High Plains Hearts (21 page)

As she turned to say something else to Jake, she realized the little lines had reappeared around his eyes and mouth, the road map of tension.

Stupid, stupid!
she berated herself.
He was finally relaxing, and you’ve tightened him right back up
.

She sent a prayer upward, so immediate that its words weren’t formed, its ideas weren’t clear to her, but its focus was true. Jake. He needed the freedom to come to his decision as she had needed the freedom to give away her precious Bible.

And with the prayer she felt her own self lightening, and she realized she had given herself freedom, too—the freedom to move away from the old patterns of thinking, the old ways of seeing, and into the new.

So new that she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

An idea roared into her mind with the strength of a tidal wave.

“Come on,” she said, tugging on his coat sleeve.

“What? There’s nothing down that street,” he responded, consulting the now-bedraggled flyer he’d picked up in the tent.

“Maybe there is. Come on,” she urged.

“What? What is it?”

She stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “You are so stubborn sometimes, Jake Cameron.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned at her.

“Always wanting to know it all, not trusting that the future might hold something you don’t know about and yet you might want or need.”

He sighed. “Tess, it’s just a street.”

“No, it’s not ‘just a street,’ Jake. Have faith. Trust me. Walk down this street with me.”

He shrugged. “Okay, but—”

She laid a mittened hand over his mouth. “Sssh. Faith. Trust.”

They walked down the darkened street in silence.

Suddenly Tess stopped and pointed. “There. What do you think?”

“Of what?”

“Of that.” She waved her hand toward a windowless hulk of a building that was shadowed beyond the streetlight’s reach.

“What is it?” He peered at it.

Tess took his hand. “Come on. Take a look.”

She pulled him up the unshoveled walk to the front door. “It’s locked, of course, but I think this is it. Check out the back.”

“This is what?”

She headed around the corner and threw the word back at him. “Panda’s.”

He hadn’t followed her yet, and she had to wait for him to catch up with her. “Panda’s? What? I haven’t decided to move Panda’s down here, and when I do—if I do—I will choose the location according to demographics, tax base, traffic patterns—those sorts of things.”

“You want a good reason? Look at this back door,” she said, flinging her arm toward the rear of the building.

A large wooden and metal door, nearly half the size of the building itself, opened onto an area cleared of trees and bushes.

“Under all this snow,” Tess said, stamping on the ground to make her point, “is a large concrete slab. Imagine tables and chairs back here and deep green umbrellas. Flowers, maybe geraniums—yes, red geraniums—in terra-cotta pots scattered around. A white wrought-iron fence surrounding the patio. And it all overlooks the river.”

She couldn’t keep the enthusiasm from bubbling up in her voice. She knew she was in severe danger of overstating it and driving him away, but she was caught up in the wonder of her idea, and, as she looked at him, she realized he was, too.

He walked evenly around the building, as if pacing off the square footage, while Tess trailed hopefully behind, trying to step in the prints his feet made in the still-drifted snow.

She could see it—she could actually see it. If only he could, too!

“I’d have to take a look at the inside, of course,” he said at last, stopping so suddenly that Tess, her head tucked down as she tried to match her footprints to his, crashed right into his back. “And check the city code. This might not be zoned for a coffeehouse. What did this used to be—do you know?”

“It’s been called the River Exchange for a long time. It was originally used as a place where the barges and merchant shipping vessels could unload and take on new cargo.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How long has it been empty?”

“Quite awhile,” she admitted. “I couldn’t tell you the exact date—this was just a spur-of-the-moment inspiration. I hadn’t planned on bringing you here—I hadn’t even thought about this building as a possible location until God put it in my mind.”

“God put it in your mind?” His voice brimmed with disbelief.

“He did.”

For a moment he looked at her, not saying anything. Then he asked, “Why? Why would He do a thing like that? Don’t you think He has other priorities, like war and famine and crime? Do you really think He’s worried about whether a little coffeehouse like Panda’s moves downtown?”

