Love Starts with Elle (28 page)

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 that 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.

Chet struggled to sit upright in the company of his commanding
officer. But the cast on his arm and leg rendered him practically
immovable.“Colonel, sir, anxious to get back on duty.”

“Not with those things.” The colonel pointed to his casts. “Even
a hotshot like you needs two good legs and arms. Guess you heard a
band of Eskimos coming off a fishing excursion rescued you.”

“It’s what I hear, sir.”

The duty nurse came around, pushing the mail cart. She was
dark and petite, not at all like Kelly, who was tall with long waves
of strawberry hair. But something in the nurse’s smile made him
crave his girl back home.“Letter for the captain.”

“Thank you.”

The return address was Kelly’s. Chet tucked the envelope by his
side, returning his attention to his commanding officer.

“The doc says you’re going to be out for a few months.”

“Not my prognosis.”

“We can use you to train new recruits, but we’ll get you back in
the air as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The medical staff claims you were mumbling about Japanese
subs when they doctored your leg.”

Maybe it was the crash, or his imagination, but Chet could’ve
sworn a whiff of Kelly’s perfume drifted under his nose. “Yes, sir, I fired
on an I-Class sub in the Gulf of Alaska, about a hundred and fifty
miles off shore.”

Colonel Sillin jotted in a small notebook. “Looks like they’re
closer than we realized. Meanwhile, we’re working on getting
replacement squadrons up here. Jack Chennault and his neophyte
flyboys, some with less than eight hours of flight time, left Washington
yesterday.” The colonel stood. “On the way here, his little lambs
got lost and scattered all over God’s white Alaska.”

Chet grinned. The ore in the Alaskan soil rendered instruments
useless half the time. “Do we know where they are?”

The colonel slipped his notebook into an inside pocket. “They
don’t even know where they are. Can’t even begin to know where to
launch search parties. It’s Chennault’s problem.”

“You know what they say: never send a boy to do a man’s job.”

“Now you tell me.” The colonel smiled, stowed his chair away,
and turned for the door. “Get some rest. Read that perfumed letter
from home.”

“Yes, sir.” Chet shifted against the featherless pillows, small
blips of pain moving across his body—arm, leg, head.

He started the letter by savoring Kelly’s handwriting. It’s how
he’d first met her. He worked at Lipsitz Department Store and she
signed for packages her mama ordered. Chet brought the white
envelope to his nose for a long inhale before tearing it open.

The fragrance stirred memories of their last night together. He
didn’t regret their passion, though he regretted the pain of compromising
Kelly. But he’d told her if she wanted to stop, he would.

The preacher’s daughter was one of the truly good girls. One
who spoke of Jesus like a friend. She’d been crazy to take up with
the likes of him. But he loved her in a way that made him ache.
Enough to love her God if need be.