Page 63 of A Convenient Heart
He’d told her from the beginning.Call me Jack.
She felt so foolish.
“You fell in love with him,” Danna said softly.
Merritt shook her head, but she couldn’t deny it out loud. She had. She’d fallen for Jack. The man with the pirate’s smile. The man who’d once been a boy who had desperately wanted a family and found hardship instead.
She blinked against more tears that threatened to fall. There’d been too many realizations in too short a time. She needed space to think. Time. And she didn’t have that, not with the pageant and auction looming close.
She smiled a trembling smile at her friends. “I have to finish getting things ready.”
Danna’s eyes showed the compassion she felt.
Corrine squeezed Merritt’s hand. “We’ll help.”
Merritt didn’t know what God had in store for her. But she had friends beside her who hadn’t let her forget that God truly loved her.
Chapter13
It was finished.
Merritt leaned her hip against the auction table with the last of the sold items atop it.
Mr. Castlerock and his bank manager, Mr. Silverton, stood at the back of the dance hall, collecting money from those who had won the bid for each item. In a few moments, they would take the cash down to the bank for safekeeping.
Over the past few minutes, as the auction had wrapped up, Merritt’s students had trailed to the back of the room, and now they were slipping on their costumes so the pageant could begin.
The auction, and Castlerock’s matching donation, had raised enough money for the lumber and nails and roofing material to rebuild the school.
The limited funds wouldn’t provide desks or materials for the students to study, but Merritt trusted God to provide those things when the time was right. She’d come to a tentative sort of peace last night, after reading Scripture and praying for God to fill the empty hole in her heart.
But watching the auction items sell, knowing that Jack had been the one to help procure them, brought back every ounce of yearning.
With a pang from her broken heart, she pushed the thoughts of Jack from her mind. Now wasn’t the time.
Mr. Castlerock called out the final total, and there was a cheer from the students, followed by roaring applause from their parents.
Daniel hurried over to where Merritt stood, followed by his father in a fine suit.
“Three cheers for our intrepid schoolteacher,” Daniel’s father called out with his hand at his mouth to amplify the words.
Heat blasted into her cheeks as cheers rang out among children and parents, even some of the grandparents and townsfolk who’d attended. Feet stomped the floor.
She caught Mr. Castlerock’s eye and he nodded to her. She waved. He and Mr. Silverton left with the money safe and sound, and she was left to soak up the raucous cheers.
She quieted the crowd, urging the students to finish their preparations for the pageant, and moved to the front of the room they’d designated as a stage, thoughts noodling at the back of her mind all the while.
She loved moments like these—being a teacher when the children were excited to learn and work together.
But the longing that had prompted her to send an answer to that mail-order bride ad remained. She wanted a family. Children of her own. A husband who loved her.
She wanted Jack.
Right now, she would have to lean on God’s promises of comfort, promises that He would never forsake her. In time, God might change her heart.
As some of the children slipped down the aisle between the seats and stepped up onto the raised platform that was their makeshift stage, she couldn’t stop the thoughts from slipping into her heart and taking hold.
She missed Jack.
