Love Starts with Elle Read online

  The scenario sounded ludicrous. “Why would they want a puppet? Jeremiah, I wasn’t around long, but I saw the church, visited with the people. They loved Jesus, wanted to impact the community for good.”

  “The congregation, yes. But the leaders are manipulators, a bunch of Jezebels. If the pastor opposes them, or executes his own plan without their expressed written consent, they go into action like a Microsoft virus, poisoning the other leaders and key members of the congregation.”

  “And no one stops them?”

  “Like who? If the pastor can’t . . . I had two-thirds of the church believing these leaders—four couples in all—rode a chariot into God’s throne room every night and returned with unspeakable oracles. The remaining third knew better but were either intimidated, naturally, or had been burned once and weren’t going to go there again.”

  “Jeremiah, that’s horrible.”

  “And I witnessed them in action.” Jeremiah got up from the table. “Can we walk?”

  Elle kicked off her shoes and joined him where sand met pine needles. His feet slipped in the sand as they walked into the head wind.

  Jesus, what do I say to him?

  After a long silence, he said, “Now I understand why the church went through senior pastors like melting ice on a hot August afternoon.”

  “What about your friends? The ones who recommended you?”

  “They are a part of it.” Jeremiah stopped as if his next step required too much energy. His gaze was lost out over the sea. “Maurice figured I’d go for the television thing and let him run everything else. The sad thing is, Elle, they don’t understand what they are doing. They love Jesus, but are blinded by their own ambition.”

  “It’s like a movie script; I can’t believe it.” Elle stood with him, arms crossed, sea salt coating her skin. “But I know you wouldn’t be here otherwise.” She looked up at him. “Are you okay?”

  “Wrestling with God, bitter, but working through it. Why did it appear to be a great opportunity if it was all going to fall apart?” He touched her shoulder. “I’m glad you weren’t there.”

  “I’ve asked myself a similar question all summer. If we weren’t right for each other, why didn’t God intervene sooner?”

  But how else would I have rented the cottage and met Heath?

  “And what did you conclude?” Hand in his pockets, he started walking again. Sadness shadowed his high cheekbones.

  Elle stared at the back of his shirt, pressed against him by the wind, and filtered his question through her last thought . . . “How else would I have met Heath?” Her breath caught for a moment.

  Jeremiah stopped in the sand, twisting sideways to look at her. “Elle? Did I lose you? Must have been some conclusion.”

  She flashed a smile, moving toward him. “Sorry, trapped by a random thought. No big conclusion, Jer. It’s just I discovered that sometimes falling apart is the will of God, the opportunity to draw near, to grow in love.”

  He pinched his brow into a V. “Not sure I signed up for that version of Christianity.”

  “Me neither, but what if God meant for your Dallas church plan to fall apart? For my wedding and gallery aspirations to come up short? What if failing is really succeeding?”

  “Unto what gain?” His tone mocked a little.

  “Godly gain. He who loses his life for Christ will gain it.”

  Jeremiah regarded her, then shook his head. “I gave up football to answer the call. You sold your gallery, rented the cottage to follow Him with me.”

  “Maybe that was only the first part of the journey.”

  “I’m taking a job at FSU. Assistant athletic director. One of my old coaches is there. He opened the door.”

  “You’re leaving the ministry?”

  “Seems it left me.” Jeremiah bent down midstride, picking up a shell, and flung it at the water. “Three years of divinity training, shot.”

  Elle hurried to walk in front of him, to see his face. “One bad experience and you quit? Jeremiah, where’s the heart of a star athlete, the one who breaks tackles striding for the goal?”

  “Quoting my own sermon to me won’t change my mind.”

  Elle observed as he flung another shell. But they were too light for the breeze and dropped to the beach without flying.

  “You accepted already?”

  “Ministry either breaks a man or makes him, and I’m getting out before I’m broken.”

  “Maybe that’s the point, Jeremiah. Brokenness.”

  Jeremiah lifted his hand toward her hair as it blew across her cheeks, but dropped it before touching her. “I can be broken in Tallahassee as much as any place.”

