“Thanks.”
A tap on the door reminded Jessa they’d left it open.
“Hello?” A soft voice called from the living room.
“Come on in,” Jessa answered.
“Megan! Hurry! Come see this.” Annalisa sat the wreath down and walked toward the living room just as a petite blond stepped through the doorway.
The two ladies hugged tightly, and then Annalisa, her arm still linked with Megan’s, motioned toward Jessa. “Jessa, this is Megan. Megan, Jessa. From the looks of that gorgeous patriotic basket on the table, I’d say y’all have met over the phone.”
“Oh, Jessa! Look at it. How did you get the campaign button without Elaine knowing?” Megan’s face glowed with excitement.
All the tension left Jessa. They both loved their arrangements. “I had a helper.”
“Jeb?” Annalisa guessed.
Jessa nodded, but before she could reply, they were exclaiming over Jake’s basket.
“Where’s Clint’s?” Megan asked.
“He came down to the shop this morning while I was putting them together, so he took his with him.”
Jessa barely caught the pleased look that passed between Megan and Annalisa. She blushed at the memory of Clint’s kiss. If they only knew. . .
“Speaking of Clint. . . ,” Annalisa said casually, “he may be a little moody right now because of all he’s been through, but normally he’s the most even-tempered man I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah,” Megan chimed in. “And he is so good with kids. Sarah and the boys just love him.”
Jessa looked from one matchmaking woman to the other. She really didn’t know what to say.
Annalisa tucked her hair on top of her head with one hand and rubbed the back of her neck with the other. She burst out laughing, and Megan did too.
“We’re so pitiful,” Annalisa said.
“We should have practiced.” Megan touched Jessa’s arm. “Clint talks about you all the time. We just wanted to give him a helping hand.”
Jessa grinned. “I started to say I’m sure he would appreciate it, but I’m not really sure he would. But I do.”
“Whew.” Annalisa let her hair fall back onto her shoulders and wiped the back of her hand dramatically across her brow. “I thought we’d blown it with you forever.”
“No way.” The thought of forever with Clint’s family made Jessa’s heart warm, but she tried to remember how hard it was to be independent when he was around to lean on.
Megan turned to Jessa. “Are you ready to go over to Jeb and Elaine’s?”
“I’d better not. I fixed that bowl of fresh-cut flowers for her, and I’ll bring it over later. I don’t want to horn in on your family celebration.”
“Oh, don’t give it a thought. You’re practically family.” Annalisa waved her hand in the air as if dismissing Jessa’s protests.
“Uh-oh, A., don’t scare her off,” Megan said softly.
Jessa watched in amusement as Megan and Annalisa played a combination of funny man/straight man. “Y’all are too funny.”
“We really need you,” Megan said, smiling. “With Annalisa’s three boys and Clint, we females are outnumbered as it is.”
“Oh, nice one.” Annalisa patted her sister-in-law’s shoulder, then cut her gaze to Jessa. “Do it for the good of womankind. . .”
Jessa bit back a giggle. She wanted to go. “I see that—unless I want to be a traitor to my gender—I have no choice but to go.”
“Oh, good.” Annalisa picked up her wreath. “Now, what do you want to carry?”
❧
Clint pulled into the driveway and parked beside his brothers’ vehicles. He grabbed the bags containing the fried chicken and all the side orders that went with it and jumped out. As he walked toward the porch, he glanced at Jessa’s house. How could he convince her to come over?
Before he could decide what to do, her door opened and Megan, Annalisa, and Jessa came out carrying the birthday flowers.
“Hey, Clint!” Annalisa called. “Come give your sisters a hand.”
He sat the chicken on the table by the door and walked across the backyard.
“Um. . .” Megan murmured as he approached. “Jessa definitely isn’t his sister.”
Clint could feel his face growing warm.
“Oh, yeah.” Annalisa balanced her wreath in one hand and gave him a one-arm hug. “Clint, for the sake of your tendency to blush, we won’t go there.”
