Bluegrass Courtship

by Allie Pleiter

  She didn’t stop to pick up the Bible when it fell off her worktable as she gathered up her papers. She was going to give Drew Downing a piece of her mind right now, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She knew something like this would happen. The minute she let her guard down, it would all go wrong. Janet stood outside the bus door with a stack of papers in her hands and a frown. She knocked loudly. Drew’s face appeared, then disappeared for a second as he reached back behind him to pulled the lever that opened the doors. “You’ve got a problem,” she said matter-of-factly as she stomped up the stairs to dump the papers on the bus table. She was a big ball of “I told you so” right now and he was going to hear about it. “I thought you told me no cutting corners.”

  He looked a bit taken aback, as well he should. “And we don’t.”

  “Yes, you did. Mike left the new roof specs with me. I should have suspected something when you switched some of the orders to HomeBase. You’re not putting the right kind of roof in there, Drew.” She pointed to the pile of instructions and Internet search printouts she’d brought with her.

  He sat down and motioned for her to do the same. Good. At least he looked like he was going to listen. “Look, I’m sorry we couldn’t fill that order with you, but there’s nothing wrong with that roof. HomeBase made us an offer and we took it.”

  “But now you’re not using the recommended materials. You’re using HomeBase’s product instead of one of the recommended materials. And your gutters aren’t the right size. And according to what I read,” she began, “the rainwater system still works best with the storage tank underground.”

  “That’s one of the options, yes. And those roofing materials are identical to the recommended ones. Only with faster installation. Nothing’s been compromised in terms of quality.”

  “Your opinion, maybe.” She’d known he was going to say that. It was a faster option, and less expensive, but she had a lot to say regarding whether it was the best.

  “The opinion of everyone else on the team. We’ve used our assets to get you a great deal on great products.”

  “Great products? Or ones that install faster and get you your pretty watering can for God?” She hadn’t meant it to come out quite so sharply, but he was being so casual and roofs were so important.

  “That’s not fair.”

  So maybe it wasn’t. She’d gotten surprisingly worked up about this. “All right, that was a bit out of line. But Drew, I don’t think this roof is going to do the job. It’s not the ideal setup. We need this.” She pointed to a catalogue of roof tiles she thought were a better choice.

  “I need the solution that works, Janet, not just the ideal setup.” He pointed to her choice. “These are top-notch, but their installation is more complicated, they’re much more expensive, and face it—they take more time than we’ve got. A rushed installation with those isn’t automatically a better choice than a solid installation with what I’ve chosen. Both work.”

  There it was: the crux she knew they’d reach no matter what kind of ideology he spouted. Confining the job to such a strict time frame forced choices that should never need to be made. Created deadlines that didn’t have to exist. “This is exactly my point. The only reason we have a deadline is because of you. School’s already in session and working out okay. Not great, but okay. We have the time to do this right. You guys opt for the quick fix because it fits into your television time frame.”

  He glared at her. “You know, you wouldn’t even be getting a whole new church roof if it weren’t for the pull of our ‘television time frame.’ Our ability to give this gutter and rainwater stuff television exposure got you the best roof available for your building. And it got you the grant. You wouldn’t have been able to do that on your own—you told me that yourself. Don’t you think that’s a fair trade-off?”

  She’d wondered when he’d play the “you should be grateful we’re here” card. “What good is that roof if it leaks in two years? In two months? Even the water tank’s wrong. There’re three whole pages in there on the dangers of not putting that tank down low enough. But why should you care? You’ll be gone. Long gone.” The words choked up in her throat.

  Drew stood up, fuming. “I read everything,” he fired back. “Mike read it. Kevin read it. We spoke four times with the manufacturer. Four times. I don’t call that rushing on a decision. That roof will not leak because we know what we’re doing. And as for that little jab about God’s watering can,” he went on, putting a sharp edge on the phrase she’d used, close to the edge of his temper. “I’ll tell you something you probably haven’t even stopped to think about. That artistic casing is more than just making the thing look like ‘God’s watering can’. It’s insulation. A layer of protection against the elements that still gives you access to it in case you need to make repairs. It’s the best of both worlds and the best option for the time we have to install it. We are here to do a good job. The best job we can. This roof is not a shortcut. It’s a smart choice based on the limitations we’ve got to work with.”

  She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Suddenly, instead of the intelligent woman he’d grown to respect, she was the obstinate hostile he’d met in the back of the paint aisle during his first hour in Middleburg. “I’m trying here,” he said. “What about you? You’ve been just waiting, just hunting for faults. Sitting back with an ‘I told you so’ all loaded up the minute you found a target. And somehow, I knew it’d be me.”

