Trial by Fire (20 page)

A lump lodged in his throat, and he tried to swallow it back. “I'm glad,” he said. “You deserve to feel safe.”

She looked up at him again with those honest probing eyes, and as he regarded her, he wondered what it would be like if he reached out and slid his fingers along her neck, up her jawline, into the roots of her hair. He wondered what it would cost him if he leaned down just a few inches and grazed her lips gently with his.

It was almost as if she read his thoughts. “I wish I was different, Nick,” she whispered.

“What would you do if you were different?”

“I'd probably pull out all the stops and chase the only white knight I know,” she whispered.

He felt the blood coloring his face.

“Can you imagine Issie Mattreaux going after the preacher?” she asked, teasing.

He wondered if it was his imagination or if she was moving closer, testing him with her proximity. He didn't move back. Instead, he just looked into her eyes, glanced down at her lips. He was breathing harder than he meant to.

“Can you imagine the preacher falling for Issie Mattreaux?” he whispered.

She looked at his lips then, and he wet them, thinking how easy it would be just to dip down and touch hers.

“What would people say?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he whispered.

They stood there like that, stricken and paralyzed as the cool breeze teased around them. Finally Nick opened her truck door. She took his cue with a disappointed look, got in, and started the engine.

“Feel free to call me if you get scared before I get over to Aunt Aggie's,” he said. He leaned down, putting his face even with hers. His eyes were serious as he locked into her gaze. “No kidding, Issie. I have a few things to do at home, but you let me know if you need me.”

“I will,” she said, and that smile came back to soften her lips. “Thanks, Nick.”

He closed the truck door, stepped back, and watched her drive away. He crossed the street and went into his trailer, turned on a lamp, and sat down in the chair that someone from his congregation had given him. He pulled his feet up and stared at the shadows on the wall.

What was it about Issie Mattreaux, he asked himself. Why was she on his mind so often, and why did she keep turning up in his life? He closed his eyes and confessed that to the Lord, told him he felt like Hosea falling for a prostitute. But in Hosea's case, God had ordained it. He knew better than that. God had not led him to Issie Mattreaux, because she was not a believer. He couldn't think of anything more miserable than being married to someone who didn't have the same values, the same goals in life, the same purpose, someone who didn't know where to turn in times of trouble, someone who didn't know the value of her life. Simply because of the blood of Christ, God would never put him with Issie. It just wasn't possible. These feelings he was having, they were lustful feelings. He wanted her because she was the unattainable, and because she was so darned pretty. He asked God to take this desire away from him, to make him stop thinking about her and stop caring. He asked him to make him think of her the way a preacher would think of a lost person, instead of the way a bachelor would think of one of the prettiest women in town.

Maybe he was playing with fire as Mark had said. Maybe
she
was. And then he told himself again that maybe he had misread his calling, that maybe he wasn't pure enough to be a preacher. If he was, wouldn't he be able to put her out of his mind and move on? If he was truly called to preach, why would he be having feelings like this for a woman like Issie?

Maybe God had brought him to the end of his preaching career for a reason. Maybe he was displeased with the thoughts skittering through Nick's mind. Maybe his weakness toward Issie was symptomatic of the weakness in his own faith. Maybe he had no business trying to uphold the faith of others when he had such a hard time fleeing temptations in his own heart. Maybe it was time to resubmit that letter of resignation.

Maybe this time he shouldn't take no for an answer.

S
aturday morning, Nick woke before Issie did. Nervous about facing an expectant, wounded congregation the next day, he decided to leave Aunt Aggie's and go home to work on his sermon. Aunt Aggie wasn't anywhere to be found, so he assumed she was out walking. He left her and Issie a note, then drove up to his trailer and saw bulldozers on the church grounds. Junior Reynolds sat on one and Jesse Pruitt on another, clearing the rubble. Several dozen other people stood around the grounds in work clothes.

It was as if he was walking into a surprise party as he got out of his car and crossed the street, for the members of his church who had shown up to help began to cheer and holler.

