by Janet Spaeth
Reverend Barnes had told her she would have a chance to share her faith. Perhaps this was it.
“I prayed that you’d find a resolution to your dilemma soon, that you could settle your heart about what to do with Panda’s. Move here or stay in the End. At this stage all I know is that I care more about you than I do about the downtown commission or any growth statistics about recovering the lost merchantability of the heart of the city. I just want you to be happy.”
He turned back, and his face was shining. “You goose. That wasn’t your prayer He answered. It was mine.”
A curious sensation arose in her chest, and it took a moment to identify it. Yes, it was indeed possible: Her heart was singing.
“You are a very sweet, wonderful man, Jake Cameron. You are kind and considerate and absolutely blessed, and I think you are terrific.”
A deep red stain began to creep over the top of his collar and edged up his neck. He was blushing!
At that moment Tess fell deeply and totally in love.
Chapter 17
Their last stop was Nativity, where an array of brightly twinkling lights led First Night revelers to the door of the church.
The downstairs had been transformed into a children’s craft fair. The dining room was filled with the chatter of children busily constructing masks of canvas, feathers, and glitter.
In the Sunday school area, preschoolers spread large swaths of paint across squares of muslin, happily dripping the plastic-covered flooring with wild splotches of red, green, blue, yellow, and purple.
Reverend Barnes’s reedy figure separated itself from the horde and loped over to join them. He greeted Jake with a hearty “Good to see you again, friend!” and Tess with a “We need you—now. Somebody has to set up a secondary project area, because …”
His words blurred into the general noise as they left for the resource room. Tess looked over her shoulder and mouthed, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and Jake waved his acknowledgment.
The room was a delight for Tess. It was filled with orderly shelves lined with paper in a rainbow of colors, woolly pipe cleaners in clear plastic bags, cartons of glue sticks, baskets of scissors, and covered boxes her fingers itched to explore.
“We have more children coming than we can attend to right now. Could you possibly cobble together some other projects for some of them to do? You can set it up in the nursery—I’ll dash up and get things arranged there. Thanks, Tess—you’re a gem. And so’s your young man.”
“He’s not my young man,” she protested, but her heart was not in it.
“Sure, Tess. Give me a holler if there’s anything else you need. I’m running up to the nursery now.”
Running was undoubtedly the right word, Tess thought as he spun out of the room like a whirlwind. He had more energy than she had ever imagined a man his age could possess.
She shrugged out of her jacket and mittens and dug into the cupboard.
The boxes were a storehouse of wonderful things. She quickly pulled out several sheets of colored tissue paper, some cellophane pieces, construction paper, scissors, and glue sticks. She dumped her treasure trove into an empty box she found neatly stashed in a corner and headed upstairs to the nursery.
Reverend Barnes was just pulling the last chair into place around the table and looked up in surprise as she walked in.
“Are you ready this soon?” he asked.
She nodded and began displaying her treasures on the table. “We’ll make stained-glass windows. First we’ll cut out shapes from the construction paper and back the holes with tissue or cellophane.”
“I remember those,” he mused. “Great idea, Tess. I knew I could count on you!”
“Say, where’s Jake?” she asked as she divided the materials.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t in the dining room, and I got only a peep in the Sunday school room.”
A group of five children burst into the room, and Tess’s career as a craftswoman began.
She had only stolen moments to think about Jake and wonder where he might have gone. There was a steady stream of children for the next hour.
At last Reverend Barnes poked his head in. “I think you can shut down now. It’s almost fireworks time, and everybody’s abandoning us.”
She flexed her fingers, stiff from cutting countless pieces of paper, and tried to flick the dried-on crust of glue off her fingernails. Her pale pink polish was chipped, and what was left was hidden under the glue remnants.
She gathered up the pieces of paper and put them in a stack. She’d come in sometime during the week and straighten up the room with more attention to detail.
The dining room crafts center was closing down, and the Sunday school room had shut entirely. No one she asked had seen Jake, and she wandered back upstairs.
Where could he have gone? Surely he hadn’t left already.
At the top of the stairs she could see into the sanctuary. Outlined in one of the middle pews was the shape of a man, not bent in prayer, but facing the large cross suspended behind the pulpit.
Could it be—?
She tiptoed around the side aisle, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, but the floor creaked and gave her presence away.
Jake turned to her, and when he did, her heart sparked anew.
What she saw was a man transformed.
His eyes shone with a gentle radiance that could mean only one thing. “It makes perfect sense. I have the proof.”
She slid into the pew next to him. “Do you want to tell me?” she asked softly, not taking her gaze from his face.
He nodded. “I wandered up here. It was dark so I was fumbling around, looking for the switch to turn on the lights. I remembered what you said about electricity and faith. That started me thinking. I have no proof electricity exists, other than the fact that my coffeemaker works and the lights come on at my house. And, of course, the monumental bill I get every month. But it could be squirrels in little wheels powering the utilities, for all I know. I’ve never seen what makes my microwave work. It just does. And when I put my nachos in there, I trust it’ll work and the cheese will melt, whether or not I understand why it does. That melted cheese is proof enough of electricity’s existence. I don’t need more.”
