Fancy Pants (Only In Gooding Book #1) (38 page)

The boys scurried to do his bidding.

“I’m sorry, Tim.” Sydney stooped and inspected the cracked wooden supports.

“Velma’s been after me to put up a bigger one made of pipe.”

“That’s very forgiving of you. I know how busy you are.”

He took her hand and helped her back up. “I’ve been forgiven far worse.”

She grinned. “I can imagine you were quite a handful as a boy. Even so, nobody’s perfect.”

“I was a rascal, but you’re right: Nobody’s perfect.”

“So then why doesn’t God appreciate it when we do our best?” She pressed her fingers to her mouth. She couldn’t believe she’d blurted out that question. “My apologies. Ever since I discovered I’m a sinner, this has all . . .” She made a helpless gesture.

“It was a reasonable question, Syd. God gave us His best— His Son. It’s by His grace we are forgiven, not because of our actions.”

Sydney didn’t want to think about what he’d said. Then again, she’d been thinking of little else for days. She gestured toward the broken clothesline. “Well, our clothes are certainly bound to be as filthy rags right now!”

“The outside doesn’t matter; the inside does.” He tapped his shirt pocket over his heart.

You and Velma have a peace in your hearts that I envy. Everything
inside me feels so topsy-turvy
.

“So it’s not God who disappoints. We’re the ones who disappoint Him because we mess up.”

“Exactly.”

“Rasselfrass!” Merle’s shout caused them both to wheel around. “Boogers and brains! Stinkin’—”

Sydney hiked up her skirts and chased after Tim toward the source of the noise.

“Merle!” Tim’s booming voice silenced the hand’s odd tirade. “What is going on here?”

“This is what’s going on.” Merle jabbed his finger through a hole in his hat. It came out through the brim and wiggled like a worm. “Nobody messes with my hat. Nobody!”

From her time as a man, Sydney knew nobody touched another cowboy’s hat or saddle.

“It was by the rubbish. I thought you were going to burn it.” Melody’s lower lip began to quiver. “The boys said I couldn’t hit it, and I wanted to prove they were wrong.” As she spoke, she squished herself up against Sydney’s side.

Tim stuck out his hand, and one of Melody’s brothers sheepishly laid his pocketknife across Tim’s palm. “Really didn’t think Sis could hit the broadside of a barn.”

Melody gripped Sydney’s hand. “You tell ’em. You tell ’em girls can do stuff just as good as boys can!”

“Just because you
can
do something doesn’t mean you ought to.” Sydney nodded toward the hat. “Sometimes things are ruined when you don’t think matters through.”
Or even when you
do think them through. Because nobody’s perfect
.

“Like my hat. My hat is ruint.” Merle continued to wiggle his finger in the hole and mourn his hat.

Melody’s eyes filled with tears.

Tim shot Sydney the same helpless,
get-me-out-of-this-fix
look he’d had when he’d been cornered in the Richardsons’ henhouse.

“But Merle’s birthday is coming up.” Sydney smiled. “And that hat, though it is a fine one, has seen a lot of use. It’s why he likes it so much. But for his birthday, Tim, Velma, and I want to get him a new hat. Don’t we, Tim?”

“Yep.”

“It’s almost lunchtime. You children go wash up and help the younger ones, too.” Sydney shooed them away. She looked from Tim to Merle. “I’m sorry. Truly, I am. The children all seem to be in high spirits today. If you would rather not join us for the picnic, I’ll understand if you men grab a plate and go off somewhere else to eat.”

“I thought I taught you better than that.” A slow smile crept across Tim’s rugged features. “Never turn your back on the enemy.”

Merle squinted at her. “How’d you know my birthday’s almost here?”

“A little birdie told me.” She turned and walked off. She couldn’t recall precisely where she’d heard it, but the important thing was that she’d restored peace. She turned back. “Oh, and one other thing, Merle. I’m very proud of you.”

“You are?”

She nodded. “You’ve finally broken that terrible habit you had of cursing.”

By the time everyone sat down for the picnic, all of the garments were cut out and sewing had begun. A few of the babies and toddlers slept on pallets in the parlor, and Sydney decided things had turned a corner and the day would turn out well in spite of the rough start.

