Their Small-Town Love

Ivy closed her eyes and claimed that promise again now. Dear Lord, show me how to live to please You, and help me make up for all I’ve done. Help me mend what I’ve broken and ease the pain I’ve caused. Help me endure the anguish I’ve caused myself and find some measure of peace. Most of all, show me Your will for my life, and help me to live it. Thank You for Your Son and His sacrifice. Thank You for Your forgiveness and for choosing to see me through Him. Amen.

She felt a moment, an instant, of that longed-for peace. Then, suddenly, there came a shift in the atmosphere, a literal tightening of the air around her, like the moment before a lightning strike. Ivy opened her eyes to encounter the angry visage of her father. Stunned, she could do no more than stare back at first.

He looked worn and tired, far older than his fifty-four years. The skin of his long, narrow face drooped in loose wrinkles, while gray streaks roughened the thatch of his light brown hair and liberally salted his bushy eyebrows, giving him the hangdog expression of a man who had seen and lost too much. As her heart lurched into her throat, Ivy’s conscience cried out, I did that to him! Thankfully, the words did not make it to her mouth. Ryan spoke first.

“Hello, Olie. I was just telling Ivy last night how long it’s been since I saw you.”

Her father ignored Ryan, his icy, gray glare burning into her like the flames of the still-flickering torches. Ivy glanced around, realized that the service had ended and took a tentative step closer, saying urgently, “Dad, I—I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Me?” he mocked. “You didn’t expect to see me here?” He stabbed a finger at the ground, declaring, “This is my home, girl, not yours, not anymore. I thought I made that plain when you showed up the last time!”

“Dad, please,” she begged softly, all too aware of Ryan standing there. “That was a long time ago. I know I disappointed you. I disappointed myself, and I’ve paid a heavy price for it. Can’t we at least talk about it?”

“Talk?” he scoffed. “Not likely.”

“I just want to tell you how sorry I am, Daddy.”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not your daddy. No tramp like you will ever be a daughter of mine.”

“Olie!” Ryan exclaimed, his tone that of the scolding assistant principal.

“You don’t know the truth about her,” Olie told him roughly. “No one does, because I’ve kept her secrets.” He shook a finger at her. “But only so long as she stayed away. Now she’s here, the truth will finally come out, and the truth is she sleeps with a man she never married and makes her living spreading filth. She even got herself—”

“Please don’t!” Ivy cried, interrupting him before he could spew the worst of it. “Please! I’ve changed.”

“Change?” Olie ridiculed. “It’s too late for change! Just go slither back under your rock and leave us be!”

Ivy couldn’t bear anymore. Clutching Ryan’s arm, she stammered an incoherent apology.

“S-So sorry. I—I never thought he’d be here. Excuse me! I—I need…” She took off at a run, fresh tears streaming down her face.

Behind her, she heard Ryan speaking in his stern, assistant principal’s voice, but she didn’t even try to register the words. What did it matter anyway? What did any of it matter? Her father would never forgive her, never let her forget, even for a moment, what she’d done. As if she could!

Ignoring the curious stares of others, she hurried away, wanting only to reach the privacy of her room, where she could pour out her heart to God and see if she could recapture even a glimmer of the peace she so desperately wanted.

Chapter Four

Ryan parked his hands at his waist, watching in shock as Ivy fled the park in tears. Turning back to the author of this ugly public scene, he pinned Olie Villard in place with a glare before stepping close to growl, “Good grief, man! What’s wrong with you?”

Even slightly cowed, Olie remained unrepentant, sticking out his long, narrow chin at a pugnacious angle. “She’s what’s wrong with me, Ivy and her filthy ways. Like mother, like daughter, I tell you, and if you’re smart you’ll keep your distance from her!” Swinging his lanky frame around, he stalked away, his hands fisted at his sides.

Sighing, Ryan cast a wary glance over the area, wondering who might have overheard. He saw several curious onlookers but turned aside their attention with a level gaze and pointed smile before bending to sweep up the shawl that Ivy had left behind in her haste. He shook out the thing, telling himself that he would return it. Frowning, he considered Olie’s unpleasant words and Ivy’s tearful response.

She hadn’t exactly denied her father’s accusations or, in all fairness, admitted to them. Still, at this point, Ryan could not escape the unhappy conclusion that Ivy had made some big mistakes in her life.

He was not one to judge; he’d made his own blunders. After the deaths of his parents, Ryan had figured that he had no reason to live an exemplary life. Why should he live his life, according to the godly rules and ethics taught him by his father and grandparents? What good had it done his dad?

His mother had always been rather fragile. The only child of a doting, widowed, older father, she’d been too well protected in many ways and more than a little self-centered. When her husband had died so unexpectedly in a freak accident on the job, her chief concern had been who would take care of her with him gone? No one had realized until it was too late, that in her grief and panic, she would swallow every prescription pill she could find.

