by Anna Schmidt
“It was a good sermon,” Megan said. “So different from Reverend Dunhill. Somehow I always left his sermons feeling as if I hadn’t done right by God all week long.”
“And how did you feel after my service?” Jeb couldn’t resist asking.
“Are you fishing for compliments, Pastor?” she teased.
“Yep. Fire away.”
Her smile faded. “Hopeful,” she said quietly. “Like no matter how bad things might seem for someone, God would be there.”
“That’s what I was going for,” Jeb said.
“On the other hand, you have your work cut out for you. Pastor Dunhill was an institution in this town.”
“I’m hoping I can show folks a different style of ministry, something a little more open. Something that will have them stop making comparisons.”
“Well, now there is that curiosity factor to be considered, not to mention the single-guy factor—no disrespect to your profession. Together they might buy you some time. No offense.”
“None taken.” They ate in comfortable silence for several seconds and then Jeb said, “I was married, you know. My wife died a few years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.” Megan resisted the instinct to reach across the table and touch his hand.
“Thanks,” Jeb said, his voice husky. He stood up and started to gather up the trash. “Well, I’ve got some packing to do and a sermon to write. I’ll see you at supper?”
“Sure. I…”
But Jeb was already heading for the house, his long strides covering the distance quickly and the snap of the screen door punctuating his quick exit.
Chapter Three
M egan sat at the table for several minutes, staring up at the parsonage without really seeing it. Instead she was thinking about assumptions she and others were guilty of making about those who had chosen the ministry as their life’s work. As a child she had believed that Reverend Dunhill had a direct line to God. As a pregnant teen, she had sought his counsel and been disappointed to realize that he, like others in town, believed she had brought her misfortune on herself. He had advised her to pray and mend her ways. And as a young mother, she had attended services to please Reba more than because church was a place where she could find spiritual comfort.
Had it ever occurred to her that maybe Reverend Dunhill had had his own problems—troubles and regrets that colored the way he brought God’s word to the congregation? Maybe he had suffered a tragic loss in his life or, like her, had always had misgivings and doubts about his ability to meet the challenges God had set before him. Either way, Reverend Dunhill had always been another authority figure to Megan. But Jeb Matthews was different. There was something about him that made her want to trust him and at the same time befriend him.
“It’s because he’s much closer in age to you,” she muttered to herself. “Reverend Dunhill was more of a father figure, or grandfather. Jeb is like a contemporary and you can talk to him—one adult to another.” She watched him load a box of books into his car, then return to the parsonage for more of his things. Megan crossed the yard and knocked at the open back door of the parsonage.
“Hi,” she said when Jeb answered the door, a duffel in one hand and a computer bag slung over his shoulder.
“Hi,” he replied.
“I forgot to tell you that I’ve been giving some serious thought to your idea for a youth café. It’s really a great idea. Small towns have their advantages, but offering enough opportunities for young people to get together in an atmosphere that’s fun but safe isn’t one of them.” She was babbling again and paused to take a long, steadying breath. “It occurs to me that Faith has a wide circle of friends and she’s great at getting them to do things. Maybe they could paint the church basement, brighten the place up.”
His smile was like a flag unfurling on a breezy spring wind. “That would be great, Megan. Just terrific. Thank you.”
“No problem,” Megan replied, sounding more like teenaged Faith than someone capable of putting together a successful youth project. On top of that, her feet felt as if they’d suddenly sunk into concrete. She couldn’t seem to move. “Well, I should be getting back.”
“I’ll give you a ride. I’m all done here.” He rolled the duffel onto the porch and handed her the computer bag. “If you can handle this, I’ll get the rest.”
Megan hooked the bag over her shoulder while Jeb stepped back inside the house and returned carrying a large box stacked with books. “Let me just load this stuff in the trunk and we’re set.”
“I can walk,” she said. “I mean, it’s just down the hill, and you might need the space.”
“Nope.” He hoisted the heavy box onto the backseat of his car, put the duffel in the trunk and then relieved her of the computer bag, setting it in the trunk, as well. “Traveling light,” he said with a grin as he closed the trunk and headed for the passenger side.
When she realized he was opening the door for her, Megan blushed. It had been some time since a man had shown her that courtesy. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“You know what?” he asked when he got behind the wheel of the hybrid and started the quiet motor. “I haven’t had time to really see the whole community the chapel serves. Seems to me that as a native you’d be the perfect guide for the nickel tour of Singing Springs. That is, if you have some time.”
“Right now?”
“No time like the present, as my mother always says. It won’t take long.”
Megan could not help laughing. “That’s for sure.” The commercial district of Singing Springs ran from the inn at one end of town to the post office and town hall three blocks north. “Okay, sure.”
It was only when she saw Nellie Barnsworth coming out of the Cut and Dry Beauty Shop on Main Street that she realized her mistake. Driving through town with the new minister would certainly start tongues wagging, and no tongue wagged faster than Nellie’s. When Jeb raised his hand in greeting and Nellie responded with a weak smile and then hurried back inside the beauty shop, Megan didn’t need a vivid imagination to guess the conversation inside those walls.
