Pieces of Forever: A Christian Romance (River Falls Book 1)

by Valerie M. Bodden

  His hand on the small of her back anchored her as they walked inside, and Ava relaxed. It was going to be fine.

  It was going to be perfect, just like Joseph had said.

  “Calvano. Reservation for two,” Joseph said to the hostess, who smiled at him, then looked to Ava―and immediately averted her gaze.

  Ava swallowed. It was going to be perfect.

  But as the hostess led them past table after table of smiling, perfect couples, Ava could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on her. Could feel them asking why a handsome, successful, eligible man like Joseph Calvano would be with her. Could feel them . . .

  Her breath jammed against her ribs, and the room spun.

  She whirled, crashing right into Joseph’s chest.

  “Whoa. Ava.” His hands came to her arms, but she shrugged out of his grip and dodged past him with a muttered, “I’m sorry, I can’t,” that she had no way of knowing if he heard.

  She darted between the tables, muttering another apology as she almost knocked a server down. When she reached the hostess stand, she made a final mad sprint for the door.

  Outside, she swiveled her head.

  Now where did she go?

  Chapter 32

  “Ava!” Joseph didn’t care how many people in the restaurant were staring as he tore past the tables and followed her.

  She had a lead on him, since it had taken him a good ten seconds to figure out what she was doing. Though he still couldn’t say he knew exactly. He only knew that he had to catch up with her.

  “Ava.” He pushed out the door, then stopped abruptly as he spotted her sitting on the curb right in front of him.

  He slowed his steps, but she didn’t look up.

  “Hey.” He lowered himself to sit next to her. “What’s up?”

  She laughed softly, no humor in it. “Sorry. That must have been really embarrassing.”

  Joseph wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but she stiffened, and he pulled back. What had happened between the kisses they’d shared half an hour ago and now? “I’m not embarrassed, Ava. I’m worried about you. I want to help.”

  She glanced at him, her eyes full. “Then take me home.”

  “I― What?” Joseph’s heart dropped right down into his stomach.

  “This was a mistake, Joseph.” A tear dropped onto her cheek, and she wiped it away before he could.

  “What was a mistake?” he asked hoarsely. “Coming here? Or . . . ?” He couldn’t bring himself to ask the rest of it. Did she think being with him was a mistake?

  “I don’t know,” Ava whispered after a moment.

  A couple approached them from across the parking lot, and Ava turned her head, shielding the left side of her face from their view. “Can we just go?”

  Understanding slammed into Joseph, along with an unexplainable anger. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

  Ava lifted her head, clearly shocked and confused.

  “Why are your scars such a big deal to you? They don’t bother anyone else.”

  “They’re not on anyone else’s face, Joseph.” Heat sizzled from Ava’s words, and she jumped to her feet, striding toward his car. But he propelled himself after her, grabbing her arm.

  “Ava, wait.” He gentled his tone. “All I’m saying is, you’re beautiful. I’ve told you that so many times. I don’t understand why you can’t just believe me.”

  Her tears were falling freely now, and he longed to shelter her in his arms. But she remained stiff and distant.

  “I don’t know. I just can’t . . .” Defeat hung on her words, and she slipped out of his grip, continuing more slowly toward the car.

  He watched her a moment, then silently unlocked it and opened her door. His heart felt too heavy for his chest as he slid behind the wheel.

  “All I’m saying,” he said quietly as he started the car. “Is the Ava I knew wouldn’t let something like this stop her.”

  He wouldn’t let himself look at her. But he could feel the ache of her sigh right down to his own soul.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said finally. “I’m not the same Ava you used to know.”

  Joseph opened his mouth to argue.

  But he couldn’t.

  They rode the rest of the way to her house in silence.

  When they arrived, he walked her to the door, praying for a way to salvage the night. “Ava―”

  But she shook her head and opened the door. “Please don’t, Joseph.” And then she closed it, leaving him alone in the dark.

