Second Chance Match

by Arlene James

  How dare Garrett just take charge of her son? How dare he? Wasn’t it enough that he had turned all her plans upside down, then made her imagine foolish little romantic scenarios just as if her heart had never been broken? Suddenly it seemed as if Garrett Willows was to blame for all the woes in her world, and she’d be hanged if she’d let him get away with it.

  “Good job,” Garrett said, patting Hunter on the shoulder. The boy smiled up at him, holding his rake by the end.

  “It’s all level again,” he remarked proudly.

  “It is.”

  Garrett periodically raked the gravel to keep it from rutting and disappearing into the grass. From time to time, Chester brought up the idea of paving the great looping drive with concrete, but Garrett agreed with the Chatams that the gravel seemed more natural, given the age of the mansion, which had been built in 1860. Today’s exercise had been more about keeping a little boy busy than anything else, though.

  Hunter was quiet and cooperative—unlike Gilli Leland, the young daughter of Reeves Leland, another Chatam nephew, both of whom had stopped by that day—but Garrett had seldom had a busier day than this one. He appreciated those long-ago days when he’d tagged along after his dad all the more now. What patience Matthew Willows had possessed!

  The door opened, and Garret glanced toward the square stoop, finding Jessa there. Surprisingly, he hadn’t heard the car arrive. He smiled, but it quickly died. Anger sparked in Jessa’s dark eyes. Sighing inwardly, he reached for Hunter’s rake just as the boy bounded up the steps to hug his mother.

  “Mommy! We cut the toperies!”

  “Topiaries,” Garrett corrected halfheartedly.

  “And there’s a soccer ball to kick and a big TV for games,” Hunter hurried on, more animated than Garrett had ever seen him. “And a girl came to play.”

  “Gilli Leland,” Garrett put in. “Great-niece of the Chatams.”

  Hunter screwed up his face and pointed at the giant magnolia tree in the side yard. “She says you can knock cats out of the tree, and there is one. It’s real ugly, but I didn’t knock it down. I just threw the rocks softly. Garrett said it was okay.”

  “Hunter was very patient and careful with Gilli,” Garret said proudly. “She’s younger than him and, well, a handful, if you get my meaning. Although, I have to admit that she’s calmed down a lot since Reeves married Anna Burdett.”

  Jessa’s eyes burned him to a crisp, but she managed a smile for her son, who rattled on without drawing breath.

  “The cat is Tom Curly.”

  “It’s a tom named Curly,” Garrett corrected hastily. “Belongs to Kent.”

  “And they got toys in the attic,” Hunter chattered. “Garrett and me made a…”

  “Ferris wheel,” Garrett supplied.

  “With these sticks that you put in holes in these round things.”

  “Tinker Toys.”

  Garrett had been appalled to find that the boy possessed only two or three small toys, so he had asked Carol what had happened to the things Gilli had played with while she and her father were in residence after honeybees had invaded their house last year. Carol had shown them a big box of playthings in the attic. Most were decades old, but they were new to the delighted boy. Garrett hadn’t been able to resist sitting down on the floor to play with him.

  Hunter chattered about lunch and how he only had two cookies with a banana and milk later.

  “And, boy, am I hungry now!” he declared.

  “Hilda probably has another cookie for you,” Garrett said with a chuckle.

  Jessa opened the door and held it for the boy, saying, “Just one. I don’t want you to ruin your dinner. Then run upstairs and get ready for a bath. You’re too dirty for the dinner table.”

  Hunter acquiesced happily, but before heading inside, he ran back to Garrett and slapped hands with him. “See you later, ’gator.”

  “After ’while, crocodile.”

  Smiling, the boy ran into the house. Jessa’s gaze seemed less angry now, but she was clearly disturbed about the boy spending the day with Garrett. He tried to explain.

  “Carol had to help Hilda clean up an accident in the kitchen. So, I kept Hunter with me. We had a great day. He’s a great kid. I really enjoyed having him around. And I hope you know that I would never, ever, do anything to hurt him. Or you.”

