Anna Meets Her Match

by Arlene James

  His soul brimming with praise, he couldn’t think of any other words to say until they fell out of his mouth.

  “Let there be a happier Anna, too.”

  Anna had never felt so hopeless. She didn’t know why. Nothing had changed. She’d never believed, not even as a fourteen-year-old with a killer crush, that she could have the sort of life that everyone else seemed to. In all honesty, she’d never found much to like about herself, and that probably would not be any different if her parents had lived. The only thing she found to value was her independence, however tenuous. As a whole, she was a disappointment, barely able to pay her bills, hold her controlling grandmother at bay—or form a private, more personal relationship.

  In truth, she’d never imagined herself romantically involved with anyone except Reeves, but he remained as unattainable as ever. A successful, stalwart Christian like Reeves Leland could never have any genuine personal interest in her. Gilli liked her, and he felt grateful to her, but that was all it amounted to, all it could amount to. Anna could do nothing about that, but she could do something about her relationship with God.

  She kept hearing Reeves ask when she had last worshipped. God deserved worship. She had forgotten that in her battle for independence from her grandmother. What God must think of her! No doubt, she was as much a disappointment to Him as everyone else, so she got down on her knees and confessed. With tears rolling down her face, she apologized to God for failing to worship Him, for allowing her resentments and stubbornness to keep her from giving Him His due. Then she made up her mind to do better.

  It wasn’t easy. She already knew that she couldn’t, was not supposed to, go anywhere but to the Downtown Bible Church. That meant facing not only her grandmother but Reeves and the Chatam sisters, everyone who had wondered why she was not in church and everyone who had invited her to join them over the years. So many had made polite inquiries and invitations, and she had blown off every one of them without a qualm. It seemed fitting then that she do this alone.

  She rose early on Sunday morning and donned, ugh, pantyhose and a long-sleeved mauve shift belted at the waist with four-inch-wide purple suede leather perfectly matched to the only pair of heels that she owned. Despite taking pains with her appearance, she arrived early in the arched foyer of the sanctuary. She walked alone across an expanse of dark gold carpet to the tall, arched double door with its heavy black wrought iron hardware. Inside the sanctuary, a full dozen chandeliers hanging high overhead echoed the black wrought iron theme. They, along with their heavy, draping chains, added a Southwest flavor to the stately interior.

  Little had changed in the years since Anna had last been here, but the few changes were startling. As always, milk-white, plastered walls stood punctuated by tall, elaborate, stained glass windows and soaring beamed arches leading to sumptuous gold leaf high overhead. Familiar, pale polished wood lay underfoot, softened now by strategically placed runners of gold carpet. Row upon row of long pews, now padded in startling turquoise velvet, still led to the massive altar and the railed apse with its raised, carpeted platform, throne-like chairs and pulpit. The glass baptistery at the very front stood flanked by the golden pipes of an ancient organ, the console of which was hidden in the loft positioned above the foyer, but two large video screens had been added, one high on either side and just in front of the apse. Both sat at an angle that did not distract from the dramatic tableau below. Neither did the railed spaces on either side of the wide aisle before the altar where a full orchestra and choir were already beginning to gather.

  Anna had forgotten how much she loved this grand space, how it quieted the soul and set the mind on God and His glories. Walking swiftly to the far end of the nearest pew, she sat down closest to the wall and bowed her head, hoping that her grandmother would not venture in before the spaces around her filled with enough people to provide her with camouflage. As she sat there, stillness filled her. Even her troubled thoughts dissolved, and she felt her breaths come and go with peaceful ease.

  After some time, the organ began to play, the music softly soaring and rippling. Soon the buzz of people finding their seats and greeting their brethren overlay the music, but Anna kept her head down. The pew rocked slightly as someone else dropped down onto it, and a shoulder bumped hers.

  “Well, well, just who I most wanted to see here.”

