Love Starts with Elle(30)

“I knew you’d come,” Miss Anna said without looking around.

Elle flipped the pages of her Bible. “Did you pray me awake?”

Miss Anna shook her head. “Once I do what the Lord asks of me, I leave it be, figure He’s big enough to fulfill His own desires.” The woman gazed right into Elle’s soul. “You have a wonderful future and it begins right here in this dingy chapel, communing with God. Elle, it’s from the wilderness places that God often promotes us.”

Miss Anna fell silent after that, seemingly lost in her own world. Elle stared at the back of her fluffy head, the woman’s comments echoing in her mind. Wonderful future. Begins right here in this dingy chapel. Wilderness places where God promotes.

Elle had spent most of her charmed life avoiding the hard, wilderness places.

For the first thirty minutes of prayer, Elle’s mind wandered. She talked to herself, carried on a one-sided mental parry with Jeremiah, then wondered where she might open a new art gallery.

Toward the end of the hour, she settled down and actually talked to Jesus about her heart issues and read the first chapter of John.

When Miss Anna rose to leave, she stopped by row two, right side. “See you in the morning, Elle.”

Elle snatched up her Bible and handbag. “Do you need a ride?”

“I enjoy the walk, thank you.”



Driving down Bay Street, Elle slowed her car as workers hung a new sign over her old gallery. Dooley’s Emporium.

Emporium? Angela was calling her gallery an Emporium?

Huckleberry Johns darted across Bay carrying his tank of environmental art, disappearing inside Angela’s new place. Good luck, bubba. If Elle hated his smelly environmental art, the pristine, well-coiffed Emporium owner would loathe it.

Elle needed to sit that boy down for a long talk.

Passing Common Ground, she decided to stop in for a latte. Parking along Bay, she went inside the coffee shop.

“Hey, Molly.” Elle had known the red-headed coffee barista since the two-year-old’s Sunday school class when Elle was the teacher. Now Molly was old enough to serve cappuccinos and lattes. “Large mocha latte, please.”

“One grande coming up.”

Grande, large, whatever. Elle picked a table by the window and meditated on her morning. The prayer chapel wasn’t as claustrophobic as she’d anticipated. But staying focused was harder than she imagined. Once she’d settled down, she enjoyed her prayers. Maybe even sensed God’s presence a little. She realized now it had been awhile since she’d really felt connected to Him.

When had she drifted into social Christianity—God as Savior but not as friend? Elle couldn’t pinpoint the season, but it was long before Jeremiah Franklin had come along and broken her heart.

Molly brought her latte around. “Sorry to hear about your wedding, Elle.”

She shrugged. “It happens. Never thought it’d happen to me, but—”

“I’d die, simply die, if it happened to me. I mean, what’s the point in going on? Life as you know it is over. All your dreams and plans. Love left you high and—”

Thank goodness for cell phones. Elle answered hers with abandon. “Hello.”

“Where are you?” Julianne.

“Common Ground. Getting depressed.”

“What? Why?”

“Molly. Can’t believe I got dumped. Thinks she’d downright die if it happened to her.”

“What does she know? I for one can’t believe you’re up before 8:00 a.m.”

What a sarcastic sister. “Best be nice because if you’re calling me this early, you want something.” Her mama didn’t raised no dummy.

“Can you watch Rio today?”

“Why? What are you doing? Can’t you take her to the babysitter?” Elle spied a young couple in the corner of the shop. The man rubbed the woman’s hands and arms, stretching over the table to kiss her. Elle shifted her back to them.

“It’s only for a few hours, Elle. Shirley won’t take her because she’s getting over a runny nose. She’s paranoid lately ’c ause her kids keep getting sick. Rio asked to play with Tracey-Love.”

Elle couldn’t think of an excuse. She didn’t have any stellar plans. Maybe organize the studio, but she didn’t have a lot of zeal about it. “Why don’t I just go with you? Hey, that’d be fun. Girl’s day out. What are you doing?”

“You and your questions. Please, watch her for me.”

“Me with questions? What about you with secrets? Are you hanging out with an ax murderer? Running drugs on the side? Stealing time with your mystery date?”

“Do you have to make everything so hard?”

“Do you?”

Silence.

“Will you watch Rio for me?”

“See you in twenty.”





TEN

“Heath? Anybody home?”

The smack of the kitchen’s screen door resonated through the house.

“Door’s open.” Heath read his last sentence for the fifth time. Something about it didn’t flow. The rhythm was off.

“How do you know I’m not a gun-toting burglar?”

He glanced up. Elle stood in the doorway. Prettiest gun-toting burglar . . . never mind. “They don’t usually knock and holler, ‘Anybody home?’”