My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  “What’s that?” He nodded toward her hand.

  “Oh.” She lifted it to show him. “My inhaler. I have asthma, so I keep it close by when I exercise, just in case.” She shifted in her running shoes, groped mentally for something to say. All that glistening skin! “So what are you listening to?”

  “Oh. Ah . . .” He twisted his arm, glanced distractedly at his iPod. “I think ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ was on when you walked up. You?”

  “ABBA. I went to see a traveling production of Mamma Mia when it came through Dallas, then went right out and bought the soundtrack.”

  TMI, Kate! Quit babbling. TMI!

  A car drove along the street and they both watched it pass, grateful for the diversion. Okay, so that heavy look he’d given her last night hadn’t been a complete delusion. There was something new between them. An awareness. A tension. It was probably mostly on her side, affecting her emotions. But there had been a shift. She could feel it acutely.

  “Is your house near here?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s back down this way and then to the left.” He turned to gesture, describing where he lived. With his attention elsewhere, Kate snuck a furtive peek at his nearby shoulder, arm, chest. There were a few faint, pale scars on his upper body. No doubt from the hockey.

  They only made him hotter.

  She peeled her attention away in the nick of time, nodding at him when he finished as if she’d been listening the whole time.

  She gave him a chance to invite her to his house for a breather, a glass of water, a make-out session. But he offered none of the above.

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your jog.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  “I’m glad I ran into you.” It was true. Seeing him shirtless and sweaty was like a shot in the arm. She now felt like she had the hormone power to walk for miles.

  She smiled at him and his focus caught on her mouth for a second.

  “See you Monday,” she said.

  “Okay.” And with that he nodded to her then ran past, launching into the upward slope of the hill with impressive speed.

  She pivoted slowly to watch him.

  If you change your mind, I’m the first in line . . .

  It was only after he’d disappeared from sight that she realized the refrain from “Take a Chance on Me” had sprung from her own heart. Her ear buds were still dangling from her fingers.

  She had to remind herself for the one thousandth time that he was only ever going to be her friend. She couldn’t let herself go all mushy over him. She just absolutely couldn’t afford it. It would be fruitless pain heaped onto a heart already vulnerable and battered from bad ex-boyfriends. The next time she fell in love it was going to be with a good, Christian, ordinary-looking guy. It was not, not, not going to be with Matt Jarreau.

  “Are you married or single?” The middle-aged woman at the church’s information desk looked up at Kate inquiringly.

  “Single.”

  “Okay then.” She flipped some pages in her binder. “The singles’ class meets in room B5. Just take the elevator”—she leaned forward, pointed— “down a floor and it’ll be on your left.”

  Yes! Yes, of course. The basement! Home to many a singles’ Sunday school class in many a church. Kate thanked the lady and made her way to the elevator. Darn Gran for insisting on coming to Sunday school today. They’d been attending just the worship hour since arriving in Redbud, which suited Kate perfectly. But today Gran’s “Golden Group” was hosting an author who’d written a book about reaching your grandchildren for Christ, and Gran hadn’t wanted to miss it. Since they only had one car, it had seemed embarrassingly wimpy for Kate to drop Gran off early and not brave Sunday school herself.

  She was already regretting her false bravado.

  What was it with churches and single people? In all spheres of life—work, social, athletic, academic—singles mixed with married people. Not so in Sunday school.

  What were the married people studying in their classes, anyway? Top secret marriage info? Racy sex tips? What could possibly be so juicy that it merited separating the married and the single adults into two separate areas of the building? Like the L sign for loser, she sometimes felt like she wore a big S for single on her forehead whenever she set foot on a church campus.

  She arrived at the mouth of room B5. A neat, trim, balding guy greeted her, had her fill out paperwork, and made her a stick-on name tag.

  “Come on in, I’ll introduce you to some people,” he said, leading her into the sparsely populated room. He smiled enthusiastically. “We’ve got a really great group.”

  How great could any singles group be, Kate wondered darkly, when all of its members were extremely eager to graduate out of it? She clutched her Bible and ventured forward.

  It could be worse, she reminded herself. This was a small-town church and all their singles met together. She wasn’t going to be treated to that favorite of big-city churches—the divide between twenty-something singles and thirty-and-over singles. Kate, most depressing of all thoughts, now belonged in the latter category. And there was no worse, more pitiable assignment in the entire church than thirty-and-over singles. Even the grief support group was arguably better. The class of shell-shocked divorced people was better!

  For pity’s sake, the custodial staff was better.

  Kate kept a close eye on Morty all through Sunday lunch at Peg and William’s. Apparently, he hadn’t recovered from Friday night’s black mood. He was still thunderous, gloomy, and seething with animosity toward Velma.

  After the meal, she took him aside to Peg’s sunroom, where they stood side by side gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows, hands in their pockets. Beyond the glass, a view of stunningly vivid orange, red, and yellow fall foliage spread before them. Some of the leaves spun on their limbs while others drifted to the ground like paper airplanes.

  “I can’t drive my Cadillac,” Morty finally said.

  “Why not?”