  A thrill of satisfaction shot through her, but she tamped it down before tilting her head. Reeves grinned at her, and she suddenly felt terribly conspicuous. Glancing around the now bustling room, she lifted a hand to the fringe of hair at her nape, telling herself that his delight stemmed from nothing more than Christian concern.

  To cover both her discomfort and her pleasure, she asked, “Where’s Gilli?”

  Crossing his legs, Reeves pinched the crease in the cuff covering the ankle that he balanced atop the opposite knee. “On her way to Children’s Church.”

  Anna smiled. “No fuss?”

  “None at all. Pardon me if I brag, but she’s been a perfect delight lately.” He grinned again, and goodness, was he attractive like this. “That is, if you don’t mind having stray cats and dirt dragged into the house.”

  Anna’s eyes went wide as she imagined what must have happened. “Oh, no.”

  He chuckled. “Yep, she finally caught that skinny gray cat that you knocked out of the tree that day. Poor Hypatia.” Reeves sighed gustily, stretching an arm along the back of the pew behind her. “The sweet old dear is exercising a great deal of patience with us, I’m afraid.”

  Anna could just imagine Hypatia’s reaction…all those priceless antiques and spotless floors. “You didn’t blame me, did you?”

  Reeves turned a face of purest innocence to her. “Of course, I did.”

  “Reeves!”

  Laughing, he moved his arm to her shoulders and curled it tight. “I’m nobody’s fool, sweetheart. They adore you, and I’m using that for all it’s worth.”

  What protest could she make to such a pronouncement? Provided, that was, she could have gotten a word past the sudden constriction of her throat. Sweetheart. He had called her sweetheart.

  Meaningless, she told herself. Utterly meaningless. Goofball would have served as well. She wished he’d called her that, anything that didn’t make her wonder if he might actually like her. Good grief, was this going to be high school all over again?

  At the front of the sanctuary, a man moved to a microphone and lifted a hand. The organ music stopped, and the man began welcoming one and all before calling their attention to the announcements now slowly scrolling across the video screens. The organ began to play again, very softly this time, and stillness once more settled over the room.

  A woman stepped up to the microphone and asked the congregation to prepare themselves for worship. Reeves removed his arm from about Anna’s shoulders and leaned forward, bowing his head. Surprised that he didn’t rise and slip out to join his aunts or friends, she quickly followed suit. Closing her eyes, she reached for some sense of God in this place. And found it. When the formal call to worship came, spoken in reverent tones by the woman at the microphone, Anna was in silent prayer.

  Dear Lord, I’m here, just as I promised, but please don’t let my grandmother make a scene, and please don’t let me embarrass myself. Most of all, please don’t let me get all caught up in Reeves again when I know that could never work out. Amen.

  The orchestra joined the organ, and the choir began a beautiful song based on Psalm 118. The congregation rose and joined in on the next selection. No hymnals. Instead, the words were projected onto the video screens. This was not a familiar hymn to Anna, and she felt lost. Beside her Reeves sang in a low, quiet bass, competent but with perhaps a limited range. She rather liked that tiny flaw in him. Later songs proved more familiar, but by that time Anna was content to simply let the music flow around her. She had forgotten, if she’d ever known, how sacred music could lift the spirit.

  When the pastor stepped up into the pulpit, Anna tried not t
o regret the end of the music portion of the service. He began with a few joking remarks, but then he got down to business with a Scripture reading. The passage, Romans 8:1–8, flashed up onto the video screens, but Anna noticed that Reeves followed along in his Bible. She divided her attention between him and the video screen, until the sixth verse smacked her right between the eyes.

  “The mind of sinful man is death,” the pastor read, “but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

  Life and peace, Anna thought, staring at those words on the screen. Suddenly she knew that she desperately needed that. For years now, she’d been existing in some kind of solitary limbo, and in all that time she could not recall more than mere moments of peace. The satisfaction that she occasionally derived from displeasing her grandmother in no way offset the long, lonely days and nights, the emptiness and grief that she felt every time she thought of her parents, the uncertainty of her job, not to mention the general hopelessness of her life. Was that all she had to look forward to? Irritating Tansy, wondering about her parents, dragging herself into the shop every day and back to her dreary apartment again in the evening, alone? That did not seem like life to her. It certainly was not peace.

