Ursula responded with a crunch.
“Did you just come here to bring me cookies?”
Gigi shook her head. “No.” Then her face took on a worried expression. “Have you spoken with Evelyn?”
He leaned against the doorframe. “Not since the night of the museum opening.”
The three women exchanged a knowing look. Knowing to them, anyway. He had no clue what it meant.
“Gigi, do you have something you need to say?” Trevor asked. “Because you look like a balloon with too much air in it.”
Doris raised her hand before she spoke. “She heard what you said.”
He frowned. “What I said when?”
Gigi let out a long sigh. “That night at the museum. I was right outside when you and Evelyn were talking in that room.”
“She didn’t bother to clear her throat or anything because she secretly wanted to eavesdrop,” Ursula said.
“That is not true.” Gigi looked down. “I admit I should’ve made my presence known, but I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I wish you would’ve.” Trevor’s hands found his pockets.
She peered at him with that same pitying look he’d seen a hundred times. It must be easy to feel sorry for the guy who had no wife, the one who’d spent most of his years trying awfully hard not to love a woman he had no right loving.
“I just had no idea, Trevor,” Doris said.
He didn’t respond. He’d tricked himself for years into believing he’d pretty much gotten over Evelyn—he was the biggest fool of all.
“I suspected,” Gigi said. “After that night you rescued her from the Royal.”
Doris gasped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Gigi gave Trevor a sad look. “For once it didn’t feel right to interfere. At least not after my attempt at matchmaking Trevor and Maggie failed so miserably.”
Trevor groaned. “Let’s not do this, ladies.”
“I’m worried about you,” Gigi said.
“That why you made me cookies?”
She shrugged. “I bake when I’m worried.”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve missed the last two Sundays at church. The music isn’t the same without you.”
Doris shook her head. “It’s really not. Last week we had a tone-deaf worship leader who knew only four chords. Also, I think he might’ve been older than me.”
“Snap out of it,” Ursula said. “You look like you’re in mourning out here.”
Trevor shifted. “You can’t mourn the loss of something that was never yours.”
“Have you tried talking to her since then?” Doris’s eyes were hopeful—too hopeful. He hated to be such a disappointment to so many people.
He turned back toward the stall, found the broom, and went over the floor he’d finished sweeping moments before the Volunteers arrived. “She won’t return my calls.”
“She’s painting at The Paper Heart and leading art workshops. Somehow Abigail got the idea that she needed studio space,” Gigi said.
Trevor kept his head down. He could feel them watching him.
“And the city made her the official artist in residence.” Doris moved in next to Gigi.
“Evelyn swears Ursula is behind the whole thing,” Gigi said.
Ursula cackled. “She thinks I’m much sweeter than I am.”
He shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time you surprised everyone.” Ursula had helped Abigail open her new store, after all.
The women responded by stepping still closer to him. When he finally looked up, he instantly regretted it. What were they, some kind of mind readers?
He groaned. “Don’t say anything.”
Gigi and Doris let out what could only be described as a squeal.
Ursula only nodded. “Good on ya, kid,” she said.
“I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want her to know it was me.”
“We won’t breathe a word,” Gigi said. “But why keep it a secret?”
“She rejected the offer. She obviously didn’t want my help,” he said.
“Do you know what you’ve done for her?” Gigi asked.
He didn’t. How could he? He hadn’t seen her in over a month. The guesthouse haunted him, the farm mocked him—the whole world felt empty since she’d gone.
Gigi smiled. “The other day, she actually stood up for herself. It’s like she just needed a reminder of who she was.” She reached out and took his hand. “You did that for her simply by giving her that push.”
“Don’t mistake her wanting to do things for herself as a rejection,” Ursula added. “She’s finally figuring out who she is.”
“Good,” Trevor said. “I spent a lot of years thinking she’d changed. And not for the better. Turns out she was just a little lost.”
“I think we’re all a little lost in our own way.” Gigi squeezed his hand. “But I’ve known Evelyn a long time, and she seems very different to me now.”
“Don’t you see?” Doris said, her eyes shining. “You’ve given her another chance at being happy, at finding her place.”
“You should do the same for yourself,” Ursula added.
He walked away. “You ladies give me too much credit. All I did was put the bug in the mayor’s ear. Told him all the ways Evelyn could help him accomplish his goals for the city.”
“It got the ball rolling, Mr. Whitney, and now she’s more content than we’ve ever seen her,” Gigi said, following him.
Evelyn’s decision to reject the money he’d offered stung somehow, as if she’d knowingly rejected him. But these crazy old women were right—Evelyn needed to stand on her own two feet.
“I don’t take any credit for her happiness,” Trevor said, knowing that all he’d caused Evelyn over the years was grief. If she’d found strength through this whole situation, she’d come by it on her own.
“Why must you punish yourself?” Gigi asked. “What’s so bad about you?”
“You were there. You heard.”
“Yes. But I don’t think that’s it.” He felt her watching him but kept his head down.
Gigi sighed. “I thought Evelyn was stubborn. The two of you are quite the pair.”