“Jake, I am 100 percent, completely, totally lost. What do squirrels and nachos and electricity have to do with God?”
“I’ve always believed in God. Always. But I’ve prayed for a faith that goes beyond just belief. What I needed was trust, the trust that would let me allow Him into my life. Didn’t it make sense that I should trust God at least as much as I trust the power company?”
He turned to her and took her hand. “That’s the step I didn’t have before. I didn’t trust Him, and without trust there really can’t be faith. I’m still working it through, and I’m not sure yet that it’s making any sense.”
“Oh, it is,” she whispered.
“I remembered your story about giving away your Bible, and suddenly I understood. I had to come to the point where I was willing to say, ‘I believe, and more than that I trust.’ ”
He shook his head. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do—to give myself over completely to Someone I can’t see, but who I do know exists. And it was the easiest thing, once it was done. I feel so different—refreshed, healthy, whole.”
“Praise the Lord.” Her words were barely spoken, but he heard them.
“Yes,” Jake said. “Yes.”
The song in her soul soared. He was home—she could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes, feel it in the way his hand gripped hers.
They sat silently, hand in hand, relishing the glory together.
The noise level of the revelers outside increased, and Jake glanced at his watch. “We’d better get outside. It’s almost midnight!”
A fresh vigor possessed her as they walked out, side by side, from the sanctuary and into the air that was so cold it snapped.
New faith. What was more beautiful than tha
t, except perhaps the patina of old faith? She pondered this until the blare of a horn startled her back into the present. Whistles clanged, people shouted, and somewhere a band struck up the traditional New Year’s Eve song “Auld Lang Syne.”
Jake faced her, tilted her chin upward, and said softly, “Happy New Year, sweetheart.”
With lips as gentle as a prayer he kissed her.
The world exploded into a stunning display of golden and purple glitter, streams of brilliant orange and yellow, a spray of red and silver.
And the earth moved to make room for heaven.
At last his lips left hers, and she opened her eyes. Behind his head a fountain of blue stars shot into the sky far above the horizon, and she laughed shakily.
“Fireworks,” she explained. “The city display is on. I thought we were—I mean, when you kissed me, I saw—oh Jake …” Her words trailed off, and she was grateful the dark hid her heated cheeks from his scrutiny.
In the splashes of light that cut through the darkness, she saw him smiling. “I saw them, too—the fireworks. Both sets.”
For not speaking much they were saying volumes, and the image of Reverend Barnes and his wife flashed into her mind. She remembered looking at them on Thanksgiving and wanting the same closeness of silent language they had. And now, apparently, she had it.
Her heart was full.
“Happy New Year,” she said to him, reaching up to touch his cheek with her mittened hand. “It’s going to be a great year!”
Especially for someone who had just committed his life to Jesus Christ, she added silently. Jake knew who walked with him every step of his life’s way, who had been with him all along, and now was revealed.
The church doors were still open, and the voices of Reverend Barnes, his wife, and some of the First Night team from Nativity floated up from downstairs.
“I’m falling in love with you, Tess. I’m declaring it in front of God Himself because, if you feel the same way, I want His blessing and His guidance on us as we go forward.”
Feel the same way? She could only nod, mute with the happiness that flooded her entire being.
It was a wonderful way to end the year and to start a new one.
Jake swung his head back and forth in amazement. “I can’t get over that. You don’t strike me as the kind of person to watch a football game at all, especially on New Year’s Day.”
He was pouring pretzels and chips into a bowl.
“Word of warning,” she said, laughing at his expression. “I don’t know a thing about football except that if the guy runs the ball to the end of the court—”
“Field,” he corrected.
“Field, that it’s worth more than if he kicks it down there. If there’s logic in that, well, I’ll eat a Giblet Niblet.”
He grinned. “A Giblet Niblet, huh? That alone would make it worth my time to find out.”
“If you want to see me be sick and die, yes, it’d be very entertaining. But to get back to football, the only reason I watch it is so I can sit on the couch and not think except to wonder where the pretzels are.”
“Here they are,” he said, carrying the bowl to the living room. “I’ve never been a pretzel fan, so you can have the whole bowl to yourself.”
“Nothing like a pretzel when the ball hits the twenty-foot line.”
“Yard line. Twenty-yard line. And you probably don’t want to hit it, you want to—hey, you really don’t know anything about football, do you?”
“Nope,” she answered cheerfully. “And I like it that way, so don’t even bother trying to explain it to me. My eyes and my ears both will glaze over, and I’ll be as catatonic as, well, my cat.”
He shook his head. “You are an amazing woman. Truly amazing. So when does the game start?”
“Two.”
“When’s that?”
“After one and before three.”
“Funny woman. Which team are you rooting for?” he asked. Then, noticing her face, he winced. “You’re not rooting for a team, are you?”
“No. I have no idea about either one of them. I just shout and yell and hoot and holler and have a ripsnorting good time.”
He leaned back and looked at her. “I’m still finding this a total contradiction in you. How can you be so wild about a game you know nothing about?”