  Chapter 33

  “Not getting dressed today?” Lori stepped onto the deck, where Ava had been curled up since before daybreak. She shrugged, checking out the rumpled pajamas she’d spent the entire day in yesterday. It wasn’t like anyone was going to see her.

  “So I take it you’re not planning on going to church either?” Aunt Lori passed her a mug of coffee.

  Ava shook her head. If she went to church, she might see Joseph. If she saw Joseph, she might wish . . .

  But there was nothing to wish for.

  What was done was done.

  Friday night had only confirmed what she’d already suspected―that Joseph was looking for a relationship with the person she used to be, not the one she was now. And who could blame him? Frankly, she liked the old her better too. But there was no going back.

  “So you’re going to return to being a hermit? Because I gotta tell you, it didn’t suit you.”

  “I was never a hermit.” Hermits were creepy old guys who lived in the woods and never came out. She was a young woman who lived in the woods and never . . .

  Okay, fine, she’d been a hermit. But what was so terrible about that?

  “I don’t see why it matters to you.” Ava wrapped her hands around her mug to warm them. “You were the one who didn’t want me to go out with Joseph in the first place.”

  “No.” Lori sipped her coffee. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  Ava gestured to her pajamas, her ratty hair, her tear-tightened cheeks. “You win. You were right.”

  Lori sighed and set her mug on the table, pulling out a chair across from Ava. “No, I wasn’t. I think maybe, sometimes, you have to take a little bit of a risk. Put yourself out there, you know?”

  Ava shrugged. She was pretty sure she’d had enough of putting herself out there for a while.

  “Come on.” Lori clapped her hands. “Go get ready. We’re going to church.”

  Ava choked on the swallow of coffee in her mouth. Had her aunt said we?

  Lori made a face at her. “Don’t make such a big deal out of it. I just want to get you out of the house.”

  Ava blinked at her aunt. She wanted to say no, to crawl back into bed and not come out . . . ever. But she might never get a chance to bring Lori to church again.

  She pushed her chair back. “Give me five minutes to shower.”

  Ava tore through her shower at record speed, then threw on an old sweater and a pair of leggings. She eyed the makeup on the bathroom counter, then checked the time. They would be late if she took the time to do her full regimen. But she couldn’t go to church with her face like this. Not when Joseph and his family and half the town of River Falls would be there.

  Lori tapped on the bathroom door. “You ready?”

  “Yep.” She rummaged in the linen closet, pulling a makeup bag from under a stack of towels, then swept everything into it. A moving car wasn’t the ideal place to do her makeup. But it was better than not doing it at all.

  “You’re driving,” she told Lori as she emerged from the bathroom.

  Lori followed her down the hall and out the door, not saying anything until they were on the road and Ava had started to apply her makeup. Fortunately, Ava had had enough practice by now that the bumps didn’t throw her off too badly.

  “So, you want to talk about it?” Lori slowed for one of the switchbacks coming down from the ridge.

  “Talk about what?”

  Lori
accelerated out of the curve. “Has playing dumb ever gotten you anywhere with me?”

  Ava shrugged. “We went to dinner. I realized he wants someone I’m not anymore. We came home. End of story.”

  “Ava, don’t you think―”

  “No, I don’t. How are things with Mr. Germain? Has he decided about the job?”

  Lori’s eyes slid to her. “That was a nasty way to change the subject.”

  Ava dropped her hand from smoothing her concealer. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” That had been uncalled for. Just because she was hurting didn’t mean she needed to make her aunt hurt too.

  “But to answer your question, I don’t think he’s decided yet.”

  “You don’t think?” Ava turned to face her aunt. “Wouldn’t you be the first to know?”

  Lori avoided Ava’s gaze. “I haven’t seen him in a couple weeks. I’ve been busy, and he’s been . . .”

  “Liar.” Ava shook her head and opened her foundation, blotting it onto her face.

  “Excuse me?” Lori slowed for a stop sign.

  “Well.” Ava pursed her lips so she could blend around them. “Here you are lecturing me about putting myself out there, and what are you doing? Hiding.”

