The Barefoot Believers

by Annie Jones

  “Jo.” Travis tried the name again.

  From his mouth, the name didn’t sound like a synonym for a second-rate castoff. She responded immediately. “Yes?”

  “I like it,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “And as for talking about awkward?” His hand resting so lightly on her back it felt as fleeting as his breath, he nodded and finished up, “I thought we were talking about grace…Jo.”

  Jo looked up. Right into a pair of soft brown eyes focused on her. Not her sister’s shadow. Not her father’s disappointment.

  Her.

  Just her.

  All her life she had wanted to see that look from someone who mattered. Who thought she actually mattered, if only as another person. She’d wanted it so badly that more than once she had made a pest of herself to her family and a fool of herself in questions of the heart. That yearning had dominated her actions for so long that she hardly knew how to do anything but seek that elusive affirmation.

  And now it had come to her unbidden.

  Without strings from him or manipulations on her part.

  Travis Brandt had gone out of his way to do something kind—for her.

  Her first impulse was to push him away. Then to make a joke, a caustic remark, an outright insult if she had to, to prove to him his lack of judgment for singling her out. If only he knew what had been going on in her mind, what had brought her to Florida.

  Jo shivered and tore her gaze away from his, murmuring, “Grace. Yes. Grace. We were talking about that.”

  Suddenly the word took on a deeper meaning. Grace, not unlike the kindness and attention Travis had shown her, came undeserved, and often when one least expected it.

  The mishmash of thoughts in Jo’s mind troubled her. Yet they also reassured her.

  “You steady now?” Travis released his hand on her crutch while his other hand still hovered close at her back. “Don’t want you taking a tumble and twisting that other ankle.”

  “Steady?” She glanced into his eyes and wanted to shout at him No! How could I be steady with you standing right there, looking at me like…like you actually care who I am and what I do? “I, uh, yes. I don’t think I’m in any danger of twisting my other ankle.”

  “Yet,” Kate piped up clearly for Travis’s benefit. Then she turned to Vince and smiled. “But given the crazy expensive stilts she wears for shoes, I’d say that other ankle is living on borrowed time at best.”

  “Spoken like a regular grumpy old woman who picks out her shoes for comfort,” Jo retorted, knowing Kate would actually take the remark as something of a compliment.

  “Hey, careful who you call old, baby sister. Don’t make me have to prove you wrong by announcing both our ages. I’ll do it. Right here. Right now.”

  Jo was not fussy about her age. In a few years, she might feel differently. But for now she could not count herself among the fluttering females who felt the subject of age too delicate to discuss in front of “gentlemen callers.” But she was the kind of woman who did not want personal information broadcast by her snarky big sister in front of a potential business contact. That was her only reason for backing down, she told herself, business.

  “I amend my comment. You are not a grumpy old woman. You are merely a grumpy woman. Who thinks she is so smart for her choice in footwear but hasn’t stopped to consider that her clunky, ugly lace-up granny shoes didn’t protect her from getting hurt any more than my adorable heels did me.”

  “Huh?” Vince looked from Kate to Jo to Kate again.

  “I followed it.” Travis stood back and stole a peek at Jo’s lone pink fluffy house shoe. “The most sensible shoe in the world won’t save the foot of a scatterbrained wearer.”

  “That’s ri—hey!” Under normal circumstance Jo might have taken a playful swing at his arm, but out of fear of making one wrong move and falling on her face—thereby proving him right about the scatterbrained jab—she simply stamped her crutch and narrowed her eyes. “I thought you brought me these as an act of Christian charity, not because you thought I was too loopy to get around without help, Mr., um, Pastor? Rever—”

  “Travis.”

  “Travis.” She settled on the name quite easily. Too easily perhaps, which made her feel the need to ask, “But in a professional capacity, I should call you…?”

  “Travis.” His tucked his hands into his pockets, making his untucked shirttail crumple up. His shoulders shifted. “Everybody just calls me Travis.”