“My grandparents had a tradition like the one we’re following. I asked Grandma one time why she let Grandpa watch the game and why she sat in with him the entire time, usually doing some sort of needlework. She said her mind wandered all over the place during the game. Even back to when she met Grandpa, after a football game when he was in his uniform and she was selling apples.” She smiled at the memory.
“She was a romantic, was she?” Jake edged down the couch, past a sleepily objecting Cora, to put his arm around Tess. “I like that.”
“She loved Grandpa, that’s for sure,” Tess said. “And that, my dear man, is the story of how Tess Mahoney came to her New Year’s Day tradition.”
The football game took all afternoon. Jake claimed he still couldn’t see how Tess could possibly enjoy the game without knowing the rules of play. She knew all she needed to know, she told him.
“There’s a football,” she said, pointing at the screen. “That guy with the amazing shoulders has it, and everybody else who’s wearing different colors wants it.”
“They’re on the other team,” Jake offered helpfully, but he received a withering glance in return.
“I know that. And I also know those aren’t the guy’s real shoulders, that they’re pads and not really paddy pads but big plastic jobbers that’d probably jar your teeth out if you ran into him face-on, which is why the other guy’s wearing a cage on his head.”
“Helmet,” Jake said helplessly.
“And that one end of the, um, the big football place—”
“Field.”
“Belongs to one side, and the other belongs to the other side, and the players want to kick the ball and make a goal.”
“Touchdown.” His voice was weak.
She shrugged. “So what’s the big deal with rules? What I don’t understand is why they run right into each other and pile on top of one guy. I mean, it’s clear he’s not going to slither out from under this heap of, what, nearly a ton of sweaty men, right?”
“A ton?” Jake looked confused.
“Well, there are ten of them, right?”
“Um, no, well, yeah, sure. There are ten. Close enough.”
“And each one weighs what, two hundred pounds?”
He tried unsuccessfully not to laugh.
She glared at him, and he controlled himself. “You bet. Two hundred pounds.”
“So ten of them would weigh two thousand pounds, which is pretty close to a ton in my book,” she ended triumphantly.
He stopped and stared at her. “Through all that convoluted logic you’ve come to what has to be an absolutely correct answer. Amazing.”
She smiled happily. “And that, Jake Cameron, is why I love football.”
Later, when the team with the green and white uniforms beat the team with the gold and blue ones, as Tess explained it, they sat with the living room illuminated with only the lights from the Christmas tree.
“We need to take that thing down,” he said. “It’s flinging its needles off with abandon.”
“But it’s so pretty,” she objected. “I like to keep it up until Epiphany.”
He stared at her. “Isn’t that January 6?”
“Sure is. What’s wrong with that?”
“That tree will be nothing but a stem and some twigs by then. You’ll have to take it down sometime this week, sorry to say.”
“Um-hum,” she responded lazily, leaning against him. “Cora’s finally used to having her very own tree in the house. You expect me to justify taking it down with the thin excuse that it’s dropping needles and it’s so dry it’s a fire hazard?”
“Take it down while she’s sleeping and put a bag of
Giblet Niblets in its place. She’ll think the Tree Fairy came.”
Tess snorted. “Giblet Niblets indeed. I’ll send her over to breathe in your face—thank you very much.”
Their conversation turned to the events of the night before.
“How many people do you suppose turned out for First Night?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but we have a commission meeting next week; so if the paper doesn’t have the count, I’ll probably find out then.” She stretched languidly. “The committee’s been on hiatus during the holidays, and I still don’t expect there to be much business to report on. So we’ll undoubtedly hear every detail about how the New Year’s celebration went.”
“Next year maybe Panda’s will participate in First Night,” he said, absently tracing one of her auburn curls with his fingertip.
“Sure! You could have a stand somewhere and probably bring in a ton of money.”
A yawn overtook her, and she nearly missed his next words.
“Setting the halo straight.”
At least that’s what she thought he said. It didn’t make any sense, and she was too sleepy to figure out what he meant.
“You’re tired, and I need to get home. Happy New Year, dear Tess,” he whispered. “I’ll lock the door on my way out.”
She pulled Cora’s warm body up and nestled her cheek against the soft fur and let the Christmas lights blur into dreams.
Chapter 18
Cora was not impressed with the swirl of red taffeta Tess proudly displayed.
“You don’t like it, Cora?”
Tess held it up against herself and swished the dress around her legs. That caught Cora’s immediate attention, and a gray ball of fur shot off the bed and attacked the hem of the dress.
“No, no, Cora! You’ll rip it!” Tess gently disengaged Cora’s extended claws from the fabric and grinned at the expression on her cat’s face. “I suppose I shouldn’t have teased you with it like that. Sorry, Sweetie-Cat.” She rubbed Cora’s nose, but the cat glared at her and stalked out of the room.
Tess didn’t know for sure where she and Jake were going this Valentine’s night. From his hints she assumed it was Whispering Winds. Her mouth watered at the memory of the elegant chocolate dessert she’d tasted there.