“Well, would you look,” I said aloud. And, in spite of knowing full well that snooping of this caliber was wickeder than merely peeking into medicine cabinets, I walked into the room. Held my breath. Allowed my eyes to adjust to the near-darkness because I didn’t dare turn on a light.
I ran my fingertips—wrinkled as they were from being cold and wet—along the leather-bound classics. Of Human Bondage. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Innocents Abroad. Pilgrim’s Progress. Even a collection of Dickens and Hardy—to more current titles. Some in hardback. Some in paperback. One shelf held nothing but theological academic titles. Others “Christian Living.” An entire shelf had been dedicated to a collection of Bibles.
I came to the end of the bookcase—the one nearest the desk—and stopped short. A large diploma, beautifully framed, hung on the wall. I blinked, stunned by what it proclaimed.
William Alexander Decker had graduated from my alma mater. The same university where I’d graduated magna cum laude, he’d graduated five years earlier, summa cum laude.
“Un-be-lievable,” I breathed. And wouldn’t you just know it . . .
I turned to face the other wall, bypassing the desk. There, between the bookshelf and the chair, hung several framed newspaper articles, each from the Chicago Star, each with the byline: William A. Decker, Senior Reporter. Other frames held newspaper articles showing Will receiving awards or shaking hands with dignitaries. One in particular caught my eye. I leaned in to study the caption beneath a photo of William, flanked by a stout but distinguished man on one side, and a glamorous blonde on the other.
“Chicago’s Golden Boy of Journalism, William A. Decker,” I whispered as I read, “senior reporter for the Chicago Star, received the prestigious Conrad R. Moses Award of Excellence in Reporting on Monday evening . . .” My voice trailed until the last line. “Pictured with Mr. Decker are Conrad Moses and his daughter, Felicia Moses.”
Felicia Moses. Her arm linked possessively through Will’s. Her face glowing like a woman in love. Her spectacular white gown a Vera Wang original if I’d ever seen one. And the pearl clutch a Natasha Couture I recognized because, one, I owned one much like it and, two, I adore Natasha Couture . . .
One final detail answered every question I’d had since arriving in Testament, North Carolina.
“Well, no wonder,” I said.
I didn’t need to turn a light on to see the obvious; the blonde looked remarkably like me.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
William Decker and I stood outside of his modest home, staring at the back of the mansion he’d grown up in through only a mist of rain. He’d brought me a wraparound dress, which was a tad outdated, from his mother’s closet. Not that I complained. It fit. It was dry. And besides, I was too busy trying to sort through my feelings about Felicia Moses. The fact that we looked so much alike. The mystery of who she’d been to him, him to her, and if the hidden story of their lives together held the key to his on-again/off-again treatment of me.
Had she broken his heart? Had he broken hers? I couldn’t ask, of course. To ask meant confessing to Will my compulsion to snoop. My tendency to go where I didn’t belong. Instead, I’d showered, wrapped myself in one of the fat, thirsty towels, and poured two cups of coffee.
Now, fully dressed and standing outside, I studied the man standing near steps that led to a rain-drenched lawn. We both clutched our mugs of steaming coffee as though they were life preservers. I brought mine to my lips and took a sip.
“So tell me,” I said.
He looked at me. He’d dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, which he wore untucked. His hat had been tossed to the seat of an old metal glider and his boots were airing out near his bare feet. “Tell you what?”
I glanced to the house in answer.
“My mother’s father,” he said. “Big Guy has done well for himself, as you’ve seen, but my mother’s father was the tycoon.”
“In what?”
“Lumber.” He leaned against one of the porch railings and looked out over the property. “My grandmother—Mom’s mother—died shortly after I was born, so I don’t really remember her.”
I pressed my back against the doorframe and took another sip of coffee, waiting.
“My parents were living in the guesthouse at the time . . .” He cast a look to the front door. “They ended up moving in with my grandfather to help take care of things. After he died, we stayed in the big house and used the guesthouse for out-of-town family or guests of the newspaper.”
“Were you close to him? Your grandfather?”
“Not like I am to Big Guy. My other grandfather—this grandfather—was first and foremost a businessman.” He smiled. “Big Guy is too, but he’s also a man who loves the land. Fishing. Hunting. Hiking in the woods.”
Take long walks . . .
“I bought hiking boots today.”
Will’s eyes widened. “Did you now?”
“Rob is going to take me hiking on the trails in Chimney Rock.” I spoke the words matter-of-factly, as though of course he would. But in my heart, I knew—I knew—what I wanted was for the man in front of me to volunteer to guide me along those trails. Or any trails. I wanted to know him.
Better.
Or at all.
What was wrong with me? This was not like me at all. I—who hardly dated, ever—had an adorable young man picking me up within a few hours for a date he had asked me out on, and I couldn’t seem to get Will Decker from under my skin.
Will Decker, who took another sip of coffee as though he were not interested at all in my declaration of hiking with Rob. But his eyes studied me nonetheless. “Is that right?”