  Vince snorted his opinion of that. “I know some people who have called you a few other things, when they think about you just walking away from the life every guy dreams of having.”

  Travis shrugged but did not try to justify his choice or the opinions of other men.

  How could he let that go so readily? Why did he not want to claim and enjoy the fame his hard work and accomplishments had brought him? Jo could not understand it. “But you do have the title, right? You didn’t get ordained off the Internet or something?”

  “No, I didn’t get ordained off the Internet.” Travis chuckled. “I have my doctorate and am a dually ordained and recognized member of the clergy.”

  “B-but people just call you Travis?”

  “Why not? That’s my name.”

  “But you earned that title. It says something about you.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it does. But, really, the kind of work I do, it’s not about me. It’s about who I serve.”

  “Don’t you want the respect you’re owed? Don’t you want…” What was she doing? She’d gotten completely off track. She’d made this small thing personal, showing a little too much about her own feelings and not showing enough respect for his. She repositioned her hands on the handles, blew a blast of air through her lips and laughed, just the right amount this time, as she looked into those wonderful brown eyes. “Don’t you want to take me to get those groceries?”

  “Groceries?” Travis said it as if it were some kind of foreign word to him. Or at least a foreign concept.

  Jo glanced at Kate. “Didn’t that caretaker lady send you here to help us get groceries?”

  “Caretaker lady?” Again a look from Travis that said, No hablo nonsense.

  “Moxie,” Vince explained.

  Jo leaned on the crutches. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “No, I came of my own volition. Just to bring you these.” Travis tore off a loose piece of the decorative crepe paper.

  He’d come just for her. She’d known he’d come to do this for her. That had touched her. But to know he had come just for her? That level of personal attention from a stranger? That…frightened her.

  Not because she thought there was anything icky or out of line about the gesture from Travis but because…because she couldn’t imagine why anyone would do that for her.

  “I talked with this Moxie over an hour ago.” Kate picked up her cell phone and looked at it briefly. “The connection was bad but I know she got the message that we needed help and she was going to send someone.”

  “So if she didn’t send Vince and she didn’t send Travis, who did she send?” Jo wondered aloud. “And how long do we have to wait for him or her to show up?”

  “Him,” Travis said quietly, and pointedly, to Vince. “As to how long you may have to wait for him—”

  “It’s not important. Travis and I are both here now.”

  “I think it is important.” Jo hopped around until she could see clearly out of the still-open door. “We trusted this woman with our home, with our mother’s finances. And now we have a hole in our porch and someone she hand selected who hasn’t shown up? Those are not signs of a responsible caretaker.”

  “None of this is Moxie’s fault.” Vince stepped forward, the way a man steps in front of a cowering dog to prevent the cruel owner from hurting it.

  And odd reaction, Jo thought. Some might say an overreaction, unless Vince had something personal at stake with this…this Moxie.

  “How can you be sure?” Kate
demanded.

  “We both know Moxie. Everyone in town knows her. She’s a great kid. Hard worker. If she said she’d do something, rest assured, she upheld her end of the deal.”

  Now Travis sounded a bit too protective of the girl. Why that mattered to Jo, or why it even registered with her at all, she could not say. After all, the only thing she had in mind for this man was a possible business proposition.

  She looked at Travis’s face, then at the crutches he had given her, muttering under her breath, “Just for me,” then the firm reminder, “just business.”

  Kate looked at Jo. The unspoken agreement that passed between them pretty much said, I won’t force the issue if you won’t.

  “I guess it could all be a simple misunderstanding,” Kate conceded.

  “You two did have a hard time hearing each other,” Jo said.

  “Bad signal,” Kate explained to Vince.

  He nodded, though the wariness had not left his expression.

  “And didn’t you say there was a lot of background noise?”

  “Yeah. She was at—”

  “Billy J’s,” both Travis and Vince said in almost the same breath.

