How Sweet the Sound

by Jacquelin Thomas

  She looked at Caleb through her tears and shook her head.

  Reluctantly Caleb turned to Revelation who started out alone with “Stand,” but were soon accompanied with the choir and most of the crowd. The next songs were just as joyously received, then it was time for the closing number. Caleb went to the mike.

  “Thank you. A special thanks to Summerset city council for realizing the importance of recognizing our Creator, and to President Jenkins and the Board of Regents of Summerset Junior College for lending us their unwavering support. My deepest appreciation also goes to Pastor French of Peaceful Rest for allowing us to use his wonderful church to practice.” Caleb paused.

  “In all things we should give thanks to our Heavenly Father and let Him direct our paths. I forgot that and it may cost me a woman I love very much.”

  A hush fell over the crowd. People seemed to sway toward the stage.

  “But whatever happens, I’ll never forget her or believe God won’t work things out between us. This song has always brought me peace and I leave you with it and wish you untold blessings.”

  Caleb looked skyward and began to sing a capella “How Great Thou Art.” “‘Lord, my God. When I in awesome wonder—’”

  “‘Consider all the work thy hand hath done.’” The strong clear voice of Grace joined his. She went to stand beside him. Their full-bodied, indelible voices touched the heart and soul and brought another hush to the crowd. The harmony and vocal delivery was superb. When they finished, their hands were linked and uplifted in praise.

  They were quickly surrounded by the members of the choir and Revelation, and the audience. When Caleb turned from accepting the congratulations of President Jenkins and Dr. T. C. Holloway, Grace was gone.

  He found her sitting on the deck in her yard, her head bowed. He didn’t know if she was crying or thinking or praying. “Grace?”

  She straightened, then came to her feet. “Caleb.”

  He felt a deep ache and a deeper emptiness in his heart when he saw the wary look on her face. “I love you. I’ll keep on saying it until you trust me enough to marry me.”

  Her hand threaded through her hair. “I used to think my mother was weak for letting my father walk in and out of our lives and drag us all across the country. I realize now how brave she was and how much she loved all of us.” She swallowed. “No one should hold anyone back from their dream, especially if they love that person. Love is unconditional.”

  He quickly crossed to her. “I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, but I can’t. One day I’ll leave Summerset. Marry me and go with me. You’ll have another home with me.”

  “My decision came to me while we were singing ‘We Fall Down.’ No matter how many mistakes we make, God is always there to pick us up and show us the way.” She stepped closer to him. “Earlier today when we were at the carnival I was storing up memories for the day you would leave and learning to live without being afraid.”

  “Trust me. Trust us,” Caleb pleaded.

  “I do with all my heart.” Her smile was tremulous. “You had it wrong. Where you lead, I’ll follow.”

  His breathing quickened. “Are you saying yes?”

  “Summerset is safe and I hid behind that safety.” Her arms circled his neck. “Believing and trusting in God means living without fear. I’m stepping out on His promises. With you, I truly believe I can live life to the fullest as God intended.”

  His arms tightened. “You will. I promise.”

  “There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind.”

  His soul rejoicing, he picked her up, twirled her around and kissed her, thanking God for sending him to Summerset and to the one woman he would always love.

  “When the time comes and we have to leave, we’ll make a new home,” Grace said. “God led us here and He’ll lead us to another place full of love and happiness.”

  Caleb smiled. “He will make a way.”

  “Always.”

  HEART SONGS

  Felicia Mason

  To every thing there is a season,

  and a time to every purpose under the heaven….

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

  a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

  —Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

  Chapter One

  As she glanced around the room at the classmates she graduated with twenty-five years ago, Carys Chappelle Shaw had to give herself credit for not only staying in shape, but also in touch with both reality and the evolution of fashion.

  More than one head of impossibly black or red hair moved in front of her line of vision. Pounds and wrinkles and hard times showed on the faces and frames of some of the people she used to know. Carys was one of the few who still looked naturally like the Camden College yearbook image from all those years ago when they were undergrads at the North Carolina college.

  Without consciously realizing it, she searched the crowd, looking for one particular face, one smile. After her third scan through, she sighed just a little—but not on the outside where it would show.

  Maybe he wasn’t coming.

  Or, maybe the picture she’d seen of him was an old one and like at least three other male classmates she’d spied tonight, he’d gone bald and gained a hundred pounds. That fate had claimed the former all-star football player and self-proclaimed ladies’ man of the class. Joe Holmes was scouting for wife number five and asked Carys, half jokingly, if she’d be interested.

  “We could merge our business empires, beautiful. Me and you. We can fly to Las Vegas tonight.”

  Because she knew he was teasing, they laughed together before he moved on, flirting nonstop with more of their fellow alumni.

  Merge their business interests, indeed. Everyone in this room thought she was flush with cash, including the fund-raising-obsessed Camden College president, Dr. Buford Brooks, who’d been all grins the moment she hit the door. Carys had no intention of correcting all their assumptions. She was rich, just not the way anyone figured.