“Thank you so much, Annalisa,” he said dryly. He hugged Megan. “It’s great to see y’all, even if you are trying to embarrass me.”
“Who? Us?” they chorused.
Since he’d hugged his sisters-in-law, he reached an arm toward Jessa automatically, then turned it into an awkward wave at the last minute. “Hi.”
Her wry grin and the memory of their kiss earlier only made his face hotter.
“Hi.”
Annalisa nudged him. “She’s the one who has her hands full.”
He raised an eyebrow at Jessa. “Need some help?”
“Just this once.” She handed him Jake’s basket and kept the glass bowl of cut flowers.
Megan and Annalisa walked on toward his parents’ house, strategically, he thought, leaving Jessa and him to walk alone. “Sneaky, aren’t they?”
She nodded. “But I love them already.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“Where’s your basket for your mom?”
“I slipped it into the utility room and hid it in a cabinet before I went to get the chicken.” He looped the bags of food over his hand as they passed the table by the door.
“So now who’s sneaky?” Jessa asked.
“All’s fair in love and war. . .and birthdays.” Clint smiled down at her.
“I’ll have to remember you said that.”
Her casual words seemed to speak of a future. A future together he hadn’t dared to dream of. Could he ever be whole enough for that?
❧
Sitting at the crowded table between Megan and Clint, Jessa was relieved to bow her head for grace. As the dishes were passed around, she put a small amount of each food on her plate. She was suddenly ravenous, and she realized she never had taken time to eat a donut.
When she’d first entered, the room had seemed packed with people of all sizes. She’d felt a little tense as she acknowledged each introduction with a smile, but Elaine’s obvious delight with all the birthday flowers had calmed her nerves. Letting the conversation flow around her now, she relaxed and enjoyed the food as well as the stories Jeb told about the brothers when they were growing up.
“So, Jessa. . .” A big cowboy to Megan’s left that she was pretty sure was Holt leaned forward and looked at her. “Have you always wanted to be a florist?”
Remembering the roller-skating carhop answer she’d given Clint to that question, she felt his gaze on her. “Since I was about eight or nine.”
“What nudged you in that direction?” Cade asked from Annalisa’s side.
She looked around the table at the family, all of whom seemed genuinely interested in her. The revelation of her big secret hadn’t made Clint treat her any differently. Maybe it was time she quit hiding her past.
“For three years when I was young, I struggled with leukemia. Thankfully, I made a complete recovery, but the flowers I received during that time made my dreary world seem so much brighter. I’ve never forgotten that.” She smiled, surprised to find her heart lighter at the easy sharing of something she’d guarded for so long. “It’s my dream to be able to brighten other people’s lives like that.”
“Well, I think you’re an expert at that,” Elaine said, beaming. “I’ve never gotten such wonderful birthday gifts.” She looked around the table. “I know I told you all how much I love them, but it seems like this time when y’all go home, I’ll still have a piece of each of you with me.”
The conversation moved on, but not before Clint winked at Jessa proudly. Most people would think it was because of
his mom’s bragging on her, but she knew he realized what a big step it had been for her to casually discuss her childhood illness.
❧
When dinner was done, to Jessa’s surprise, both the men and women jumped up to clean off the table and do the dishes. Love and laughter flowed through the rooms as if they were tangible. She recognized immediately where Clint got his penchant for teasing. His whole family loved to tease, good-naturedly, of course, and no one was immune from it.
After the dishes were done and the house restored to its perpetual state of tidiness, all the clan, with the exception of the youngest members, gathered around the television to watch the baseball game.
Jessa had never been a big baseball fan, but the excitement on the McFaddens’ faces converted her. At first, she whispered her questions to Clint, and he patiently answered her. By the beginning of the fourth inning, she leaped to her feet with the rest of the family when something exciting happened.
When the camera showed Jake warming up in the bull pen, the room shook with whoops of excitement. He struck his first batter out, and from then on, the men didn’t sit back down, apparently preferring to stand ready to shove their exuberant fists in the air.
