The ride to the church was quiet. Deacon could have kicked himself for pushing so hard. What was he even thinking? Blair was right; there was no future for them. Not really. She was only expecting to stay long enough to help her mom, anyway.
Obviously, she wasn’t interested. He’d been pretty obvious that he was, and she’d turned him down flat.
She had a ton more experience than he did, and she probably saw him for the awkward loser that he was.
He’d spent a lot of time trying to learn the Bible, and learning to do what the Lord wanted him to, but hardly any thinking about what he might need to say to a woman in order to convince her to take a chance on him.
He’d depended on God to bring his wife into his life. He supposed, in hindsight since everything was always more clear that way, that God didn’t typically do everything. He expected the human he was helping to have a little bit of a brain. That’s why God gave it to them after all.
God helps those who help themselves.
It wasn’t exactly a Bible verse but was based on biblical teaching. Maybe more applicable would be “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Or maybe Solomon knew what he was talking about when he wrote in Proverbs that one of the wonders of the world was “the way of a man with a maid.”
Deacon wished to spend a little more time studying that verse and figuring out what exactly the way of a man with a maid was.
So he could use some of it on Blair.
Too late though. The lady had been clear. She didn’t want him.
As he pulled into the church, he figured he better break the silence. “We’re meeting with Kendra. She’s sixteen. I would like your word that anything that’s said in the church today won’t leave the church. You don’t even have to sit close. She and I will sit on different pews, with me turned around facing her. You can sit anywhere, but stay in the sanctuary, please.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you but not an ear. Is that right?”
He tilted his head over at her. “Does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore? If you’re making jokes?”
“I wasn’t mad at you to begin with. I was more mad at myself.”
“Mad at yourself? Why?”
She threw a hand in the air before it came down and slapped her leg. “How can you ask that? You know what I’ve done in the past. How can you even ask why I might be mad at myself?”
“I don’t know how everything you’ve done had anything to do with what happened between us today.”
“It has everything to do with it. And you know it. Especially for you, and who you are.”
His brows drew down, but a dark blue car pulled in beside them. “That’s her. I really would like to talk to you some more. If you won’t do a picnic by the river, maybe you could set the parameters.”
“Just let it go.” She jerked the latch on her door and started to push it open.
“Maybe I don’t want to let it go.”
She put a leg out, and he wanted to grab her and stop her, but he fisted his hands in his lap instead. He had to let her go.
As she slid out, she turned her head over her shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t matter what you want.”
She’d certainly rejected him enough for one day.
He had to try to get his head in the game, thinking about Kendra and the issues that she was having with her parents, and different verses in the Bible that he might need to go to, trying to have them on the tip of his tongue so that he was ready to answer any questions she might have.
Blair was true to her word. She stayed close enough to see but not hear.
Maybe because of her discretion, the counseling session went well. He thought anyway. Kendra was coming along and seemed to accept Blair much better than Lynette, who was a very godly woman but did come on a little strong.
Kendra’s relationship with her parents was still rocky, but as he spoke to her, she wasn’t quite as rebellious about it as she had been.
“Okay. I’ll see you again next week.”
“Oh, you will. My parents aren’t going to let me out of it.”
“Sorry about your luck,” he said with a benign smile, admiring her parents for doing the hard thing. It was a lot easier to just let your kid do whatever she wanted to do than to actually make her do something hard, like go see the assistant pastor and take counseling.
It would be a struggle at home, he was sure.
Kendra jerked her head at Blair. “Is that the girl from town that was in prison?”
Deacon raised a brow as he gathered up his Bible but didn’t say anything. He knew that had probably made Kendra more relaxed, but he wasn’t going to talk about it with her.
“My parents said she was back in Cowboy Crossing. What a hick town. I don’t know why anybody would leave and come back.”
“There’s a lot of things to love about a small town. One would be the fact that you don’t really need to lock your doors at night.”
She was too young to appreciate a small town. Some kids seemed to grow up, content where they were. And others, like Kendra, couldn’t wait to leave, stretch their wings, and make their mark on the world. Never content with the quiet, peaceful stillness that he treasured so highly.
“So, is she the ex-con or not?” Kendra asked. Again.
Deacon stood. “I’ll see you next week.”
“She must be. Don’t know why you’re being so weird about it though. If she served time in prison, she served time in prison. No point pretending she didn’t.”
“I am. I’m the ex-con.” Blair had come down the middle aisle and now stood beside Kendra’s pew. “I’m Blair.” She held her hand out.
Kendra looked at it for a minute, and Deacon had to swallow hard and clench his fist. Tempted, if Kendra said anything unkind to Blair, to grab a hold of the little squirt’s throat. He didn’t like Blair calling herself an ex-con either. It might be true, but she didn’t need to put herself down.
After what felt like a really long time to Deacon, Kendra lifted her hand up. “I’m Kendra.”
She seemed to look Blair up and down. Deacon bit his tongue, frustrated that this must be what Blair dealt with all the time, the downturned look, the idea that she wasn’t good enough, having prison thrown up in her face.
He realized she’d never told him what she’d done. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. He supposed it was because of all the rejections.
“It’s nice to meet you, Kendra. I think the whole reason that your parents are sending you to Deacon is to keep you from being an ex-con. So if you think it’s a bad thing, maybe you might think about listening to him.”
She dropped Kendra’s hand and kept walking up the aisle toward the altar where she knelt, putting her head on the railing.
Deacon turned back to Kendra who was still staring at Blair.
“I know that,” she said in a much softer voice than she had been using. More humble. “But it never sunk in, not like it did just now. I get it.” Her face turned toward Deacon. “That would never happen to me.”
