Close to Home

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Although Carson had supplied the financial means, it was Dodie who had inspired him to turn back to God.

  That she was on a different path right now had something to do with that summer six years ago, and he was determined to find out what it was. Maybe not this weekend or the next, but eventually he would discover what made her drop out of his life, quit school and travel halfway around the world.

  Carson sighed. “I don’t think someone like Dodie would be an asset to you. Besides, she’s not going to move from Riverbend and those wacky little jobs I hear from Chuck that she’s holding down.”

  Jace understood Carson’s frustration. Hadn’t he felt exactly the same?

  But Jace had known Dodie longer than Carson had, and since he began working on the fundraiser with her, he’d caught flashes of the Dodie he used to know. And it was those glimpses into who she had been and could be that gave him a ray of hope that he would find her again.

  Jace stopped at the reception desk and shuffled one-handed through the mail. Callie handed him a couple of phone messages.

  “Important?” he mouthed, holding up the messages, meaning did he have to see to them directly.

  Callie was about to reply when her phone rang. He waved her off, then put the stack of messages on top of a letter he was waiting for and headed down the hall.

  “I gave that girl every chance that you and Chuck got. And she threw it all back in my face when she left without saying anything to me. No words of thanks for the job I’d given her, no explanation. Nothing. I think that should speak to her character,” Carson was saying.

  Jace felt a riffle of anger at Carson’s comment as he pushed open the door to his office. “I don’t think Dodie’s character is up for debate.”

  “You’re right. I apologize.” Carson was quiet a moment, as if giving himself space to move on. “At any rate, I just wanted to touch base with you. I was looking at some of these files. Are you sure you’re charging all your time? Because it seems to me that your hours for the Griswold file are a bit thin.”

  Thanks to the previous lawyer, Jace had spent a lot of extra time rewriting the will that Mr. and Mrs. Griswold had gotten him to draw up. But Jace didn’t think Mr. and Mrs. Griswold should be charged for Harvey’s mistakes.

  “I am billing the way I should.”

  The moment of silence following his assertion spoke volumes. Carson was always after him to make sure he billed properly, explaining that the more accurate the hours were, the more equitable the bills.

  But now and again Jace couldn’t help but think that Carson was trying to eke out whatever he could wherever he could.

  He dismissed the thought as ungenerous. Carson was a businessman and he had every right to run his law firm using sound business practices.

  Still…

  “Just make sure you don’t short yourself. I didn’t send you out there to do charity work,” Carson said with a quick laugh. “If you need anything, let me know. Chuck said he would gladly help out on this end.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary, but I do have something I want to go over with you.” Jace picked a file off his desk, and soon he and Carson were going over the legalities of some mistakes Harvey had made on a partnership agreement.

  No sooner had he hung up then the phone rang again, and Jace was immersed back in his work.

  The day slipped past, and by the time his secretary left, Jace felt as if he had done two days’ work in one. He looked up from the computer and blinked at the clock. It was 5:36 p.m. He smiled. Dodie said she was coming by with a painting. He’d have a chance to press her about the movie.

  But an hour and a half later, Dodie still hadn’t shown up, nor was she answering her cell phone. Jace couldn’t help but think about Carson’s comment. Was she truly unreliable?

  Or was she simply afraid to see him again?

  He waited ten more minutes then called her at home, but there was no answer.

  He didn’t have a chance to follow up on why she hadn’t come because the next day he left for Edmonton. He had to catch up on his workload there.

  He knew he shouldn’t care as much as he did. That didn’t stop him from regularly checking his cell phone and his personal e-mail while he was in the city. But there was no message from her.

  Was she doing it again?

  He tried to ignore that nagging thought.

  Did that bother him because her no-show underlined what Carson had hinted about her? Or was it because he felt like she was avoiding him? He had foolishly thought their moment by the river, their shared kiss, had as much of an impact on her as it had on him.

  When he returned to Riverbend on Thursday he decided he’d had enough with the uncertainty. He was going to the thrift store and he was just going to ask her, point-blank, what happened.

  He strode down the sidewalk, pushed open the door and let his eyes adjust a moment from the bright sun outside.

  Dodie stood behind the counter sorting through a bag of clothes. She looked up, and her surprised expression gave Jace a curious lift in spite of his frustration with her.

  “So you decided to store the painting at your place?” he asked bluntly. “I waited at the office for quite a while the other night.”

  Dodie frowned. “I left a message with your secretary. My friend called me right after you left the coffee shop. She told me she would drop the painting off at your office this afternoon.”

  “Callie didn’t say anything to me before she left that day, nor did she give me any message.”

  “I specifically told her to give you the message.” She gave him a quick smile. “Didn’t want you to think I was unreliable.”

  Her unconscious repetition of the very words Carson had used gave him a guilty start.

  Then he thought of the scribbled messages his secretary had given that day, the ones Callie had said weren’t important. He realized he hadn’t even looked at them. One of them had probably been from Dodie.

