Love Starts with Elle(67)

TWENTY-ONE

She didn’t sit in her usual spot, second pew from the front, right side. Instead, Elle lay prostrate on the chapel floor before the altar, nose pressed into the worn carpet, dark spots forming where her tears landed.

Sleep had evaded her most of the night as she’d tossed and turned, tangled in the sheets. Finally, at five thirty, she’d showered and driven to the chapel.

Jeremiah’s surprise return was one thing. But his surprise proposal jerked her back into a world she’d packed up and labeled “Over. Move On.”

Did she want to marry him? While she’d spent the past three months healing, forgetting him, had she really? Just seeing him awakened dormant feelings, wants, and desires.

“Jesus, what do I do?”

Still face down on the worn carpet, Elle fumbled for the tissue box. It was there somewhere. Glancing up between tangled strands of hair, she found it just outside of reach. She crawled over, pulled one free, and blew her nose.

“What’s troubling you, Elle?”

She turned. Miss Anna watched her from the second-row pew, all peace and prettiness in a faded blue dress with white flowers. “Seems we’ve traded places. You at the altar, me in the pew.”

“Jeremiah showed up last night, Miss Anna.” Elle walked on her knees over to her mentor, box of tissues in hand.

“What did he want?”

Elle blew her nose again. “To marry me.”

“Goodness.” Miss Anna patted the bench and moved over. “What did you say?”

“What could I say? I told him I need to think and pray. And in his usual confident way, he said he’d wait for me, no matter how long.”

“My, my. That boy was always so determined.”

“He’s bitter, Miss Anna. His experience with the Dallas church was not good. He quit.”

“I see.”

But his overtures, the expression in his eyes, his tenderness of his touch lingered in her thoughts. “The things that drove us apart are no longer a factor. He is genuinely sorry about what happened, but I’m not sure I’m the one to walk him through his valley.”

Did her confession sound unloving? Didn’t love conquer all, keep no record of wrong? Never quit? Never fail?

“A bitter man only grows more bitter unless he surrenders everything—his pride, his reputation, his identity to God,” Miss Anna said without a hmm of wonder.

“But aren’t we supposed to love one another, help one another?”

“Jeremiah needs to figure this mess out the way you did, by speaking to Jesus.”

“Were you ever in love, Miss Anna?” Elle dabbed the tears from her cheeks with a balled-up tissue, thinking she’d spent two months praying with this woman and knew nothing of her.

“Once upon a time.”

“Miss Anna, you’re smiling. Look at you.” Elle bent forward to see her face, curious about the man who made her blush like a young woman all these years later.

She wondered if Jeremiah’s name did the same to her cheeks.

“My father insisted I go on with my education after high school, so I went up to the College of Charleston. Oh, Elle, I had a ball. It was after the war and campus was so gay and lively. My roommates were very special gals. We became such dear friends—to the day each one passed. We attended all the dances and parties. Some of the young men wanted to court me special, but I was having too much fun to go with just one boy.”

Elle gave her shoulder a sisterly nudge. “You go, Miss Anna.”

“Naturally, that’s when I met Lem. He was a looker, so strong and masculine. Earned medals for his courage on the battlefield. My girlfriends and I were standing at the refreshment table admiring him amongst ourselves when he walked right over, bold as you please.” Miss Anna spread her hands beyond her shoulders. “Broad shouldered, dancing blue eyes, a thick mop of wavy black hair every one of us spent hours primping to get. We didn’t have fancy curling irons like you girls today. Well, like I said, there he stood and us girls froze like four red-lipped popsicles. popsicles.” She popped her hands together.

Elle propped her chin in her hand. “Did you know he was coming to talk to you?”

“Oh my, no.” Miss Anna gazed off as if seeing Lem on the horizon of her memory, absently fiddling with the edge of her collar. “My girlfriend Peggy was the pretty one among us. All the fellas wanted her.”

“Except Lem.”

“Except Lem.” Love rooted her answer. “He was as kind and good on the inside as he was handsome on the outside.”

“Miss Anna, don’t keep me in suspense. Did he ask you out?” The magic of reminiscing was starting to sweep her away. How had Miss Anna ended up here keeping company with an old chapel instead of growing old with the man she loved?

“He asked me to dance and when he turned me onto the floor, I knew I’d never leave his arms.”

She sighed.

Elle echoed.

“Six months later, he asked Daddy for my hand, but to tell you the truth, I think Daddy prompted him a little.” Her little chortle came from a distant place in her heart. “Daddy loved him as much as I did.”

“So you married him. Lem Jamison.”

“Yes, ma’am, I did marry him. He was my world. Ten years later he died, and we never had any children.”