Chapter 4
Red Flag Warning
Autumn
The news came very quickly. The next day, when Colletta had time to confirm with the board that, in fact, the church was in financial dire straits, she returned to me. My position was cut immediately.
“I’m so sorry, Autumn. We will work hard at bringing you back as soon as we can.
You have my word. We can keep you until the end of the week, as a courtesy.
” I thanked her for the grace, my mind wandering to the place I didn’t want to go.
Will I find another job? Will I be forced to move back in with my parents?
I shuddered at the thought, realizing I would rather work as a janitor specializing in public restrooms than ever harbor such an idea.
The place I had been avoiding—What will Ray say in response to this?
He was about to be my husband in just a few months.
Through richer and poorer, right? As I worked on cleaning up the mess from the food donations, sorting them and stocking our church’s food pantry, I considered that perhaps Ray would say I should just focus on the wedding planning from here on out.
After all, I had money saved. My pay had been relatively low, but other than my cheap rent above the laundromat, I didn’t have a ton of expenses, either.
I was probably the only girl I knew in Maple Haven who didn’t care for a herd of horses, wasn’t buying daily expensive coffees, or getting my nails done every week.
Those were some high-priced hobbies, and though I appreciated each thing, I had never taken the plunge myself.
Though, I supposed I might have to skip getting my nails done now for the wedding, and there were a few other minor expenses that I still hadn’t paid for that I would cut.
I pulled my phone out and checked my bank balance.
It would be wise to find other employment as soon as possible, I decided, after seeing that actually quite a bit of my money had gone to wedding-related expenses and of course my recent habit of frequenting the Fairy Falls Grocery store bakery.
Truthfully, the wedding couldn’t be scaled down very much.
The wheels were already in motion and on September 15th, at Ray’s grandparents’ sprawling cattle ranch in Montana, we were to wed.
The location was a tad remote, three miles away from civilization at the base of a cliff with a waterfall.
Hieroglyphics were carved into the side of it.
In the golden hour, when the sun was shining just right, the cliffs cast a shadow that looked like a heart.
Our guests were going to either be driven to the base of the cliff in small off-roading vehicles, or they had the option of traveling via horseback.
All of the details had been painstakingly sorted by me.
I even had an insurance policy in case grandma rolled an ankle on unsteady ground or one of the groomsmen got tossed off his horse for trying to show off in front of the bridesmaids.
There were going to be “watering holes” set up for this never-ending heat every fifty yards of the trip.
Portable bathrooms would have full-length mirrors, just in case someone needed a fit check.
A local falconer had been bringing his birds of prey out weekly to mitigate the area of snakes.
By all accounts, there wasn’t a single scenario I hadn’t accounted for, and I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t essential to cut.
Before putting my phone away, I opened my messages to text Ray, and my eyes widened as I saw that he was actually typing something to me.
“Can I come by?” Ray, coming to my work?
Sure, his dad was the current pastor, as Cody and his wife, Blair, were off on another mission trip, but other than church on Sundays, I never saw him here.
Ever. I quickly agreed and not even five minutes later, his boyish, handsome-self walked through the front doors.
When Ray stopped by the church, the church where everyone knew exactly who he was, where I had been working five to six days a week filling in several job titles, I hadn’t been expecting him.
This wasn’t something he usually did. In our eighteen months of being together, he had never shown up unannounced.
He had never surprised me. Even when we got engaged after only six months, I hadn’t been surprised like I was today.
After all, I had seen the ring box in his coat pocket, and he had asked me my ring size a week before. There were no surprises with Ray.
Thinking back to our engagement, my parents acted like I had just won some sort of Nobel Prize in marriage.
No one lit a candle compared to Ray, the pastor's son. Ray, the future doctor, pastor’s son.
Ray, the volunteer on weekends, animal-loving, knowing every verse in the Bible, future white coat wearing pastor’s son.
As far as my parents were concerned, it didn’t get any better than this.
It couldn’t get any better than this. I had started to believe it myself.
So, on this fateful day that Ray showed up, he had his hands in his jeans pockets. I couldn’t see either of them. The last time he did that, it was just before he pulled out my engagement ring. Today, his hands didn’t budge.
“Autumn,” he said, as if he was confirming that was, in fact, my first name. But it didn’t sound like he was addressing me but rather saying the season out loud.
“Ray?” I looked at him with confusion while he averted his gaze.
He looked away from me. I now know that he couldn’t make eye contact because he was about to do something shameful.
But at the time, I felt fear that something very, very wrong had happened to him.
Was it a relative? Did the family dog fall ill?
Surely, he showing up here at my work, unannounced, meant that he had an emergency that he needed me with him to face.
We would weather the storm together, just like we would no matter what came our way in the next fifty years together.
“Can we go outside for a minute?” Ray’s eyes shifted around the room, where two volunteers had been sorting through all of the seasonal decor that we used at the church throughout the summer and seeing what needed to be kept, repaired, or thrown out.
While Rebekah was working on folding up the 4th of July bunting we had barely taken down, her husband Sam was sorting through a box of fall decor we were about to put out.
Large pumpkins, sparkle leaves of every color in nature and make-believe, and hay bales.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I told the couple, who had just volunteered for an hour this morning before their respective jobs started.
They both met me with a nod, each of them consumed with their tasks on hand.
Rebekah had pulled out a bag of firecrackers, and with wide eyes handed them to her husband, as if they could spontaneously explode at any moment.
“Thanks,” Ray said, opening the large door of the church at the end of the aisle and motioning for me to walk out onto the steps.
“What’s this about, Ray?” I asked, my mind going back to why there was a bag of firecrackers sitting in the dusty church basement to begin with. I’ll handle that in a moment. Right now, my fiancé needs me. Something is so wrong that he’s come to my work.
“I—I just wanted to talk to you about something.” He looked away from me, the sunlight causing me to squint my eyes.
If I’d had even one more second to think before coming out here, I would have grabbed my sunglasses.
Or, maybe now, I wouldn’t have come out here at all.
Something wasn’t right. If I was honest with myself, something hadn’t been right for months.
“Okay, just tell me already.” He nodded, his hands now settled in his suit jacket pockets.
His outfit today was strange; it wasn’t unusual for him to wear a suit jacket over a shirt.
In fact, he did this often. But the manner of how much it didn’t go together today was different for Ray.
He usually had a bit more style. He was a little more put-together.
Today’s outfit choice was either rushed, or he just didn’t care. Two things Ray did not exemplify.
“I want to call off the wedding.”