  When this had become so personal, Drew couldn’t say. But it was. Highly. “You know, you almost had me,” he went on. “I thought maybe we’d finally convinced you that we’re not part of the imagined hordes you’ve decided are out to get you.” He paced the bus, trying to get a check on his anger. He had to calm down, pull his tangled emotions out of this, and get her to understand. “We’re all making adjustments here. And yes, I’m making compromises, but all compromises aren’t bad. As long as we keep our eyes on what can’t be compromised, we can understand what can be. Even I’m catching on to that. I’m getting on a plane tomorrow not because I want to, but because it needs to be done. It’s a compromise that will get us a huge sponsorship and let us help three times as many people in the next three seasons. And people want our help. People need our help. And, hard as it may be for you to admit it, Middleburg wants our help.” He flung one hand toward the church lawn, his temper getting the best of him again. “Your neighbors are happy to have us here. They see us as an answer to prayer. They pray with us. They pray for us. Can’t you see that? You won’t even come to the prayer meeting and hear people giving up all kinds of thanks to the Lord that He sent us here to help them.”

  Her eyes turned sharp and cold. “Don’t make this about church. Don’t you dare go there again.”

  And maybe that’s what burned him most of all. You simply couldn’t make this about anything but church. This was church. The body of Christ, reaching out and helping. He was trying to help in every way he could, and she was standing there, blocking his path in her pursuit of some concept of perfection. She makes me so angry, Lord. Why won’t she see Your hand in this? He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “Okay, purely professionally speaking, every single construction project—everywhere on the planet—faces compromises based on time, materials and a gazillion other variables. It’s why budgets have contingency lines. You of all people should understand that.”

  “This is not a lumber shortage or a zoning snafu. Those are compromises. This is cutting corners, pure and simple.”

  Drew groaned and thumped his hand on the table. “No. This is working with what we’ve got. This is already far and above what you could have achieved without us. This is such an amazing thing if you’d just take off those idealist blinders and look around you.” He leaned over the table toward her, willing her to pull that wall back down, furious that she looked at him with such a cutting suspicion. “Middleburg’s little kids are going to have the coolest pres
chool around. Your church is better off. Why can’t you get that? Why do you have to be hunting for how I’m out to con you?” And it had become just that, hadn’t it? It had all somehow boiled down to how he was out to trick her. It had become infuriatingly personal.

  “Because you’re leaving, and I’ll be stuck here picking up the pieces.” It meant a million things the way she said it.

  And it was true. It did mean a million things. The tone of her words cut through his anger to force the realization that he was leaving. He’d leave Middleburg when this was over, and he hadn’t even realized how it was bothering him. Never before had Drew had so many reasons to rush ahead and so surprising a craving to stay put.

  “You can do whatever you want, can’t you?” she went on. “Just as long as we think it’s wonderful, as long as we don’t look too close. Because by the time we see the cracks in the plaster, you’ll be gone.” She grabbed up her papers, and suddenly they both knew they weren’t talking about the cistern or the roof anymore. “You and your shiny happy bus will be long gone into your huge new season and we’ll…we’ll still be here making the real life happen. The dull, daily stuff you don’t have to worry about like how much higher the heating bill will be or how long the carpet stays tacked down. It’s easy to leave, Drew. The real work is in staying.”

  He grabbed her shoulder. “You have no idea how hard it is to leave here.” His voice tripped over the words even as his grip on her thundered through both of them. Let go, he told himself. Let go of her. He didn’t.

  She stared at him, her eyes a mixture of puzzlement and awareness, and Drew realized he was slipping down that slope he’d tried so hard to avoid.

  She’d gotten to him. Gotten under his skin. He’d let her resistance egg him on, just as he was always drawn to the hostiles. He let her go.

  “What do you mean ‘hard to leave’?” She pulled away from him, but her voice lost all its edge. “You’ve got everything. You’re a hero. A star, and soon to be a bigger one at that. I mean, just look at your home.” She waved her arms around the bus. “It’s got all the bells and whistles. You get every new tool the moment it’s made.”

  “It’s a bus,” he said blandly. “It’s not a home.” At that moment, he thought about the little line of trinkets that stood on her kitchen window, the tiny accumulations of a lifetime in one place that she probably never even noticed anymore, and his heart ached. For here, for her, for this ordinary thing he thought could be replaced by all the lights and drama.

  You can’t have her. This is dangerous. Really, truly dangerous, his spirit yelled silently. “I’m leaving. And it’s hard.” It explained everything and nothing.

  A terrible silence hung in the air. Her eyes burned dark and wounded, and for a single moment he was ready to ditch every conviction and take her in his arms. She’d fit perfectly, too. He just knew it somehow, which made it all the worse.

  “Don’t make me regret you ever came.” She turned and left.

  He started after her, then stopped himself. Right under the Home Green Home sign he’d made for the bus back during the first season.

  With a growl, he pulled the sign off the nail and tossed it across the bus. It skidded on the carpeting and slid under the back bunk to slam against some boxes. Lord, You could have ripped Missionnovation right out from underneath me and I don’t think it would feel this bad. Drew sank back against the bus wall and fisted his hands in his hair. Why is this falling apart now?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Drew hardly slept. He bumbled around the bus at three-thirty in the morning, trying to remember if they had an iron somewhere. He didn’t have to wear a suit, sure, but he felt like he at least ought to look like he put in an effort to look nice. If he’d been smart, he would have asked Annie where the iron was before she trundled herself off to the bed and breakfast. He didn’t want to turn on the light for fear of waking Kevin, but if he hit his toe on one more corner it was going to be a very long day indeed. And he was already fighting to keep a good spirit. Taking a 5:30 a.m. flight to the coast was enough to fry any brain even without his earlier fight with Janet.

