Trial by Fire

  She went into the kitchen and found a note that Aunt Aggie had gone to take snacks to people working on the church grounds. She made a bowl of cereal and sat down, hating the thought of being alone today. She wished she hadn’t made Nick feel like he had to avoid her. She wondered if that was a sign that he was attracted to her, or repulsed by her.

  Still, as she finished breakfast, she began trying to think of reasons to see him today. The church grounds, she thought. Aunt Aggie said they were working on the church grounds. Maybe if she went to help…

  She cleaned her dishes, then went to the truck and drove to Nick’s street. But even as she drove, she realized that part of the reason she was thinking so much about Nick right now was that he was not interested in her. Had he been, she didn’t even know if she would have given him the time of day. She felt a little bit like Mark Twain who would never join a club that would have him as a member.

  For that, she hated herself.

  She pulled onto his street and saw the bulldozer on the church grounds. Dozens of people sifted through rubble, and she wondered if she should keep driving to keep from stirring any further gossip about her and Nick.

  But she had no place else to go, so she pulled Steve Winder’s old pickup truck into Nick’s gravel driveway and sat there idling for a moment.

  She shouldn’t have come here, she thought. She started to pull out of the driveway when she heard something bang on her truck. She looked out the window and saw Nick standing at the door. She rolled the window down. “Nick, I was going to volunteer to help, but I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

  “Cause me trouble? Why would you?” he asked.

  “Just coming here. I mean, the rumors.”

  He shook his head. “They’re all so busy over there, they don’t care.”

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “They’re clearing the property,” he said, “so we can start rebuilding.”

  She turned and looked out her rear window and saw that women and children and old men and young were all helping. “Looks like they could get it all done today with that kind of a turnout.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” he said. “They planned all this without me. I didn’t even ask them to come. I was going to try to find a way to do most of it myself, or scrounge up a committee. I thought I’d have to twist arms and beg and plead. But they turned the ignition themselves, and I didn’t even have to give them a shove.”

  She thought she’d missed something. “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I just mean that my job is to equip the saints to do the work of the church, but it always seems like it isn’t really happening that way. Today it is. Come on and help, Issie. They’re all too busy to speculate about why you’re here. All hands are welcome.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure,” he said. “Come on.” He opened her truck door and ushered her out. She followed him across the street, wondering if this was his way of getting her assimilated into the fellowship of the church. She wasn’t sure, but whatever he was doing, it was working, because she really did want to be a part of this effort.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Allie had stiffened the moment she saw Issie drive up in Nick’s driveway. She wondered if the rumors she’d heard about them were true. Had Nick been spending time with the woman who once tried to steal Allie’s husband away?

  “Oh, great,” Mark said, coming up behind Allie and following her gaze. “Don’t tell me she’s coming to help.”

  They watched her get out of the car, and Allie turned back to tying up garbage bags. “Looks like it.”

  “Are you okay?” Mark asked. “We could leave if you’re uncomfortable.”

  Allie tried to reassure him with her smile. She knew that Mark hadn’t given Issie a thought in a long time now, and he had managed to rebuild her trust in him as they had built their family. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to get chummy with Issie.

  Celia touched her shoulder, and Jill approached her too. “Really, are you okay?” Jill asked. Celia had her blond ponytail pulled up and was covered with soot since she’d been sifting through the rubble for anything they could salvage.

  “I’m fine,” Allie said. “I forgave Issie a long time ago.”

  “Then why do you look so tense all of a sudden?” Jill asked her.

  Allie turned back to gaze at Issie’s truck. “Because I still get uncomfortable around her. I wish I could forget, but I just have problems with her.”

  Mark saw that Issie was coming into the crowd of workers, and Nick was treating her like one of them. “I’m gonna ask her to go home,” he said.

  Allie grabbed his arm. “You can’t do that.”

  “But Allie, I don’t want you to have to work beside her today and drag up all those memories. This is our church.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Allie said. “It’s Christ’s church. And if we can’t welcome someone like Issie into our fellowship, even rejoice that she would come, then we’re the ones who don’t belong here. Not her.”

  His face softened and he studied his wife’s face. “You’re right. I know you are. I’m just trying to protect you from my own stupid past mistakes. Plus, I question her motives. I think she’s after Nick.”

  Allie looked up at Mark again. Their eyes met, and she looked away. She had always secretly suspected that Nick had a thing for Issie. She wondered what the appeal was, and if he realized he was on dangerous ground.

