Chapter 7 Olivia
“I’m mortified that I missed your lecture,” Olivia told Professor Farrow, her face flushed as he greeted her at the door of Antoine’s Eatery near Swarthmore. “Everyone was gone by the time I arrived.”
“It’s my fault.” He removed his stiff homburg hat and smoothed back a rogue lock, golden drops linking his French cuffs. “I noted the wrong meeting hall on my calendar and then gave that information to you.”
Her frustration at missing his talk turned quickly into compassion over his demanding schedule. “I thought I’d made the error.”
“The mistake was solely mine.” He opened the restaurant door, then followed her into a warm lobby that smelled like caramelized sugar and freshly baked bread. “I almost missed my own lecture.”
“The making of a nightmare!”
Professor Farrow hung his hat on a rack. “Fortunately, I arrived in time for a colleague to hurry me into the auditorium before my introduction.”
“That’s a relief.”
A waiter led them to a table before handing them menus. The professor sighed as they studied the dinner options. “I fear my age is catching up with me.”
If he considered himself old, she must look quite ancient. “I suspect you’ve barely reached the year of thirty.”
“Thirty-three,” he said. “And each year rolls by more rapidly than the last.”
“I wish I could tell you that the years slow with age.” Now—a blink of life—and she was rapidly approaching her forty-sixth.
“Everything seems to have slowed down since I lost my wife.”
Olivia’s eyes swept up from the menu, surprised at his admission, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his head had turned toward the window as if he might catch a glimpse of his belated wife in the fading light.
She hadn’t realized that he’d experienced the loss of his spouse. Those depths of grief, she understood. The crawl of time. The year after Graham’s death seemed to last forever.
No wonder Professor Farrow’s students didn’t know if he was attending the literary panel. He probably had days when the world seemed to flip upside down, and he couldn’t quite find his way to the top.
“I’m sorry to hear of your loss,” she said even though she’d long tired of that sentiment. He’d probably tired of it as well.
His eyes found her face again. “Thank you.”
“How long were you married?”
“Four years.”
Losing one in the early years of marriage did nothing to diminish the pain. If anything, it made it worse. Their lifetime together had been cut devastatingly short.
Olivia cupped her hands over the menu’s leather cover, searching for better words to console this man.
Three years had passed since she’d kissed Graham’s cheek and whispered that it was time for his Savior to welcome him home.
After the fullness of two decades together, she’d wanted to travel the path after him but the journey into the waiting life was one they all had to travel alone.
Alone. She still couldn’t imagine living the rest of her decades, if God gave her that many years, without him.
She missed talking story, partnering together at church, the steady love between them at home.
Even when their hearts broke, after they lost their sweet Annabelle, they held each other close.
Safe—that’s how she’d felt with Graham. Even in sorrow, they’d never wavered in their care for one another. He always supported her endeavors. Loved her as she had loved him.
The man in front of her must also miss his wife terribly. “Professor Farrow—”
“Simon, please. The professor bit makes me sound like my father.”
“It’s a title you should wear proudly.”
“Oh, I do.” With his smile, light returned to his eyes. “Perhaps a little too proudly.”
How refreshing to hear his honesty. And the change in conversation was welcome to keep her from derailing a pleasant dinner with memories of Graham. “It’s quite an accomplishment to teach at an institution like Winfield.”
“Still, professor is not a label that I prefer to have with friends.”
Could she and Professor Farrow—Simon—really become friends? It was fascinating, a girlish notion really, that he thought more of her than his many other colleagues, but still, her heart skipped a beat.
The waiter interrupted their conversation to inquire about their meal. Olivia ordered quiche Lorraine while Simon chose the beef bourguignon with potatoes and mushrooms.
“Would you like a glass of Bordeaux?” the waiter asked, and Simon glanced at Olivia.
“Just water for me, please,” she said, waiting for him to scoff at her teetotalism, but it didn’t seem to rattle him.
“I would like an iced tea.”
She was relieved that she didn’t have to defend her abstinence.
“Were you angry at God when your husband died?” he asked.
