From Roots to Sky (A Kissing Tree Novella)

By Amanda Dykes

WWII airman Luke Hampstead found comfort in letters from the sister of a lost compatriot. When he visits Texas to thank her, he discovers her constructing a project with surprising ties to his letters. . . and that she herself is even more surprising. While a promising opportunity awaits him elsewhere, will what they've shared be enough to give their future flight?

From Roots to Sky is a heartfelt novella from award-winning author Amanda Dykes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781493424986

Amanda Dykes

Amanda Dykes is a former English teacher, a drinker of tea, and a spinner of hope-filled tales. For more information, visit www.amandadykes.com.

Book preview

Books by Amanda Dykes

Yours Is the Night

Set the Stars Alight

Whose Waves These Are

NOVELLAS

Up from the Sea from Love at Last:

Three Historical Romance Novellas of Love in Days Gone By

From Roots to Sky from The Kissing Tree:

Four Novellas Rooted in Timeless Love

© 2020 by Amanda Joy Dykes

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Ebook edition created 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4934-2498-6

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Jennifer Parker

The author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency.

To all whose homes are havens of

hope, life, and refuge.

Contents

Cover

Books by Amanda Dykes

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Epilogue

Sneak Peek of Yours Is the Night

About the Author

Back Ad

God places the lonely in families;

he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.

Psalm 68:6

Prologue

DECEMBER 24, 1944

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

Dear Hannah." Luke’s hands shook as he spoke the words and tried to form the letters on a torn paper sack. His breath puffed into the dark night, then dissipated into stars above, the sound of shells and shots ringing in the distance.

Concentrate. The word escaped raggedly. If that was what he sounded like, he must look worse than the piles of rubble peppering this landscape. Having your plane shot down in battle and falling from the sky into waves of snowy drifts would do that to a guy, he guessed.

He glanced around, confirming yet again that he was alone. Had been alone in the plane, as its lone pilot. So much was a blur—­but yes, that part was clear.

Lights danced into his wobbly consciousness. A tiny Belgian village on Christmas Eve. Home fires burning, soft carols filling homes and chapels, and here he sat, half buried in snow with at least one broken leg and a smattering of other splintered maladies inside, leaning up against his impossibly cold plane. Or what was left of it. The remains of an old stone barn sat a stone’s throw away, its bent weathervane sprouting crookedly from the ground, creaking its own Christmas melody into the night. Its off-­key groan, pitiful as it was, seemed to speak hope to him.

Concentrate. Again, through gritted teeth. He gripped the pencil and willed it to move. He may not be able to drag himself to safety. He might well die this night. But he would fight for his life with the weapons he had: pencil, paper, and a pen pal he’d never met, halfway across the world in Texas.

Where it was warm.

He fisted the pencil and forced his hand to form shaky letters. If he did not move, he would close his eyes. If he closed his eyes, he would sleep. If he slept, he would die.

D-­E-­A-­R

H-­A-­N-­N-­A-­H

The cold burned colder in the blur in his mind. He dug through the mire of his thoughts to the nearest clear memory. Danny Garland, tossing that ridiculous half grin at him before he’d left for duty six months back. Throwing him his notebook. Hey, he’d said. You write to my sister while I’m out. Keep sending her those drawings—­just till I get back.

He had never come back. So Luke Hampstead, whose own last letter received had been of the Dear John variety, took up writing to a stranger in Texas . . . and kept it up when her brother no longer could, his life claimed by the war.

And now she would get him through this cold. Please, God . . .

He had never written her much in the chatty way. Only technical notes explaining his sketches, to keep her brother’s promise. But now . . .

H-­h-­h-­how are you? He breathed the words, small talk freezing into ice and dropping to the ground. It figured. He never was good at small talk. He wrote the words anyway to the tune of shellfire and distant caroling.

It went on this way for hours, on into the silence. Fighting back the creeping fingers of cold with the warm promise of golden Texas light. When dawn crept over the jagged-­tree horizon of the Ardennes Forest, Luke Hampstead beheld three impossible things . . . and laughed the prayer of a man so grateful his words had long, long run out.