“No wonder you never ended up together—you’re both too nice.” Ursula sounded disgusted.
He went back to sweeping. “I let her marry him.”
“It’s not your fault that they got married. Or that he cheated. You can’t take on their burden as your own.” Doris and Ursula circled around him, closing in like the walls in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
“No, I had my chance. It’s too late.” His sweeping had become hurried and useless. “Can we just drop it?”
Doris put a hand on his arm to stop him from moving. “Tell me you don’t love her, and then we’ll drop it.”
He paused. “You know I can’t do that.”
Three pairs of eyes watched him. “Then tell us this,” Ursula said. “Isn’t she worth fighting for?”
“Of course she is, but you don’t understand.” He stared past them, toward the guesthouse that Evelyn had turned into a home. How empty it all seemed since she was gone. “She deserves better than me.”
“Oh, hogwash.” Ursula gave him a shove.
Trevor righted himself.
“That is a fool’s response,” she said.
Doris looked genuinely afraid.
“I have three words for you, Whitney.” Ursula took a step toward him, poking him square in the chest. “Figure. It. Out.”
He didn’t move. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. You’ve had fifteen years to convince yourself she deserved better. Fifteen years to talk yourself out of it. Told yourself she was someone other than the girl you knew. She’s not. She never fit in with all those rich, hoity-toity types.”
“Now, that’s true. Something about her always seemed different,” Doris said with a nod.
“You think you’re going to get a gaggle of chances, or wh
at?” Ursula glared at him from behind her large-framed glasses.
“No, I just told you. I had my chance.”
“You aren’t listening!” She threw her hands up. “This is your chance.”
“Mr. Whitney,” Doris said, her tone calm to offset Ursula’s tirade. “What Ursula is trying to say is that this is where Evelyn belongs. Out here. With you.”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t want me. Especially not after she found out what I did. I lied. That’s a felony in her book. The worst kind of crime.”
“She’ll get over it,” Ursula said.
Gigi scolded her with a look, but Trevor wondered if anything—or anyone—could ever shut that woman up.
“I appreciate your concern, ladies, but some things just aren’t meant to be.”
They stared at him, hopelessly, helplessly defeated.
“So that’s it, then?” Gigi asked. “Nothing more to be said?”
He shrugged. “I put the whole thing in God’s hands a long time ago.” Surely they wouldn’t argue with God.
Gigi’s face turned sour as if she’d just gotten a whiff of a carton of milk well past its expiration date. “No, you didn’t.”
Now Ursula and Doris sent her a chastising look, but it was obvious the supposed leader of this little band of matchmakers had no intention of backing down. She took a few steps toward Trevor. He stood unmoving, waiting for her to unload whatever it was she had on her mind.
Gigi looked as though the revelation was coming to her that very moment. “If you’d really given this thing over to God, would you have ordered those hearts every single year?”
Trevor felt the surprise hit his face. “What do you mean?”
“Giving it over means letting it go. You found a way to hold on to it all this time. You never really gave this thing to God.”
“Oh, my,” Doris said. “She’s right.”
“No, she’s not,” Trevor said, searching for a valid line of defense. “No one even knew who bought those hearts, especially not Evelyn.”
“But you knew, Mr. Whitney,” Gigi said quietly. “And that’s the point.”
Trevor leaned against the door of the stable and sighed. He’d convinced himself all those years ago that he’d let her go—but Gigi was right. He never really gave his feelings over to God. Not wholly.
What did that say about him?
“It might be time to surrender, Mr. Whitney,” Gigi said. “Truly and completely surrender. You may’ve thought you did that, but unless you were willing to accept that the answer might be no, you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You held on. You tried to stay in control. If you’d really surrendered, you would’ve accepted that the answer was no and moved on. It’s time to surrender now.”
He ran a hand over his stubbled chin. “So you don’t think I should make a grand gesture to try to win her back?”
“They might,” Gigi said, looking at her friends. “But I don’t. Maybe for once it’s better if we don’t get in the middle of this and you accept that if it really is meant to be, God will see to it. Lay it down.” She touched his arm. “Once and for all.”
They started out toward Gigi’s old Buick, but before she opened the passenger door, Ursula turned around. “It’s not weak, you know. Surrendering.” She squinted in his direction as if sizing him up all over again. “Takes a whole lotta strength to give the thing you want most over to God, not knowing whether he will give it back to you. And it takes a lot of faith to mean it.”
She gave him a final once-over, then climbed into the car, which drove away, leaving Trevor with nothing but thoughts he didn’t want and a sad kind of regret he knew he could only pray away.
Hours later, in the quiet solace of an empty farmhouse, Trevor replayed the words over and over. Surrender. Lay it down. Figure it out. How had he failed so miserably?
He tossed and turned, battling questions he knew he couldn’t answer and realizing all the ways he had not surrendered. He’d exited her life but kept one eye on her at all times. He’d clung to that ounce of hope and rushed in when she was in need. Was it possible he’d done the right thing for the wrong reasons?
