Shoes to Fill

by Lynne Gentry

  As the truth sunk in, his charming grin took on a cavalier defiance. “So?”

  “So ... no matter how well all of those doctors tried to manage my disease, years of unstable glucose levels have taken a toll on my organs. That’s why Angus has to be so careful, but at least he can father children without putting his body at risk. If I happen to get pregnant, the strain could kill me.”

  David clasped her shoulders, his eyes swimming with compassion. “Did I say I wanted a bunch of kids, or did I say I wanted you?”

  “See, this is why any girl could fall in love with you.” Tears made it hard to speak. “You’re selfless.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m a selfish pig. I’m preaching so I don’t have to take care of my mother for the rest of her life. I’m helping Angus so that I can preach. And, most selfish of all, I want you. No matter what. Just you.”

  Amy gave a little shake of her head. “You may think you can live without kids now, but I’ve seen how you really are. With Angus. You love him. You’ll make a terrific father and someday you’re going to want a son of your own. Then you’ll look at me and ... and I won’t be able to stand the disappointment in your eyes.”

  “You’re going to have to trust me, Amy.”

  “Trust? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? You don’t trust anybody. Especially not yourself.” She pushed him away. “Don’t call me again.” She ran and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Silently cursing the wind, the darkness, and his inability to comfort the woman he loved, David spun in the opposite direction and crashed smack into the brickhouse attorney his father had hired behind everyone’s back.

  “Where’s the fire?” From Saul’s planted legs and open stance, this was a lawyer not easily flustered.

  “Sorry, Mr. Levy,” David backed away, palms in the air.

  “I’m closed for the night.” Saul aimed his laser gaze between David’s eyes. “If you’re finally coming around to see what I had to say, you’ll have to make an appointment.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sent you two texts today. Never heard back.”

  “I didn’t get any texts.” David pulled out his phone. Sure enough, in the flurry of getting Angus settled, he’d let Saul’s messages go unanswered. Heat creeping up his neck, David lowered his phone. “I’ve been a little busy.”

  Saul neither grinned nor gloated. He simply said, “Guess that frees me up to work directly with your mother?”

  “Technically, it doesn’t. I’m her counsel.”

  “Then act like it, boy.” Saul strode past him and pushed his way into the diner.

  David crammed his phone back into his pocket, lowered his head against the wind, and stalked toward home. He was failing on every front. Failing to help his mother sort through whatever legal mess left by his father. Failing to ease the tension between his mother and Maxine, putting Momma’s ability to remain in the home she adored in even greater danger. Failing to fill his father’s shoes. Sunday was coming and he hadn’t started his sermon, let alone assembled the persuasive arguments he’d need when he met with the Board to gain his interim approval. And finally, most frustrating of all, he’d failed to offer any kind of defense when Amy accused him of being incapable of trusting anyone, especially himself. If he couldn’t trust himself, how could he expect her to trust him when he said he didn’t want kids?

  Kids?

  Did he want them? He hadn’t intentionally put children on his list of life’s goals. But neither had he crossed off fatherhood as part of his very distant future.

  Hadn’t Saul just proved he wasn’t mature enough to take care of himself and his mother? He didn’t need a houseful of kids. If it came down to a choice between Amy as his wife or a woman fertile as a guppy, Amy would win hands down. Because what he wanted, no, needed, was a woman who centered him. Without Amy in his life, he could see himself wandering from school to school, adding degrees to his resume, and never finding his true purpose. And for once, that sounded awful.

  The bass thrum of loud music blasted David from his dire reflections and projections. He looked up and found himself standing outside the front doors of Mt. Hope Community Church. He didn’t remember walking the six blocks between the diner and the church, but here he was. Yellow light spilled from the vibrating stained-glass windows.

  “What the heck?” Fingers numb from the cold, David fumbled with his keys. By the time he stepped into the building, every bone in his body rattled. A deep bass rhythm pumped from the sanctuary. He crossed the foyer and opened the door to the usually dark and quiet auditorium.

