Pocketful of Pearls (18 page)

“Not having a computer is service to God?”

Put like that, it did sound a little odd. Dinah had never given the structure of her life much thought. You looked a certain
way, you behaved a certain way, and if you thought otherwise than a certain way, you certainly didn’t say anything about it.
The structure was there for a reason—to show people the beauty of worshipping God.

Not having a computer hadn’t brought anyone to God, though, she had to admit. At least, not in Hamilton Falls.

“Let me ask it a different way,” Matthew went on when she didn’t answer. “How is God deprived if you get a computer in service
to Tamsen?”

“He isn’t,” she replied. “But it might be a stumbling block to someone else if they found out I had one.”

“A stumbling block?”

“If they saw that I gave in to temptation, they might be tempted, too.”

“Even though its purpose is good and in itself, it’s harmless.”

“Yes.” Now the preaching she’d heard against the “window into the world” was really beginning to sound silly. She’d had to
accept it because the words had come from the Shepherds, who were inspired by God. “We’re supposed to obey the word of God
without questioning, Matthew,” she said quietly. “Anything else means we’re disobedient. That we have a wrong spirit that
isn’t Christ-like.”

“Christ questioned all kinds of things,” he said. “He was always making people think about what they were doing. And I think
you question what you’re doing a lot more than you let on.”

The water had to be ready by now. Why wasn’t he making the tea? “That’s because I’m a bad, disobedient person. I’m supposed
to be a holy vessel and most of the time I just feel like an old cracked pot that somebody threw out.” And if that wasn’t
an invitation to a pity party, she didn’t know what was. Shame and embarrassment scorched her cheeks. “Sorry. That was a selfish
thing to say.”

He got up from the laptop and for a horrible moment she thought he was angry. Then her panicked brain translated his gentle
movements. He was just reaching for the box of tea bags in the cupboard behind her.

“You are none of those things,” he said softly. He poured hot water into the fat brown teapot, swished it out, and dropped
the tea bags in. “You are a beautiful woman, with a kind, generous heart. That wretch of a Phinehas has taken what is loveliest
and twisted it so you don’t even recognize it any more.”

Beautiful? Was he crazy? She was skinny and awkward and all her body was good for was attracting the wrong kind of attention.
Rage and self-contempt burned her throat and she bent to snatch the carrier up off the floor. The abrupt movement wakened
Tamsen, who began to cry.

Dinah hardly heard it above the roar in her own head and the desperate urge to flee. It wasn’t until she’d run across the
yard and was safely in the house that she came to herself and realized Tamsen was screaming with all the fear and rage of
one who believes she will never be cared for again.

AT ONE IN
the morning Dinah finally admitted that trying to sleep was pointless. A glance out the hall window, which looked out over
the barn, told her she wasn’t the only one—the lights in the hired man’s suite were on, too. In fact, the only person getting
any sleep was Tamsen, for which Dinah was pathetically grateful.

After scaring the baby earlier, it had taken an hour to calm her down enough to distract her with a bottle. Tamsen knew perfectly
well Dinah wasn’t her mother, so even when Dinah tried to hold and comfort her, she wasn’t having any of it. Or maybe it was
because Dinah couldn’t relax—maybe the child felt the stiffness in her muscles, the rage in every fiber.

Dinah was convinced sheer exhaustion had finally sent Tamsen into dreamland, and she’d tucked her into the old white crib
they’d brought down from the attic with a sigh of relief. Who had told her that little babies were easy to take care of? It
must have been Linda Bell, who looked after other people’s kids for a living. If this was the easy part, she didn’t envy Tamara
the later stages of motherhood one bit.

But it wasn’t stress over the baby that was keeping her awake now. It was the war going on inside her and the pictures her
mind played on the darkened ceiling of her room.

How could he spoil their friendship by calling her beautiful? In just the same way Phinehas had rooked her in, had shown her
love and attention, and then—when she was addicted and couldn’t live without it—had begun the unspeakable.

Now she was going to have to ask Matthew to leave. She couldn’t bear the sight of him, knowing that he was thinking of her
that way. Knowing what was in his mind the moment she let her guard down. She was alone out here, and he could begin his campaign
of misery at any time he chose.

