What would I say to him? I couldn’t even think straight, much less figure all this out.
But I heard his footsteps on the gravel, then made out his silhouette as he approached.
He didn’t say anything. Just took the chair beside me and began to rock.
We’d planned to watch in the new year at Miss Mamie’s, but I suddenly felt too weary to rise.
I forgive You, God, for putting me in the middle of this. But I don’t know what You want me to do. I can’t figure it out. Help.
Be careful what you pray for.
At last, when I’d finished the whole bowl of peach ice cream, I set it aside and tried to speak, but my tongue was frozen, so I came out sounding like I was totally snockered, which in this case was an exaggeration. “You were a true pipeline from God in that pulpit.”
“That’s my goal,” he said quietly.
“It scares me to death,” I confessed, unexpected tears escaping. I swiped them away, knowing that my mascara probably made me look like a raccoon.
Connor didn’t try to get closer. He just gave me my space, asking a simple, pregnant, “Why?”
“Because you’re a holy man,” I accused, propelled by residual anger at God despite my efforts to forgive Him for doing this to me.
Connor shook his head, gripping the wide, white arms of the chair. “I’m just a man who loves God and was called to preach. No more, no less. I fart under the sheet, just like everybody else.”
The uncharacteristically coarse comment made me laugh in spite of myself, but it came out truncated from my tear-swollen nose and sinuses. Then I sobered, letting out a long sigh. “How can you be so sure that I’m the one God wants for you?”
“I just know. I’ve prayed about it, and I know.”
“Well, I sure wish He had told me.” Too tired to discuss it anymore, I gathered Mama’s quilt around me and managed to find my feet. “And on that note, let us retire to the family room to watch the big ball drop in Times Square.”
At last, he circled my shoulders with one arm and led me inside. “Big ball, it is,” he said with affection.
Do not go there, my inner Puritan scolded from the closet I’d locked her in.
I turned to look up into his face. “Happy New Year, Connor,” I said with a blast of brandy breath. “God help me, I love you beyond all sanity.”
He continued guiding me to the family room beyond the kitchen. “I love you, too. All of you, just the way you are.”
The liquor spoke before I could intervene. “I wish I could say the same. You scare me, you holy man, you.”
Connor chuckled and recited, “‘For our God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’”
A ridiculous giggle escaped me as I plopped onto the sofa facing our new big-screen TV. “Second Timothy one, verse seven,” I cited. “I used to claim that verse every day after my divorce, for the fear. Now I claim it for the sound mind, but I’m not convinced it’s working.” Another giggle escaped.
Connor sat beside me, then picked up the remote and turned on the TV.
Chilled from the inside out and outside in, I shivered, curling tighter in the quilt as I laid my head on his thigh to watch.
I sighed, content to be just as we were, in the moment. “Fabulous sermon. Need to hear that one every week.”
“We recorded it on CD. I’ll bring it to you first thing in the morning.”
“Mmmm.” I closed my eyes. So cozy. Wish we could stay that way forever. “First-foot,” I mumbled as the world began to fade away.
Connor bent to kiss my hair. “First-foot.”
“I forgive Phil,” I murmured. “I do. I really do. And Mary Lou.”
The next thing I knew, it was morning, a sunny, unseasonably warm New Year’s Day, and I was still laid out on the sofa, but Connor was gone. The strong aroma of coffee drew my eyes to my brother as he approached.
He put the steaming cup on the coffee table. “Happy New Year, Sissie-ma-noo-noo.”
I sat up, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room, and hooted. My hair was slabbed up on one side, my eyes ringed with tear-smudged mascara. Tears had erased tracks of my foundation and blush, so my cheeks were striped, and I had no lips.
Dear heaven, did I look this way when Connor was there? Please, please, no.
Instead of teasing me, Tommy frowned in concern. “We found you here alone when we got back last night. Is everything okay?”
“Connor wasn’t here?” Alone with a drunken me, my head on his thigh.