  David scanned the unbelievable scene.

  On the lit-up stage, Wilma Wilkerson, the church organist, stood behind an electronic keyboard. Her eyes were closed and her beefy hands were flying over the keys. He traced the throb in his clenched jaw to Amy’s Aunt Bette Bob who was rockin’ out on an electric guitar. Ivan Tucker pounded the mammoth drum set spread across the back of the stage. Front and center, Nellie Davis pranced before two freestanding spotlights. She sang with her closed eyes and both hands wrapped around the handheld microphone plastered to her bottom lip.

  Nellie was so engrossed in belting out the words to a gravelly country version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing she didn’t notice David charging down the aisle, his arms waving frantically and shouting, “Nellie, what is God’s name is going on?” Ivan’s nerve-shattering bang to a cymbal swallowed David’s objections whole.

  Determined to put a stop to this foolishness, David marched to the stage lip and yanked the overloaded power strip from the socket. Silence fell over the sanctuary.

  Nellie’s eyes popped open, her claws ready to tear into whoever had shut her down. “David?” She noticed the cords dangling from the surge protector still in his hand. “You could have waited to the end of the song to thank us.”

  “Nellie, what is this?” He waved the power strip over the stage.

  “It’s Cornelia,” she corrected. “And this is my Christmas Eve praise band.”

  “Praise band?”

  “The one we talked about, remember?”

  “We agreed to a few Christmas songs. Not a country western hoedown. And what happened to asking Amy Maxwell to sing?”

  Nellie turned to her band. “While David and I iron out our little creative differences, why don’t y’all take five?”

  Bette Bob’s eyebrows shot up. “Why didn’t you invite my niece to sing, Nellie?”

  “Cornelia,” Nellie corrected as she laid her mic down. “I needed the instruments up to speed before I brought on more vocalists, Bette Bob.”

  “Come on Wilma and Ivan.” Bette Bob undid her guitar strap. “I may have brownies in the oven and coffee brewing in the fellowship hall, but I know stink cabbage when I smell it.”

  Once the band exited the auditorium, Nellie came down off the stage. “David, you really need to work on your people skills, especially when you’re dealing with volunteers. They’re temperamental.”

  “For your information, my people skills are just fine.”

  “Is that why my mother asked my father to vote against your interim proposal?”

  David’s anger rumbled in his gut. “Don’t try to blackmail me, Nell.”

  She flinched at his refusal to call her Cornelia. “Look, you took on Amy’s little social experiment, not me.”

  “Leave Amy out of it.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, Nellie’s keen radar flashed in her green eyes. She’d picked up on his passion for the blonde nurse and he was going to pay. A slow, Cheshire grin spread across Nellie’s perfect teeth. David instinctively tightened the scarf around his neck.

  “You know what?” Nellie purred. “I should let you sink, drown in your own stubborn stupidity. But, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve loved you too long to let you fail now.” She swallowed her hurt and quickly continued, “So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to work with this band until they sparkle, and you’re going to
keep my parents happy by letting me do this for you.” As she brushed past him, she purposefully grazed her tightly-sweatered breasts against his arm. She plucked her coat from the front pew. “Be a dear and turn off the lights on your way back to your precious parsonage.”

  “When hell freezes over.”

  “Remember, David.” Nellie pivoted slowly. “Board members are the most temperamental of all volunteers.” She threw her coat over her shoulder as easily as she tossed around ugly threats and sashayed out.

  Power strip clutched in his hand, David shook the tangled mess of cords at the empty pulpit. He’d been a fool to think he could fill his father’s shoes. “I can’t do this, God. I thought I could. But I can’t.”

  Why hadn’t he listened to his grandmother and taken over his grandfather’s firm?

  Wait.

