Love Remains (6 page)

The light changed, and she continued on past the college. Turning off before reaching Hillsboro, she wound around a couple of secondary streets to Acklen Avenue. Usually, she parked on a side street, nearly a full block away from the large church. Today, however, she indulged her laziness and found a spot near the small parking lot at the rear of the church. Must not be too many people in the early service for there to be this many parking places available near the building.

Halfway up the stairs to the Sunday school classroom, she paused, wheezing, chest heavy. If she started coughing now, it would sap her of what little strength she had to try to make it through the morning. And she couldn’t collapse again, not in front of Bob—Patrick and everyone else.

Her low-heeled black pumps echoed loudly against the tile in the
empty corridor. As she expected, the singles’ classroom—which had been made large enough to accommodate them by the removal of the walls between three regular-sized rooms—was empty. With it being Labor Day weekend, she didn’t expect more than half their normal number to show up.

The Sunday school director had already dropped off their attendance sheets. In a way, Zarah was glad they got new record sheets each week. That way, she didn’t have to see if someone had messed up the job that had been hers almost from the first day she’d attended this church. She pulled out the basket of name tags from the metal cabinet behind her welcome desk and started laying them out on the table on the far end of the room by the coffee station.

“What are you doing here?”

She cringed at Patrick’s tone and volume but rearranged a few name tags to put them in alphabetical order before turning. “I’m feeling much better.”

Patrick slammed two half-gallon jugs of orange juice down on the beverage table hard enough it was a miracle the tops didn’t pop off and spew the sticky liquid everywhere. “Just because you have your voice back—”

“And no fever and no headache.”

“—doesn’t mean you’re better.” He grabbed her head—one hand wrapped around the back, the other covering her forehead and eyes. “You don’t feel overly hot.”

“I told you I don’t have a fever.” She’d forgotten just how fussy he could be. She should have remembered—she’d wanted to kill him after she’d twisted her ankle two years ago hiking in Gatlinburg, he’d hovered so much.

“What’s this, an exorcism?” Flannery McNeill’s voice floated into the room.

Zarah pushed Patrick’s hands away. “Yeah, Patrick is trying to exorcise my pneumonia away.” She handed Flannery her name tag. “I thought you were going to Birmingham for the weekend.”

Flannery made a face that would have twisted anyone else’s features into ugliness. But not Flannery McNeill with her big hazel eyes, high cheekbones, patrician nose, and full lips. She couldn’t do ugly no matter how hard she tried. She set the five doughnut boxes she’d carried in on the table. “One of the senior editors quit Friday—with a book due to the printer by Tuesday that wasn’t ready to go. I was at the office until one in the morning Friday night and then didn’t get home until almost midnight last night. But now all the changes are made and all that has to be done is for the designer to prepare the electronic files and upload it.”

“Sounds…fascinating.” Patrick rolled his eyes.

“Thanks, Mr. I-Hit-Things-with-a-Sledgehammer-All-Day.” Flannery propped her fist on her hip.

“Face it, Ms. Wordy Girl. The work of a building contractor will always be more interesting than the work of an editor. Plus, no one feels like they have to watch what they say—or the way they say it—around me.”

“As if you’d ever be bothered by speaking improperly in front of me.”

Zarah chuckled and returned to setting out the name tags. The constant bickering between the two of them had bothered her when she first met them, until she learned that not only had they grown up together—same church, same neighborhood, same schools—but in their World History class in high school they had been assigned a project on Scotland, based on their last names. Upon discovering the clans Macdonald and McNeill had been bitter enemies in medieval times, they’d taken to bickering with each other whenever possible—to make their ancestors proud.

Oh, she should forewarn Flan—

“What are
you
doing here?” Flannery’s voice carried a note of surprise and disdain.

Too late.

The beautiful, icy blond pinned Bobby with narrowed eyes. When
he’d made the decision Friday night to attend Acklen Ave. on Sunday, he’d never considered she might still go to church here.

“Flannery. You’re looking well.”

She crossed her arms. “I asked you a question.”

He mimicked her stance. “I’m here because this is the church I grew up in, and it’s the church I plan on attending now that I’ve moved back to Nashville.”

Flannery’s eyes went back to their normal roundness, now filled with surprise, and she turned toward the far right end of the room. Bobby looked, too. His heart bumped against his ribs. Even with her back turned, he’d recognize Zarah’s mass of curly hair anywhere.

“Zarah, did you know about this?” Flannery demanded.

Zarah’s shoulders raised and lowered—then shook as she stifled a cough. She turned. Not quite as pale as Friday night. But dark circles dug trenches under her eyes—she looked like she could use a solid month’s sleep. “Yes, Flan, I knew.”

“And you’re…okay with it?” Flannery’s tone dropped almost to a whisper.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Zarah’s expression clearly warned the other woman to lay off.

“We’ll talk later.”

Patrick’s head swung back and forth between the two women. “What are y’all talking about?”

Zarah patted Patrick’s arm—and a flash fire of jealousy surged through Bobby before he could snuff it. “Don’t worry about it, Patrick. It’s nothing.”

And there, in one word, he had Zarah’s opinion of everything that had happened between them as young adults
—nothing
. It had meant nothing to her then; it meant nothing to her now.

“Diesel, help me put the chairs out.” Patrick seemed to take Zarah at her word.

Bobby gladly pitched in with the manual labor of moving forty chairs into a circle in the center of the large room. It gave Zarah and
Flannery a chance to have a private conversation as they finished laying out the name tags.

Zarah and Flannery McNeill—friends. Figured. He wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or offended that Zarah had sought out people from his past to become friends with when she moved here.