Well, she’d handled worse things than firing a hired man. She could do this, too, much as it hurt. She’d actually begun to
think of him as a person, not a man, which was new in her experience. She’d even smiled at his gentle jokes and admired his
skill with a computer, even if he was sort of useless at practical things like managing a walking tour on his own.

He’d protected her and even saved her life, but that was probably just part of the buttering-up process. If she saw him as
her protector, she’d be more likely to let him get close, wouldn’t she?
Well, fool me once and it’s your fault,
she thought.
Fool me twice and it’s mine.

He’d gone and spoiled it and proven himself to be a wolf in men’s clothing, seeking to devour. In the morning she’d hand him
his wages and he could just go buy a bus ticket and devour somewhere else.

With a decision made, and control asserted somewhere, even if it was only in her mind, Dinah turned over and tried once again
to go to sleep.

NATURALLY, ONCE SLEEP
did come, she overdid it. Dinah cocked a bleary eye at the alarm clock on the bedside table and groaned. Nine thirty? Good
grief, the baby had probably died of starvation. In fact, she must be dead or the screams of enraged hunger would have roused
her hours before.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Dinah crawled out of bed and staggered to the door, where she snatched her dressing gown off its hook and ran down the hall
to Tamara’s old room. By default it had become the baby’s room, more because there was room for the crib and a writing desk
that did duty as a changing table than for any other reason.

The crib was empty and the carrier gone.

Had Tammy come back in the early hours and taken her? But no, there was the diaper bag sitting next to the bed. Mystified
and filled with dread, Dinah ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt in the kitchen doorway.

Matthew looked up and smiled. “Good morning.” Tamsen lay cradled in his left arm, both little starfish hands splayed against
the bottle. Her plump cheeks worked in and out, flushed with the effort of wrestling nourishment out of it.

“This is one bottomless pit of a baby,” he said proudly. “We had one breakfast at six o’clock, and decided to have our elevenses
early. At this rate she’s going to start putting on the pounds.”

If she hadn’t been so astonished, Dinah would have found the scene comical. Matthew’s elbows stuck out at angles, as if he
couldn’t quite get the knack of holding her comfortably, and he held the bottle in his fingers as if he were poking it through
the bars of a cage at the zoo.

Tamsen didn’t seem to mind one bit. In fact, she was a whole lot happier on Matthew’s lap than she had been on Dinah’s last
night.

Last night.

The angry speech she’d rehearsed in her head seemed to be written in washable ink and it was fading by the second. How was
it possible he’d forestalled Tamsen’s crying and managed to feed her twice already without waking her, Dinah? And how deeply
in need of sleep was she that she’d missed it all? Most important, what depths of consideration and care did it show in this
man that he’d (a) thought of all this and (b) acted on it?

What was she going to do now?

Dinah sagged against the kitchen door jamb and tried to get her foggy brain to work.

“I started a pot of coffee.” Matthew nodded toward the pot. “It isn’t as good as yours, but then, your tea isn’t as good as
mine.” His smile held all the satisfaction of a man who had put in a hard day’s work and was proud of it.

Wordlessly she got a mug from the cupboard, put in some milk, and poured coffee. While she sank into a chair at the kitchen
table, Tamsen finished the bottle and Matthew lifted her to his shoulder, patting her back.

Dinah hooked a tea towel from the oven door with two fingers. “Don’t forget this.”

“The towel is probably in better shape than my shirt.” He repositioned the baby on his shoulder and continued to pat her.

She had planned to offer him some of her father’s clothes, poor man. Right, and she’d planned to kick him off the ranch today,
too. Which was it going to be? She buried her nose in the coffee mug and hoped the caffeine would clear her brain. Hot and
strong, softened with milk, it was actually pretty good. Not bad for an Englishman.

There she was, thinking good thoughts about him again.

If the good ones outweigh the bad ones, maybe you should rethink this altogether.

As if he’d read her mind, Matthew said, “I’m sorry I upset you last night. I made personal remarks and offended you, and I
would like to apologize.”

