Chapter 6
“We have an entire month to do this, you don’t have to get everything finished in one day.”
Mertie ignored her sister and continued to scrub the deck chairs.
“Mertie,” Amara said, her tone demanding Mertie’s attention.
Mertie didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to give herself any time to think. And the sooner they got the stuff done, the sooner she could leave and never come back.
Amara’s hand landed on her forearm, forcing her to stop scrubbing and to look her sister in the eye.
“What is going on with you?” Amara said, exasperation in her voice, but caring and compassion there as well. Her sister loved her and wanted the best for her. Even if they weren’t as close as they could be, Mertie didn’t doubt that. And as the oldest and the one with the commanding personality who organized and led naturally, it was her fault they weren’t close.
“Nothing. I just don’t see any point in sitting around twiddling our thumbs when there’s work to do.” That wasn’t entirely true, but she wasn’t the kind of person who sat around and waited for somebody else to take care of things. She did it herself.
“You don’t need to work yourself into the ground. I’m going to go out on the boat with Hobert late tonight, and I wanted to make sure you knew that. I don’t want you feeling like you have to work when I’m not here.”
“Somebody needs to do it,” she said, not meaning to sound nasty. But she was a little frustrated with her middle sister, Olive, who hadn’t shown up at all.
“It’s not Olive’s fault she’s gotten stuck in South America and can’t get a flight out.”
There’d been something about quarantine and then an issue with her passport, and through it all, Olive had not managed to make it home. Although Mertie wondered just how much of that was because she really didn’t want to come home.
She had preached just as loud and long as she could about not making assumptions about other people and always assuming the best. She reminded herself that she needed to live what she had been preaching all this time.
She had just opened her mouth to tell her sister not to worry about her, when her phone rang.
Mertie almost didn’t answer it. She was supposed to be on vacation, and her personal assistant had strict orders not to bother her unless it was urgent.
All of her other calls were forwarded to an automatic voice message. Then her personal assistant could go through them at her leisure, responding to the ones that couldn’t wait until Mertie was back in.
She had never actually taken off this much time before, but it was imperative that she get the house cleaned and sold so she could focus on her career.
There was a part of her that also wanted to develop relationships with her sisters. She could hardly do that if she was running back and forth trying to keep her business afloat.
“You can go ahead and get that. I’m going back in to wash the windows.” With that, Amara disappeared back inside the house, and Mertie pulled her phone out of her pocket, seeing her assistant’s number before she swiped and said, “Hello?”
She almost added that she had asked not to be interrupted unless it was extremely urgent, but typically Sandy, her assistant, was quite good and completely dependable.
“I’ve been screening all your emails, and there are a few you might want to take a look at, but when this came in today, I knew I had to reach you.”
“Okay,” Mertie said, suddenly all business. She had no idea what might have Sandy so excited.
“Zebedee Clinger called.”
That was interesting.
“All right,” she prompted when Sandy didn’t say anything else. Sandy knew she had a tendency to go into unemotional, analytical mode when the stakes were high. Her reaction shouldn’t be surprising. Even though the news was unexpected and extremely exciting.
“He wants to partner with you.”
“Partner?” Mertie didn’t typically parrot whatever Sandy said, but she didn’t understand. Zebedee Clinger was the top Christian author and speaker in the United States at that moment. He didn’t need a partner.
“Yes. Partner. You know his wife recently divorced him, and he feels like he’s having trouble reaching women. He told me that he feels like he needs to add a woman to his team, and he wanted that woman to be you. He told me he wasn’t looking at anyone else.”
That was huge. That was bigger than huge. That was...career changing.
“You’re right. This is definitely something I wanted to know. Thank you for calling me.”
“I have an email ready. I’m going to send it to you with all of the details, everything we spoke about on the phone. He is supposed to be following up with an email as well, and then once you get that, you have everything you need in order to figure out how you’re going to move forward.”
It wasn’t if, it was how.
The thought gave Mertie a little bit of pause, because she had just been thinking that God had brought her here to possibly change her life and her career trajectory. But... God wouldn’t have thrown an opportunity like this into her lap if He hadn’t wanted her to seize it and run with it. Think of all the people she could influence. Think of all the good she could do. The revival that might come to America as men and women were both being reached on a major scale for the Lord.
They spoke for a little bit longer before hanging up, with Mertie trying not to jump with excitement. It wouldn’t be the thing for a well-respected Christian speaker to have a happy dance in the middle of her porch.