  He glanced at her. “You know anything about cars?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well then, this might be hard for you to understand.” He ran a hand through his beautiful gel-free silver hair before returning his attention to the woods. “My Cadillac is a classic car. I bought it in ’63. I was working on the force then, hadn’t made detective yet. Married with two kids. The car was six years old at the time, but the first owner had been an old lady who’d hardly put any miles on it.”

  Kate nodded. Waited.

  “I’ve always been real practical. Frugal, you know? I didn’t make much and my wife was at home raisin’ the kids back then, so we had to be careful about money. But when I read that classified ad in the paper, saying that a Cadillac was for sale, I just had to go by and take a look. And as soon as I saw that car, I had to have it. Can’t really explain it.”

  “You don’t have to. Some things are just like that. Love at first sight.” Against her will, her brain conjured an image of Matt looking slowly up at her from beneath the brim of his baseball cap.

  “Exactly,” Morty said. “That car’s the one—What do you call it? Indulgence? It’s the one big indulgence of my life. My wife was mad at me for weeks—” he shook his head ruefully—“months over buying that car. I didn’t want to drive it much, you see, even back then. So we had to share her car.”

  Kate could understand why his purchase had gone over like a lead balloon.

  “Over the years the kids grew up and left and my wife died, God rest her soul. But I’ve still got that car.”

  “I’d like to see it sometime.”

  “Sure. I’ve kept it in mint condition. I mean mint condition.” He looked at her seriously.

  “I believe you.”

  “The car’s perfect. I work on it myself, order parts when I need ’em. A couple times a year I load it onto a flatbed and drive it to car shows. You wouldn’t believe the offers I get to buy it. It’s worth a fortune.”

&
nbsp; “I bet it is.”

  “I won’t sell it, of course.”

  “No.”

  He sighed, and they watched the leaves together for a few quiet moments.

  “I can’t just up and start driving it all of a sudden,” he said. “It’s a collector’s item. What if someone runs into me? Where am I going to park it while Velma and I are eating dinner? What if there’s a storm? Hail, God forbid? Not to mention just the regular ol’ wear and tear of driving it around . . . all those miles I’d be adding.”

  “I gotcha,” Kate said.

  “Maybe you could ask Velma to reconsider.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. She was firm on it, Morty. You know how she is.”

  He groaned, worked the toe of his shoe into the floor.

  “I hesitate to speak for her,” Kate said tentatively, “but I think she wants you to drive the car because she thinks you’d get more enjoyment out of it that way. You know, live life to the fullest and all that.”

  “I couldn’t enjoy my car any more than I already do,” he answered defensively. “Why does that woman keep wanting to change things about me? When am I gonna be good enough?”

  “She indicated that this was her last request.”

  He scowled. “How’d she like it if I demanded she change some things?”

  She’d like it like a yeast infection. “Um . . . you could try, I suppose.”

  “The thing is, Kate, I don’t want to change anything about her. I like her just the way she is.”

  Kate looked at him, this burly man with his new hair and his new clothes and his sad expression. He was trying so hard. “For what it’s worth, I think Velma’s crazy if she doesn’t go out with you.”

  “And I think that Matt Jarreau fellow is crazy if he doesn’t go out with you.”

  “What?” Kate asked, surprised. “Oh no, we’re just friends.”

  He looked at her with compassion, as if she were the dumbest person alive.

  She blinked back at him. What exactly were the seniors talking about when she wasn’t around?

  “So if I want to go on a date with Velma, it’s the car or nothing, huh?” he asked.

  “It’s the car or nothing, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t think I can do it, Kate. I just don’t think I can do it.”

  chapter thirteen

  Ah, that most glorious of chores. Taking out the trash. The fact that it could pile up with such astonishing, impossible speed depressed Kate. She’d take it out in the morning and, as if by magic, spot it brimming again come noon. She’d tromp out with it at noon and then find herself jamming a box of Cheddar Jack Cheez-Its into a full bin again come bedtime.

  But perhaps it wasn’t even that—the never endingness of the trash. What bugged her the most was that any person with two brain cells knew that taking out the trash was a man’s job. So her failure at finding a husband had, among other things, relegated her to a life of trash handling.

  It was Monday morning and she’d woken unusually early. Thoughts of Matt had jumped into her head and prevented her from falling back to sleep.

  She padded to the kitchen in her UGG slippers and cotton jammies in search of coffee. Gran was still clunking around upstairs so Kate got the coffee maker going, pulled out the stuffed trash bag with a sigh, and slipped on her quilted trench.

  Fog covered the morning in quiet, white, and chilly stillness. She was halfway across the lawn on her way to the trash cans located at the back of the barn when she saw him.

  She gasped and stopped, the trash bag swinging.

  Matt, leaning against the side of his truck, huddled into his leather coat, watching her with glittering eyes. He didn’t look happy.

  Her heartbeat kicked at the sight of him. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  He pushed away from his truck and approached. “Here.” He took the Hefty bag from her. “Let me.” And exactly as God must have intended for man to do from the beginning of time, he strode into the fog and took out the trash. She could have fainted at the romance of it.

