A Light in the Window (39 page)

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Authors: Jan Karon

BOOK: A Light in the Window
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Ah, but it felt good to laugh! Why didn’t he laugh more often? He had asked himself that very thing a hundred times. Well, and who would he laugh with? Not Emma! And getting a grin out of Dooley Barlowe was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
He drew her close and said, “I have something for you.”
“A new joke from Uncle Billy!”
“I haven’t had a joke from Uncle Billy in months.”
“Well, then, I can’t guess.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, noting that Barnabas helped himself to the warm place he left on the sofa.
When he came down again to the study, she had curled up with his dog, who was fresh from an afternoon bath. “If Violet Coppersmith could see you now ...” he said.
“Cardiac arrest!”
He passed on to the kitchen, where he took a dog biscuit from the cabinet. “All right, old fellow, off with you!” Barnabas leapt from the sofa and dashed after the biscuit that had skidded under a wing chair.
Why did he have to feel winded from the stairs as he handed her the blue velvet pouch? Why did his knees creak like a garden gate when he sat down beside her? In any case, he thought her face lighted up like the bush he strung outside her door at Christmas.
“May I take my time looking inside?” She drew her bare feet under her and leaned against the cushions.
“There’s no hurry.”
She held the pouch in both hands, happily feeling the contours of what it contained. “It’s the moon, I think!”
“Yes! You’ve hit it on the head. And the stars are in there somewhere, too—I collected them last night after the rain.”
Sudden tears sprang to her eyes.
“Cynthia! Blast!”
“I’m sorry!” she said, laughing and crying at once. “I don’t mean to do it. It’s just that I love your ... heart, Timothy.”
She reached at last into the pouch and felt the brooch and drew it out.
“It was my mother’s,” he said. He had intended to say more, had in fact rehearsed a small speech, but it left him.
She held it in her palm and gazed at it, as if stricken, tears streaming down her cheeks. Good grief, he thought, would this never end? She was worse than the man in the attic, who had bawled his head off every time something touched him. Worse than that, weeping was nearly as catching from his neighbor as was laughter—he felt himself choking up.
“Cynthia, stop it this minute!” he said in a voice from the pulpit.
She looked at him then and laughed and touched his face with her hand and leaned to him, kissing his forehead. “Thank you,” she said.
Later, he remembered that his mother had done that very thing—kissed his forehead and thanked him and wept.
They walked to her house, passing single file through the gap in the hedge.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said on the porch stoop. “What time shall we leave for the airport?”
“No later than noon.”
“Consider it done,” he said, tracing her cheek with his finger.
“Bookends,” she whispered, putting her arms around his neck.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
She gazed at him, the joy beating in her. “I’m not going to ask you to marry me.”
It took a moment for what she said to sink in. He stood very still, as if moving or breathing would expose him, like a rabbit before a hound in the field.
In the glow of the porch light, he saw her eyes turn that mesmerizing shade of periwinkle. She smiled and said, “You’ll have to do the thing yourself, my dearest.”
“Aha.” He thought she looked exactly as Violet might look when sitting at the edge of a fish pond.
Safely through the hedge, he discovered his circulation seemed to have shut down; he felt he had turned to stone. Marriage!
He carried the brooch upstairs, his mind crowded with thoughts. Why was fear always so close upon the heels of his joy, overtaking it every time?
He laid the brooch on the dresser, thinking of her reluctance to leave it with him to be cleaned and the catch repaired. She had at last relented, saying she would wear it always and especially for her confirmation at Lord’s Chapel. He went to bed with the image of Stuart Cullen placing his hands on her head at the altar rail.
Lying there, he prayed for deliverance from his fear and confusion, ashamed that he could not do what others appeared able to do every day—take a stand and stick by it.