I nodded, then nervously drained the last of my coffee. I looked into the empty cup for lack of something else to do. “I’ll take my mug back inside.” I focused on his mug. “How about you? Want more while I’m in there?”
Will peered into his cup. “Nah, I’m good.”
The screen door slammed behind me as I entered the house and walked straight to the kitchen. I washed the coffee mug, turned it upside down in the drainer, and walked back through the house toward the front door.
“Hey, Ashlynne?”
I stopped just inside the screen. Will was sitting on the glider, pulling his boots over thick socks. “Yes?”
“The lamp right there next to you . . .”
A traditional brass table lamp rested on a crocheted doily atop an antique occasional table.
“Would you turn it on for me before we go?”
I flipped the switch. Light spilled to the tabletop below. A book lay in front of the lamp as though it had been purposefully put on display. “Hey,” I said, picking it up and holding it toward the screen. “I’ve been reading this book every morning.”
Will straightened and stood. Shimmied one heel farther into the boot. “That right?”
“Yeah.” I opened the door and walked out, still holding it. “I get up early, sit outside with my tea and Buddy and Sis, and read one section. It’s good for—”
“—contemplation,” he and I said together.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
He stared up at me, saying nothing.
“Did you buy it around here?” I asked. “I’d love to send one to Leigh. And maybe one to Gram and one to Mom . . .”
He shook his head, but only slightly. “No.” He took the book from my hand and ambled to the door, leaving behind a new trail of tension. “We’d best get going,” he said, opening the screen. He placed the book on the table without fully entering the room, then pulled the front door shut. “The rain has let up and, if I’m not mistaken”—he turned and his eyes met mine—“you have a date.”
And just like that, I was back to square one with the man who could make or break the future of my career.
While dinner at the lakefront restaurant was wonderful and my date very much a gentleman, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering. My eyes focused on Rob, on his lips and the way he
folded his hands. My ears heard the words he spoke, but with so many thoughts of William Decker, I couldn’t say I listened.
Why was he affecting me this way? Or at all? More than that, why did I allow him to have this kind of control? I told myself over and over—A male/female relationship is not why you came here, Ashlynne. This is not the objective. Think professional, girl, not personal.
I took a deep breath, refocused on Rob, and made a new determination to enjoy my evening with him and to leave any other thoughts of his best friend—my “boss”—behind.
Later, with dinner and small talk behind us, Rob opened the passenger door to his Prius for me. I noticed two boxes in the backseat I’d not seen before.
“What’s in the boxes?” I asked after he’d started the car.
He glanced behind him. “Those? School supplies. Book bags, crayons, paper . . .”
I grinned at him. “Are you going back to preschool?”
He smiled in return. “Nah. Will, he’s the one.”
I felt my brow scrunch, frustrated that he had been thrust back into my thoughts. I struggled to keep my words apathetic. “Will is going back to preschool?”
Laughter rolled out of Rob. “No, no, no. He heads up a small organization that gathers school supplies for children whose parents can’t afford it otherwise.”
“Poor children?”
Rob shook his head. “Children aren’t poor. Their parents may be strapped a little, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a fair shake at education.”
“And Will heads it up?”
Rob’s face illuminated in a flash of streetlamp light. “His brain- child. He gets several of us businesspeople to donate. Then we take the supplies out to the elementary school in a bus. You know, the old-fashioned kind?”
I nodded, but said nothing. The road twisted ahead of us, but the lights from Rob’s car lit the way, exposing banks of jutting rock and packed soil. “Even at night,” I said, “this place is beautiful.”
“I can’t imagine being anywhere else.” After a few silent minutes, Rob added, “Name the date when you want to take a day and go hiking up in Chimney Rock.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “I’ll check the schedule for this coming week and see when I have some time off.”
“Sounds good.” Rob kept his focus on the road, saying little until, “You have feelings for him, don’t you?”
My head spun so fast it nearly broke off my neck. “Who?” I asked. But I knew who.
He blinked, his eyes shimmering with what I could almost swear were tears. “I can tell, you know.”
“No,” I exclaimed, probably a little too forcefully. “No,” I said again, this time much closer to a choked whisper.
He chuckled then. Looked over at me. Back to the road. “I think you do.”
“What—what—I mean—what makes you think so?”
Rob’s chuckle became a laugh. “Well,” he drawled, “for one thing . . . that.”
“That what?”
“You know, just the way—the way you’re always asking about him. Talking about him. Arguing with him.” He swallowed. “And the way you look when you do all three.”
I didn’t speak for a moment. Rob Matthews had become a friend. One I felt I could trust. With my feelings, if I could only figure out what they were. And he was Will’s friend, too. His best friend. I could talk to him.
I could.
“He’s so . . . so . . . frustrating,” I began. “Never in all my life has anyone treated me so . . . so . . . no, that’s not true. Once in my life.”
“Someone hurt you?”
I bit my bottom lip. “Yeah.”
“Someone hurt him too. Once.”
Could it be . . . the woman in the picture? But I didn’t ask. Because I knew, if I did, Rob wouldn’t tell me. He was loyal to his best friend, as he should be.
“So what happened?” Rob asked. “If you care to share.”