“Started your house hunt yet?” Patrick asked, pulling Bobby’s attention away from the women.

“Not yet. I wanted to get my feet on the ground at work first. I finished all of my certifications with the state last week. This week will be my first on the job at the unit.”

“Any particular area you’re looking at?”

“I’d kinda like to stay around here. This is the area I grew up in; it’s what I’m most familiar with. The office is off Briley Parkway, northwest of downtown, and it’s only a ten- to fifteen-minute drive from my grandparents’ house—but that’s without traffic. I want to give it a week or two of morning and evening rush hour to see what it’s going to be like.”

“Thinking about a house or what?” Patrick pointed at chairs as he counted them.

“Nah—too much maintenance. I love my parents’ condo—but I can’t afford something like that. I’ve been noticing all the new condo and townhouse developments along Hillsboro, Music Row, Demonbreun, and West End. I’m thinking about maybe getting into one of those. I realized a pretty good profit on my place in LA, so I’ve got a budget that will go a long way here.”

A gasped, “No!” from Flannery caught Bobby’s ear, but he refused to turn. He wasn’t being egotistical in his belief they were talking about him. Flannery’s reaction to his arrival pretty much guaranteed it.

He continued talking real estate with Patrick, finding out how much Patrick had paid for his house in Green Hills—and barely hiding his reaction to the mid-six-figure number. The area had always been upscale; apparently it was even more so now. Thursday, he’d had to drive down through the heart of Green Hills, past the mall and
Hillsboro High School, to a multi-use retail and office building to get his car registered and his Tennessee license plate. At eleven o’clock in the morning on a weekday, traffic had been horrible—akin to what he might expect in the shopping district on the Saturday before Christmas.

Not only did he not want the maintenance a house required—yard work, exterior, roofing—he wanted to be close to one of the interstates. Easy on, easy off—meaning easy to work. After four years spending an hour to ninety minutes sitting in traffic every morning and evening to go about twenty miles to get to work, he was ready for an easy commute.

“I can hook you up with my real estate agent—she’s a member here, actually. She’d have been at the party Friday night, but she was going out of town for the holiday weekend. She did me a huge favor getting me in to see my house literally five minutes after the listing went public.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

People started trickling in. Patrick stopped trying to get the chairs arranged so that there was the same amount of space between each one and went over to the side table and made coffee.

Zarah moved to stand beside the small desk just inside the door. She greeted everyone by name, offered to get them coffee or orange juice, and, as they mingled, brought each one his or her name tag and beverage of choice. The only people who didn’t let her serve them were the ones who wanted to doctor their coffee with the powdered creamer and sweeteners.

Bobby observed in horrified fascination. Didn’t these people remember that Zarah had been in the hospital recently—and that just Friday night, she’d been so sick he’d had to drive her home? A few people asked her how she was feeling, but those were the women he’d tagged as forty-plus, most likely divorced, and almost certainly moms. But the younger people—those he estimated to be no older than Zarah’s thirty-two—were the ones who took advantage of her
subservient nature, who seemed to find nothing amiss in her acting like a restaurant hostess rather than a member of this group, an equal of everyone here.

He remembered all too well the Thanksgiving dinner at General Mitchell’s home when he’d mistaken Zarah for part of the catering staff her father had hired in to cook and serve the meal. He also remembered asking her a few months later if she ever got tired of always doing things for others and allowed herself to have a selfish moment. Her answer had been no. Apparently, it was still no.

“If y’all will take a seat, we’ll get started.” Patrick’s voice boomed over the din of conversations.

Zarah quickly wended through the crowd, the coffee carafe in one hand, a jug of OJ in the other, refilling people’s cups. He shook his head. If she did it in the middle of the lesson, he might have to reconsider his decision to become a member of this class. He couldn’t watch her debase herself like that every week—even though he wasn’t allowing himself to feel compassion toward her. Not after the way she’d treated him.

There were just enough chairs for everyone—well, for everyone except Zarah. But she sat down at the desk and started marking the attendance sheet. She’d probably bring her chair over when she finished.

He sat so that he could just see her. After a few minutes, she took the roll sheets and put them in the plastic box on the classroom door, which she then closed. She stood just inside the door a moment, looking over the circle—and apparently noticing no empty chairs. Not even Flannery had thought to save her a place.

Zarah went back to the desk to get the chair—no, wait, what was she doing sitting down over there again? Sure enough, she opened up her Bible as if she was going to sit there, apart from the rest of the group, for the entire lesson.

Bobby clamped his teeth together. How could these people be so insensitive to someone who did so much for them?

As soon as Patrick finished his introduction and asked a discussion question, Bobby scooted his chair back, creating a wide enough hole in the circle to accommodate another chair. He ignored the questioning looks from everyone else, pulled another chair off the stacks lined up against the wall, and put it in the gap. He then went over to the desk, picked Zarah’s Bible up off it—careful not to lose her place—cupped his hand under her elbow, and escorted her to the extra chair.

Her face went from sickly pale to eight-hours-in-the-sun red in a flash, and her eyes glittered with extra moisture, making Bobby’s triumph empty. He hadn’t just embarrassed her, he’d mortified her. In front of her friends and acquaintances. But he refused to back down—or to let her act like an unwanted appendage rather than a vital organ in this body of believers. He opened his Bible and returned his attention to the lesson as if nothing had happened.

Something odd caught his attention, and he turned and looked at Flannery. She smiled at him and gave a slight nod of her head.

He refused to acknowledge the gesture. If Flannery were the good friend to Zarah she’d acted like earlier, she would have done what he had long ago—and every week before now—to show Zarah they wouldn’t tolerate her hiding in a corner.