Their Small-Town Love

by Arlene James

  “But you’re not that Ivy anymore,” he pointed out. “Besides, you have a testimony to share, an important one in this day of relaxed societal standards. I mean, look at Devony and how she’s used her experience for good.”

  “But Devony’s experiences were forced on her. Mine were not.”

  “All the more reason, if you ask me,” he argued. “Think about it. The vast majority of us are in your boat, Ivy, not Devony’s. I’d go so far as to say that all of us share the experience of making poor choices at some time in our lives. Don’t you think that someone with the experience to back her up ought to be out there showing the world that it’s possible to make the right choices and change your life?”

  Ivy bit her lip, and he knew that she was considering what he’d said, which was right where he decided to leave it. He had pressed her as far as he should for one evening. He changed the subject to the progress being made on Charlotte and Ty’s house and Hap’s plans for the future.

  “He’s going to do it,” Ryan said. “He’s going to give up the motel. I can see it coming, and so can everyone else. He’s agreed to have the Esquivels come to look over the property weekend after next.”

  “Esquivels?”

  “The couple Charlotte and Ty have found to take over the place. They’re proposing a kind of lease/purchase plan. Apparently the Esquivels don’t have much in the way of savings to help them buy the place outright.”

  “Poor Hap,” Ivy said, but Ryan shook his head.

  “I don’t think he sees it that way. It’s been a tough decision, but these days he seems to be pondering the next generation. I think he wants to sit back and play great-grandpa for a while before it’s too late. He’ll be eighty-one in August, for pity’s sake. It’s time. For all of us.”

  She nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  But she didn’t. Ryan really did not think she understood that the time for change had come to all of the Jeffords, him included, or that in his case she herself might be the agent for that change.

  That, too, he left alone, sensing that her desire to protect him would just make her run again if he even broached the subject of their being together. He had to find a way to prove to her that they could be together, if not in Eden, then wherever God took them He had only come to that conclusion himself on the drive up here.

  For the first time, he had found something, someone, more important than Eden or the school or even his family. More important than his fear of trusting a woman with his heart. It was Ivy’s now; he just had to get her to accept it. But the only way he knew to get her to do that was to show her that he would stand beside her, come what may.

  When the meal came, he prayed over it, holding both of her hands in his, thanking God for the food and the time together and asking for the strength and wisdom to do what they both knew they must. Ivy ate in silence, picking at her food more than ingesting it, obviously preoccupied. Ryan followed suit, but his gaze never strayed far from her troubled face.

  Afterward, when he walked her back up those three flights of stairs, Ryan sensed that if he tried to kiss her, she would not only deny him but perhaps panic and run again, to who-knew-where this time. So he merely pulled her into a light embrace, kissed the top of her head, and took himself off to a lonely motel room, returning in the morning with a fast-food breakfast.

  “Cara and Tyler would not approve,” he joked, placing the bag in the center of the tiny table in Ivy’s kitchen.

  “Nothing new for me,” Ivy grumbled, pushing hair out of her face. “I’ve made a career out of others’ disapproval.”

  “You could change that, if you would,” he said, earning a glare from her.

  “I’ve tried!”

  “Try again. You have to come home and make your peace with your past, Ivy,” he insisted. “If you don’t, you’ll never know another moment of contentment.”

  A short, humorless laugh escaped her. “Contentment? What’s that?”

  “Contentment, Ivy,” he said, “is knowing that you are where you should be, right where you belong.”

  “That’s just it,” she told him, her voice straining to shrillness. “I don’t know where I belong, but it’s certainly not Eden.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, stepping close to reach up with one hand and skim back her hair, “but you won’t know unless you do this.”

  “You know what they’re saying about me!” she argued.

  “And that’s why you have to come back.”

  “I can’t!” she whispered, tears rolling from her eyes.

  “You can,” he insisted gently, wiping the tears away. “You must. Because going back is the only way to go forward. You have to look them in the eyes, show them their lies and trade it for the truth. We’ll do it together. We’ll face them down together.”

  “No. No, please. I-if it was just me, maybe, but what about…” She couldn’t let him know that her first thoughts were of him. “Wh-what about Rose and the boys?”

  “Exactly my point. Eventually Rose will hear the rumors, Ivy, and she’ll be hurt and ashamed, with no way to fight for the truth. You think that you’re doing her a favor by running away, but you’re not. If you want to help her, Ivy, come back and help me kill the rumors.”

  “But how?” she asked.

  “I have a plan, but we can discuss that later. Just trust me on this, okay?”

  “I do trust you, but killing rumors is like killing snakes with a peashooter!”

  Ryan chuckled and smoothed his hands down her arms. “What I have in mind involves a heavier, more accurate weapon than a peashooter.”

  “Such as?” she demanded.

  “The truth. It worked for Devony. That day on the radio,” he reminded her, “Devony told her story, and look what good has come of it.”

  “But this is different,” Ivy insisted. “I’m not Devony, and anyone who stands by me will suffer, Ryan. Don’t you see? It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it!”

  “You’re worth it to me,” he said, cupping her face in his big hands.