I chewed on the inside of my mouth to keep from spewing tears. “I was rejected, you know? Because of who I am.” I shook my head. “I had some crazy notion that I’d be accepted because of who my family is, but instead I was pushed . . . aside.” I glanced out the window, to the shadowing trees and bushes. The house that told me we were one away from the Decker Ranch. “They didn’t even have the decency to accept me for what it could get them. They didn’t even try.”
We reached the driveway. Rob turned in, but he didn’t say anything. When he brought the car to a stop by the cottage, he put it in park, but didn’t switch the ignition off. Instead, he turned to me and said, “Him, too.”
Rob’s eyes told me he wasn’t kidding. And, after what I’d seen that afternoon, I knew the possibility was real. “Because of his family? Because he is a Decker?”
“No.”
“But you said . . .”
“Will was rejected for being what he is.”
I didn’t understand. Not fully.
I looked beyond Rob’s shoulder, through the car window and out to the darkened lawn sloping toward the highway. The lightning bugs had begun their ritual. I returned my attention to Rob and I found him studying me in much the same way as I had watched the animated insects. “And what—what is he?” I asked.
He smiled, albeit faintly. “A good man.”
I clutched my hands together. Stared at them for long minutes, trying to understand. Something. Anything about William Decker. “I don’t—I don’t know what that means. How could he have been rejected for being a good man?”
He wasn’t Jesus, after all . . .
And Rob wasn’t answering. “I’ll walk you to the door,” he said.
He got out of the car, walked around, and opened my door. I placed my feet on the rocks and my hand into Rob’s upturned palm. He pulled me to him, squeezed my hand, and brought his lips to my ear. “You’ll have to wait for him to tell you the rest,” he whispered, as though the night would carry his words back to the guesthouse behind the mansion.
I nodded.
This would have to do for now.
22
I attend a nondenominational “mega-church” in Central Florida. The building is new and expansive. There is a bookstore and a café. A stage and multimedia system to rival any Broadway theater. A praise and worship team who put on what some would call a choreographed show, but which ushers thousands into the presence of God six times over each and every weekend.
It also has a ladies’ restroom near the sanctuary that airports should take note of. It was the only ladies’ room I’d ever been in that could actually “house” every woman who could possibly need to use the restroom during the church service at the exact same moment. So vast, so well-furnished, you could just about hold church in there.
After an insistent invitation, on Sunday morning I rode with Bobbie and Shelton to Cabbot’s Creek Baptist Church because, “You’ll never find it on your own and we might get separated if you drive behind us.”
The Deckers’ church, according to what Shelton proudly told me on the way, had been built in the 1700s. “The building you’ll see today isn’t the one erected way back then,” he told me. “That one was made of logs and it burned.”
“And this one?” I studied his eyes in the rearview mirror and could see that Will had inherited his grandfather’s eyes.
“The current building is actually the third for the church, but even it’s old.”
Bobbie turned in her seat to make it easier to see me. “The old church, the original one, was a meeting place for Patriots back when we were still citizens of Old England.”
The original building of the church I attended in Central Florida had originally been a Taste-A-Burger Restaurant in the 1960s. I decided not to share that tidbit of trivia—it couldn’t compare.
“After service, if you care to look at some of the old graves behind the place, you’ll find some going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.”
I brightened at the thought. “That sounds interesting.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. She turned to face forward again.
The inside of the church was what I’d expected. The stonework and arches gave the sanctuary a Gothic appearance. Short pews—hard and shiny with age—formed rows of moderate length. The end of each pew had been cut high and carved like rolled scrolls. A center aisle, carpeted in red, led to a prayer altar of dark wood. Beyond it, an ornate lectern, and beyond that a floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window. On both sides of the sanctuary, dimly lit by antique brass chandeliers, arched stained-glass windows. Some depicted saints such as John, Peter, Paul, Francis. Others shared stories our faith is established upon—Moses and the Hebrew children crossing the Red Sea, Ruth gathering wheat, David slaying Goliath, Jesus raising a child from the dead. Jesus himself, ascending into heaven.
I inhaled deeply. The scent of lit candles and polished wood rushed my senses. This was . . . lovely. Reverent and sacred.
Music from an old organ filled the room, nearly drowning out the chatter from clusters of those standing between the pews or in the aisle. A few older members had already sat, including Will, who seemed to sense our entrance. He turned from a pew near the front, smiled, stood, and walked toward us.
I nearly tripped over my feet. Will wore a dark blue suit and a tie that I’d wager a month’s salary came from Armani’s men’s collection. His hair, so typically finger-brushed straight back and hidden beneath his hat, looked freshly washed, groomed, and combed. When he reached us, he took his grandmother’s elbow to guide her to their seats. But over his shoulder he said, “Good morning, Miss Rothschild.” Then, of all things, he winked at me.
“Good morning, Mr. Decker,” I said.
Beside me, Shelton Decker chuckled.
We sang old hymns—songs I had not sung in years. It didn’t take many stanzas—two at most—before I felt them resonate within my spirit.
The Road to Testament Page 20
