by Toni Blake
“I’ll take orange juice.”
As she bustled around—getting the hot food onto plates, asking Beck to grab utensils from a drawer she pointed out with the big fork she used to transfer the sausage—she remembered a very recent time when she didn’t even want him in Meg’s kitchen. Now, this quickly, he fit here, rummaging in the drawers, taking a seat across from her at the old farmhouse table, digging into the hearty breakfast she’d prepared.
“You sold your pancakes short,” he told her, shoveling a man-size bite into his mouth.
And she couldn’t deny that they were pretty delicious. “Maybe you’re right—guess I make a pretty yummy pancake.”
“Damn straight you do.”
There was so much to be happy about this morning. Good sex. Good sleep. Good pancakes. Good feelings about herself because being with him reminded her she was...well, just as good as anyone else, flaws and all.
And yet, if last night had brought clarity about how much she wanted to have sex with Beck again, the morning was delivering a clarity of a different kind. A kind she didn’t want to feel, wanted to just keep ignoring. But trying to ignore what had happened with Simon and Whitney hadn’t worked—and she was pretty sure ignoring the problem with Beck wouldn’t, either. She really couldn’t just keep taking the easy road in life—after a while, taking the easy way became, ironically, too hard to bear.
Even so, she tried to eat, tried to simply enjoy the moment and stay with the good feelings. Because she was plain sick of all the doom and gloom around her lately—didn’t she deserve to be happy for a while? At least for the length of a morning?
But then she realized she’d forgotten to carry the plate of sausage to the table, and when Beck offered to get it, standing up and heading toward the counter, her eyes landed on the bulldozer key near the back door. And she knew—she knew in her soul—that he saw it, too. And wasn’t even surprised about seeing it.
She had no idea what that meant, so as he picked up the plate of sausage, she asked quietly, “Aren’t you going to take that?”
He played dumb. “Take what?” Carried the plate to the table, sat back down.
“The key.”
He forked two sausage links onto his plate. “No,” he said evenly. “Not until you decide to give it to me.” Then proceeded eating.
“Why?”
“Same reason I gave it to you in the first place. To let you have time to...accept the situation.”
His simple words made all the blood drain from her face. Because her growing feelings for him made it painfully easy to forget what lay at the heart of the matter here—but he was reminding her. She sadly confessed, “I suppose I sort of have. Or I’ve at least run out of ways to try to stop it.”
His response stayed just as composed and kind. “I still have no intention of pilfering that key away. You can give it to me when you’re ready.”
She stopped eating, lowered her fork, pressed her lips firmly together. She’d never be ready. Not to watch those trees fall—and certainly not to give her consent to it. “What happens if...if I never give it to you?”
He stopped eating, too, and narrowed his gaze on her. “Honestly?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Eventually the weather will clear and enough snow will melt that work can resume, and then I’ll get another key for the bulldozer brought over from the mainland.”
She drew in a deep breath, blew it back out. “Wouldn’t it be easier...to just take the one hanging on the wall?”
He tilted his head. “You sound almost like you want me to.”
“I don’t want to keep causing you problems,” she said. “But at the same time, I can’t willingly give you my blessing to tear down the trees.”
He met her gaze sadly, sighed. Then cut off another bite from his stack of pancakes. “I still don’t want to take the key from you, Lila. You give it to me when you’re ready—or not. I’ll deal with the situation either way.”
He was trying to sound kind, be kind. But she could also hear the businessman in him sneaking back out. The man who had a job to do, money to make, obligations to fulfill. She knew businesspeople had to do that, run their businesses. But she liked every other part of Beck better. Maybe his dad had, too.
She resumed eating, as well—but the air had thickened with tension, the silence felt heavy, and Beck clearly thought a change of subject might fix it. “So what’s on your schedule for today?”
She blinked uncertainly, almost having forgotten what it felt like to have a schedule. “I suppose I might loom knit some, maybe wrap some of the gifts I’ve been loom knitting, and then probably loom knit some more. And in between all that excitement, I’ll probably look out at the snow and occasionally check my weather app. And if it doesn’t snow today, I might get really crazy and walk down to Koester’s for a few groceries. After that, I’ll probably do some loom knitting.”
“Turns out I’ve got some time on my hands, too,” he said in a jocular way that told her he could relate. “I could, um, hang out and walk down to Koester’s with you later. Maybe have lunch at Dahlia’s or the Skipper’s Wheel if either is open. Unless you have too much loom knitting to do to squeeze me in.”
He wanted to keep spending time with her. She wanted that, too.
Only...when you really got down to it, what was the point? “There’s a problem with that,” she informed him sadly.
He raised his eyebrows. “I was right about the urgent loom knitting?” But his tone sounded just cautious enough that she knew he had some idea, joking or not, of what the problem really was.
“Even if I didn’t throw you out last night, and even if I loved waking up with you this morning... I still can’t get past the fact that you’re going to tear down those trees.” She’d said as much already, of course, but this time it came out more somberly, more gently.
