Love Finds You in Snowball, Arkansas

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “Lois, have an arrangement delivered to the Palmers in four twenty. Something elegant. Something by Preston Bailey. Maybe an Enchantment bouquet.”

  “Card?”

  “Best wishes on your fortieth. Compliments of your friends at the Conroy.”

  “Champagne?”

  “No. Mr. Palmer is insulin-dependent and on blood pressure medication.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  Lucy lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. “I just do.”

  “Okay,” Lois said with a laugh. “You got it.”

  “I’m going down to the lounge for a while. We’ve got English high tea for the Braxton bridal shower this afternoon, and I just want to make sure everything is on track before the mother of the bride’s plane arrives.”

  I love my job, Lord!

  This week, the Palmers were back to visit. I always love it when they come to Little Rock. The Braxtons are having their daughter’s bridal shower in the lounge, and the mayor’s surprise party will be held in the ballroom at the end of the month. That’s going to mean lots of VIPs coming to town, all of them looking for something special from Guest Services. Thank You so much for planting me at the Conroy. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing.

  In my work life anyway.

  What am I meant to be doing in my romantic life? Is Justin Gerard the answer to that prayer? He makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and my knees grow weak, but does that mean he’s The One for me?

  I have such a good feeling of anticipation about this trip to Snowball. Like some of my questions are bound to be answered there. Alison’s flyer advertised this retreat as an opportunity to seek Your will for our lives, and that’s what I really want to do. I want to put my best foot forward with Justin and see if we click—that is, if You let me know my feeling about him is right.

  But just remember it’s me, Lord. Sometimes I get caught up in my own thoughts and I miss what You’re trying to say to me.

  So You’ll have to talk veerrry sloooowly and VERY LOUDLY to make sure I don’t miss the point.

  Listening already,

  Lucy Louise Binoche

  Chapter Two

  “I DON’T GET IT. YOU’RE FISHING THE BUFFALO AND YOU DON’T WANT me to come along?”

  Matt set down the can of raw almonds and turned toward his friend, only to find him fiddling with the fishing pole Matt had left propped up against the refrigerator.

  “Put that down,” he said, snapping it out of George’s hand.

  “I’m just checking it out.”

  “You break everything you touch, Sedgewick,” Matt teased.

  “Is that why you don’t want me to come along? Afraid I’ll break something? Come on. What are you making, anyway?”

  “Trail mix,” Matt replied, returning his attention to the ceramic bowl on the counter. “For the trip.”

  “What’s in it?”

  Matt gave George an elbow just in time to keep George’s hand out of the bowl. “Raw almonds, raisins, pumpkin seeds. Virtually nothing that you’d enjoy.”

  “I see a bag of chocolate chips there,” George declared. “I like chocolate chips.”

  “Those are for Lucy.”

  “Lucy?” he exclaimed, incredulous. “Lucy is going, but you don’t want me along?”

  “It’s a church retreat for the singles group, Sedgewick. There will be Bible verses and worship singing and lots of Jesus talk.”

  “Oh.”

  “Still want to go?”

  “Will any of the females be as hot as Lucy?”

  “Shut it…”

  “Why won’t you set me up with her, Frazier?” George asked sincerely, snatching up the bag of chips and pouring a few into his mouth. “You two are just friends, right?”

  “The best.”

  “Then why can’t I take a pass at her?”

  Matt withdrew his hands from the bowl and glared at George. “The very fact that you chose those words to express your desire to date my friend is the reason you’re never going to.”

  George dumped a few more chips into his mouth before Matt took the bag away from him and emptied the rest of them into the bowl.

  “Seriously,” he said to Matt. “Why haven’t you and Lucy ever hooked up?”

  Matt lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “Growing up, she was Lanie’s friend.”

  “So? I tried to date every friend my sister ever had.”

  “I’ve known her since she was six, Sedgewick,” Matt replied. A nostalgic smile crept over his face. “I took her to a dance once when she was a freshman, but only because her date left her in the dust at the last minute. Lanie and her date are there, and Lucy is there, all dressed up in this frilly pink number, and the guy just bails on her. Never shows up.”

  “Ah, man.”

  “I know. So I spend all night working up the courage to kiss her. After the dance, we’re standing on her front step, and just as I’m about to make my move, she goes into this speech about how she’s always wanted a brother and how great it is that she has me. After that, I guess it was only natural for me to remain a sort of fraternal figure to her.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why I can’t—”

  “Well, you can’t,” Matt interrupted.

  “So, what? There will be fishing on this trip? And what else?”

  “The usual outdoor rituals,” Matt told him, turning the trail mix a few times with both of his hands.

  “Hiking. Boating.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I can’t go—why again?”

  “It’s the singles group only this time around. But if you’d go to church with me now and then, you’d be invited to these extravaganzas.”

  “High price to pay for some camping out.”

  “Sedgewick, why are you here?” Matt asked with a grin.

  George thought for a moment, and then he jumped as if bitten by a sudden current of electricity.

  “Oh, right. I’ve got Razorback tickets.”

  “For when?”

  “Tonight.”

  “In Fayetteville?”

  “Yeah. If we take off right now, we can make the second quarter.”