  Returning to the college after all these years seemed strange to her. She’d been in touch though, mostly via substantial checks to pet departments and specific fund-raising efforts—all sent under the Chappelle name. But she felt as if at any moment, a sorority sister would bounce in front of her and propose a trip to the mall, the movie theater or a neighboring college. They’d pack eight in a car and head off for an adventure.

  Carys smiled.

  Those were the days. Days when the future was a distant shore far beyond even the imagination, and happiness was the only conceivable fate for those who lived charmed lives. Time had, of course, done its number on that way of thinking.

  Now, all she could do was wonder just what had happened to twenty-five years of her life—a quarter of a century gone by in two blinks of eyelashes carefully thickened with a Parisian mascara.

  “If you don’t smile, Carys Chappelle, Dr. Brooks and everyone else is going to think your family is pulling its money for that new medical arts building we’ve been hearing about.”

  She recognized the voice near her ear, and a smile blossomed on her face. Her heart hammered in her throat. “I-is that really you?”

  “Turn around and see,” he said.

  Willing her heart to stop beating so wildly, she carefully placed her soda glass on a covered tray and turned slowly toward the man.

  She let out a delighted squeal. And then they were hugging each other. Laughing together. Rejoicing.

  He clasped her around the waist and Carys reveled in his touch. This is why she’d come back. Why she’d been standing in a corner instead of being the social butterfly she’d been most of the evening, as well as while in college, and during the intervening years.

  “T. C. Holloway. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “And you’re as beautiful as ever. More so.”

  Carys thrilled at the words, even more grateful that she’d never slacked off on gym time, pedicures, manicures and the attendant pampering of a well-kept woman. It t
ook work to make a forty-seven-year-old look not a day over thirty-five. Thank goodness Carl always insisted on that.

  “You always knew how to flatter a woman.”

  “It’s not flattery,” Thornton said. “I only speak the truth.”

  A delicate tapping of a fork tine on crystal stemware halted her next words. The two hundred or so people gathered in the ballroom for the alumni reception all faced the front of the room where a man in dress whites stood next to a woman in a too snug blue sequined cocktail dress.

  “May we have your attention,” she said, a lilt in her voice.

  As the room quieted down, Carys glanced at T.C. He’d filled out a bit in the years since they’d graduated, but not an ounce of fat showed on him. The blue suit that she’d immediately pegged as Armani fit him the way the designer intended for his clothing to flatter the male physique.

  She noted the French cut sleeves and elegant cufflinks at his wrist. And if she weren’t mistaken, she got a fleeting glance at a top-of-the-line Rolex on his left wrist.

  Carys smiled to herself as she faced the podium.

  T.C. Holloway had done all right for himself.

  “I see a few people we want to bring up here and reintroduce to you. Everyone remembers the captain of the football team. Come on up here, Joe.”

  Joe Holmes, the former football player who’d acquired one hundred or so pounds in the intervening years, owned a mini-chain of used car lots. Carys knew because along with his proposal to head to a Las Vegas wedding chapel, he’d pressed into her hand a flexible plastic key chain with the Trust Joe logo on it and invited her to stop in for test drive. Carys didn’t think that she’d be trading in her luxury vehicles anytime soon—especially not for a used whoop-dee. But she applauded as Joe heaved himself up the steps and gave a booming welcome to all.

  Thornton Holloway wasn’t given to speechlessness. As a matter of fact, he earned a living and provided for his family by exploiting not only his intellectual knowledge, but his skill at breaking down those complex thoughts into concepts and sound bites easily digested by the masses, everyone from children to seniors.

  But none of the degrees he held, none of the experiences he’d had in the years since graduating from college prepared him for coming face-to-face with Carys Chappelle.

  He’d come a long way from his days growing up in Texas. His family had been so proud when he’d graduated with an associate’s degree from Summerset Junior College. Even then his calling to ministry was evident in the work he did at Peaceful Rest Church, the congregation that to this day he considered his home church. On a scholarship and lots of prayers from the members, he’d transferred to Camden College where he discovered a whole new world, a world a country boy at first found baffling. But it was here on this campus in North Carolina where he’d honed his speaking skills—and where he’d fallen in love with Carys Chappelle.

  A part of him hoped that Carys would be at the class reunion. He wanted her to see that he’d overcome the debilitating deficiencies that plagued him when they were undergrads. He wanted to see if she’d be as beautiful in the flesh as she was in his memory.

  The answer to that—an overwhelming and resounding yes!—sent his senses into overload, short-circuiting every rational thought in his head. He hadn’t given any consideration to what their first meeting might be like. Throwing herself into his arms, she’d taken charge of the moment and him by surprise. What didn’t come as a surprise, though, was how wonderful she felt in his arms—as if she’d always belonged there. When he looked in her eyes, his entire world seem to slip off its axis.

  Feeling as if he suddenly needed an anchor in a tumultuous sea, he reached for a drink from the tray of a passing waiter. Belatedly, he realized it was champagne, and put the flute back on a draped tray set aside for discarded glasses and plates.