  Coffeemakers are quiet. Start there. Drew groped his way toward the middle of the bus where the kitchenette and coffeemaker were.

  And smiled.

  There, hung on a cabinet handle with a Wear This sticky note above it, was a freshly laundered—and neatly pressed—green Missionnovation button-down shirt. Next to the coffeemaker, which was already filled with grounds and water so all he had to do was hit the on switch, was a Missionnovation travel mug with a second sticky note that simply said “GWG.” On the Missionnovation bus, that was shorthand for “Go with God.” Drew could think of no finer send-off for the very unusual day he had before him. Annie truly was the glue that held Missionnovation together. Anyone who thought it was his doing was sorely mistaken. He found the notes he’d left on the counter for Kevin and Annie and wrote “GWG” across the top with a fat black marker.

  When the plane landed in Los Angeles, Drew found himself missing Kentucky’s gentle, misty sunrises. The sun crept into the day through the Bluegrass mountains, but here, it seemed to explode too loudly off the horizon. Charlie met him at the airport, sporting one of his sharp dark suits and looking every inch the television producer. “How are ya, Charlie?” he said, grabbing Charlie by the arm and feeling like it had been far too long since they’d seen each other. His first season of Missionnovation—back before the shirts and buses and coffee mugs—seemed like decades ago. “If our friends could see us now,” he joked, adjusting Charlie’s tie even though it was perfect already.

  “What’s in the boxes?” Charlie pointed to the stack of bakery boxes Drew had brought with him on the plane.

  “Oh, a few hometown goodies from the site. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted Muffinnovations.”

  Charlie looked doubtful that this designer-organic-soy-latte crowd would handle anything called “Muffinnovations.”

  “They’re green,” Drew added, just because it made Charlie’s eyes bulge a little wider. “Very green. And they’re delicious.”

  “Fine. I’ll eat a muffinno-whatever on the way if it’ll make you feel better. But I’m going to start praying now. Hard.”

  “My dad always said a soul prays better on a full stomach.”

  Janet had a million other things to do today, but she wasn’t taking one eye off this roof installation. Especially with Drew out of town. She’d spoken with the roofing men three or four times over the last day, and they had answered several of her concerns to her satisfaction. That made it better, but by no means was she ready to give her approval of the project. So, despite a whopping workload back at the store, Janet cleared her day to stay on site and make sure MCC got the roof it deserved.

  The first part of the gutters went up with ease. Things fit where they were supposed to, and Janet grew optimistic. It’d be satisfying to have the thing in and done right by the time Drew returned from California. The second and third sections were trickier, needing to match angles with the first sections, but with a bit of tweaking everything worked. Everything was going according to the timetable Janet and Kevin had drawn up. Janet even caught herself feeling less stressed as she tightened the screws that held a downspout in place.

  By two o’clock, Kevin was up on the highest point of the church, working with the roofers in Drew’s place to get the flashings around the steeple in an adjustment she’d suggested.

  She knew the time because she was checking her watch when she heard it.

  Accidents seem to have a sound all their own. Things fall all the time, and the brain recognizes the ordinary nature of the sound. The real crashes, the ones involving loved ones and precious things, register instantly in the brain. Janet knew, the second she heard the sound of splitting lumber, that something bad had happened. She’d caught the eye of the worker next to her—the bank teller here on his day off from work—and froze in alarm. But only for a second, before dropping her screwdriver and
bolting around the corner to where the sounds continued in a lengthy, lethal-sounding series of crashes.

  Kevin lay motionless on the grass, his body curled in an unnatural angle. His hard hat had rolled off his head, and one arm lay sprawled awkwardly behind him. For a split second Janet thought he was dead, until he made a horrible moaning noise and lurched to one side, followed by a flinch that told her he was in serious pain. The roofers were talking amongst themselves, trying to figure out how Kevin had fallen despite the safety equipment she knew they all used.

  Most of the other Missionnovation staff were clear across the property working on the preschool. Janet found herself nearly alone among a handful of people who looked shocked and stumped as to what to do now.

  “You,” she pointed to the tallest of them, “Call 9-1-1. The address we’re at is 128 March Avenue, on the west side of the building.” Janet caught sight of her mother coming out of the church’s front doors, followed by several other women who must have heard the accident from the inside. “Mom!” Janet shouted, “Go find Annie on the bus and tell her Kevin’s been hurt. Tell her to get a hold of Drew in California right away.”

  Drew stared at the sleek-looking HomeBase marketing executive in front of him, and wondered if the guy would know what to do with a hammer if handed one. Sure, he’s slick, but don’t judge, Drew thought to himself, God can work with anybody He chooses. After all, he said HomeBase was interested in expanding the show without removing any of the spiritual content.