  “No. You have too much to lose!”

  “What I lose if I don’t stand by you is more important.” He leaned down and kissed her softly, then straightened before she could react.

  She stared up at him, and he felt her wavering. It was enough for the moment, reason to hope and to silently praise God.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They spent the day touring the city and the evening on dinner and a movie. Every moment, to Ivy, was tinged with joy and pain. Her growing love—yes, love—for Ryan was a mockery of all that she had once felt for Brand, and she knew she must keep him out of the crossfire of malicious gossip at all costs. Besides, she could not see any way to make a romantic relationship between them work. Clearly, she could never again live in Eden, and Ryan would never be able to live anywhere else.

  Still, she had decided she would not deprive herself of his company while she could have it. When they parted that evening with a light embrace, it was with the agreement that he would pick her up for church in the morning. She’d been attending a large, busy church not far away, where she’d blended in without attracting too much notice. When the morning came, however, Ivy’s composure fled.

  “I can’t!” she told him, dressed in her Sunday best. “Not on Mother’s Day. I’m sorry. I should be able to do this, but I just can’t.”

  Without a word, he swept her up into his arms and sat down with her on the little couch in her living area, holding her while she wept.

  “I should be stronger than this,” she said after a long while, speaking as much to herself as to him.”

  “Shh. Cry if you must, but don’t apologize, not for this,” he told her. “There’s time enough tomorrow to be strong, to fight for the life God intends you to have.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “I do.”

  “How can you?”

  “I just do, and understand this, Ivy, I won’t let you wimp out on me. You hear that?”


  She nodded.

  “Then promise,” he said. “Promise me you’ll come back to Eden just once more, Ivy. Promise me. And if it doesn’t work out as I hope, then I’ll never ask it of you again. All right?”

  As she looked into the eyes she loved so dearly, what could she do but agree? “All right,” she whispered. “I’ll try.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  But she was not his girl, and she wouldn’t let herself believe that she could be. Moreover, she was not convinced that going back would be the right thing to do for anyone. But she would. In the end she would pack up her peashooter and go back to Eden one more time, because Ryan had asked her to.

  Ryan left Oklahoma City on Sunday evening with a promise and a plan, nothing more. Ivy still did not know what he meant to ask of her and insisted that she needed the week to tie up loose ends and follow up on job queries. He granted her that week because he could do nothing else, and laid the rest at God’s feet.

  The plan seemed not only audacious but fraught with uncertainty, but Ryan could not forget Grover’s assertion that only a public repudiation of the lies would quell the gossip, so that’s what he needed, a public repudiation. Should Olie refuse to back down, then at least Ivy would see that Ryan would not abandon her. Either way, his future would be tied to hers. Ryan hoped, prayed, that he could convince her that they belonged together.

  During the interminable week that followed, he worried if he was doing the right thing and spent hours with his grandfather and pastor, talking, planning and praying. Every day felt like a month; Friday itself felt a year long.

  Ryan spent the day fretting, when he wasn’t teaching, coaching, overseeing graduation plans or arranging to attend a seminar on Saturday. That had been Principal Spicer’s price for letting him walk out early on the previous Friday. In return for Spicer covering his afternoon classes, Ryan had agreed to take Spicer’s place in the year-end seminar on Saturday. He hated to do it, but at the time his only thought had been to get to Ivy before she disappeared.

  On Friday evening, Hap looked up from the domino table where he sat once again with Teddy Booker, Justus Inman and Grover Waller, and announced, “She’s here.” Ryan didn’t have to ask who he meant. He just got up from Hap’s rocker and went to the counter to pick up the room key he had laid there earlier. As he went by, he clapped Grover on the shoulder.

  He and the pastor had prayed together, and they’d planned together. They’d had second thoughts together, and they’d come right back to Ryan’s original idea. Now if only Ivy would agree. At least she’d shown up when she promised to. That had to be a good sign.

  “Thank You, God,” he whispered as he went out to meet her. Surely, surely, this meant it would all work out as he hoped.

  Watching Ryan walk toward her across the motel lot, Ivy fought to keep her composure. She had come because she’d promised and because there was nothing left for her in Oklahoma City, but she truly could not imagine what he hoped to accomplish with this.

  Even if he somehow managed to quell the rumors, she could not stay in Eden. She had to have a job, and Eden had no radio station. Still, she’d done as Ryan had suggested and fired off a résumé and format proposal to a Christian station in Wichita Falls, Texas, some thirty or forty miles southwest of Eden. Now it was up to God.

  If she’d needed proof of God’s intentions, however, she’d gotten it before she’d left the city. The station in Tennessee had called. They were interested in a format she had proposed and wanted to know if she could call on Monday morning to speak in teleconference with the station manager and the head of advertising? Of course she could and would, but first she had a promise to keep. She pushed away the bleak feeling that overcame her when she thought of moving to Tennessee.

  Ryan reached her side, a room key dangling from one hand, a smile of welcome on his dear handsome face. The face she loved. He would probably never know how dear that face had become to her.

  “Okay,” she said, sounding more aggrieved than she’d intended. “I’m here, not that I think it’s going to do any good, mind you.”

