Who Needs Cupid?

by Debra Salonen, Molly O’Keefe

  “Minimum wage jobs,” Lucky said before she could stop herself. Then she clamped her mouth shut tightly. She wasn’t going to turn this into a sparring match.

  “Any kind of growth is good for the city,” Jane pointed out.

  “Are you selling for the money?” Lucky asked Josh, unable to stop her questions from coming.

  Josh ignored her and continued, “With the proceeds of the sale, I’d like to set up an endowment that perhaps Jane would be the executor of and that those who wished could be part of an executive board that would make financial decisions for the endowment.”

  “What kind of financial decisions?” Jane was clearly interested, but Lucky couldn’t believe it. She looked around and found that rather than being outraged, disappointed, or just plain mad, the others were sitting there, considering the possibilities. Was she the only one who felt Josh was doing something incredibly stupid?

  “Mrs. Simmons is going to need someone to check in on her daily,” Josh answered. “I’d like her to receive a modest amount regularly to supplement her social security.”

  Lucky was the only one who didn’t nod in agreement.

  “Also the Conners need help with some of Rachel’s medical expenses.”

  “I know that it’s not going to be a lot of money,” Josh said, holding out his hands to them. “But it certainly would be enough to get folks through these tough times. I know this is a shock, but I wanted to give you as much notice as I could. I’m moving to Chicago the middle of next month.”

  “Don’t we have a say in this?” Lucky asked. “Isn’t there something in the bylaws that says you can’t just arbitrarily shut us down?”

  Ginny patted Lucky’s knee. “It’s hard for all of us, but I think that the pastor is making a good decision.”

  Lucky couldn’t argue with her friend. Ginny’s husband had been one of those laid off. Now he was traveling two hours one way for not much more than a minimum wage job. With a new business in town, he’d be able to work closer to home.

  After the meeting adjourned, Lucky stayed seated even though the Chambers offered to run her back to the Lucky Duck. Soon only she and Josh were left.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Have you gone crazy?”

  Josh shook his head and began returning the chairs to their orderly rows. “You know, Luck. I think this is the sanest I’ve ever been. Selling the property is a good compromise. It will benefit the community and it will benefit me.”

  “So we’re going to have a Mega Mart as part of Fenelon Falls landscape?”

  Josh was silent. Finally he said, “Things change all the time. You know that better than anyone.”

  Lucky could feel tears pressing behind her eyes. She was going to cry, yet again. “But if you sell the property and tear down the church you can’t come back, even if you wanted to.”

  Josh looked away from her, his jaw working. He’d never been good at expressing his feelings, even to her. Yet she could often anticipate what he worried about, ease his problems before they became something big. How had she missed the fact he didn’t want to live in Fenelon Falls?

  “You actually think that this is the best solution?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to go through this anymore, Lucky.” Impatience tinged his voice. “Believe me, it’s for the best.”

  “The best for whom?” Lucky felt the tears spill over. She wiped them away.

  “You know, Lucky.” Josh sat down next to her, but his presence wasn’t comforting. He handed her a handkerchief, but didn’t touch her, didn’t pull her into a hug, didn’t put his arm around her. “For you, everything has to stay the same in order to be good. It’s not that way for me.” His tone was hard, clipped. “I would have thought you’d know that.” He rose impatiently, but didn’t go very far.

  Lucky was surprised. Josh never spoke to her like that.

  Pulling herself out of her pity party, she searched his face. His expression was unyielding but his eyes were vulnerable, and Lucky finally understood. Josh had always supported the community. He’d given and given and given.

  She reached out and caught his wrist. He tried to shake her off, but she held on, making him look at her. She’d been so stupid not to have recognized it months ago.

  “So tell me, Josh,” she asked with a whisper. “When was it that you lost your faith?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  TRUST LUCKY to be the one who would actually articulate what Josh had only begun to realize. He wanted to deny Lucky’s words, but he couldn’t do what amounted to a lie.

