Miracle in a Dry Season (31 page)

“Whatever you say.” Robert looked confused, but he rang up the items and Casewell headed home, whistling. Step one was accomplished—well, nearly.

The next morning, Casewell walked out to the pasture while the dew was still on. He carried a pocketknife and a Mason jar with some water in it. He began cutting the flowers that had sprung up as fast as the grass. There were daisies and black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, and butterfly weed. He debated cutting some Joe-Pye weed, but decided it was too big a flower. He settled on some little blue asters and decided it was aplenty. The Mason jar was stuffed with flowers, and he wondered how he might go about arranging them better. He decided to look for something prettier than an old jar to put them in when he got back to the house.

Plopping the flowers on the drain board, Casewell set out his ingredients for caramels. He dumped everything but the vanilla into an extra large saucepan and lit the gas flame under it. This was going to be easier than he thought.

Fifteen minutes later, Casewell knew he was in trouble. The mixture in the pan seemed to be taking forever to come to a rolling boil—whatever that was—so he jacked the heat up. He’d just turned away from the stove for a minute to look for a better container for the flowers when the caramel boiled over, spattering the stove with a residue that seemed to turn to stone. He’d gotten the flame under control and saved most of the contents of the pan, but a great deal of what was in there seemed to be adhering to the sides. Angie had explained that he could test to see if the candy had reached the hard ball-stage by dropping a little bit of it into a glass of cold water.
He’d done that, but all he got was a gummy wad of gunk that wasn’t a hard ball of anything. He decided enough was enough and dumped what he could into a buttered pan.

Then he nearly cursed. He’d forgotten to add the vanilla. Grabbing the little bottle, he sloshed some into the pan of candy. The liquid pooled across the top and then seemed to mostly evaporate. Maybe that’s how it worked. Casewell jammed the hot, sticky saucepan under the faucet and filled it with cool water. He reached in to loosen the residue with his fingers and found that it had hardened to a satiny sheen. He considered whether he really cared about keeping that pan. Probably he could get by without it.

Caramels finished, Casewell turned his attention to the flowers. He found an old blue-speckled coffeepot that he thought would look better than the Mason jar. He filled it with water and began trying to arrange the flowers. Somehow it didn’t look quite like he’d pictured, but he guessed it would do.

He poked a finger at the candy and found it to be the consistency of soft taffy. Maybe Angie had been right about making candy when it was humid. He stuck the pan in the Frigidaire and hoped for the best. After cleaning up the kitchen and throwing out the saucepan, Casewell considered the third element he needed to win Perla. Words.

He began to suspect the candy and flowers had been the easy part. Surely if he could preach a sermon, he could tell a woman how he felt. Thinking about his sermon gave him an idea. Maybe the Bible would have some words he could use. He flipped to the Song of Solomon. He’d never found cause to spend much time in this particular book, but it was the love story of King Solomon and his bride, so surely there was something good in here. He browsed until he came to the seventh
chapter. And there he read King Solomon’s description of his beloved and, blushing, decided that this was no help at all.

He scrounged up a piece of paper and a pencil, which needed sharpening. He pulled out his pocketknife and gave the lead a good point. Then he sat at the kitchen table, flowers at his elbow, and gave his full attention to writing down what he should say.

Maybe if he started it like a letter.
Dear Perla
. There, a beginning.
I wanted to tell you that I . . .
That he what? Loved her? That seemed kind of blunt. Wasn’t he supposed to warm up to something like that? Aha
 . . . admire and respect you
. Good. But that was all he could come up with. He could tell her he liked her cooking, but he liked his mother’s cooking. He could say she was a good mother, but that seemed too far afield from what he really wanted to say. And what was that? Casewell flung the pencil down and cradled his head in his hands. He just wanted her to know that he didn’t want to live another day without her.

He heard a sound and jerked his head up.

“Casewell?” A woman’s voice wafted through the screen door.

“Come on in.” He folded the paper and crammed it into his breast pocket.

Perla stepped into the kitchen, wearing a soft-yellow dress that made her hair look as golden as a late autumn field. But her blue eyes seemed almost gray today, like creek water reflecting storm clouds overhead. Casewell marveled that he could think thoughts like that but couldn’t write a simple love letter.

“I found this pan outside.” Perla held the ruined saucepan. “Shall I clean it for you?”

Casewell jumped to his feet and reached for the pan. “No, no. I was, uh, putting it out for the critters to eat.”

Perla looked skeptical but relinquished her hold. “Oh, how lovely.” She spied the flowers on the table, and her eyes brightened just a bit.

Casewell felt off balance. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He threw up a quick prayer to heaven, something he should have done before he embarked on all this nonsense, and turned to pull the bouquet closer.

“They’re for you,” he blurted.

Perla seemed to lose what little color there was in her cheeks, and then they flushed pink. “Why, thank you,” she said, reaching out to cup a blossom. “I have to say I’m surprised, but it’s very thoughtful of you.”

“You should have flowers every day of your life.” Now Casewell flushed. Where had that come from?

Perla seemed to be amused. She gave a little smile and raised one eyebrow. Were her eyes getting bluer? “Really. Every single day? Even in winter?”