Miss Mamie stopped rattling pots in the kitchen, eavesdropping, no doubt.
“Nope,” Tommy said.
“‘Abstain from the appearance of evil,’” I quoted. “First Thessalonians, five, twenty-two.” I never cared much for that one, but Connor couldn’t afford to ignore it.
I stretched, then swung my legs to the floor, raking at my hair. “He must have left when I fell asleep.”
“I smell you had help going to sleep,” Tommy observed. “Is this becoming your knee-jerk reaction to stress? I’m starting to get worried.”
“No,” I lied deliberately. If I had married Connor, I would have given up alcohol altogether for his sake, but not till then.
I put my palm in front of my nose and exhaled a sour gust of death-breath, still tainted by the odor of peaches and stale brandy. “Gross.”
I stood. “Gotta run get a shower and brush my teeth before Connor’s our first-foot.”
Speak of the devil, the doorbell chimed “Auld Lang Syne.”
Shoot! “What time is it?”
Tommy cocked his head. “About ten.”
Shoot, shoot, shoot! “Why didn’t y’all wake me sooner?” I headed for the basement stairs, snatching one of Miss Mamie’s Hermès scarves from the hooks by the basement door. I tied it over my hair, then ran down the stairs to escape. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m human.” I safely escaped out the back while he came in the front.
Forty-five
Twenty minutes later, I entered the kitchen in jeans and a pink cotton sweater, my damp curls caught up with combs on either side, and my face as natural as I dared. (Eye makeup, concealer, lipstick, and bronzer.)
Miss Mamie surveyed me with approval, as did Connor, who immediately stood and pulled back the chair beside him. “Wow.” The compliment was soft, but more than sufficient.
“Hi, Connor” came out with surprising calm.
Blind horny despite my sensible self’s escalating warnings, I sat beside him. As it had since the beginning, attraction pulsed between us like a quasar.
Connor’s smile strained a bit; he shifted in his seat and looked away. “Ah, could you please pass me the muffins, Miss Mamie?”
Obviously, this was mutual.
Smug, my mother handed him the basket, then the butter. “Take as many as you like, young man. I think of you as part of the family.”
Can we say, obvious?
Minister, I scolded myself. Holy man, holy man, holy man.
It didn’t do any good.
Tommy glanced at me and murmured, “One day at a time.”
My churning emotions grabbed hold of that. Just think of now. Be here. Be grateful.
I started mentally reciting my blessings: my relationship with God, my warm bed, my apartment, Tommy and Carla, Miss Mamie, Daddy, even as he was, poor Uncle B, David and his family. The Home, my car, gas in the tank. The cash and Krugerrands. Very grateful for those. Hot baths. Good health.
As I went on, the intensity of my attraction eased, but only a little.
“Lin, honey, are you okay?” Miss Mamie’s voice intruded. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
I lurched back to reality, the table coming into focus to reveal that all four of them were peering at me in concern. Embarrassment throbbed in my neck and face. “Sorry. Just spaced out for a second. Food. Yes. Please pass the muffins.”
I took a sip of the coffee Mama had served me. Perfect. Half-strength, with Sple
nda. Had to have that caffeine.
Connor’s expression brightened. “Miss Mamie,” he said with deference, “I’d like your permission to court your daughter with the intention of marriage.”
Mama snorted, shooting him a surprisingly sharp look. “My daughter, sir, is a sixty-year-old woman, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you want to marry her, quit beating around the bush and ask her, for heaven’s sake.”
Connor tucked his chin. “I stand corrected.” Then he turned to me. “Will you still let me court you?”
Wrong question.
Say no! No! my inner Puritan pleaded. Do not do this!
“Yes,” came out, instead, in unison with my brother and mother.
“But just to make sure we’re right for each other,” I qualified. “In God’s eyes, not our own.”
Connor nodded with assurance. “Of course.”
Tommy and Mama leaned back in relief.
