Retreat

by Noelle Adams

“Maybe lonely. Yeah. Nothing bad though.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Why would you assume something happened?”

  “Why do you keep asking me stall questions instead of answering my questions?”

  Mercy hadn’t studied psychology and counseling the way Cecily had, but she might as well have. She could read Cecily like a book.

  “Nothing happened. Not really. I’ve just been feeling kind of lonely lately, I guess, and one of the friendships I thought I had has… I don’t know. I’ve just been wondering about it.”

  “Is this that Kara person?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. I just always thought she sounded too good to be true.”

  “Yeah. I’m not jumping to conclusions or anything, but even wondering about it makes me feel kind of lonely.”

  Mercy paused for a moment before she responded. “I wish you weren’t so isolated out there. If you lived closer to a city, you’d be able to meet more people like you.”

  “I know. I know. But Balm in Gilead is what it is because it’s isolated. It’s part of the package.”

  “Maybe you should travel more.”

  “I’m going to a little town in the mountains next month for a workshop.”

  “A little mountain town is not what I had in mind.”

  “I know. But it’s something.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Why don’t you come out here and visit me? I don’t have much going on next week.”

  Cecily sighed, feeling a pang of disappointment because she would have loved to visit her sister in Charlotte for a few days. “I don’t think I can. I’m so booked I don’t have any breathing space for the next two weeks.”

  “Well, you can’t just stay there and work all the time and keep being lonely.”

  “I’m not that lonely. I have plenty of friends. They’re just all in different situations than I am. It’s part of being single in your thirties in a small town.”

  “There’s got to be someone you can talk to. Right now.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I mean in person. If you look someone in the eye and have a real conversation, you’ll feel better. Who can you talk to right now?”

  The first person she thought of was Zeke.

  The only person she thought of was Zeke.

  “There might be someone,” she said slowly.

  It sounded like Mercy was smiling as she replied, “Good. Then go and talk to him.”

  Cecily gave a little jerk. “What makes you think it’s a him?”

  “Of course it’s a him. I can hear it in your voice. As soon as we hang up, go talk to him.”

  “I don’t know if I can. He— This person and I are not prone to just chatting for the sake of chatting.”

  “Then that’s your problem. Make that change. If you want to talk to him, go talk to him. Who cares if he works for you? You can still have a conversation with him.”

  “How do you know he works for me?” Cecily’s voice squeaked slightly in her surprise.

  Mercy laughed uninhibitedly. “Do you really think I don’t know who you’re talking about? Sure, he’s a strange, grumpy, repressed lumberjack of a man who wears the worst clothes I’ve ever seen, but he’s a person and you like him. So go talk to him. I promise you’ll feel better if you do.”

  “All right. I’ll think about it.”

  “No thinking about it. Do it. Promise me you will.”

  Cecily gave an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. I promise.”

  “Good. I’ll text back in an hour or two to make sure you followed through.”

  Cecily was shaking her head as she said goodbye, but she already felt a little better—just from talking to someone who knew her as well as her sister did.

  She wasn’t alone.

  At all.

  And maybe her sister was right. There was no reason not to take a little walk and see if she ran into Zeke.

  It wasn’t like he would be hanging out with anyone else.

  She checked herself out in the mirror and decided she looked fine in a pair of capris, a tank top, and a light beige cardigan. Her hair was down, but she didn’t feel like pulling it back up into a bun, so she left her apartment as she was.

  She was stopped in the lobby by a couple of guests who had a question about the beach umbrellas. Then she paused to chat with a group who was still hanging out by the pool. The sun was low in the sky now, but it wasn’t yet dark.

  When she’d finished the casual conversation, she went to the garden, but it was empty. Then she walked down to Zeke’s cottage, but the blinds were still open and the lights were off, which meant he wasn’t yet in for the night.

  She made her way down to the beach, said hello to a few more guests, and then finally spotted Zeke on the pier.

  She thought at first he was fishing since he was sitting down with his legs hanging over the side. But when she approached, she saw he didn’t have a pole in his hands.

  He was just sitting, staring out at the ocean.

  He glanced over as she got near, gave a short nod, and then turned back to stare at the water.

  From Zeke, this was a friendly greeting, so she was comfortable enough to sit down beside him, hanging her legs the way he was.

  His shirt today was a particularly ugly shade of seafoam green, and he’d paired it with bright blue shorts.

  She didn’t care about his clothes though. She liked his vivid blue eyes, his broad shoulders, the dark hair on his tanned forearms, the firmness of his thighs.

  When she didn’t say anything, Zeke turned to look at her again. “Did you need something?”

  “No. Just taking a walk.”

  His eyebrows lowered. “Why?”

  “No reason. Do I need to have a reason to walk along the beach and down the pier?”

  “You always do.”

  She realized he was right. She never took a walk or stopped to talk unless she had a reason. She wondered what that said about her.

  “You okay?” Zeke asked after a moment, his voice gruffer than before.