  “You know what I loved about you when I met you?”

  “My dashing good looks?” He smiled, half teasing, half hunting.

  “I loved your confidence. You knew your calling. You were strong where I was weak.” The wind picked up, wrapping Elle’s skirt around her knees.

  “Just because I’m changing my career doesn’t change who I am, Elle. I can be there for you, help you find what you’re looking for.”

  “I’m praying my way there, Jer, and I like the journey, bumps and all.”

  The dipping sun unrolled an orange and red banner across the blue expanse, and in this place of beauty, Elle grieved for Jeremiah. Not only did the Dallas experience wreck his ministry, but it seemed to have looted his personal relationship with the one called Christ.

  Jeremiah swept her to him with a single-arm embrace. “Elle, I love you and I need you. The night we broke up, you asked me to quit the church instead of you, and I refused. I made the wrong choice. But not once did I doubt proposing. You were the one for me from the first moment I saw you. Elle, you’re the one for me now.” He bent toward her, hesitating, then carefully dusted her lips with his. “Marry me.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  She didn’t sit in her usual spot, second pew from the front, right side. Instead, Elle lay prostrate on the chapel floor before the altar, nose pressed into the worn carpet, dark spots forming where her tears landed.

  Sleep had evaded her most of the night as she’d tossed and turned, tangled in the sheets. Finally, at five thirty, she’d showered and driven to the chapel.

  Jeremiah’s surprise return was one thing. But his surprise proposal jerked her back into a world she’d packed up and labeled “Over. Move On.”

  Did she want to marry him? While she’d spent the past three months healing, forgetting him, had she really? Just seeing him awakened dormant feelings, wants, and desires.

  “Jesus, what do I do?”

  Still face down on the worn carpet, Elle fumbled for the tissue box. It was there somewhere. Glancing up between tangled strands of hair, she found it just outside of reach. She crawled over, pulled one free, and blew her nose.

  “What’s troubling you, Elle?”

  She turned. Miss Anna watched her from the second-row pew, all peace and prettiness in a faded blue dress with white flowers. “Seems we’ve traded places. You at the altar, me in the pew.”

  “Jeremiah showed up last night, Miss Anna.” Elle walked on her knees over to her mentor, box of tissues in hand.

  “What did he want?”

  Elle blew her nose again. “To marry me.”

  “Goodness.” Miss Anna patted the bench and moved over. “What did you say?”

  “What could I say? I told him I need to think and pray. And in his usual confident way, he said he’d wait for me, no matter how long.”

  “My, my. That boy was always so determined.”

  “He’s bitter, Miss Anna. His experience with the Dallas church was not good. He quit.”

  “I see.”

  But his overtures, the expression in his eyes, his tenderness of his touch lingered in her thoughts. “The things that drove us apart are no longer a factor. He is genuinely sorry about what happened, but I’m not sure I’m the one to walk him through his valley.”

  Did her confession sound unloving? Didn’t love c
onquer all, keep no record of wrong? Never quit? Never fail?

  “A bitter man only grows more bitter unless he surrenders everything—his pride, his reputation, his identity to God,” Miss Anna said without a hmm of wonder.

  “But aren’t we supposed to love one another, help one another?”

  “Jeremiah needs to figure this mess out the way you did, by speaking to Jesus.”

  “Were you ever in love, Miss Anna?” Elle dabbed the tears from her cheeks with a balled-up tissue, thinking she’d spent two months praying with this woman and knew nothing of her.

  “Once upon a time.”

  “Miss Anna, you’re smiling. Look at you.” Elle bent forward to see her face, curious about the man who made her blush like a young woman all these years later.

  She wondered if Jeremiah’s name did the same to her cheeks.

  “My father insisted I go on with my education after high school, so I went up to the College of Charleston. Oh, Elle, I had a ball. It was after the war and campus was so gay and lively. My roommates were very special gals. We became such dear friends—to the day each one passed. We attended all the dances and parties. Some of the young men wanted to court me special, but I was having too much fun to go with just one boy.”