He’d said she was beautiful. That was offensive, all right. To a crazy person. A normal woman would have smiled and accepted
it gracefully. Unfortunately, Dinah didn’t have the knack. Never had. Not that compliments came her way all that often. But
still . . .

“It’s all right,” she said at last, awkwardly, her voice muffled in the depths of the coffee cup. The decisive tones of a
woman about to give an employee his walking papers. Sure.

“It isn’t all right. I caused you to question your beliefs, with the presumption that mine were somehow better.”

Is that what he thought he’d done? “It wasn’t that.”

“What was it, then?”

She’d made such a fool of herself last night he couldn’t think much less of her if she went ahead and told him. “It all goes
back to Phinehas.”

She’d lost him already. “Phinehas?” he repeated.

“He—he would tell me I was beautiful. For years, you know, before he . . . before. That I was his favorite among the favored
families, that my spirit made me lovely in his eyes. It took a long time to realize what he was doing.”

Matthew gazed at her a moment, his eyes sad. “He was preparing the soil?”

She nodded, thankful there were some things she didn’t have to say out loud. “And I fell for it, like a total idiot.”

“Dinah, what was it like for you, growing up?”

A breath of cool relief passed over her at the swerve in subject. “I hated being a kid, but it was nothing to being a teenager.
You can’t imagine how awful it is to be an Elect girl at Hamilton High School.”

“The black?”

“The black clothes, the hair long enough to wash the feet of Jesus, the notes we have to give the Phys. Ed. teacher explaining
why we can’t wear shorts, doing our homework in a stuffy classroom while everyone else is out at the track. Even swimming
in the river is impossible.”

“Why?”

She thought back to past summers—the heat, the discomfort, the frustrated longing to be normal. “Bathing suits are immodest,
so we wear T-shirts and our oldest skirt, pinned between our legs.”

“To swim?” Tamsen hiccuped and swiveled her head to look up at him as his voice rose.

“Eventually you give it up because it just isn’t worth looking that silly.”

“I can see that,” he agreed. “But what was it like here at home?”

How did one describe it? “My father believed in the structure. Every jot, every tittle of the law was important to him, and
he made sure it was important to us, too.”

“Moses’s law?”

“No. God’s law. The Elect’s law.”

“Can I see it? I’d like to become better acquainted with your doctrine.”

“Oh, it isn’t written down anywhere.” She waved a hand. “It’s something you learn by osmosis, listening to Melchizedek and
Phinehas preach, watching the others, watching your parents.” She paused, remembering. “Getting smacked when you don’t wear
your sleeves long enough or you don’t put your hair up neatly enough. When you wiggle or get bored in Gathering, which apparently
I used to do a lot.” She shrugged. “But all of that trains you to have the right example, and that can lead others to the
way where they can find salvation.”

“To Christ, you mean.”

She nodded, and took another sip of coffee.

His brows were creased in a puzzled frown. “But how does how you look lead people to Christ?”

“The outside reflects what’s on the inside. And what’s inside brings people to want that for themselves.”

“It seems to me, from what you’ve described, what’s on the inside is a lot of unhappiness and failure to measure up to the
jots and tittles.”

Dinah realized that, in her selfishness, she’d failed to explain this in a godly way so that he’d understand. “It—it’s good
for us to make sacrifices. It pleases God when we give up things and don’t conform with the world. That’s how we work out
our salvation.”

The baby spit up on the tea towel at last. Matthew cleaned her up and then held her in his lap, where she stared at Dinah,
her little mouth open.

“Dinah,” he said quietly, “have you ever heard of grace?”

That was easy. “Of course.”

“How would you define it?”

She thought of the preaching at Summer Gathering, of the hot, airless tent and the hundreds of people packed inside listening
to the word of God. Last summer there had been a lot about grace, prompting follow-up sermons about how much the people of
God needed it in an unholy world.

“Grace is like grease,” she explained. “It’s what moves between the people of God so that they live in harmony with one another.
The way engine parts all work together.” He was looking a little doubtful. Had she got the answer wrong? “Why, how would you
define it?”