At midnight, he remembered that he still didn’t have a title for his Easter sermon.
He had planned to preach “The Glad Surprise,” for that, after all, is what the resurrection had been, coming as it did after the horror of the execution, a hasty funeral, and the loss of hope among the disciples.
On the other hand, “All for Love” contained the entire message of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection in a mere three words. That was the gist of it, the condensed version, the bottom line.
The issue of love, he thought, was surrounding him on all sides. “... and pass it to your wife,” he heard Miss Pattie say in his dreams. “... and pass it to your wife.”
After the mournful watch of Maundy Thursday, Mitford awoke to falling snow on Good Friday.
“What’d I tell you?” grinned Coot Hendrick, who was doing his part to steam up the windows of the Main Street Grill.
“Man,” groaned J.C. Hogan, who despised snow and especially didn’t relish a fulfillment of prophecy by someone with stubs for teeth.
Miss Sadie’s extensive roof patching was finished, and the work in the ballroom went at a pace.
“Father,” she said, ringing up soon after the ground had turned white, “what do you think of this snow?”
“I’m trying not to think of it at all!” he said with feeling.
“Louella bought a straw hat for Easter, but she declares you can’t wear straw in the snow.”
“Easter is not about weather. Tell Louella to wear her new straw. We’ll be looking for it.”
Miss Sadie turned from the phone and warbled into the distance, “He says wear it anyway, he’ll be looking for it!”
“How’s it coming in the ballroom?”
“Oh, Father! You won’t believe how much it’s costing. I nearly fainted when I heard what it takes just to scrape the window casings. I had to sit down—the room was spinning every which way. But I’m going through with it! Do you think the Lord will look on this as wrong stewardship, spending so much money on a room we probably won’t step foot in again?”
“Miss Sadie, when you consider all those harpists crowding around in heaven, and the mansions and streets of gold, well then—I believe the Lord knows something about big doings, Himself.”
“She’s my only family, Father.”
“Absolutely I agree one hundred percent. Make that a hundred and twenty.”
“I’ve never had anyone to do for ’til now.”
“You can’t take it with you, Miss Sadie, and I don’t believe Lord’s Chapel could bear the blessing of... your further generosity.”
“Guess who I’m thinking of inviting?”
“I can’t guess.”
“Absalom!”
“Excellent.”
“But his sister won’t come. I’m sure of it. Wouldn’t you think, Father, that a person who calls themselves a Christian would have forgiven and forgotten after all these years?”
“What makes you think she hasn’t?”
“I asked Absalom when he was preaching at Lord’s Chapel and you were in Ireland. I said, Absalom, has Lottie forgiven me for not marrying you?’ I was very direct!”
“The only way to be.”
“Absalom just shook his head, and said, ‘No, Sadie, I’m afraid not.’ I could see it troubled him. And I blurted out something I’ve been wanting to say for more than sixty years. I said, ‘It seems to me she’d be grateful I didn’t marry you, so she could keep you for herself!’ ”
“Strong words,” he said, smiling.
“Absalom laughed, but deep in my heart, Father, I felt mean as a snake for saying it.”
“Christians hardly ever live up to our expectations, Miss Sadie.”
“I think you should know, Father, that I’ve forgiven her for not forgiving me.”
“That’s the spirit!”
She sighed, and he heard the rare weariness in it.
“It seems to me you could use a hug.”
“A hug?”
“Have you had one since Sunday?”
“Not that I can think of, but the man doing the plasterwork shook my hand.”
“I’ll be right up,” he said.
Miss Sadie leaned on her cane in the rubble of the ballroom and peered at him. “What about Dooley?”
“What about him?”
“Haven’t you done your part yet?” she asked tartly. “You’re supposed to do your part and be looking into schools.”
“Yes, well, how right you are. And I haven’t done my part because, to tell the truth, I hate the thought of sending the boy away. Now, don’t flog me, Miss Sadie. I’m just telling you the way it is.”
“I hope you don’t mind my saying so, Father, but that is very selfish thinking.”
There was a meaningful silence. “I’ll do it,” he said at last, feeling as if he had choked down a dose of paregoric.

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