But I still couldn’t stomach the idea of being a minister’s wife. I’d spent a lot of years twelve-stepping myself into somebody I liked, and I couldn’t turn my back on her. People had certain expectations of ministers’ wives, especially Baptists, and I didn’t fit the bill.
Still, I couldn’t resist Connor, so I was willing to take this one day at a time.
Connor nodded, then asked, “There’s a new Star Wars movie at the mall. Would you like to see a matinee?”
Just for today. “Sure.”
Connor brightened. “It’s a date.” Happy, he dug back into the pile of grits, bacon, scalloped apples, and fried eggs on his plate.
Just for today, I could enjoy his company and go to the movie we’d both been looking forward to. Be in the moment. Take what comes. Stop beating myself up.
I sighed, letting loose of the mental melee that had been going on inside me since Connor had declared himself. Just for today, I could savor Mama’s muffin with my coffee while I watched him eat.
Like my mother and grandmothers before me, I loved to see a man enjoy his food.
Truly content for the first time in a long time, I relaxed and put it all in God’s hands.
Just for today.
Then the doorbell rang again, and what was on the other side made me take everything back.
Forty-six
“Y’all go on,” Tommy said as he rose. “I’ll get it.”
Probably one of Mama’s friends come a-calling. For years, they’d swapped homemade treats on New Year’s. Mama rose, untying her apron, then checked her hair in her mirrored reflection on a glass cabinet door.
But the low voices that filtered back through the kitchen door didn’t sound like Mama’s friends.
When more time passed, Miss Mamie started for the door to see what was up, but just as she approached it, the paneled oak swung in on her, revealing a red-faced, steaming Tommy.
“Tommy, what’s wrong?” Carla asked as he steadied the Mame.
“Here, Mama.” He drew Miss Mamie back to her seat. “Lin’s got company. Why don’t we all keep Connor entertained till she’s back.” He glared at me. “Very quickly, I would hope.”
Connor’s gaze darted from one of us to the other, then settled on me. “Go ahead, Lin. I’ll be here when you’re done.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Let’s hope so.”
Wary, I got up and headed for the foyer. As I approached, I made out a suit-clad man looking out the front window, his figure silhouetted by the sun, a huge bouquet of flowers wrapped in pink paper tucked into his arm.
Then he turned and spoke, and I almost keeled over. “Hi, Lin. It’s me. I’ve come to apologize and beg you to take me back.”
“Phil?”
No! Not now! Not today. Not ever!
My wayward ex approached me, proffering what I could now see were red tulips, my very favorite. Until that moment.
“I had a conversion,” Phil said. “I’m not the man I was. And I want you to take me back.”
God had just dropped the A-bomb.
I faced Phil, my doubts about Connor evaporating as if they’d never existed. The two men didn’t even function in the same dimension.
“Let me be the man you deserve,” he said with clear sincerity. “We made a vow to God that I broke, but I want to make it right.”
He’d never humbled himself for anyone, let alone me, yet there he was. I stood there, wanting to run, wanting to scream. But the husband of my youth had just come back, supposedly transformed, and asking my forgiveness.
Where was my forgiveness now? All I felt was panic and anger. “What about your mistress?” the worst in me spat out. “How does she feel about this?”
Phil’s mouth tightened into a line, then he told me, “She left me. That was part of my conversion. When that happened, I finally understood what I’d done to you.”
Because his mistress had dumped him? Please!
Outrage exploded inside me and I felt my expression harden with rage.
Conversion, hah! A snake is a snake is a snake. “Get out.”
“Please give me a chance to make it up to you,” he kept on pleading. “To be the man you deserve. Lin, you were the best thing that ever happened to me, but I was an idiot and took it all for granted. I threw us away with both hands.”
“Along with all our money, and then some,” I retorted. “Leaving me destitute.”
“You have every right to hate me,” he said with convincing contrition. “If I could take it all back, I would, but that’s not possible. But I swear, I’m not the man I was. I’ve been changed, and I want you back more than anything. Please give me a chance to show you.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I’m the husband of your youth. We belong together.”