“Jeb.” Elaine pulled on her husband’s shirt. “Sit down. I can’t see.” She looked across the blank spot on the couch to Jessa. “Does it look to you like Jake is rubbing his shoulder a lot?”
“Oh, Mom, don’t be a worrywart.” Cade’s words were spoken lightly.
“I suppose you’re right, but you know what problems pitchers can have.” Elaine smiled. “He’s doing great, though, isn’t he?”
“Definitely,” Holt agreed.
Jessa lost her focus on the television for a minute. Why couldn’t her mother worry like Elaine? A minute or two of concern, ended with a smile, instead of obsession?
Clint grabbed her hand and squeezed. She met his tender gaze and was almost positive he knew exactly what she was thinking. Their hearts were growing more closely linked every day.
❧
This Sunday morning, it was no accident that Clint slipped into the pew next to Jessa. He squeezed her hand briefly. As he released it, he noticed Annalisa on the other side of Jessa nudging Cade. His family was definitely rooting for them. That meant a lot.
As the service began, Clint forgot about his surroundings and gave himself over to worshiping God. But the first words of the preacher jarred him to the core.
“In the Old Testament, we read of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt because God told her not to look back, but she did it anyway. What about you? Are you a pillar of salt? Have you been looking back instead of forward?”
The man in the pulpit seemed to talk directly to Clint as he hammered home the thought of how immovable a block of salt was and how the past could stop people in their tracks. “In the book of Philippians chapter three, verses thirteen and fourteen, the apostle Paul, inspired by God, admonishes us to forget what lies behind and reach toward what lies ahead. Paul tells us that he presses on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Clint knew that none of his family would have talked to the preacher about him, and that even if they had, the preacher wouldn’t prepare a sermon specifically for him, so that only left one source of this lesson. God had brought Clint to this place today to hear the truth from His own Word.
Whether I accept it or not is up to me.
Twenty-two
Monday at lunch, Clint took his sandwich out to the most deserted spot on the lakeshore he could find. He’d intended to talk to Jessa on his break, but before he did, he knew there was someone else he had to work things out with.
Clint had enjoyed the weekend with his family, but part of him had still struggled with the fact that Ryan wasn’t with his family. Ever since the sermon that God had practically written specifically for him, he’d known that he had to come to grips with the past and then move on.
He’d been thinking all night of what Ryan said right before he died. “I’ll be waiting.” And he’d remembered again that day when Ryan had yelled, “Last one to heaven is a rotten egg.”
Without a doubt, his friend’s faith had been real. And deep down, Clint knew he had been right. Ryan was waiting in heaven. Tears ran down his face as he watched the wind ripple across the water. He could almost hear Ryan teasingly accuse him of being a sore loser.
Logically, he knew that there was nothing he could have done to save Ryan. As Jessa had pointed out that day in the cabin, God was the only one who could have done that. And He had. But instead of saving the temporal life, He’d saved the eternal one. If Becky could accept her husband’s death, even while she still mourned him, how could Clint do any less?
He bowed his head and felt the breeze ruffle his hair as he poured out his heart to God.
About half an hour later, he stood, his legs shaky with relief. He hadn’t realized how weighted down he’d felt with the burden he’d carried.
Thank You, God, for all You are to me.
As Clint patrolled the perimeter of the lake, he noticed the white van parked at a picnic site. According to the lettering on the side of the van, it belonged to the church where his parents attended. Members of the youth group were piling up sticks, as if preparing to start a bonfire.
He pulled into a parking place at the site. Today was a teachers’ workday at the area school, and the kids were understandably exuberant at having a day off, so he hated to be a party pooper, but he’d better warn them of the wind. As he got out of the Jeep, a man he recognized from church met him.
“Hi, Clint. I’m glad you stopped by. We brought hot dogs and marshmallows, but I was wondering if it’s too windy for us to start a fire today.”