  Matt portioned out trail mix into several small plastic containers and popped on the lids.

  “I’m not driving almost three hours each way for a basketball game tonight, George.”

  “You got something better going on?”

  “I’ve got dinner with Lucy.”

  “Of course you do.” George snatched up the fishing rod again and shook it at his friend. “Catching it first?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Come on, Frazier. Come with me.”

  “You’d better get on the road if you want to make the second quarter.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “What can I say? You know me.”

  “Yes, and it’s quite the burden, let me tell ya.”

  “Leaving so soon?” Matt asked him.

  George laughed on his way out of the kitchen. “Have fun singing ‘Kumbaya’ around the campfire,” he called from the front door.

  “Oh, I will.”

  Matt was relieved when the door slammed behind George. They’d been the best of buddies since college, but George never did get the side of Matt that hungered for a deeper truth. He’d been hoping to pass that understanding to his friend for many years now, but somehow it just never clicked. Matt continued to pray that someday it would.

  He checked his watch. There should be time to make a run to Lenny’s Bait & Tackle before Lucy arrived with the Chinese food.

  Grabbing a handful of trail mix from one of the containers, Matt jogged out the back door.

  Lucy slipped into her favorite designer tee, a gray-and-white-striped number in the softest Egyptian cotton. She’d gotten it on sale at thirty percent off, but Matt loved teasing her about owning a tee shirt that had to be dry-cleaned.

  She dialed the phone while zip
ping up her vintage denim jeans and stepping into chunky sandals that showed off her iced cinnamon toenails.

  “I’d like to place a takeout order,” she told the voice on the other end of the phone. “We’ll need a pork lo mein, a cashew chicken with fried rice, and two eggrolls. Oh! And an order of crab rangoon. It’s Lucy Binoche. I’ll be there to pick it up in fifteen minutes. Thanks so much.”

  Tucking her cell phone into the green hobo bag she’d bought on eBay, Lucy snagged her keys from the brass hook by the door and hurried out.

  “Give a girl a fish and she’ll eat for a day,” Lucy exclaimed the moment Matt opened his front door. “But teach a girl to fish, and she’ll come home with a hot boyfriend named Justin.”

  Matt stood in the doorway, shaking his head.

  “Lemme in.”

  “If you didn’t have Chinese food in your hand, I might not.”

  Holding the bag up toward him, she began to swing it to and fro. “Mmmm,” she teased. “Crab rangooon.”

  “Lucy Louise Binoche, you’re lucky I’m starving.”

  The two friends discussed their workdays over dinner, exchanging barbs and anecdotes, plans and challenges. Hardly a minute passed in silence. They never seemed to run out of things to say to each other, and Lucy loved it that way. Matt was, without a doubt, her best friend in all the world.

  “Mattie, you’re such a good guy. I really appreciate your doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping me not to make a fool of myself.”

  “Well, you may be overestimating my abilities here, Luce.”

  “Come on,” she said on a serious note. “I mean it. I just don’t want to look like a total rookie out there.”

  “Would that be so bad?” he asked her. “I mean, you are a rookie. It doesn’t change anything about who you are.”

  Lucy squeezed Matt’s arm. “You don’t understand.”

  “Nope. Guess I don’t.”

  “Okay, so what’s first?” she asked as she hopped up and rinsed her plate in the sink. “Boating or fishing?”

  When she returned to the dining room, Matt was standing in the middle of the adjoining living room, one brow arched and holding a fishing rod with both hands.

  Lucy hurried toward him and reached for the pole.

  “Not so fast,” Matt chided. “First things first. Bait and Hook 101.”

  Lucy let herself sink down into the overstuffed chair facing the coffee table, and Matt sat on the sofa across from her.

  “Buffalo National River is known for its smallmouth bass fishing,” he explained, and he laid the pole to rest across his legs before opening a small white container. “And these, my friend, are like crab rangoon for bass.”

  Lucy looked down into the container and let out a one-syllable scream. “Mattie, what is that?”

  “Worms, silly.”

  She grimaced and pressed herself against the back of her chair.

  “Well, what did you think you were going to catch them with? Your good looks and charm?” Matt asked her. “Now come over here so I can show you how to bait your hook.”

  “Oh, Mattie. You’re kidding, right?”

  “Do you want to learn to fish or not?”

  Their eyes locked for a long moment while she thought it over and worked to hold down her dinner. Finally, with a groan, Lucy got up and rounded the table, sitting on the edge of the sofa with guarded caution.

  “You take them between your fingers like this,” he demonstrated, and Lucy closed her eyes and turned away.

  “Arrrrgh.”

  “You try.”

  “Matt, I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “I can not.”

  “Okay. It’s no skin off my toes if you don’t want to learn to fish after all. It’s probably better that way anyhow. I mean, you were sure to make a complete fool of yourself.”

  “Oh, give it to me.”

  She clutched the squirming thing between two fingers, holding it away from her like a smelly diaper. Suddenly, the worm wiggled right out of her grasp and fell to the floor. Lucy hopped to her feet, screaming, and did a little dance as she jumped from one foot to the other and back again.

  Matt leaned over and picked up the worm, and then he stared at her.