The question startled her at first, so personal in nature, but then she pondered his words. He wasn’t a church member or relative whom she had to feign what had dampened her heart and mind. Instead of pretending, she decided to be honest. “I was all jumbled up for months. Hurt, confused, angry.”
“The full range of emotion.”
“Except joy,” she said. “And in those first days, I didn’t feel much of anything. I was like a hollowed-out log, rootless while trying to stand tall. Then came the hurt and frustration.”
“I’m still trying to reconcile why God took Ruthie so early in life.”
“You’re angry as well . . .”
“Some days,” he concurred. “I guess I’m still sorting it out.”
Someone lit a cigarette to her right, and she scooted her chair as if she could block the smoke from their table. “Do you have children?”
“No,” he said slowly. “What about you?”
“We had a girl named Annabelle. She died before her first birthday.”
“No mother should ever lose her child.”
Her gaze dropped to her hands. “Annabelle took part of my heart to the grave, like Graham did, but hearts have a tendency to expand. I think of her whenever I write the heroines in my stories, and with every book, every time these women overcome their hardest struggles, I imagine Annabelle overcoming with them.”
A breath of time as he seemed to consider her words. How quickly they’d rolled off her tongue tonight. Like the doubts, the secrets she’d guarded for years, were safe with him.
“That’s a lovely sentiment,” he finally said.
“Annabelle was part of every story I wrote over the last eighteen years.” And she clung to the hope that one day she’d see her daughter again. That God, who’d graciously given her a child, would reunite them.
When Simon smiled at her again, his blue eyes lit up. “I actually wanted to talk about your books.”
“Really, there’s not much to talk about.”
“Did your husband read all your stories?”
“Oh, no.” She smiled. “He stuck to Calvin and other theologians like Charles Hodge. He would have enjoyed your article about the themes of destiny and free will in Shakespeare’s work. Hamlet and Macbeth and—”
“I wrote that article a long time ago,” Simon said. “Many of the details escape me now.”
She understood. “Whenever I start a book, I’m so immersed in creating the new story that I can barely remember my past characters or plotlines.”
“Novel writing requires a genius of its own.” He sipped his tea, and she wondered at this man before her who thought deeply about God and books. “My Ruthie loved reading your stories.”
That picture of his wife warmed her. Perhaps that’s why he’d sought her out. Her books reminded him of the dear woman he’d lost. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Mrs. Belle is brilliant, she’d say.” Another sip. “And I would agree with her assessment.”
“You’ve read my books?”
“Of course.” The smile sparked his eyes again. “A handful of them, at least, when I’m not reading Shakespeare. Although if you ask me that question in front of my fellow professors, I’m afraid I would take the well-traveled path of a coward and say that I don’t read romance.”
She returned the smile. “You wouldn’t be the first person who pretended not to read my work.”
“After my bout of cowardice, I’d like to think I would admit to my indulgence.”
“You’d really say that you read romance?”
He stroked his clean-shaven chin as if the act might help formulate words. “I’d say I was reading your stories to study the components of mystery and how you simplify complicated theology for your readership.”
Her eyebrows climbed in mock dismay. “Are you saying I’m a simpleton?”
“Of course not. It’s extremely difficult to portray complicated ideas for the masses.”
“My masses are some of the most delightful people in the world,” she said.
“Intelligent women with a heart for truth, although most of them are also exhausted with childrearing and maintaining their homes. In the evening hours, they want nothing more than to escape into someone else’s world where they don’t have to solve all the problems.”
It was Olivia’s job to solve them so they were quite satisfied with the results.
“You’ve done your job well,” he said.
Why had she put Simon Farrow in such a tight box?
She’d been nervous about meeting him for dinner, worried that he would see her as flighty or irrelevant, but he continued to be just as witty and down-to-earth as the man she’d met at Winfield.
They hadn’t even begun eating, and she was enjoying their time immensely.
“I suspect your answer about the mystery and theology in my books is a respectable one among the men in your scholarly circles.”
“And probably the women,” he said, “since none of my female colleagues would admit to reading romance.”
Yet she’d corresponded with a number of professional women over the years who told her in confidence that they’d appreciated the keen insight in her stories. How, like Simon said, she simplified terms and concepts for an easy read.