  Elle gave her shoulder a sisterly nudge. “You go, Miss Anna.”

  “Naturally, that’s when I met Lem. He was a looker, so strong and masculine. Earned medals for his courage on the battlefield. My girlfriends and I were standing at the refreshment table admiring him amongst ourselves when he walked right over, bold as you please.” Miss Anna spread her hands beyond her shoulders. “Broad shouldered, dancing blue eyes, a thick mop of wavy black hair every one of us spent hours primping to get. We didn’t have fancy curling irons like you girls today. Well, like I said, there he stood and us girls froze like four red-lipped popsicles. popsicles.” She popped her hands together.

  Elle propped her chin in her hand. “Did you know he was coming to talk to you?”

  “Oh my, no.” Miss Anna gazed off as if seeing Lem on the horizon of her memory, absently fiddling with the edge of her collar. “My girlfriend Peggy was the pretty one among us. All the fellas wanted her.”

  “Except Lem.”

  “Except Lem.” Love rooted her answer. “He was as kind and good on the inside as he was handsome on the outside.”

  “Miss Anna, don’t keep me in suspense. Did he ask you out?” The magic of reminiscing was starting to sweep her away. How had Miss Anna ended up here keeping company with an old chapel instead of growing old with the man she loved?

  “He asked me to dance and when he turned me onto the floor, I knew I’d never leave his arms.”

  She sighed.

  Elle echoed.

  “Six months later, he asked Daddy for my hand, but to tell you the truth, I think Daddy prompted him a little.” Her little chortle came from a distant place in her heart. “Daddy loved him as much as I did.”

  “So you married him. Lem Jamison.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did marry him. He was my world. Ten years later he died, and we never had any children.”

  Elle tore at the waded tissue her hand. “Oh, Miss Anna, your heart must have broken.”

  “Into a million pieces. He was standing out in the yard, looking at our peach tree, calling for me to come out and join him. It was a lovely spring afternoon. But I wanted to finish up my dishes. I was rinsing the iron skillet when he collapsed right before my eyes. By the time I got to him, he’d gone on.”

  Elle brushed her hand lightly over Miss Anna’s arm. How could she seem so peaceful and right about her life? “I’m so sorry.”

  “Last thing Lem ever said to me was, ‘Anna, honey, come see this.’” When she glanced at Elle, she smiled. “Such a profound man, don’t you think.”

  “Miss Anna, how can you joke? You’re talking about the man you loved. What’d you do?”

  “Lived my life. But Lem’s breath had been my very own. I had to learn to breathe for myself. Daddy moved me home. Eventually I worked for him, then took over his business.”

  “You never wanted to remarry?”

  “Not right away. I missed Lem so much. I was lost and confused. Out of plain ole desperation, I got down on my knees one night and begged the Lord to show me how to get rid of the pain and live for Him.” She gripped her Bible tighter to her chest. “You’re second generation, you know, Elle.”

  Elle glanced at her for a long second. “Of widows? Please say no, because I’m not even married yet.”

  “Goodness, no.” Miss Anna patted Elle’s leg. “Dorothy Morris prayed in this old chapel—of course it was the sanctuary back in them days. When Lem died, she approached me to come pray with her. I’d read about my namesake in the Bible, a woman named Anna praying in the temple. So I thought I’d give it a try, see what Dorothy had been doing every morning for years.”

  “I see.” A sense of awe couldn’t bypass her sense of terror. Elle wanted to be a woman of faith and prayer, but in her core being, she wasn’t sure she was willing to pay the price. “So you chose me like Dorothy chose you?”

  “I didn’t; He did.”

  “So, what do I do about Jeremiah?”

  “Pray. It’s all you can do. Pray and move the heavens to answer.”

  Rain grayed the morning as Elle drove to Daddy’s Port Royal office on the corner of Ribaut and Barnwell.

  She parked in a visitor slot next to Daddy’s Cadillac and reached over to the passenger seat for a bag of Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits and homemade strawberry jam.

  As a salesman, Daddy spent most of his office hours in the car and on the road, but since Elle could remember he spent the quiet morning hours in the office doing paperwork.