  “Yeah. Billy J’s.” Kate fell back against the cushions and sighed. “I was sort of hoping that whoever she sent over would come bearing a plate piled high with steaming, delicious seafood and sides hot off the buffet.”

  “Stop.” Jo couldn’t reach through the crutches to clutch her complaining stomach so she just leaned forward even more to show her suffering as she moaned, “You’re killing me.”

  “Then let’s go.” Travis tugged a set of car keys from his pants pocket.

  “Give me a chance to change my clothes,” Jo said before the keys could so much as jangle. “Kate, tell Travis what you want us to bring you.”

  “Bring? Why can’t I go with?” Kate asked.

  Travis gave his keys a shake. “No reason we can’t all go down there and fill up now.”

  Jo could think of a reason. She didn’t want them all to go. She wanted this chance to talk to Travis about selling the house, about whom he knew and—

  “And then on the way back we can stop by the grocery store. You wouldn’t mind that, would you, Vince?”

  “That might put too much strain on Kate’s foot,” Jo spoke up before Vince could. “She had surgery only ten days ago.”

  “And you sprained your ankle just yesterday.” Kate scooted to the edge of the couch, ready to push herself up. “If you can do this, I can do this.”

  “Maybe I can’t do it,” Jo offered, grasping at anything to try to get her plan back on track.

  “Don’t worry.” Travis moved to her side. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  “You promise?” she whispered without meaning to.

  “I promise,” he whispered right back, sounding very sure.

  Jo wanted to be alone with Travis now more than ever.

  Which was why she knew she could not let that happen. Business and romance simply did not mix. That was how she had gotten herself into this awful mess to begin with.

  She could not risk adding insult to…irrationality, again. She had to stick with her original plan, even if it meant changing those plans at a moment’s notice.

  “Let’s do it, then,” she said as she hurried to the back of the house so she could change into something a little less…slept in. “Let’s all go to Billy J’s together!”

  Chapter Nine

  A steady stream of people had flowed in to the Bait Shack Seafood Buffet since the doors had opened at eleven.

  In.

  But not out again.

  Every available space along the two rows of highly varnished picnic-style tables that filled the center of the huge dining room was full. Every booth by every plate-glass, fogged-over window that lined the walls, too. Every stool sitting haphazardly around what had once been a bar and now was officially called the “drink station,” where waitstaff grabbed sodas and specialty juice concoctions, was occupied.

  There was a line at the buffet. A cluster of people waited for tables to come open—or to spot someone they knew well enough to squeeze in beside. A few folks who didn’t have the patience for that had simply taken the chairs from the waiting-to-be-seated area and set themselves down wherever they could find a spot.

  “Hey, put that chair back where you got it!” The infamous Billy J stabbed his finger, or what was left of it after an unfortunate fishing accident, at two of the buffet interlopers. “You tryin’ to get them to come out here and close this place down?”

  “If your bad cooking ain’t made them do that yet, I doubt my sitting in this chair eating the stuff will,” one of the robust fellows called back before popping a hush puppy into his mouth then puffing out his already round cheeks.

  “’Sides, you ol’ coot, you the one al’ays sayin’ you gonna close this place down anyways. Why you care if we hurries things along a bit?” the scruffy fellow next to him threw in.

  “Now, I ain’t foolin’, folks. Listen up, here.” Billy J lifted both of his fleshy arms, which, coupled with the soft flab flapping under his chin, made him look a little like an old, proprietary pelican trying to scare scavenger crabs and gulls away from his catch.

  He did it to draw attention to himself, of course. As if he needed to do anything to accomplish that.

  Wherever he went, Billy J commanded attention. Bearded, wearing shirts roughly the size of and with the same subtle array of colors as a circus tent, and never without his white captain’s hat with a parrot feather in the brim, he sort of naturally drew people’s eyes. Children often mistook him for Santa Claus off on a tropical vacation. Adults often thought of him as some kind of mythical creature as well, they just never agreed on which one.

