Excerpt of A Promise of Grace by Lynette Sowell

The minivan’s air conditioner gave one last puff of cold air not long after Silas Fry drove across the Florida state line. Silas merely lowered the front windows without saying anything to the children.

How many more hours to Sarasota? Two? Three?

“I wish we were back in Mozambique.” Lena sighed and fanned herself where she sat in the front passenger seat. She leaned toward the open window. Her sigh sounded as if her world had suddenly crumbled. At nearly nineteen, she tended to see life in extremes. And Belinda had been the one adept at handling her moodiness.

“Me, too.” Matthew’s echo was born of always wanting to follow in Lena’s trail.

“I know you do, I know.” Silas forced his voice to come out around the lump in his throat. Africa, his home. Their home. It would never be the same without Belinda. None of them would be.

Despite what Belinda had done long, long ago, he’d loved his wife to the end. The day a semi had plowed into the van in which she and some other ladies had been riding home from a quilt auction. None of those who died had suffered, the families were told.

Suffering was left for the rest of the families left behind, spouseless husbands, motherless children.

Silas filled his lungs with the fresh, humid air blowing into the van. “Your great-uncle said we’ll have plenty of time to go to the beach after supper tonight.”

The seashore. The ocean had been the one constant where they’d lived in Africa, not far from the coast in Mozambique. And, one big reason he’d chosen to move them all to Florida. In landlocked Ohio, the children had balked and he even found himself feeling a bit constricted, his only refuge in the air, flying a Cessna.

Life with Belinda as their hub had fallen apart. Somehow, with God’s help, they’d find a way to put it back together again.

Someone had told him children were resilient.

Children?

He often needed to remind himself Lena wasn’t a child anymore, her studies had ended long ago, and she was planning to continue her education, not to become a teacher like her mother, but a medical assistant. She’d already completed her high school equivalency certificate and planned to enroll in college in Sarasota.

Matthew, not a child, either, all of fourteen and idolizing his older sister with her take-charge view of the world. They’d already discussed him finishing school in Pinecraft at the Mennonite school, after seeing where he compared to other students his age. He had a good eye for building and construction, as well as taking motors apart and putting them back together. Silas wasn’t sure where he’d come by his skill.

But Silas couldn’t help thinking of both of them as children. He’d been there from the beginning, when their first cries rang out. He’d seen them grow and thrive, through first words and first stumbles, through the first days of “I can do it myself.” Especially with Lena, who seemed to have come from her mother’s womb sure of herself and the world.