as she pulled her daughter into the house. “You’re all I have since your father went to his heavenly home, bless his sweet soul.”
Hearing the standard soliloquy on her late father’s many attributes cuing up, Charity spoke quickly to interrupt the tape. “I’m glad you care, Mother. Now let’s eat before your great breakfast gets cold.”
Between bites of eggs and fried potatoes, Charity filled her mother in on the details of her embarrassing experience at the hospital. She mentioned stopping by the church as an aside.
“Oh, you poor dear.” Laura made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head before sipping her coffee. “That had to have been so difficult. We both thought Andrew was the perfect choice for you—the Lord’s choice. He seemed so much like your dear father. But Andrew’s decision to marry that divorcée shows we were mistaken.”
Obviously. And apparently Laura still resented the woman who’d eliminated her daughter’s chance at the handsome youth minister. She wished her mother would just let it go, as Charity finally had. Especially after today.
“I’m fine, Mother.”
“Sweetheart, the godly man we’ve always hoped for is out there somewhere, waiting for you. We have only to wait for God to reveal His plan.”
“I know you’re right,” she answered, anything but sure. How many times had she heard those same words—and believed them? So why did they sound so empty now?
Absently tracing patterns in her remaining scrambled eggs, Charity let the questions plaguing her lately resurface. She’d always figured with her devout mother and near-sainted late father, she’d received faith as a birthright. The rest she was beginning to question. But what more could she do? She already walked the Christian walk and talked its talk head and shoulders better than others in her church. Not that she expected a reward, but didn’t God answer the prayers of the faithful?
As if she noticed how quiet Charity had become, Laura reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m just sure you’ll meet him soon.”
Charity’s fork stilled as Rick’s face—too handsome for his own good—sneaked uninvited into her thoughts. She’d met a “him” all right, but if first impressions could be trusted, he didn’t belong in this conversation at all.
“Good, you can be sure for the both of us.” If only her attempt at humor didn’t sound so strained.
“What did you work on at the church?” Laura asked as she cleared away the dishes.
“I couldn’t get focused. I didn’t get much done.” She couldn’t explain why she was reluctant to discuss that exchange with Rick, even if her mother had given her a perfect opportunity to broach the subject.
Laura offered her a closed-lipped, all-knowing mother smile. “You probably just got impatient and left. You’ve always been impatient.”
The comment ruffled her, but Laura was right. If not for Charity’s rush to find a husband, maybe she wouldn’t have chased Andrew so desperately or been so furious when he rejected her. Not for the first time, she wondered if her accusing him of having an affair with Serena had been inspired more by revenge than holiness.
She would have thought she’d learned a thing or two from that humiliating sequence of events. Like, for instance, that making rash judgments could result in undue embarrassment for all those involved. Andrew had told her there was a perfectly good explanation for his overnight presence at Serena’s house, if she would only wait for it. But Charity hadn’t waited; she’d gone right to the deacons with her charge. And then it had come to light how Andrew and Serena had been counseling Reverend Bob’s pregnant teenage daughter.
Shame over that situation still made Charity hang her head low. If you learned so much, what were you doing, attacking that poor builder? That Rick McKinley was wrong suddenly didn’t seem a good enough defense for her actions.
“Charity, dear, stop daydreaming and eat some toast. You’re going to waste away to nothing. And just look at your eyes. You look exhausted.”
Maybe that’s because I worked all night. That unkind response startled Charity so much she straightened in her chair. Guilt appeared immediately, but she covered it with a smile and a nod. It wasn’t like her to talk back to her mother, even in her thoughts. Mother always had her best interest at heart. She needed to remember that. “You’re right. I am tired.”
“You go straight to bed then. I’ll clean up the kitchen. I did most of the cleaning while I was waiting for you, anyway.”
“Thanks, Mother,” she said, choosing not to respond to that last comment or the mild censure that came with it.
Charity let herself be shooed up the stairs to her room, but the tiny daisies that covered the bed, walls, filmy curtains, even her picture frames, immediately crowded her. It was a little girl’s room. Nothing had changed in that room in twenty years, except the grade level of shelved textbooks and the arrival and upgrades in her desktop computer.
She couldn’t sleep here, or anywhere else. Not as confused as she felt after the events at the hospital. And not with Rick McKinley’s smug face reappearing in her thoughts. Before this morning, she’d only seen him that one time at the groundbreaking, and now his image wouldn’t go away. More frustrating than that, just one confrontation with this guy had dissatisfaction with her whole life twisting inside her like a tightening noose.
That made no sense. Her life was fine. Settled, even. So it had to be something else. Something about the man himself. Crawling under her blankets, she tried to push away the images as well as the agitation that kept her breathing from steadying toward sleep. She could still see him measuring and sawing wood, outside in the September morning. Outside the church.
“Wait. That’s it.” She looked about the room, as surprised at having spoken aloud as having sat straight up in bed.
She’d never seen Rick inside her church. Maybe he didn’t attend anywhere. Come to think of it, she didn’t recognize any of the crew from Sunday services, and since she never missed one, she should know. Oh, Rusty attended regularly, of course, but the rest were definite prospects. Maybe her preoccupation with Rick was a sign of her mission to bring that motley construction crew into the church.
Letting her head float back to the pillow, she imagined all the men, tool belts still slung on their hips, lining the church’s front pew. But her plan stalled, only halfway formed. Before she could act as a candle leading those men to light, she needed to make amends with their difficult leader.
A case of nerves. Nothing else could explain the way her pulse tripped at the thought of facing Rick again. She flipped onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow and pressing her heart into the mattress to slow the beat.
Maybe it was anticipation for the mission ahead. It had nothing to do with being under the scrutiny of those huge, unreadable eyes or absorbing the tension he radiated in waves. No, she had been and would continue to be unaffected by the rugged Rick McKinley. But an uneasiness settling deep inside made her wonder.
Rick took the last bite of his sandwich during his lunch break, wishing he could bite back the resentment that had soured his mood all morning. That he couldn’t shake the irritation only made him angrier. He stood up from the picnic table, stowed his cooler under a tree and stalked toward the building site. Rusty caught up with him halfway across the parking lot and fell into step beside him.
“Hey,
