DANA WENT OUTSIDE TO THE FIREPLACE ON THE NORTH side of the cabin to start a fire and mull over the things Reece had said. Six minutes later the fire crackled like popcorn, and she slipped off her shoes and held up her blue stockinged feet to let the flames make them toasty warm.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Marcus stood in the doorway.
“Not a bit.” She motioned to the chairs on her right. “I’d enjoy it.”
Marcus settled into a tan wicker chair.
Dana adjusted her sweatshirt. “What’s the toughest thing about being here for you?”
“Being absent from my wife and daughters. Fighting the feeling I should be with them right now instead of here.” A shadow flitted over the professor’s ruddy complexion.
He wasn’t attractive in the classic sense. His ears were a bit too big for his face, his head a bit too small for his body, but his countenance was full of trust. And that was attractive. He would have been a wonderful older brother.
“Their names?”
“Kat is my wife, Abbie is my older daughter, and Jayla is the younger.” Marcus pulled a photo out of his back pocket and stared at the picture for at least ten seconds before handing it to her. Kat had auburn hair and a radiant smile, as did the girls. She guessed his daughters’ ages at ten and twelve.
“They’re beautiful.” She handed the photo back to him. “You’re the only testosterone in the house, huh?”
“That wasn’t always the situation.” Marcus sighed, grabbed a piece of wood, tossed it into the fire, and stared at the flames. “But it is now.”
Whoops. Everyone had their hidden sorrows. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—”
“Don’t be. What indication have I given you that you might know?” He glanced at her with sad eyes. “There is no harm in asking. But I’ll reserve the right to tell you about it till another day. What about for you? What’s the toughest part?”
Dana sighed. “Having Brandon here, as you might imagine. Regardless of whether it’s part of some divine plan, it’s still a sizable sliver in my heart. No one will ever be able to tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“Because of your past together?” Marcus shifted the logs and sat back in his chair, gazing at the river.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do you care to share your story?”
Dana shook her head. It was the last thing she wanted to do. But in seconds the feeling changed. Maybe it was being at Well Spring. Maybe it was because seeing Brandon had stirred everything up again, and she needed to talk to someone about it. Maybe it was because there was something about the professor that made him trustworthy. Should she? The silence stretched to a minute.
“I worked at Spirit 105.3—”
“Really? My wife listens to that station with great frequency. You were employed there?”
“For seven years. Then three years ago I took a job to manage the sales department of another station in Seattle.”
“Was that a beneficial move?”
“I’m not sure. I know it was the right move. But I miss the people at Spirit. I still have a lot of friends there.”
“What caused your departure?”
“Personal reasons.” Dana pointed toward the cabin.
“I see.” Marcus leaned forward and tossed another log on the fire. “He was involved with the station?”
She pulled her legs onto the chair and sat crisscrossed as the memory swelled up in her mind. Her assistant, Rebecca, had rushed into her office that day five years ago waving her hands like she was on a parade float with her arms programmed at quadruple speed.
“He just pulled into the parking lot! Our parking lot!”
“Who?” Dana asked.
“Brandon Scott. He’s doing a private set for the air staff and programming and anyone else in the station who wants to come.”
“That’s right, I was going to try to make that. I like his music.”
“Try?” Rebecca grabbed Dana’s hands and pulled her into the hallway. “No, no, no, you must do.”
Dana slid into a chair in the back just after Brandon started his set. He was cute. And she liked his laugh as he bantered with the group. After his third song, he set his hands on top of his guitar and glanced at the twenty or thirty of them and smiled. “You guys rock. Truly. This is so fun for me. Thanks for the invite.” His gaze settled on Dana and stayed there longer than on the others. Quite a bit longer.
He launched into a song about running the wilds together, and something inside her stirred. If she were still in her teens, she would have called it a crush. Now she wasn’t sure how to define it. As Brandon sang he continued to glance at her and the feeling inside her grew.
As he played the rest of his songs, she fell in love with his music. When she shook his hand before he left the station, she had the distinct impression she would be falling in love with him.