“What's going on here?” he asked.

“We decided to go ahead and clear the land,” Jesse yelled from the bulldozer. “That way we can get started rebuilding as soon as possible.”

He hadn't had the chance to think of that himself. Instead, he'd been so blinded by the rubble that he couldn't see into the future at all. He looked around at all the faces and all the people in work clothes prepared to spend the day clearing the junk away from the church. There must have been forty or fifty people there. He felt the heaviness of his heart lifting as his mind flitted back to that letter of resignation he was planning to offer them. Maybe he would wait. There was no reason to put a damper on the work they would be doing. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves and began doing what he could to help.

 

I
ssie woke up a little later, thinking about Nick. She got up and showered quickly, then came out of her room to see if he was up. To her disappointment, he was already gone.

She kicked herself, wondering why she spent so much of her time thinking about the preacher. He wasn't the exciting, tough, alpha-male kind of guy that she usually fell for. Instead, he was sweet, sensitive, safe. So why did her heart pound out of control when she was around him? Why did her hands tremble and her mouth go dry? Why had she stood there at the truck yesterday, looking at his lips and waiting for him to kiss her? Why had she been so crushed when he had stepped away again?

The thought of her feelings for Nick began to make her hate herself. She could never be good enough for a man like him.

She went into the kitchen and found a note that Aunt Aggie had gone to take snacks to people working on the church grounds. She made a bowl of cereal and sat down, hating the thought of being alone today. She wished she hadn't made Nick feel like he had to avoid her. She wondered if that was a sign that he was attracted to her, or repulsed by her.

Still, as she finished breakfast, she began trying to think of reasons to see him today. The church grounds, she thought. Aunt Aggie said they were working on the church grounds. Maybe if she went to help…

She cleaned her dishes, then went to the truck and drove to Nick's street. But even as she drove, she realized that part of the reason she was thinking so much about Nick right now was that he was not interested in her. Had he been, she didn't even know if she would have given him the time of day. She felt a little bit like Mark Twain who would never join a club that would have him as a member.

For that, she hated herself.

She pulled onto his street and saw the bulldozer on the church grounds. Dozens of people sifted through rubble, and she wondered if she should keep driving to keep from stirring any further gossip about her and Nick.

But she had no place else to go, so she pulled Steve Winder's old pickup truck into Nick's gravel driveway and sat there idling for a moment.

She shouldn't have come here, she thought. She started to pull out of the driveway when she heard something bang on her truck. She looked out the window and saw Nick standing at the door. She rolled the window down. “Nick, I was going to volunteer to help, but I don't want to cause you any trouble.”

“Cause me trouble? Why would you?” he asked.

“Just coming here. I mean, the rumors.”

He shook his head. “They're all so busy over there, they don't care.”

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“They're clearing the property,” he said, “so we can start rebuilding.”

She turned and looked out her rear window and saw that women and children and old men and young were all helping. “Looks like they could get it all done today with that kind of a turnout.”

“That's what I was thinking,” he said. “They planned all this without me. I didn't even ask them to come. I was going to try to find a way to do most of it myself, or scrounge up a committee. I thought I'd have to twist arms and beg and plead. But they turned the ignition themselves, and I didn't even have to give them a shove.”

She thought she'd missed something. “Huh?”

“Never mind. I just mean that my job is to equip the saints to do the work of the church, but it always seems like it isn't really happening that way. Today it is. Come on and help, Issie. They're all too busy to speculate about why you're here. All hands are welcome.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I'm sure,” he said. “Come on.” He opened her truck door and ushered her out. She followed him across the street, wondering if this was his way of getting her assimilated into the fellowship of the church. She wasn't sure, but whatever he was doing, it was working, because she really did want to be a part of this effort.

A
llie had stiffened the moment she saw Issie drive up in Nick's driveway. She wondered if the rumors she'd heard about them were true. Had Nick been spending time with the woman who once tried to steal Allie's husband away?

