Dean knew the moment that Ann Billings entered the sanctuary. He’d have known even if heads hadn’t turned, which had prompted his to turn, as well. Something in the air changed when Ann came around. He’d felt it long, long ago, a specific electrical charge as unique to Ann as the smell of her skin, the color of her hair, the taste of her lips. That electricity shimmered through him even as his head turned and his torso twisted, his gaze unerringly targeting the tall, elegantly beautiful woman strutting down the aisle in lemon-yellow shoes with ridiculously tall heels.
The shoes matched the tank top that she wore beneath the slender, charcoal-gray suit that screamed money and class to everyone in the room. The straight skirt stopped demurely at her knees, and the neatly tailored jacket nipped in at the waist in a decidedly feminine fashion. She’d caught her long, vibrant hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck, allowing long tendrils to frame a face made up with the barest touch of rosy lipstick and dark mascara.
She looked like a queen, certainly not a farmer’s wife. Most especially not the wife of a farmer without a farm of his own.
He didn’t have the courage to approach her, but he didn’t have the strength to ignore her, either. Feeling beaten by the sheer, unreachable beauty of her, Dean turned away, pierced to the core, and prayed that she’d keep her distance. He didn’t think he could bear being around her; he didn’t think he could resist if she pressed.
Not a word of the service stuck in his mind. It all flowed right through his thoughts like so much flotsam in a stream. He tried to seize on the theme of the sermon, to lose himself in worship, to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit as he had so often in the past, but all he could feel, all he could think about, all he could focus upon was Ann and the deep, yawning sense of loss that he felt.
Beside him, his grandmother shifted uneasily. She had sensed that all was not well with him. He’d blamed the pending start of the school year in just three days’ time, but he wasn’t sure that Betty bought it. Even Donovan had felt his father’s disquiet. The boy had climbed onto Dean’s lap the previous evening for tickles and hugs, something he hadn’t done in quite a while. He was such a big boy that he had outgrown Dean’s lap, and his laughter, while bright and warming, had seemed just a little forced. Dean had felt grateful but not comforted.
He missed her. He would always miss her, but everything—including that dazzling suit she wore today—said that she didn’t belong with him. Agonizing internally, he opened his Bible to Romans, his favorite book, and thumbed through the pages until his gaze fell on the second verse of the twelfth chapter.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.
The pattern of the world. Did that mean Dean should disregard all these signs he thought he saw, everything that seemed to tell him that he and Ann couldn’t work? Or was that so much wishful thinking on his part? He shook his head, knowing that he couldn’t trust himself to divine anything correctly. His desire got in the way. So much for renewing his mind.
He flipped a few pages over and came to the eighth chapter. Verse twenty-seven said, And He Who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
Dean closed his eyes and simply thought, Intercede for me, Lord. I don’t know what to say or do except...thank You.
After the service he went straight out the side door to get Donovan. As usual, the boy bubbled over with what he’d learned that morning, waving around his coloring papers and story folder. Dean nodded and listened, half hearing as he shepherded his son back to the sanctuary. There he found his grandmother and Ann cozily chatting amongst a knot of three or four other women.
Ann’s gaze zipped unerringly to meet his. Then suddenly Donovan ran across the emptying sanctuary to throw himself at her.
“Ann! You’re back!”
She went down on her knees to greet him, accepting his hug with a wide smile. “Hello, Donovan!”
“You can come, then,” he declared. “Dad said you might not be back in time, but you are, so you can come for the first day of school!”
Ann glanced up at Dean then smiled apologetically at his son. “I can’t promise, Donovan. I’m sorry. I may have to go back before Wednesday.”
“Awwww.” Donovan stepped away, slapping his hands against his thighs in disappointment.
“My father will be very ill when he gets out of the hospital,” Ann explained gently. “My sister can’t drive and take care of him, too. I have to go help. But it may not be on Wednesday. I just don’t know yet.”
“The hospital is in Oklahoma City,” Dean said, gathering Donovan against him. He knew just how the boy felt, but nothing could be done about this. “You’ve been to the city. You remember, don’t you?”
Donovan nodded. “It’s a long way,” he whispered huskily.
“Perhaps Ann would like to join us for Sunday dinner,” Betty suggested, “just in case she’s not able to be here on Wednesday.”
Dean felt as if he’d received a blow to the gut, but Donovan looked up with a grin. “Okay! We got kittens in the barn.”
Ann’s eyebrows jumped. “Kittens?”