  She caught her breath at that, then said tersely, “It’s best if we…if he doesn’t become too attached to you.”

  “Why?”

  Her pretty lips flattened into a straight line.

  Garrett nested the rakes, holding both in one hand. “You’re hiding from his father, aren’t you? You’re afraid you’ll have to run again.”

  “His father and I are divorced, and I am Hunter’s custodial parent by order of the court. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Okay. I’m not trying to pry. I just want you to understand that you’re among friends here and have nothing to fear.”

  “You don’t the first thing about fear!” she snapped.

  Not know about fear? He didn’t know whether to laugh or shout. Oh, he knew fear, all right. Unrelenting fear on so many levels that resolving one did nothing to ease the mind. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but she had already turned back into the house, the door closing behind her. Garrett gnashed his teeth, wondering if that woman would ever warm up to him.

  Maybe it was best this way, though. After spending the day with Hunter, Garrett very much wanted to help the boy and his mom. He’d started to wonder if maybe he wasn’t supposed to do that. Then he’d started to wonder if God might even mean for him to become more to them. But that was obviously just his attraction to Jessa asserting itself. She was worlds above him. Besides, how could he become more to her when she wasn’t even interested in being his friend?

  No, the best thing he could do was to just keep his distance and say a prayer for the two of them every now and again.

  Gulping down the painful bubble that rose in his chest, he picked up his rake and grimly faced the evening ahead.

  “Well, what do you think now?” Magnolia asked, returning to her seat on the settee after once more closing the parlor doors. Everyone in the house knew not to open those doors when they were closed, everyone except Jessa.

  “Ellie’s right,” Hypatia said with a satisfied smile, “Jessa was an enormous help today.”

  “You don’t think she’s hiding anything?”

  “Oh, yes, I think she’s hiding something. Hunter did tell Carol that he wasn’t supposed to talk about his last name, after all.”

  “I wonder if she’s not hiding from something,” Magnolia suggested. “Or, rather, hiding from someone.”

  “Like who?” Odelia wanted to know.

  Magnolia sighed. “I asked Abby Streeter about her, and all she would say is that Jessa and the boy had had a rough time of it but that things had gotten better since the divorce. Garrett thinks they were abused.”

  “Ah,” Hypatia said. “That makes terrible sense.”

  “It’s so sad,” Odelia opined. “Marriage is supposed to be forever.”

  “I doubt she had a choice except to divorce, dear,” Hypatia said soothingly. “I agree that she and the boy were almost certainly abused. Surely, you’ve noticed how she tries to fade into the background and hold herself aloof. She seems wary, as if she’s expecting everyone to turn on her at any moment, and look at how timid the child is.”

  Odelia’s face clouded. After a moment she asked, “Doesn’t that remind you of someone?”

  Magnolia nodded. “Garrett, once upon a time.”

  “Then perhaps he is the one best suited to minister to her,” Hypatia mused. “God must have meant that when He brought her here.”

  “Or He meant her
for Garrett,” Magnolia stated baldly.

  Odelia gasped. “Do you really think so?”

  Magnolia stroked her braid with both hands. “I’ve known for a while that the time has come for him to move on with his life. He should be out on his own, building a real life for himself, not stuck here catering to three old ladies.”

  “Oh, but that would mean three weddings to plan!” Odelia rhapsodized. “What fun!”

  “Now, now,” Hypatia warned, “we mustn’t run ahead of God. Matters of the heart belong to Him. Our job is to share our home and His love with others as He brings them to us. I mean, we can’t expect every houseguest’s visit to turn into a romance.”

  “So true,” Magnolia agreed.

  But she knew what she knew. She’d seen the way Jessa and Garrett looked at each other, especially when they thought no one else was paying attention. She kept that to herself, though. The last thing she wanted was Odelia gushing to everyone about a possible romance between Garrett and Jessa.

  Odelia proved her sister’s caution warranted when she sighed dreamily and said, “Oh, what a handsome groom Garrett will make. Almost as handsome as my Kent.”

