He couldn’t think of a response to that so he just sat there.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I’d come over and just look at the place. Every time I look this direction I’m shocked. I can’t believe the building’s not still here, that my pulpit’s not standing, that there aren’t pews everywhere, that people can’t come and go.”
“But you know insurance will take care of it and you can rebuild.”
“We can’t rebuild Ben,” he said. “We can’t rebuild the sense of security and peace that we had in this building.”
“You sure don’t put much confidence in your congregation,” she said. “I mean, it seems to me if this was such a great church, that a few problems like this wouldn’t ruin everything.”
She was right. He didn’t have much confidence in the church. Most of the time he felt he was pushing an eighteen-wheeler uphill, heavy with the cargo they needed to bear fruit in God’s kingdom, but they just never felt like turning the ignition on. Now he feared what energy they did have would die out completely, and he didn’t know if he had the strength to keep pushing.
He didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so he looked at her, assessed her face and her eyes. “How’s the hangover?”
“Better,” she said. “Thankfully, we didn’t have any major trauma today.”
“So have you had your fill of Joe’s Place yet?”
She looked across the street at the trailer Nick lived in. “It’s not Joe’s fault. It’s mine. Next time I won’t drink so much.”
He shook his head. “Issie, what’s it going to take?”
“For what?” she asked.
“For you to wake up and realize that that’s no kind of life.”
“Hey, good people get hurt and killed too. Ben was at your church every time the doors opened and he’s dead now. So living a high-and-mighty life doesn’t guarantee safety.”
“No, but the risk is higher when you pass out in bars and thumb your nose at the people trying to kill you.”
“I didn’t thumb my nose,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“You shouldn’t have gone anywhere alone last night,” he said. “You should have kept as low a profile as possible. Why would you go about your normal routine when Cruz is looking for you?”
“I don’t know. I was depressed. My brother had all but thrown me out of his house because I turned Jake and his friends in. I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was upset and worried, and I needed a drink.”
“You never need a drink.”
“I needed to relax, get my mind off things.” She looked frustrated as she groped for words. “You could never understand. You live some kind of unreal life, and I don’t know how you do it, but I’m not like you. You’ve probably never had a vice in your life.”
“Hey, I had plenty of vices before I became a Christian,” he said. “I gave in plenty. I know what I’m missing, Issie. I’m missing a lot of heartache, a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety, a lot of remorse, a lot of self-indictment, a lot of guilt. I’m missing those feelings of waking up in the morning and running the night back through my mind, trying to figure out if I did or said anything that I was going to regret today.”
“You?”
“Oh, yeah, me. The miracle is that God could take somebody like me and use me. I mean, he didn’t just transform me into a new creature. He literally made me into something he could use.”
“Well, that’s you, Nick. You’re a useful kind of person. He could never use me.”
“Of course he could.”
“Not with my past,” she said. “You don’t know all the stuff I’ve done.”
She looked sadly off in the distance, and he reached for her chin and turned her face back to his. “Issie, look at me.”
Those dark eyes came up to meet his.
“You have no idea how useful you could be. God has a plan for you. He’s had a plan for you all along. You just wouldn’t follow it. But if you started following it, you could do amazing things.”
Her expression seemed soft, vulnerable, and for a moment he thought he might be getting through. Her eyes were stricken as they locked into his, and he thought he saw a fine mist painting the inside edge of her lids, but then that hard look came back and she was skeptical again.
“When I think of God’s plan for my life, I picture me in a black church suit with ugly pumps and my hair pulled back in a bun. I picture me going around with a fifty-pound Bible, waving it in people’s faces and quoting Scripture every time I open my mouth. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”
“Issie, you know a lot of Christians. Do they act like that? Do they look like shells that are going around repeating robotic phrases?”
“No,” she said, “some of them don’t. But some do. They talk about Christ and righteousness, and in the next breath they’re declaring themselves superior to Jews and blacks and gays…and anybody who’s not like them. Even Cruz and his group are Christians. They don’t drink or smoke or do dope, but they kill people. And they think it’s okay because they figure if they hate somebody, then God must hate them too.”
“Issie, they’re not us.”
“They say they are.”
“They’re liars. They’re using the banner of Christianity to camouflage their hate. They’re defining who we are, Issie, but they’re defining us wrong. Don’t buy into their lies. Go to the Bible and see what God says. And look at the ones who follow that Bible, the ones who love and pray and cope and help people in need. The ones who think not only of themselves, but of others, no matter how different they are. The ones who hate sin but love sinners enough to rescue them, just as surely as you rescue people every day.”
She looked down at her hands, turning his words over in her mind.
“Issie, Christians are not a bunch of clones without personalities. God doesn’t want that. He needs all kinds.”
She swallowed. “Well, I could be wrong. I have been before.”
