Andrea shakes her head in disbelief. “It was all a mistake. Mom and Dad gave me the table right before Bill and I married. Dad knew how much I loved that table and everything it meant.” She stops, recalling that difficult time forty years earlier. “He was making this table when Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer that ended up moving to her lungs.” Her voice catches and she uses a finger to swipe beneath an eye. “This table inspired Mom to learn how to cook from recipes my grandmother had given her. My brother, Christopher, and I would jump in and help, and then Mom got sick and Dad helped, Grandma helped, and people from Elmore Community Church helped and they didn’t even know us!” She looks at Joan and John, remembering. “What a scary, horrible time for my parents, but the love and the help that our family received is unbelievable to this day.”
“Your recipes don’t mention anything about cancer,” Lauren says to Joan.
Joan shakes her head. “No. It was such a huge part of our lives for so long that I didn’t want Andrea to look at a recipe and think of the cancer, but rather to think of the person who gave me the recipe. We gathered a lot of recipes from wonderful cooks during that time,” she says, smiling.
“But how did the table get lost in the first place?” Travis wonders out loud.
Andrea sighs. “The lid to my recipe box had broken and I put the recipes in the drawer just until I could replace the box. Then we…” She looks up at Bill.
“We were moving to a different house,” Bill says. “We had a garage sale with some neighbors, and I don’t even know how it happened, but somehow the table that was set aside for the move got sold, and Andrea was devastated.”
“She cried for days,” Joan says.
“Weeks!” John adds.
“Because the table you had made was gone—and all of Mom’s recipes!” Andrea says, running her hand again over the top of the table.
“Larry thinks it was probably used for children,” Lauren says. “And they probably never bothered to try to open the drawer once they managed to seal it shut. He said he couldn’t open it at all and had to work away at it, which is the only explanation for why the recipes were still in there.”
Joan sits at the table across from Andrea. “I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen the table in years,” she says, her hands tracing the edge of it. “Oh, my goodness, John.” She glances up at him. “All those months of making this.” She looks at Lauren. “What in the world made you track down the owner of those recipes?”
Lauren smiles, leaning into Travis. “It’s going to sound weird, but I just knew that whoever wrote those recipes really loved her daughter and there was no way that daughter would willingly give them away. And in another weird way, I felt close to all of you. I wanted to learn to cook because of the recipes, and Travis and I have cooked a lot of things together. I actually think I’m a pretty good cook now,” she says, laughing.
“You never know what’s going to happen in life, do you?” Joan says.
TWENTY-EIGHT
December 2012
The doorbell rings, and Travis walks to the front hallway and opens it. “Hey, Travis!” Lauren can hear Larry’s voice on the front porch. “Gloria needed these for the fund-raiser, and I was passing by, so I thought I’d drop them off.”
“Come on in,” Travis says. He takes two wooden keepsake boxes from Larry, setting them down on a side table in the living room.
“I’m sorry,” Larry says. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“No!” Lauren says. “Larry, come in! This is perfect.” She looks at Joan and John. “This is Larry, the man who refinished the table. Larry, this is John and he made this table back in…” She realizes she doesn’t know when John made the table and stops.
“In 1972,” John says, looking at Larry. He steps to him and sticks out his hand. “John Creighton.”
“Nice to meet you, John,” Larry says, shaking his hand.
“And you’re Larry.” John stops, looking at Larry’s face. “Larry! Larry from the hospital.”
“Just Larry from Grandon,” Larry says. He pauses for several moments before his mouth turns up in a grin of realization. “John?” he says, whispering. “John from the hospital!” The men pump each other’s hands before embracing and laughing together.
“Joan! This is Larry. Remember after your first surgery I told you I met him in the cafeteria.”
Joan’s eyes get misty looking at him. “The man who taught John how to pray.”
Larry shakes his head. “No, I just talked about wood.”
“No,” Joan says. “John changed after he met you. God put you there for him that day.” Larry begins to shake his head. “He did! John didn’t believe anything at that time. Neither did I. But you were there, and you said what John needed. Christmas became new to us because of you! You set John on a journey to discover who God and His Son are.” She steps to him and hugs Larry. “Just like a woman named Ronnie was there in the chemo room one day with her son and she said what I needed. Just like a man named Ed from church showed up at John’s workshop door at the time he needed him. And just like you had this table when Lauren needed one. God doesn’t waste any opportunities. We do.” She turns to look at Lauren. “I’m so glad you didn’t waste this opportunity.” She hugs Lauren, and Lauren beams from ear to ear.
“These,” Lauren says, picking up the rest of the recipes on the table and handing them to Andrea, “belong to you. I hope you don’t mind, but I made a copy of each one of them.”
“I made her,” Travis says. “Hope we didn’t infringe on any copyright laws.” Andrea laughs, shaking her head.
“And the table
