Saturday Morning Read online

  Praise for

  Saturday Morning

  “I didn’t just read this book; I devoured it, reluctant to put it down until I knew the outcome. This beautifully written story of friendship and faith will leave you a little more sure of two things: the goodness of God and the power of prayer. Saturday Morning is Lauraine Snelling at her very best.”

  —ANN TATLOCK, Christy Award-winning author of All the Way Home

  “I loved this book! I love the way Lauraine Snelling weaves together the lives of four disparate persons who are brought together by time and circumstance. It was funny. It was profound. It was a delight to read. It ministered personally to me.”

  —LINDA HALL, author of Steal Away and Chat Room

  “Saturday Morning is a joy of a read. Lauraine crafts a compelling story of four women whose lives converge in San Francisco. These believable characters, through individual struggles and a common goal, grow in trust and grace. Lauraine’s writing is both humorous and convicting—a perfect combination that kept me thinking about Hope, Andy, and J House long after I turned the last page. Thank you, Lauraine, for a delightful novel!”

  —LESLIE GOULD, author of Beyond the Blue and Garden of Dreams

  “Once again, Lauraine Snelling delivers a moving story, with great characters, real problems, and a satisfying ending. Enjoy it with a friend!”

  —BETTE NORDBERG, author of A Season of Grace and Detours

  Years ago, I belonged to a study/prayer group at Saint Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Vancouver, Washington. We decided to take God at His Word and see what happened. Ever since then I have truly believed in miracles, the power of prayer, and our Father who loves and listens and still acts today Someday I’ll see you all again. I wish everyone a “Girl Squad.”

  a cognizant original v5 release october 16 2010

  Acknowledgments

  How grateful I am for friends who give their time and expertise to help a book become. Chelley Kitzmiller went far beyond the norm in helping me rewrite this book and make it work. Thanks, my friend, I will be forever in your debt. Kathleen Wright can ask questions like no other in order to help me understand who the characters really are and what they want and need. This is no little gift that she shares so generously. Chelley, Nanci, and Karen, thanks for reading and commenting to help me pull out the best for this book. I am convinced I have the best support group possible. Thanks to all of you for your prayers, wise counsel, and constant encouragement. Oh yes, and the brainstorming, too. Bonnie Line is my tea and scone expert. Thanks, Bonnie.

  Thank you, Cecile, who hired on as an assistant and did not know, nor did I, how your editorial skills would grow and blossom. You do the work of three people, and I know my editors appreciate you too.

  Dudley Delffs and all those at WaterBrook Press, thanks for believing and pursuing excellence. What a team you are. Thanks for being part of my life. Thanks, Laura Barker, for encouraging me to write this book.

  Thanks to Brian and Brian and for your stories and information about San Francisco and encouragement; to Rose Liggon who gave me the idea for Hope; to Woodeene for taking me to the Lavender farm in Eugene; to Brian at Speedy’s, best wishes for all success at your store. I love farmers’ markets and shop there whenever I can. I thinkthat comes out in this book, so thanks to all those who’ve made markets so enjoyable. You get an A+ for sharing recipes and knowledge.

  Mark Bittner wrote a book of his experiences with the Wild Parrots of San Francisco. Thanks, Mark, for all you shared, and the movie was pure pleasure. One of the highlights of research for this book was seeing the flock of parrots fly overhead and watching them land and chatter in the trees of Mrs. Marchant’s Garden. What a delight.

  And always, husband, partner, researcher, and best friend, Wayne, the research trips on this one were wonderful fun. You were so patient as we figured out exactly where and why things should happen for this story. We do enjoy San Francisco, but like Andy, we find visiting good, and we’re glad to go home again to our mountain valley and to all the critters who make our life complete.

  Thanks, God, for letting me write and tell stories that I pray bring You glory.

  Lavender Meadows

  Medford, Oregon

  “We did it! We did it!”

  Andy Taylor threw the purchase order in the air, leaped from her chair, and whirlwind dance-stepped around the workshop barn of Lavender Meadows. “We finally made it.” She switched from shouting to singing, making up words as she went. “We’re in the money. From now on every day will be sunny. Give lavender sachets to your honey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  After two turns around the twenty-by-twenty workspace, Andy stopped, caught her breath, then retrieved the purchase order from the plank floor where it had landed. Her hands trembled as she read it again, this time committing each word to memory, beginning with the Nordstrom store letterhead. When she got to the signature, she squealed in delight. She hadn’t imagined it. It was real. Mike Johnson, the head buyer, wanted the entire line of lavender-based products: soaps, hand and body lotions, sachets, tea—even the cookbook—for all his California stores.

  Andy sank into the closest chair and stared at the paper. She felt tears gather in her eyes. All the hard work was finally starting to pay off. It had been a long, hard transition from the apple and pear orchards, which had been her parents’ livelihood until the competition had beaten them out, to the fields of lavender, which had no competition at all because nobody thought it was a crop worth growing.

  She focused on the quantity column and whistled. This was just the beginning. She knew how retail worked. Once the products were in the store and the other chains got wind of them, there would be calls from other buyers and more orders. Now that was the kind of competition she welcomed.

