Love Starts with Elle (13 page)

The chapel was dark other than the stage lights and the array of pale color created by the only undamaged stained-glass window. Already up front kneeling at the altar, Miss Anna’s face tilted toward the ceiling, her lips smiling. Music played from a small boom box and Elle tiptoed down the aisle to the second-row pew, right side. The hardwood under the bunching carpet complained.

“I knew you’d come,” Miss Anna said without looking around.

Elle flipped the pages of her Bible. “Did you pray me awake?”

Miss Anna shook her head. “Once I do what the Lord asks of me, I leave it be, figure He’s big enough to fulfill His own desires.” The woman gazed right into Elle’s soul. “You have a wonderful future and it begins right here in this dingy chapel, communing with God. Elle, it’s from the wilderness places that God often promotes us.”

Miss Anna fell silent after that, seemingly lost in her own world. Elle stared at the back of her fluffy head, the woman’s comments echoing in her mind.
Wonderful future. Begins right here in this dingy
chapel. Wilderness places where God promotes.

Elle had spent most of her charmed life avoiding the hard, wilderness places.

For the first thirty minutes of prayer, Elle’s mind wandered. She talked to herself, carried on a one-sided mental parry with Jeremiah, then wondered where she might open a new art gallery.

Toward the end of the hour, she settled down and actually talked to Jesus about her heart issues and read the first chapter of John.

When Miss Anna rose to leave, she stopped by row two, right side. “See you in the morning, Elle.”

Elle snatched up her Bible and handbag. “Do you need a ride?”

“I enjoy the walk, thank you.”

Driving down Bay Street, Elle slowed her car as workers hung a new sign over her old gallery. Dooley’s Emporium.

Emporium? Angela was calling her gallery an Emporium?

Huckleberry Johns darted across Bay carrying his tank of environmental art, disappearing inside Angela’s new place.
Good luck,
bubba.
If Elle hated his smelly environmental art, the pristine, well-coiffed Emporium owner would loathe it.

Elle needed to sit that boy down for a long talk.

Passing Common Ground, she decided to stop in for a latte. Parking along Bay, she went inside the coffee shop.

“Hey, Molly.” Elle had known the red-headed coffee barista since the two-year-old’s Sunday school class when Elle was the teacher. Now Molly was old enough to serve cappuccinos and lattes. “Large mocha latte, please.”

“One grande coming up.”

Grande, large, whatever. Elle picked a table by the window and meditated on her morning. The prayer chapel wasn’t as claustrophobic as she’d anticipated. But staying focused was harder than she imagined. Once she’d settled down, she enjoyed her prayers. Maybe even sensed God’s presence a little. She realized now it had been awhile since she’d really felt connected to Him.

When had she drifted into social Christianity—God as Savior but not as friend? Elle couldn’t pinpoint the season, but it was long before Jeremiah Franklin had come along and broken her heart.

Molly brought her latte around. “Sorry to hear about your wedding, Elle.”

She shrugged. “It happens. Never thought it’d happen to me, but—”

“I’d die, simply die, if it happened to me. I mean, what’s the point in going on? Life as you know it is over. All your dreams and plans. Love left you high and—”

Thank goodness for cell phones. Elle answered hers with abandon. “Hello.”

“Where are you?” Julianne.

“Common Ground. Getting depressed.”

“What? Why?”

“Molly. Can’t believe I got dumped. Thinks she’d downright die if it happened to her.”

“What does she know? I for one can’t believe you’re up before 8:00 a.m.”

What a sarcastic sister. “Best be nice because if you’re calling me this early, you want something.” Her mama didn’t raised no dummy.

“Can you watch Rio today?”

“Why? What are you doing? Can’t you take her to the babysitter?” Elle spied a young couple in the corner of the shop. The man rubbed the woman’s hands and arms, stretching over the table to kiss her. Elle shifted her back to them.

“It’s only for a few hours, Elle. Shirley won’t take her because she’s getting over a runny nose. She’s paranoid lately ’c ause her kids keep getting sick. Rio asked to play with Tracey-Love.”