  “Y-yes.”

  He must have heard the very slight hesitation because he frowned at her.

  She sighed. “I’m really fine. Just felt kind of bored and… restless.” She wasn’t prone to hiding her feelings, but she was uncomfortable telling Zeke that she’d felt lonely and had come out intentionally to talk to him.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. Then after a long pause, he added, “Me too.”

  Her chest relaxed at this admission. She immediately felt less lonely, more understood, as if there was someone in the world who felt the way she did, who wasn’t always distracted by a very full life.

  They sat together in companionable silence as the sun lowered in the sky, casting shades of orange and pink onto the clouds and the sea.

  When Cecily finally spoke again, it was to ask a question that came out of nowhere. “What was your wife like?”

  He gave her a quick look with a jerk of his head.

  She’d never asked him about his wife before. They’d never talked about her at all. They’d known each other only slightly in seminary, and Cecily had only seen his wife a couple of times at a few get-togethers. By the time Zeke had started working for her, he’d already been widowed.

  The silence stretched out so long that Cecily thought Zeke wasn’t going to answer. Then finally he muttered, “She was… bright. Bubbly. Like Kara but real.”

  From those few words, Cecily understood exactly what his wife had been like. One of those sweet, sparkling women with happy spirits and genuine charm. She nodded to show she understood.

  “We met in college,” he went on, offering more in response to the question, much to Cecily’s surprise. “We were married in less than a year. I’d never known anyone so… sweet. She was a librarian, and I think she liked it. But what she wanted most was to be a wife and mother. She had her heart set on it.”

  Cecily moistened her lips, trying to imagine how he�
��d acted with his wife. She really couldn’t imagine him with someone like that, but he’d been different back then. “You were married for several years, right? Why didn’t you have kids?”

  “We were waiting until I’d finished seminary. I worked so she could get her masters in library science, and then she worked while I went to seminary. We were going to have kids after I was done. So she never got to have them after all.” He almost never spoke this much, and his voice was hoarse, as if from disuse. He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke. “Sometimes I wonder…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. She knew what he’d been about to say. “I guess it’s hard not to wonder what life might have looked like if we’d made different decisions.”

  It had to be an ache for him—the knowledge that his wife had never gotten her heart’s desire because they’d made the decision to wait.

  “What do you wonder?” Zeke asked, turning his head to look at her again.

  She met his gaze for a moment but glanced away when it felt too deep, too significant. She told him the truth though. “I wonder what my life might look like if I’d gotten married young, if I’d had kids and a family like all my friends instead of focusing on my work.”

  “You could have done both.”

  “Maybe. But maybe not.”

  “Did you have the chance to get married?”

  “Yes,” she said with a little smile. “I’ve had two marriage proposals.”

  “Yeah?” His eyebrows had gone up, and there was a strange look in his eyes.

  “Yes. One was… Well, it was hard to take it seriously because I didn’t know the guy very well. We’d gone to church together, and he said he’d been watching me and thought I’d be an ‘estimable’ wife, and he asked my permission to ‘court me toward marriage.’ He said God was ‘calling’ him in my direction.” She laughed. “Those were his exact words. He didn’t have a ring or anything, so maybe it wasn’t a real proposal. But it felt like one to me back then.”

  “What did you say?” Zeke had relaxed, and he was almost smiling now.

  “I tried not to giggle as I told him very kindly that I didn’t think God was calling me in his direction.”

  “He got angry, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He was trying to act all cool, but I could tell he was angry and offended, as if I were an infidel for feeling a different calling from God than he did.”

  “And the other guy?”

  “He was more serious. I dated him for about six months in seminary.”

  “Charlie Cooper.”

  Cecily sucked in a little breath. “Yes! How did you know?”

  “I was there when you were dating him.”

  Of course he’d been there. They were in seminary at the same time. She just hadn’t known Zeke well back then, and it had never occurred to her that he’d notice whom she’d been dating.

  “He was crazy about you,” Zeke added.

  Cecily felt her cheeks warm, which was absolutely ridiculous. “Yeah. He was really sweet, and I liked him a lot. But…”

  “But what?”

  “It just never felt… right. It always felt like I was playing a part, being the kind of girl who would date him. I’m not sure I can even explain it. By the time he proposed, I’d already starting discussing plans with Pierson for this place, and I was more excited about focusing on what we could build here than I was in getting married. He was taking a church in New England, so I couldn’t have done both. So I said no, and I felt terrible about it since he was so hurt afterward. I do sometimes wonder what my life would be like—without Balm in Gilead, as a pastor’s wife.”

  “Do you regret it?” Zeke asked, a rough texture in his voice.

  “No. This is what I’ve always wanted to do. This is what I still want to do. I’ve never been like your wife was. I’ve never really been able to see myself having kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  Cecily felt a little pang at the soft word, wondering if he was agreeing with her that she was nothing like his wife.

