Chapter 2
Mertie wiped the sweat from her brow as she moved the stiff bristle brush across the outside light fixture, scrubbing off the bird dirt, the cobwebs, and anything else that had attached itself to the siding over the years.
This house was going to shine, gleam, be a beckoning light on a hill, a home the prospective owners would absolutely not be able to resist, and it would get snapped up immediately, the second it went on the market.
Mertie was determined that would happen. She did not have time to sit around and wait for the house to be on the market for six, eight months, a year. She didn’t even want it to be on the market for two months. So she had a goal—four weeks from now, the entire house would be spotless, totally cleaned out, and ready to be shown to prospective buyers.
She intended that it be put on the market and sell that very day.
She was known for setting goals and achieving them.
That was why she had been up at five o’clock in the morning, scrubbing the outside of the place.
It was 6:30, and her stomach was rumbling, reminding her that all she had was a cup of coffee this morning, and it was time for breakfast.
“Are you coming to Bible study with me this morning?” Her sister, Amara, had walked out of the door and stood with her Bible tucked under her arm, a mug of coffee, lid firmly attached, in her other hand.
“No. Not today.” Not ever if she could help it. She would work, spending all of her free time getting the house ready.
“But the new preacher is going to be doing it today. And considering your line of work, I would think that you would be interested. People are interested in your opinion of him.”
“Well, they can be interested all they want to, as much as I hate to turn down Bible study.” She did love studying God’s word, and she loved studying God’s word with other Christians, but not in Raspberry Ridge. There were too many memories here. Too many things she wanted to forget. She didn’t want to stay here any longer than she had to. When she had arrived yesterday afternoon, she and Amara had gone over all the things that they needed to do, and she had determined that she was going to start and not quit until they were done. That included stopping for Bible study.
Are you too busy for me? Are you being a Martha in a world where you should be a Mary?
Mertie’s hands stilled, although she gripped the brush tightly, closing her eyes.
Over the years, she’d gotten better at hearing God’s still, small voice. She was a go-getter; she got things done. She saw black and white and was easily able to discern between truth and lie, right and wrong, good and evil.
That is part of why she had become a successful Christian speaker and author, in demand all across the country. She wasn’t quite in the top tier of Christian speakers, but she was getting there. There were only a few men who were bigger than she was, and they all had churches. She, of course, was not a pastor, because the Bible expressly said a pastor should be the husband of one wife. Considering that she would never be a husband, she could not be a pastor. Plus, the Bible also said it was a shame for women to speak in church.
She didn’t write the Bible, she just tried to live it. But she refused to try to explain the parts she didn’t like away or decide to ignore the stuff she wished wasn’t there. Sometimes it made her mad, and she’d had more than one conversation with the Lord about it. But she was reminded of the passage in Judges where Deborah was chosen to lead the Israelites because there wasn’t a man who wanted to do it. It was a shame for men.
Somehow, God, when He created humanity, had decided which jobs were best suited for which genders, and He had handed those jobs out. Who was she to question Him? She couldn’t make a world. She couldn’t even make a blade of grass grow. She couldn’t create one single-celled organism, let alone the whole planet full of them. She supposed, when she was able to do those things, then she could decide that women could be pastors.
In her line of work, sometimes she met people who got angry about it, but the Bible didn’t say that women couldn’t make just as good pastors as men. God just gave women different jobs. She could either follow God and His Word, or she could make her own way, but then it would be her religion and not really a Christian way. And as much as she had a commanding personality, with a full-steam-ahead attitude, she truly did want to submit to God and obey. Even though it wasn’t what she would have chosen if she had been writing the Bible.
Regardless, she recognized that voice and knew that her choice to work instead of going to Bible study was not the right one.
“Amara?” she said, calling after her sister who was halfway down the walk.
“Yeah?” Amara said cheerfully, stopping and turning, lifting her coffee to her lips and taking a small sip.
“Hold on a second. I... I’m a mess, but let me grab my Bible and a cup of coffee.” She was going to need another cup, since she wasn’t going to get breakfast for at least an hour. More likely an hour and half, or two. Depending on how long everyone wanted to talk.
Maybe, if she was lucky, it would be one of those Bible studies where someone was assigned to bring food.
She didn’t even care if it was good. Just something to put in her empty belly. She wasn’t used to getting up and working for an hour and a half before breakfast.
But if that was what needed to be done, that’s what she would do.
She climbed down off the ladder and hurried into the house, going upstairs and grabbing her Bible on her nightstand where she had read a few verses and prayed this morning, intending to have a longer time of devotions in the afternoon when she was ready for a break from work. She often taught in her books and speeches that it didn’t matter when a person got into the Bible, just a matter that they did.
Of course, the Bible itself said morning, noon, and night will I pray, so, for her, morning, noon, and night was the standard.