Elle couldn’t think of an excuse. She didn’t have any stellar plans. Maybe organize the studio, but she didn’t have a lot of zeal about it. “Why don’t I just go with you? Hey, that’d be fun. Girl’s day out. What are you doing?”

“You and your questions. Please, watch her for me.”

“Me with questions? What about you with secrets? Are you hanging out with an ax murderer? Running drugs on the side? Stealing time with your mystery date?”

“Do you have to make everything so hard?”

“Do you?”

Silence.

“Will you watch Rio for me?”

“See you in twenty.”

TEN

“Heath? Anybody home?”

The smack of the kitchen’s screen door resonated through the house.

“Door’s open.” Heath read his last sentence for the fifth time. Something about it didn’t flow. The rhythm was off.

“How do you know I’m not a gun-toting burglar?”

He glanced up. Elle stood in the doorway.
Prettiest gun-toting
burglar . . . never mind.
“They don’t usually knock and holler, ‘Anybody home?’”

“Guess not.” She smiled. Her best feature. And her hair. Very shiny hair.

“What are you up to?” It dawned on him she’d passed through the kitchen where he’d let a few days worth of dishes pile up in the sink. He told himself he didn’t have time to clean up, he had a book to write, a kid to raise. But at the moment, he was a tad embarrassed about it.

“Waiting for Julianne to drop off Rio.” She entered the rest of the way, sitting on the edge of a low rocking chair. “How long have you been going to Beaufort Community?”

“Few weeks. Your dad called and invited me.”

“My daddy? Big guy with hats? When did you meet him?”

“He came by looking for you once.”

“Ah, right, on Doomsday. Yeah, well”—she brushed at her shorts—“good for him to invite you to church.”

“How are you these days? Any china-smashing urges?”

She set the rocker in motion. “No, but this morning it occurred to me having a relationship with God requires more than showing up Sunday, singing loudly, amening the preaching, volunteering for Harvest Festival, and joining the Christmas choir.” She grimaced, giving Heath a theatrical thumbs-up. “Look at me, God. No hands.”

He laughed. She seemed to have fun being honest with herself.

“I was in a bit of a God desert myself.”

“Your wife died, Heath.”

“No reason to box out God.” He scooted his laptop aside. “Why is it when things go wrong, we run from Him instead of to Him?”

She rested her head on the back of the rocker that once belonged to Aunt Rose. “If I knew,
I’d
be writing the book and living on Fripp Island off the royalties.”

He breathed out a short laugh. “Well, the first one who finds out, tell the other, okay?”

“Deal.”

“Elle, you here?”

She angled back, gazing toward the kitchen door. “Jules, in the living room.” She peeked at Heath. “Rio wondered if Tracey-Love could play.”

“Absolutely. She’s in her room.” Heath clapped his hands against his legs and stood, calling down the hall. “TL, want to go with Miss Elle and Rio?’

A second later, the girl popped into the room, settling against her daddy, staring at Elle. Heath smoothed her hair, so coarse under his palm. “What do you say?”

Tracey-Love melted a little piece of him every time she fastened her blue gaze with his. “C-can you come t-too?”

Heath checked with Elle. “What did you have in mind? Can an old dad tag along?”

“I have nothing in mind. Come if you dare.”

He dared all right, even though Nate waited for pages. He’d spent most of last night and today researching and outlining his book. But he’d be crazy to pass up a morning with his new friend. Especially with her delicate features and spunky wit.

“You talked me into it. TL, get your shoes.”

A day out would help his muse uncover the rest of Chet McCord’s story. In the back of his mind, a female protagonist had started to speak. There. Call today research. Heath figured he needed to spend a day with a woman to get the groundwork for his character. Maybe instead of being the next Grisham, he could be the next Nicholas Sparks.

He wondered how guilty he’d feel over Nate’s coronary.
A relationship
story? Love story?
Gasp, choke,
call 911.

Heath walked out the back door with Julianne and Elle, talking about the whatevers of the day like the weather and price of gas as Rio and Tracey-Love ran-skipped hand in hand to the van.

