Even though she felt like normal life was beyond her grasp, Emily flipped the sign to Open Saturday morning and pulled up the shades at West of Paris. How on earth was she supposed to function today? How does anyone play helpful shopkeeper when her heart’s been twisted into knots?
The new locks were actually rather pretty—Janet had done a fine job. A brass plate around the knobs even hid the spot where Mark had tried to pry open the door. The table with the broken leg was splinted with some duct tape and paint stirrers Janet had brought over and covered with a tablecloth that ran to the floor so no one could tell.
But Emily knew.
The linens were all neatly back in their stacks, and the scratches in the floor from the broken glass were almost impossible to see. Short of the missing cash register, any casual customer would probably have no idea anything was wrong.
Tidying up West of Paris was the easy fix.
Emily had absolutely no idea what to do about Gil. How to face him. She’d thought she had prepared herself for whatever dark patches his past held. But she hadn’t been at all prepared for something so personally painful. She was supposed to be getting past that. She’d just given a speech that was supposed to prove she was getting past that. Past the years of detesting whoever it was that had stood by and watched Ash die. Now, it was as though it had all happened yesterday—the wounds reopened instantly.
She’d been a wreck when she came back from the farm. Her emotions warred within her all night. She barely slept. Despite her horror at his admission, the depth of her feelings for him hadn’t disappeared. She couldn’t understand how those feelings could exist along with the shock at his crime. When he’d said “accessory to felony,” she’d never thought it could mean “accessory to murder.” Somehow, her brain wouldn’t allow her even to consider the possibility.
It all seemed too impossibly cruel.
She sorted distractedly through a delivery of greeting cards, trying to do something productive. What was this tangle of feelings? There was wonder, she thought as she put the children’s birthday cards into their assigned slots on the display. Her heart had reopened itself to wondrously new yet surprisingly familiar feelings. There was sadness—mourning, even, for lost innocence—which was silly, for who comes into love innocent at her age? Who doesn’t bring the past’s wounds into a second love?
Emily removed the leftover Valentine’s Day cards from the display. Did she love Gil? Could she love Gil, knowing what she knew now? Could she ever think of him as different from the bystander at Ash’s murder? Nothing she felt made any sense—she only knew she felt off-kilter and confused.
There was a sliver of thankfulness, she thought as she placed the thank-you cards in their spaces. Part of her believed she’d never feel for any man again. She had convinced herself that what she had with Ash was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
The cards that captured her mood, sadly enough, were the get-well-soon ones. She did feel ill. Wounded, broken and unwell. But this didn’t feel as if it was going to get well anytime soon.
What have You sent me, Father? I thought my heart had died along with Ash, and You give it to a damaged man who risks his money and reputation on criminals? Someone with a past so hurtful to me? I can’t live with that. Surely You know I’d want anything but this. How could You bring that speech into my life and then do this? Fool me into believing I could finally forgive and then show me how I can’t? I can’t trust Your plan for my life when You do this to me.
The truth of that thought cut her so sharply she sank to the floor amid the boxes and wrapping. I’ve never trusted Your plan for my life, have I? Not since Ash. I pretend to have faith, but only as long as it’s comfortable.
Why?
The answer was awful. Because I think Your plan for me failed.
O Lord, it’s true: I think You failed me. People of faith can’t really believe that, can they? Emily leaned back against the counter and stared into space, stunned by the discovery of her own mistrust. Looking back on the years since the murder, though, Emily could clearly see she’d rarely trusted God at all. She’d never let Him guide her, only presented Him with requests. Submitted her solutions for approval. What did she do every morning? Hand God a to-do list in the guise of praying over it. Tell Him what she wanted. Had she ever once even asked Him what His plan was for her life? Listened instead of petitioned?
Never.
“I’ve spent my whole life telling You what to do,” she whispered to the air, as if she needed to hear it aloud to grasp the enormity of it.
Was it so surprising that God brought her to a place where she had no idea what to do next? Where no option made sense? Where she didn’t have one of her famous solutions?
To a place where she had no choice but to hush and listen?
There, on the floor, Emily Montague sought God.
For real. Maybe for the first time in her life.
My life is Yours. It’s always been Yours, but I snatched it back when Ash died. And I’ve made a mess of it.
These sins felt too large for her own faith, too huge for the theology she had. Truth didn’t feel like truth anymore. She felt as though she’d just stared down the limits of her faith and found herself beyond what she could handle. Here, now, she could barely be sure she had the faith to hope things would sort themselves out.
I’ve never really laid it all at Your feet, have I? I’ve never, not once, prayed “Thy will be done.” So I’ll start now. This whole mess—all I am, all I’ve done, all I’m up against—it’s all Yours. All Gil is, all he’s done, all he means to me—they’re all Yours, too. Have Your will in this. Teach me to listen. I’m not sure I know how.
“Thy will be done.” She said it over and over as she sat on the floor of her shop, hoping it would sink in.