  He wasn’t married to this place, and Amy had made it abundantly clear he would never be married to her. There was nothing holding him here. His law license was still current. Once he took over the firm, he could afford to move Momma anywhere she wanted to go. She’d always wanted to travel and he’d have the financial means to make that happen. Seeing the world would help her see her precious parsonage for what it was...a smothering glass dome over her head. And he’d make it his mission in life to see that his mother got over Howard and Maxine Davis.

  They’d gotten over her a long time ago.

  “David?”

  He turned. “Momma?” His mother stood at the back of the sanctuary, the afghan one of the Story sisters had crocheted for her wrapped around her shoulders. “What are you doing coming into the building by yourself this late at night? It’s dangerous.”

  “Apparently.” Her eyes moved past him and on to the stage. “What’s all that?”

  He sighed. “Nellie’s brainchild.”

  Momma strode the aisle, the afghan flowing behind like a crusader’s cape. “Her praise band.”

  “Yep.”

  “Are they any good?”

  “Momma, what difference does it make? They’re not playing.”

  “Why not?”

  “You and I both know the moment Ivan bangs that drum, half of the congregation will walk out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “James David Harper, what have you done?”

  “I told Nellie to take her band and—”

  Momma held up her palm. “And she told you...what?”

  He sighed and dropped onto the front pew. “Momma, aren’t you tired of kowtowing to every holier-than-thou thug in this church?”

  Momma motioned for him to scoot over. “None of us get to have our own way all the time.” She picked up the hymnal with Parker Kemp’s last song list peeking out from the yellowed pages. “Maxine may grouse about my traditional Christmas Eve program but she doesn’t want a praise band. She loves singing those old hymns and carols.” Momma pulled out Parker’s list. “See. These are Maxine’s song selection suggestions for next week. Not a single song on her playlist was written before the Revolutionary War. Parker throws her a bone and sings a couple of her suggestions each week. Seems to make her happy.”

  “So why did she agree to this?” He flicked his wrist at the collection of instruments on the stage.

  “Maxine wants the same thing I want.” Momma smiled at him, tears glistening in her eyes. “Her child’s happiness.”

  He studied this tower of strength sitting beside him. Who was she and what happened to the woman who’d trained him to jump in and save her before he saved himself if the family van ever went over a bridge? “Amy says it’s not the parsonage you’re hanging on to, but the hope that one day you and Maxine will be friends again.”

  “Wise girl, your Amy.”

  “She’s not my Amy, Momma.”

  “Could have fooled me, and most people don’t.” She patted his knee. “Come on, I smell Bette-Bob brownies in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve had a belly-full for one night.”

  “Of Nellie?”

  “Of vagrants. Church politics. Women. Everything.”

  Momma didn’t ask about Angus or the boy’s job interview. She didn’t even ask why Amy wasn’t here with him. Instead, she said, “David, you can either be the mesquite thorn that flattens tires, or you can be an olive branch for hurting souls.” She lifted his chin. “The choice has always been yours.”

  “Let me guess...J.D. Harper’s dying words?”

  “No.” Momma’s gaze slid up to the empty pulpit that had been pushed aside to make room for the band. “Your father lived with a willingness to always put himself in someone else’s shoes.”

  “And, by implication, Dad would want me to look at this from Nellie’s point of view?”

  “More than anything, your father wanted this church to live with an open heart, to grow in their ability to look beyond themselves.”

  David blew out a long slow breath. “Saul Levy wants to see us.”

  Momma sighed and eased back against the pew. “It can wait until after Christmas, can’t it?” She nodded toward the stage. “I think it’s going to be a good show this year.”

  David laid a heavy hand on hers. “It can wait, Momma.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next morning, Shirley trailed David to his father’s office and shut the door. “Have you seen what that Davis girl has done to the sanctuary?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re not letting her get away with it, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “That explains the phone call I got from Etta May.” Thankfully, Shirley wasn’t one to make him work for the point of a conversation. “She wanted me to warn you that a considerable number of naysayers have joined Maxine’s campaign to keep Mt. Hope Community ... vagrant-free.”