“I’m pretty sure if you talk to her, Blair will tell you that she thought the exact same thing. Did your mom tell you that along with a prison sentence, Blair was a cheerleader and homecoming queen? She was popular in school. Everyone loved her. No one would have said it could happen to her.”
Kendra nodded, digesting Deacon’s words. Deacon didn’t turn around, but he hadn’t heard Blair stand, and he assumed she was still kneeling at the altar. He’d spent a lot of hours there himself. He wanted to turn and go and pray with her, but he could hardly walk away from Kendra.
“‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ Don’t ever think that it couldn’t happen to you.”
That was exactly why Blair was here today. He couldn’t imagine doing anything inappropriate with Kendra. There was absolutely zero temptation for him. But it was so easy to think that it couldn’t happen to him. And he didn’t want to have that haughty spirit that went before a fall.
“I’ll see you next week, Mr. Hudson.” Kendra waved at him and walked off.
Deacon waited until she was out of church and he heard the door close before he turned. Blair was still there, and her back shook like she was crying.
Knowing he still had to be careful, Deacon walked down the aisle and knelt beside her. He put one hand on her shoulder and whispered a prayer in the stillness of the sanctuary.
Her shoulder stiffened when he touched it but relaxed under the words he said to the Almighty.
He fell silent, pleading with the Lord to heal whatever heartache she had, most of it stemming from mistakes of the past, he would guess. It was frustrating that things one did in one’s youth could close doors to opportunities for the rest of one’s life.
Blair hadn’t had to tell him, but being a farrier was a great career for her, because she would never have to fill out an application and mark down that she’d been incarcerated.
She stirred under his hand, which was still on her back, lifting her tearstained face. “I’m sorry. I’m holding you up. You don’t have to stay.”
“You’re not holding me up. There’s nowhere else I want to be.”
“There’s got to be a million places you’d rather be than sitting beside me while I bawl my eyes out.” She grabbed a tissue from the box behind the rail, intended for that purpose, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I promised to tell you why I went to prison.”
“I wanted you to tell me Sunday afternoon down by the creek.”
“I don’t want to ruin a good Sunday afternoon.”
“That’s not going to ruin anything.”
“Maybe not for you. You’re not the one who lived it.”
“It’s under the bridge.”
Her lips flattened, and she turned away. “I know that. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way.”
“It’s not God that needs to forgive you. It’s you that needs to forgive yourself. Let it go.”
“How can I forgive myself when everyone I see reminds me that I’m a failure? It feels like everything I do comes back to that. Every person I meet, I can see it in their eyes. Being in Cowboy Crossing is especially bad. At least in the town I was living in, it wasn’t something that every single person knew. Now, I can’t pump gas, can’t go the grocery store, can’t teach kids’ club at church without people looking at me and accusing me even if they don’t say anything. It’s the way they pull their kids away from me or the way they say hi and keep walking.”
“The Bible says ‘whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.’”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to tell you to shut up.”
He didn’t flinch. “Start planting a different crop. You have to get through the bad harvest, and then you start reaping the good.”
She put her head down. “I’m sorry.” Her breath was fast, like she’d been running, but her shoulders were slumped.
He wanted nothing more than to fix everything for her. To touch her, share the pain she was feeling. He hated that she had to take it alone.
“You’re right. That’s what turning over a new leaf is. Going down a different path. Planting a different crop. Never thought about it like that. Because you’re right, you reap what you sow. Yet, you have the option to start sowing something different anytime.”
“Exactly. You still have the bad crop in the ground. And you might always get a little of that crop, but every year, it gets better and better.”
“Leave it to a Missouri farm boy to have such a good grasp on the concept of sowing and reaping.”
Deacon grunted. “It’s what I love.”
“I thought you loved being a pastor? I thought that was your dream?”
“Can I be both? Jesus was a carpenter, right? Paul was a tentmaker.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m not sure if it’s biblical for a man to do nothing but preach. Although, I gotta say it’d be easier on my pocketbook.”
She laughed. “You might be a preacher, but I can’t picture you with a pocketbook.”
“Tinsley’s had more than a few, usually bright pink, and trust me, I’ve carried a pocketbook.”
Her smile seemed sad, and he remembered earlier that she’d been upset when he talked about Tinsley.
“Why does that happen?”
“What?” she asked, grabbing another tissue and blowing her nose again.
“When I say something about Tinsley, it’s like you withdraw into a shell.”
She shrugged and looked away.
“Don’t lie.”
Her head snapped back around. “I didn’t need that reminder. I didn’t lie, and I wouldn’t.”
“There’s something going on.”
“Maybe there is. But maybe I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe that’s not something I’m going to tell you. Whether you’re a pastor or not.” By the time she was done, she seemed very defensive, and he knew he needed to back off again.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. None of my business. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I’m sorry. It is something I’m…sensitive about. Maybe someday.” She looked kind of hopeful and pushed to her feet. “I think I’ve held you up long enough.”
“I told you I don’t have anywhere else to go. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.” He pushed up with her. “We on for Sunday? You’re gonna tell me about what happened, Tinsley’s gonna play in the creek, and we’ll eat some good picnic food that my mom will be thrilled to make. Sound like a deal?”
“I think I’ve already said no to that three times.”
“Then this is the time you say yes.”
She looked down to the tissue in her hand, like it held the answers to the hard questions of the universe. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He waited, holding his breath. He could feel her wavering.
“Yes. I’ll go on a picnic Sunday afternoon with you.”
He had to smile. What else could he do? “Thanks.”
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