Susan Evans McCloud - Beloved Stranger

Susan Evans McCloud has published over fifty books in the LDS market. Her versatile works include biography, historical fiction, mystery, childrens books, and a volume of poetry. She also writes a column for the Mormon Times under the title of In Our Lovely Deseret, and is known for her screenplays, which include the award-wining John Bakers Last Race, and her scores of lyrics for the Young Women, and for various Church seminary programs. She is best known for her two much-loved hymns Lord, I Would Follow Thee and As Zions Youth In Latter-days.

Susan is active in the LDS Church, and currently serves as a ward Gospel Doctrine teacher, and as an ordinance worker in the Provo City Center Temple. She is the mother of six children, grandmother of ten, great grandmother of five.

Hugh and Lawrence stayed with the confused officers and straightened things out. Samantha didn't watch the light plane take off and rise into the night sky. She drove the van Lawrence had followed her in, she and Jordan alone. She drove back to her house, the house which had been home to her father and awaited her now, a peaceful and trusting refuge.

They scarcely spoke at all until they were safely inside. She settled him in his own chair in her father's study, propped with pillows and reinforced with pain pills and a cool drink.

"I cannot guess who told you," Jordan began softly. "There were very few people who knew."

"Reuben Goddard."

Jordan ran his fingertips along his forehead. "Of course! Reuben knew more than most. But how did you meet him?"

"At the gas station. Thanks to the Jaguar," she smiled.

He didn't return her smile. "How long have you known?"

"I knew nothing at all until this afternoon. I couldn't believe what he was telling meit was very hard to believe."

He drew his breath in almost painfully. "What made you ask?"

"Lots of little things eating away at meunexplained things. But I never realized their impact until Thursday night when you came back here."

Jordan's gaze narrowed, as though he were pained at the memory.

"Remember, I looked in your pockets for your address book so I could find Lawrence's number? I left the book with your wallet, here on the hall table. The next day I went to pick them up, and the wallet slipped through my hands. And when I bent down to get it, I saw my picture."

He nodded. "All of your pictures."

"That's right. I couldn't understand! I wanted to know everything right then! But I couldn't ask you, not in the condition you were in. And I couldn't locate Reuben." She leaned forward a little. "So tell me now."

He shrugged his shoulders and fidgeted. This was difficult for him.

"My mother met your father at a university function about three years after he came here. She was in the company of her sister who teaches in the Spanish department. My aunt's husband was out of town, and so she had asked my mother to come." He raised an eye? brow. "One of those things, one might say. My mother and your father both needed friends. My mother had had a series of bad experiences with men, following my father's death. They knew each other a little over a year before he asked her to marry him."

Samantha trembled as he spoke the words out loud, and they took on more of the power of reality. She leaned back in her chair. "Go on." She must save her anguished questions until after, or he would never get through the telling.

"Lawrence and I knew him by that time, and we were both overjoyed. I was fifteen years old, and I appreciated his friendship. He had a way"his mouth twisted into a quizzical expression"of giving advice, of guiding without seeming to, without exerting any noticeable pressure." He lifted his eyebrows apologetically. "But, of course, you know that. Anyway, Lawrence and I needed him badly, and even Lawrence responded."

"So you were a happy little family." She couldn't help herself.

"Yes." He cringed visibly at the pain he was causing her. "I won't lie and pretend we weren't, Samantha. You deserve to know how remarkable your father was. He made my mother ... very happy."

Samantha sighed, remembering against her will the photograph of the woman in Jordan's wallet. "And after she died?"

"When she died I was twenty-one, able to be on my own, though I'd been living at home and"

"Where was home?"

"Not far from here. Up on the Avenues. The house had been my mother's. He bought this house afterward."

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"Legal custody of Lawrence was given to my mother's sister, and so he lived with my cousins and aunt for a while."

"Why didn't he stay with my father?"

"He was angry. He was only sixteen years old, and he had let himself love Lewis. Besides"Jordan sighed and shook his head wearily"he and my mother were very close. I think he believed Lewis might remarry, leave him as both his own father and mother had done."

"How terrible!" Samantha shuddered.

Jordan cocked his head and cleared his throat. "It was pretty bad. But actually, a regular family with a family routine was good for him then."

"What about you?"

Jordan paused. "I was pretty close to your father. I lived with him for a while."

"In this house?"

"I helped him fix it up."

"It was your home then, too." Jordan was being succinct; she could see she would have to ask questions. "It wasn't just the last six months of his life."

"No. I lived with him for over two years while I finished college."

"The cabin and the car?" It was as though she were running down a list, a list of crimes of a condemned man for which he was required to make explanation.

"You have no mercy," he groaned. "Lewis bought the cabin for usso Lawrence could trap, mainly, and he and I could read or tinker without interruptions. Later he wanted to give it to medid, in essence." He sighed, and the sigh was a shudder. "I bought the car in his name, for insurance purposes, mainly. That was really mine from the start."

"Why didn't you tell me?" She struck her hand against the side of the chair. "Why didn't he tell meany of this?" She was leaning forward again, clutching the chair arms. "I want to know why, Jordan!"

"I'll try to tell you," he replied softly. "Some of it must be obvious. What would your mother have done? Had a fit, poisoned everything, poisoned youturned you against him. That's what terrified him most.

"'She'd make Samantha believe I was replacing her,' your father used to say, all the time. He couldn't bear the thought of that happening, of you feeling left out or in any way deserted or unloved."

"How do you know! Why do you know all this?"

"Because he talked to me." Jordan breathed deeply, with a sigh of great sadness. "It wasn't easy for him. I think being around us, having a family, made him miss you all the more. It started out with him just saying little things to me, here and there. But when I would listen, when he saw I was really interested"

"Why were you really interested?"

"I'm not sure. I liked him. Everything about him seemed to interest me." He shifted his eyes from hers. "I loved him. I was grateful for him and wanted to make him happy, as he was making us happy."

She clutched the edges of her chair, wondering if she could bear this.

"After a while he started reading your letters to me."

"My little-girl letters?" She blushed inwardly.

Jordan nodded. "Course, at times he would leave parts out, especially as you got older. But the letters were too shortthe letters only started him going."

"What do you mean?"

"He would reminisce. It was easy to hear the pain in his voice, the longing for you, the flashes of joy certain memories brought. Through the years"he shook his head, remembering"every little thing you achieved or accomplished he shared with me, and we rejoiced over it together."