Chapter 5
C ash stood in front of Kendra Whitmore’s front door, knocking with a few short raps before he shoved his hands in his pockets.
He had never done anything like this in his life before, and it wasn’t feeling right now. In fact, he had the definite feeling that he needed to turn around and walk away. But that could be him just chickening out, and he wasn’t going to allow himself to do that. One billion dollars was no small thing, and if getting married was all he had to do in order to get it, he was at least going to make the effort.
There was some shuffling, a little bit of yelling, then suddenly a child started to scream.
Almost as abruptly, the screaming stopped. Not long after that, a woman, her hair askew, her T-shirt stained and worn although still skintight, wearing skintight black pants along with a pair of socks with one big toe sticking out of a hole of the one on the left, opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I believe you spoke with my aunt. She called an hour ago to let you know that I was coming.”
“Oh. Of course. Cash Johnson?” the woman said, as though she wasn’t sure of his name.
Cash nodded.
“You can come in. I did try to clean up a little, and I have my hired girl helping me with the children. It just took us a bit to get them out of the room.” She spoke as she opened the door wider, slowly, as though she were waiting for the last of the kids to disappear.
“You have three?” The way she was talking made it sound like she had a whole lot more than that.
“That’s correct. All under the age of six. It’s quite a handful,” she said, like raising small children was hard work, which he knew it was. Although if they were properly guided and disciplined, it wasn’t as hard.
He tried to curtail that thinking. What did he know about that? He hadn’t raised any children at all, although he certainly spent his share of time around them with various church activities and with teaching Sunday school and junior church from the time he was a teen.
Kendra led him through the living room, which was strewn with toys, although it did look like someone had made a bit of an effort to tidy things up. The TV was on but muted. It was some kind of children’s program from the look of it.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just take you right into the kitchen, and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
He didn’t typically drink coffee this late at night, but she didn’t wait for his reply. She turned the corner and started leading him away.
He figured he could take a couple sips and it wouldn’t hurt him. But nothing about this was feeling right.
Am I just afraid? Or is this really not the right way to go?
He felt like he should have asked the Lord a little bit more before he ran ahead. As a pastor, he’d learned to stop and check with God before he did anything, and he meant anything. But after God had allowed everything to fall apart, he had more trouble trusting God.
He wanted to be one of those people who trusted God no matter what. Whatever happened, good, bad, or very bad, he just would believe that God would work it out for his good.
And intellectually, he still did believe that. But practically, he was just waiting for the next sucker punch, knowing that God would allow it. He didn’t want to think of God in that way, because that wasn’t the kind of God he served. A God who was just waiting to sucker punch him. But he supposed he allowed himself to wallow in anger and bitterness too long for him to simply pull himself out and trust that God would be good.
He knew people who weren’t Christians who assumed the universe was going to give them all the good things. If they could assume that about the universe, surely he could assume that about his God?
“So your aunt told me that you have a proposition for me,” Kendra said as she pointed to a chair at the table. “You can sit down there.”
“I can give you a hand making coffee,” he said. He didn’t want to just sit while she worked to serve him. That wasn’t the kind of person he was.
“No. You’re just fine. I am in control of my kitchen, and I don’t like other people touching things.”
He nodded, pulling out a chair and sitting down. He kind of liked to putter around the kitchen, and helping made him feel good. But maybe if she didn’t like people in the kitchen, he could help her clean.
He shook his head. They weren’t even talking about marriage, but...his mind went there. If he was going to propose to her this very night, he’d already identified several places where they might not be compatible.
He always thought that two people could make a marriage work no matter what. It was just a matter of one of them being willing to give up their way and go along with the other one. Sometimes in some marriages there was a spouse who had to be the one who always gave up in order to get along. He’d seen those marriages work, and he’d seen both spouses be very happy in them. It was a matter of choosing to be happy despite a person’s circumstances. It was possible, because he’d seen it.
But he always advised anyone who wasn’t married to be very cautious, because it took a lot of Christian growth, a lot of dependence on the Lord, a lot of sanctification going on inside of a person in order for them to be happy in such a circumstance.
