Chapter 28
B randon sat on Lenore’s couch, a completely new sound coming toward him from down the hall. He looked up from his phone to see her wearing a strappy pair of silver sandals to accompany the little black dress she’d bought in town yesterday.
A smile filled his whole face. First, at the sight of her walking and talking and breathing, and then at the way she struck a pose, that sexy hip jutting out and making everything male inside him come alive.
“Look at you ,” he said as he rose to his feet. He approached and drew her into his arms, leaning in close to her ear.
Because Zona had left the homestead on Friday, they were alone as usual. “I think we should skip church,” he whispered, his hands sliding around her waist. “You’re going to cause a whole commotion in that dress.”
“No.” But even as she protested by pushing against his chest lightly, she smiled.
“That dress is simply stunning,” he said, and kissed her cheek before backing up and telling himself to mind his manners and control his thoughts. “ You’re simply stunning.”
“Do I need anything else?” Lenore asked.
“Just me and you, we’re all set.” He took her hand and led her past the small dining table and the brand-new, gleaming, stainless-steel fridge that had been delivered last night.
She’d gotten it as a floor model. It had a couple of dents down at the bottom on the freezer drawer, but it had saved her hundreds. He’d helped her move all her groceries from her cooler into the fridge, and she’d said he could put his things in there too.
Brandon had taken her up on that, and having a refrigerator reminded him that he still wanted to get cold storage under the back porch, and a goat pasture built, and a turkey enclosure fenced in.
They still had that pesky problem of water, Mitch’s wedding next weekend, and then Christmas and the new year—both of which would take Brandon and Lenore off the homestead to celebrate with their friends and family.
He felt an invisible clock hovering above his head, tick-tick-ticking down the time he had left here. He swallowed back the uncertainty of whether he and Lenore would last past February first, and he’d taken his concerns to his knees. The Lord had not answered him in any noticeable way.
As Brandon drove them to church, he recognized that he had started to drift again in his beliefs. Perhaps God had given him enough. Had grown weary of his pleas. Simply couldn’t provide more.
Lenore seemed lost in her own thoughts too, her hands folded politely in her lap, her gaze out the side window. They hardly spoke on the drive south, and when Brandon finally pulled into the pretty red-brick church with the tall steeple and stained-glass windows, he almost wanted to go home again.
Home.
The word sat in the front of his mind, and he honestly didn’t know where that was anymore. Hidden Hills? Or with Lenny on the homestead?
“I’m so nervous,” Lenore said, and Brandon looked over to her.
“What do you think is gonna happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Lenore said. “That’s what’s scary.” She looked at him with her expression full of trepidation. “Did you know I didn’t post on the job board for six months, because I was scared of what would happen if I did?”
She made a nervous scoffing sound. “I didn’t know who would apply. I didn’t know if I could trust my instincts when I met them. I didn’t know if they could do anything that I hadn’t been able to do. It was terrifying.”
She looked out the windshield toward the chapel. “This feels like that.” She turned her attention back to him. “Maybe we should just go home.”
Home.
The word once again echoed through his mind. He reached for her hand, folding it into both of his.
“I can tell you what’s going to happen,” he said quietly.
“We’re going to get out of the truck. I’m going to hold your hand while we walk into the building.
We’re going to sit down next to Dawson and Caroline and their kids.
They’re going to be so happy that we’re here.
Then Willa Glover is going to get up. She’s going to talk about the Savior and His love and His mercy and His grace for all of us.
Every single man there is gonna wonder how I got you to go out with me, and who you are, and why they haven’t met you and snatched you up yet. ”
She scoffed again, but Brandon smiled.
“Then we’re going to sing the closing hymn, and we’ll say hello to my momma and daddy, and Arizona, and Duke, and their kids. Then we’ll walk out of that building hand-in-hand, and I’m going to take you somewhere amazing for lunch.”
Lenore dropped her head, a singular golden curl coming forward to fall over her shoulder.
She normally wore her hair straight back in a ponytail, and Brandon sure liked this look for church.
She’d dusted on a little bit of makeup as well when she normally didn’t, and a warmth filled Brandon.
It told him he wanted his home to be with Lenore on the homestead.
While he’d been able to get his voice to say a lot of things, he couldn’t figure out how to tell her that.
“Come on,” he said roughly. “Let’s go in.” He got out first and went around to help her down. He walked with her, her hand in his, into the chapel. He found Dawson and Caroline on the left side, where two seats on the end waited, as planned.
He let Lenore go into the pew first, and he sat down on the end beside her, putting his arm around her back. He squeezed his brother’s shoulder while Caroline leaned forward, reached across Dawson, and patted Lenore’s knee.
“How are you two?” Dawson asked, the picture of calmness—though Brandon knew he suffered with plenty of his own mental problems.
“Uncle Brannon!” Colt said from the other side of Caroline, but Dawson leaned forward and shook his head.
“You can talk to him after, son. It’s about to start.”
Colt didn’t like that, but Brandon let his parents deal with him, because Pastor Glover had just gotten up behind the podium, and Brandon always enjoyed the things she said.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters,” Pastor Glover started. “You may have noticed we did not begin in our usual way. There is no choir coming down the aisles. There is no organ this morning.”
She smiled as if this were a wonderful thing.
“That’s because our organ broke this week during choir practice.
” She chuckled, though she didn’t exactly sound happy.
“It is exceptionally bad timing as we prepare for our Christmas program, but as Cactus and I fiddled with it after we sent the choir home, I had the strangest feeling….” Her voice grew tender. “That God’s timing is perfect.”
