Page 2 of Look for Me

Martin watched her enter the chocolate shop. He rolled up his window. Time to confront her, to see if she still remembered him—or cared to remember him.

How do I approach her?

Martin prayed to God for wisdom. He had been saved for only four years and his prayers were not yet as strong or clear as his sister’s or his brother-in-law’s, who was now the assistant pastor at a church in metro Atlanta.

However, Pastor Flores from Martin’s own church said that God would hear the prayers of his heart even if he couldn’t form the words. As he learned to pray more, he would have more words to pray.

Martin willed his heart to speak to God, though he could not come up with anything concrete or specific. Perhaps the coffee had spiked his system to the point of making him jittery. Perhaps the drive from Savannah had sapped his strength. Whatever it was, he couldn’t find the words.

Finally, he bleated a weak, “Read my heart, Lord Jesus.”

It would have to do. Otherwise he might as well go home.

His only purpose of coming down to this small beach town was to get a glimpse of the only woman he truly loved.

Now he must talk to her, to see if she was real, that she wasn’t a doppelgänger. To see if she still remembered him. If there was still any hope for them.

And if she had met Jesus since their sad parting.

No doubt it would be a difficult conversation. Their breakup had been anything but sweet. On the day before Tina’s wedding, Martin had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, thereby making him a brand-new man who wouldn’t sleep with Corinne any more until their wedding night.

“I don’t want to marry you!” Those were her last words as she threw his apartment keys at him—leaving a small scar on his cheek—and walked out into the streets of Savannah in the pouring evening rain.

The next day, she quit her job at Tina’s Turn Pottery Studio, moved out of her house, sold her car, changed her phone number, cut off all contacts with her friends and relatives, and disappeared from Martin’s world.

Until now.

Chapter Two

“That was a quick lunch, Dinah.” Sandra Preston, the chocolate shop owner, was washing a giant copper bowl in the sink when Corinne walked past by her.

“Fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to eat a sandwich. Besides, I have to make up for the doctor’s visit yesterday.” Corinne washed her hands at another sink.

“Yes. How’s your little girl?”

“She’s okay now. All the red spots are subsiding. She’s learning not to scratch.”

“That’s hard for a three-year-old, but I was never allergic to ants.”

“It’s not an allergy per se. She just had a reaction because there were too many bites.”

“Falling on an anthill will do that to you.”

“I know.” There was nothing Corinne could do. She could not afford daycare, and preschool was closed for the summer.

All she could do was rely on the octogenarian Wanda Lewis—known to everyone at church as Wanda—to babysit Dahlia while she worked all day here and then as a server on weekends at a local bar. Wanda had poor eyesight and even poorer hearing. Dahlia would sneak out to play in the backyard alone. It was fenced in, but the ants were already inside the yard.

Corinne remembered panicking when Wanda called her yesterday, saying that Dahlia was screaming for help in the backyard. Her co-worker Hardin gave Corinne a ride back to the house and took them to urgent care.

And paid for it out of his pocket and the generosity of his heart. Corinne prayed that the pastry chef would not ask for something she could not give in return.

She felt bad that, without any health insurance, she would have to rely on the mercy of others.

Minimum wage and never rising up, she couldn’t even afford her own car. Every penny she earned went to feed her daughter and pay for the one bedroom she rented from Wanda Lewis, whose sister used to live with her before she had to move to a nursing home.

Corinne had thought about getting a job at the Walmart in Homestead across the causeway, but it was a forty-five minute drive each way. Not having a car didn’t help.

She had also found out about retail jobs at a couple of gift shops in Islamorada, half an hour south of here—but again, no car, no help.

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