The Carpenter's Daughter (30 page)

I mentally beat down both the heat and the desire to make that little gesture actually mean something.

“Yeah, that’s what all the guys say.” Yikes, not the best way to make nothing out of it. I rushed to fill the air before he could respond. “What does being southern have to do with going the wrong way?”

“Well”—he tipped his imaginary hat—“my mama taught me never to show up at someone else’s house for a meal empty handed, especially someone you don’t know.”

My eyebrows pushed against the skin above my nose. “She did, huh?”

“Yep.”

And with that syllable, he was out of the truck.

I thought about the scene that was about to ensue at Darcy’s house. Adam had been nice, though his emphasis on the word
friend
when he first spoke with Jesse unraveled all sorts of frayed edges in my stomach. Jesse was a friend, and Adam didn’t need to make it sound like I’d made him out to be more. What must Jesse think of me?

“Hey.” He stood a few steps outside my door, which he’d opened for me. “You coming?”

“Yeah.” I scooted out, acutely self-conscious about the stupid dress. How did you get out of a pickup in one of these things without flashing the world behind you? How did you keep everything pinned down discreetly while the wind stirred the skirt wherever it willed?

No more dresses. Ever.

Jesse’s hand cupped my arm as I touched the ground, as if he was escorting an actual lady.

“You look nice today.” The warmth of his hand remained even after he shut the door and we started across the parking lot. “Did I tell you that?”

No. He hadn’t. But saying so would tell him that I’d noticed that he hadn’t and that I hoped he would.

“I don’t know.” I pushed a smile onto my lips. “Thanks.”

That was smooth, right? Nothing desperate or presumptuous or idiotic. I could handle this.

The AC slammed against my skin as we passed through the sliding doors, almost giving me a headache from extreme temperature shock. I pulled in a lungful of air, noting that Jesse had yet to remove his hand, and schooled every facial expression to look passive. Relaxed. Normal.

Yeah, this was normal stuff for me…I always wore girly clothes, and having a man escort me was par in my life.

Jesse stopped by the produce area. “Okay, so what do I get?”

I looked up to him. Oh goodness, those eyes. On me. Smiling.

Nope. We were friends, this was normal, and I didn’t have any reason to feel…dizzy? That was dumb.

I shrugged. “Oranges?”

He snorted. “Cute. I’m not showing up to your aunt’s house with a bag of oranges. Try again.”

“I don’t have any idea. I don’t know this practice.”

“What do they like?”

I stood mute, feeling my eyes round. “Food?”

With a headshake, he rolled his eyes, which for some stupid reason, I thought was adorable.

“How about dessert? Did your aunt already make something?”

After a mental rerun of the stuff I saw Darcy gathering this morning, I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. We were going to grill kabobs. Don’t think I saw anything sweet.”

His satisfied smile, pinned right on me, made my stomach swirl, which only intensified when his hand moved from my arm to my back as he guided me deeper into the produce department.

“Have you ever grilled peaches?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good. You’ll love it.” He bagged eight of the fuzzy things and then guided me toward the frozen section. “We need whipped topping. Gotta have whip.”

“Okay…”

And then he stopped, well before we reached the freezer.

“What’s your favorite color?”

He was always taking U-turns on me, and I never knew what he was thinking. With a glance at him, I found him looking across the aisle at the—

Flowers?

My favorite color? Must have been a slip. “Darcy likes yellow.”

He looked at me. “That’s not what I asked.”

The throbbing pulse thing started again. What was he asking?

“Color, Sapphira.”

I couldn’t beat down the heat sprawling over my face. “Depends on what we’re talking about. I like white on a house. Deep browns for floors. Light blue on walls…”

His laughter halted my list. “Such the carpenter’s daughter.” Then he stepped across the aisle, away from me, and snatched a handful of mixed blossoms.

“Here.” He held them out to me.

I did nothing but stare.

He took my hand and pushed the bunch into my palm. “Study them, and you can tell me later which one you like best.”

Why would I do that? I swallowed, wishing my head wasn’t spinning with confusion. A man didn’t just get a girl flowers. Not in my world. But it couldn’t mean anything. Jesse had been clear about our boundaries, and I was going to respect them.

Wished he would too.

Silly girl, those blossoms weren’t for me. He’d meant them for Darcy. He’d only wanted to know my favorite color because he was quirky. That had to be it.

He finished his shopping, paid—and made sure the flowers landed back in my hands after the clerk was done with them—and then we headed back in the right direction.

Darcy and Rick welcomed Jesse like it was nothing unusual for me to bring a guy to their house. Thank the great big heavens. Seriously. I couldn’t handle any more awkwardness wrapping around me. They chatted about his traveling, how he got into it, and why he continued, while the kabobs sizzled on the grill.

“I know a guy that would want to meet you,” Rick said as he transferred the sticks of veggies and meat from the grill to a platter. “He’s got a project north of here—a big one. Actually, it’s a joint project. Several churches in the area have come together to purchase a block of houses in a rough area of town…”

Jesse grinned, nodding. “I know this one. I work with a guy back in Valentine who was telling me I needed to contact his brother-in-law about that project. That’s why I’m here.”

Oh. That was why. As reality dimmed my daydreams, I glanced back to the colorful blossoms Darcy had inserted into a vase of water.

“How ’bout that.” Rick laughed. “Sounds like your friend’s brother-in-law is our associate pastor. Can I introduce you to him?”

So, did God plan these things, or did they just happen? I sat back in my wicker chair on the deck, listening to the men as they grew more enthusiastic about this coincidence, wondering how the theater of life scrolled out. Did God plan for me to meet Jesse? If He did, what was His purpose, exactly? I was glad I met him, and as the song that had become my anthem the past few days played through my head—
Jesus, He loves me
—I was so enormously glad I’d met the Carpenter’s Son as a result.