  She tried the front door. It was unlocked, so she slipped into the reception area, careful about invading unannounced.

  Last year Arlene Coulter had redecorated the offices for a huge discount as a favor to Elle, replacing the old seventies rust-­colored shag carpet and dark-wood paneling with polished hardwood and drywall. She hauled off the plastic and wood-laminate office furniture and moved in real cherry desks with ergonomically correct chairs.

  A soft rain began to rat-a-tat against the picture pane. Elle peeked down the hall from the reception area to see if Daddy’s light burned.

  “Daddy?” Why hadn’t she bothered to phone first? This was his only time to work undisturbed. “Daddy?” Knocking lightly, she peered into his giant, square-shaped office with a wall of windows.

  He was jamming with headphones on.

  Smiling, she moved in front of his desk, jiggling the bag of biscuits. “Oh, Daddy . . .”

  He snapped off the headphones. “Elle, what are you doing here?”

  She sank down into the western-style leather chair he’d insisted Arlene buy for his office. “Leave the frou-frou stuff in the reception area.”

  “I brought biscuits.”

  “From the Frogmore?” Daddy’s interest peaked.

  “Of course from the Frogmore.” When she opened the bag, butter-scented steam drifted out.

  Daddy swiveled around, opened the bottom door of his credenza, and produced two plates. “All right, pass them over.”

  “Jeremiah is back, Daddy.” She picked out a biscuit before handing the bag to him. She’d only bought three—one for her, two for him.

  He rocked back in his desk chair, leaving the biscuit bag for now. “And?”

  “He left the church in Dallas, which is a long, sad story, and now he wants to marry me.” Repeating it out loud didn’t bring any more clarification.

  “I see.”

  Elle popped the top off the minitub of jam. “He accepted a job at FSU to be the assistant athletic director.”

  “Um-hum.”

  “You got anything to say besides ‘I see’ and ‘um-hum’?”

  “I suppose. Seems to be a trend with that boy, accepting a job, then asking you to marry him.”

  Elle set aside her biscuit, not really all tha
t hungry. “I noticed.”

  Daddy rocked forward, propping his arms on his desk. “Do you love him?”

  “If I do, does that make him the right choice for me?”

  Daddy’s face remolded into his “father” expression, the one with fleshy lines between his eyes and around his nose. “What about Heath?”

  She jerked her head up. “Heath? What does he have to do with anything?”

  “Just helping you sort things out.”

  “No, you’re complicating the matter. What makes you think . . . Daddy, Heath is a friend. Period.” What time is it? Eight thirty? The morning had barely started and she felt beat by the day.

  “Elle, you’ve been praying, spending time with the Lord. You’ve changed. I see it in your eyes and countenance.”

  “Fine, Daddy, but how does that help me answer Jeremiah?” Elle needed to stand instead of sit. She walked to the window and twisted open the wood-slat blinds. The rain had thickened. “He could’ve left Dallas without ever coming here, gone straight to Tallahassee, and I’d have never known. But he didn’t. He came back for me.”

  “Tell me, this church business, how has it affected Jeremiah?”

  “He’s bitter, confused.”

  “You want to marry a man struggling with his identity and faith? Elle, consider how blessed you were to have escaped the troubles in Dallas.”

  “I know, Daddy, believe me. But maybe it was just a timing issue. Maybe I let all my hopes go and now God is giving them back to me. Are hard times a reason to say no to the love of a good man?” The rain cleansed the city of the grime collected during the hot, dry July. Elle felt a part of the washing.

  Daddy stood beside her. “If you have to decide in a rush or because some biological or romance alarm clock is going off, then you’re probably going to make the wrong decision. But if over time you and Jeremiah still find it right, I’ll support you.”

  She tipped her head against his shoulder. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “But if I were you, I’d go home, look in the mirror, and figure out why every time I heard the name Heath McCord the light in my eyes could illuminate a stormy night.”

  “Captain McCord, you’re looking well this morning.” Colonel Norman Sillin grabbed a chair for himself and sat down, not bothering to unbundle his winter garb.