“Yeah, four of them,” Donovan reported happily, “but we can’t keep ’em all.”
Ann groaned and looked at Dean. “You won’t tell Meri, will you? She’s insane for cats.”
He couldn’t help but smile. His heart was cracking into pieces, but she could still make him smile. “Not a word,” he solemnly pledged.
“I have to go home and change,” Ann said, cupping Donovan’s chin in her hand.
Betty chuckled. “We’ll see you shortly.”
“Yes, and thank you.”
She looked Dean straight in the eye then, as if willing him to repeat his grandmother’s invitation—or rescind it. He could do nothing more than nod and usher his son up the aisle after his rapidly retreating grandmother.
He didn’t have the courage to welcome Ann or the strength to rebuff her.
Intercede for me. Intercede for me. Oh, please, Lord, intercede for me...
* * *
Dean hadn’t exactly welcomed her at church that morning. Ann had to wonder if he regretted the kisses they’d shared. Maybe he feared that she had developed expectations. She had not—unless wishes were expectations.
After changing her clothes, Ann thought about calling the Pryors to cancel, using the excuse that Callie had prepared a special dinner without her knowledge, which was true. But then every meal Callie prepared seemed to be special, and both Callie and Rex encouraged her to go. Because Rex happened to be on the phone with their father at the time, Wes got in on the act, asking to speak to Ann himself.
“So, Sunday dinner with the Pryors, huh? Well, that’s a tonic to a sick man.”
Now, how could she argue with that, especially as he sounded sick? She brightened her chatter, mentioning that Donovan was campaigning to get her to accompany him and his father to his first day of kindergarten on Wednesday.
“Sounds like a fine idea,” Wes said. “You should go.”
“I’m just not sure about the timing,” Ann countered. “I want to get back to the city before you need me.”
“Kindergarten’s only half-day. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I see no problem,” Wes said. “Take the boy to school. Pick him up again afterward. Then head up here. We can be home before bedtime. Unless that’s too much driving for you in one day.”
“No, no,” Ann hastened to assure him. “That’s fine. If you’re sure.”
“Works for me,” Wes told her. “Now I need a nap.”
Praying for her father’s recovery and thanking God for his wisdom and generosity, Ann got in the truck and drove over to the Pryor place.
The old clapboard house, with its crisp white paint and unusual rounded porch that wrapped two sides of the first floor, seemed in pristine condition. Its pale green metal roof lent an air of gentility to the place, and the guttering, railings, flower beds and brick steps and walkways showed that a great deal of time and attention had been showered on the place over the decades. Easily a hundred years old, the inner windows still bore the wavy glass of the original era. Ann saw no chimney, only a smokestack. Three black rocking chairs, painted to match the trim around the many tall, narrow windows and doors, took pride of place on the porch, pots of colorful flowers spilling over around them.
A screen door at the end of the porch banged open, and Donovan and Digger came running out to greet her. She brought the truck to a stop on a neat patch of gravel hemmed in by railroad ties next to a large, white metal barn with three garage bays and several smaller doors. At the other end of the property she saw a white chicken coop with the same pale green metal roof as the house and barn. The whole tableau made a very sweet picture, especially given the tire swing and tree house in the big hickory shading the porch.
Dean came out of a door in the barn and lifted a hand in what seemed a halfhearted greeting. Ann slid out of the truck and smiled at him.
“Good news,” he announced. “The cat’s moved her kittens to some unknown location.”
Ann chuckled. “You’ll find them.”
“I’m afraid so. Just not today.”
“What a lovely place,” she said then, glancing around. “Neat as a pin.”
“Grandma’s a great believer in orderliness,” he divulged, ducking his head. “There’s iced tea on the porch.”
“Sounds nice.”
Donovan hit her with a hug just as they rounded the rear end of the truck. “Come see my tree house!”
“I saw it when I drove up. Looks cool.”
“Dad and me built it. Watch how you get up.”
He ran to the tree and pulled on a rope. A ramp with rails slid down, braces dropping into place to keep it steady. Donovan half crawled, half ran up it, the dog on his heels.
Ann turned a delighted smile on Dean. “Wow! Did you do that?”
“He was pretty small when we built that,” Dean said. “Too small to climb a ladder. We had to come up with some other way for him to get up there.”
Donovan peeked over the wall of the tree house, calling, “Come on up!”
“Is it all right?”
“Sure. Go on.”