Those were the kinds of spiritual giants he wasn’t sure he would ever compare to.
“You’re right. I’m here because I have something to offer you.”
Did he want to do this? The words felt wrong.
“Oh?” she asked, setting the mug of coffee she just made for him on the table. “Here’s the sugar,” she said as she set the canister down beside him. “And I’ll grab some milk. I’m interested in your offer.” She laughed a little. “I’ve been trying to figure what it could possibly be, and I really have no idea.”
“Maybe I started at the wrong place. You said you had three children?”
“Yes. And I have a lady who comes to help me. She barely had time to get here before you did, so that’s why there was a little bit of chaos behind the door, in case you heard it.”
“I did. But children can be loud. It didn’t exactly shock me.”
“Oh my goodness. You’re not kidding that those things can be loud. The oldest is in first grade, and I cannot wait until the others can go to school. It is absolute exhaustion just trying to keep up with the two of them all day long.”
“I’m sure that’s very hard.”
He heard lots of parents say things like that, and he wondered if he would be that type of parent. He didn’t want to be in a big rush to send his kids off to be away from him all day. He wanted to love and enjoy them. Was it possible to do that with small children?
There was a huge part of him that said it was, because he’d seen parents who did love to be around their children, even parents who homeschooled them and had them there with them twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week. There was no respite, but they didn’t seem to need one.
“Hang on a second. I promised the lady who is helping me that I would grab some snacks for her. She’s gonna run down here and get them. And then I’ll be able to sit and talk with you.”
She must have texted her help on her phone, because she’d barely said that when footsteps sounded on the stairs.
A slim woman, with her hair in a high ponytail and her eyes bright, her cheeks rosy, her walk energetic and businesslike, strode into the kitchen.
“Here’s them snacks I promised,” Kendra said, handing a grocery bag full of things to the woman.
Cash couldn’t help it. He stared at her, thinking she was much more like the type of woman that he would have wanted to marry. She seemed like she was naturally cheerful, and while she wasn’t dressed in expensive clothes, as far as he could tell, she had a way about her that was classy and elegant without being ostentatious or off-putting.
He stood up as she stepped into the kitchen, and without thinking about it, he took two steps toward her, his hand out. “I’m Cash. I think I’ve seen you at church.” He was trying to run through his memories of all the people that he’d met in the last two months and which one this one might be. If he didn’t miss his guess, she was one of the Clybourn family. The big family that went to church and filled it to overcapacity when they all showed up.
“I’m Ada. It’s great to meet you. You’re Aunt Karen’s nephew?”
She said Aunt Karen, like Karen was a relative of hers, when he knew for a fact she wasn’t.
Her hand slid into his, and he found himself shaking it and not wanting to let go, which was odd. He’d shaken thousands of hands over his career as a pastor and never had that feeling before.
“Are you married?” He could have clamped his lips down around his chin and up over his forehead after those words slipped out. What was he thinking? A person didn’t ask someone they just met if they were married.
Ada’s brows went way up and her eyes widened before she laughed. “I’m not. What an odd question.” She shook her head. “I need to get back to the kids.”
She turned and practically skipped away. He wasn’t very good at judging anything about women, but he was pretty sure she was in her thirties. And yet she walked like she was a teenager. Still, if the best job that she could get at thirty years old was babysitting for a woman like Kendra, he probably wasn’t interested in her, just because of her lack of industry. He wanted a wife who wasn’t afraid to work. He wanted to work alongside her and build something together. Whatever God put in front of them.
He did not allow himself to watch her walk away but moved back to his chair and sat down in front of the steaming coffee he hadn’t touched.
Kendra pulled a chair out and set her own cup of coffee down before she sat down across from him. “All right. The kids should be happy for a little while, and I have a little time to talk to you. Go ahead.”
He sat there staring at her, wondering if he really wanted to be married to this person for the rest of his life.
He didn’t have to wonder for long. The answer was a resounding no. It didn’t matter how many millions or even billions anyone offered him, this was a no.