  “No problem.” Relief sluiced through him. Thank goodness he hadn’t called her. He would have looked like a fool. And behind that came another thought.

  Carson had been wrong.

  In a much better mood now, he glanced around the shop, surprised at the ambience. Clothes were sorted by kind and size, hanging neatly from circular racks. On top of each waist-high rack stood a mannequin modeling an outfit. The fanciful outfits on each mannequin made Jace guess that Dodie had a hand in dressing them.

  Shelves full of toys lined one wall. Another set of shelves held shoes, neatly laid out. It looked like a regular clothing store, except some of the items were obviously used.

  “See anything you like?” Dodie asked, a faint edge in her voice.

  “I actually might, if I had time to look around.” Jace jerked his chin at the piles of clothes. “What are you doing?”

  “Triage. We get so many donations that we have to be ruthless about what we keep.” Dodie held up a neon pink shirt with a rip down one sleeve and mismatched buttons. “See, this kind of thing?” She tossed it over her shoulder in a colorful arc. “To the dump. No one would buy it.”

  “People still give a lot of junk, don’t they?”

  Dodie shook her head. “I don’t know why people don’t stop to think what people would be willing to spend money on.”

  He leaned an elbow on the counter, moving a bit closer to her. He was about to ask her about the movie again and once again they were interrupted.

  A young woman with two young children came into the shop. Dodie hurried around the counter, as if eager to escape him.

  “Hey, Linda, how are you doing? What do you need today? Something for Krissie?” Dodie squatted down to get on the girl’s level. “Do you need a new dress? Or some pants today? Or does your doll need something?” The little girl responded, shyly at first, then gaining enthusiasm and momentum as she talked about her clothes, her doll and then the party she was invited to.

  While Jace watched, Dodie’s conversation shifted from the mother to
the little girl and, occasionally, to the little boy in the stroller.

  She was animated and friendly.

  And incredibly appealing.

  Ten minutes later, as Dodie rang up Linda’s purchases, the little girl looked up at Jace, a frown wrinkling her forehead. “Aren’t you going to buy anything?” she asked.

  “I might,” he said. “There’s lots to pick from, isn’t there?”

  “My mommy says this store is a godsend,” Krissie said, clutching her doll. “Except I don’t know what that means.”

  Jace couldn’t help a quick glance at her mother’s older-style coat and worn blue jeans. He knew exactly what it meant. He, his sister and mother had often come to a store quite similar this one. Only then the thrift shop was in a dingy store down a back alley and someone like Dodie wasn’t sorting the donations, weeding out the junk.

  That was the job of the shopper. It took many dedicated hours of sifting through torn and stained clothes to find something suitable in order to save a few precious dollars.

  As the family left with their purchases, Jace felt a rush of appreciation and, yes, gratitude that this woman didn’t have to do the same. He was glad she had a welcoming and cheerful store to shop in and that people like Dodie had done much of the legwork already.

  Dodie may deny her faith in God, Jace thought, may say she didn’t believe in Him anymore, but he realized she was doing what God required. Doing justice, performing loving kindnesses and walking humbly with God, even though she might not realize that was where she was going.

  And in that moment, he allowed himself to hope she would return to her faith.

  And, maybe, return to him.

  Dodie went back to her sorting, intent on deciding whether a pair of lace-trimmed jeans would make the cut.

  Jace leaned an elbow on the counter, watching her. He could tell, however, that she was as aware of him as he was of her. Every now and then her eyes would slide to him and a faint flush would color her cheeks.

  He clenched his fists to keep himself from brushing his knuckle over her cheeks.

  And as he looked at her lips, he too easily remembered their shared kiss.

  “So, is there something else you want?” she asked, finally. “I don’t want to be getting in the way of your career.”

  “My career is doing okay right about now,” he said with a grin. “Chuck is going to have to watch his back when I get back to Edmonton.”

  “Chuck was always good at that,” Dodie snapped.

  Dodie had never cared for Chuck and had always said that Carson was too easy on him. Often Jace agreed, but he didn’t want to talk about Chuck.

  “Sounds like things are coming together for the fundraiser,” he said, sensing a change of topics was in order. “Only a couple of weeks now.”

  “I’ve got most of my stuff in.”

  “And then some.” Jace released a theatrical sigh. “Bad enough you beat me, now you seem to want to rub my nose in it by bringing stuff in again and again.”

  “I’m competitive by nature.”

  “I remember that from school,” he said with a laugh. “Always a fight for me to get better marks than you.”

  “I liked beating you,” she said, returning his smile.

  “Do you ever think of going back to school?”

  She held his gaze and it was as if her eyes pierced into his soul. “I know you saw those textbooks on my coffee table.”

  He held his hand up. “Guilty as charged.”

  “But to satisfy your rapacious curiosity, yes, I do think of going back to school and have been taking courses toward that.”

  “Counseling?”

  “I know it’s not in the same league as charging corporate clients their left eye to set up their accounts, draft contracts and evade taxes, but it’s important.”

