Chapter Eighteen
Lottie did not attend the Independence Jubilee.
She meant to, telling everyone she would be there.
She had even put on her best dress Saturday evening and tied her bonnet ribbons twice because the first attempt sat crooked.
When the first fiddle tune drifted up from Main Street, bright and merry and full of all the things she did not know how to feel anymore, Lottie sat down on the edge of the hotel bed and could not make herself rise again.
The whole town danced without her.
She heard it through the open window: boots on boards, laughter from the beach road, the lilt of several fiddles.
Mrs. Beck called for someone to rescue the star cakes before the children found them.
Once, much later, she heard a cheer go up, followed by the wild scrape of a reel playing too quickly.
She wondered if Cecil was there, standing at the edge with his arms folded, watching other people do what he had decided he could not.
Would he notice she was missing?
She hated herself a little for wondering.
By the time the music faded, and Wild Rose Ridge settled into the soft, tired quiet after a celebration, Lottie had cried enough to leave herself hollow. She wasn’t healed, simply empty.
Sunday morning came bright, blue, and indecently cheerful. Wild Rose Ridge, for all its spent lanterns, sagging bunting, crumbs of cake, and children still sticky from yesterday’s celebration, went to church before it allowed the holiday to be called complete.
Lottie appreciated but also resented it.
Lottie washed her face in cold water, pinned her hair with hands that only trembled once, and put on the same dress she had failed to wear the night before.
No Bellamy woman went to public defeat looking untidy.
Delly had taught her that, though Delly would have called it practical presentation rather than pride.
A knock came at the hotel room door.
Lottie opened it to find her sister standing in the hall with two biscuits wrapped in a napkin and an expression of carefully managed neutrality.
“I brought breakfast.”
“I am not hungry.”
“I anticipated that objection and chose something portable.”
“You are becoming less subtle since marriage.”
“I was never subtle. I was merely efficient.”
Lottie took the napkin because refusing bread from Delly had always been more trouble than eating it. Her sister’s gaze moved over her face.
“You do not have to go to church this morning.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You do not.”
Lottie looked down at the folded napkin in her hands. “If I stay here, everyone will know why.”
“Everyone already suspects why.”
“That is not comforting.”
“No, but it saves you the labor of pretending mystery.”
Lottie almost laughed. It caught in her throat and came out unevenly.
Delly stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “I can sit with you here. Jeb will understand.”
Of course, he would. Jebediah Simms had become annoyingly good at understanding things. Lottie liked him for it. She also resented him for having learned courage faster than Cecil.
“No,” Lottie said. “I am going.”
Delly gave an exaggerated sigh. “For yourself, or to prove something?”
Lottie hated the question because it required examination, and she had done quite enough examination for one week.
“For myself,” she said at last. “And because I missed the Jubilee. I will not miss church too.”
Delly’s face softened.
She did not fuss. That was another sign of growth. Instead, she slipped her arm through Lottie’s and walked with her downstairs, out of the hotel, and into the bright morning.
Wild Rose Ridge looked like a town that had celebrated hard and slept little.
Bunting hung from porch rails in tired swoops.
A forgotten paper flag lay near the mercantile steps.
The platform on the beach stood empty. The lanterns unlit and pale in daylight.
A child near the bakery still had red sugar in the corner of his mouth and the solemn expression of someone who had committed several small sins and regretted none of them.
Mrs. Beck waved from her doorway. “Bless you both. Service first, then we shall see what remains of the cakes.”
“I fear several may be beyond rescue,” Delly murmured.
“Then we must perform the Christian duty of disposal,” Lottie said.
Delly squeezed her arm.
The little white church was already filled when they arrived.
The Busy Bees occupied their usual pew with the moral confidence of women who had decorated half the town and intended Heaven to notice.
Cornelia sat with Tucker near the front.
Jeremy Stafford’s chair had been placed at the end of a pew, his fiddle case tucked beside him from the night before.
Jeb stood near the aisle, waiting for Delly.
He looked at her as she came in.
Lottie saw it.
So did Delly, though her sister pretended she did not. Jeb held out one large hand. Delly took it after only the smallest hesitation, and he helped her into the pew as if she were precious, not fragile.
