Free Rekindled by Tamera Alexander

thought.
    “Good morning.” Isaiah brought the bowl with him and sat on a chair beside the bed. As he mixed the contents, a pungent scent spiced the air. “You’ve been asleep for two days.” He winked. “I forgot to tell you, watch out for Abby’s tea.”
    Despite not wanting to, Larson smiled in response. Something about Isaiah—Abby too—skirted his defenses and infused him with unsolicited hope.
    Isaiah lifted a brow. “Well, that’s a little something, at least.”
    Larson swallowed and glanced at the bowl. “I hope that’s not breakfast,” he whispered, testing his voice. His mood lightened at Isaiah’s smile.
    Isaiah looked down at the bowl dwarfed in his hands. When he lifted his head, all traces of the smile were gone. “Tell me your name.”
    Larson stared at him a moment. “Larson Jennings,” he rasped.
    “As I see it, Larson, God’s given you a second chance. You can have your life back. Not as it was, but as it is now.” He set the bowl aside and leaned closer. “When I found you in that burned-out shack, the only reason I pulled you out was to bury you. There is no earthly reason why you should be alive right now, so there must be a heavenly one.”
    Larson watched Isaiah’s rugged face fill with emotion. A single tear trailed down the man’s rough cheek.
    “I normally don’t go through that ravine. I travel around it.” Isaiah glanced down at his clasped hands. “You might say my former life instilled a sense of caution in me. I like to know what’s around me, and I don’t like closed in spaces. Especially at night.”
    Larson read the pain in Isaiah’s eyes and suddenly wanted to know more about this man. “Where were you . . . before this?” His voice resembled a rusty hinge.
    “I was born in Georgia and worked for a time on a plantation there and in South Carolina. I came out west almost twenty years ago with a man who won a hand of poker. I was the prize. Oh, I didn’t mind leavin’ the South, not one bit. The man who won me was a physician.” He gave a soft laugh. “As it turned out, he was an excellent doctor but a poor gambler. Years later he was shot for cheating. But the day he won me in that card game, bless him, I became a free man.”
    Isaiah spoke the last words with a sigh, and Larson suspected that whatever Isaiah’s life had become after that day, it wasn’t what he had expected. Strangely, that thought brought him hope, and spurred further questions within him. Was there a chance that God hadn’t forgotten him after all? And what had Isaiah said about a heavenly reason for him having survived the explosion?
    Larson remembered Kathryn sharing a Bible verse with him once that spoke to that thought, or close to it. Something about God’s ways being different from ours. Kathryn often read their Bible in the rocking chair by the hearth at night. Recalling how she looked, her features softened by firelight, her honey hair reflecting the glow, sparked a longing inside him.
    Unlike Kathryn, he’d never taken much stock in reading the Bible. If obliged to give answer, he would concede that the Bible was God’s Word. But the simple truth was, it had never made any real difference in his life. How could dried words on a page, written hundreds of years ago, make a difference in a man’s life? Hard work and making a success of yourself were what counted. God invested abilities in a man and then expected a return on that investment. Surely that was what mattered.
    Unexpected doubt goaded Larson’s certainty. How would he ever make a success of himself now? All of his dreams, money, and energy were tied up in the ranch. If he lost it, he lost everything. He did a quick calculation. On the sixteenth of March the next loan payment would come due. If he was late again, Harold Kohlman would surely follow through with his threat.
    “Larson, are you hungry?” Isaiah’s voice drew him back. “Abby has breakfast ready.”
    Larson looked up, distracted. “Sure,” he