Nothing on the farm seemed willing to cooperate. Nobody was allowed off the grounds, not even for church. As hard as it was to skip worship, Gil felt a little distance was the safest thing for everybody. He tried to read a few Bible passages aloud in front of the fireplace Sunday morning, but no one paid attention. Unsettled by Mark’s transgressions and bored by being on lockdown, the guys bickered constantly all weekend. A tractor broke, his computer froze twice and he was so distracted he deleted twelve files instead of backing them up. He wasn’t hungry, the corrections department was breathing down his neck and he couldn’t sleep.
By Sunday night, Gil was so frustrated and miserable. He walked into the living room after midnight to light a fire because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
He stopped in the doorway, frozen by the sight of Steven sitting on the floor in front of a single lit log in the fireplace.
And an open Bible.
“Don’t take this away, God,” Steven was saying quietly. “Mark screwed up somethin’ fierce, and we’re gonna lose Homestretch. I know I’ve been a jerk and all, but Gil keeps tellin’ us You know what to do with jerks so I reckon You can fix this. You gotta fix this. I…um…well, I need this place. I can’t go back. So I’m begging You, don’t let a jerk like Mark and take Homestretch down. And don’t let Gil give up—You and I both know he wants to. Just don’t let him, okay?”
Gil stood still, stunned by what he heard.
Steven. The last guy on earth he’d think to come round.
What had he said to Emily? Just when I think I finally found the batch that can’t be turned around, one guy turns. That’ll start the rest of them, and it works out.
Gil left the room as silently as he’d entered it, leaving Steven to get acquainted with the God, who’d been waiting for him for years.
Alone in his room, Gil stared into the night sky for hours. Then, just before dawn, he drove to Emily’s house.
Just to look at it. Because he needed to.
Emily was getting a bit annoyed. Her epiphany should have solved something. Given her at least a decent night’s sleep or dawned a new day with more clarity.
It didn’t. Nor did church. Sunday was a blur, and Sunday night had lagged on just as sleepless as the night before. She’d woken Monday still trapped inside a blizzard of emotions. Half of her was so weary she wanted to throw her arms around Gil and tell him nothing was beyond God’s mercy and it would work out. But the other half was raw enough to walk away from him, from his complicated past and all his costly risks, and pretend they’d never gotten close.
The most excruciating thing of all was that she knew she could do neither.
She couldn’t go back to him until she’d settled the matter of his record completely in her heart. She owed him that much. But even if God somehow managed to settle that issue, was that everything? What if more secrets lurked in his past? Could she handle it?
She looked up from her kitchen table and gazed out her windows, seeking the comfort from the sunrise.
He was there.
Gil was there, standing alone across the street. Oblivious to the weather, hands stuffed into his jean pockets, he stared at her house.
He looked as miserable as she felt.
She stared at him for a moment, kidding herself that he couldn’t see into the kitchen and see her. Even with a great distance between them, their eyes locked. It was a full minute, maybe more, before she walked slowly to the front door and opened it.
Gil crossed the street, barely taking his eyes off her, and walked up to the gate. He came no farther, though, standing on the sidewalk, leaving her with her arms wrapped around her bathrobe, feeling the cold February air surrounding her in the doorway.
It was awful, standing there aching for a solution or the right thing to say and coming up empty.
“How are you?” His voice was low and unsteady.
The question was so ridiculous that it made the corner of her mouth turn up in a half smile. “Terrible.”
“Me, too.”
They held each other’s gaze for a sore moment, before he looked down at the sidewalk. “I’d make it different if I could,” Gil said finally. “But I can’t.”
“No.” Emily could barely gulp the word out, her voice was so tight. It’d be so simple to pull him into the warmth of her kitchen, to tell a half-truth and say it’d all be okay, that she’d get over it. But it wasn’t simple, she wasn’t sure she’d get over it, and she wasn’t sure it’d be okay. After a long moment she found the right question to ask. “Are you sorry?” It seemed a foolish, almost insulting question, but she needed to hear his answer. Maybe those words would be a place to start.
He didn’t need to ask “about what.” He didn’t even need to speak an answer, actually. The pain and resignation in his eyes went miles beyond anything words could hold. “You’ve no idea,” he said so quietly she barely heard him.
“I want it all to be okay,” she said, her voice suddenly catching at the hopelessness of it all, “but…”
“But…” He wasn’t cuing her to finish.
Not everything comes out in the wash. It was an odd thought, but then again it made a peculiar sense for the moment. Some stains set in.
Emily thought of her grandmother’s old aprons, hung with reverence along one wall of her kitchen. They were thin and soft with age, but she kept them hanging there. She would trace her fingers around the stains after her grandmother died. She knew the stains—what they were, how they got there, the love and labor that made them. Those aprons wouldn’t have been the same if the stains had come out.
But it wasn’t the same thing.
She couldn’t pretend it was the same thing.
He gave her one last look—a look that felt far too much like goodbye—before he turned and walked toward his truck. The emptiness of the sky after he left made Emily sit down and cry until she had no tears left.