  “I will close this place down,” he barked. “You just watch me.”

  That was about the time everyone looked away.

  See, they had heard this promise before.

  “One more group of folks comes through that door before some of you overstuffed freeloaders leave, I won’t have no choice.” He gave them all what people called the not-so-evil eye. Nothing about Billy J. Weatherby could be construed as anything but benevolent. And everyone knew it.

  Moxie most of all. She sighed and laughed at his antics.

  He caught her gaze and smiled back. Not the big, goofy grin he bestowed on strangers and old friends alike. No, this smile was for Moxie alone and came with a twinkle in his blue eyes and a twist of his lips that said without a sound, There’s my girl.

  He often spoke about how the Lord had “rained down a double fistful of blessings” on him by bringing his Molly Christina into his undeserving life. And he never let her forget how much she meant to him.

  Moxie smiled back at her dad, smiled then shook her head as if to let him know she didn’t buy his claim about closing down any more than his customers did.

  “Bam!” He slapped his meaty hands together as he made his way back toward the kitchen muttering—loudly. “Shut them doors and head off fishin’ and leave y’all locked in here till Christmas.”

  “It’s a fire-code violation,” Moxie called to chair-sneaks. She jerked her thumb toward the place in the waiting area where they had taken the chairs, and the men grudgingly got up and relocated.

  Someone called out to her, asking for more sweet tea.

  A drawn-out creaking, rising then falling in pitch and loudness, made Moxie turn.

  Yet another couple crowded in through the front doors.

  In. But not out again.

  Rain did that in Santa Sofia. Made people restless. Bored. Hungry.

  “Hungry!” Moxie remembered her promise to get someone to go by the house to pick up a grocery list for the Cromwells and realized she hadn’t followed up with Gentry to make sure he’d done it.

  Surely he’d done it.

  Moxie had explained that it was important. The women needed Gentry’s help. And he was going to be in the area, anyway, helping Esperanza and the baby
move in, right?

  “Right?” The hardness she interjected into the single-syllable word struck her nerves like a hammer on a piano string. Gentry Merchant was a twenty-three-year-old man. Despite his father’s insistence on treating him like a kid, he was a man. A man with a child to look after. Moxie had done the right thing in asking that man, okay, that young man, to do this small favor.

  “Right?” she whispered.

  He’d said he would.

  No.

  He’d listened to her lecture and then had said, “All right. All right.”

  Did that actually constitute a bargain struck between them? Knowing him, he would find a way to argue that he hadn’t committed to helping the Cromwells at all, but had merely conceded that he should be helping his wife and child move into the rental cottage on Dream Away Bay Court.

  She thought about calling the Cromwells back but she couldn’t hear a thing in here, even on a good day when the reception was strong. Besides, they had her number. If Gentry hadn’t shown up yet to collect a grocery list for them and run their errands, surely they would have called her back.

  She thought of all the years they had not bothered to call or inquire in any significant way about the cottage. Clearly, follow-up was not their forte. Moxie chewed at her lower lip.

  She tried to get a glimpse of the clock on the shelf behind the cashier’s stand. She had to squint to fully concentrate on the kitschy Kit Kat clock ticking happily away amid the confusion of seashells, strings of paper lanterns and pink-flamingo lights, rubber fish, crabs, lobsters and starfish tacked to the wall.

  “After two,” she murmured as her gaze drifted downward to fix on the framed photo of herself as a baby.

  A photo faded into shades of green, ruddy brown, violet and a sky bereft of blue, left stark white by the passage of time, it was the only memento of her life before Billy J and his wife had taken her in. She paused for a moment, as she always did when she became suddenly aware of the photo, to stare into the eyes of the woman holding her. Her aunt, or something like that. Her birth father hadn’t given Billy J more details before he’d abandoned her.