“Oh, great,” Mark said, coming up behind Allie and following her gaze. “Don't tell me she's coming to help.”

They watched her get out of the car, and Allie turned back to tying up garbage bags. “Looks like it.”

“Are you okay?” Mark asked. “We could leave if you're uncomfortable.”

Allie tried to reassure him with her smile. She knew that Mark hadn't given Issie a thought in a long time now, and he had managed to rebuild her trust in him as they had built their family. But she wasn't sure she wanted to get chummy with Issie.

Celia touched her shoulder, and Jill approached her too. “Really, are you okay?” Jill asked. Celia had her blond ponytail pulled up and was covered with soot since she'd been sifting through the rubble for anything they could salvage.

“I'm fine,” Allie said. “I forgave Issie a long time ago.”

“Then why do you look so tense all of a sudden?” Jill asked her.

Allie turned back to gaze at Issie's truck. “Because I still get uncomfortable around her. I wish I could forget, but I just have problems with her.”

Mark saw that Issie was coming into the crowd of workers, and Nick was treating her like one of them. “I'm gonna ask her to go home,” he said.

Allie grabbed his arm. “You can't do that.”

“But Allie, I don't want you to have to work beside her today and drag up all those memories. This is
our
church.”

“No, it isn't,” Allie said. “It's Christ's church. And if we can't welcome someone like Issie into our fellowship, even rejoice that she would come, then we're the ones who don't belong here. Not her.”

His face softened and he studied his wife's face. “You're right. I know you are. I'm just trying to protect you from my own stupid past mistakes. Plus, I question her motives. I think she's after Nick.”

Allie looked up at Mark again. Their eyes met, and she looked away. She had always secretly suspected that Nick had a thing for Issie. She wondered what the appeal was, and if he realized he was on dangerous ground.

Then she felt guilty again. If Jesus had shied away from the woman at the well, or the adulteress who was about to be stoned, just because of who they were…well, that would mean he'd have to shy away from Allie for her past sins, and Mark for his, and none of them would ever be forgiven. Suddenly one of her favorite Scripture verses struck her in the heart: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

There it was, she thought. She had to love because Christ loved her. It was very simple, really. Cut and dried. Black and white, with no gray areas. Issie had as much right to her love, as Allie had to Christ's. And it was Allie's job—no one else's—to make Issie feel that she could be accepted here on the holy land where God's house had been built.

T
hey gave Issie a job sorting through a pile of hymnbooks in a box, and salvaging the ones that could still be read, as well as the Bibles that had been in the pews. The fact that anything was salvageable was a small miracle, Nick said. Issie felt an awkward sense that she didn't belong when she saw Mark and Allie working alongside everyone else. She and Allie had had a difficult time speaking to each other ever since she had caused problems in their marriage.

As she sorted Bibles, she was peripherally aware that Allie and Mark were whispering to each other. Was Allie telling Mark to get her out of here? That's what
she
would have been doing. Was she threatening to go home if she had to lay eyes on Issie Mattreaux one more time?

Hours passed and everyone kept working. She worked quietly, not interacting much with anyone else, though occasionally someone spoke to her as if she did belong.

When they'd gotten the building leveled and cleared and everyone was backing away as the bulldozer made its last sweep through, Issie saw Allie heading her way. She stiffened instantly, bracing herself for whatever was coming. She wondered if Allie had waited for the noise of the bulldozer, so that no one would hear her chewing her out.

But when Allie reached her, Issie saw a smile instead of hostility. “I appreciate how hard you worked today, Issie.”

Issie tried to return the smile. “No problem. I didn't have anything else to do.”

“Some of us are about to go over to Aunt Aggie's and set up the chairs for tomorrow's service. Nick wanted me to ask you if you were interested in coming.”

Issie looked up across the crowd and saw Nick on the other side of the bulldozer. He could have asked her himself, she knew, but there was something about sending Allie over that was supposed to speak to her heart. She looked up at the woman whose home she had almost wrecked.