  “I’m not hiding.” Lori pressed her foot to the gas. “I’m giving him space to figure things out.”

  Ava snorted. “And does he want space?”

  Lori’s silence answered for her. Ava was going to push it further but decided to drop it before her aunt used her own arguments against her.

  And before her heart did too.

  It took all of Joseph’s willpower not to turn around in the middle of the church service and look up into the balcony. When he’d seen Ava walk in with her aunt Lori, he’d nearly left poor old Mrs. Talbot, whom he’d been helping to her seat, to totter for herself. Fortunately, the old woman’s grip on his arm had been strong. Unfortunately, by the time he’d gotten her seated, Ava had disappeared―to the balcony, he assumed. He’d been two steps away from running up there to apologize for Friday night when Mr. Siebert had caught him with a question about his pet Gila monster. By the time Joseph had extricated himself from that conversation, the bell had been ringing to start the service. He’d stood, undecided, at the bottom of the balcony stairway for a full minute before making his way into the sanctuary to sit with his family. A decision he’d been regretting ever since, even as he had to acknowledge to himself that this was probably how Ava preferred it.

  Simeon elbowed him as the congregation sat. Joseph followed a beat later, forcing his attention to the pulpit, where Pastor Cooper, the youth pastor who served with Dad, was getting ready to preach. The guy was his sister Grace’s age―Mama had even wanted Grace to marry him at one point―and an engaging preacher, though in a different way from Dad.

  “I am about the most impatient person you ever met,” Pastor Cooper opened his sermon. “I cannot handle waiting in a line. Can’t handle waiting for deliveries. Honestly, I can’t even handle waiting for someone to reply to my texts.”

  Amen to that. Joseph smiled ironically. Waiting for a text could just about kill a man. Which was part of the reason he hadn’t texted Ava after Friday night. His heart wasn’t prepared to wait right now.

  “And waiting on an answer to a prayer. Ooh boy.” Pastor Cooper wiped his brow in exaggeration. “I really can’t handle that.” He stepped down from the pulpit and walked closer to the congregation. “How about y’all? You ever feel like God is slow as a snail in molasses to answer your prayers?”

  Make that a snail crawling backwards through molasses, and Pastor Cooper might be onto something.

  “But you know,” Pastor Cooper continued. “I don’t think any of us really have a right to complain. Not unless you’ve prayed for something as long as Abraham and Sarah did. They waited a looong time for God to keep his promise to bless them with a child―until they were in their nineties. Or what about Hannah? She waited a long time for her answered prayer. Zechariah and Elizabeth too. Talk about patience. It makes me itchy to think about all the waiting.” He shook his head. “You ever wonder if they felt that way sometimes―itchy with waiting? Discouraged with impatience? I dunno.” He shrugged, lifting his hands to his sides. “Probably. I mean, they were human like you and me. But here’s what they did in their impatience―” Pastor Cooper paused long enough that Joseph started to feel impatient for him to continue.

  But then the young pastor smiled. “They waited on the Lord. They trusted in his timing.”

  Joseph sank back into the pew. It felt like he’d been waiting forever already for God to answer his prayers about Ava. But what if this wasn’t God’s timing? What if it was never God’s timing for them to be together?

  “I can hear the question half of y’all are thinking right now,” Pastor Cooper said. “The other half of you are wondering how long you’ll have to wait for me to wrap this sermon up.” A laugh went through the church. “But the half of y’all who aren’t feeling so impatient with me, you’re wondering how you know the difference between God’s ‘wait’ and his ‘no.’ Should you wait a certain number of days or weeks or years and then figure it must be a no?”

  Pastor Cooper looked thoughtfully at the congregation. “I don’t think so. Remember, God doesn’t work on our timelines. To him, a thousand years are like a day. Abraham’s one hundred years was no time at all to God.”

  Joseph shook his head to himself. In another hundred years, he and Ava would be beyond the nursing home.