  He needed something to safeguard his hands. If he didn’t watch it, he’d wind up putting them around Carys Chappelle’s waist again. Thornton jammed his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

  Joe Holmes completed his welcoming remarks and passed the microphone back to Anita, the former head cheerleader, who gave an overview of the weekend’s activities.

  “But before we jump right in,” she said, “I think it would be appropriate if one of our own got us started on the right foot. T.C., would you lead us in a prayer?”

  He nodded, knowing Carys’s eyes were on him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, friends and classmates,” Anita said, imbuing each word with bouncy enthusiasm. “After the invocation from our own Reverend Doctor Thornton Holloway—we all knew him as T.C.,” she added on a conspiratorial aside, as if they’d been close back then, “we have a few icebreakers I think you’ll enjoy.”

  Thornton excused himself from Carys and made his way to the front. He then gave thanks for allowing the class to be together one more time, for getting travelers safely to their destinations and for keeping watch over those who wanted to but couldn’t be in attendance for the weekend. “Thank you, Lord, for abundant blessings, boundless grace and new mercies everlasting.”

  Muffled “Amens” went around the ballroom. Then the festivities commenced in earnest.

  Prizes were awarded for everything from the class member who’d traveled the farthest distance to the ones married the longest and the most—a prize Joe claimed. Thornton returned to the spot he’d last been standing in with Carys but she’d disappeared. A search of the ballroom revealed not even a hint of the dove-gray silk wrap dress she wore.

  It was just as well, he figured. The scent of her perfume, something light but evocative—just like the woman—still played havoc on his senses. He’d been alone all these years. There was no sense in getting worked up over an unattainable woman.

  Carys came out of the ladies’ room with one of her old sorority sisters. They lived about an hour apart and had stayed in touch by phone calls and getting together for lunch every now and then. Lynn’s running commentary on just about every person they’d graduated with kept Carys entertained.

  “And would you just look at that,” Lynn said, tapping one long manicured nail against her cheek and speaking just loud enough for Carys to hear. “Who could have guessed that T. C. Holloway would turn out like that? Remember those Farmer Jack flannel shirts he used to wear? He walked around campus looking like something out of The Grapes of Wrath.”

  Carys had to smile as she followed her friend’s gaze toward Thornton. Lynn might still be a world-class gossip, but American literature remained her passion.

  “Mercy, look at that man.”

  Carys lifted an eyebrow at the tone and glanced at Lynn.

  The look earned her a nudge from her friend. “Don’t jump all prissy and refined on me now, Carys. Back in the day, you liked a nice piece of eye candy just like the rest of us.”

  “Yes,” Carys said. “But that was back in the day when we were young and immature.”

  Lynn rolled her eyes, but she kept that interested gaze on Thornton who stood talking with two other people. He’d never been exceptionally tall, probably stood about five feet ten or eleven. But instead of being lean, wiry and almost emaciated, the way he was in college, he had filled-out. Clean-shaven, the caramel color of his skin remained smooth. The sculpted fade of his haircut and the touch of gray at his temples gave him a wise look that Carys found both comforting and appealing. His face and his bearing imbued confidence and invited people to confide in him.

  “The brother is working that suit,” Lynn muttered.

  Carys had to agree with that. Overall, the package was a very handsome distraction—just the sort she didn’t need or want.

  At just that moment, he lifted his head, saw her and smiled. Carys smiled back.

  “Mercy,” Lynn said, fanning herself. “I need to go find my husband. Quick. See you later, girl.”

  Chuckling to herself at Lynn, Carys began to work the room, making her way toward Thornton, who looked to be doing the same thing. Their steps had an easy grace, both man
euvering in such a way that only an astute observer would notice they had a mission in mind. By the time they met up again, in the middle of the ballroom, they’d both greeted and chatted with several classmates who’d stopped them along the way.

  “So, where are you staying this weekend?” she asked him.

  “Across town at the Omni.”

  “I knew I should have made a reservation there.”

  He smiled. “Are you flirting with me, Carys Chappelle?”

  She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s Carys Shaw now,” she said. “And maybe I am.”

  Chapter Two

  Thornton didn’t know what to make of the woman standing in front of him. For so long all those years ago he’d dreamed—big time—of just this sort of moment with her when she’d focus that six-hundred-watt smile on him.

  The only problem was they weren’t nineteen- or twenty-one-year-olds flirting for the first time. And, she was married. The huge diamond on her ring finger and her correction on her last name told him that.

  Why, then, was he wishing like crazy that he’d been the man he was now with the Carys Chappelle she’d been then?

  “Would you like to join me for coffee?” she said in invitation. “The lobby bar at my hotel is open late.”

  “I don’t drink coffee so late.”

  Even as the words came out of his mouth, Thornton felt like a complete idiot.

  Where was the great Thornton Charles Holloway—the man who held a doctorate from Harvard, pastored a church with more than 3,500 people and made regular appearances on television and the radio? Standing here now next to Carys Chappelle Shaw he couldn’t seem to string together a coherent sentence.

  How pathetic was that?

  “Some things never change,” he muttered to himself.