Regardless, she grabbed her Bible, and the notebook that was never far from it, and hurried back down the stairs, glancing in the mirror as she went out of her room and sighing a little. Mertie Jardine, speaker, writer, and teacher of the Bible, was not exactly put together this morning. She had a handkerchief tied around her hair, dirt splatters on her face, and she wore the oldest clothes in her wardrobe, clothes she had pulled out of the closet that had belonged to her sister back in the day. Old jeans with holes in both knees and a T-shirt so thin a person could almost see through it, the logo long since faded away, although she thought it might have been for the Michigan Wolverines, but wasn’t sure.
Regardless, her ratty old tennis shoes completed the look, and no one would look at her picture on her book jackets and confuse that woman with the woman who was walking out of the house, coffee in hand, clutching her Bible right now.
“I’m so glad you’re coming,” Amara said, a big smile on her face.
The smile was probably less about Mertie going and more about the man who was walking up the drive to meet them. Hobert Gilcrest had asked her sister to marry him, and they were hoping to get the new pastor to do the ceremony soon. Preferably, right after he was ordained in the church. Mertie had heard nothing but good things about the man candidating for the pastor position, although she hadn’t caught his name.
She just knew it was a man and that he had a daughter.
Which led Mertie to wonder if he might be married and divorced, since she had heard nothing about a wife.
She hadn’t worried about it though. It wasn’t her town, and he wasn’t going to be her pastor. She had a small home in the suburbs of Chicago, which she used as her base when she wasn’t traveling, which she did as much as she could. She did not turn down a request, although she had blocked out the next four weeks in her schedule to help her sisters get their parents’ house ready for market.
“I’ve heard he’s really good,” Mertie said, tucking her hand in Amara’s elbow, as they walked toward Hobert.
“I’m sure he is. I trust the opinion of the pastoral committee.”
“Anyone who wants to come here to preach would have to be preaching for the sake of the gospel and not for filthy lucre.” She said “filthy lucre” with a little bit of irony, since that was the phrase the Bible used. Her sister would recognize that even though it might not be something that even a casual Christian would recognize.
It was nice to be among people who understood her and got her humor. Especially since she wasn’t exactly known as a humorous person. Of course, a teacher of the Bible probably was expected to be serious and studious and look like a trustworthy person. Mertie had never had to work on that. It had come naturally. Although, keeping secrets, hiding a part of herself, didn’t come naturally, and there was one big secret that she kept, always.
As they walked, they met Hobert, and she stepped back a bit as Amara and Hobert embraced, smiling at each other and whispering a few words as they exchanged a kiss.
A little part of Mertie’s heart squeezed. She had determined that a romantic relationship was not something that she would pursue, ever. She had messed up, and while she didn’t believe in penance, she did believe in reaping what a person sowed, and she had sowed something terrible in her youth. And what she was going to reap was giving up any idea of a romantic, lifetime relationship. Even though she wanted it. What person didn’t want to have a life partner standing beside them through the trials and tribulations of this earthly journey?
Soon they were back on their way, and it didn’t take long to walk down the driveway. They nodded and waved to several people on the sidewalk as they walked up the street to Homer’s and Skyler’s house. It was the last house on the street, before the healing garden and the bluffs, below which there was a pebble beach, where she and her sisters had spent many a summer afternoon swimming and dreaming.
That was before their parents had moved them to Chicago and her life had taken a screeching left turn.
Since adulthood, she’d only been back once, and that had been for something she never talked about.
There were several people already gathered on the porch, and when they saw Mertie and Amara and Hobert coming, someone jumped up to go get more chairs.
There was a small table set up, with a breakfast casserole sitting on it, along with plates and plastic forks. It was already more than half gone.
“Help yourself to some casserole. We already prayed,” a smiling, very pregnant woman said.
She thought it might be Vera Miller. She had been around town when Mertie had grown up, but that had been more than ten years ago.
Hobert cut a piece for Amara and himself, and they walked off, leaving Mertie to cut her own.
They were so cute together, talking softly and exchanging sweet smiles. Mertie was happy for Amara, even though she thought Amara might be a little off her rocker to have given up such a prestigious and lucrative job in Chicago to become the wife of a fisherman in a tiny town that no one had ever heard of.
Still, Mertie was not going to judge. If that was the Lord’s will for her, then that’s what her sister should do. Sometimes it was hard to remember that money wasn’t everything, although Mertie understood the temptation. And she admired her sister for understanding that and choosing the better thing.
Mertie tucked a stray piece of hair underneath the kerchief she had on her head and then picked up the plate where she’d plopped a small piece of breakfast casserole. She was starving, but as a public speaker who was constantly in the public eye, she couldn’t afford to eat as much as she wanted to. She needed to stay slim. Even though she was a Christian speaker, and she was supposed to be speaking to people who looked at your heart and not the way you looked on the outside, it was still imperative that she keep her figure slim and trim. No one wanted to see someone on stage who didn’t look their best.
Plus, she could hardly teach about moderation, if she didn’t practice it herself.
Taking her piece of casserole to the porch steps, she didn’t wait for a chair, but stepped down two steps, and sat down. There was a man on a chair right at the top of the steps, his feet stretched out and crossed, his Bible in his lap and a pen in his hand as he made a note on a small notebook he had on one knee.
