Love at Last

Many of the businesses along Main Street, in buildings that dated to the antebellum South, catered to the students. Woodston Banking and Trust, Mr. Kincaid’s bank, was located in a three-story modern brick building, and Lorene went in to open a checking account for personal use during the time she was in Woodston.

In midafternoon she returned to Riverview Ridge, where Dottie and John were working in the yard. Dottie waved her hand, and Lorene walked to the flower bed where Dottie was pulling weeds.

“We’re trying to get the place in shape before Heritage Week,” she said. “I’m booked up that week, so I’ll be busy.”

“I’m surprised I was able to get accommodations then,” Lorene said.

“I’d just had a cancellation about an hour before you drove in,” she said, “or I couldn’t have taken you. Want to eat dinner with us this evening?”

“Yes, if it’s not too late to make reservations. I’ve been looking over Woodston today for some ideas on planning the publicity. It’s an interesting town.”

“We think so, but we’ve only been here a few years. After John retired, we wanted a quieter place than Louisville, but still on the river. We heard that this property was for sale and decided it would be a good investment—a place for us to have a little income and give us a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.”

“What time is dinner?”

“Six-thirty.”

“I’ll see you then. I’ve been grocery shopping, so I’d better put my cold things in the fridge, unpack the rest of my belongings and settle in for the long haul.”

A carved mantel of oak, embellished with designs of oak leaves and pineapples, was centered in one wall of Riverview Ridge’s dining room, with two original cupboards on each side. The cupboards were filled with antique dishes. A floral-patterned paper covered the walls above the wooden chair rail. The wide panels of the oak floor were highly polished, but numerous scars indicated the rough wear the wood had seen for over a century.

Several small tables were placed around the large room, providing seating capacity for twenty. Lorene joined a middle-aged couple from Illinois, who were traveling through Kentucky on a nostalgia journey retracing the places they’d visited during their honeymoon twenty-five years earlier. They showed Lorene pictures of their children and grandchildren. The meal was served family-style with a choice of country-fried chicken or baked fish, a variety of vegetables and salads and, for dessert, a fruit plate or rhubarb-raisin pie. The cuisine was evidently an attractive feature of Riverview Ridge.

Lorene and her companions spent over an hour at the table, and it was an enjoyable interlude, but when she excused herself and went to the apartment, Lorene stood for a long time staring out the window. Her eyes didn’t focus on the pastoral setting, for she was in a wistful mood. While she’d been exerting all of her time and energy in building a successful business, Lorene hadn’t often allowed herself to dwell on the things she was missing in life. Indeed, considering the unhappy marriages of her parents and her younger sister, Rose, she’d long ago concluded that she’d made the right decision to remain single. If marriage didn’t offer any more love, understanding and companionship than her family’s marriages demonstrated, she wasn’t interested.

But visiting with the contented couple this evening had opened her eyes to the happiness and contentment possible in a marriage. The couple’s life hadn’t been without difficulties, but through sickness, disappointment and death, their love had expanded until it was warmer and stronger than it had been on their wedding day. The tender glances exchanged by husband and wife as they remembered their honeymoon had been Lorene’s undoing. She was convinced that she and Perry could have had a similar marriage. Why hadn’t she been strong enough to defy her parents and go back to Perry before it was too late?

Lorene leaned her head against the windowpane, but she didn’t cry. Her anguish was too deep for tears. If the decision had been hers, after she’d gotten over her anger at Perry’s rejection she would have found him again. But once she returned home and her parents learned about her affair with Perry, they took matters out of her hands. Her father had been transferred to another state, and she’d gone with her parents to enter another university. If she had it to do over, Lorene believed she would have defied them, but she hadn’t been very assertive then, so she’d let Perry drift out of her life.

For months after their separation, Lorene had been angry at God for causing the rift between her and Perry, but when she got away from her parents she started going to church again. But one day she’d heard a sermon on the unpardonable sin that had puzzled and agitated her. She’d wondered since that time if she’d committed sins that couldn’t be forgiven, but she was hesitant to bare her personal life to anyone. Who would have thought that an unexpected pregnancy could have caused so much heartache?