  Then she felt guilty again. If Jesus had shied away from the woman at the well, or the adulteress who was about to be stoned, just because of who they were…well, that would mean he’d have to shy away from Allie for her past sins, and Mark for his, and none of them would ever be forgiven. Suddenly one of her favorite Scripture verses struck her in the heart: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

  There it was, she thought. She had to love because Christ loved her. It was very simple, really. Cut and dried. Black and white, with no gray areas. Issie had as much right to her love, as Allie had to Christ’s. And it was Allie’s job—no one else’s—to make Issie feel that she could be accepted here on the holy land where God’s house had been built.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  They gave Issie a job sorting through a pile of hymnbooks in a box, and salvaging the ones that could still be read, as well as the Bibles that had been in the pews. The fact that anything was salvageable was a small miracle, Nick said. Issie felt an awkward sense that she didn’t belong when she saw Mark and Allie working alongside everyone else. She and Allie had had a difficult time speaking to each other ever since she had caused problems in their marriage.

  As she sorted Bibles, she was peripherally aware that Allie and Mark were whispering to each other. Was Allie telling Mark to get her out of here? That’s what she would have been doing. Was she threatening to go home if she had to lay eyes on Issie Mattreaux one more time?

  Hours passed and everyone kept working. She worked quietly, not interacting much with anyone else, though occasionally someone spoke to her as if she did belong.

  When they’d gotten the building leveled and cleared and everyone was backing away as the bulldozer made its last sweep through, Issie saw Allie heading her way. She stiffened instantly, bracing herself for whatever was coming. She wondered if Allie had waited for the noise of the bulldozer, so that no one would hear her chewing her out.

  But when Allie reached her, Issie saw a smile instead of hostility. “I appreciate how hard you worked today, Issie.”

  Issie tried to return the smile. “No problem. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

  “Some of us are about to go over to Aunt Aggie’s and set up the chairs for tomorrow’s service. Nick wanted me to ask you if you were interested in coming.”

  Issie looked up across the crowd and saw Nick on the other side of the bulldozer. He
could have asked her himself, she knew, but there was something about sending Allie over that was supposed to speak to her heart. She looked up at the woman whose home she had almost wrecked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just go on home.”

  “Oh, no. We need your help. Besides, I wasn’t going to say anything, but Aunt Aggie cooked a little extra for the firemen today and she said that we could eat when we got to her house.”

  Issie studied Allie’s face and wondered if she was just a good actress, or if she really wanted Issie to come. “Why do you want me to go so bad?” she asked. “I would think you would want me as far away from your husband as I could get.”

  Allie’s eyes saddened, and she looked away. “I have to admit, sometimes when I’m around you bad memories come back. But that’s my problem, not yours. The truth is, we’re all here clean-ing up a church, and there’s not a reason in the world that you shouldn’t be there working right along beside me if you want to be. Believe it or not, Issie, I forgave you a long time ago.”

  Issie looked away. She hadn’t asked for forgiveness, had never admitted wrong, but denying that she had been seemed like a waste of effort now. Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked down to hide them. “You have every reason to hate me,” Issie admitted.

  Allie smiled. “Christ has every reason to hate me. But he doesn’t. So how could I hate you?”

  When Allie went back to her husband in the crowd, Issie found herself unable to speak or think. The lump grew in her throat and she tried to swallow it back, but she knew she was going to burst into tears right here in front of everybody and cause another round of gossip if she didn’t get out of here. Quickly, she crossed the street and headed toward the rusty pickup that was still parked at Nick’s house.

  She got in and sat there for a moment, covering the tears that were coming through her lashes. Suddenly there was a knock on the window. Nick stood there, looking in with concern. She rolled her window down.

  “Issie, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  She wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself together.

  “I saw you talking to Allie,” he said. “Did she say something that upset you?”

  “No, no. Not at all.”

  “What then?”

  “She was very sweet,” she said, bringing her misty eyes up to his. “And she has every right not to be. She’s forgiven me for the way I intruded on her marriage. Thing is, I guess I’d be more comfortable with the hate, because I know how to deal with that.”

  Nick reached through the window and wiped a tear that was rolling down her cheek. She drew in a deep breath as if jolted by the contact. “I’m not a very nice person, you know,” she said. “Even if I wanted to come to your church, be a part of this, I couldn’t. I would never fit in.”

  Nick just kept smiling. “One of my favorite Bible passages is in 1 Corinthians 6,” he said.

  She gave him a smirk. “Haven’t read it lately.”

  He grinned as if he knew she didn’t even own a Bible.

  “It says, ‘Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’”

  More tears erupted in Issie’s eyes. “Well, see there? That keeps me out on several counts.”

  “That’s not my favorite part,” Nick said, leaning in the window and getting too close to her face. “The next verse says, ‘That is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.’”

  She looked up at him, her eyes intent on seeing the insights that seemed too natural to him.

  “You think you don’t belong in that group over there?” Nick asked. “Well, Issie, almost every one of them fits into those categories before they came to know Christ. Some of them just had heart problems. They weren’t outward thieves and they weren’t going around committing adultery, but they were doing it in their hearts. Others of them did these things openly. Just look at them, Issie. You’ve lived here long enough to know. You know who has changed and who hasn’t. If people couldn’t change, then Paul wouldn’t have said, ‘Such were some of you.’ God doesn’t keep those people out of heaven unless they decide to stay out. He can wash you and sanctify you and justify you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you can be just as much a part of this congregation as anybody over there. We’re just all a bunch of turned-around people.”