But this life right now…

What did I do with Jesse? I couldn’t make my heart stop lifting with a hope that things could change between us—had changed. That terrified me. With things between me and my dad being so rough, and finding out that my mother—the rock-star model, apparently—had died when I was still a kid, I couldn’t handle any more emotional trauma.

Rejection from Jesse would require emotional life support. Best not go there.

We gathered around the outdoor table on Rick and Darcy’s deck and prayed for our meal, and I tried to feel normal while I pulled my food off the skewer. Jesse blended as Jesse always blended. Easygoing. Lively. Comfortable.

I fell into my usual silence, trying not to sink under the ache of disappointment. Surely I’d get over it.

Adam and Jeff both had plans. Something about sand volleyball somewhere not there. Rick promised to call Grant North—the associate pastor whom Jesse apparently needed to meet, and then he and Darcy left for their Sunday walk.

Did they always take a Sunday walk?

That left me on the deck alone with the guy who had become my best friend—something I’d never had—and my deepest disappointment.

I stared at my hands. Silence swirled in the warm summer breeze.
God help, because I feel too much to be indifferent.

Jesse leaned against the table, his forearms pressing onto the glass. “Talk to me, Sapphira.”

I glanced to him, the pain building inside me. “You still call me that.”

He sat a little straighter. He looked down to the table, and I thought there was a hint of fire on his face. “Does it bother you?”

Yes.
But not because I didn’t like it. “No. I—you hadn’t for a while.”

Silence again. I hated it.

“You drove a long way.” There. No more silence.

His head came up, and when those green eyes landed on me, there was no way that I could convince myself that I could just be his friend.

He shifted, brushing his fingers against mine. “I was worried about you.”

Emotion built so thick in my throat that I wondered if I’d suffocate. “Why?”

“I told you. I care about you.”

Yeah, he did. Right before he said we couldn’t be more than friends. Clearly he did care. I shut my eyes, not wanting him to see how much I wanted him to be more.

His voice dropped, soft and deep and threaded with concern. “Tell me about your mom.” His hand warmed my shoulder. “What happened?”

Steady, there, my fragile heart.
“I Googled her because my dad wouldn’t tell me anything.” I stopped, pulling in a cleansing breath.

“You wanted to meet her.”

“Yeah. I don’t know why.” Pushing my shoulders back, I lifted my gaze from the table. I wasn’t defeated. This life, this week, wasn’t fair. But I wasn’t beat. Not by my dad, or my dead mother, or by Jesse Chapman. “Now I know though. She’s dead. Has been for years.”

“Sarah…” Jesse studied me, the concern on his face deepening as a shadow of confusion passed through his eyes. He stared at me, as if trying to read my thoughts.

Read them, Chapman. I’m not beat.
Whatever this was between us, it wasn’t going to take me down.

He pushed away from the table and stood. Leaving again.

Immediately I regretted the way I’d mentally slapped him, because he seemed to feel it, as if I’d struck him with my palm.

His retreat paused after two steps, and then those tanned arms circled around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

After a sharp intake of air, I worked to unscramble my thoughts. He wasn’t leaving. He was holding me, and that pulled all of the emotion to the top again. Not just about him, but about my mom, about my dad. I didn’t know what to do with it all, and I didn’t want it to crash over me anymore.

“I didn’t even know her, so…” It shouldn’t matter to me if she died.

“You wanted to.”

I did. I had no explanation for why. Why would I have searched out a woman who had abandoned me?

“It’s okay that it hurts, Sarah.”

Was it? “I wish my dad had told me—” The words caught. I was going to cry? Because of a dead woman I didn’t even know? Yes. And because my dad had lied to me, and because of it… “Maybe it wouldn’t have stung quite as much when she never reached out to me on my birthdays. No Christmas cards. No graduation call. If I’d known, then—”

With his arms still around me, Jesse knelt beside my chair. “I know. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” I spat. “Why wouldn’t he tell me? What good was it to keep it secret, to make me find out from the stupid Internet?”

Darcy’s voice, soft and tentative, came from behind us. “Guilt and pain and fear do strange things to people.”

We turned in unison to find her at the deck door.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spy.” She stepped toward the grill. “Just forgot my sunglasses.” After grabbing what she’d come for, she turned, settling her eyes on me.

Jesse’s hold loosened, and he dropped the arm closest to Darcy. But the opposite hand found my shoulder, and his thumb ran small, soft circles into the muscle. For a moment, Darcy looked at him, and she seemed to smile without really smiling before she slid her attention back to me.

“Your dad…” She sighed. “He’s had a hard life, and he doesn’t know what to do with all of the baggage. And the stuff with your mom—there’s still a lot of guilt and pain there. He does love you though, Sarah.” She moved close enough to reach a hand across the table to cover one of mine. “Truly he does. And he’s scared to death of losing you.”

After squeezing my fingers, she settled her sunglasses on her face and headed for the door, touching Jesse’s shoulder as she moved by.

The air felt heavy as I processed my life all over again. I couldn’t talk about my mom with my dad. He’d never tell me about her, what it was he liked about her, why they fell in love in the first place. Pushing him was severing our relationship. I didn’t want that.

I didn’t want to keep living as I was either. My life needed to be mine, to mean something, and to move forward.

Again my eyes slid shut, and a new wave of emotion crashed over me.

“It’s okay to cry.”

I shook my head.

He turned me to face him, cupping my cheek in his palm. “I know grief, Sarah. I know it’s not the same—our stories are very different—but I also know this: When everything goes dark and lonely and sad, one thing is still true. Jesus loves me. He loves you.”