Lowering her fork to the plate, she looked across the table into his eyes, longing to make him understand what was going on in her heart. “Surely now you get that this is...about more than trees. It’s about letting a man take something from me that I don’t want to give, feeling like I don’t have any control over what’s happening. But even if it were only about the trees, and the inn, and Meg, I’d still feel the same way. You make me want to let it stop mattering, but I can’t. Because I forget for a while. I forget when you’re listening to me, or being sweet to me, or making me laugh. And I forget when you’re kissing me, and God knows I forget when you’re naked with me. But there always comes a moment when I remember. And that moment is...crushing. That moment makes me feel like I’m betraying Meg. And my grandma. And...myself. Because I can’t keep being selfish my whole life—I can’t just keep doing what I want and saying the hell with everyone else.”
“I don’t want to make you feel that way, Lila. I don’t want to make you feel any way but good.”
She just looked at him. Words weren’t necessary anymore. Leave the trees alone.
The silent answer, same as ever, came back through his eyes. I can’t.
“If I could, I would,” he told her, out loud.
“And if I could be with you without it being selfish, without it being...me just doing whatever I feel like, as usual, no matter who it hurts, I would. But as long as those trees are coming down, being with you is siding with the enemy, and letting Meg down. And I can’t be the girl who lets down her sister anymore. Which makes this all just sort of...pointless.”
She reheard her own words then—how serious they sounded. Like what had happened between them wasn’t just sex, like it was serious and emotional. Maybe he felt the same way—she didn’t know. But not knowing, it still embarrassed her, made her drop her focus back to her half-eaten pancakes. And it also reminded her that... “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway since I’ll be leaving at Christmas. But even if it’s just for now—I can’t see...past the trees.”
/> She lifted her eyes back to him and their gazes locked again across the table. Her heart beat too hard. She’d ruined something here. Or he had—she wasn’t sure anymore who was at fault. But maybe that didn’t matter, either. Regardless, he pushed back his chair, stepped up to hers, and bent to kiss her forehead. A silent goodbye.
He lingered there, close to her—she could feel his warmth, his breath on her skin, for a heart-piercing moment—then he stood upright, turned, and walked away. A minute later, she heard the front door and knew he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BECK SAT STARING out the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back of his West Bluff home. The view—in summer or winter—was simultaneously breathtaking and peaceful: Lake Michigan and the Upper Peninsula beyond viewed from Summer Island’s highest ridge. It had a way of making you feel utterly secluded, hidden away in the idyllic north woods beauty.
When he’d bought the house with the aim of developing the land on the southern-facing slope adjacent to West Bluff Drive, it had been with the idea of giving more people a view just as stunning, and of bringing more prosperity to the island. He’d never imagined it would hurt anyone, and certainly not to the extent it seemed to hurt Lila.
What if you had known? If you’d realized it would hurt Meg and her family, would you have bought the land anyway? Gone ahead in the name of progress? He shook his head, truly unsure of the answer. Not that it mattered; he couldn’t turn back the clock.
The idea of seclusion had appealed when he’d come here—and at certain moments still did. But the truth was: being alone had been better before meeting someone he thought he’d like sharing this all with.
That said, going to bed with Lila and then being sent packing afterward was getting old. No matter the reasons why, no matter whose fault, no matter which one of them couldn’t or wouldn’t bend on the issue. And sure, it had only happened twice, but he held little hope that a third time would end any differently. And as she’d pointed out, she’d be leaving soon anyway, so maybe the best thing he could do for himself was forget about it and move on.
Great idea, except that’s impossible. Because the connection between them had been...real. And for her to have confided in him had deepened that connection. And it had torn him up inside—tore him up again now just thinking about it. No woman deserved to experience what she’d been through. He gave his head a light shake, unable to understand how any man, no matter how rich or powerful, could justify such behavior.
And hell—Simon Alexis aside, he didn’t exactly enjoy making her feel like she was betraying her sister, either. He thought she was taking an extreme viewpoint, but given all she’d been through, he supposed he could almost understand her way of thinking.
Pondering how much nicer a day this would be if he were down on Harbor Street with Lila right now having lunch with the glow of Christmastime all around them, he walked to the kitchen in sock-clad feet and threw together a ham sandwich, grabbing a can of Coke from the fridge, as well.
Settling at his too-big dining room table—hell, why did a man who lived alone and never had guests need a dining room?—he ate, and thought. Christmas Eve was only a week and a half away. Lila would be gone and he’d quite possibly never see her again. And he’d be in Kentucky, visiting with his mom and sister, and watching his niece and nephew unwrap gifts on Christmas morning. Life would get back to normal. Whatever normal was. He’d kind of lost track.
But he supposed one thing was slowly becoming clear to him. Being alone wasn’t all he’d hoped or anticipated. His dad’s death, the divorce—isolating himself had sounded damn good after all that. But the joys of such solitude had run their course quickly. And if he was honest with himself, maybe he’d been hungering for companionship since soon after his arrival, starting the moment he’d met Suzanne and wanted to know her better. Now, spending time with Lila had deepened the urge not to go through life alone.