But Ada... Ada he could handle being married to. The question was could she handle being married to him.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time. I just realized the thing I came here to talk to you about is no longer available. Sorry.” He scrunched his face up, waiting for the explosion.
“Are you serious? I had someone come here specifically to take care of my children, I cleaned up the house and interrupted my entire evening so that we could chat, and you changed your mind?” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. You know where the door is. You can see yourself out. I’m going to enjoy fifteen minutes of peace and quiet before I go tell Ada that she can go back home to the ranch. At least she doesn’t charge me.”
A wave of comprehension washed over him. Ada wasn’t doing this as a job. It was a ministry. And she lived on a ranch. Interesting. Maybe he knew that. But she just didn’t seem like a farm girl to him. She seemed...different.
Though he supposed he didn’t know what he expected from a farm girl, probably something more along the lines of what was in front of him with Kendra.
“I’m really sorry I wasted your time,” he said, pushing back away from the table and standing up, grateful he wasn’t going to have to pretend to drink his coffee. “If there is something I can do to make it up to you, just let me know.”
“You can give me a car,” Kendra said, obviously knowing that he was a used-car salesman in his aunt’s business.
“I can’t give you one, but I can make you a deal on one,” he said, but there was no effort to make his voice sound happy or excited the way he would have with a person standing in front of him at the used car lot. Kendra didn’t really want a car. She wanted something for free. And she wasn’t going to buy one. He would guess she didn’t really need one. But what did he know?
“Yeah. Next time I break down, I’ll come see you.”
“All right, you do that.”
She didn’t look at him as he started to walk away and didn’t say anything else before he reached the door and let himself out into the cool evening.
He loved the way North Dakota nights held a million stars, enjoyed the slight breeze and the sense of wholesome wildness. It hadn’t taken him very long in the state before he looked forward to evening walks.
Was he foolish to even try to find someone to marry him?
Lord? Ada is the kind of girl I want.
The breeze followed him as he walked down the steps and started toward his car.
Somehow, there were no audible words and not even a thought, but the idea came that if that was what he wanted, then he should try again. Why not visit Ada?
He didn’t know anything about her or her family. But he knew someone who did.
It didn’t take long to get back to his house. He couldn’t remember being that excited to talk to his aunt before. He found her sitting in her recliner in the living room, a blanket over her legs, a book in her hands.
“Do you have a minute?”
“It didn’t go well,” she said, two seconds after she looked up and saw his face.
It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about. Oh yeah, he was going to ask Kendra to marry him. He’d totally forgot about that.
“I just didn’t have the right gut feeling about her.” He didn’t believe a person should live according to their emotions, be it anger or sadness or whatever the feeling was. It shouldn’t dictate how they acted.
But he did believe in gut feelings. Those feelings that a person got when they just felt something was off or wrong or something was completely right. He felt like that was a person’s consciousness picking up on things that might not even register in their brain, and they might not think about or consciously notice, but those things added up sometimes to be right.
He also thought that was how the Lord spoke to him. Making things feel like they were the right thing to do. It was a feeling, but it wasn’t an emotion.
“So you didn’t ask her?” his aunt said, closing her book and setting it in her lap, with her hands folded carefully over top of it.
“No. But there was a girl there, a woman. Someone I’ve seen at church. I think it was one of the Clybourn women.”
“Those are good girls. But I think almost all of them are married.”
“It was Ada. Is she married?” Ada herself had already told him she wasn’t, but it seemed good to confirm it with his aunt, just so he didn’t misunderstand.
“No,” his aunt said slowly.
He gave her a couple of moments to think, and then he said, “Would she be a good one for me to ask?” He didn’t know why he was holding his breath. Other than he was more invested than what he thought in hoping that she could be the one.
Why?
He’d seen her for all of five minutes, if that, and he certainly couldn’t make any judgments based on that short amount of time.
Of course, he’d seen her in church too. She hadn’t caught his eye the way she had this evening. Maybe knowing he needed to be serious about finding someone if he wanted to take advantage of the offer had changed his perspective.
He didn’t like to think that that might be true though.