But instead of slinking lower in the seat as she might have years earlier, Megan sat up a little straighter and smiled as she pointed out landmarks to Jeb. “Teresa Samuels owns the beauty shop there. Her husband, Charley, has the gas station in the next block. There’s the bank, of course. Fred Barnsworth is the bank president, but then since he’s also president of the board at the church, you must know that.”
“Good man,” Jeb said. “So far everyone you’ve mentioned is a member of the church.”
“Well, yeah, most people here attend church—maybe not your church but…”
He chuckled. “It’s hardly my church, Megan. At least I hope that’s not how people see it.”
“Figure of speech,” Megan said softly and fought against the familiar sense of inadequacy. One thing from her past that she had failed to overcome was the way she was intimidated by anyone with a college education. And Jeb—well, he had his Ph.D.
They rode the next block in silence. “What’s the Shack?” he asked as they passed a sprawling old building painted in vivid red, white and blue.
“It’s sort of a general store for tourists. There’s a soda fountain and ice cream shop at that far end, and then at the other they stock fishing equipment and live bait and water toys for the kids. And in the middle is Jessica’s Northwoods Boutique. T-shirts and sweatshirts mostly,” Megan added when Jeb glanced over.
“And is there a Jessica?”
“Oh, sure. Jessica and Pete Burbank. She handles the boutique while Pete handles the tackle and bait shop.”
“And who serves up the ice cream?”
“They have four kids—twin boys age twelve and the two girls. Maria is the youngest at ten, and Cindy is two years younger than Faith. They all help out in whatever way they can.”
“Sounds like we could have a good start on the café if we just get Faith and half the Burbank kids to show up.” He pulled i
nto a parking space. “How about some ice cream? I’d like to meet the family if that’s okay with you?”
“Sure.” What was she going to say? That Jessica Burbank had once been her best friend? That Jessica’s brother, Danny, was the one who had impregnated her and then denied it? That even after college when Jessica returned to Singing Springs and married Pete, her high school sweetheart, she had maintained only a polite but distant relationship with Megan? And that Danny, now married and living out west somewhere, had told his lie so many times that he’d come to believe it himself?
“Sure,” she said again and reached for the door handle.
“Megan?”
She opened the car door, but remained seated and did not turn at the sound of her name, too afraid of what her face might reveal.
“We can do this another time if you’d rather. I mean, if there’s some reason you…”
Megan closed the door and refastened her seat belt. “You know that business I told you the other day about my past? Well, there’s a little more to it. How about we take a drive around the lake and you tell me what Nellie Barnsworth and others might have told you about me, and I’ll fill in the blanks?”
To her surprise, Jeb seemed to instinctively understand that something had triggered her sudden change of mood. Without comment he drove until they reached the turn onto the road that circled the lake. After a minute he pointed to a sign indicating a trail next to a small parking lot. “Would it be okay if we walked a little way on the nature trail? It’s such a mild day and you know how spring goes in the Midwest—one day spring and the next back to winter. I like to take advantage of these days when they come.”
“Okay.” Megan was already having second thoughts. She should have just agreed to the ice cream. The truth was that she’d panicked at the idea of encountering Jessica Burbank in the new minister’s company. Not that Jessica would do or say anything inappropriate. She and Megan might no longer be friends, but Jessica was still a woman that Megan admired and respected.
She realized the car had stopped and she and Jeb were just sitting there. “The trail might be really boggy,” she said, as if that topic had been uppermost on her mind.
“If it gets too wet we can always turn back.” He turned slightly so that she knew he was looking directly at her. “You have to make a start, Megan, before you know for sure.”
They were no longer talking about the trail.
Megan sighed and opened her car door and Jeb followed suit. “What has Nellie Barnsworth told you about me?” she asked as they approached a sign mapping out the trail choices.
Jeb selected a knobby branch from those left by previous hikers and handed it to her. “In case the muck starts to win,” he said and took the second staff for himself. “And I’m not going to repeat what anyone tells me, Megan—about you or someone else. You tell me as much as you want me to know and we’ll leave it at that.” He indicated that she should lead the way. “It’s your story, Megan, not theirs.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then tried to start again. How to frame it so that—what? He thought well of her? He pitied her? He was angry at Danny Moreland for not taking responsibility for getting her pregnant? What did she want from him?
“Just say it, Megan,” he said gently, “or don’t. It’s your choice. But know this—whatever you tell me today will not be repeated, and I am not interested in judging you. It’s just that you seemed so troubled when I mentioned going inside that store.” She heard him chuckle. “In my business, at least the one I’m in these days, that triggers a response.”
“What kind of response?” Good, let him keep talking and she wouldn’t need to say much.
“While I was in divinity school, I became interested in words and their meaning. I guess I wanted to be especially careful that whatever words I use to deliver a sermon were the correct words, ones that couldn’t be misunderstood.”
