When Grace Sings (43 page)

She stood beneath the weight of his hands, beneath the weight of his painful past. She’d listened, as he’d asked her to do. Now she wanted the same courtesy from him.

Briley

He braced himself for Alexa’s protest. She would protest. Argue. Beg. Maybe even cry. He’d always hated seeing girls cry. Especially when he caused the tears. But he’d be strong. He would
not
give in.

She took hold of his wrists and lifted his hands from her shoulders. Then she moved behind him and gave him a little push. “Your turn.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder with a raised brow. “For what?”

“To sit down and listen.”

She pushed him again, the pressure insistent, and he huffed out a brief snort of laughter. He could listen. He owed her that much. Even though his eyes and nose itched from breathing in the musty scents of the old building, he moved to the bench, turned, and seated himself as if perching upon a throne. Palms on his thighs, he lifted his chin and gave her a haughty look. “Thouest may speak.”

She frowned. “I’m not teasing, Briley.”

So much for using levity to decrease his discomfort. “Sorry. Go ahead.” He pointed at her, warning her with his scowl. “But keep in mind, Aunt Myrt said I’m as stubborn as a dozen mules, and she was right. You can’t change my mind.”

She stood for a moment, seeming to examine him, and he made it a point to gaze back without flinching, even though her somber perusal made him
want to squirm. Finally she moved to the bench and sat on the end. Shifting sideways so she could face him, she linked her hands in her lap and fixed her gaze on his face.

“First of all, I’m sorry you never felt loved. I can’t imagine anything worse. I didn’t have a big family, and I was jealous of the kids who had a mom and a dad and brothers and sisters. I always wished I could be part of a family like that. Even so, I wouldn’t have traded my mom for any other family in the world. I guess, even though it might sound a little weird, it was a good thing my birth mother threw me away, because the best mom I could hope for found me.”

Briley gave a little start, a strange thought forming in the back of his mind. If his mother hadn’t booted him out, he’d have never met Aunt Myrt, the best person he’d known until coming to Arborville and meeting the Zimmermans.
Tear down or build up?
Alexa was talking, and he forced himself to listen.

“I knew how much Mom loved me, and I was fortunate to have other people in my life—people from church—who loved me, too. Most of all, my mom always told me how much God loves me.”

Aunt Myrt had told him the same thing. Over and over and over …

“If I had grown up feeling like no one loved me, I’d probably be trying to find my self-worth and value in other things, like a job.” She sucked in a sharp breath and looked away for a moment, as if something had poked her in the ribs. When she turned to him again, her cheeks wore a rosy glow. “I’ve kind of done that myself with the B and B … trying to make it a success so my aunt Shelley and uncle Clete would think more highly of me. They”—she blinked away tears—“didn’t like me much when I first came to town.” She touched his knee, just a brush of her fingers. “So I understand why the article is so important to you. I really do.”

He didn’t think his front-page article and her cooking for guests carried the same importance, but arguing would only prolong their conversation. He clamped his teeth together and remained silent.

“But you’re looking for recognition in the wrong place. The people who
hurt you? They didn’t care about you then, and they don’t care about you now. Do you really think your estimation will go up in their eyes just because your name appears under an article on the front page of a newspaper?”

Defensiveness hit so hard he jolted. “Now, just a minute, I—”

“But let’s say it does change their minds. Let’s say they look at your name on that page and they realize they were wrong—that you aren’t dumb or incompetent or worthless. Will that magically change you somehow?”

He tried to interrupt again, but she kept going, either unwilling or unable to stop her flow of words.

“Will that brief moment of reflection—of ‘Hmm, so I was wrong’—by people who aren’t even in your life anymore make any real difference? I don’t think so. Because, Briley,
those people
don’t define your worth.”

The cocky teenager who’d resided under Aunt Myrt’s roof roared from the past and aimed a sarcastic arrow at Alexa’s heart. “Oh yeah? Says who?”

“Says God.”

He bolted to his feet and moved to the opposite side of the bench, where he glowered at her. He wanted to roll his eyes. He wanted to bark out a derisive laugh. He wanted to storm out the door and not look back. But he couldn’t. Some invisible, incomprehensible something—or was it Someone?—sealed him in place.

She rose and turned to face him, her movements so slow she seemed to be pushing through a wall of water. “ ‘For God so loved the world …’ ” Her voice was quiet, reedy. He had to strain to hear her quote a scripture he’d memorized to earn a candy bar from his Sunday school teacher when he was thirteen years old. He recited it in his mind along with her. “ ‘That he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ ”

She reached across the little bench and touched his wrist. “ ‘Everlasting,’ Briley. Did you hear that? What you’re trying to do won’t last forever. It will only give you momentary satisfaction—no longer than the amount of time it takes to read your name.”

He ground his teeth together so tightly his jaw ached. He wished he could argue with her, but somehow the arrow he’d tried to fling had become a boomerang, spinning around and impaling him instead. The pain in his chest took all his focus. He couldn’t form a coherent thought.

“I know you want to feel important. I know you want to feel loved.” Tears rolled down Alexa’s cheeks. Tears not for herself, but for
him
. “So listen to God’s words. Believe them. He loved you enough to send His very own Son to take the penalty for your sins. If you accept His salvation, you’ll have love—love that lasts through eternity. You’ll be God’s child, and there is no greater position than that.”