Brandon ducked his head, his eyes following the grain of the wood on the pew in front of him.
“He knows Christmas is only a couple of weeks away,” the pastor said. “He knows we get more people to church on Christmas than any other time of year. He knows how incredibly important the choir and musical numbers are to me for our Christmas program.”
She paused, and Brandon lifted his head in time to see her swiping at her eyes. That alone made his chest constrict, because Pastor Glover meant a lot to him.
She’d aged over the years, and Brandon hadn’t even noticed until that moment. She always preached with such power and expressive facial expressions. And she signed—especially now that her son had opened his Deaf Academy and they had more deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees.
“My husband has been calling around for an organ repairman,” Pastor Glover continued, her voice steady, though her eyes remained bright.
“We’ve learned that people who know how to repair organs are very hard to find and in very short supply.
We’ve been quoted January, February, even May.
And obviously, none of those will do in order to salvage the Christmas program. ”
She looked left and right, her hands in ASL finally catching up to her words in English “Just when I thought I’d learned enough in this life, God continues to teach me.”
Pastor Glover drew a deep breath. “I know He could fix that organ. I know He could give me an idea of what to do, or He could lead Cactus to a person who could come tomorrow to fix it.
“I also know that sometimes I try to fix everything myself, using temporal means here on earth, when I should turn to the divine.
“That is my message to you today. Are you trying to control too much on your own? What could be different if you opened the door to the Lord? If you trusted that His timing is perfect, and that He will provide for you in the very hour that you need it?”
Her questions sank deep into Brandon’s heart, and then his mind, and then his soul.
He’d burrowed deep within himself, but the sound of sniffing beside him brought him back to awareness. He looked at Lenny and found her quietly weeping. He tightened his arm around her, pulling her closer to him, as if he could shield her from anything bad in this world.
She looked at him, gave a wobbly half-smile, and laid her head against his chest.
“I don’t know what will happen with the Christmas program,” Pastor Glover said. “Perhaps we will play recorded music. Or perhaps the piano will suffice. Or perhaps God will tell Pastor Knowlton and I something else He would like us to do.
“No matter what, I trust Him. I believe in His divinity and His power to work miracles—not only in my life, but in each of yours. I encourage you to strengthen your own trust in, and belief of, God’s power and timing.”
Brandon ducked his head again. He had always been one to go with the flow, laughing along the way and moving from one thing to the next.
He had lived an easy life until the past year or so, when he realized he wanted more than casual dating, and a new girlfriend every month, and a life inside a shared two-bedroom cabin.
Stepping out of that comfort zone had been hard for him, and he’d assumed God would immediately provide the things he’d suddenly found lacking in his life.
But He hadn’t.
Brandon now carried some scars on his heart and in his mind. He’d been pushing and pushing God for what he wanted instead of trusting in the Lord’s power and timing.
As Pastor Glover continued to preach, one single word caught in Brandon’s mind.
How?
How did he trust more?
How did he believe deeper?
How could he see the hand of God in his life more prevalently?
How?
He wasn’t sure. But as the sermon ended, and the congregation stood to sing their closing hymn with the piano, Brandon thought, surprisingly, of the homestead.
He’d had no idea how he could possibly get Lenny and her homestead to the point of functional in only three months.
And yet the things they’d accomplished together in only half that time flowed through his mind as the hymn rose around him and filled the rafters of the chapel, moving on its way toward heaven.
They had accomplished so much there, even when Brandon hadn’t known how. He’d gotten up every day. They both worked hard all day long. They consulted with one another. They pivoted when things didn’t pan out. They made the supplies and equipment she had work.
He believed.
The song ended, and sure enough, his mother and father came to say hello. So did Arizona and Duke, and Brandon found himself leaving the chapel hand-in-hand with Lenny, just as he had predicted.
He sighed as he got behind the wheel and looked over at her. “I want to hear what you thought,” he said. “But first, I just have to say something.”
He swallowed, the words not quite lining up still. “First, will you go to Mitch’s wedding with me next week?”
Lenore smiled. “Of course.”
Satisfied and his bravery buoyed by such an answer, he nodded. “Second…your homestead is starting to feel like my home. And you even said it earlier: ‘Let’s just go home.’”
He shook his head, because this wasn’t what he wanted to say. Or maybe it was.
“I’ve been really worried about what will happen with us on February first,” he said. “If I’m working somewhere else, it could be hours away, and I’ll never see you. All of the fear and anxiety you had about walking into the church today? That’s how I feel about leaving you and the homestead.”
Lenny simply watched him for several long moments, blinking in a normal way.
Brandon’s gaze dropped to the steering wheel, and then the speedometer, which sat at zero as they still idled in the parking lot.
“I’m falling in love with you,” Brandon said.
“And I’m scared that I don’t know what will happen.
I’m scared because I’ve never been in love before.
I’m scared that I might be the only one who feels this way. ”
Stillness in the cab blanketed him, and then Lenore’s delicate hand slid along his on the steering wheel, unclenching his fingers and pulling them toward her.
“You’re not,” she said, her eyes down on their joined hands. “Okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen either. But you’re not the only one feeling this way.”
She lifted her gaze to his, and Brandon nodded. She didn’t say anything else, and Brandon had to trust, somehow, that God’s timing really was perfect. He had to believe that when that time came, they’d both be able to do and say what they needed to.
For right now, he backed out of the parking space and said, “I feel like a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Is Italian all right for lunch?”