As a college student separated from his remaining family by just enough distance to guarantee no interference from them, Ryan had buried his grief and anger with months of partying. He had told himself at the time that it was nothing more than a rite of passage. Only after returning home for the summer and reconnecting with his older brother, younger sister and paternal grandparents did he find enough peace to reclaim God’s purpose for his life.

The rest of the family had been struggling, too, but together they had all managed to put the dual tragedy behind them. In helping to assuage their pain, Ryan had found balm for his own. The steady, sturdy love of his family had given him strength and direction, and their wise counsel had helped him find his calling. He’d learned to value the integrity of his own soul above gold or anything else the world had to offer.

He knew too well how easily rebellion could be justified by a spirit blinded with grief or rage or the lure of worldly things, so he would not judge Ivy. Getting caught up in a public family feud made him distinctly uncomfortable, and he certainly wasn’t ready to upset the order of his life, no matter how drawn he felt to the beautiful woman Ivy had become. Still, he could not help wanting to protect Ivy from her father’s anger.

He would return the shawl, but perhaps, Ryan decided, it would be best to give Ivy some time alone. Maybe, in the meantime, he could figure out the best way to deal with this mess. Her wrap in hand, he trudged back to the motel to seek the counsel of his family. So much for his intention to keep them in the dark concerning his date, if that was the word for it, with Ivy this morning. Along the way back to the motel, he prayed for guidance, knowing that if he was not very careful he could find himself more involved than seemed wise for a man who had never been comfortable with the idea of trusting his heart to any woman.

“I admit I heard some talk about Ivy,” Hap Jefford said in his gravelly voice, “and I been concerned for some time now ’bout Olie.”

Dropping down into his usual chair at one end of the oval maple dining table in the apartment behind the lobby of the motel, Hap bent and began the process of lacing up his boots with fingers gnarled by age and arthritis.

“Carrying around that much bitterness can’t be good for a fellow,” Holt put in, turning away from the high chair where he had just deposited Ace. Going down on his haunches, he began to help his grandfather with the boots.

The two so resembled each other, despite the forty-four years between them, that old photos of Hap were often mistaken for current ones of Holt.

The family had just returned from the late service at First Church, and while Charlotte and Cara had gone into the small kitchen to get dinner on the table, the men had made themselves comfortable in the apartment dining room. For Holt, Ty and Ryan, that amounted to removing their jackets and ties and rolling up their shirtsleeves before taking their customary chairs at the table; for Hap it meant shucking his decades-old black suit and trading it for his usual flannel shirt, denim overalls and work boots. Emerging from his bedroom once more, he had picked up the conversation about Ivy where they’d left off earlier.

“Care to elaborate on just what it is that you’ve heard?” Ryan asked. Much as he disliked gossip, he wanted to know what caused Ivy’s pain and Olie’s anger.

Hap shrugged and rasped, “Mostly it was about that radio show of hers. I’ve heard the term vulgar in connection with it.”

That, unfortunately, dovetailed with what Ryan had heard at the banquet the previous night.

“I’ve listened to that show,” Ty admitted. “I’m ashamed to say it used to be one of my favorites. For what it’s worth, it was mostly her partner, FireBrand Phillips, saying and doing the risqué things, but vulgar isn’t too strong a term for what I heard. I guess the thing is that when being outrageous is your trademark, you have to find a way to constantly outdo yourself. It got to be too much for me even before I met the Lord.”

Hap made a mournful, disapproving sound deep in his throat. “Pitiful way to make a living.”

Ace growled in an attempt to copy the old man’s sound, and Hap smiled indulgently at the boy. Theirs was a mutual admiration society.

Charlotte came in from the kitchen bearing china dishes and flatware, which she carried to the table before heading over to the maple hutch to gather tablecloth, place mats and napkins. “According to what they said when they recognized her at the banquet last night,” Charlotte reminded them, “that’s all behind Ivy now. She and that Phillips have broken up the act.”

“That is what it sounded like,” Holt agreed.

“Look, for all we know, Ivy had a change of heart about the way she was making her living,” Charlotte said. “I, for one, think she should get the benefit of the doubt.”

“She did go to early service with Ryan this morning,” Holt pointed out.

“Which had nothing, I’m sure, to do with him personally,” Ty quipped, “him being such an unappealing cuss.”

Ryan pulled a face at his brother-in-law. “I don’t think she’d have gone at all if she’d known Olie would be there.”

“Shame, what he did,” Hap said.

“She ran off in tears,” Ryan recalled softly. “It was heartbreaking.”

“Even if what the gossips say about Ivy is true,” Charlotte went on, “Christians should show her the love of Christ, as I’m sure you all know.”

“Well, that settles it then,” Hap announced, slapping a knee for emphasis.