It was a common question, and she had heard the meat of it before. But this time it hurt, coming from him.

The answer came forth with a surprising ease. “God cares about you. You are not at war. You are not starving. You are not in the clutches of crime. Yes, for people who are at war, are starving, or are victims of crime, those are His priorities. And I don’t pretend to know why God does everything He does. He doesn’t answer to me. I answer to Him.”

“But why are you saying He gave you the idea and led you down this street? Give yourself some credit here, Tess. It was probably in the back of your mind, and you weren’t even aware you were thinking about it. Your subconscious solved it.”

“God did it,” she insisted. “Because God answers prayer.”

He smiled. “Sure. I admit that. But who on earth was praying about this?”

“I was.”

His eyes held hers. “You prayed for this? You want me downtown enough that you prayed to God to find me a place for Panda’s?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not what I prayed for.” She tried to look away, but his gaze was arresting.

“Then what did you pray for?”

“Prayer is private communication,” she hedged.

He stared hard at her for a moment, then looked away, but not before she saw the expression on his face. It was part annoyance, part anger, and part disappointment.

Reverend Barnes had told her she would have a chance to share her faith. Perhaps this was it.

“I prayed that you’d find a resolution to your dilemma soon, that you could settle your heart about what to do with Panda’s. Move here or stay in the End. At this stage all I know is that I care more about you than I do about the downtown commission or any growth statistics about recovering the lost merchantability of the heart of the city. I just want you to be happy.”

He turned back, and his face was shining. “You goose. That wasn’t your prayer He answered. It was mine.”

A curious sensation arose in her chest, and it took a moment to identify it. Yes, it was indeed possible: Her heart was singing.

“You are a very sweet, wonderful man, Jake Cameron. You are kind and considerate and absolutely blessed, and I think you are terrific.”

A deep red stain began to creep over the top of his collar and edged up his neck. He was blushing!

At that moment Tess fell deeply and totally in love.

T
heir last stop was Nativity, where an array of brightly twinkling lights led First Night revelers to the door of the church.

The downstairs had been transformed into a children’s craft fair. The dining room was filled with the chatter of children busily constructing masks of canvas, feathers, and glitter.

In the Sunday school area, preschoolers spread large swaths of paint across squares of muslin, happily dripping the plastic-covered flooring with wild splotches of red, green, blue, yellow, and purple.

Reverend Barnes’s reedy figure separated itself from the horde and loped over to join them. He greeted Jake with a hearty “Good to see you again, friend!” and Tess with a “We need you—now. Somebody has to set up a secondary project area, because …”

His words blurred into the general noise as they left for the resource room. Tess looked over her shoulder and mouthed, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and Jake waved his acknowledgment.

The room was a delight for Tess. It was filled with orderly shelves lined with paper in a rainbow of colors, woolly pipe cleaners in clear plastic bags, cartons of glue sticks, baskets of scissors, and covered boxes her fingers itched to explore.

“We have more children coming than we can attend to right now. Could you possibly cobble together some other projects for some of them to do? You can set it up in the nursery—I’ll dash up and get things arranged there. Thanks, Tess—you’re a gem. And so’s your young man.”

“He’s not my young man,” she protested, but her heart was not in it.

“Sure, Tess. Give me a holler if there’s anything else you need. I’m running up to the nursery now.”

Running was undoubtedly the right word, Tess thought as he spun out of the room like a whirlwind. He had more energy than she had ever imagined a man his age could possess.

She shrugged out of her jacket and mittens and dug into the cupboard.

The boxes were a storehouse of wonderful things. She quickly pulled out several sheets of colored tissue paper, some cellophane pieces, construction paper, scissors, and glue sticks. She dumped her treasure trove into an empty box she found neatly stashed in a corner and headed upstairs to the nursery.

Reverend Barnes was just pulling the last chair into place around the table and looked up in surprise as she walked in.

“Are you ready this soon?” he asked.

