The ache started again in her chest. “I’ve lived with the kids at school.”
Yes, you have. You have loved them beautifully. And I’m so glad. But I have more for you.
“I don’t want another man! I just want Sam!”
She felt the flutter again, stronger. As if He were laughing. Not mockingly. Knowingly.
I’m not sending you down the aisle. I’m asking you to open your heart. I’ll give you what you need, but I can’t do that if the opening to your heart is so tight you need a tub of lard to grease anything through it.
She chuckled. “I knew You were Southern. . . .”
I’m shamelessly in love with you, Winnie. And I want you to come into this season with Me. I want to show you things. New things. Things that you can only find when you’re single.
“What if Sam thinks I’ve forgotten him?”
I’ll assure him you’ll never forget him.
“Promise?”
I Am the Promise, Winnie.
Winnie let her head drop. Tears flooded through her and over her and fell around her until she was certain there would be no tears for the next decade. And when she was spent both in body and soul, she walked back inside and closed the door. Roy was right. You had to face your fears before you could truly heal. She had stared hers down tonight.
When her head finally came to rest on the pillow, she began her evening conversation. But this time she wasn’t talking to Sam. This time she was talking to the Ultimate Companion. When she fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning, she was positive she had effectively worn God out too. She was almost certain the moon flickered.
* * *
As soon as Christian opened the door to his Jeep, Riley could hear the music. The little white church stood with its doors flung open wide, windows propped up with sticks of wood, and light streaming out from every open cavity into the darkness of the evening. He didn’t have to tell her where they were. She just didn’t know why they were there.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the front door. “You’ll love it, I promise.”
They walked into a tiny foyer no bigger than a closet. Two wrinkled ushers—eyes closed, heads rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the old Negro spiritual coming from inside—greeted them from folding chairs flanking each side of the door. Well, kind of.
Christian smiled and patted one on the shoulder. “Wake up, Tiny, or you’re going to miss the robbers when they bust in the door.”
Tiny’s eyes popped open, revealing coal black. A grin spread across his face, his wrinkles running like speed racers, as his eyes registered Christian. His remaining teeth were seen through his openmouthed smile. He chuckled, closed his eyes, and went right back to swaying.
Christian led Riley to the back row. About the time her legs hit the edge of the pew, the final chords of the song ended. Her heart sank slightly. She loved music—especially this kind of music because it reminded her of Josalyn. It took her back to a place she loved and to the woman who had helped heal her soul. An elderly pastor climbed the two steps covered in worn red carpet. She was certain its muted shade was a reflection of the knees it had held and the tears it had received.
He asked the congregation to sit. She and Christian followed. “You okay?” he whispered.
She couldn’t think of any place she’d rather be. “I love it.”
He wiped his brow in mock relief.
The pastor gave a fiery message, seemingly more fit for a Sunday morning than a Wednesday evening, but it was received with just as much enthusiasm as if he were speaking to a stadium of twenty thousand. He mopped sweat from his brow, and after forty-five minutes of organ-accompanied preaching, he collapsed in an exhausted heap in the front row. The organ music didn’t stop, though. And when it hit a familiar chord, as if directed but completely uninstructed, every member of the congregation rose to their feet and began the first stanza of “Amazing Grace.”
The words and melody soared through the breeze of a perfect Bahamian evening and didn’t stop their journey until they settled right across Riley’s soul. She had heard this song a thousand times. She knew every word by heart. But until now she had never heard those first four lines the way she heard them in this moment. “‘Amazing grace! how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.’”
And that was what seemed to happen. As those words washed over her, so did Laine’s words from that afternoon. “You have not ever forgiven yourself.”
She knew that she hadn’t. And now she could see—really see—that it had been unforgiveness that had caused her to lose her husband. The man she had loved since she knew how to love. It was that same unforgiveness that could possibly cause her to miss this wonderful man next to her. And something in that moment let her know she didn’t want to live under her own load of shame anymore. That everyone at their core was wretched. Sure, society had its own measuring scales, but in the light of this kind of grace, all were wretched beyond deserving. But now she realized that’s why it’s called grace. Because you can’t earn it. You can’t ever be good enough for it. And in that moment, everything the past four years had blinded her from she could clearly see.
Her body felt glued to the pew. Christian had stood earlier, but she couldn’t move. Nor was there a power great enough to stop the overwhelming emotion that rose like a welling tide to the surface. She leaned her head against the back of the wooden pew in front of her and didn’t try to