  Jace ran his thumbnail along a scratch in the counter, wishing he didn’t feel so defensive. “Is that how you see what I do?”

  “Sorry—that wasn’t fair. I know what you do is important…it’s just…People had other plans for my life and I didn’t agree with them.”

  Jace’s mind ticked back to other conversations with Dodie while they were in college. Conversations about family expectations and personal duty. “People like your mother?”

  Dodie nodded. “I know she loves me and all that, but I also know that she’s had me pegged for some type of degree since my fourth-grade teacher recommended that I skip a grade. And then, when I was elected valedictorian in high school, she set her sights on lawyer. She’s had plans for me.”

  “And those plans didn’t include working in a thrift store or helping Janie out or selling stuff at the farmer’s market?”

  Dodie snorted. “Most definitely not.”

  Jace glanced around the store. “I have to confess, your current career choices are a surprise for me, too.” He thought of what they had talked about on their “date” by the river. What she said made sense, but he still had the feeling that something was missing from the equation. Dodie moving so dramatically from prelaw to thrift store still didn’t add up in his mind.

  “Confess away. It’s good for the soul,” Dodie quipped.

  The phone on the counter rang and Jace felt a spark of irritation. He had better get to the point soon. He had shunned his work for too long, and he had to get back to it. But not before he asked her out again.

  “I suppose I could find someone to pick them up.”

  Jace glanced at Dodie. Her forehead was puckered in a frown.

  “I could talk to Ethan,” she was saying, referring to her cousin. “Maybe he’d lend me that beloved truck of his.” She bit her lip. “I’ll give you a call when I can find out more.” Her frown deepened after she hung up the phone.

  “Something wrong?”

  Dodie looked distracted. “Arnie DeVries, the man who makes the chairs, wants me to pick them up on Sunday. He’s leaving for Arizona on Monday morning and won’t be back before the fundraiser. But I need a truck.” She picked up the phone again.

  “I have a truck,” Jace offered, thankful once again that his mother hadn’t sold his father’s truck like he had urged her to.

  Dodie looked from him to the phone. Her indecision wasn’t encouraging. When she picked up the phone, Jace against fought back frustration. He was about to push himself away from the counter when she put the phone back on the hook and gave him a tentative smile.

  “Thanks for the offer. I’ll take you up on it.”

  “I’d better drive, though. The truck is dependable, but temperamental.” He waited a moment, then she nodded. “When do you need to pick this up?”

  “He asked me to come at about twelve-thirty, which means we’d have to leave my place at about eleven-thirty.” Then Dodie hesitated. “Church is over at eleven-thirty, right?”

  He nodded. “And it would take me at least fifteen minutes to get from church to your place.”

  “I suppose I could meet you at church,” she said.

  “Or you could come to church. That way we won’t miss each other.” Jace threw out the comment with a casual air, as if it didn’t matter as much as it did.

  “I guess I could. I haven’t been in a while. Mom and Dad would be pleased.”

  “So, see you Sunday, then?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Though her comment was affirmative, it wasn’t enthusiastic, and Jace wondered if she was really going to follow through.

  Chapter Eight

  Dodie parked her car down the street from the church, turned off the engine and wondered, yet again, what she was doing.

  It was Jace’s fault, she thought. Jace with his praying at their picnic. Jace with his comment about a part of her needing God.

  Last night, she pulled her Bible out of the cupboard for the first time in years. She had taken it to bed, laid it on the bedside table, like she used to.

  But she hadn’t been able to open it. Not yet.

  She wasn’t ready for a one-on-one conversation with God. Bu
t church she could manage. Once in a while she attended to keep her father happy and her mother off her back. This would be no different.

  Dodie stepped out of the car and strode down the sidewalk, heading for the front doors of the building. Once inside, she glanced around, her gaze skimming over the people milling in the foyer. She gave a smile to a friend, dodged a little girl who was squealing at her sister to wait up for her. If she could find Janie, she would sit with her.

  Or, barring that, one of her cousins.

  Then, just as she was about to head up the stairs to the sanctuary, a deep voice called her name, and a shiver raced down her spine.

  Jace stood behind her. Today he wore a crisp blue shirt, with a corduroy blazer, denim jeans and cowboy boots.

  Dodie felt a faint trill of attraction. Her Jace, she thought.

  “Good to see you here,” Jace said, rolling up the bulletin he’d received from the ushers at the door.

  “Good to be here.” Dodie inclined her head but as she moved up the stairs, she sensed Jace right behind her.

  Dodie scanned the pews from the back of the church. She saw Sarah and Logan, but there was no room beside them. Ditto Ethan and a very pregnant Hannah.

  Janie and Luke weren’t here yet.

  There was room by her mother, but Dodie didn’t feel like dealing with the surprise she knew her mother would show.

  But could she really sit by herself?

  “Can I sit with you?” Jace asked casually. “I hardly know anyone here and I hate sitting alone.”

  Dodie chuckled, then nodded. “Sure. Why not?” She led the way to a spot not too close to the front, but not so far from the back that it looked like she was trying to hide.