  Kent Monroe handsome? Magnolia thought. With his balding head, shaggy eyebrows and huge belly? Love truly was blind, Magnolia decided. She shared a guilty glance with Hypatia and bit her lip. It wouldn’t do for Odelia to wonder about her smile.

  “I don’t know,” she managed after a moment, “now that I think of it, if her first marriage was unhappy, Jessa might not wish to remarry. And surely God has someone more…trusting in mind for Garrett.”

  “Hmm,” Odelia said, her romantic illusions depressed. At least for the moment.

  Sending Magnolia a resentful glance, Garrett sized up his options then slipped into the chair next to Hunter at the dinner table. By sitting next to Hunter, he avoided a seat directly across the table from Jessa. His hide still smoked from their encounter earlier, though she had kept her anger carefully banked. Nevertheless, Magnolia had insisted that he join the family for dinner again that evening, and she hadn’t been interested in his reasons for not wanting to do so. He asked himself what had gotten into the womenfolk around here. One little shopping trip and they all came back breathing fire!

  Hunter smiled up at Garrett, his lips curving into silent welcome. Softening, Garrett wondered what it would take for that boy to show some teeth and smiled himself at the idea of it. Ellie hurried into the room, talking a mile a minute.

  “You won’t believe the dresses we bought! Jessa is so good. She has the most exquisite taste.”

  What followed was a fifteen-minute monologue by Ellie on the day’s shopping expedition. Odelia proved surprisingly mum, saying only that she wanted to “wow” Kent on their big day.

  “My darling, you ‘wow’ me every moment of every waking hour,” he told her indulgently.

  “Sugar, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Ellie quipped, winking at Odelia, who giggled like a schoolgirl.

  Magnolia cleared her throat and addressed Hunter. “So, young man, how was your day?”

  “Super!” Hunter answered instantly. Then, to the surprise of every adult at the table, he launched into a detailed description of all that he and Garrett had done that day.

  “I couldn’t use the scissor-thingies,” he said, meaning garden shears, “but I showed him where to cut to make it twisted, and then he got the soccer ball, and I can kick it! Really, I can. And we had games on the big TV. Cool, huh?” He wrinkled his nose then. “I’m not very good.”

  “You did well for your first time,” Garrett insisted.

  Hunter flashed him a smile and went on and on about it being okay to throw pebbles at the tree that didn’t really have cats growing in it and playing with “Tinky Toys” and Gilli chasing him through the rose arbor and…

  “All right, son,” Jessa interrupted quietly. “That’s enough.”

  “No, no, we’re enjoying his conversation,” Hypatia said, calmly eating her dinner.

  Hunter shifted in his chair and ate a green bean before suddenly bursting out with, “You got to rake the gravel up on the sides then straight down, like, in a row! And the attic’s not dusty at all, even if Carol said we’d find bunnies there. Garrett says maybe they’ll ride the fairy whirl when we’re sleeping tonight.”

  “Fairy whirl?” Odelia asked in hopeful confusion.

  Garrett quietly explained about the Ferris Wheel built of Tinker Toys on the attic floor and the imaginary dust bunnies.

  “Oh, what fun!” Odelia exclaimed, clapping her hands.

  “Yeah, lots of fun,” Hunter confirmed, looking at Garrett with shining eyes.

  Chuckling, Garrett bumped the boy’s shoulder with his elbow and again he got that tight-lipped smile. Some day, Garrett told himself, I’m going to see those teeth! But the next instant he realized that it might not be so. This, in fact, might be his last chance to see the kid happy. Jessa would probably keep Hunter away from him after this because she obviously considered him a bad influence. Maybe if he told her that he would drop his claim to the Monroe place, she’d look on him more kindly. Then again, perhaps she wasn’t so wrong about him.

  He comforted himself with the idea that at least she didn’t know the worst. Perhaps she never would, for after she left Chatam House, whether to go to the house on Charter Street or elsewhere, she obviously had no intention of ever seeing him again.