  She tried to mentally calculate the profit on this first order. Numbers flashed in front of her eyes like a calculator gone berserk. She would have to put pencil to paper, but she was sure there would be enough profit to stash a few thousand into her parents’ retirement account as well as to buy or lease the equipment she needed to produce essential oil of lavender.

  Andy wrapped her arms around her middle and squeezed herself. She could hardly wait to give her parents the good news.

  From the day she’d begged them to become her business partners, telling them that she really needed their experience and help, they had been behind her with encouragement and support. If they had ever seen through her intentions, they never let on.

  She wished her husband was half as encouraging and supportive as her parents. He loved her and admired her, of that she had no doubt. He often told her she had “many fine qualities.” But as far as he was concerned, Lavender Meadows was and always would be just a “nice little hobby.” Why last year’s balance sheet hadn’t made him see Lavender Meadows’ potential, she didn’t know, but surely this order would wake him up, make him see now what the rest of them saw.

  Andy’s thoughts raced. Martin. How would she tell him? What would she say? “Dear, I have something to tell you.” She shook her head. Not enough punch. “Martin, I think you should sit down.” Scratch that. Too dramatic. “Martin, you know how you’ve always called Lavender Meadows my little hobby?” She mentally handed him the purchase order and imagined his eyes widening and the corners of his mouth teasing into a smile.

  “Andy, dear, where are you?” Her mother’s voice came from the walk between the house and the barn.

  Martin’s stunned face faded into nothingness. While the idea of flaunting the order in his face was fun to think about, she would never do it. Not in a million years. Instead, she would tell him the news via e-mail, with words carefully chosen so they wouldn’t sound like she was saying, “I told you so.”

&nb
sp; “In here,” Andy called back, putting Martin to the back of her mind. She knew her mother always stopped at the sundial garden where the flagstone path divided in a Y, one arm to Andy’s house, the other to the refurbished barn-turned-studio, office, production, and shipping center. A half-dozen roses surrounded the sundial, the only roses on the farm. Her mother’s favorite was the tea rose named Double Delight. It had a creamy center with petals tipped with the pinks and reds of a brilliant sunrise. She didn’t have to see her mother to know she was bending over and inhaling the rose’s potent fragrance.

  “That rose is blooming more this year than ever before,” Alice said from the doorway, where she paused until her eyes could adjust. Ever since her cataract surgery, she was more careful about going from the bright daylight into the dimness of the refurbished barn. At length she moved away from the door, walking as gracefully as she had twenty years ago. It was all in her posture, Andy reminded herself, a posture her mother had learned and practiced faithfully throughout her years as a dancer.

  “You say that every year.”

  “I know, but here it is September, and the meadows are covered with blossoms.” Alice closed her eyes and sniffed the air. “Between roses and lavender, I always feel like I’m on a scent-sational high.”

  Andy smiled at her mother’s unique use of their advertising slogan. “Clever. Very clever.”

  “Yes, I thought so too,” Alice said with a laugh.

  In years past, Andy and her mother had more than once been accused of being sisters, not only because they sounded so much alike but also because they looked alike, with straight hair cut just below their ears, broad brows, strong chins, and clear hazel eyes.

  Once Andy had turned fifty, however, she refused to let her hair show any gray, and she always plucked her eyebrows to some semblance of order.

  Andy could barely contain her excitement, but she’d decided to wait for the right moment to give her mother the good news. She wanted that moment to be one they would both savor for years to come. “You always make me feel good,” she said instead.

  Alice picked up the raffia-tied clump of lavender on her work-table. “Why, thank you. What a nice compliment.”

  Something I don’t do often enough. Andy promised to rectify that failing and held out the purchase order. “I got a fax a few minutes ago from a new customer. It’s the biggest order we’ve had yet.” Andy handed her mother the purchase order and watched her read it.

  Alice’s face underwent a series of expressions: disbelief, shock, and finally jubilation. “This is—Oh, my. This is wonderful, I mean fabulous, I mean—Oh, honey.” She glanced up, her eyes sparkling. Clearly, she was incapable of expressing herself further.

  “This is just the beginning, Mom. Just the beginning.” Andy surged to her feet and flung herself into her mother’s arms. “We’re a team, Mom. You, me, and Dad.” She glanced around the workshop: bunches of drying lavender hanging from the lattice attached by chains to the aging beams, dried lavender blossoms piled in bins, toiletries and sachets displayed on a table. Cubbyholes with various sizes of plastic bags lined the wall above the worktable, where she and her father, Walt, spent hours preparing the various products for shipping.

  Alice pulled back, concern wrinkling her brow. “Do we have enough product on hand for an order this size?”

  Andy nodded. “It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it.”

  Alice breathed a sigh of relief, but the look of concern stayed with her. A moment later she asked, half under her breath, “Have you told Martin?”

  Andy knew what her mother was thinking, the same thing Andy had been thinking a few minutes ago. “No. I’ll e-mail him tonight after dinner. I’m sure he’s in a meeting right now and wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted.” Martin, her husband of thirty-two years, spent all his afternoons in meetings, selling product for Advanced Electronic Systems, or AES as it was commonly known. When he wasn’t in a meeting, he was on the road traveling to the next meeting. It was a never-ending cycle that had kept him absent from their home most of their married life. Andy had learned to cope because travel was what Martin did, what he’d always done. She contented herself with having him home at least two weekends a month, and she planned her schedule accordingly.