  He’d wanted to marry his wife.

  He wasn’t likely to ever want her.

  Not that it mattered, of course. He was completely unavailable to Cecily in every way. She shouldn’t even be thinking in that direction.

  The sun had reached the horizon now, exploding in waves of color across the sky and water. Both of them sat and watched it without speaking.

  When the sun finally disappeared, leaving the world in darkness, Cecily became aware of the intensity of her feelings for Zeke. She was feeling close to him. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted them to really be together—the way it almost felt they were right now.

  Those were very dangerous thoughts and completely inappropriate.

  She cleared her throat. “I better get back.”

  He nodded, his eyes meeting hers in the dim light.

  She reached over and touched his beard—unable to stop herself—but then pulled her hand back quickly. She got up, murmured good night, and hurried back to the main building.

  She did feel a lot less lonely now. Mercy had been right.

  But she would really need to be careful. She couldn’t use Zeke to fill what seemed like an emptiness in her heart.

  It wouldn’t take long before she wanted him for real.

  And he was one man she could never have.

  Four

  Zeke spent most of the next day avoiding Cecily.

  It was harder than he’d expected.

  This wasn’t just because he and Cecily worked together, and it was natural for their paths to cross at least a couple of times a day. It was also because he kept wanting to see her.

  He’d gone to bed last night with his mind whirling and his heart racing. He didn’t know why Cecily seemed to have sought him out yesterday or why she’d asked him about his wife, told him about her own experiences with men. Neither one of them were prone to personal conversations or intimate confessions.

  Cecily had always been a paradox. Honest and open about her feelings in an emotionally healthy way but still managing to maintain a professional boundary.

  From almost everyone.

  And definitely from Zeke.

  That boundary had slipped last night, and it excited Zeke more than anything had since…

  Since he could remember.

  But that wasn’t smart and it wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t in keeping with the man he had become, so Zeke gave himself a series of lectures throughout the day, every time his eyes started to rove, searching for a slim, upright body and gleam of blond hair.

  He wasn’t going to do this to himself. He wasn’t going to get his hopes up.

  He wasn’t going to be stupid or young or naïve or foolishly optimistic.

  That was the road that led to heartbreak. He knew it better than most.

  But when dinnertime came, he was obliged to make an appearance in the dining room. Cecily liked for him to be around for the evening meal since that was when the most guests gathered at one time and when it was most likely for problems to arise.

  They almost never did, but Zeke was occasionally needed for crowd control or to intimidate a loudmouth. He wasn’t going to shirk his duties because he was entertaining wrong feelings for his boss, so he forced himself to show up, get a cup of coffee, and sit in the corner to keep his eye on things.

  Cecily came in at six forty-five, looking as pretty and polished as she usually did in a slate-gray dress and pink heels. Her eyes searched the room and came to rest unerringly on where he was sitting.

  She gave him a little smile.

  He tried to scowl, but he found himself smiling instead.

  To his relief, she didn’t come over to talk to him. If she had, he probably would have acted like a besotted idiot. But he watched as she made a circuit around the room, chatting with guests, introducing people who were sitting alone, and generally being a good host.

  She wasn’t one of those extraverts who were always the center of attentio
n. Her mingling was quiet, contained, perfectly executed to keep the attention on other people and not on herself. She was doing her job, caring about her guests. She didn’t seem to care at all whether all these people thought she was special, entertaining, attractive.

  He liked to watch her and not just because she was so tantalizingly beautiful with her prim outfits and contained manner—making the warm spirit her appearance hid even more desirable. He also liked that she was so good at what she did, so incredibly competent.

  She’d helped so many people and never once expected to be admired for it.

  Sometimes this fact rankled inside Zeke. She’d spent her life taking care of other people.

  Someone needed to take care of her.

  He wanted to take care of her.

  As soon as he admitted this to himself, he forced the thought out of his mind. He couldn’t deny he was feeling this way more and more, but he didn’t have to let the thought fester.

  He might have tried to cut ties with the world over the past eight years, but he was still a human being with the same wants and needs he’d always had.

  He could admit what he was feeling. Acknowledge it.

  And then move it aside because he could never act on it.

  When Cecily had made her way around the room, he thought she would leave as she normally did.

  Instead, she walked over to him.

  He saw her approaching. Made sure not to stare at her. Tried to convince his heart not to beat quite so quickly.

  She sat down in the empty chair at his table, a little smile at the corners of her full lips.

  “What?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.

  “Nothing. I was just sitting down if that’s all right.” She arched her eyebrows as if he were being unreasonable.

  He grunted.

  She didn’t normally just come to sit with him. She didn’t normally seek out his company.

  She had last night though. And here she was, sitting beside him for no reason except she’d wanted to.

  He should be trying to dissuade her from this.

  He shouldn’t be feeling so… good about it.

  “I think the Andersons snuck in a phone,” she said in a light, conversational tone. “They hid something in her purse when I went over to them.”