Like Sweet Potato Pie (21 page)

Oh boy.
I shaded my tree some more, hands shaking so that I had to erase one edge.

A little spark leaped up into my mind, glowing, just like the golden spots of color that had danced over the fire. Only this one didn’t fizzle. It burned like an ember under my thoughts all the rest of the evening until Adam walked us out to Tim’s truck to say good-bye.

Overhead the moon had risen, sharp and cold, over the smoky black land as Tim and Becky slapped hands one last time with Todd on the other side of the truck. Christie, blessedly, hung limp with sleep in Becky’s arms, while Gordon panted and made sticky swirls on the truck window with his wet nose.

Adam opened the truck door and pushed back the front seat for me then offered me his hand to jump into the back.

I stood there looking at his hand in the moonlight then slowly grasped it. Squeezed in behind the seat and tucked in my knees, breath curling softly in the chilly air.

Adam hadn’t let go of my hand.

Then instead of releasing me as I expected, he pulled me toward him ever so slightly. “Shiloh,” he said in a strange, tender tone of voice that I’d never heard before. I loved the way he said my name—rolling it over his tongue like a song. “Thank you. For everything.”

His face came so close to mine that it startled me, and a tremor quivered through my stomach. I felt the heat in my cheeks as I stammered to say something—anything—that wouldn’t sound stupid.

But I didn’t need to. Without another word Adam kissed me lightly on the forehead. He released my hand and stepped back to adjust the seat. Then he stood off to the side with his hands in his pockets, jacket collar up against the wind.

“Shah-loh?” Becky hollered, striding around the darkened yard, swiveling her head. “Where’d ya go?”

“I’m here!” I leaned over Tim’s hunting stuff and banged on the window, cheeks flaming.

Tim threw his hands up in the air in mock exasperation and waved good-bye to Adam then let in a frigid blast of air as he threw open the truck door.

Tim and Becky laughed as we pulled away, bantering back and forth and playing with sleepy Christie, and I joined in. But I don’t remember a word of what we said. I sat in the darkness, face hot in the cold cab. Touched the tips of my fingers to my forehead.
Adam just kissed me.

Sure, he could have kissed a sister that way, or his mom—but it was still a kiss. A sign of affection and even—dare I say it?—possession.

I wondered there in the darkness, with Tim’s gun rack behind me and headlights dazzling my eyes, how it would feel to be known as Adam’s. To have his strength and protection all around me like the sturdy walls of a house, sheltering me against the cold and loneliness of life. To spend my days in peace, knowing that I was no longer alone.

Just as he’d said before drawing me into the warmth and glow of the party.

The spark that had twinkled in my mind suddenly blazed up, bright and burning.
Light. Laughter. Life.
Just like Adam’s fall-blooming garden, spilling out color no matter how short the days.

I stared out at the darkened fields, telephone poles flashing by as my thoughts gathered momentum. Counted off things on my fingers. Then reached out and whapped the back of Becky’s seat so abruptly that she yelped.

“What in the name a Pete?” she exclaimed, lurching around to scowl at me.

“That’s it!” I cried. “Adam figured it out! I know what I’m going to do with Mom’s house!”

C
old wind whipped my hair as I carried the giant photo prints out to the car, looking them over in the bright parking lot. I wished the November sun would warm the chilly asphalt and even chillier car, but no such luck.

My roses in the flower bed had long since faded, withered like the brown and yellow leaves that still clung to barren trees, but I had preserved vivid fall. Here. On glossy printouts of Kodak paper with matching black frames: Mom’s spiraled Kobe blooms all rimmed with ice. A lone tree on a hillside. Leaves beaded with raindrops, all in bright colors that popped against the white matting.

All these photos would form a gallery on the cream-colored kitchen and living-room walls. My house fairly sang with simple touches here and there: a bouquet of dry hydrangea blooms, their once-blue petals turned to paper-thin sepia. Bare forsythia branches in a vase. Bible verses. The Bible open to 1 John. Fragrant walnuts in a bowl. Golden pumpkins. Fall leaves.

Everything fresh and joyful, just like my new heart.

The house didn’t need more expensive stuff. It needed my
soul.
It mirrored me, Shiloh P. Jacobs, the butterfly-to-be—the no longer empty, who came to life, day after day, like a green tendril waking from winter sleep.

Looking around at her new world and finding a gift here, a surprise there. A touch of God’s hand in the smallest of things. Things that might otherwise be overlooked in my former rush for beauty, polish, and poise.

For the first time I didn’t care a bit what Lowell thought.

My house would sell soon. I felt it.

Which meant I needed to figure out what on earth to do about Adam Carter. And soon.

“Thanks again, Pastor,” I said, shaking Matt Davis’s hand as I left the Sunday school room. Behind me a couple of guys still argued over whether soft point or hollow point bullets worked better for deer hunting, and a woman named Tammy wrangled over who had doughnut duty next week.

Donut duty. Another reason for my fervent interest in the class.

“No problem, Shiloh.” Pastor Davis beamed, patting my elbow. “We’re glad you’re here.”

The class had finished early, so I slipped down the hall toward the still-cold sanctuary to wait for Tim and Becky and Faye. And try as I might to deny it, a certain Virginia landscaper.

I clutched my Bible under one arm, thinking of the blue-violet asters Adam brought to The Green Tree as a centerpiece for my kitchen table. Something warm had crept into his eyes when he looked at me, and I found myself tongue-tied when we spoke, blood rushing to my face. Me, a fearless reporter who’d interviewed the Japanese prime minister without batting an eyelash.