  Alice laid the purchase order down on the worktable. “If we get any more orders like this, we’ll have to hire more help.”

  “What do you mean if?”

  “Don’t be too cocky now,” her mother warned, then turned toward the window that looked out over the south field. She had a faraway look in her eyes. “Who’d have thought that that lavender sachet I gave you way back when would come to … this?” She looked over her shoulder at her daughter. “You were right on, honey. About everything.”

  “I did a lot of praying, Mom.”

  “Well, it looks like your prayers and ours have been answered.” Alice glanced heavenward, then turned back to Andy.

  Now it was Andy’s turn to gaze out the window. The south field, three acres lovingly planted with French lavender and cared for solely by her father, was the newest. Andy knew she’d inherited her love of growing things from her father and her love of cooking from her mother. From both of them came her love of Medford, Oregon, where she’d grown up and where she’d learned her faith at her parents’ sides.

  As newlyweds, she and Martin had purchased a corner of the family farm, making them the third generation to live on the land, and their three children, the fourth. Andy had insisted that they build the house close to her grandfather’s old milking barn so the children could have all the animals their hearts desired. Over the decades, the barn had served as a home for her grandfather’s milk cows, then as a shelter for the kids’ beef cattle, sheep, and barn cats, and now as the center of business for Lavender Meadows.

  “You know, it’s funny,” Alice said. “Your dad and I were talking over lunch about working up that stretch of pasture behind the barn. Do we have enough starts for that?”

  Andy mentally counted her nursery rows of lavender cuttings rooted in four-inch plastic pots. “No, but it’s not a problem. I’ll have to order some Hidcote from one of the other nurseries.” She raised her hands over her head in a stretch and inhaled the fragrance of lavender, underlain with old barn scents of hay, cattle, and manure.

  With the excitement over, at least for the moment, Alice flipped through the in-box, looking through the rest of the mail. She pulled out a sheaf of paper-clipped order forms and laid them out on the worktable. “My goodness. That last ad we put in the Rogue Valley News has really paid off. There must be thirty orders here.”

  “I ran another one in the classifieds for this weekend, and now I wish I hadn’t,” Andy said. “Martin e-mailed and said that he has a long weekend at home and that I should plan something, but … ”

  “Dad and I can handle things here,” Alice volunteered as she always did.

  “Are you sure? That would be great.” Andy turned her thoughts to the weekend ahead. “I wonder what he’d like to do. He always says that when he’s home, he just wants to be home, but I’d sure like to go out to dinner on Saturday night. Maybe we could even take in a movie. I’ll have to check what’s playing.”

  Alice sat down and began to make order of the paperwork. “Have you heard from Morgan?”

  “She’s homesick. That hasn’t changed. You’d think that she’d be thrilled to be there, what with all the years she dreamed of following in Bria’s and Cam’s footsteps in the hallowed halls of Pacific Lutheran University.”

  “Being happy to be someplace has no bearing on homesickness. I remember the first year you went to Bible camp.” Alice chuckled softly.

  Andy heard her mother’s soft laughter and pretended an indignation she was far from feeling. “Mother, I was only eight. Besides all our family vacations, Morgan’s been to 4-H camp, to Bible camp, and to Washington DC with her senior class, and she stayed with Bria in Seattle. I didn’t really expect this of her.”

  “Just because t
hree children are reared in the same family doesn’t mean they will be anything like each other.” Finished with her sorting, Alice picked up a one-pound plastic bag and set it on the digital scale.

  “You don’t need to weigh every one of those.”

  “I know. Just checking to make sure the machine is working right.”

  Andy’s father had invented a machine, similar to a grocery store coffee grinder, with a dial that could be set to release dried lavender by ounces or pounds. One needed only to hold a bag under the spout, press the foot pedal, and wait until the bag was full. Both Andy and her mother had tried to talk him into patenting the invention, but he said it really wasn’t that ingenious.

  Andy noted how efficiently her mother worked. How good it was when parents and children could work together and still remain best friends. Not for the first time, Andy thought about how much she was like her mother. Besides looking like sisters, they had similar work ethics and morals. There was one similarity, however, that Andy wished were different. Both of them had given up promising careers for love. Alice had been the lead female dancer in a prestigious dance troupe in Los Angeles, and Andy had been halfway up the corporate ladder in a clothing store chain.

  Sadly, the only dancing Alice had done since her wedding day was at church socials and the occasional evening out on the town. Until a couple of years ago, Andy had thought her own talent as a businesswoman would be wasted as well. For thirty-two years there hadn’t been much to apply it to, other than comparing rates for insurance companies and long-distance phone carriers. With extra time of her own, once the older children had started off to college, she found herself working outside more. She’d always loved lavender, and before she knew it, she had herself a lavender garden. One thing led to another, and soon the lavender blossoms were finding their way into her bath, under her pillow, and even into her cooking.