Like Sweet Potato Pie (35 page)

“What? I just meant …” Adam reddened.

“I know. I know. It’s just …” I turned my head to where I couldn’t see the groundhog. “I didn’t expect you to say that. Sorry. Go on.”

“I know I’m weird, Shiloh. I don’t do things conventionally sometimes.”

“Yeah. The muddy sweater is a nice touch.”

Adam chuckled then wiped a patch of brown stuff with his napkin. “My way isn’t the only way to do things. But these are the standards I’ve set for myself after … um … significant failure otherwise.” He sipped his coffee. “Forgive me if I come across like I know it all. I don’t.”

“I didn’t think that.” I poured in another packet of sugar and stirred it. “You’re … well, different, to say the least.”

I stirred awhile longer, trying to unjumble my words. My thoughts, even. “But it’s a good different.”
I think. Maybe.

“Really?” He looked up as if relieved and reddened slightly. “Thanks.”

For goodness’ sake! We looked like two petrified high schoolers from that Buffalo Crack whatever. My hand wobbled, and I spilled my cream down the side of the cup. He wiped it off for me with his napkin.

If Kyoko could see me now, she’d slap me silly.

“You’re … well, something special, Shiloh.” That Southern drawl resurfaced, and I lifted my head. “I’d just like to get to know you better. And see what God has planned for your life.”

I loved the way he said it, as if God had big things ready for me, just waiting to burst out. Maybe He did. I didn’t know how, surrounded by dinky two-lane roads and cows, but Beulah sure believed Him. I drank my coffee and thought, playing with my stirrer.

Not dating? Not kissing? Not coming inside? What, were we supposed to sit in the parlor and crochet?

“What did you … um … have in mind?” I attempted tact.

“Well, I don’t have anything planned exactly because I thought you … you know. Felt differently.” Adam turned his cup around on the scratched table, avoiding my eyes. “But … um … talking about things, maybe with your family and friends.”

“I don’t have any family. And what things?”

“Yes you do have family. Faye. Beulah. People who love you.” A corner of his mouth turned up wistfully. “And what to talk about? I don’t know. Your dreams for your life and your future, maybe. Where you think God is leading you and what you plan to do after you sell your house.”

He took a deep breath. “And that’s all. I just wanted to make my … uh … intentions clear. So you don’t think I’m playing games with you.”

At the mention of playing games, Shane’s greasy smile slid into my mind, along with his fat wallet of bills. My eyes bounced to Adam’s worn coat and then back to my fingers on the coffee cup, one of which still wore a bandage.

My hopeful expression slowly faded. Like the last gasp of a country music croon on the scratchy overhead system, leaving us in a few embarrassing seconds of silence.

“But there’s one thing.” I leaned forward, tucking stray brown hair behind my ear. “My house. Regardless of what we think, and … um … feel …”

My voice faltered, and I crossed my mud-caked shoes uncomfortably. “I can’t stay here in Staunton. If the house doesn’t sell, I’m going to be in big trouble.”

“Why?”

“Just … because.” I sipped my coffee, too embarrassed to splatter my mess about back taxes and overdue Gucci credit cards across the greasy Tastee Freez table. “You know I’ve got a lot of bills and … and stuff. That waiting tables and putting price stickers on books won’t even begin to put a dent in. And then there’s Ashley.” I sighed. “The house
has
to sell, and by the end of March.”

“Why, because of tax time?”

I jumped so sharply coffee spilled from my cup. “No. Not exactly. It doesn’t work that way. But don’t you see? If I do sell, then …?” I shrugged and took a nervous sip of my coffee. It was back to arguing about tea again.

Adam didn’t answer.

I peeked up at him sitting there in the booth, plaid shirt collar poking out from under his sweater. Rough hands holding his coffee cup. Youthful face, but mature from his years of experience. Not so long ago he’d been a virtual stranger, pouring gas in my rental-car tank while I wiped horse slobber off my hands.

“Well, I’m here to see what God has for you, and maybe it isn’t Staunton.” He looked up soberly. “Maybe it isn’t me.”

I nodded, hardly daring to breathe.

“But I’d like to find out.”

“Okay.” I picked up my cup.

“Really?”

“Sure.”

Relief and joy spread over Adam’s face. But he covered it quickly and lifted his cup to mine. I thought he was going to say, “To us,” which freaked me out a little. But instead he announced, “To the starlings.”

His old bird joke from the first day I met him. I laughed.

“To the starlings,” I grinned, tapping my cup against his.

Starlight flickered over the darkened meadow when Adam eased into the Smokewood Meade development plot, Tim rumbling in behind us in his white pickup. Armed, I might add, with more than enough deer-hunting weapons of all sorts to keep us sufficiently protected.

But nothing Adam or Tim said could have prepared me for the sight of Mom’s battered Honda, its sides dented in and windshield wipers and side mirrors torn off. The windshield smashed, littering the dry November grass with glistening shards.

My brand-new, just-fixed, seventy-dollar headlight bashed in.

AND MY RICE KRISPIE SQUARE PLATE EMPTY.
The nerve!