She went up the ramp, finding it solid and steady, and crept through the open doorway on her hands and knees. Standing was possible in the center of the platform, but Dean had put a sloping roof on the thing so that it was sheltered from rain, and the outer walls were only tall enough for her if she stayed on her knees. She sat with her legs folded while Digger lolled in one corner and Donovan showed her his treasures: a huge acorn, a collection of cat-eye marbles in a tin box, several tiny cars, the skull of a squirrel and a trio of “super power” rings.
“I’m gonna sleep out here sometime,” he announced, looking around with satisfaction. “Maybe this year.”
She had the feeling that this event depended completely on his willingness to brave the night out-of-doors on his own.
“That sounds like fun,” Ann said. “I remember the first time I slept outside. My brother and sister and I pitched a tent in our front yard and camped out. I never knew there were so many sounds outside at night.”
“Dad and me, we’ve listened to ’em,” Donovan confirmed sagely. Ann hid her smile, assuming that such listening might be the reason Donovan had not yet slept in his tree house.
The screen door on the house creaked again, and Betty appeared on the porch. “Dinner in fifteen minutes, everyone.”
Ann went up on her knees and waved at Betty, calling down to her, “Anything I can do to help?”
“You and Dean can set the table, if you like,” she called back, squinting up at the shadows beneath the tree.
“I’ll take care of it,” Dean said, starting toward the house.
Ann looked at Donovan, winked and said, “We better go.”
“Come on, Digger,” Donovan said, crawling to the exit. Ann followed.
It was easier to stand going down the ramp than it had been going up. She trailed Donovan across the thick grass to the brick walkway, with its lovely herringbone pattern. Dean waited for her at the top of the porch steps, a tall tumbler of cool iced tea in hand.
He nodded to Donovan, saying, “You go on in and wash up.” Passing the cool glass to Ann, he added, “You just relax out here. Company shouldn’t have to set the table.”
“I don’t mind,” she told him, taking the glass.
“It’s not too warm out here in the shade,” he said, nodding toward one of the rocking chairs as she took a long drink of the cold, sweet tea.
“Oh, that’s good,” she gasped, feeling the icy coolness sweep through her. “Now, lead the way inside. I don’t mind helping out at all.”
Dean’s jaw ground side to side, but he nodded and turned toward the door. She didn’t understand the issue, unless he really just didn’t want her here. He opened the screen and turned the brass knob on the interior door, pushing it open for her. She stepped straight into a long, narrow, pearl-gray room with a potbellied stove in the far corner.
“Does that work?” Ann asked in surprise.
“It does, but it’s a replica, a pellet stove. Grandma turned the original into a planter out back. That’s where she grows her herbs.”
“How ingenious!”
“You’d be surprised how much heat that pellet stove puts out,” Dean told her. “It really knocks down the utility bills in the winter.”
“Interesting. It looks right in here, too.”
He grimaced. “It’s all replicas in here because that’s the style Grandma likes. The dining room furniture, though, that was Grandma’s great-great-grandma’s, and she won’t part with it, no matter how much veneer falls off it or how wobbly it gets.”
“Well, I don’t blame her,” Ann said, walking over to look at an old portrait in an oval frame. “Surely this isn’t a reproduction.”
“No, no. That’s Great-Great-Grandpa Hayden. I almost named my son Hayden, but I wanted him to have his mother’s last name, Jessup, and one family name seemed enough for one tiny baby, so in the end I settled on Donovan.”
“It’s a good name, Donovan Jessup Pryor. But I like Hayden, too. Maybe you can use it for your next child.”
Dean looked positively stricken for a moment. Then he lifted a hand, indicating a door at the end of the room near the stove. “Um, this way.”
They walked over a rag rug atop a gleaming hardwood floor. Ann noted delicate crocheted doilies and enameled chinaware atop colonial-style tables. Somehow, the flat-screen TV atop the buffet-cum-entertainment center in front of the humpbacked sofa managed to look intrinsic and cozy in the old-fashioned room.
As they entered the dining room, Dean pointed to a chair placed against the wall and said, “Don’t sit there. It’s not safe. In fact, only the chairs around the table are sturdy enough to sit in.”
Because there were five chairs around the table, Ann saw no problem. The size of the sideboard and china cabinet told her that the ornate, rectangular table was missing two, perhaps three, leafs. Ann went straight to the china cabinet, where Betty was setting out plates.
“What a magnificent piece of furniture.”