  But Pastor Cooper was still preaching. “So we wait on the Lord, boldly, confidently, trusting in him fully. And as we wait, we worship, we serve, we glorify. And when he answers those prayers, whether with a yes, a no, or a wait some more, we give him thanks that though we are impatient, he is patient. He coulda―probably shoulda―wiped us all out from the start, from that first sin. But he waited. He promised a Savior. He waited some more. He sent that Savior. He waited some more. He promises to bring all who believe in him to eternal glory in heaven. So why all the waiting? Why not just snap his fingers and take care of it all in one moment―I mean, he’s God, nothing is too hard for him, right? But here’s the reason for his patience: You. Me.”

  Pastor Cooper strode back to the pulpit and looked down at the Bible Joseph knew always rested there. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” He looked up. “It’s the ultimate patience. Waiting for us to turn and repent. To believe that he has taken away our sins. So that one day all of our impatience will disappear as we are in the never-ending joy of eternity with him. Amen.”

  This time as he stood, Joseph couldn’t help looking over his shoulder at the balcony.

  Lori was wiping her eyes and smiling, and next to her, Ava looked radiant. Joseph’s heart filled with joy for her. She’d been waiting so long for Lori to be willing to come to church with her, to listen to God’s Word. He could only imagine how strongly Pastor Cooper’s sermon must have resonated with her.

  He turned back toward the altar, his heart suddenly lighter.

  He could wait on the Lord.

  And on Ava.

  “Come on, we have to go,” Ava whispered, tugging urgently on Aunt Lori’s hand as Pastor Cooper began his weekly announcements at the end of the service.

  “What? Why?” Lori whispered, tugging back and remaining in her seat.

  Well, that was cute. Ava had been waiting sixteen years for her aunt to come to church and now that she had, she didn’t want to leave.

  “I can’t.” Ava directed her eyes pointedly to the pews below―to Joseph, who was right there and yet so far out of reach.

  “Ava, I think you should at least―”

  But Ava tugged harder, and Lori practically fell out of her seat. She gave Ava a look but stood and followed as she tiptoed down the steps at full speed, then launched herself out the church doors and made a beeline for Lori’s car.


  “Lori.” The voice called her aunt’s name when they were halfway across the parking lot. “Can we talk a minute?”

  Aunt Lori glanced at Ava, a question in her eyes. Ava bit her lip, looking over her shoulder at the church doors. Mr. Germain was the only one out there, but others would follow soon.

  She desperately wanted to say that now was not the time. Lori could talk to Mr. Germain later. Somewhere else.

  But she nodded. “I’ll be in the car.”

  Lori squeezed her hand with a grateful smile. “I won’t be long.”

  Ava practically ran the rest of the way to the car, then slouched down as far as she could in her seat, eyes fixed all the while on the church building, as she prayed that Joseph wouldn’t come out.

  She owed him an apology for Friday night. But she couldn’t face him right now. Wasn’t sure how she’d face him ever again.

  Her eyes strayed to Lori and Mr. Germain, who had rested a hand on her aunt’s arm. He appeared to be speaking earnestly, and as Ava watched, Lori smiled, then leaned over to hug him.

  Ava wrapped her arms around her middle as the ache in her heart deepened. Why was it so easy for everyone else and so hard for her?

  When Aunt Lori returned to the car, she was beaming.

  “So?” Ava let herself sit up enough to fasten her seat belt.

  “He said he wants me to be part of his decision. We’re going to have dinner tonight to talk about things.”

  “That’s great.” Ava sat up all the way as Lori finally pulled out of the parking lot, though she waited until they were two blocks down the street to breathe again.

  As she did, an unwanted wave of disappointment rolled over her.

  Joseph hadn’t followed her out the way Mr. Germain had followed Aunt Lori. He hadn’t come looking for her at all.

  How many times can you push him away and expect him to come back?

  She knew that was true. And she hadn’t wanted him to come after her. So she needed to stop moping.

  “So,” she said to Lori, “how did you like the service?” She felt strangely shy, asking the question, like the first time she’d shown Lori one of her photographs.