I slid out of the truck to my knees right there in the snowy ground, unable even to cry.

T
he Christmas season had announced its arrival in Staunton with gaudy strings of colorful blinking lights and tacky light-up reindeer. The nicer houses put up more “refined” white lights, but not the purple house down the street. Oh no. They decided to decorate with orange candles in every window, giving the whole place a creepy Halloween glow.

Trinity surprised me. Not only had she moved out of my place, but she’d left her old apartment and moved in with a cousin. The dark circles slowly disappeared from under her eyes, and although I know she still missed Chase on some level, I saw her smile again.

I stood on a stepladder at The Green Tree, helping Jerry dust the evergreen boughs and red ribbons.
Merry Christmas, Chase ol’ pal!
I thought spitefully, adjusting the wreath over the door.

Jerry had given Trinity some extra shifts to keep her busy, and surprise of all surprises, handed me an envelope with nearly three hundred crisp dollar bills. Courtesy of Blake, who’d taken my Mary Baldwin College party of thirty—and graciously saved me my tip.

Which meant that, during the month of December, I got to pay my light bill and buy groceries.

As for my car, Beulah paid for my entire repair bill when she heard the news, and Tim and Becky and Adam threw in enough to get my house and car-door locks replaced, since I never found my wallet and keys.

Just my purse, lying there in the empty snow.

For Christmas I got invited to more places than I could humanly attend: Christmas Eve with Faye and her Sunday school class, a bash with Stella and Jerry, Christmas dinner with the Carters. Beulah and both generations of Donaldsons haggled with me over the remaining days.

I hauled home more gifts of homemade spice cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels than I could eat, plus new gloves and doggie toys and ice scrapers for my car. Peppermint-scented candles and creamy goat’s milk soap from Cracker Barrel’s gift shop. And a fat seventy-five-dollar gift card for JCPenney, which I hoarded like Scrooge himself, dreaming of soft knits and clean wool pleats. Fancy designer or not. It had been, after all, a long time since I’d plunked down money for new clothes.

We all showed up for the church’s candlelight service on Christmas Eve, too, cold and happy and laughing and excited. Whispering about our Christmas plans. Until the spotlight beamed down on the baby in the manger, and I remembered why Jesus had come. How He’d shown up unceremoniously, much like I had in Virginia, and taken on flesh so He could know our pain. Our joy. Our temptations and struggles.

And not just to know them, but to heal them.

We circled the shadowy sanctuary with flickering candles in our hands: a shimmering group of faces, of uncertainties and memories, both sweet and painful, all joined in solidarity.

The ancient verses gleamed comfort into our souls: “But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.’ ”

Becky stared into the flickering flame with eyes brimming over, remembering perhaps her empty womb but the full manger. Faye held my hand, her face lit with hope for the new year. Adam stood next to me, one hand on Rick’s wheelchair and the other around Todd, eyes glinting gold.

I’d never seen anything like it. The swelling music, throbbing in my throat, as I lifted my voice for hymns. The mystery of simplicity and sacrifice, power and humility. The rustle of Bible pages, whispering, “Draw closer! Draw near on your knees! Come see the One who came in flesh … for you!”

For one shimmering moment I knew—without a cloud of doubt in an inky-black winter sky—who I was.

I am Shiloh P. Jacobs, redeemed of God. I will never be the same.

My hands shook as I held my candle, spilling wax teardrops down onto the paper holder.

I could still feel the warmth of flame and candlelight in my soul when Adam led me out into his backyard after Christmas dinner, a light snow sifting down from the laden boughs like powder. It was crazy enough that I’d spent a whole day with his family, helping Vanna bake cranberry-apple pies and playing G.I. Joe action figures with Todd.

My eyes playing hide-and-seek with Adam’s blue ones as we set out gold-rimmed china and unfolded red cloth napkins. Firelight glowing on the curves of his face, his sweater smelling of wood smoke and snow, and our fingers intertwined as we bowed our heads for prayer. Now I stared up at evergreen branches and bare twigs stretched across gray—a gaping, open sky, bare and exposed, in contrast to the lush, sheltering canopy of fall. My sapphire blue birdbath wore a crown of ice, fallen maple leaves enshrined as if in glass.

“Is that where you got my Christmas tree?” I asked, breath making a white puff. Adam knew I hated cut Christmas trees, chopped down in the prime of their lives, so he dug up a little pine for me, root ball and all, and potted it. In the spring I’d replant it out in my backyard—for whoever bought the house to enjoy it.

“Over that way.” He pointed. Our footsteps crunched in soft snow, and my nose smarted with cold. Began to run. Not the best way to make an impression.

“
Shh.
See that?” He moved his head close to mine and pointed.

“What?”

“There. In the tree.” His breath stirred the hair against my cheek, and I could smell the faint fragrance of his aftershave, masculine and woodsy like he’d been hauling in firewood. Actually he had. Maybe it wasn’t aftershave.

“Um … where?” I gulped.

“To the right of that big turkey oak.”

“Turkey what?”

Adam’s shoulders jumped with poorly concealed laughter. “Just look.” He turned my head with his hand and pointed. “See that red dot?”