  He made his way back a few moments later, materializing suddenly from the mist.

  “Did you come to work early this morning to take out my trash?” she asked with a smile.

  “Not exactly.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but as usual with Matt, no information was forthcoming. On the one morning when a hat would have made sense, he wasn’t wearing one. On closer inspection, she saw some other things amiss. His eyes were red, he hadn’t shaved, and his hair looked like he’d combed it with chopsticks. Despite all that, or maybe emphasized by it, the lines and contours of his face struck her as starkly, painfully beautiful.

  “Hard night?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you like to come inside for coffee?”

  “No . . . I . . .” He searched for words, then shook his head. He went to the rear of his truck and unlatched and lowered the back end. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”

  “Sure.” She walked over, her UGGs squelching on dewy grass, and hoisted herself up to sit on the edge of his truck bed. Her hair was a mess and she didn’t have on a bit of makeup, but thankfully she’d washed her face and brushed her teeth.

  He lifted himself up beside her. Time stretched. All around them the sounds of Chapel Bluff hushed. It felt, sitting together in the still, pale fog, like they were alone in the world.

  Just when she thought he was going to say something, he ground his teeth together, growled, and held his silence.

  She sat patiently, the tips of her ears turning chilly, her butt freezing from the cold metal beneath her, trying to imagine what he wanted to talk to her about.

  “You said something the other night,” he said at last. He spoke low and even, looking down at his hands. “The night we argued.”

  She watched him.

  “You said something about God having blessings He wants to give me. About me not letting Him.”

  She paused, her thoughts swimming. “I remember.”

  He met her gaze for a beat, then looked back down. She could see how troubled he was, how torturously hard this was for him. “I just . . . It’s been bothering me ever since.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t realized.”

  “I was happily married once,” he said. “God took her away. So if anyone has refused stuff in the relationship between God and me, I guess I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t me. It was Him.”

  She nodded, absorbing that. It was seven in the morning, they were sitting in the driveway of Chapel Bluff in the cold, and after all the weeks of their acquaintance, he was ready to talk to her. She tried to look cool about it, calm. But she could already feel her blood starting to rush. She didn’t want to blow this chance with him, to shut him down accidentally, to misrepresent God.

  Where to begin? Maybe best to start with easy questions before wading into the hard stuff. “Did you go to church growing up?”

  “My mom took us when we were kids.”

  “And? Tell me more.”

  “Ah . . . I prayed that prayer you’re supposed to pray and was baptized and everything. But when I started playing hockey, I got too busy to go. I was always traveling.”

  “What about Beth? What was her story?”

  “Her whole family, they were big church people. She loved going. Whenever I was in town on Sundays, she made me put on a suit and tie and go with her. I teased her about it, but honestly,” he said, looking up toward the tree line, gazing into his past, “I didn’t mind it and she knew it. It was the least I could do if it made her happy.”

  A stab of horrible selfish jealousy caught Kate square in the chest.

  He loved Beth. She knew this. Still, the evidence of it stung and stung hard.

  “When she was diagnosed with cancer . . . I prayed for her,” he said. “It’s not like I’d been some great Christian or anything. But I prayed as hard as I could, asking God to save her. Day and night. I actually thought . . .” He shook his head
as if furious with himself. “I actually thought between God and the doctors that she’d be okay.”

  Kate sent up a quick, silent request for insight. She had no wisdom of her own in the face of a beautiful twenty-seven-year-old who’d died of brain cancer.

  Matt popped a few knuckles. “Do you know how good she was? She was this, this really good person. Didn’t have a mean bone in her body.” He looked over at Kate. “Do you believe God could have saved her?”

  “Yes,” Kate answered.

  “So then why, out of all the people on earth, didn’t He? Her? Someone who was so sweet and who trusted Him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah.” He scoffed. “Me either.”

  She chewed on the side of her lip. “This is a fallen world.” The words sounded trite, impossibly small. “I hate that it’s true, but there are diseases and poverty and suffering. A lot of it’s unfair.”

  His profile hardened.

  “He never promised us that we wouldn’t suffer. But He’s too just not to redeem it. And He does promise us that He won’t leave us. That He’ll be with us through the worst. That He loves us.”

  He grunted disdainfully. “He could have saved Beth, and He didn’t. Was that love? Because it looked a lot like indifference to me. I can’t understand why He didn’t let her live. And I don’t want to believe in a God that would let that happen to a person like her.”

  She hugged her coat more tightly around herself. “It’s okay, you know, to argue with Him, to confront Him, to scream at Him, whatever. He’s big enough. He can handle it. Just so long as you talk to Him.”

  He released a low, bitter laugh. “No thanks. We’re not exactly on speaking terms.”

  “No?”

  “No. I wrote Him off when Beth died, and I think we’re both fine with the arrangement.”

  Looking at Matt in that moment—dark windblown hair, distrustful slant to his shoulders, cynical twist to his lips, eyes shadowed with sorrow—a sudden and absolute certainty overcame Kate. Goose bumps lifted down her neck and arms. “Actually,” she said slowly, “He’s not fine with the arrangement.”

  Matt turned his attention to her.