The Carpenter's Daughter (24 page)

When would the sun break over my horizon?

Jesse couldn’t be my sun. That was what he was trying to tell me.

For the first time ever, I really wondered about this Jesus. Was He just another light bulb flickering in the night—or could He burn through the darkness?

Jesse

Sarah studied the lamp above us. I wasn’t sure what she saw or what she was thinking, but she seemed intent on it.

I squeezed her hand. “He does love you, Sarah. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”

Jesus loves you.
That was all I had to give her. Maybe not much—except it was the most simple, profound truth she could know. If only she’d believe it.

She sniffed and squeezed my hand back. That was something—she didn’t argue, or come back at me with some sarcastic comment about religion or white-collar people or church.
God, please…
My prayers for her built up with urgency.
…set her free.

Her attention came back to me for a moment, and then without a word she moved toward the hotel. I forced my fingers to unwrap her hand, and walked beside her. Silence accompanied us as we passed inside and down the hall to her door.

She slid her key card into the door, but I stopped her from opening it, with a hand over hers. I had more to say. Needed to say. “Sarah, I have to go tomorrow.”

Her face darted up to mine. “What?”

“I have to go back to Tennessee. There was a storm, and my parents’ house was damaged.” I sighed, moved my hand away from hers, and rubbed my neck. “I’m not sure how long it will take, so I don’t know when I’ll be back up this way.”

Her eyes drifted away from mine, and her body sagged. Officially, this had gone from best to worst not-a-date ever.

I rubbed her arm. “Will you answer if I call you?”

She pressed her lips together and blinked, then nodded.

Tugging on the arm I still touched, I pulled her into a hug. Words wouldn’t form in my head, so I simply held her.

What if I never saw her again?

I closed my eyes as ache throbbed deep in my heart. I wished I knew the future—or that I could write it the way I wanted it to work out. Then I would know that she’d be in my life forever; she’d be saved and whole and happy. And mine.

I couldn’t know any of those things.

In reality, I only knew one thing for sure.

Jesus loved her.

And me.

Sarah

We finished demo by lunch the next morning. Mack found me before break, which was a first.

“Carpenter-girl, you coming out back to eat?”

In the middle of unbuckling my tool belt, I didn’t bother to look at him. Found it a relief that I was occupied, because that was a weird request—he hadn’t cared much about what I did, unless it concerned putting Jesse in a bad mood.

Had Jesse put him up to it?

Could be. Troy was still around, pounding nails into the roof above me—without Jesse’s supervision.

Strange. The past couple of days I hadn’t worked right beside Jesse, but that day I really felt the void of his absence. Couldn’t hear his laughter while he joked with a volunteer. Couldn’t sense his eyes on me when I wandered to the truck to grab a water bottle. The lack of his presence felt like a chilly breeze against my heart.

What was I supposed to make of our friendship? He cared—deeply—but we couldn’t go there right now. What did that mean?

“Sharpe,” Mack snapped, “you gonna answer me?”

Oh yeah. That was why I was thinking about Jesse—he must have told Mack to watch over me.

I shook my head. “Thought I’d run into town.”

“Not today. The new owners are here, and they want to meet you.”

What? No. I didn’t do introductions. Recent weeks had proven that to be a disaster.

“Let’s go, carpenter-girl.” He nodded to the back door. “Your fans await.”

My fans?

Twenty or more sweaty people milled around the dirt-patched backyard, the hum of their conversations saturating the air. Anxiety wound a cord around my chest and cinched it down tight. Stupid as it was, I glanced around, looking for Jesse.

“Relax, kid.” Mack leaned so he could speak near my ear. “You’re fine on your own.”

Wait. Mack? The gruff supervisor-contractor guy giving me a pep talk? What had Jesse told him?

“Mr. and Mrs. Brown.” Mack reached a hand to a man who was probably in his late twenties. “You were asking about the designer. Here she is. This is Sarah Sharpe.”

Designer—ha! I was no designer. I was a carpenter. A drafter and framer. Not a designer.

“Sarah…” The woman next to the man gushed my name. “Mr. MacKenzie showed us your plans for the renovation. They’re amazing! I can’t believe you can do all that to this rickety house. It’s going to be beautiful.”

I stared at her. It wasn’t an amazing plan. I blew out a few walls, made the kitchen and bathrooms bigger, and added a nicer window to the front of the house—which wasn’t even my idea. There was nothing special about what I’d done. Except that I’d enjoyed doing it.

