Roy had been keeping himself busy, occupying himself with the church repairs to distract himself from his broken heart. Anytime he wasn’t fully engrossed in his work, he would find himself thinking about Cora—her cute, dimpled smile with the slightest gap between her front teeth, the way her eyes sparkled when she got excited, and her godly wisdom. She had this ability to speak directly into his soul, saying exactly what he needed to hear, as if they weren’t her words but God’s, as if God had sent her just for him, right when he didn’t even realize he needed it the most.
But thinking about Cora caused a physical sensation of pain in the center of his chest, one that made it hard to breathe if he thought too much about it. Because despite all of those things that made her the perfect woman in his mind, Roy knew that he could never have her. He remembered the sermon from that day not too long ago when he went to church in Magnolia Grove, and the reading from I Corinthians:love is not selfish.
It would be selfish to try to pursue Cora when he had nothing of value to offer her, to deprive her of a life where she would always have everything she needed. After she had left his house that morning, when he finally picked himself up off the floor, he got out a notebook and began to make a chart analyzing the risk involved in the investment of the ranch.
He was doing this for the sake of smart financial planning but also with the ulterior motive of finding some way that he could convince himself that pursuing Cora had no chance of taking her down with him into financial ruin. It was a last-ditch effort to save what he thought they could still have.
His analysis only proved the opposite. By investing everything he had into the ranch, everything banked on it. One harsh winter or an epidemic among the livestock could cause his entire investment to collapse. In that case, Roy would have no choice but to return to Wheats Ridge and resume his life as a ranch hand.
He could scrap the entire idea of selling his father’s land. He knew that Cora would be perfectly happy living here if she were to marry him instead of Alfred. She already felt at home here. But then there was the question of what he would do to earn a living. He would not be able to make it as a pastor, and attempting to do so would plunge him into an unhappiness that wouldn’t be fair for Cora to have to endure. All of his professional skills involved working on a ranch, and it was the line of work he truly felt called to do.
If only he could ensure his financial success on the ranch, even for a year, then maybe he would have the confidence that he could provide for Cora. But by then it would be too late: her father expected her to marry sooner rather than later, and Alfred Mills was already in the perfect financial state to provide for her—not just hypothetically.
So, with all of this taken into consideration, Roy had to make the difficult and excruciatingly painful decision to stay away from Cora. He was afraid that if he saw Cora, he would be tempted to run to her, to take it all back and beg her to be with him. She might say yes, and she would be ecstatic in the moment, but would she still be happy five years, ten years down the road, when he wasn’t even sure if he could put food on the table? He imagined herself withering away from starvation, her cheeks shallow and the light gone from her eyes. That image scared him more than a lifetime without her.
But despite all his best efforts, it was indeed a small county, and yesterday he had seen Cora when had least expected it. He had traveled to Magnolia Grove to discuss with a land and housing developer an ad for a small ranch that rested between Lakewood and Magnolia Grove. As he walked out of the building, there she was, sitting in a fancy stagecoach next to an extravagantly dressed older woman.
She didn’t appear happy to be there, and when their eyes had momentarily locked, just before she looked away, she almost seemed to be pleading for help. Ever since then, he had been wrestling whether that look was his imagination playing tricks on him or whether she was really unhappy.
After he finished applying a layer of coat on one side of the church, he retreated inside the building for a break. Now that he had completed the interior repairs, the church more resembled what he remembered from his childhood. He walked slowly inside the room where he once attended worship every Sunday, even if it were sometimes against his will. He ran his hands along the edge of the pews, absorbing the nostalgia.
For so long this place had been associated with the trauma of his childhood, but now that he was coming to understand his father better—thanks to Cora—he was able to walk in this place and absorb the good memories. When he was a young boy, before everything got complicated and the pressure on him increased, he loved listening to his father speak to the crowd. He admired him and was proud to be his son.
For old time’s sake, Roy sat down in one of his usual pews. He looked toward the pulpit and imagined his father standing there, commanding the room with dedication and love. A sudden urge came over Roy, as if an invisible hand was gently guiding his head downward, and Roy obeyed, bowing his head and for the first time in a long time, beginning a conversation with his Heavenly Father.