She sighed, folded her hands, and stared at Marcus. “The next day at work I got a rose from Brandon with an invitation to have lunch. That turned into dinner, which turned into beach walks and movies and eventually a diamond on my finger. Then one day six months later, three months before the wedding day, he showed up at my home and shredded my heart, and here we are.”
“That’s why you left Spirit 105.3?”
“I couldn’t handle hearing his music all the time and walking past that signed poster of him in the hallway every day.”
“What were his reasons for ending the engagement?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Marcus frowned and stared at her. “An explanation for his actions wasn’t given?”
“Nothing more than he was sorry, please forgive him, and this was ‘what he had to do.’” Dana tossed the book she’d had in her lap onto the chair to her right. “I asked him six more times why, and six times he answered, ‘I just know I have to.’”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
They sat in silence watching the fire die down.
“It’s interesting to observe the way he looks at you,” Marcus said.
“How?”
“Like a man who has lost his greatest treasure.”
Dana shook her head. “You need to get those glasses of yours replaced with ones that help you see more clearly.”
“I realize that sentiment might be a challenge to hear, but it’s true.” Marcus stood and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’m going inside to attempt to get more of the slumber I didn’t get last night. Thanks for revealing part of your story to me.”
Dana stayed at the fire for another twenty minutes, trying to ignore Marcus’s comment about the way Brandon looked at her. She found more failure than success. But even if Brandon did still have feelings for her, it didn’t matter. She would never let him back into her heart. She would never let anyone back in ever again. Being abandoned was her calling in life, and she’d learned to live with it.
Dana stood and stirred the fire, then tried to squash the feeling of despair sloshing around her mind and heart as she walked toward her bedroom. She should be thrilled. She was seeing parts of God she’d never imagined. She was in a stunning setting. But her heart ached.
She let the thought spread through her soul. Because it was true.
You will always be alone.
She flopped down on the bed and stared at the knots in the pine wood on the wall to her right. Part of her wanted to stay. Step further in. See if God would or could bring healing. Another part dreaded the idea because it would mean opening up. And she couldn’t do that.
You don’t belong here. He tricked you. He can’t be trusted. You know that now.
Reece. Some friend. No, he hadn’t lied to her. But he’d deceived her. He could have told her Brandon would be here. And she had to make budget. Had to!
They’ll fire you.
No. It wouldn’t happen. She would develop a promotion that would loosen the purse strings. Write a package advertisers would snatch up by the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it needed to be in motion today. Not next Monday. Now.
She pulled out her cell phone and checked her e-mail out of habit. A message flashed: NO SERVICE, COULD NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. Tomorrow she would borrow Reece’s car. Drive out, write the promotion, and get it to the station. She’d be there and back in two or three hours easy. Then she could breathe. Then she could open herself up to what God had for her at Well Spring.
Dana sat up and squinted at the window. A small square envelope was taped to the top right corner. She slipped off the bed, pulled the note off the window, and opened it in the wicker chair in the corner of the room.
Dana,
I’ve never been talented with words, so I won’t try to make this note one of eloquence. And I’ve never had an overabundance of tact or subtlety, so forgive my bluntness.
You’re screaming to get out of here. Every emotion you have is telling you to flee. But you must not leave. Stay in the wound. It’s the only way to find healing.
The enemy is likely throwing thoughts your way that are not your own. Fight it.
And Brandon is not your enemy.
Give it time, please?
Put everything from home out of your mind—including your radio station. Do not let the temporal distract you as you’re delving into the eternal.
The issue causing your stress at the moment isn’t that the station needs you—it’s that you need the station. It has become your idol, the thing you turn to for assurance, for worth, for your joys and even your sorrows. And it keeps you from feeling totally alone.
Now you are in an environment where you are stripped of the caffeine-like shots of e-mail. There’s no promotions director or client or salesperson needing your immediate attention. Here you are not needed at all. But you are wanted. You are valued. You are desired by God himself.
And you are not alone.
Breakthrough is coming. I promise.
Reece
For a man who supposedly didn’t have a way with words, Reece did quite well. She let the note fall to her lap. She wasn’t sure whether to hate the man for reading her mind once again, or like him for telling the truth.