“I’m afraid it might be.” He glanced at the kids. He hated to disappoint them, but safety had to come first. He pointed to a grate at the next picnic area. “I tell you what. Why don’t you build your fire in that grate? It won’t be as pretty as a bonfire, but it will be safer with the wind like it is today. And you can still have your wiener roast.”
“That sounds like a fine idea.” As the man turned to break the news to the group, Clint saw Seth sitting on the outskirts. The boy saw him at the same minute and jumped up. He practically ran to Clint and dragged him away from the already relocating group.
“Clint, I need to talk to you.” His words ran together in nervousness. “I’ve been praying you’d show up. I guess Brother Joe was right. God does answer prayer.”
“Hey, slow down. What’s wrong, Seth?”
“It’s The Flower Basket. I’m afraid something is going to happen to it.”
“Like what?”
Seth ran his hand over his buzz cut and flung his arms down to his side. “I don’t know.” He paced back and forth. “Oh, man, I can’t say.”
Clint put a steadying hand on Seth’s shoulder. “Why not? Who are you protecting?” Suddenly, little things that Seth had told him about his alcoholic father came rushing back to him. “Your father?”
“I’ve got to go.”
Seth took off for the woods.
“Seth! What might happen to Jessa’s shop?”
“It might burn down.” The last words were tossed over Seth’s shoulder as he took off through the thick trees in the general direction of town and The Flower Basket. Clint debated going after him on foot, but since Jessa was at The Flower Basket and possibly in danger, he’d have to deal with Seth later.
He jumped into his Jeep and tore down the road toward the shop. As he approached the tiny downtown district of Lakehaven, his heart seemed to take up permanent residence in his throat. He took the last corner on what felt like two wheels.
“Oh, Father. I know You’ve never forsaken me. Even when I thought You did, I was the one who turned away, not You. Lord, if it’s Your will, keep Jessa safe. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Clint pulled the Jeep into the parking lot and ran up to the back door. The loud buzzing of the smoke alarm sent hi
s heart plummeting to his feet. He tried the door.
Locked.
In desperation, he pounded on it with his fist, then sprinted to the bathroom window. With trembling hands, he pulled the screen off.
Lord, please help me.
A single brick lay two feet away almost buried in the ground. Clint quickly pried it loose and slammed it into the glass, then wrapped his jacket around his arm and hand so he could clear out the jagged edges. With a flip of the lock, he raised the window and hoisted himself up to the ledge.
Acrid smoke filled the bathroom, but keeping his jacket over his nose, Clint touched the closed door. It didn’t feel warm, so he cautiously opened it.
Clint did a hasty search of the front of the store, but it was vacant. The smoke alarm would make it impossible to be heard, but he had to try. “Jessa!” he yelled.
When he stepped toward the back room, his eye was immediately drawn to orange flames that danced along a pile of artificial greenery on the floor. Behind the flames lay an inert figure on the floor.
A four-foot area hadn’t caught yet, and Clint murmured one more prayer and headed for that spot. When he reached the figure, questions flooded his brain. Ruby Trent lay on the floor, unconscious.
What had the eighty-year-old woman been doing in the store? Where was Jessa?
He reached behind him with one hand and unlocked the back door. Then he scooped up the elderly lady tenderly in his arms and carried her out into the fresh air.
Jessa came running up from Main Street just as Seth ran up from the other direction. Ruby stirred. Clint deposited her in Seth’s arms and turned to Jessa. Her freckles stood out against her white skin.
“Where’s your fire extinguisher?”
“By the sink.” She grabbed his arm. “Wait, Clint. Don’t go back in,” she cried.
“Jessa, trust God. He’s with me, and this is what I do.” He hurried back into the building where the flames had spread another two feet along the greenery.
He lunged for the fire extinguisher, pulled the pin, and quickly covered the flames with the calming foam. When there was no ember left, he ran back out the door and bent over, drawing in great gulps of air.
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