  Lucky just sat there, as if she was seeing him for the first time, the pad of her thumb rubbing the inside of his wrist. He didn’t find it comforting. “I get it, now. You think you’re not doing enough. That’s why you want a job at a church with twenty-three other ministers. It’s too hard on you to do this on your own.” Her voice was imbued with sympathy. “You think that if you are around these ministers, you’ll get your faith back. You’ll find your way back.”

  Josh couldn’t talk. It was a terrible thing to be a minister and have nothing left to give. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t be his father. He cleared his throat. “You can still come with me,” he said quietly. “The offer still stands.”

  Lucky shook her head. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for in Chicago, Josh.”

  “What are you talking about?” Josh was ready to put an end to this conversation.

  “You think you’re going to find your faith in that big church, but all it’s going to do is keep you busy. You’ll be so busy you won’t have to think about why you feel the way you feel.” Lucky still hung on to him, her voice urgent.

  Josh carefully extracted his wrist from her grasp. “I know exactly why I feel like I feel.”

  Lucky clearly didn’t believe him.

  He tried a different tactic, forcing himself to remain calm. “Just know that what works for you, Lucky, is the very thing that’s killing me.”

  “Leaving isn’t going to help, Josh.”

  “That’s what you say, but I won’t know until I get there,” he replied. “So, Lucky, this is it. All right? I know you don’t agree. But let’s just leave it like that. You stay here and I’ll go to Chicago. I can’t be part of your fairy-tale life.” The last part was said with such force and bitterness, that Josh was ashamed.

  If he’d meant to hurt Lucky, he’d accomplished his goal. Without another word, Lucky started to leave. Once at the front doors, she turned around to look at him. He knew she wanted him to bend, to give her a ride back to the Duck, somehow retying those strings that were slowly unraveling. But all he could do was watch the best thing in his life walk out of the door.

  Thursday, February 1

  LUCKY KNEW exactly when the whole town knew that the Fenelon Falls Community Church was closing by the exponential increase to the foot traffic to her shop. Sales had never been better as folks intent on digging out more information about Josh and what his new job was going to be ended up looking around and purchasing some small Valentine’s gift. She hadn’t seen Josh since their visits with Mrs. Simmons and the Conners the previous Sunday. Emily and Rachel had been home and with Josh talking with Seth and Lucky chatting with Em, they did a very good job of hiding their discord.

  Over the week, Lucky had realized there was no way she’d be able to go with him. Josh could leave Fenelon Falls, but she couldn’t. Too many people needed her. And while she knew Becca and Elle would do just fine without her, Lucky wasn’t so sure she’d do fine without them. Chicago was a different world. She would have no friends, nothing, not even a job. But no matter how great her misgivings were about Josh’s decisions, she tried to sound positive about his new move to the inquiring minds that pressed her for information.

  “He’s going to a gorgeous church,” she said to one customer.

  “They’ve got a huge choir and several ministers,” she said to another.

  “They have a brochure,” she kept repeating. “It looks li
ke Josh will have his work cut out for him.”

  “Too bad about Josh,” Elle commented, fingering a soft puffy heart. “I know you really wanted things to work out between you two.”

  Lucky shrugged. She knew it wasn’t the money or the fact that the church building was falling apart or even the lack of a congregation that had Josh leaving. It was Josh. He had lost his faith. The irony overwhelmed her with sadness. He was going through a crisis of faith and the only place he thought he could find it was in a big church in a city where faith battled daily with despair. But that didn’t matter because she also knew that nothing could convince Josh he could find his faith right here in Fenelon Falls.

  “I guess he needs to spread his wings. I’ll survive.” Lucky was tired of these conversations, but Elle was her friend.

  “It’s too bad that there isn’t some kind of compromise,” Elle said, her eyes filled with compassion.

  Lucky just snorted. “According to Josh, selling the church is compromising.” Lucky didn’t stop counting her inventory, checking off what had sold well, what she wanted to reorder next year and what would go on the sale table on February 15.