  “Turned around?” she asked.

  “One hundred and eighty degrees. We changed our direction. We’re striving toward Christ now instead of toward sin. That’s the only difference between you and me.”

  She leaned her head back wearily on the headrest. “But I have a lot of baggage, Nick. A lot of people in this town have things to hold against me. And if I haven’t hurt them, then they have preconceived notions about who I am and what I do.”

  “Those notions can be changed,” he said. “I guess before this crisis with the church, I didn’t have a lot of faith in my people. I guess I thought they wouldn’t know what to do, how to act, unless I told them. Like they were all a bunch of sheep that would scatter if I wasn’t there to keep them all together. But I’m learning differently. They’ve grown. They’ve matured. They’re wiser than I thought. And they’re too wise to think that they’re above you somehow. That life of sin is just behind every one of us. We’re all sinners saved by grace.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked. “Saved by grace?”

  He drew in a deep breath. “It means we don’t deserve it. Not one of us here deserves to be in communion with Christ or to go to heaven. Not a single one of us. But for some reason that no one on this earth can fathom, God looked down on us and saved us from our emptiness. He filled us up, Issie. He can fill you up too.”

  Someone across the street called to Nick, and he waved. “Come on, Issie. We’re headed over to Aunt Aggie’s to set up for the service. Won’t you come?”

  She wiped her eyes with both hands. “You don’t need me there, Nick. I’ll find something else to do.”

  “I’d like for you to be there,” he said. “Please come. I like your company.”

  The words spoke volumes and told Issie all she needed to know to persuade her into coming. If it was true that Nick liked her company, then maybe these feelings she’d been nursing toward him were not entirely absurd. Somehow it vindicated her. She drew in a deep breath and got out of the truck. “All right,” she said, “I’ll come.” Then she followed Nick back across the street and into the crowd of church people, climbing into the back of Jesse Pruitt’s truck, to be transported the few blocks to Aunt Aggie’s.

  It took a couple of hours to set the yard up in such a way that they could worship adequately the next morning, and as Issie found herself getting involved in the plans, she began to wish she could be in attendance. She had never come to Nick’s church, had never heard him preach except at a funeral or two.

  By the time the chairs were set up and the pulpit had been placed, and they had figured out where they would plug in the microphones, amplifiers, and speaker system, Issie found herself alone with Nick. Aunt Aggie had gone to the fire department to start supper, and the others had headed home. The dip in the land, so that the chairs were seated at the bottom of a bowl-shape in Aunt Aggie’s acreage, allowed the hills around it to act as barricades against the breeze. Issie sat on one of the chairs like one of the congregants, trying to imagine whether she would feel out of place if she came. After a moment, Nick came and sat down beside her. “So what do you think?” he asked.

  “I think I’m going to have to come hear you preach tomorrow,” she said.

  He grinned. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. I could hardly work this hard to get everything set up, and then not be here.”

  “
Well, yeah, but you realize I’m supposed to be preaching, don’t you? Really think you can handle that?”

  She breathed a laugh. “It’s not your preaching that’s kept me away. Maybe it’s the church building.”

  “So you have a paranoia about church buildings?”

  She shook her head. “No, I have a paranoia about rules.”

  “I told you—” he began, but she cut in.

  “I know you did. It’s not about rules. It’s about the heart. I think I saw some evidence of that today.” She could see that that pleased him.

  “So you’re really coming tomorrow?”

  “I’m really coming,” she said.

  “Then I guess I’d better go home and work on that sermon.”

  “You don’t have it ready yet?” she asked.

  “No, I guess I’ve been a little distracted.”

  She suddenly felt guilty. “I guess I’m the one that caused that. All the rescuing you’ve been doing.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s not that. I’ve just been a little depressed. I haven’t felt like there was any point.” He looked over at her with a grin. “But if you’re going to be here, maybe there is.”

  “Glad to be of service,” she said.

  That afternoon when Nick went back to his trailer to work on his sermon, he got his Bible and his other study aids and piled them all on his kitchen table. He began to write the sermon that the Lord had laid on his heart today, while he’d been working with his flock to salvage the church. As he was writing, he pictured Issie sitting there soaking in every word, so he wrote the sermon directly to her and prayed while he wrote it that the Lord would penetrate her callused heart so that that empty look would vanish from her eyes, and instead he would see joy and peace like he’d only seen in believers.

  The depression since the church fire, the murder of Ben, his own failure in rescuing the boy, his worries about what Cruz and his gang might do next, and his doubts about his own calling all vanished in light of the hope that he might lead one person to Christ tomorrow.