Then Widow O’Toole picked up her cake and carried it over to the blankets where the men sat. “You can bet that’s not a rum cake,” Velma whispered to Sydney.

Sydney’s smothered giggle turned into a gasp as the widow knelt down in front of Merle. “It’s your birthday. I baked you a cake.”

“Oh.” If he’d looked horrified earlier about his hat, he now looked sick enough to be on death’s door.

“That was mighty nice of you.” Tim reached out to take it from her.

She jerked it back, looked into Merle’s eyes, and began to warble, “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. . . .”

“Wasn’t it a wonderful day?” Sydney opened her napkin and slid it onto her lap. “We made six dresses and five pinafores.”

Velma reached over and patted Sydney’s hand. “Aprons. We call ’em aprons.”

“Aprons. Five aprons.” Sydney beamed.

Tim asked the blessing.

“Some of the older girls used scraps and stitched a blanket for the Vaughns’ new baby.” Sydney took a sip of coffee. “Wasn’t that thoughtful of them?”

“Is that why they stopped using my lariat as a skip rope?”

“It was so generous of you to loan it to them. Velma, might I please have a little butter? Several of the children took turns with the butter churn, Tim.”

“I suppose that explains why they were all eating popcorn.”

“When Christmas draws nigh, we’ll have to invite them all over to make popcorn balls. Oh! And a taffy pull. Wouldn’t that be jolly?”

Tim arched a brow. “By then, Merle might forget about his hat—but you’ll have to take care that Widow O’Toole doesn’t come. It’ll take a long time before he recovers from this afternoon.”

Beneath the table, Velma kicked Tim and said, “All in all, we got a lot done today.”

“Yup. Considering that the men didn’t have ropes, they did a fair job of rounding up the horses.”

“You do have them well trained.” Sydney buttered a biscuit. “I meant the horses, but the same could be said of Forsaken’s hands.”

Tim drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Sydney . . .”

She heaved a remarkably unladylike sigh. “Oh, very well. I confess. This was the first time I’ve entertained in America. Cervantes says, ‘To be prepared is half the victory.’ I thought I’d planned adequately and wanted everything to go perfectly, but I failed abysmally.”

Velma shot Tim a look-what-you-did scowl.

“You got the dresses and aprons made.” Tim nodded to emphasize his assertion. “That’s what counts. Roast tastes good, Velma.”

Sydney sliced off a miniscule bite of meat.

“Your plan worked, Sydney.” Velma poked at her potato. “Bet Mrs. Orion wears that fancy gown to church next week.”

“She’ll look lovely in it.”

Tim cleared his throat. “Syd—you’re not playing matchmaker, are you?”

“Merciful heavens, no! I’m no good at romance—my own or anyone else’s.” Hectic red tinted her cheeks. “Timothy, did you know that Americans misquote the Bible?”

Her change of subject astonished him—not only the change, but the topic she chose. Then again, over by the broken clothesline, she’d said matters were weighing heavily on her soul. Tim speared several green beans. “How’s that?”

“Fearing what else might go awry or what Widow O’Toole might do, I blurted out that perhaps someone might want to read aloud to us as we sewed. Before I could suggest a story from
Peterson’s Magazine,
Mrs. Bradle pulled a Bible from her sewing box.”

“She has a Bible with her wherever she goes,” Velma commented.

Tim wondered, “What did she read?”

“Nothing.” Sydney continued to play with the food on her plate. “She passed her Bible to Etta and stole the baby from her. Etta said she’d been reading from Matthew. You’ll never believe it, but she read that verse we talked about on the way home from church. Where Jesus prays. He said, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’ A verse or two later, it talks about transgressions.”

Tim nodded slowly. It never ceased to amaze him how God worked. Even so, he didn’t want to pressure Sydney. He’d told her he wouldn’t debate her on spiritual matters.

“But at lunch, Mrs. Bradle prayed for the food and started that prayer. Everyone joined in. But you all said it differently. You don’t say debts. You say trespasses.”

Lord, guide me and give me the words you would have her hear
. Tim put his elbows on the table. “What do the words mean to you?”