“This is Sarah’s first renovation project with us.” Mack filled my rude silence. “You can bet it won’t be her last, if I have anything to say about it.”

Mr. Brown laughed. “I would think so.” He set his look squarely on me. “Clearly we’re happy with your drawings. Thank you. We didn’t know you could do so much with a condemned house.”

I managed a smile. I hoped it looked like a smile, anyway. Mostly, I was dumbfounded. My mind drifted to the project my dad had waiting on the bottom of his to-bid list. What if…

Mack nudged my shoulder with his large hand.

Oh yeah. I was supposed to be having a conversation.

“I’m happy you like it.” I reached for Mrs. Brown’s hand. “I hope it turns out exactly like you hope.”

She hugged me. In my filth, grunge, sweat, and stink, that woman gripped me in an all-out hug.

“We can’t wait.”

I tried to smother the sudden intake of breath and pushed out another grin.

Mack directed me to the food table with a tip of his head. “Eat up. More work ahead.”

Crazy how one tiny, inconsequential conversation could change the color of the sky. Well, not really, but as I left the work site later that evening, after an energized afternoon filled with much accomplished, I honestly thought my world seemed clearer, less gray.

I hoped that Jesse would call that evening so I could tell him about it.

Jesse

The house was a mess—and it was more than storm damage. Guilt soured in my gut as I walked through the home my parents had built. A hint of mold sat on the damp air, and a thick film of dust covered every surface. Evidence of mice scattered over the floor in the kitchen, and green slime had grown around the sink and on the bathroom fixtures.

Negligent. I’d been one of
those
people. For five years I’d spent my time fixing livable places for people across the Midwest, and all the while had allowed my parents’ home to slip out of repair. It didn’t have to be that way. I just hadn’t wanted to deal with it.

“Pretty bad.” Shane startled me from the front door. The plan was that he’d meet me here first thing in the morning. I’d made it into town somewhere around 1:00 a.m., maybe after, and had thought to stay at the house. Right up until I pulled next to the curb and found a massive hole punched into the front wall and a foot-diameter tree limb lying on the front porch. While I lived most of my life in hotel rooms these days, not being able to stay in my childhood home stapled a cold reality onto my heart.

It wasn’t my home anymore. They weren’t there, and my life… Well, I didn’t know how to define my life, exactly. But it wasn’t in this house. It had moved on.

I hooked my thumbs over my jeans pockets. “Yeah. You didn’t send pictures of the front.” I frowned. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Shane shrugged and stepped over the refuse scattered across the wood floor. “I told you to get here—figured you’d see it for yourself soon enough.”

“Storm damage says roof damage to me, not holes the size of a giant’s fist in the side of the house.”

He crossed his arms. “Does it matter?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. No, it didn’t make a difference, really. But everything had gone heavy the past week, and this felt like one more brick to add to the pile.

Shane finished his trek across the front room, sidestepping furniture that had been knocked out of place, and crunching shattered glass under his boots. Water damage colored the wood floor and crept up the drywall under the peeling paint and warped base trim. The room would need to be gutted. Completely redone. Strange, gutting a house in Nowhere, Nebraska, hadn’t bothered me—seemed fun, actually. Thinking about gutting this house, though, even part of it, sank like a hot rock into my stomach.

I growled under my breath. “Where to start?”

Shane’s hand clapped on my shoulder. “With coffee. You’re a grump, which is not normal, so let’s get some grub and a hot mug of joe, and we’ll figure it out over breakfast.”

Mack’s scowl passed through my memory. He’d called me a grump—or something like it—a couple of days ago. Man, I was a hot mess these days. I thought that was left to the realm of women.

Speaking of which, Sarah’s blue eyes replaced Mack’s image in my head, and my heart squeezed. She was one giant question mark in my life, which felt more like that hole in the front wall of my parents’ home than a harmless punctuation mark at the end of a sentence.

As if I needed any more frustration first thing this dreary morning.

Maybe I’d call her. With that thought, some kind of overwhelming demand steeped me—like I
needed
to call her. That instant. Except Shane was standing next to me, waiting for my answer.

“Breakfast would be good,” I said.

He nodded. “Mia will have it ready. The girls are anxious to see you.”

I pushed out a tight smile. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Shane turned and started weaving through the damage again. I pulled my phone from my back pocket and scanned for
Sapphira
in my contacts.

Shane paused at the door. “Thought we were leaving?”