Despite all my inner scoldings to the contrary, my hands still trembled when Adam and I bent together over his computer screen to design the layout of his flyers, our fingers barely touching on the mouse.

We walked through the cold grass and shrubs of his late-autumn gardens in early morning, the grass painted with frost and a silver, low-hanging mist sifting down through the trees. I stood next to him with unexpected closeness, squatting to take photos of his work and feeling flushed as I stood up. Stilling as he brushed a single eyelash off my cheek, his eyes just inches from mine.

We did all the work together: going over the final draft, picking up the printing with jittery hands, distributing them all over town, designing new business cards.

And wonder of wonders: it
worked.
For once I’d done something right, something that didn’t fall apart into burning pieces splattered across the ground.

Adam had to hire two more employees to deal with the unexpected increase in clients, more than he’d ever had in the fall. Not to mention two orders for cobalt-blue birdbaths—complete with scarlet-red mums, just like the one in the picture.

In return for my help, Adam gave me a Greek-style fish tile in colorful mosaic, carefully chiseled out of an old garden wall he’d torn down at some sprawling estate. Baskets of wrinkly, citron-scented osage oranges and red bittersweet berries. Which now adorned my newly be-souled house.

He even went so far as to pick me up from The Green Tree on our way to Thanksgiving dinner. A big, noisy family shindig at Becky’s parents’ house over in Stuarts Draft—out in the farthest reaches of the county—and I inhaled the musty smell of his truck, like mulch and burlap and a whisper of cologne. We laughed together over glorious orange sweet potato casserole topped with melting marshmallows, piling our plates full of green beans, turkey with cornbread stuffing, and quivery Jell-O salad. His eyes tender as the golden yeast rolls he passed me, our fingers barely brushing on the basket.

Whoever this Adam J. Carter was, I found him invading my thoughts and carefully laid plans a little too often for my comfort. And with the worst timing possible—right as I scheduled house showings and turned mug handles in the same direction and polished a stove someone else would soon own.

How could I even consider him? Especially so soon after my debacle with Carlos?

For years I eschewed marriage, telling myself I’d never be like Mom and Dad, arguing hours into the night and slamming doors in icy good-byes. Not me. Not alive and vulnerable, afraid to weep. Even Carlos had remained more or less at a painful distance, which served me well when he cut the ropes with one swift, magnificent, coldhearted swipe.

But Adam? I laced my fingers together tightly, wondering if maybe he could be different, could be …

“Sugar?” Faye had stroked a strand of hair behind my ear the night before as I sat at my kitchen table, hands clumped with biscuit dough. My eyes fixed on the fish tile and its red, blue, and yellow mosaic squares. “That’s real pretty. Who gave it to ya?”

“That?” My voice had come out sort of squeaky, and I tried to shrug. Plopped the blob of dough down on the flour-covered table. “Oh. Just Adam. Sort of as a thank-you for … um … work stuff.”

Faye didn’t reply. She just leveled her eyes at me behind her glasses and moved the biscuit pan out of the way. Handed me the rolling pin. “Adam’s a real nice guy,” she finally said, clearing her throat. “He’s got a good heart, Shiloh. I wonder if ya …”

I scraped some dough off my fingers with the spoon and looked up, my pulse beating faster.

“Ya ever … well … think of him as more than jest a friend?”

“Adam?” My sticky fingers shook, and I picked up the rolling pin and gently flattened the dough. Like so many of my reservations, smooshed thin and pliable. “I don’t know. I guess I thought he’s … all right.” My shoulders shrugged again, and I curved the rolling pin around a circular edge. “He’s not that good-looking, Faye. I mean he’s not ugly or anything, but he’s not … you know.” My face flamed. “Okay, maybe I’ve thought of him that way. A little. Yes.”

I couldn’t look at Faye. Couldn’t raise my head. I just kept rhythmically rolling the dough.

Her voice came so soft I almost didn’t hear: “Have ya told him?”

“What? Of course not.”

“Well, maybe ya should.” Faye tipped my chin up with one flour-covered finger. “Or at least let him know ya feel the same way.”

“Why? I’m leaving anyway. It won’t do any good.”

“I think ya oughtta let him decide that.” Her words hung in the air. “He’s old enough to recognize love, Shiloh. And so are you. Trust God and tell him the truth.”

That night I burned the biscuits. But they were the sweetest ones I’d ever eaten, crisp and brown on the bottom, drizzled with strawberry jam. I thought of the words
love
and
Adam Carter,
and a small voice inside me murmured a hesitant
yes.

I stopped briefly by the church bathroom in the chilly Sunday school wing to fix my hair, wondering how to put into words what I needed to say to Adam. Maybe after church, as we stood outside in the bright wintry sun, the vast sapphire sky cold and magnificent. The last days of fall swirling around us like dried leaves on the wind.

Maybe I’d ask him what he meant by that kiss. Or maybe I’d just say it: “You’re all wrong for me, but I like you anyway.”

No. That sounded horrible. I smoothed the clip in my hair and straightened my sweater, amazed that for once words eluded me. Me, a journalist, whose life and craft wove words—and suddenly my tongue could only stammer.

But I would find those words and exchange them as a gift, like that little fish tile and pot of asters he placed so eagerly in my open hands.

I pushed open the bathroom door and stepped into the hall, checking my watch. Voices echoed against the corridor walls as classes let out, strains of music just beginning to filter over from the sanctuary.

And then I saw it—a figure that looked like Adam’s as I brushed past an empty Sunday school room.