  “Hello to you, too,” he quipped, completely disarming her so that when he pulled her into his embrace and kissed her, she had nothing left with which to refuse him.

  She wound up hanging on for dear life, her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. By the time he lifted his head, she could barely stand, pulled to pieces by hope and despair, the desires of her heart and the conviction of her soul.

  “Ryan,” she whispered, “what are we doing?”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he told her, “but I’m saying hello to someone I’m very, very glad to see.”

  Someone you’ll be saying good-bye to again soon, she thought morosely.

  “Look,” she said, shaking her head, “I’ve been thinking about this, and I know you say that I have to face down these rumors, but how am I supposed to do that? Just showing up proves nothing.”

  Ryan glanced away, then caught her hand in his, saying, “Let’s get you settled then we’ll talk about it. Just don’t take anybody’s head off until you’ve heard us out, okay?”

  “Us?” she asked as she was being pulled by Ryan’s hand back to the driver’s seat of her car.

  “I’ll open the room,” he told her. “You move the car. Then I’ll help you carry in your things. After that, we’ll walk over to talk to Hap and Grover.”

  At least she knew who “us” was now, but that didn’t make her feel any better about this mysterious plan of his, because when all had been said and done, she knew that she would be moving on. Alone.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Ivy said, getting up to pace back and forth in front of the potbellied stove in the corner of the motel lobby. “Publicly confronting my father will just result in an ugly scene.” She folded her arms across the midriff of her pink-and-white double tank top, then dropped her hands to the waist of her comfortable jeans.

  “Sweetheart, do you think I’d ask it of you if there was another way?” Ryan said from his seat on the couch.

  “It won’t be easy,” Hap put in, “but it could make a difference when he sees that there are those willing to stand with you.”

  “Not with my father,” Ivy argued. “I appreciate your support, I really do, but I don’t see how this can work. What if he just doesn’t show up? What then?”

  “You leave that to me,” Grover told her. “I’ll get him in that church building one way or another.”

  Ivy faced Ryan beseeching him with her eyes. “Look, I understand what you’re trying accomplish here. If Dad publicly recants the lies, it will go a long way toward squashing the rumors, but I don’t want to shame him. I’ve done enough of that.”

  “What about the way he’s shamed you?” Ryan asked, an irrational spurt of anger pushing him up to his feet. “That needs some redress, if you ask me.”

  “But Ryan, I started this. I’m the one who disappointed him.”

  “And he’s the one who won’t let it go!” Ryan insisted. “Besides, this isn’t just about him. Getting out the truth, setting the record straight, is the only way to put the past to rest and reclaim your good name.”

  “I don’t have a good name to reclaim.”

  “Then it’s time to change that,” Grover said calmly. “As a new creature in Christ, you have a right, an obligation even, to create for yourself a name that honors your Lord. We’re just trying to give you an opportunity to do that. But, it’s up to you.”

  “Pray on it,” Hap advised. “You can let Grover know tomorrow whether or not you want to go through with it.”

  Ivy nodded but reluctance poured off her. Ryan felt a very real fear. It was not going to work. She wasn’t even going to give them a chance. Bitter disappointment rose inside of him, but he fought it down. Whatever happened, he still believed that they belonged together. If God could overcome his blindness and his fears and set this precious lady in his life, surely He would make a way for them.

&nb
sp; “While you’re praying,” Ryan urged quietly, “think of Devony. That day that she went on your radio program changed not only your life but hers as well.”

  The horrified expression on Ivy’s face told him that he had made a mistake. Just remembering that day and what Brand had put Devony through was enough to make her want to run screaming in the opposite direction.

  “I just don’t know if I have Devony’s strength and courage,” she admitted.

  “I’ll tell you what you have,” Hap said in his gravelly voice. “You have friends to stand with you, more and better friends than you may know.”

  “That’s more than Devony had then,” Ryan pointed out.

  Ivy smiled, but it did nothing to diminish the concern clouding her eyes. Ryan felt a chill that rattled all the way to the marrow of his bones.

  “I’m tired,” she said, “and I have a lot of thinking and praying to do, so if you’ll all excuse me…”

  “I’ll walk you to your door,” Ryan declared, taking her by the elbow.

  They strolled out into a clear, balmy night. The first cicadas of the season chirped in a hopeful chorus as they moved down the ramp and out onto the pavement.

  “You don’t have to walk me all the way across the lot,” she said then. “I know you probably want to make an early night of it, considering all you have to do tomorrow.”

  Ryan lifted a hand to the back of his neck. “Actually,” he decided, “I don’t think I’ll go to the seminar.”

  “But you have to go!” Ivy cried. “You said so yourself.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” Ryan argued. “Besides, I’d rather be with you.”

  She looked absolutely appalled. “I knew it was a mistake for me to come back here.” She exclaimed. “I won’t be responsible for you neglecting your job, Ryan, I won’t!”

  Frustrated and fearful, he threw out his hands. “Fine! I’ll attend the seminar if you feel that strongly about it.”

  “Well, of course, I do. Don’t you think I know how important your job is to you?”