Page 15 of Sugarplum Dreams
“Do you need coffee?” his mother asked, knowing that he didn’t drink it.
“No thank you. It hasn’t gotten that bad yet.”
She laughed. But the concerned expression on her face did not waver. “I’m waiting,” she said with a tight smile.
He figured she was probably bracing herself. She had so much bad news this year, and he didn’t want to be the bearer of more bad tidings, but he didn’t figure that she would be overly happy with what he had done. Although, he knew that he could tell her that he felt like it was what God wanted him to do, and while she might not accept that, might ask if he had questioned it, he was pretty sure that if he could convince her that he was one-hundred-percent sure it was what the Lord wanted him to do, she would be okay with it. Not that a person’s weird actions could be excused anytime they said it was God’s plan. But it did have a tendency to make things go better with his mom anyway.
And it was the truth.
“Well, I’ve been doing some work this year, and I started to notice a woman in our town, you know her, Charity Ames, and her five children.”
“Charity is a really sweet woman. I’ve noticed her as well and have done a few things for her also. She definitely can use any help that she can get,” his mother said, and then she pressed her lips together almost as though she were deliberately not saying anything more.
He almost smiled but managed to keep his face serious.
“I wanted to try and figure out if there was more that I could do for her. She has five children, her husband has left her, he’s not wanting custody, not wanting anything, and…” He didn’t want to say that he knew that she was behind on her bills and that her mortgage was six months overdue. That she was trying to scrape it together as best she could but hadn’t been able to. There were some things that he knew because of his work as the Secret Saint that normal people didn’t know. And he didn’t want to spread that information around.
“I just know that she’s in financial difficulty, she’s struggling, and as I was thinking back, I felt like the Lord was nudging me to marry her.”
“Really?” his mom said. It was just one word, but it was said in that tone that had all kinds of doubt and questions in it. She was questioning whether or not he was truly hearing from the Lord. And he couldn’t really blame her.
“That seems like a really weird thing for the Lord to do, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” she said with not a little bit of sarcasm.
“I suppose Hosea felt the same way.”
His mom pressed her lips together once more and nodded at the same time. That was her signal that he just outmaneuvered her.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, although this time, there was more humor in her tone than sarcasm.
“I’m pretty sure I am.” He didn’t mean to rub it in, but that’s what he had thought about when he thought that God was being ridiculous—God seemed to work and move in the area that humans considered ridiculous.
“All right. So… What else?”
“So, I prayed about it, thought about it, and talked to the pastor about it, and decided that I might as well talk to her. Maybe she would turn me down. It’s kind of out there.”
“To say the least.”
“Exactly. And I guess there’s a part of me that thinks maybe if I keep waiting, I’ll find someone. The same way Terry and Amy have.”
“I’d really like for that to happen. I kind of thought that Bergen was the one.”
“Trust me. I did too. She seemed perfect in every way, except in the way that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with me.”
“Yeah.” His mom held a ton of apology and sorrow in that word. She was upset with him for not being able to keep her. She was more upset with Bergen for leading him on for so long and not telling him that she had no intentions of getting married until she had traveled the world. She was just staying in one spot, making enough money to fund her travels.
“So I went today and talked to Charity.”
“With the kids there?”
“I think I saw five. Is that all she has?” He was pretty sure about that. He’d been involved in the Secret Saint work that had gotten her children Christmas gifts. He hadn’t done it all himself though, so maybe he was missing one.
“That’s the number she has. That makes sense, since school is out today. All of them would have been there.”
“Yeah. Well, it was chaos.”
“That’ll be the way it is every day. It’s the way five kids are.”