“One second.”

He hovered at the entry. Dang. No phone call. A text would have to do.

Hey. Miss you. Call me.

I took in a breath of musty air and exhaled. Didn’t settle the rumpled stirrings in my heart. Maybe Shane was right—I needed some coffee and food.

Sarah

Hey. Miss you. Call me.

I stared at my phone, which had buzzed in my back pocket while I was unloading my tools.

How did all this work anyway? And what exactly was
this
?

We just can’t go there right now.

So, that left us where, exactly? Somewhere in a friendship zone…

For being levelheaded, nice, and everything good, Jesse was sure tying me into knots.

I hit the little green phone icon on the screen. Call sent. Why hadn’t
he
called
me
?

He didn’t pick up. So, I was supposed to call, he wasn’t going to answer, and I was stuck leaving a message I hadn’t prepared for. I huffed.

“Hey. Hope you made it okay. I’m about to dive into work, so I guess we’ll talk later. Or something.”

I stabbed End and glared at my phone.

I was making this too complicated. Air slowly released from my lungs, and my shoulders relaxed. He was a friend. That should be good enough, because I needed a friend. And I had wanted to talk to him—especially after meeting the Browns yesterday, which was part of the reason I was irritated. He said he’d call, and he hadn’t. But having worked around men all my life, I knew that was standard. When they said they’d call, they meant eventually. There was a long expiration date on that promise.

My phone chimed. New text.

Jesse:
Sorry. In the middle of a thing. I do want to talk to you though. Call me when you have a break?

I smiled, and heat tickled my face—not from the morning sun.

Me:
Okay. A couple hours?

Jesse:
Sooner?

That warmth turned hot. See, this was why things were confusing.

Me:
We’ll see. Gotta get to work.

Which meant that Jesse couldn’t occupy my mind. A good thing. Probably.

“Sharpe.”

Mack’s bark ripped my attention from the phone
.
I slid it into my pocket.

“Yes, sir?”

“I picked up those Lam beams last night. I need you to get them installed.”

“Yes, sir.” Except I couldn’t set massive headers on my own. The group of workers we had over the weekend wouldn’t be showing up today. I walked to his truck, assuming we’d need to unload the two-by-twelve laminated wood beams. “Will you be around to help?”

“Can’t make any promises.” He slid the first of six wood planks out of the truck bed. “Grab any of the guys. All you need is muscle, right?”

Yeah. Except the thing of it was, simply grabbing one of the guys on this kind of job didn’t always work out well for me. Jesse, in fact, had proven to be about the only man who took me seriously from the first hello. Probably because I’d pirated his nail gun.

It was a man’s world, and—even if I’d lived in it every day of my life—it remained a man’s world.

Huh. For some reason, resentment didn’t pool thick and icky in my stomach with that thought. Determination, yes, but not resentment. I knew what I was doing, had shown myself capable beyond my dad’s supervision, and had gained Mack’s approval. All good things. Plus, and this still ballooned inside me, I’d found something I was particularly good at. I could do that reno job in Hastings. I knew I could, and I’d be good at it.

Except one little hang-up. I hadn’t discussed my plans with Dad.
Pop
went that balloon.

“Hey.” Mack snapped his fingers at me. Twice. “Work, girl. Loads of work.”

Right. I put two hands to a beam and tugged, sliding it over the metal runners of the truck bed. Mack caught the back part, and we marched it toward the house. After leaning it against the house, we spun in unison to get the next.

“Jesse make it to Tennessee?”

Whoa. Number one, small talk? From Mack? And two—why’d he assume I’d know?

“Guess so. Haven’t heard otherwise.” I exhaled slowly, quietly—and dang that dumb heat on my skin!

Mack glanced at me and then bowed his head as a grin chiseled onto his scruffy face. “You two…”

Wasn’t going to touch that. He didn’t have a clue about it—because I didn’t, and I was pretty sure Jesse didn’t either.

He tugged another beam loose, and this time I followed him with the tail. We continued to unload the lumber without another word. When the beams were all accounted for and placed next to the house, I moved to retrieve my tools, which were still sitting in the grass by my truck.

Mack squeezed my shoulder—also strange—and gave it a little shake. “Tell him hey.” He patted the spot he’d squeezed, then walked toward the front door. Chuckling.

I assume he meant Jesse—and for some undefined reason, I smiled. Reaching for my back pocket, I found my phone again.

Me:
Mack says hey, and did you make it okay?