  “The endowment is certainly a generous gift to the community. Jane is already researching the best way to invest the money and how to protect Josh from any nasty surprises taxwise,” Elle was saying.

  “The best gift to the community is Josh’s presence. If he stayed, he wouldn’t have to deal with any nasty tax surprises.” Nothing was going to change Lucky’s mind, no matter how sensible Elle was being. She felt for her precious gold heart. She’d gotten Ed the jeweler to solder the clasp on so it wouldn’t slip off again. She might be losing Josh, but she wasn’t going to lose this necklace.

  “Maybe he can’t,” Elle suggested. “Maybe he’s at a place where he doesn’t have enough perspective to see beyond leaving. But just because he leaves doesn’t mean he can’t come back.”

  Lucky knew what her friend was trying to tell her, but there were other issues. “Do you want a Mega Mart staring down at the Cup?”

  Elle laughed. “As long as they don’t sell coffee, I’m good with it. Now, if it were a Starbucks, that’d be a different story.”

  “So what did you think of those last cards of Bec’s?” Lucky changed the subject, hoping Elle was wise enough to follow her lead. “I can’t believe how bad they were. I mean, she’s the nicest person in the world, but to wish someone a flealess Valentine’s Day is scraping rock bottom.”

  Elle winced. “You know how it is. She’s distracted. Between Will and her mother.”

  “Things still tense with Jane? I thought she looked a little distracted.”

  Elle was silent. Finally the older woman confided with a grimace, “You know what Jane said to me the other day?”

  Lucky shook her head. She’d spent so much time feeling sorry for herself that she hadn’t really been thinking about anyone else. She stopped what she was doing so she could focus her attention on Elle.

  Elle laughed but it didn’t reach her eyes, making Lucky realize how serious the troubles between the sisters were.

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t even believe that she could say those words.”

  “What?”

  “She said she hated me.”

  “That’s terrible.” Lucky hugged her friend. “I am so sorry. You know, Jane is just an unhappy person. And I think she feels like you’re closer to Bec than she is. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

  Elle shut her eyes tightly and took a deep breath. “I’m fine. And yes she did mean it.”

  The bell on the front door rang and three more customers came in. Elle allowed Lucky to greet them, and after a few short moments, Lucky joined her again. “Don’t worry. Time takes care of such things. And anyway, things can’t always stay the same. Eventually Jane will come around.”

  “Did those words come out of your mouth?” Elle asked with surprise. “That’s growth.”

  “My growth?” Lucky asked, feeling a little defensive. How did the conversation get back to her and Josh? “What are you talking about?” She gave Elle an annoyed look.

  Elle laughed. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? The battle’s half won if you can admit that change happens and what you think you want isn’t really what you want at all. The Fenelon Falls Community Church endowment is going to do a lot of good for a lot of people.”

  “But it means Josh is leaving.” Lucky hated that she couldn’t be happy for him.

  “But he doesn’t have to go alone. You said he asked you to go with him.”

  Lucky shook her head. “Just because he’s making a bad decision, doesn’t mean that I also have to. I don’t want to leave Fenelon Falls. Everything and everyone I love is here. Who would I eat shortbread with?”

  “I think you need to figure out what you want more. It might not be what you think it is.” Seeing that Lucky wasn’t going to say anything more, Elle straightened as she saw a horde of teenagers heading for the Cup O’ Love. “Oh. Duty calls.”

  Lucky peered out and saw that Max was part of the group. “And someone else is calling, too.”

  Elle shook her head. “He’s the one person not calling.”

  “Maybe you should call him,” Lucky suggested.

  “You said it, I didn’t,” Elle said as she went out the door. “Oh hi, Josh. Your ears burning?”

  Lucky flushed red and shot Elle an evil look that was completely wasted on her.