  While she listened to the pastor, she watched Reeves make notes on a slip of paper that he’d drawn from inside the cover of his Bible. At one point, he underlined something in the Bible itself, and she wondered what it was in that passage that could apply to him. Looking back up to the screen, she decided that it must be the first verse.

  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

  She had always known, never doubted, that Reeves was a Christian. Certainly, he did not live “according to the sinful nature.” Somehow, even when he most irritated her and was most irritated by her, she had always realized that he lived by an inviolate code of conduct that she could only admire.

  After a brief invitation, during which the pastor and others prayed with several individuals who came forward, the service moved toward a close. Anna snagged her handbag from the floor where she’d placed it earlier, nodded silently at Reeves and slipped out of the pew to hurry through those double doors—only to find Tansy waiting for her in the foyer.

  “I can’t believe my eyes!” her grandmother exclaimed, rushing toward her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?”

  Anna made for the nearest exit, replying with her customary bluntness, “Because I didn’t want you to know.”

  Tansy stepped in front of her. “Just tell me what’s brought this about?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Anna said, attempting to move around her. Tansy made an ungainly sideways hop to block her, and Anna panicked, looking around blindly for an escape. A long, square-palmed hand closed around her forearm.

  “This way,” Reeves said. Anna stared at him in confusion. “Children’s Church,” he went on, watching Tansy, “it’s this way. Better hurry if we want to beat the crowd.”

  Gratefully, Anna followed, rushing to keep up as his long legs led her away from Tansy and through a doorway across the foyer into a hall. They were well out of sight when he turned into yet another long hallway. She finally drew up. Her feet, in shoes meant for nothing more demanding than a short, sedate saunter, were killing her. Reeves stopped and strolled back to where she slumped against the wall.

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I assumed you didn’t want a scene.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at that. “I can remember a time when you’d have relished one, done your best to embarrass Tansy.”

  Anna smiled wanly. “So can I.”

  He tilted his head. “Looks like the brat’s grown up, after all. And yet, I suspect you’re about to make a liar out of me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I implied that we have plans.”

  “Which we don’t.”

  “Not if you refuse to join us for Sunday dinner,” he conceded pointedly. Anna blinked at him. “Mind you, the aunties eat ‘simple’ on Sundays,” he hastened to add, “simple but ample. I’m sure they’d be delighted for you to join us. I know Gilli would.”

  Anna noticed that he didn’t say anything about himself, but then she didn’t expect him to. Why then was she disappointed?

  “Let me add a little more incentive,” he went on, stepping closer. “I doubt Tansy would follow you to Chatam House.”

  Anna widened her eyes in horror. “But she would trail me back to my place.” Smiling, she quipped, “You sure know how to convince a girl, Stick.”

  “Charm,” he said with a wink. “I learned it at the knees of my aunties, you know.”

  Anna shook her head. Not only had he rescued her from an ugly public scene, he’d found the perfect way to diminish her embarrassing gaffe of the day before. Always one to value a good joke, she retorted, “Baloney. It’s genetic, bred into your very bones.”

  “Like the cleft chin.”

  They both laughed, and then he asked in an entirely conversational tone, “Where is your place anyway? I don’t think I even know where you live.”

  “Cherry Hill Apartments.”

  “Ah, yes. The complex in that low spot out there by the highway.”

  She snickered. “That’s right. The one with no cherry trees.”

  “Hmm, I’d have thought you were more the Peach Orchard type,” he said, naming another apartment complex in town.

  She shook her head with mock sincerity. “I don’t particularly care for peaches.”

  “You mean they actually have peaches?”