“Hey, girls, let’s drive in my car.” Elle waved them over. “We’ll put the top down.”

Okay, seemed like fun. They watched wide-eyed as the top motored open. Heath helped Elle buckle them into the backseat, then slipped into the passenger side. “Where to on this lovely day?”

The crisp lowcountry morning was already warm as the sun rose, burning away the last of the predawn dew. Elle slipped on her sunglasses and turned the key. “Seems like a day for boating to me.”

“I’m in,” Heath said, turning to the girls. “Boating?”

Tracey-Love joined in with Rio’s, “Yeah,” though she’d never boated in her little life. This was good for her—new experiences, new memories.

Driving through Lady’s Island neighborhoods toward Elle’s parents’ home where her daddy docked a small boat, Heath surfed the wind with his hand. The girls chattered as the wind whipped their hair about, but Elle drove in silence.

Let her be; she’s working through more than a busted relationship.

Slowing, she turned into a wide, paved driveway and maneuvered a thin dirt road around to the back of her parents’ house, a sprawling two-story with a wraparound porch, thick green lawn, and a deepwater dock.

Elle parked in the shade and led them to the dock.

“Heath, put these on the girls, please.” She tossed over life jackets. On the boat, she checked the gas and other security thingies, Heath guessed, while he fixed up the girls and himself.

Finally, she motioned for them to climb aboard. “Girls, you stay seated once I get you in the boat, okay?” They nodded dutifully, grinning from ear to ear. “I don’t want to feed the fish little-girl toes.”

Tracey-Love’s eyes widened, and she shot a fearful gaze at Heath.

“She’s just teasing, baby.” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
Want to
knock out the fish-food chatter?

She winced.
Sorry.

“We’re going to see dolphin and fish and birds.” Elle tugged the tie from her hair and, angling TL around, finger-combed her hair into a ponytail.

TL stood still, facing the far shore, chatting with Rio. But Heath? He stepped close to watch and learn.

Elle concluded her boating instructions with a whip-twist of her hands and the tie. “If you want something, girls, just ask me or Tracey-Love’s daddy, okay? There, ready to go?”

Just like that a neat ponytail. A miracle, a regular Houdini feat. Seemed easy enough.
Ha-ha.
He’d practice on TL later.

Elle fired up the motor. “Heath, untie us.”

He jumped to the dock, loosened the rope, tossing it into the boat, hollering, “Ship, ahoy.”

One day he’d look back and wonder what possessed him. Surely he knew better. But instead of jumping from the dock into the boat, Heath jumped straight down into a thick, deep mound of chocolate-looking pluff mud. It slurped him like a straw.

“Heath.” Elle dashed to the side of the idling the boat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m great.” Laughing, he molded a pluff mud ball and lobbed it at her. She ducked even though it didn’t come close.

“You know you’re stuck, don’t you?”

“What? No. I’m going to swim right out.” Heath moved to demonstrate . . . except he couldn’t move. His legs and chest were cemented into a pluff mud grave. “Um, Elle?”

She popped her hands together as she started to laugh. “Are you stuck, Superman? Do not tell me you purposefully jumped.”

“It beckoned me.” His expression pleaded with her. “Want to help a guy out? Laugh later.”

Or now. Elle collapsed against the boat, her lilting laugh bouncing off the water and catching a ride on the breeze.

Meanwhile, Tracey-Loved glared down at him with an enormous frown.

“Hey, Tracey-Love, isn’t Daddy having fun? Elle? Still sinking.”

Still laughing, she tossed him the rope, then nudged the boat forward, easing him gently out of the mud into the sleek water of Factory Creek. It’d been awhile since Granddad had warned him and Mark about the deep pluff mud:
“Fall in and I’ll likely never find
you to dig you out.”
Heath had thought it was a Granddad scare tactic.

Now, some thirty-odd years later, apparently not. Swimming to the side of the boat, he did his best to wash off, then hoisted himself aboard. His finger-and toenails were darkened with mud he’d have to scrub out later, and his hundred-dollar deck shoes would never be seen again.