  “Angus isn’t a vagrant.” David tossed his computer bag on the desk. “The kid’s an orphan who came in search of his widowed grandmother. If this church isn’t willing to help widows and orphans, maybe I’m wasting my time here and Mt. Hope Community should shut its doors.”

  Shirley peered over her glasses. “You’re preachin’ to the choir, you know?”

  David dropped into his father’s desk chair. He dragged his hand over the stubble he’d left on his face in defiance of Nellie’s attempts to make him into someone he wasn’t. “Maybe it’s time I preached the hard truth to the entire church.”

  “I’m not saying Maxine wouldn’t benefit from a strong dose of scripture, but are you sure that’s the tactic you want to take?”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  Chewing on the corner of her lip, Shirley nodded. “It’s not good.”

  “Let me guess. Maxine wants my name removed from interim pastor consideration.” David set back in his father’s wobbly chair. “What would Dad do, Shirley?”

  “You’re not your daddy.”

  Come Sunday morning, David had never felt that truth more. He stood on the front row, shifting foot to foot as Parker Kemp wrapped up the last song on Maxine’s suggested list.

  Parker had tried to explain before the worship service that he wasn’t taking sides, but he wasn’t going to throw gas on the smoldering embers. “What will it hurt to sing a few of Maxine’s favorites?”

  Everything. That’s what.

  Maxine’s days of nailing Harpers with the sledge hammer of grief she’d carried around for ten years had to end. After all, Maxine wasn’t the only one who’d suffered since Colton died. David lost his best friend that day and Momma lost hers.

  The moment Parker asked everyone to be seated David took his exasperation to the podium.

  He planted his father’s shoes behind his father’s pulpit. He opened his father’s Bible, but he took out his own notes. His tongue was a coiled whip of scriptures he’d spent hours preparing. Channeling the image of Jesus clearing the temple, David believed the time had come to unleash some righteous anger. He raised his eyes and aimed for Maxine and Howard. Nellie sat beside them, her shining auburn hair a reminder he was playing with fire. Three birds. One sto
ne.

  He had nothing to lose. If the Harpers were going down in flames, at least he could hold his head up and know he hadn’t let Momma down without a fight.

  A hymnal smacked the wooden floor beneath the pews. Everyone jumped then turned to see who had been so careless.

  Angus? In church. Without being forced since he’d moved out of the parsonage and in with his grandmother. And he’d brought Ruthie with him.

  David had forgotten all about the invitation he’d extended them that night in the diner. He couldn’t believe they’d accepted. The kid, red hair slicked down and a red flush creeping up from the stiff white collar buttoned around his neck, sat deer-in-the-headlights still beside his equally uncomfortable grandmother. Angus’s guilty eyes darted back and forth, searching for a way of escape from the unwanted attention. Amy, sitting on the other side of Angus, patted the boy’s hand reassuringly. She mouthed, it’s okay, then bent, scooped up the songbook, and slid it quietly into the rack on the back of Maxine’s pew.

  Amy.

  David’s gaze locked with Amy’s. He hadn’t expected to see her here either. He’d reached out to her several times these past few days, but she’d not returned his calls or texts.

  Sunlight lit the golden curls framing Amy’s beautiful, yet very neutral face. He had no idea what she was thinking. Was she an angel sent to offer support? Or was she here as the innocent victim of his unwanted affections intent on seeing him hanged?

  Momma’s admonition to be an olive branch rather than a mesquite thorn rang in his ears.

  No way.

  He straightened his notes and cleared his throat. Tiny actions, but as his father used to say, tiny actions were the wheels that set the greatest actions in motion. To his surprise, when he looked up, his cloud of anger had lifted and he could finally see what his father must have seen every time he took this pulpit.

  Before him sat a group of good people. People he’d known most of his life. People who loved him as much as they loved this church. People who would themselves be living on the fringe had they not found this place to belong. People he could trust.