“I think if you’re going to do that, you’re going to need to go to her brother. You’re going to need to lay out everything for him. Everything in your past, everything that you’re thinking about. I wouldn’t hide what you were accused of. But I would tell your side of the story. And you need to be honest about where you stand with the Lord.”
His aunt sounded serious. Almost grave.
“Her brother?”
There were a lot of question marks in his head after his aunt had spoken, but that was the biggest one.
“Her parents both died in a car accident years and years ago. Her brother Ezra is the head of the family. I suppose he doesn’t make decisions without input from the other siblings, but he would be the one you would need to talk to. Whether he would make the decision or whether he would bring her siblings in to discuss things, I don’t know. I really haven’t had much interaction with the family, but they’re good, they’re solid, and if Ezra thinks that you are good and solid, and he gives his okay, that would go a lot further than anything else you could do in the next three days.” She paused. “That’s how long you have?”
He nodded. He understood what his aunt was saying. He needed to present his case, get approval, and then talk to Ada. Hopefully she would see something in him that she thought she could spend the rest of her life with, and she would say yes to his crazy proposal.
“Maybe I should just let this go. I can’t imagine what I would do if some woman approached me saying that she would get one billion dollars if she married me. I think I would go running in the opposite direction.”
“Maybe she will. Maybe the whole family will think you’re crazy. It...probably doesn’t help things with the things that you’ve been through.”
He nodded. He hadn’t told anyone here about his past, about the accusations. Because it was Zoe’s word against his, and he was the one who had left rather than stay and fight. But the church had fired him, had not backed him, and...maybe he should have stayed. Maybe he should have tried to clear his name. After all, a person was supposed to be innocent until they were proven guilty. But nowadays, an accusation like that carried more weight than an eyewitness almost.
Again, he had to fight the urge not to be bitter and angry against Zoe and the Lord.
“I have a car to sell in the morning, and I hate to leave the dealership during the day. Do you think if I wait until tomorrow evening, it would be too late?”
“I think if you wait until tomorrow evening, that’s the only time you’ll be sure to get Ezra at home. They’re ranchers with several businesses. They’re out taking care of their animals and farming their fields. I would guess that he doesn’t spend much time standing still during the day.” Her finger pressed along the edge of the spine of her book. “I don’t have his phone number.”
“That would be helpful, but maybe not necessary. I’ll drive out tomorrow as soon as I close the dealership. It’s Tuesday, so it closes at five.”
“I can come and be at the dealership if you’d like to leave a little early.”
“No. I think I’d better do my best to make sure I take care of my responsibilities. I can’t allow this to have me dropping everything and running off, and not doing what I said I would do.”
He had told his aunt he would take care of the dealership. He knew she was hoping he would buy it from her, but he hadn’t committed to that. He had committed to bringing it back from the brink of bankruptcy and getting it profitable again so that his aunt could sell it if she wanted to.
The two months that he’d been there had been the first two months that it had been in the black the entire year. He was well on his way to doing what he said. In another few months, his aunt could sell it.
Of course, if he got married and got the billion dollars, his aunt wouldn’t have to worry about money ever again.
“I appreciate you sticking to your word. But sometimes we can’t see the bends in the road that God would have us go down. Don’t let anything that’s happening at the dealership keep you from doing what you know the Lord wants you to do.” His aunt looked him in the eye, and he knew that she was serious. She truly did want him to follow the Lord.
“Thank you. I appreciate that freedom. But God always wants us to keep our word and do what we say we’re going to do, and honor our responsibilities, as well as take care of the people in our family.” He meant that with all his heart, and he knew that it was always the right thing to do to take care of the people that God had put in his path. It wouldn’t be right to just walk away from his aunt because it was no longer convenient for him to work at the dealership, especially since she had given him the job even though he’d never sold a car in his life and given him a place to stay, a place to run to. Although he hated to admit that he had run.
He got his own book from the coffee table and walked over to the other recliner. They had an evening ritual of reading for an hour or so before they showered and went to bed. It was later than usual, but his aunt was in her chair, and he would spend some time with her. He had to admit, he was looking forward to the next day.