Megan felt herself relax as she picked her way over rocks and tree roots along the path that skimmed the lake’s shore. “Such as?”
“Minister,” he said. “Think about it. A minister is one who ministers, but what does that mean really? Well, I discovered that if you go through several layers of synonyms it can mean many things—to nurture, support, serve, sustain and even to befriend. Although that takes matters to a higher level involving things like trust, confidence, faith.”
Megan did what she always seemed to do in circumstances where she was mistaken for someone far more educated and sophisticated than she was. She put herself down.
“I never thought of it like that.” She glanced back at him, took a deep breath and plunged into the icy waters of her past. “As you know, I got pregnant in the fall of my senior year. I graduated, but that was the end of formal schooling for me. Not that I would have gone on to college anyway. We didn’t have the money.” Because Dad had no job and drank up whatever we had coming in from the county.
Megan set her jaw and started up the path that wound to the top of a bluff. After the thunder of her humiliation died, she heard Jeb coming behind her. At the top of the rise he caught up with her and touched her shoulder. She paused but did not turn.
“You know what I figured out, about the time I decided to apply for divinity school?”
She shook her head, afraid to trust her voice.
“Real education comes with living in the real world. Oh, book learning certainly has its place. For one thing it broadens our worldview and can give us tools for understanding how the world works—how God intended for His world to be. But it’s how we meet the challenges that come our way in life that provides the greatest lessons.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, knowing that his words were meant to console and heal.
“Let’s sit for a minute,” he suggested, indicating a weathered wooden bench overlooking the lake. The inn and church were visible on the far side.
Megan sat, but kept her focus on that distant shore.
“What’s the connection with the Burbanks, Megan?”
“Faith’s father is Jessica Burbank’s brother.”
“Danny?”
“Yeah. He started denying it, and pretty soon everyone believed him. He even believed it.”
“He still has no part in Faith’s life?” Megan could not help noticing that Jeb’s voice had tightened, and she glanced up at him.
“It’s hard to blame him, really. We were teenagers and he had this full scholarship to play football at a college in California. It had been his dream since I could remember. Eventually he married and had a short career as a professional ballplayer and then became a sportscaster for a television station out there. He built a career, had a real family….”
“You and Faith were a real family,” Jeb snapped. “Sorry, sometimes I lose the objectivity. A work in progress,” he added.
His very real and human reaction to the choices Danny had made gave Megan the confidence she needed to continue. “Trust me, I wasn’t always so understanding. When he denied being with me, knowing he was my first and only…” She blushed. “You know,” she mumbled.
“But in time you forgave him?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes the people you trust most in life can disappoint you. They might even leave you and never look back. I’ve known that since I was eight and my mother left my dad and me. Reba helped me understand that wasn’t my fault, and when Faith was little and asked about her father, I tried to teach her the same lesson.”
“And now?”
“She never asks about him.”
“She knows who he is?”
Megan looked at him and smiled. “She knows who Reba and I say he is, and she knows who the rest of Singing Springs believes he was—a summer visitor who swept me off my feet and then left town.”
“And which version does Faith believe?”
Megan shrugged. “Hard to say. She doesn’t talk about it at all. She did when she was younger, but I suspect it’s become easier to buy into the second version.”
“A
nd that’s all right with you?”
“Here’s what life has taught me, Jeb. The will to survive is a powerful and even intoxicating thing. If the challenges are great enough you’ll accept what you need to to come through it as unscathed as possible.” She saw his eyes widen slightly. She assumed that he was surprised to hear such a complex thought come out of someone like her.
“And Jessica?”
“Jessica was my best friend even though she was two years older. We just clicked. She was away at college when I realized I was pregnant. I can’t blame her for believing her brother.”
“But when she came back here to live?”
“By that time we were different people. Not much had turned out the way either of us had dreamed when we were kids. She had her family and a business to run. It wasn’t like we were mad at each other or anything. I understood that family ties were more powerful—I respected that. I guess I had always envied that a little,” she said, more to herself than to him. She stood up. “We should head back.”
Jeb followed her back down the trail, along the shore and out to the car without registering anything beyond the line of Megan’s shoulders and head held tall and proud. He held the car door for her. She smiled and murmured a thank-you as she ducked inside.
He got in, started the engine and then sat there for a long moment. “You know, Megan, that part about one of the synonyms for minister being to befriend?”
Her nod was almost imperceptible and she looked at her hands folded in her lap.
“Well, I’d like us to be friends if that’s all right with you. One thing I’ve noticed about Singing Springs is the absence of a lot of people in my age group—folks are either a lot older or a lot younger. I imagine it can get pretty lonely.”
“I don’t want pity,” she said through lips drawn tight.
“Who said anything about pity? The truth is I could use a friend. I may be the new preacher in town and already I understand that the position carries a lot of weight with the local population. But it can be pretty lonely standing up there behind that pulpit by myself, looking out at pews filled with expectant faces.”