“It’s English,” Betty told her proudly. “Been in my family seven generations, eight now with Donovan. Great-Great-Grandpa Dilman Hayden bought it used for Great-Great-Grandma Rosalie at an estate sale in Boston. She gave it to her daughter, Mary Nell, who gave it to her daughter, Susanna, who gave it to her son, Arnold, who passed it down to me. Dean’s mother cares nothing for it, but his aunt Deana and I agree that it ought to go to him and then, hopefully, to Donovan or another of Dean’s children.”
“Grandma,” Dean grumbled, “Ann’s not interested in our antiques or our family history.”
“But I am,” Ann refuted brightly. “I think it’s beautiful furniture, and I love the history of it. I think you should have it completely restored.”
“And how do you suggest we pay for that?” Dean snapped, his hand going to the back of his neck. “The last estimate we got was over a thousand dollars, so we’ll just have to make do. Or eat in the kitchen.” Betty sent him a troubled look.
Too late, Ann realized that Dean might fear she would find his home and its contents below her standards.
“We eat in the kitchen all the time,” she said with a shrug, setting aside her tea to carry the stacked plates to the table, “but if we had this table, I’d insist that we eat in the dining room, even if we had to sit on benches.”
Glimpsing the triumphant smile that Betty shot Dean, Ann walked around the table, setting the plates, which were painted with delicate pink peonies and drooping bluebells, onto blue place mats. Dean brought around blue cut-glass tumblers and grass-green napkins rolled neatly inside brass rings adorned with pink china peonies.
“It looks like a garden,” Ann said, stepping back.
“Grandma likes her ‘pretties,’ as she calls them,” Dean commented, placing a set of brass salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table.
“I can see that,” Ann told him, walking over to finger a ruffled doily beneath an impressive soup tureen on the sideboard. “My mother would have loved this place. I can almost see her here.”
“Oh?”
Ann nodded and put her back to the sideboard. “I didn’t get her domestic gene, I’m afraid, but I love the history of these things and the continuity of them.”
“Aunt Deana likes modern stuff,” Dean said, trailing a finger along the edge of the table, “but I don’t mind the old stuff, so long as it’s serviceable.”
“If you take care of things, then they remain serviceable,” she pointed out.
“I do my best,” Dean said shortly.
“I know you do.”
Donovan came into the room with a basket full of hot biscuits. “Daddy, can I have a biscuit with butter? Please? It won’t ruin my dinner, I promise. Grandma says for you to come get the roast.”
“I’ll get the roast,” Dean said, looking askance at his son, “and the butter. Ann, would you see to it that he gets into his booster seat?”
“Happy to.”
Donovan didn’t need help. He was sitting in his booster seat with an open biscuit on his plate before she could get the chair out from under the table. She shoved it back again while he picked around the edges of the steaming bread. Dean brought in the butter dish and the pot roast then went out again to help Betty carry in the vegetables and tea. Ann buttered Donovan’s biscuit and watched him quickly devour the thing, smacking his lips and closing his eyes in ecstasy. Ann had to laugh.
“He loves Grandma’s biscuits even more than Callie’s cookies,” Dean said, placing a pitcher of tea and a bowl of ice cubes on the sideboard.
“Mmm-hmm,” Donovan agreed, licking butter from his fingers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed anything that much,” Ann said.
“Wait until she brings in the honey to go with the biscuits,” Dean said, leaning close to speak softly into Ann’s ear. Donovan caught the salient word, however, and crowed with delight.
“Honey!”
“After you eat your vegetables,” Dean dictated.
Donovan wiggled excitedly in his chair and picked up his fork. Shaking his head, Dean walked around and pulled out a chair for Ann then did the same for his grandmother, who entered the room just then with a platter of vegetables to go with the pot roast. He took his own seat at the head of the table. Ann felt sure that he’d been occupying that chair since his grandfather had died. Dean had been all of, what, fifteen years of age then? As he clasped his hands together and bowed his head to pray over the meal, Ann recalled what her father had said about him.
A man fully grown. That was how her father had described Dean, and as usual Wes was correct. Dean had been the owner of this property since the age of fifteen, and when he’d wound up a father at the age of twenty, he’d taken responsibility for his actions, listened to wise counsel, found a solution to his problems and gone to work, surrendering himself to Christ in the process. She, on the other hand, had been a Christian almost her entire life, the product of a loving, two-parent home, raised with every advantage, and she’d let petty insecurities drive her away from her home and the people who loved her most. She felt so foolish.
There was grown, and there was mature. In some ways, Dean was much older than she was.
It was time for her to actually grow up.