  “BYE, ELLE.” Josh looked around the Duck, his hands in his pockets. It looked even more pink in the daytime. He’d never realized that so many items could be shaped like a heart. Sparkly, glittery and, yes, pink stuff launched themselves at him as he trod the love gauntlet to the counter Lucky was hiding behind. “And what is the purpose of this holiday?” Josh mused out loud.

  “It’s about love, all right?” Her voice came from under the counter.

  Josh leaned way over and saw just a bit of Lucky’s hair. “Are you hiding from me or something?”

  Lucky popped up like a jack-in-the-box, startling him and scoffed, “No, I’m not hiding from you. Why would I be hiding from you?”

  “I don’t know. Elle just said that my ears should be burning. Were you talking about me?”

  Lucky had a pair of scissors in her mouth. “No.”

  Josh always knew when Lucky was lying to him. Her eyes gave her away every single time.

  “So what were you saying?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t saying anything.”

  “Okay, then what were you thinking?” Josh knew Lucky drew very definite lines between what she said and what she thought.

  She frowned, her reading glasses making her look very schoolmarmish. “Nothing you haven’t heard before.”

  “I just came in to say hi. Let you know I’m leaving in two weeks. A week from next Wednesday.” He threw the information out to her. She hadn’t told him if she was going to come, too. Not that he really expected her to. She was too deeply rooted here.

  “Okay” was all she said.

  “I’m going through all the stuff in the rectory.” He could see she didn’t really want to talk to him, but he wasn’t ready to leave. “I thought there might be a few things you’d want. I’m finding a lot of your stuff.”

  “All right.” Lucky nodded. “That sounds fine.”

  Josh couldn’t stand it. She was already distancing herself from him. Probably so she wouldn’t be so hurt when he actually left. He’d always known he would lose Lucky, but he hadn’t expected the pain and emotion he’d feel.

  Lucky picked up her clipboard and left the protection of the counter, crossing to the part of the store that was farthest from him. Silently she started to count the stuffed bears. After a pause, he went over and joined her.

  “So when do you want to come?” he asked.

  “There are only five. I thought there were six,” she muttered.

  “Isn’t your inventory on the computer?”

  “Yes
,” she answered. “But I like to do an actual hands-on count.” She burrowed into the stack of cuddly bears.

  It was obvious she was acting this way so she wouldn’t have to look at him. And that left Josh with no choice. He stepped in front of her to block further access to the shelves.

  “Josh, move,” she said, her voice was impatient. “I’m trying to work.”

  “Not before you and I talk.”

  “Talk?” Lucky stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. “What on earth do we have to talk about?”

  “About my leaving, about whether you’re going to come with me.” There, he’d said it. This wasn’t exactly the most romantic of settings, but still better than the backward proposal he’d given her two Sundays ago. Then, he hadn’t thought everything through. But now, more than ever, he had to know her decision.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  The abruptness of her answer startled him. “No?”

  She rose and held the clipboard tightly to her chest. She repeated, “No. I’m not going to go with you. You might be able to leave, but I can’t. I’ve got my business, the house is paid for, my friends are here, and there are people here who depend on me. My life is here, Josh.” Lucky’s expression was one of unhappy resolve, and Josh could feel the regret emanating from her. “I’m not going to abandon the people who love me the most.”

  “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

  Lucky swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, Josh. That’s what I think. Now can you move, please?” Lucky squatted down again and started to count stuffed ducks.

  Josh obliged but didn’t leave. Her words still stung. She wasn’t wrong to say what she felt. And of course she would feel abandoned, but it didn’t make his chest hurt any less.

  After a full tense minute, Lucky looked up. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” He welcomed Lucky’s question. It meant he still had a chance to save their friendship.

  “Do you love me? And if you lie to me, I’ll know.” She sounded like she was joking, but Josh knew differently.

  “Don’t do this, Lucky.” Josh couldn’t stop the thudding in his ears and the tightness in his chest. He could only wish for a heart attack. “Let’s not go there.”