  The remainder of the dinner conversation focused on weddings. Ellie announced that her only attendants would be Dallas and Petra Chatam, Asher’s sisters. Asher’s brother, Phillip, and cousin, Chandler, would stand up with him. Odelia and Kent opted for her sisters. Period. Hypatia, predictably, reacted negatively.

  “But…Kent can’t stand at the altar unattended!”

  Kent cleared his throat, dabbed his mouth with his napkin and looked straight to Magnolia. “I was hoping that Magnolia would stand with me.”

  “And you could be my maid of honor,” Odelia said to Hypatia. “That way you’d both have positions of honor.”

  “Nothing says Grandpa must have a male attendant,” Ellie put in helpfully, clearly pleased. “I mean, this is the twenty-first century. Right?”

  Magnolia glanced around the table then started to laugh. “I guess that makes me the best maid!”

  Hypatia blinked, swallowed and muttered, “Why do I feel like a relic?” Garrett looked down to hide his smile, but Kent chuckled fondly. Hypatia sighed. “Well, I suppose if I can be a maid of honor at my age—” Realizing that she trod upon shaky ground, she shot a glance at Odelia, straightened and said, “It’s not my wedding, it’s yours, and of course you should do as you wish.”

  Odelia beamed. Ellie clapped. Magnolia laughed again. Kent nodded gratefully to his “best maid.”

  Garrett marveled at the delight in triplicate that was the Chatam sisters. How blessed he was to know and work for them. After the long years of darkness, God had placed him squarely within the light and love of Chatam House. And now He had done the same for Jessa and Hunter. He could only pray that Jessa realized what a blessing it was to be here. Meanwhile, Garrett determined not to feel sorry for himself. As Hypatia said, in mourning the lack of one blessing a person could easily fail to have gratitude for another. Whatever happened, he was determined not to fail in gratitude.

  After the meal, the diners went their separate ways. Ellie hurried off to call Asher. He’d had a dinner meeting that evening, and they’d apparently been out of touch as long as they could bear. Tonight all the lovey-dovey stuff depressed him, however. When Kent and Odelia went off to sit in the rose arbor together, cooing like turtledoves, he actually felt a moment of irritation. Then Hypatia said something about needing a long, hot bath, and he realized that he was not the only one feeling out of sorts tonight.

  Poor Hypatia,
she’d done her best to adjust to the changes that the Monroes had brought to Chatam House. Magnolia, on the other hand, seemed to have flourished, gaining new energy for this next phase in her life. She took Jessa and Hunter to investigate the toy situation in the attic.

  Garrett found himself wandering restlessly to the kitchen, where he made a cup of sweet mint tea, which he carried out to the patio. The night could not have been more mild. The air brushed against his skin with the whisper softness of warm silk, and a pale, perfect half-moon hung high overhead in a navy blue sky slowly deepening to black. Garrett chose a chaise longue just outside the circle of light cast by a hanging lantern and settled upon the cushions, sipping his tea and listening to the faint music of the fountain that flanked the patio.

  After years of regimented chaos, he treasured these precious moments of sublime simplicity. He opened his mind to God and drank in tranquility with his tea. Peace gradually filled him.

  He remembered a verse from Luke, chapter twelve.

  Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

  Inhaling deeply, Garrett whispered a prayer into his cup, thanking God for this little kingdom of peace and the many riches of His greater kingdom. It was enough. If God so deemed it, how could it not be?

  He didn’t know how long he’d sat there, basking in the serenity, when the door opened off the sunroom, and he turned his head to see Jessa stepping through it. Surprised, he swung his feet off the chaise and down to the ground, pivoting sideways on the cushion. She ducked her head, smiling sheepishly, a worried expression clouding her dark eyes. He knew at once that she had come to mend fences, and his heart leapt with joy.

  Never, he told himself silently, underestimate God’s willingness to give peace to His children.

  Chapter Seven

  “Hello,” she greeted him softly.