She nodded and began displaying her treasures on the table. “We’ll make stained-glass windows. First we’ll cut out shapes from the construction paper and back the holes with tissue or cellophane.”

“I remember those,” he mused. “Great idea, Tess. I knew I could count on you!”

“Say, where’s Jake?” she asked as she divided the materials.

“I don’t know. He wasn’t in the dining room, and I got only a peep in the Sunday school room.”

A group of five children burst into the room, and Tess’s career as a craftswoman began.

She had only stolen moments to think about Jake and wonder where he might have gone. There was a steady stream of children for the next hour.

At last Reverend Barnes poked his head in. “I think you can shut down now. It’s almost fireworks time, and everybody’s abandoning us.”

She flexed her fingers, stiff from cutting countless pieces of paper, and tried to flick the dried-on crust of glue off her fingernails. Her pale pink polish was chipped, and what was left was hidden under the glue remnants.

She gathered up the pieces of paper and put them in a stack. She’d come in sometime during the week and straighten up the room with more attention to detail.

The dining room crafts center was closing down, and the Sunday school room had shut entirely. No one she asked had seen Jake, and she wandered back upstairs.

Where could he have gone? Surely he hadn’t left already.

At the top of the stairs she could see into the sanctuary. Outlined in one of the middle pews was the shape of a man, not bent in prayer, but facing the large cross suspended behind the pulpit.

Could it be—?

She tiptoed around the side aisle, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, but the floor creaked and gave her presence away.

Jake turned to her, and when he did, her heart sparked anew.

What she saw was a man transformed.

His eyes shone with a gentle radiance that could mean only one thing. “It makes perfect sense. I have the proof.”

She slid into the pew next to him. “Do you want to tell me?” she asked softly, not taking her gaze from his face.

He nodded. “I wandered up here. It was dark so I was fumbling around, looking for the switch to turn on the lights. I remembered what you said about electricity and faith. That started me thinking. I have no proof electricity exists, other than the fact that my coffeemaker works and the lights come on at my house. And, of course, the monumental bill I get every month. But it could be squirrels in little wheels powering the utilities, for all I know. I’ve never seen what makes my microwave work. It just does. And when I put my nachos in there, I trust it’ll work and the cheese will melt, whether or not I understand why it does. That melted cheese is proof enough of electricity’s existence. I don’t need more.”

“Jake, I am 100 percent, completely, totally lost. What do squirrels and nachos and electricity have to do with God?”

“I’ve always believed in God. Always. But I’ve prayed for a faith that goes beyond just belief. What I needed was trust, the trust that would let me allow Him into my life. Didn’t it make sense that I should trust God at least as much as I trust the power company?”

He turned to her and took her hand. “That’s the step I didn’t have before. I didn’t trust Him, and without trust there really can’t be faith. I’m still working it through, and I’m not sure yet that it’s making any sense.”

“Oh, it is,” she whispered.

“I remembered your story about giving away your Bible, and suddenly I understood. I had to come to the point where I was willing to say, ‘I believe, and more than that I trust.’ ”

He shook his head. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do—to give myself over completely to Someone I can’t see, but who I do know exists. And it was the easiest thing, once it was done. I feel so different—refreshed, healthy, whole.”

“Praise the Lord.” Her words were barely spoken, but he heard them.

“Yes,” Jake said. “Yes.”

The song in her soul soared. He was home—she could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes, feel it in the way his hand gripped hers.

They sat silently, hand in hand, relishing the glory together.

The noise level of the revelers outside increased, and Jake glanced at his watch. “We’d better get outside. It’s almost midnight!”

A fresh vigor possessed her as they walked out, side by side, from the sanctuary and into the air that was so cold it snapped.

New faith. What was more beautiful than that, except perhaps the patina of old faith? She pondered this until the blare of a horn startled her back into the present. Whistles clanged, people shouted, and somewhere a band struck up the traditional New Year’s Eve song “Auld Lang Syne.”