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  Once she was seated again, he placed it between her two twitching fingers.

  “Now you take the hook like this,” he said, showing her, “and you pierce the worm once here, and then again here.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You stab him? Twice? Why twice? Isn’t once enough, Matt?”

  “Twice. To keep the worm on the hook.”

  “Does it hurt him?”

  “Maybe,” he told her truthfully. “But not as much as being eaten by a bass, which is the overall plan, isn’t it?”

  Lucy looked at him with serious regard, and Matt burst out laughing.

  “It’s the circle of life, Lucy. You stab the worm and the fish eats the worm so that you can eat the fish.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Come on. Give it a try.”

  Lucy held the worm in front of her and leaned in toward it. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and then she made several attempts before the hook finally went through the twisty-turny worm.

  “One more time,” Matt encouraged her.

  “It’s awful,” she whimpered.

  “I know. The things we do for love.”

  She tried several more times to make the second stab, but she just couldn’t manage it.

  “Okay, Mattie. I’ve got the idea. I don’t have to torture him anymore, do I?”

  Without a word, Matt removed the worm from the hook and tossed it back into the container. He then removed the hook from the end of the line.

  “How about we try some casting?”

  “Like throwing the line?” she asked, not quite containing her excitement. “Did you see that Robert Redford–Brad Pitt movie about the river and the fishing? It was so beautiful. They were out there in the middle of the river, throwing their fishing lines back and forth, back and—”

  “Not in my living room!” Matt warned, yanking the fishing rod away from her. “In the backyard.”

  A few dozen cast attempts later, the only injuries were sustained by a hanging ivy plant on Matt’s patio and by a stray cat, who was appalled when it was unexpectedly slapped with the end of a fishing line.

  Deciding to move on to the second lesson of the evening, they filed back into the house. It took both of them to lift Matt’s prized kayak from the brace on the wall. Five minutes after they set it down in the center of the living room floor, Matt returned from the kitchen with two glasses of water on the rocks to find Lucy in the center of the kayak, swaying from side to side and feigning vertigo.

  “The rapids through your living room are killer!” she cried, holding on to the sides of the craft with both hands. “I hope I can make it.”

  “I hate to rain on your adventure, Lucy, but with the weather conditions we’ve been having this fall, we may barely have enough water to float down the Buffalo National River.”

  “Aw, really?” she asked—but she didn’t know if she was really all that disappointed. “Then I’ll just have to ride the current here at your place.”

  She let out the start of an overdone, stammering scream and then began to fight against her imaginary white-water current once again. She slammed against one side of the kayak and then the other and then back again.

  “Whooops!” Lucy shouted suddenly as she tumbled onto the carpet, the overturned kayak resting in her lap and the glass of water Matt had brought her emptied over one leg and down the side of the table.

  “Sorry.”

  “Only you, Lucy Lou,” Matt commented. He sat on the arm of the sofa and gulped down his own glass of water. “Only you could turn over a kayak in the middle of the living room and all but drown in a glass of water.”

&nbs
p; Lucy always looked forward to Sunday mornings. She liked to attend the early service because that was when the choir performed. Many of the younger members of the church waited until the eleven o’clock service when the music was more contemporary, set off by guitars and drums and tambourines, but Lucy enjoyed the traditional hymns and the enormous pipe organ. She also liked the early service because that was when attendees were greeted just inside the double doors by Mr. and Mrs. Gamble, two of the original members of Grace Community Church and the first couple to be married there nearly fifty years ago. There was something so sweet and nurturing about them, and they always greeted her with a hug and a smile.

  Pastor Dan’s sermons were consistent in their uplifting and thought-provoking messages. This particular Sunday he recounted the life of Peter, a personal favorite of Lucy’s. Peter was impetuous and impulsive; a bit of a slow learner but filled with childlike, hopeful faith. Although imperfect in every way, Peter was changed by meeting and sharing an intimate relationship with the Son of God. He later taught Christians about the sufficiency of God’s grace, and yet he was a man who needed it more than most.

  Leaning over toward Matt, Lucy whispered, “I’m definitely feeling Peter.”

  Matt grinned. “I hear you.”

  After the service, Lucy spotted Justin in the courtyard with Cyndi and Jeff from the singles group. Cyndi waved her over, and Lucy silently thanked her for it.

  “We’re headed to the Laughing Moon for brunch,” Cyndi told her. “Do you want to join us?”

  “That sounds great. I’ll get Matt,” Lucy replied. Trying to sound casual and feeling like she was failing in a big way, she added, “Justin, are you coming?”

  “I am,” he said, and the way he smiled at her turned her legs to warm jelly.

  Those are the greenest eyes I’ve ever gone swimming in.

  “I’ve got to drop Alison off at home,” Cyndi told them. “I’ll meet you there.”

  The Laughing Moon Café was one of Lucy’s favorite Little Rock hangouts, just perfect for brunch after Sunday services. It was a bit of a drive from the church out to the historic Hillcrest neighborhood, but it was well worth the time for exceptional gourmet coffees, wonderful omelettes and quiches, customized pizzas and calzones, and an array of options for the most discriminating sweet tooth.