Her fingers slipped around his wrist, a gentle tether pulling him toward the One Aunt Myrt had loved and served and tried so hard to make real to him. “God the Father wants to rejoice over you with singing, Briley. Will you let Him?”

Longing spiraled through his chest.
Will you let Him?
And then Len’s warning about being taken in by a little Plain girl swooped into his memory. He was playing right into her hands. The longing unraveled. He yanked free of her grasp. “As I said, I’ll use fictitious names, but the story’s in. And that’s final.” He expected her expression to harden. For venomous words of protest to spew from her mouth. Maybe even for her to leap over the bench and pound her fists on him in rage. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had physically attacked him in anger or frustration.

But she didn’t.

Gazing up at him with tear-brightened eyes, she nodded. Then she sighed—an airy expulsion of breath that spoke of both resignation and acceptance. “All right. If you think that’s the right thing to do, I won’t argue with you. But, Briley?”

He stiffened his frame, steeling himself against a new feminine ploy.

“I’m going to pray for you. Not for you to change your mind about the article, but for you to change your mind about God. Because you need His love.”

“You need His love, Briley Ray. It’ll transform you if you’ll only turn to Him.”
Aunt Myrt again, rising from the past. He’d had enough. Without a word, he spun on his heel and pounded for the barn door. He gave it a vicious two-handed thrust that sent it screeching along the iron rail. Chill air, heavy with the scent of fall, filled his lungs, and for one moment he savored the fresh essence—the smell of the plains. The smell he now associated with the Plain.

Growling at himself under his breath, he aimed his feet for the cottage. He’d pack. Pay his bill. Throw in some extra to compensate for the income his early departure would take from Alexa and Mrs. Z. Then he’d hightail it back to Chicago and count down the minutes until his long-held dream became reality. He would see his name on a front-page byline. He would!

An unfamiliar car revved up the lane, stirring a cloud of dust. The car’s horn blared out, an intrusion to the otherwise peaceful setting, and the passenger hung out the side window while waving both hands. Was someone in the middle of some kind of emergency? He moved backward to give the vehicle space to pull in, and he almost stepped on Alexa, who’d apparently trailed him out of the barn.

Before he could apologize to her, the passenger door flew open, and none other than Nicole Kirkley dashed directly at him, squealing at the top of her lungs. She leaped into his arms. “Briley, I won! I won!”

Anna—Grace

Anna—Grace might not like Paul Aldrich much, but it took less than an hour for her to fall in love with his son. Steven and the carpenter spent the morning putting the bathroom fixtures into place, and instead of helping his dad, Danny assigned himself as her assistant. With a seriousness that made her swallow giggles, he explained how to use half-inch-wide blue tape—painter’s tape, he called it—to mask off the tops of the baseboards and along the window and door frames.

“You don’t hafta put it along the ceiling this time since we’re gonna paint the ceiling, too.” Danny stood in the middle of the dining room with his hands on his hips and examined the newly Sheetrocked ceiling with a critical eye. “Dad had to take down the crown molding before he could fix the walls and ceiling, and that’ll save us some time. But he kept it, and Mr. Braun wants to put it back up.”

As he tucked the remaining tape in the pocket of his overalls, he said, “You ever painted a room before?”

She shook her head. “No. Never.”

“Painting’s not hard. Just takes planning, preparation, and patience.” He aimed his businesslike gaze at Anna—Grace. “See, since the crown molding’ll cover up the place where the walls meet the ceiling, it won’t matter if the ceiling paint touches the wall. We just gotta make sure the wallpaper goes up almost to the ceiling line. Then the crown molding will hide the edge of the wallpaper and any little paint oopses.”

What an adorable little man he was! Anna—Grace turned her back on him so he wouldn’t see her smile. She pretended to press a short stretch of tape more snugly to the door casing and then, when she’d gotten her amusement under control, she faced him again. “You know a lot about fixing up houses. Are you going to be a carpenter when you grow up?”

Danny scratched his head. “I dunno. I like helping Dad. Mostly ’cause I just like being with him.” The boy grinned sheepishly. “He’s kind of my best friend even though he’s my dad.”

Anna—Grace’s heart caught. The boy’s sincerity tugged at her. Paul Aldrich must not be all bad if he possessed the admiration of this darling little boy.

Danny went on. “But Dad wants me to be what God wants me to be, and I’m not really sure what that is yet.” Hunching his shoulders, he giggled. “But sometimes I hope God’ll want me to be a baseball player. I like baseball a lot.”

Anna—Grace didn’t bother to hide her smile this time. “If you play ball as well as you prepare a room for paint, you’ll be the best player ever.”

Danny beamed at her. He swung his arms, brushing his blue-striped
overall legs with his open palms. “So … ya ready to paint now? Dad’s got extra rollers and paint trays in the truck. He said we should go ahead and use them, too, when I asked him for the painter’s tape.”

Anna—Grace cringed. “Can’t we use brushes?” Steven had purchased brushes.

The boy made a face. “We could, but it sure goes slow. Rollers are better.”

She hadn’t wanted to use the carpenter’s painter’s tape, and she didn’t want to borrow any of his equipment, but the boy seemed to know what he was doing. She sighed. “All right. I’ll have Steven buy some to replace the ones we use today, as well as the tape. Okay?”

Danny offered a nonchalant shrug. “You’ll hafta talk to Dad about it. He told me to make sure you got whatever you needed to get the job done.”