and striped dinnerware she’d drooled over in the Crate and Barrel catalogue that had come earlier in the week. There’d never been a preacher in Shelter Valley Community Church, or in the other churches in town, who didn’t wear the long flowing robe and sash associated with the calling, and who didn’t hide behind a pulpit when he preached.
Constant peace? Who was he kidding? Constant aches and pains, more like it.
But then, from what she’d heard, the man was thirty-eight years old and had never been married. He had no family. What did he know about loving?
Hamburger.
Dryer sheets.
Boneless chicken breasts.
Toilet paper.
“The soft kind,” Tim leaned over to whisper. He was on her other side, next to his oldest sister, Ellen. Rebecca, Martha’s fifteen-year-old daughter, was on the other side of Shelley.
“Pay attention!”
With exaggerated force, Martha pointed to the preacher. After all, her kids were the only reason she was even there.
Once, shortly after Todd had left and before she’d landed her job as production assistant at Montford University’s television station, she’d let tight finances convince her to buy bargain toilet paper. That had been the first time her son had expressed the anger that had been building since his father’s defection.
“You aren’t paying attention,” Tim whispered, more loudly than Martha would have liked. Raising this boy was certainly different from raising the three girls who’d come before him.
“She doesn’t have to, stupid, she’s the boss.” Shelley leaned across Martha to hiss at her brother. Much to Martha’s distress, Shelley’s youngest sibling was most often the target of the girl’s disdain.
“Nuh-uh,” Tim said in a low voice. “God is.”
With a roll of her eyes, accompanied by a dramatic flounce for all the congregation to see, Shelley settled back against the pew.
Martha looked straight ahead, pretending that all was well in Mooreville. And saw that the members of the entire congregation weren’t the only witnesses to their little interchange.
David Cole Marks, the new preacher at Shelter Valley Community Church, had seen the whole thing.
She held his gaze until she realized she was behaving as belligerently as Shelley in one of her more “charming” moments. Then Martha returned her attention to the paper in her lap.
Or attempted to.
The preacher’s eyes seemed to bore into her mind, interrupting her ability to focus on the list in front of her. There’d been nothing disciplinary in those eyes, nothing condescending. No rebuke.
Only kind understanding. And a question. As though he wanted to help.
Yeah, right. She’d seen that same compassionate regard from this man’s predecessor—and knew firsthand that what a person showed on the surface was no indication of what might lie beneath.
Forget the grocery list. Next time she’d bring a book.
“IT’S ALWAYS A BIT of a challenge coming into a new church,” Pastor David Marks said aloud as he drove his hunter-green, two-door Ford Explorer away from his house behind Shelter Valley Community Church. With four bedrooms, the place was far too large.
He’d stopped home only long enough for a frozen burrito after church. He’d had a couple of invitations to dinner, but hadn’t wanted to pass up the opportunity—until now, nonexistent—to visit with Martha Moore and her family. Her meeting his gaze during services this morning had been a first. “Trust and confidence has to be earned,” he continued.
But this time is harder.
David nodded, right at home with the small voice inside him. He used to question his sanity over that voice, making himself crazy with a need to discern its source. His own mind? Intuition? An angel? There was no way to ever prove it one way or another, so he’d finally settled on an angel. He’d granted himself his own personal guardian angel.
“Yes,” he answered, “this time is harder.”
Why?
“Because this time I’m paying for the sins of another man.”
He felt the truth of those words like a punch to the solar plexus. He’d known, of course, but never consciously acknowledged it. Never gave words to the thought.
Yes.
He turned. And turned again, slowing when he drew close to his destination. “Something with which I am intimately familiar.”
Yes.
Peace settled just beneath his ribs as the next thought occurred to him. “And that makes me the right man for this job.”
Yes.
With this acknowledgment, the uphill struggle of the past six months—visiting home after home, seeking out people in their own surroundings, trying to break through the defensive walls that prevented him from doing his job as effectively as possible—ceased being such a drain on his emotional energy. “Thank you, Angel.” And you can kick me for taking six months to ask, he added as a silent afterthought.
You’re welcome. He was sure the angel was laughing.
David was laughing at himself, too, as he pulled into the driveway of his most standoffish—and yet, he suspected, one of his neediest—parishioners that Sunday afternoon in January.
He’d been trying to pin Martha Moore down to a visit since he’d arrived in Shelter Valley the previous summer. Today, he’d finally been given a very reluctant invitation—and only because he’d finally wised up and gone through her son, Tim. That was one young man who seemed open to new experiences, willing to give a new relationship a chance.
David was looking forward to getting to know Tim better.
He glanced at the well-worn, leather-bound Bible beside him, decided to leave it there, and climbed out of his car. Later. He’d get to the good book later.
DAVID WISHED HE’D BROUGHT the book. Not because he would’ve opened it. Or even considered reading from it. Certainly the atmosphere, even with the smell of chocolate chip cookies in the air, was not conducive to a sharing of his favorite passages.
No, facing the pleasant and completely empty smile of Martha Moore across the coffee table in her living room, David wished he had the book for purely selfish reasons. He wanted something to do with his hands.
No.
Okay, he wanted to hide behind the safety and security it represented.
Yes.
Yes. Well, angel, thanks a lot for that one. He listened while Martha told him how much she’d enjoyed his sermon that morning. He was almost positive she hadn’t heard a word of it. She’d been writing—and David would bet she hadn’t been taking notes on anything he’d had