That was the difference, Lottie thought as she sat beside them.
Precious was not the same as fragile.
She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her head. “Lord, please make today quick so I can go back to the hotel room. I know I should let this go and let You handle it, but I want to hold on to my feelings a bit longer. Amen.”
“Amen,” Delly said, wrapping her arm around Lottie’s shoulders and giving a squeeze.
The church was a terrible place to have a tender heart. There were hymns, Scripture, and silence. Polished pews held a person still when every feeling inside wanted to pace. There were people who loved one another and noticed too much.
Worst of all, there was preaching.
Preacher Sutton had an unfortunate habit of saying true things in a calm voice, allowing no argument.
She picked up the hymnal and shifted in the pew, making the mistake of looking toward the back.
Cecil sat among the loggers near the last pew.
He wore his Sunday coat. His beard had been trimmed.
His hair was combed back, though one stubborn wave had already freed itself near his temple.
His right hand was wrapped clean and visible, resting against the pew in front of him instead of buried away.
He looked up at the same moment.
Their eyes met across the church.
For two days, she had been teaching herself how to live with the space between them. One look from him threatened to ruin the whole lesson.
He did not look away first.
That was new.
The bell gave one final, bright note, calling the congregation together. People settled. Preacher Sutton rose, and Lottie faced forward before anyone could see what Cecil’s eyes had done to her composure.
The service began with prayer, followed by hymns.
Lottie sang because she had always loved hymns, even when the words scraped against tender places. Her voice was unsteady at first, but Delly’s came in beside hers, low and sure, and after a few lines Lottie found her way.
Behind her, from the last pew, she heard Cecil.
He wasn’t loud, but she knew his voice. She knew the depth of it, the careful steadiness, the way it seemed to carry sorrow without collapsing beneath it. He sang the old words as if he had not allowed himself to believe them for a long time and was trying to remember their meaning.
Lottie gripped the hymnal harder. Preacher Sutton preached on freedom.
Of course he did. It was the Fourth of July, and even Mrs. Hanford would have taken issue with a sermon that ignored the day entirely.
He did not stay with flags and speeches, nor with the nation’s liberty, though he honored both with grave affection.
Lottie listened as the preacher spoke of chains a person could see, then of chains more carefully hidden. He preached on fear dressed in sensible clothing, and pride which wore humility so convincingly a person might mistake one for the other.
Lottie’s gaze dropped to her gloved hands.
She did not look at the back of the church. She did not need to.
“Some men,” Preacher Sutton said, his voice calm enough to be dangerous, “bury their gifts and call the burying wisdom. They say, ‘I have kept this safe. I have risked nothing, harmed nothing, spent nothing.’ Yet our Lord did not praise the servant who hid his talent in the ground. The gift was not given to be protected from use. It was given to be ventured.”
The church had become silent.
“A heart can do the same,” he continued. “A man may bury tenderness and call it strength. A woman may bury hope and call it sense. A family may bury truth and call it peace. The Lord who made us knows the difference between peace and a locked door.”
Lottie swallowed. Delly’s hand found hers on the pew between them and squeezed once.
Preacher Sutton turned a page in his Bible.
“The Apostle John tells us perfect love casteth out fear. Mark the mercy in that. It does not say we must first cast out all fear before love is permitted to enter. Many of us would wait forever if that were so. Love comes while fear is still shaking in our hands. Courage often follows only after we have stepped forward trembling.”
Lottie’s throat tightened until singing later would be a lost cause. She had stepped forward, trembling.
She had loved Cecil with her eyes open, and he had refused her. The loving itself had not been shameful. She had not buried her heart in the cold ground.
She had offered it, even if he did not know how to receive it.
“Freedom,” Preacher Sutton continued, “is not the right to stand alone and call ourselves untouched. Freedom in Christ is the courage to stand before God and one another as we are: unfinished, marked by sorrow, dearly loved, and called forward anyway.”
Lottie closed her eyes as the words pierced her heart but also healed it. When the sermon ended, she kept her eyes closed for a moment longer and prayed the smallest prayer she had offered all week.
Lord, help my beloved Cecil move forward. Then, after a breath, she added what was harder for her to admit. Help me stand if he does not come.
The final hymn rose around her.