Casewell grinned. He liked her spunk. “In winter you should have a different snowflake for every hour of the day.”

A soft smile spread across Perla’s face. “Why, Casewell, that’s practically poetry.”

He decided there was no time like the present. He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out the pan of caramels. “I made you candy, too.” He plunked the pan down on the table and rifled through a drawer for a butter knife. “Here, I’ll cut you a piece.”

“Caramels? I love caramels.”

Casewell thought Perla looked younger and prettier by the minute. He thrust the knife into the candy and found it to be the consistency of cold molasses. He must have looked like he needed rescuing, because Perla took the knife from his hand,
scooped up a bit of candy on the tip, and popped it into her mouth.

“Delicious,” she said. “Try some.”

She handed him the knife, and in that small act of sharing, Casewell realized that he couldn’t keep from speaking his heart another moment.

“Perla, I don’t want you to leave.”

“I’m not exactly anxious to go, but I really do think it’s for the best. Actually, that’s why I’m here. I came to tell you good-bye. I’ve been putting off going long enough, and I just wanted to . . . to thank you, I suppose.”

“What in the world for?”

“For being such a help serving food. For being my . . .” She hesitated. “My friend when so many people treated me like I was some kind of bad luck. And for being so good to Sadie. I know she needs a father, and you and John and Robert have been such wonderful examples of godly men for her. I appreciate that.”

She looked Casewell fully in the eye for the first time since she came in the door. He thought he saw something there—a question?

“I want to go on being an example.” He spoke in a hurry, as though the words he’d been searching for had arrived all at once. “I want to be more than an example for that child. I want to protect her and love her and be there for her when she falls out of trees. I want to hear her laugh and hold her when she cries. I want to be a father to her.”

Perla’s eyes were decidedly blue now—like icicles against a winter sky. Casewell began to wonder if he’d said something wrong after all.

“Well, you can’t just decide to be her father.” Perla’s voice was clipped. “There’s more to it than that.”

“I know.” Casewell reached for Perla’s hand, which she let him take, although she didn’t soften her posture. “I think I started in the wrong place. There’s so much I want to say to you. I’m not good at knowing where to begin.” He tugged her to a chair at the table and scooted a second chair around so it faced her. He sat and took both of her stiff, cold hands in his own. They were small and soft, though not without calluses. He noticed a burned spot on her right wrist—probably from reaching into a hot oven.

“Perla. I love Sadie, but more importantly, I love you.” He had to stop a moment and catch his breath. There, he’d said it. Perla relaxed the tiniest bit, her back curving a little into the kitchen chair. “I thought about loving you the first time I saw you, and then I found out you had a child, and no . . . well, you know what I found out. I judged you and before I do anything else, I need to ask you to forgive me for that. I was wrong about so many things.” He waited and looked into her eyes.

“I forgive you,” she whispered.

“Thank you. Now, once I decided you weren’t . . . appropriate for me, I chose not to love you. But God has been working on my hard heart and so have you. Watching you feed all those people. Watching you love people who scorned you. Watching you love a child that some women might have wanted to abandon. I can’t help loving you.”

“No.” The word came out of Perla sounding harsh. “No,” she said again more softly. “I’m not worth loving. I think God’s cursed me with the ability to feed people as a way of doing penance for my sin. And I will do that penance. Loving you would be more good than I deserve.” She turned her head away.

Casewell wanted to pull her into his arms, but he just got a firmer grip on the fingers she was trying to slip out of his hands.

“If we only got what we deserved, this world would be a sorry place. I used to think I was a good man. I thought my father was a good man. But we sinned against each other by withholding our love and our forgiveness. It took his dying for me to understand that God loves us so much He’ll give us eternity with Him, even though we fail Him every day. Dad and I figured it out just in time. Please don’t spend the rest of your life waiting to find out that you’re loved whether you deserve it or not.”

Tears streamed down Perla’s cheeks. “I’m afraid,” she sobbed.

“Of what?”

“Of losing you. Of giving myself to you and then losing you.”

Casewell stood and drew her to his breast. “I vow that I will love you as long as I live and that we will spend eternity together in heaven. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.”

Perla cried harder. Casewell could feel her tears soaking through his shirt and wetting his skin. He relished the intimacy of that.

Perla hiccupped and tried to take a few deep breaths. “Casewell Phillips?” she said at last.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

Casewell laughed. “Leave it to me to forget the most important part. Yes. Perla Long, will you be my wife and bless me with your daughter and your cooking for as long as we both shall live?”

“I will.” Perla sighed, leaning her cheek against the dry side of Casewell’s shirt.

23

C
ASEWELL
WOKE
THE
NEXT
MORNING
, his heart full of praise. It was raining again and the soft patter of drops on the roof made him want to tarry in bed. He had a brief thought of how he would be sharing his bed soon and found himself very much awake. It was just as well. He had work to do.

While his plan to court Perla hadn’t gone exactly as planned, he did still think Delilah had given him good advice. And there was one element of the plan he had neglected—a gift for Sadie. He brewed some coffee, ate a couple of slices of bread and butter, and dashed through the rain to his workshop. He would make the finest dollhouse any child had ever owned.