“Well, if you’re wrong about this,” Nick said, “then your eternity will be affected by it. I don’t want that for you, Issie. I don’t want you to miss this.”
She breathed a laugh. “I don’t particularly want that, either.”
“Then come out of the cell.”
Her smile faded. “What cell?”
“The one on death row. There’s someone waiting to take your place. Your pardon is waiting. Until you take it, you’re in bondage, Issie. You’re trapped. You think you’re free but you’re not. You’ve just constructed your own prison.”
“Oh, yeah?” She was starting to get angry. “And what exactly am I trapped by?”
“Sin,” he said. “You hate it and you don’t want it, but then every night you go back to Joe’s Place and you drink and you pick up a man.”
“Okay.” She got up from the scorched pew and held up her hands to halt his direction. “I do not pick up men,” she said. “But even if I did, it is not a sin to attract a man.”
“No, but it’s a sin to lust after them, make them lust after you, and take them home with you.” He hated saying it. He didn’t want her to turn on him, but if he let it end like this, he might never have another chance to be this honest with her.
“How dare you?” she asked. “Just because things aren’t going great for me does not mean that I’m some kind of hell-bound sinner.”
“You said there were things in your life that God wouldn’t be able to accept,” he said. “What do you call those?”
“Well, so what? Maybe they are sins. But you don’t have to paint me to be some kind of harlot who prowls into the bar every night looking for her latest victim. I’m not like that. I go there to unwind, to talk to my friends.”
“Oh, I know you’re not like that,” he said. “You’re not a hunter. I think you’re the hunted.”
Her mouth fell open. “And who is hunting me?”
“Lots of people,” he said. “They’re a
ll looking for a pretty girl with a big heart who just wants to be loved.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head and looked into the wind. It whipped her hair around her face, and she shoved it behind her ear. “I know what I’m doing, Nick. I’m in perfect control. I’m the driver in my life.”
“You’re contradicting yourself all over the place, Issie.”
Again she shook her head with disbelief. “Okay, so I am, but you’re confusing me.”
“I’m confusing you because you’re not making any sense.”
“So the only sense to be made is that God has a plan for me and I’m supposed to follow it, and all his rules, and live like you live, constantly depriving myself of everything in the world that I want?”
“Well, see, that’s the thing that’s different,” he said. “If you gave your life to Christ, you’d want different things.”
“The other night you admitted that you don’t,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “You admitted that you’re tempted just like I am.”
“I’m tempted,” he said, “but in my heart I want what God wants for me, and that’s why I take that escape when he provides it.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want that escape,” she said. “Maybe I like the so-called prison you say I’m in. Maybe I don’t want to walk through the door that he’s opening for me to get out. Maybe that’s because I don’t see it as a prison.”
“No one ever does,” Nick said. “That’s what’s so sad.”
She groaned and combed her hands through the roots of her hair. “You make me crazy, you know that? You drive me right up the wall.”
“Yeah, I’ve been known to do that.”
She looked suddenly very weary, and he remembered her crouched like a little girl next to the toilet last night.
“I’m tired, Nick. I’m going to Aunt Aggie’s. I just came by to check on you, see how you were doing. I guess you’re getting back to normal, throwing your punches.” She got up to leave.
“I’m not throwing punches, Issie. I’m trying to throw a life raft.” Nick followed her, stepping over some of the rubble on the way to the pickup.
She reached the truck door but didn’t get in right away. Instead she stood there and looked up at him.
He wondered if Mark was right, if she knew exactly the power she had over men. He didn’t want her to have that power over him. Still, he stood there looking down at her, stricken with how his heart rate escalated when she looked up at him. Even when she wasn’t at her best, there was something about her eyes that drew him in, something that had always made his heart jolt.
“I worry about you,” he said. “Last night, I sat by your bed and prayed for hours.”
He couldn’t define the poignant expression that passed over her face. It was something between shock and sorrow, and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry. “No one’s ever prayed for me before,” she whispered.
“I have,” he said. “I’ve been praying for you for years.”
She looked down at the key in her hand, her eyes stricken. “My advocate,” she whispered.
He frowned. “Your what?”
She swept her hair behind her ear. “Nothing. I was just thinking.” Those tears filled her eyes now as she looked up at him. “Thank you for worrying about me.”
He smiled. “You act like I’m doing it on purpose when, in fact, I just can’t help myself. I guess it’s this built-in protective mechanism that I get whenever I see a lady in trouble.”
Her smile faded. “A damsel in distress, you mean?”
“It’s not a sign of weakness, you know. Vulnerability and weakness are not the same things.”
She tried to smile again, but quickly that smile faded and tears seemed to rim her eyes as she looked up at him. “You make me feel safe, Nick. I like to be around you. That’s the real reason I came looking for you today.”
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.
Chapter Forty
Saturday morning, Nick woke before Issie did. Nervous about facing a
n 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.
Issie 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.
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