“Good news?” Amara said, making her startle, and her hand went to her chest.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“I’m sorry,” Amara said, tilting her head as though waiting for Mertie to answer the question.
“Yes. Very good news. It could be a game changer for my career.” She hadn’t been expecting anything like that today. She had been rather preoccupied about all the other things that had been going on, and just when she was down, the Lord had sent her the very best news she could possibly have.
But there was a little nagging voice in the back of her head that asked whether the news was good, or whether it was a choice that she needed to make, to resist the temptation of power and prestige and choose instead family and the thing that looked like it would be less but could actually end up being more. More in someone’s life beyond her own.
She could change a million lives, possibly more, if she accepted the opportunity that Zebedee Clinger was potentially offering.
“You look excited. Happy even. You haven’t looked like that since you got here,” Amara said, and Mertie knew she wasn’t trying to hurt her or complain. She was just making an honest observation.
Maybe it was thinking about her daughter or about Garnet, or maybe it was the idea that being bigger meant being better. She couldn’t afford to have anything wrong with her life; Christians could be merciless in their demanding that any leader they had be absolutely perfect. After all, wasn’t it hypocritical to preach about something that you didn’t have right in your own life?
She certainly didn’t want to listen to Christian speakers who didn’t have it all together.
No one else did either. So she had to make sure that every I was dotted, every T crossed, and this was not a good time for an unknown daughter to come out of the woodwork. Especially considering how she was conceived.
“I’m sorry. I am happy to be here. And I really hope that it will lead to a better relationship between you and Olive and me. I guess I’ve just been...preoccupied.”
Seeing one’s daughter for the first time since she was a baby would do that to a person.
“You know if there’s something you want to talk about, I’m willing to listen.”
Vera had said the same thing.
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Great. I was coming out to let you know that I had put some hamburger in the refrigerator to thaw, in case you wanted to make something. But I’m going out on the boat tonight, and I won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“Hobert is fishing at night?” she asked, knowing that her sister could make whatever decision she wanted to, but it kind of sounded like they were spending the night together on the boat.
“Yeah. Actually, he was telling me that sometimes fish bite better at night under a full moon. That’s what we have tonight. So we’re going to try it. Honestly, we’re fishing.” She gave Mertie a smile, a friendly one, with no rancor in it, so Mertie didn’t feel like Amara had taken offense over her question. After all, if someone was trying to help you do right, it shouldn’t offend you when they asked you a question.
Unless you didn’t like being pulled away from the brink of sin. There were times in Mertie’s life where she hadn’t appreciated someone’s effort to help her do right. Maybe now was one of those times. She could have talked to Amara or Vera, but the main reason she didn’t want to was because she figured that they would encourage her to get to know her daughter.
Mertie wasn’t sure she could handle that. There were some deep emotions involved, hard feelings, and things that she had known from the beginning that she would probably want to keep buried for the rest of her life. She hadn’t expected to come face-to-face with her daughter later. Now, the desire to know her, to see what kind of woman she was becoming, to...see if she needed a mom...
She didn’t even know if Garnet was married. Maybe he was.
She hadn’t seen a wife on the porch, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
She worked for another hour, but her head was far, far away. She was so torn about what decision she should make, she packed her things up early, deciding that it might be helpful to go down to the healing garden and just sit and listen to the water, and ask the Lord to show her clearly what she was supposed to do.
She already knew what she wanted to do, and she already knew what would help the most people. Obviously, accepting Zebedee Clinger’s offer.
That was even more clear to her when she checked her emails and saw that the promised one from him was there.
She read through it quickly, then read it one more time.
He was offering a full partnership, speaking engagements, a three-book deal, cowritten together, almost guaranteed to sell millions of copies, and a speaking tour starting the next summer.
Not only would she be touching millions of lives, literally, but she would be making enough money that she would never have to worry about money again.
She could donate to whatever she wanted to donate to, help with child trafficking, rescue babies whose parents didn’t want them.
There was so much good she could do, it was almost a no-brainer to write back immediately and say that she accepted his offer and his people could talk to her people and they could hash out a contract between them.
But something held her back. Kept her from replying to the email. That prompted her to carefully put her things away, cleaning up her mess, taking one last look at the outside of the house which was half scrubbed, but still needed a good bit of work, and then turn her face to town, grabbing her pen and notebook and her Bible as well.