddai—God—I fell in love with Him here, Laz. I knew Him before I came, but here He is so much more—”
“Real.” Laz smiled, a gentle smile she’d never seen before.
“Yes.” Avery took a deep breath. “But the people I left—they’re real too. And I ran away from them.”
“Avery.” Laz was looking at her as a father might gaze at a well-loved daughter. “Ain’t no shame in running away. Folks do it all the time, you know.” He looked down at the floor. “Thing is, most run into and inside themselves. They don’t run away on the outside, like you did.”
“I think I did both.” Avery stopped, tried to think what to say. Laz was quiet, watching her. Giving her the space to listen to her thoughts.
“I have a sister.” The sentence came out with force.
Laz lifted his eyebrows. Said nothing.
“She needs me.” Avery folded her trembling arms across her torso.
“She tell you that?”
Avery avoided his gaze. “We don’t talk. Haven’t in years. I found out—another way.”
He nodded slowly.
“She needs me.” The repetition came from her urgency. She bit her lip desperately. “I don’t know what to do.”
Laz rubbed his nose contemplatively. “Seems easy to me.”
He must have seen Avery’s perplexed look, because he sighed. “S’pose that Mercy was lost—what would you do?”
“Look for her. All over creation if I had to.” There was no hesitancy in Avery’s reply.
“Then don’t you do as much for your sister?”
Avery felt the impact of his words. She lowered her head. “It’s not that easy, Laz. I’m here, and—”
“—And you have to go outside the hiding place to find her.” Laz’s voice was quiet, steady. He took hold of her shoulders gently. His hands were rough but warm. Like his heart.
“Avery, girl, listen to an old mountain goat that’s made purty near ever’ mistake a man can make in his life.” His voice had smoothed from its usual hearty tones into a quiet huskiness, unmistakable in its sincerity. “We come to these mountains for beautiful reasons. We come for ourselves, our spirits, and we come for God, too. Even the people that just say they come cause it’s purty and makes ‘em feel special, they’re feeling the Spirit of God, and they don’t even know it. But—” he sighed. “God ain’t just the God of the mountains. He’s the God of it all. And sometimes—sometimes He takes you out of the mountains. Into the valleys.”
“I can’t go.” Avery didn’t know if her whisper was directed at Laz or El Shaddai.