The first impossible thing: his letter. Which he had labored over with more dedication and concentration than he could ever remember pouring into a single effort in his entire life . . . was a meager few sentences long, looked like a kid had written it, and bore the ramblings of a man convinced of his own demise. This pitiful excuse for a letter was what he’d exhausted his entire being to write?

The second impossible thing: his breath. Coming in shorter, quicker beats now—­but coming still, its puffs illuminated by a sun he’d thought he’d never see again. He was alive.

And the third impossible, beautiful thing: a man and woman in humble farmhouse garb, running up the hill toward him with what looked to be a homemade stretcher. Gesturing back at a chimney, smoke curling out, with cinnamon on the air. The woman uttering something in Dutch to the man. "Leven. Leven. Muttering urgent and low, like a prayer, then leaning in to hear his breath. Declaring, Leven—­Life! Amen. You are alive!"

If this wasn’t heaven, it sure felt like it. And if this wasn’t heaven . . . he sure had a lot of life left to live. And a letter to deliver . . . and a promise yet to keep.

one

MAY 1945

OAK SPRINGS, TEXAS

The farm truck that had picked him up somewhere on the road from College Station, Texas, groaned a metallic farewell. A cloud of dust and wayward bits of straw engulfed Luke. They billowed and settled, revealing a main street approximately twenty strides long with a looming gray water tower standing at the end. Oak Springs Welcomes You, it read in large painted letters, and looked for all the world like an overgrown tin man standing guard over the yellow brick road. Only instead of yellow bricks, it was sidewalk-­lined asphalt with a lone blue model A pickup truck parked in perfect parallel with the curb.

No place on earth like Oak Springs, Danny had said.

Really, Danny? Looks like you landed me in Oz. Luke wished he could sock his friend on the shoulder right about now.

Unfolding his map, he looked from this spot—­so small it wasn’t even named in writing—­to the place he was headed for: New York. People’s hopes were high that the war would end soon, and the world of air travel was on the brink of big changes . . . changes he would be a part of. An honorable discharge followed by a long and confining rehabilitation, in which he nearly went mad, had set him ready to be back in the sky in a matter of months. This time, blazing the postwar trail in commercial flights, bringing war-­weary Americans to places over the sea once more. Please, God.

Traveling to New York via Colorado with a detour to Oak Springs, Texas, may not have been the most expedient choice. And his wallet was nearly caving in on itself with emptiness because of it. But he had a delivery to make, and it was one that he’d agreed in his soul had to be made in person. Hannah Garland had saved his life, though she didn’t know it, and this one small thing was the least he could do to close this chapter of his life. Judging by the size of this town, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one woman. He had her address, of course, but no knowledge of where in this town or its reaches it might be.

He approached the first in a row of brick storefronts—­Tom’s Diner. His stomach growled at the thought of a plate of steaming breakfast, though it was well past dinner, as proved by the locked door handle. Be back at sunup, the note on the door said.

Across the way, a tall brick theater with light-­studded letters dubbing it the Orpheum Cinema touted in rounded black letters upon its marquis that Meet Me in St. Louis would open there this evening.

He passed a few other storefronts—­Nettie’s Notions, its window display featuring fabric bolts lined up like so many books. The Chili Parlor, the air lingering with spices of cayenne and onion making its Closed sign a special brand of cruel. And the Ice Cream Emporium, where a lone busboy swept up the gleaming wooden floor inside.

Faint whistling sounded, and a man whittling in a rocking chair a few doors down gave a wave. His denim jeans were dusty and his plaid shirt had seen some trials in its day, but they suited the man and his entire come-­sit-­awhile demeanor just fine. Howdy, soldier, he said, chewing on a long piece of straw. Not from around here, are ya?

Luke slung his kit bag over his shoulder and approached, taking the man’s proffered hand.

No, sir, I’m not. He wasn’t exactly a soldier, either, but didn’t want to correct a perfect stranger. His uniform made him conspicuous out here, he’d realized on the journey. But that empty wallet—­it didn’t have any hidden stores for purchasing extra clothes. He had a few civvies, but they were worn and dusty from travel, and this delivery