  “Of course not, but still…” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Right.” His lips twitched.

  “I did consider Pecan Valley,” she said, just to keep the joke going.

  “But?” he asked.

  “They actually have pecan trees.”

  He arched both eyebrows. “How trite.”

  They laughed again.

  Anna thought, Look at us. We’re having fun together!

  Who would ever have believed it? The Brat and the old Stick-in-the-Mud actually enjoying each other’s company. It was, she suspected, as close to having her dreams come true as she would ever get.

  Chapter Ten

  “See!” Gilli ran into the parlor and came to an abrupt halt directly in front of Anna. “Here she is!”

  Anna bit her lips. The skinny gray-on-gray striped cat hung by the neck from the crook of Gilli’s arm, its also-gray eyes staring off into space. Anna would have thought it was paralyzed or traumatized if not for the lazy curl of the tip of its tail.

  “He,” Reeves corrected, leaning against the doorjamb. He had removed his coat and tie and rolled back the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. “Here he is.”

  Gilli nodded and announced, “Her name’s Special.”

  “His name is Special.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gilli agreed, petting the cat’s narrow head. “Do you like her collar?”

  Anna looked to Reeves, waiting for his correction. He shrugged and shook his head as if to say that it was pointless. Anna cleared her throat, looked at Gilli and commented, “It’s, um, pink.”

  “Special likes pink!” Gilli declared. “Don’t you, sweetie cat goodie dear?” She peppered her endearments with kisses to the cat’s ears. Other than a single twitch, the cat might have been a stuffed toy.

  Hypatia showed up in the doorway beside Reeves. She sent an exasperated look at Gilli, shoulders slumping.

  “Gilli dear, what are you doing with that cat now? Luncheon is on the table. Come along. Reeves, see Anna into the dining room, will you?”

  “With pleasure,” he said, straightening away from the doorframe. He strolled toward Anna just as Hypatia swept Gilli and the cat from the room.

  “Poor Hypatia,” he remarked, “overcome by a three-year-old.”

  “And a cat named Special,” Anna added, grinning.

  “I sugg
ested we name him Catatonic, but only the vet thought that was funny.”

  Anna sputtered laughter.

  “You laugh,” Reeves said, eyes sparkling, “but I spent a minor fortune on that critter before the veterinarian could convince Hypatia that it would make a safe house pet, although the jury’s still out on its mental health.”

  “I adopted a baby possum once,” Anna told him, still sputtering.

  Reeves grinned. “Tansy must have loved that.”

  “She didn’t know. Until it escaped. Silly thing fainted every time I got near it, or pretended to, then one day it bit me and ran.”

  He shook his head, still grinning. “Don’t think that’s going to happen in this case.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “How can you say that?”

  As if on cue, a high, plaintive “mmmmrrrrrroooowwww” began to echo through Chatam House. Reeves crooked a finger at her. “You’ll see.”

  Curious, she accompanied him to the dining room, where Hypatia sat with her head in her hands. Gilli occupied her usual chair, her feet swinging merrily as she spoke to a pet carrier on the seat next to her.

  “There, there, Special baby doll dear. I right here.”

  Anna went to peer into the carrier. The cat was laid out on its side, as stiff as a corpse, the only sign of life that eerie, mournful, ceaseless howl that emanated from its open mouth. Alarmed, she looked to Reeves.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Gilli’s not touching it, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Reeves said.

  “I will not have an animal loose at the table,” Hypatia insisted.

  Magnolia and Odelia entered through the butler’s pantry then, carrying a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water, respectively.

  “It’s not working, Hypatia,” Magnolia asserted, plunking the bread platter onto the table. Odelia placed the pitcher on the sideboard and cupped her hands around the twin fruit salads clipped to her earlobes.

  “Oh, all right!” Hypatia snapped. “Anything to placate that absurd—” She cast a long-suffering look at Gilli. “Special.” She sighed. “Anything for Special.”