“Dear God,” Roy began, his voice shaking with uncertainty, as he was out of practice. “Forgive me. Forgive me for running away from home, for abandoning my father and not opening my heart to conversation with him. Forgive me for turning away from You.
“I never stopped believing in You, God. Even when I wanted to, even when I thought it would be so much easier to reject my faith entirely, You were always there, pulling at my heart, calling me home. And I think maybe that’s why You sent Cora.”
His voice shook at the mention of Cora’s name, but he felt a divine urge to continue his prayer. “Please keep Cora safe, God. Lead her to a life of happiness and love and security. And if Alfred Mills is who You have ordained to be her husband, then please give her a peace about that so she can be happy.” Roy paused, breathing in deeply before adding to the last part of his prayer, “And please give me a peace about it, too. Help me to let her go to her husband.”
After Roy finished his prayer, he walked to the pulpit and stood behind it, trying to imagine himself standing there, preaching the Word of God to a crowd of people. Standing there only solidified his knowledge that being a preacher was not his personal calling, but for the first time, instead of bitterness toward his father, he felt flattered that his father had thought so highly of him that he believed him fit to follow in his footsteps.
Just as Roy was about to step away from the pulpit, he noticed something sticking out from the crevice beneath the top of the podium, where his father would often stash his notes. Roy reached his hand inside and pulled out a black, leatherbound Bible.
Roy’s Bible. The one that Roy couldn’t find in his old bedroom the morning he went to church in Magnolia Grove. He had assumed his father had gotten rid of it, but when he thumbed through the pages, he saw notes in the margin, much like the notes his father made in his own Bible before he gave sermons. Some of the notes had dates written in the margin, and emotion welled up in Roy’s throat when he noticed the dates—all of them after he left for Wheats Ridge.
His father hadn’t gotten rid of his Bible. His father had used Roy’s Bible to preach his sermons.
Roy’s legs started to shake, and he sat down on a pew in the first row, thumbing through his own Bible, seeing where his father had highlighted, underlined, and made notes in the margin over the five years that he had been gone, as if adopting Roy’s Bible to preach from was his father’s way to feel closer to him.
Then Roy landed on a page where a passage was both highlighted and underlined, with stars drawn in the margin for further emphasis. Although the words on the page were blurred through his tears, Roy managed to read the passage from the Gospel of Luke:
“So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
Now the page from this chapter of Luke was blotted was tearstains, as Roy couldn’t stop them from falling. His father had marked his passage during his absence, as if he were hoping that Roy would someday return home and find it—this message sent from Heaven.
“I love you, Father, and I’m sorry,” Roy said in the silence of the church, his voice broken. And somewhere, in the deepest recesses of his soul, coming from a place he would only be able to hear in the silence and stillness of God’s presence, he heard his father whisper, “I’m sorry, too, son. And I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cora and her father pulled up to the estate of Alfred Mills, where they would be having dinner with Alfred and his mother. Cora had already known that the Mills lived in the largest, most stately home in Lakewood, but she had never before been this close. The house was set back on what seemed to be miles of open land. It was a two-story structure with white pillars. The front of the house was curved almost into a semicircle, and rows of brightly lit windows surrounded the house. The windows on the second story each had private balconies.
“Just think, Cora,” her father said as they climbed out of the wagon, putting his arm paternally around her shoulder and holding his hand up in the air, gesturing at the estate. “Soon, this will all be yours.” He pointed up at one of the balconies. “Just imagine waking up in the morning and sitting up there, having coffee or tea while you take in this gorgeous view.”
“Yeah, Pa. That might be nice,” Cora placated him, smiling politely and nodding. She knew her father meant well, that he wanted for her what he was never able to provide, but he didn’t seem to understand that such extravagances weren’t important to her.
Instead, her mind wandered to the modest ranch that Roy would buy, and she began to daydream of it. Perhaps it would be a quaint house with only one floor, with a wraparound porch built by Roy’s own hands, where they could sit side by side in rocking chairs and watch the sunset. She imagined children playing in the yard, maybe pushing each other on a swing like the one Pastor Burns built for Roy when he was a kid, which she used to be envious of every Sunday when she saw the house. The children would each take turns riding on Iggy, who in Cora’s fantasy was still alive and strong. At night they would all sit around the dinner table, eating a simple meal that Cora provided and thanking God for simple blessings.