No! No, no, no! God, how can You let this happen? You know I love Connor.
My inner Puritan whispered, But weren’t willing to take on what comes with him.
Was that what this was about? Penance, because I didn’t want to be a holy man’s wife?
Cruel. Cruel, cruel, cruel.
Phil dropped to his knees before me. “I beg you, Lin. Give me another chance. Just a chance to prove myself.”
He’d already done that. Dumped by his mistress, indeed.
“I’m seeing someone,” I heard my voice mince out.
Clearly astounded, Phil scrambled to his feet. “Really? Who?”
Once again, he revealed himself. Shocked that anybody would want to date me.
“If you must know, he’s a Baptist minister.”
Phil actually laughed, just as I would have if anybody had said I’d date a Baptist minister before I’d met Connor. “And he doesn’t care that you’re divorced?” Phil challenged, showing his stripes.
“No.” I didn’t want to elaborate, but my compulsion to justify myself kept talking. “He’s divorced, too.”
Phil shook his head. “Goodness. The Baptists have changed.”
Then, as if he were slipping a mask back on, he went humble again. “What’s his name? I’d like to talk to him, if that’s okay.”
“His name is Connor,” Miss Mamie’s voice declared from the dining room.
Traitor! “Miss Mamie!” Why in heaven’s name was she butting in? “This is a private conversation!” Alas, no more.
“Where does this Connor live?” Phil pried, a spark of the old darkness in his eyes.
“Next door,” Miss Mamie called back, accompanied by the sound of a scuffle. Tommy, no doubt, trying to drag her back into the kitchen. Fainter than before, she sent one final parting shot. “He’s in the kitchen!” The last word was muffled midway.
“So he’s here.” Phil started stepping backward into the dining room. “Why don’t we see what he has to say about this?”
The last thing in this God’s green earth I wanted was a confrontation between my ex-husband and the man I loved. Especially with Phil claiming to have been converted—noticeably without mentioning Jesus.
“Lin,” he said as he backed toward the door, “I broke our vows, but I want to make it right.”
&
nbsp; Before he reached the door, it swung open and Tommy shoved Connor out of the kitchen.
Connor recovered his dignity while Phil looked him over like a hungry lion spotting a lame gazelle. He stuck out his hand, taking Connor’s, then clasping Connor’s forearm as they shook, a clear dominance gesture. “So you’re Connor,” he purred. “I’m Lin’s husband, Phil.”
“Ex-husband,” I corrected, my arms still filled with tulips.
Visibly shaken, Connor looked to me. “What’s this all about, Lin?”
Phil answered before I could. “I’ve been converted, seen the light,” Phil declared, “and I want to make it up to Lin. She’s the wife of my youth, and I want to marry her again, but this time, as the husband God wants me to be.”
Connor went deadly still.
I rushed over to take his hand. “I explained to Phil that we’re seeing each other.”
Connor’s hand was cold as ice in my warm one, but he returned my grip with equal strength, binding us together. Then he let go and stepped back.
No! No.
I didn’t know which was worse, having to deal with Phil, or Connor’s desertion.
Phil straightened, a few inches taller than Connor, and faced him squarely. “As Jesus said in Matthew five, thirty-two: ‘Anyone who divorces his wife except for unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery,’” Phil recited with deceptive gentleness. He cocked his head at Connor. “Is that what you want for Lin, or yourself?”
I shuddered, watching Phil use scripture as a weapon.
Connor let out a harsh sigh, then looked down. When he looked back up at Phil, his expression radiated pain and confusion. “I’ll have to pray about this.”
I grasped his upper arms. “But we have a date. Today. Please, Connor, don’t let Phil ruin this. He’s already ruined my life once. Don’t let him do it again. Help me. We love each other.”
Connor gazed long into my face with infinite compassion. “You are the wife of his youth. He has repented.”
Queen Bee Goes Home Again Page 24
