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Grandfather appears to know more than he ever expresses.”
    “Yes, but he’s never approved of your father’s ways with women. Let Grandfather handle Townsend
and
Silas.”
    He nodded. “Don’t worry. I won’t go after Silas with flying fists.”Under his breath he added, “Though sometimes I’d like to teach him a lesson.”
    She winced. Silas looked as though he might be able to defend himself too well. She could have reminded her cousin that he was a Christian now, and Christians did not use their fists to settle family disagreements, but Zachary often told her she was too preachy. As far as she was concerned, it just made good sense to remind him of what the Scriptures taught….
    “Remember,” he asked. “Try to get Candace and Great-aunt Nora here before Grandfather arrives this afternoon, will you?”
    She dismounted from the buggy, feeling a warm gust of moist Pacific air rustling her gray nurses dress with its red cross. She watched soberly as Zachary turned the horse and buggy onto Derrington property, where a secondary road led to the plantation house built in the days of Grandfather Ainsworth’s father.
    As Zachary rode away, her restive mind could envision strife personified as jackals running close at the buggy’s wheels, nipping and snarling as Zachary set out to keep the meeting. “We have your emotions,” she imagined them boasting. “You’ll soon be ours to parcel out like a dead rabbit.”
    The mission church spoke to her of peace, for within rested the treasure chest of truth that would answer all debates and silence the quarreling voices of strife. The wooden building stood across the road on a gardened plot of land once owned by the Derringtons but now part of a larger acreage sold by her uncle Townsend to Parker Judson. When Rafe had agreed to a partnership with Parker Judson to develop the pineapple plantation using the prized slips Rafe brought from French Guiana, he’d gone out of his way to negotiate with Parker Judson to allow the historical church to remain untouched on its own special plot of ground, along with Ambrose’s house. For that act of faith and devotion on Rafe’s part, she loved him all the more.
    Eden quickened her steps, turning her thoughts to the new problem she must deal with. Ambrose could advise her, as he hadbeen doing since her childhood, and he would pray for her when she went to speak with Rafe about Kip. Ambrose was a bedrock in her life. He had always been there for her while her father, Dr. Jerome, was away on his quest.
    She hurried along the path past the pearl fishery once belonging to Matt Easton, but now controlled by uncle Townsend since he’d married Celestine.
    The sun was warm, and she resettled her fiber sun hat while the trade wind, smelling of the sea, stirred around her and flirted with the tropical foliage, weaving mysterious patterns and hinting of many adventures yet to come. She smiled, wondering what those adventures might be.
    Eden neared the church, nestled among the palm trees and topped by a white cross. The cross beckoned to the weary and sin burdened, and the door was placed perfectly in the center, for “Jesus is the true door that opens to forgiveness and access to the Father,” her father had said.
    Inside there were no fancy furnishings or stained glass murals, only wooden pews and plain, square windows. As she stepped onto the bare wooden floor, the familiar grit of beach sand greeted the soles of her shoes. Somehow the sand always found its way inside. It did not matter, though, for in this little church amid the soft rustle of palms and the distant breaking of waves, Eden felt a fellowship with heaven. She suspected she was sentimentally inclined toward the church as a link to join her heart to her parents because they had established it before her birth.
    When several Hawaiians working for the Derrington family in the pearl fishery had made professions of faith and were baptized—in the pearl fishery—her father,