“I don't know. Maybe I'll just go on home.”

“Oh, no. We need your help. Besides, I wasn't going to say anything, but Aunt Aggie cooked a little extra for the firemen today and she said that we could eat when we got to her house.”

Issie studied Allie's face and wondered if she was just a good actress, or if she really wanted Issie to come. “Why do you want me to go so bad?” she asked. “I would think you would want me as far away from your husband as I could get.”

Allie's eyes saddened, and she looked away. “I have to admit, sometimes when I'm around you bad memories come back. But that's my problem, not yours. The truth is, we're all here clean-ing up a church, and there's not a reason in the world that you shouldn't be there working right along beside me if you want to be. Believe it or not, Issie, I forgave you a long time ago.”

Issie looked away. She hadn't asked for forgiveness, had never admitted wrong, but denying that she had been seemed like a waste of effort now. Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked down to hide them. “You have every reason to hate me,” Issie admitted.

Allie smiled. “Christ has every reason to hate
me.
But he doesn't. So how could I hate you?”

When Allie went back to her husband in the crowd, Issie found herself unable to speak or think. The lump grew in her throat and she tried to swallow it back, but she knew she was going to burst into tears right here in front of everybody and cause another round of gossip if she didn't get out of here. Quickly, she crossed the street and headed toward the rusty pickup that was still parked at Nick's house.

She got in and sat there for a moment, covering the tears that were coming through her lashes. Suddenly there was a knock on the window. Nick stood there, looking in with concern. She rolled her window down.

“Issie, what's wrong?” he asked.

She wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself together.

“I saw you talking to Allie,” he said. “Did she say something that upset you?”

“No, no. Not at all.”

“What then?”

“She was very sweet,” she said, bringing her misty eyes up to his. “And she has every right not to be. She's forgiven me for the way I intruded on her marriage. Thing is, I guess I'd be more comfortable with the hate, because I know how to deal with that.”

Nick reached through the window and wiped a tear that was rolling down her cheek. She drew in a deep breath as if jolted by the contact. “I'm not a very nice person, you know,” she said. “Even if I wanted to come to your church, be a part of this, I couldn't. I would never fit in.”

Nick just kept smiling. “One of my favorite Bible passages is in 1 Corinthians 6,” he said.

She gave him a smirk. “Haven't read it lately.”

He grinned as if he knew she didn't even own a Bible.

“It says, ‘Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.'”

More tears erupted in Issie's eyes. “Well, see there? That keeps me out on several counts.”

“That's not my favorite part,” Nick said, leaning in the window and getting too close to her face. “The next verse says, ‘That is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.'”

She looked up at him, her eyes intent on seeing the insights that seemed too natural to him.

“You think you don't belong in that group over there?” Nick asked. “Well, Issie, almost every one of them fits into those categories before they came to know Christ. Some of them just had heart problems. They weren't outward thieves and they weren't going around committing adultery, but they were doing it in their hearts. Others of them did these things openly. Just look at them, Issie. You've lived here long enough to know. You know who has changed and who hasn't. If people couldn't change, then Paul wouldn't have said, ‘Such
were
some of you.' God doesn't keep those people out of heaven unless they decide to stay out. He can wash you and sanctify you and justify you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you can be just as much a part of this congregation as anybody over there. We're just all a bunch of turned-around people.”

“Turned around?” she asked.

“One hundred and eighty degrees. We changed our direction. We're striving toward Christ now instead of toward sin. That's the only difference between you and me.”

She leaned her head back wearily on the headrest. “But I have a lot of baggage, Nick. A lot of people in this town have things to hold against me. And if I haven't hurt them, then they have preconceived notions about who I am and what I do.”