The whole time he ate, he found himself staring at the wooden Nativity box still sitting on the table, the papers he’d already looked at in a small stack beside it.
He didn’t care to read more about what a rotten guy he was. But, same as before, some long-forgotten sense of duty niggled at him. The man’s dying wish was for me to read this stuff. Maybe I should give it one more go.
Tossing a crumpled paper napkin atop his now-empty plate, he shoved it aside and reached to warily pull the cedar box closer.
Lifting the lid, he drew out the next group of folded pages and opened them up. He discovered another sermon, dated Easter several years ago, and titled “Ultimate Sacrifice.” Beck perused it—words about God having sacrificed his only Son and what we should take from that in living our daily lives. The next sermon he drew from the box was about faith, and a third addressed miracles.
All in all, he mostly just found it a relief that they weren’t about him and his shortcomings as a son or a person. And to his surprise, there was something warmly nostalgic about reading his father’s more recent sermons. Having sat through hundreds of them in his youth, Beck could almost hear his father’s powerful voice delivering the words—there’d been a certain cadence when he spoke that reverberated through the writing on the page. As a child, he’d admired his father’s passion, and perhaps he still did. Perhaps the sermons were reminding him of that—and of a time when their relationship had been simpler, better. Just a father and a little boy.
On Sunday mornings, his dad had been a man in a suit in a pulpit, giving guidance to the masses. But on Sunday afternoons, he’d become a father who took his son fishing, or hiking. A smile stole over Beck along with an old memory: a pretend dinosaur hunt at a local park famous for the prehistoric bones and fossils discovered there. Life with his dad hadn’t been all bad—no, not all bad by any means.
Beck began reading the next sermon, called “A Cheerful Giver”—yet he’d gotten only a few lines into it before realizing he’d indulged in those softer thoughts of his father too soon.
* * *
Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 7. It reads: Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
I’ve talked to you before about my son, Beck, and ways in which we disagree. We approach life differently, my son and I, and it’s caused me much heartache as he’s become a grown man and gone his own way in the world. I tried to teach Beck to give, to those less fortunate, to our community, anywhere we can—to give just as the Lord instructs us to in His Word. But as he grew up, Beck seemed to resent giving just as much as I love giving.
Beck took a deep breath, blew it back out. Maybe this was a mistake—and maybe this would be the last damn sermon he read. Better to remember his father for dinosaur hunts than this.
But even so, his eyes continued down the page. Perhaps out of morbid curiosity to see just how much his father would denigrate his own son publicly.
Let me tell you a story about Beck that I love, though.
Okay, that was a surprise.
One Christmas some years back when he was a young man earning a good living, he gave me a wonderful leather coat for Christmas. And though he tried not to let it show, I could see the joy he took in it, and it was a fine coat indeed—certainly the finest I ever owned. And I was proud that my son wanted to honor me that way, and proud that he could finally see the merits and satisfaction in the act of generosity.
One cold winter’s day soon thereafter, I encountered a homeless man named Robert on the street in downtown Cincinnati who had no coat of his own. My heart instantly told me to give this man my coat—he needed it far worse than I did, and it would carry my son’s kind gesture to a soul in need.
Beck had heard all this before, but somehow, this time, the words struck him in a new way. A homeless man in winter with no coat? Suddenly, giving the man the coat didn’t seem like such a heartless thin
g to have done. Maybe it just took time—and perspective—to view it differently.
And then Beck nearly fell out of his chair—because he reached a part of the story he didn’t know.
Just last week, a miraculous footnote to this event took place. I received a phone call from Robert, the same man to whom I’d given the coat so many years ago. He’d remembered my name and that I was a reverend, and he located me here at the church through an internet search. And here’s what Robert told me when he called. That the coat had given him more than warmth—that my giving it to him had also restored his hope, his belief that he could turn his situation around. He wore that coat all winter as he started down the road to seeking employment and having a home. Before long, he found himself in a halfway house, and with a job. And slowly but surely, he saved enough money to get himself an apartment, and his living situation continued to improve gradually over time.
Now, all these years later, that man owns a small home, has a full-time job, and has just graduated from a technical college, where he learned a trade that can serve him for the rest of his life. He’s gotten married, and he and his wife work tirelessly to aid the homeless. He still wears the coat, even though it’s a bit on the tattered side now, he tells me, and he said when he pulled it from the closet on the first cold day this fall, he thought of me—and decided to track me down and thank me for the coat.
Sometimes, you see, a coat is more than a coat, and a gift is more than a gift. You never really know how far one gesture can reach or how much one simple kindness can give to a person. I was grateful to Beck for the gift of that coat. And I was grateful in a different way to be able to give it to our brother, Robert. Now, I’m even more grateful to Beck for his heartfelt gift—a gesture that has carried forward from me to Robert, and now from Robert to every person in his life, to his wife, to every needy soul who in any way benefits from his charitable heart. Look at the lengths one simple gift reached when given cheerfully, with love.