He looked up casually as she walked by and nodded a greeting.
He looked familiar, the same way Vera Miller looked familiar. Probably someone she had known twenty years ago but didn’t recognize now.
She wasn’t going to be in town long, and as the man looked right back down at his notebook, she didn’t introduce herself but took a seat on the second step down and said a silent prayer over her casserole before she began to eat.
She assumed the eating happened before the teaching, maybe so the casserole wouldn’t get cold or to give people time to wander in.
Someone came out with more chairs, and a couple more people arrived, while Mertie finished her casserole and opened her Bible to Deuteronomy ten, which she had overheard in a conversation above her head would be the starting place for them today.
“Good morning, Connie,” an older woman said as she gingerly sat down on the step by Mertie’s knee, calling her by her mother’s name.
“Good morning. And Connie is actually my mother. I’m Mertie. Her oldest daughter.”
The woman’s eyes, a little rheumy and confused, narrowed as her brows drew down.
“You couldn’t be. She didn’t have children,” she said, sounding like she knew exactly what she was talking about.
“She has Alzheimer’s.” The man above her spoke softly, for her ears only.
Mertie didn’t even look up but just lifted her head, acknowledging his words and thinking about how familiar his voice sounded before she looked back at the woman.
“Of course. My mistake,” she said, keeping herself from saying “my bad” at the last moment. The woman probably wouldn’t understand the modern-day slang.
“This is my mother, Gertie.” Homer came over, offering her coffee, lifting up the pot he held in a silent question.
She shook her head. Too much coffee and she got exceptionally hyper. She had to limit her intake.
“I remember Gertie,” she said fondly, thinking about the woman who had always had a cookie to offer her after school or a cold drink of lemonade on a hot summer day when they were walking down to the pebble beach.
It was sad that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and it made Mertie feel a nostalgic homesickness that she hadn’t felt in forever.
Of course, she couldn’t remember those days without thinking of Garnet and how they had been inseparable until her family had moved away. He had been her best friend since she was old enough to remember having friends. Her sisters had tagged along when she and Garnet had allowed it, but they always seemed rather immature and young.
Garnet and she had ridden their bikes together, climbed the bluffs together, and swum in the lake together. They had been allowed to swim as long as they had a buddy, and she and Garnet were each other’s buddies.
Of course, she couldn’t think of Garnet without remembering that last fateful time that she had seen him, seeing the disappointment in his eyes and hearing him ask her if she would do the one thing she knew she couldn’t.
Through the years, every once in a while she would wonder what would have happened if she would have said yes. But she had made a different decision. And she never allowed herself to look back with regret. Just kept her eyes forward and concentrated on what God wanted her to do.
Gertie was rambling on about something that her mother would probably know exactly what she was talking about, but Mertie had no idea so she just nodded and tried to say things that would not set the older lady off.
Finally, after about ten minutes of chatting and finishing up their breakfast casserole, the man above her cleared his throat and said, “I think it’s about time for us to get started. And I wanted to thank you all for coming. Maybe you were expecting Homer to be leading us today, but Homer asked me to, since I am candidating at the church, and he thought it would give everyone a chance to hear me a little more.” The man’s voice held humor, like he wasn’t sure why anyone would want to hear him more, and Mertie liked the confident way he spoke, while still allowing a bit of humor in his tone.
As he spoke, her eyes were caught on a young teenaged girl who had been sitting on a tire swing in the front yard. As the man spoke, she had closed her book, got off the swing, and started walking slowly through the yard, picking her Bible and notebook up from where they sat on the ground near the sidewalk.
She started to make her way toward the porch while the man mentioned that he had grown up in Raspberry Ridge and had moved in with his parents, who were getting older and needed and appreciated him coming back to give them a hand with the yard work and upkeep on their big old, empty house.
“And some of you already know that I have a daughter. Her name is Dabney, and she’ll be joining us, because she wants to, not because I’m making her,” he said, and that humor was back. Mertie heard it in his voice as his daughter lifted her eyes, and Mertie found herself looking into eyes that were the exact same shade of blue as her own.
As her eyes roved over the girl’s face, she realized the features were very familiar as well. Even the hair color was the same as hers.
It couldn’t be.
“Oh,” the man above her said. “I guess I should start out with my name. For those of you who haven’t been talking to the pastoral committee, I’m Garnet Irving. And I’m here to candidate to be the new preacher at the Raspberry Ridge Bible Church.”
Mertie felt the world tilt and sway, and she put a hand beside her, grabbing the banister, taking a deep breath, trying to clear her head.
Garnet Irving.
No wonder the man’s voice had sounded so familiar, no wonder he had looked familiar, it was Garnet.
She didn’t say a word to anyone, simply grasped her notebook and Bible in one hand, her coffee cup in the other, jumped up, and hurried off the steps, all but running down the sidewalk and fleeing headlong into the healing garden. Knowing that if she ran home, everyone on the porch would be able to see her the entire way, and only wanting to get away from the prying eyes and out of the presence of the one person who knew her deepest, darkest secret: Garnet Irving.