“Those notions can be changed,” he said. “I guess before this crisis with the church, I didn't have a lot of faith in my people. I guess I thought they wouldn't know what to do, how to act, unless I told them. Like they were all a bunch of sheep that would scatter if I wasn't there to keep them all together. But I'm learning differently. They've grown. They've matured. They're wiser than I thought. And they're too wise to think that they're above you somehow. That life of sin is just behind every one of us. We're all sinners saved by grace.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. “Saved by grace?”

He drew in a deep breath. “It means we don't deserve it. Not one of us here deserves to be in communion with Christ or to go to heaven. Not a single one of us. But for some reason that no one on this earth can fathom, God looked down on us and saved us from our emptiness. He filled us up, Issie. He can fill you up too.”

Someone across the street called to Nick, and he waved. “Come on, Issie. We're headed over to Aunt Aggie's to set up for the service. Won't you come?”

She wiped her eyes with both hands. “You don't need me there, Nick. I'll find something else to do.”

“I'd like for you to be there,” he said. “Please come. I like your company.”

The words spoke volumes and told Issie all she needed to know to persuade her into coming. If it was true that Nick liked her company, then maybe these feelings she'd been nursing toward him were not entirely absurd. Somehow it vindicated her. She drew in a deep breath and got out of the truck. “All right,” she said, “I'll come.” Then she followed Nick back across the street and into the crowd of church people, climbing into the back of Jesse Pruitt's truck, to be transported the few blocks to Aunt Aggie's.

It took a couple of hours to set the yard up in such a way that they could worship adequately the next morning, and as Issie found herself getting involved in the plans, she began to wish she could be in attendance. She had never come to Nick's church, had never heard him preach except at a funeral or two.

By the time the chairs were set up and the pulpit had been placed, and they had figured out where they would plug in the microphones, amplifiers, and speaker system, Issie found herself alone with Nick. Aunt Aggie had gone to the fire department to start supper, and the others had headed home. The dip in the land, so that the chairs were seated at the bottom of a bowl-shape in Aunt Aggie's acreage, allowed the hills around it to act as barricades against the breeze. Issie sat on one of the chairs like one of the congregants, trying to imagine whether she would feel out of place if she came. After a moment, Nick came and sat down beside her. “So what do you think?” he asked.

“I think I'm going to have to come hear you preach tomorrow,” she said.

He grinned. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. I could hardly work this hard to get everything set up, and then not be here.”

“Well, yeah, but you realize
I'm
supposed to be preaching, don't you? Really think you can handle that?”

She breathed a laugh. “It's not your preaching that's kept me away. Maybe it's the church building.”

“So you have a paranoia about church buildings?”

She shook her head. “No, I have a paranoia about rules.”

“I told you—” he began, but she cut in.

“I know you did. It's not about rules. It's about the heart. I think I saw some evidence of that today.” She could see that that pleased him.

“So you're really coming tomorrow?”

“I'm really coming,” she said.

“Then I guess I'd better go home and work on that sermon.”

“You don't have it ready yet?” she asked.

“No, I guess I've been a little distracted.”

She suddenly felt guilty. “I guess I'm the one that caused that. All the rescuing you've been doing.”

“No,” he said, “it's not that. I've just been a little depressed. I haven't felt like there was any point.” He looked over at her with a grin. “But if you're going to be here, maybe there is.”

“Glad to be of service,” she said.

 

T
hat afternoon when Nick went back to his trailer to work on his sermon, he got his Bible and his other study aids and piled them all on his kitchen table. He began to write the sermon that the Lord had laid on his heart today, while he'd been working with his flock to salvage the church. As he was writing, he pictured Issie sitting there soaking in every word, so he wrote the sermon directly to her and prayed while he wrote it that the Lord would penetrate her callused heart so that that empty look would vanish from her eyes, and instead he would see joy and peace like he'd only seen in believers.

The depression since the church fire, the murder of Ben, his own failure in rescuing the boy, his worries about what Cruz and his gang might do next, and his doubts about his own calling all vanished in light of the hope that he might lead one person to Christ tomorrow.

And that person might be Issie Mattreaux.