“My aunt Serena said men care about money, property, and title. Debt is about money. Trespassing is property.” She frowned. “I can’t match up transgressions and title, though.”

“Title is about family.” He looked at her.

A small
V
formed between her brows as she nodded.

“Transgressions separate us from God. We’ve trespassed out of His will and into the land of sin and darkness. There’s no way we can buy our way back into His grace. The debt was canceled when Christ shed His blood on the cross. Because of His sacrifice, God is willing to adopt us as full heirs in His family.”

“So debts, trespasses, and transgressions are all synonyms.”

Tim nodded. “You could say that.”

“And disappointments,” Sydney added softly.

Tim understood her reference and nodded.

“I’ll never forget Fuller explaining salvation to me.” Velma’s voice had a catch in it. “God was willing to overlook my past all because of Jesus. One minute, I was a whore’s daughter, and the next minute I was a daughter of the King. All I had to do was confess that I’d sinned and ask for forgiveness through the grace of Christ Jesus.”

“That’s all?” Sydney looked flummoxed.

“Yes,” Tim and Velma said in unison.

Sydney shook her head. “No, it can’t be that simple. It’s not a little thing, like me confessing that I was a miserable hostess today. A soul is different. Momentous.” She couldn’t fathom that anything so life-changing would be that casual. “There’s always a proper way to do things. Rules.”

“In the Old Testament times, that was true.” Tim nodded. “Sacrifices had to be made in strict accordance with detailed laws. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies in the temple to commune with God. But because of Christ, the curtain to the Holy of Holies was torn apart. He fulfilled all the laws. We call upon His name, and we are saved.”

Sydney placed her fork on the edge of her plate with exacting care. Her hands were shaking, and her heart thundered in her chest. “You mean to tell me, I spent countless months learning all of the etiquette—months of learning precisely how to walk and how far to bow and the proper way to hold my skirts and dip my head—all so I could make my bow to the queen of England, yet I don’t have to do anything whatsoever to approach the Lord? I could ask Him to adopt me, and I don’t have to wear something special or go somewhere important?”

Tim smiled. “God is with us everywhere. We don’t have to go to Him.”

“I was sitting in a railroad car when Fuller explained it to me.” Velma reached up and poked in an errant hairpin. “Noisy and drafty, with raindrops comin’ in the window we couldn’t shut all the way. But that didn’t matter. In fact, I sorta think it was fitting. I was leaving behind everything I used to be, and God was moving me on to a new life, washing and blowing away all the past.”

Velma’s words seemed almost poetic. “I guess it doesn’t matter if someone has one small sin or a million big ones— they’re still not Christian.”

Tim looked at her, his eyes patient and steady. Slowly, he nodded. Sydney wasn’t sure whether he was merely agreeing with her, or urging her to continue to think aloud. “You said the outside doesn’t matter; the inside does.”

“Men judge by outward appearance, but God looks at our hearts.”

Even so, she glanced down at her bodice. She wouldn’t receive callers or pay a visitation on someone if her gown were soiled. God deserved at least that much consideration. It wasn’t vanity; it was respect. Satisfied that she wasn’t smudged, she looked at Tim, slid her hands into her lap, and clasped them tightly together.

“What’s bothering you, Sydney?” Velma asked.

“Even if I accept that clothing doesn’t matter, surely conduct does. One doesn’t barge in on royalty and say whatever one pleases. Especially when seeking an extraordinary favor. Jesus gave us the proper words—that prayer. So which word is right? Debts or trespasses?”

Tim’s eyes turned a somber gray. “Are you asking out of simple curiosity?”

“You said if I searched, the answers would be there for me. There’s a verse about asking and seeking and tapping.”

Tim nodded. “It’s in the seventh chapter of Matthew. ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”’

“Knocking. That implies I’m supposed to find a door.” She pushed away from the table. “I always thought rules complicated things. Now I wish I knew the rules.” Suddenly everything she wanted seemed so very close, yet she didn’t know how to reach out for it. Her knees shook and the tightness in her chest grew unbearably. She chewed on her lower lip, then blurted out, “Something this important must be done properly.”