Marrying Minister Right

Chapter Sixteen

Michael did not look back as he reached the walkway to the parsonage. His shoulders back and his head high, he still made such a lonely figure, a dark silhouette against the outline of his simple home.

Heather, her heart aching, wanted to call out to him, but she didn’t know what she could possibly say. Should she shout out “I want to believe you, but I don’t dare” or “You just don’t get how badly hurt I have been”? Neither seemed adequate.

Or fair.

She sighed and headed for the church so she could gather a few things from her temporary office. Nothing left for her now but to go home for the day.

Home? Heather’s home was not in High Plains. Given what she had just learned, that she could not trust the one man she wanted to trust with her whole heart with something as simple as looking out for a kid’s feelings, she knew now it never would be.

That made her pick up her pace toward the church, shoulders back and chin up.

“Avery? I’m sorry about how this has turned out. Let’s talk.” Compassion, worry and maturity met in Michael’s voice as shouted to be heard inside the house as he bounded up the front steps.

He was a good man. Heather could not deny that. Michael really cared about his niece, and clearly he had learned from his past mistakes. As soon as he found Avery he would sort things out, make them right.

But what about her? What about their friendship?

I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Colt Ridgeway’s words echoed in her thoughts. She put her hand on the rail and her foot on the first step, then looked toward the parsonage.

What about them having more than a friendship? He had let that go so easily. How could she have imagined he could have cared for her like that? No one else ever had.

Just then the scent of roses and fresh greenery filled her senses. She looked down to find a smattering of torn and scattered petals under her feet.

“Avery,” she whispered, visually tracing the tattered bits of pink and green up the stairs and into the church. She hesitated for only a heartbeat to consider going to get Michael, then charged up the stairs, through the main doors, the foyer and up to the doors of the sanctuary.

She pressed her palm to the old wood that, through the generations, so many people from High Plains had touched. She shut her eyes and bowed her head in prayer.

“Please, Lord, please, go before me in love. Surround me in Your strength. Let Your wisdom shine through me and may Your goodness and mercy follow me always,” she whispered.

She opened her eyes and in that moment imagined all the hands that had been laid upon this very door over the years. On the happiest of days and the saddest. In times of celebration and commemoration. Bringing every human emotion to lay before the one God who would welcome them into His arms no matter how poor or how ragged, how unloved or unworthy they may have felt themselves to be.

They had all crossed this threshold, just as Heather had on her would-be wedding day. Now she had to do it again. Could she?

A child was hurting, feeling all alone in the world. Heather chose to take her own advice. “Sometimes God’s time means you cannot wait.”

With that she took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

The sanctuary had changed very little since she had run out of it ten years ago. Sunshine, tinted red and yellow by the stained-glass windows, illuminated the walls. It gave a gleam to the wood of the ceiling, the pews, the pulpit and the softly lit cross on the back wall.

Heather held her breath. Her cheeks flushed. She took a step, faltered then looked down, half expecting the ground to have turned to quicksand. Finding instead the more worn and definitely dustier old maroon carpeting she remembered now littered with more rose petals, she rallied and went farther in.

“Avery?” she whispered.

Nothing.

“I know you’re in here. I can see where you’ve been tearing at the bouquet and dropping leaves and petals.” Heather took another step.

No response.

“Your uncle Michael is worried about you.”

At last something between a cry and derisive “ha” came from the front row.

Heather hurried forward to find the young girl curled up on her side on the pew, clutching the bouquet the way a younger child might cling to a teddy bear. She approached cautiously.

Avery did not flee or flinch or even raise her head. She just lay there, her shoulders shaking with every gut-wrenching, silent sob.

Heather knelt before the pew and ran her hand over Avery’s soft brown hair. “I know. It seems like a boneheaded move on your uncle’s part not to tell you about the change of plans right away, but he didn’t do it to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“You know?” Heather’s hand stilled. She had expected rage and contempt from the girl toward Michael, but this quiet, accepting admission threw her. “Then why did you run away from him?”

“I didn’t. I ran…I ran here.” She sat up at last and sniffled. “Because Uncle Michael said that if you have God on your side, you will be able to stand up to all the miserable junk in the world that tries to knock you down.”

The simplicity of the way the girl had just encapsulated Michael’s whole dedication homily made Heather smile, just a teeny bit. “That’s right.”

“Well.” The girl swiped her hand under her nose. “I was knocked down, wasn’t I?”

“Yep.” Heather nodded. Stroked the girl’s sweat-dampened hair back from her pale forehead then looked around and found a box of tissues at the end of the row, kept there for funerals and weddings and christenings and perhaps particularly penetrating sermons, any time a member of the congregation might get weepy. She tugged free a couple of sheets and handed one to Avery. “You were thrown for a real loop.”

“It’s not fair. I don’t think anything can help me stand this,” she moaned and in the next breath threw herself, blubbering, into Heather’s arms.

Startled, Heather tensed. Then she remembered her own prayer and the passage from Ephesians that Michael had quoted when they dedicated the land to rebuild the town hall. It seemed only right that God would bring her back to this sanctuary where she had once run from her own pain and disappointment and give her the chance to do what she had not done before. To stand. She could do this.

“Life isn’t always fair, kiddo.” She wrapped Avery into a deep, comforting hug. “But you can stand it. You can stand firm in your convictions. But to do that, you may need a little help from your friends here. Like me. Like your uncle Michael.”

Avery sniffled and pulled away. “It’s good to have friends, but I…I…need…I should be able to count on…my…my…”

The word seem to strangle in her throat.

But Heather did not need to hear the word. She felt it to the very core of her being, felt the girl’s pain, and for the first time in her life, gave voice to the stark and brutal truth that she had pushed down for so long.

“Mom.” She finished the girl’s thought. “You should have been able to count on your mom. And your dad. They should have been the ones to tell you this, no matter what they feared you might think of them afterward.”

Saying it aloud seemed to cement everything in Heather’s mind. She knew now that the pain she had carried, the anger toward her father, John and especially Michael had been misdirected. The person she should have been able to always trust, who should have always been honest and supportive of her, was her own mother. The fact that her mom had kept the truth from her was the real reason Heather never really felt worthy of being loved.

Why had her own mother not been the one to tell her about her birth father? Even though they had reached their own kind of peace at the end of his life, she had to wonder why Edward hadn’t owned up to the truth and helped her cope with it after her mother’s death.

Those questions, unasked, had gnawed at Heather and torn her up inside for far too long. Her stubbornness in blaming Michael had allowed her to ignore them. That only served to keep the wounds forever fresh.