In spite of her doubts that God would forgive her, Lorene had continued to pray, and she believed God heard her at times, but other days there seemed to be a large gulf between her and Heaven that mere words couldn’t bridge. Her spirits plummeted during those periods, and she feared her past would always stand in the way of complete communion with God. Perry knew most of her shortcomings. Perhaps she could talk with him about her spiritual doubts and questions. But on second thought, she decided Perry was the last person she should confide in.

Lorene was jolted out of her melancholy when Dottie called up the back stairs. “You’re wanted on the phone.”

Perry had her mobile phone number, so he wouldn’t have called Riverview Ridge.

Lorene went to the head of the stairs. “Do you know who it is?”

“Alma Denney.”

Lorene didn’t hand out her cell phone number recklessly, but it would be all right for Perry’s secretary to have it. And Dottie, too, should know if someone else tried to reach her through the B and B. “Please give her my cell phone number and ask her to call me up here? Got a pencil to write it down?”

“Nope, but I’ve got a good memory.”

Grinning, Lorene called off the telephone digits.

The interruption was welcome to Lorene. If she’d spent many more minutes thinking about what she’d missed with Perry, she would soon have indulged in a pity party, with herself as the only guest.

“Hello, Alma,” Lorene said when her phone rang soon afterward. “What can I do for you?”

In the soft drawl that Lorene was beginning to recognize as the native dialect, Alma answered, “I called to invite you to church at the college chapel tomorrow morning. There won’t be a large crowd, because many of the students go home on weekends, but our chaplain always has a good message. And we want you to have lunch at our house afterward. Perry usually has the noon meal with us on Sunday.”

The invitation surprised Lorene, for she’d thought Alma resented her unexplained connection with Perry, and she hesitated. Was the woman seeking an opportunity to pry into her past? She had intended to go to church tomorrow, knowing that she could get some good ideas for publicity as she watched Woodston residents worship. And she wanted to see Perry as much as she could while she was in Woodston. She must store up some new memories to cherish when she went back to Pittsburgh. The town had seemed empty today because he hadn’t been here.

“Thank you. I’ll be happy to come, although I can’t stay late. I have to hand Mr. Kincaid a financial proposal Monday morning, and it isn’t ready yet.”

“Feel free to leave when you must,” Alma assured her.

Alma waited for Lorene at the chapel door on Sunday morning, and they entered the small sanctuary to the sound of organ music. Zeb, Alma’s husband, nodded a welcome to Lorene as she and Alma slid into a pew brightened by light through a stained-glass memorial window.

Lorene focused her thoughts on the minister’s message, “The Unconditional Love of God,” based on the Scripture passage from Jeremiah 31. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.”

“God’s love is not fickle like the devotion of humans,” the minister stressed at the outset of his sermon, “which is often motivated by the actions of those we love.

“His love is unconditional. He loves us if we’re good. He loves us if we’re bad. God doesn’t treat His children as some earthly father might, saying to His child, ‘If you’ll be good, I’ll love you.’ There is absolutely nothing we can do that can make God love us more or less than He does right now. Even when our actions grieve the heart of God, His love remains steadfast.”

If these words were true, God had forgiven the sins of her youth. Had she worried needlessly about the one thing she’d done that she thought God, and Perry, could never forgive? Maybe it was God’s plan for Kenneth Cranston to leave her employ so she’d be forced to come to Woodston and set things right with Perry. She blinked and picked up the thread of the message.

“Many people live in fear that the revelation of some skeleton in the closet will ruin their reputation. That isn’t necessary for those who’ve trusted Christ. Mistakes and sorrows are common to everyone, including Christians, but the Scriptures promise that God’s forgiving love remains steadfast.”

Lorene’s face flushed, and she felt faint when the minister summed up his sermon. “Turn your attention to the Biblical account of Jesus’s confrontation with a woman who had committed adultery, an unforgivable sin in ancient times, one punishable by death. Jesus dealt first with the woman’s accusers, reminding them of their own shortcomings. They dropped the charges. He knew the woman was guilty of the sin, but He spoke kindly to her. ‘I don’t condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.’ That incident confirms Jesus’s unconditional love.”

Lorene squirmed uncomfortably, thankful when the minister closed his sermon and gave the benediction.

She hadn’t seen Perry, but when he joined her and the Denneys in the foyer, she assumed he’d been sitting behind them.