He got out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen, got himself a drink of water, and stared out the window at the empty guesthouse.
“What do you want me to do, Lord?” The words came out angrier than he intended, but then he had been angry lately, hadn’t he?
He had finished the water and set the cup in the sink when that one word popped into his head again. Surrender.
That was it. If he and Evelyn were ever going to be together, then God would have to work a miracle. Evelyn would have to forgive him, come to him. It would have to be her idea. No more gestures or painted hearts. No more love songs or romantic memories.
Finally, once and for all, he was giving up the one thing he wanted more than air. Because he could finally see that if she wasn’t God’s will for him, then he shouldn’t spend time loving her in that way.
He plodded back to bed and tried—failed—to drift off to sleep. Somewhere between two and three in the morning, Trevor finally sat up in bed and rubbed the tired from his eyes. “God, I mean it this time. I’m laying this down.”
Trevor vowed in that exhausted moment to let this go. To really let it go. And that meant no more clinging to shreds of hope.
He knew women liked men who were strong, but he’d been strong all this time and it had gotten him nothing. So he chose a different kind of strength. The strength of surrendering. Of trusting God’s will.
But as he lay back down, he prayed a simple, final prayer. “Please let it be your will . . .” And he drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER
44
EVELYN SAT OUTSIDE the office of literary agent Alexandra O’Dell, clutching her portfolio with both hands. When Doris had let it slip that her niece was an agent in Denver, Evelyn did something she never would’ve done before.
She asked for a favor.
“I have a book idea,” she’d told Doris, feeling naked at the admission.
The other Volunteers all looked at her, and she waited to hear the many reasons it was silly. Frivolous. Unlikely. But they said none of those things. Instead, her confession was met with encouragement and support.
“What’s the story about?” Abigail had asked, joining them at the table.
Evelyn hesitated.
“We’re safe, Evie,” Abigail said. “We want this for you.”
And Evelyn believed her. She spent the next hour telling those women about Silly Lily, the girl with a knack for mischief. She told them about the grumpy neighbor who had no tolerance for anything childish or fun. She explained how Lily had a dog named Beefcake, who inadvertently led the curly-headed girl to the yard of that neighbor, where Lily single-handedly brought joy and happiness into the old lady’s life.
She flipped to the last illustration, where the little girl rushed over to the old woman and gave her a hug.
She leaned back. “Is it dumb?”
Gigi put a hand on Evelyn’s. “Of course it’s not dumb.”
“Who’s that supposed to be?” Ursula pointed at the picture of Lily and the old woman. “She looks familiar.”
Evelyn smiled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ursula picked up the image and squinted at it. “Are you saying I’m cranky?”
Amused glances crisscrossed the table.
“Is this what you think I look like?” Ursula held the picture up next to her own face. Evelyn didn’t want to brag, but she’d captured the very essence of the woman sitting across from her.
“You’re missing the point, Ursula,” Gigi said. “At the end, the old woman has a heart of gold.”
“Yeah, it’s just buried under a pile of cow poo,” Doris giggled, barely glancing up from the phone she held in her hands.
Tess spoke before Ursula could respond. “Doris, what are you doing over there?”
Doris’s forehead wri
nkled in concentrated confusion. “My grandson changed the settings on my phone. I can’t find Alex’s number.”
Tess took the phone from her, pressed a few buttons, and returned it.
“How’d you do that?” Doris stared at the phone in her hands.
“Magic,” Tess said. “And isn’t your grandson seven years old?”
Doris shrugged. “He’s very advanced.”
She’d called Alex and told her about Evelyn’s book, though Evelyn had cringed a little at her pitch, which was long and meandering. In the end, Alex had agreed to meet with Evelyn, and while Evelyn was thankful for the favor, sitting here now, she thought she might throw up.
An office assistant offered her coffee while she waited. Evelyn politely declined. She fidgeted. She thought about leaving.
Anxiety bubbled underneath her surface, begging her attention.
She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and forced herself to focus on the words that had calmed her more in the last few months than anything else ever had.
Be anxious for nothing.
God, please calm my weary heart. She prayed the words silently, knowing he heard them.
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus . . .”
“Evelyn Brandt?”
The woman’s voice startled her, but as she nodded a hello, she realized her heart rate had slowed and the knot in her stomach had considerably less of a hold on her. She stood and extended a hand to the petite woman with a blonde bob.
“I’m Alex,” she said. “Come on back.”
Evelyn followed her to a small office and sat across the desk from her.
“So you know my aunt Doris?”
Evelyn smiled. “I do. She’s very sweet.”
“She reminds me of a bird.”
Evelyn laughed.
“In a funny way. Not a mean way.” Alex flicked her hand in the air. “Oh, you know what I mean.”
Oddly enough, she did. “I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got.”
An hour later, Evelyn left Alex’s office feeling like she’d just made a friend. She probably should’ve been looking for a business partner, but she’d unknowingly had one of those for ten years of marriage, and she’d decided she didn’t want to do business with anyone unless she liked them.
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