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Copyright © 2007 Lyndell King
Pastor Nathan Saunders smiled at Petra as she skipped along the ocean’s edge. The dying sunlight gleamed on blonde wisps that danced free around her fine-boned face. A faded blue ribbon fluttered near her ear where she’d woven back an over-long fringe. Six years ago he’d given her that ribbon on the day they graduated high school. She still wore it once a week and wouldn’t let him replace it. Typical Petra – sweet, sentimental, adorable.
He studied the smooth perfection of her skin. Despite his quiet, plodding steps and veneer of calm, his nerves buzzed. She was everything he’d ever wanted. He’d waited an age to have her. Every extra day seemed an eternity.
The question he’d always carried close to his chest now lingered on the tip of his tongue. Was six months too soon after her father’s death to ask her to marry him? He’d seen her cry, had held her while her heart broke, but he longed to hold her again while she laughed and her eyes sparkled. He tired of waiting for the sign to show a relationship between them was God’s will, his personal version of Gideon’s wet fleece. Whether the sheep be wet or dry, he wanted to break through the unspoken barrier and be more than her friend and minister.
He sent up a silent prayer for the gazillionth time and winced at the thought he was nagging God, like a flea trying to steer the dog he rode on. You’re more than a friend to me, Nathan. Let Petra only say those words and he would take it from there. Was that too much to ask?
She fell back to walk beside him and laced fingers gritty with sand through his. Her smile made his heart tumble.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said as if in answer to his thoughts. “Something really big.”
“Yes?” His attention zeroed in on the nervous dart of her pink tongue as she moistened her lower lip.
“I’ve decided to marry.”
“Marry?” he managed, the word half-mangled as a lump choked off his air. He stopped walking to gaze at her. Had she decided to forgo courtship given how long they’d known each other?
He’d planned to date and woo her first, but if marriage was what she wanted, he’d happily embrace it.
“John Peters asked me.”
“John Peters?” Joy disappeared in the space of a heartbeat. His jaw fell slack. Had he heard right?
“You don’t approve?” Her brow creased with disappointment.
Approve? He fought the unchristianly urge to tear Peters apart. Instead he forced a tight smile, guilty as a thief at being caught in his self-indulgent thoughts. “Your announcement shocked me is all,” he said. “You’ve known him such a short time.”
High color stole along her cheekbones. “Almost six months. Since father died.”
And Peters had not felt the compassion to delay his suit during her time of grieving. That scarcely tamed the unchristianly urges to pound him into fish burly.
“It’s an attractive offer,” she pressed. “John is a good man.”
“Certainly,” Nathan admitted. Though perhaps not as good as he thought himself.
He looked down and dug a toe into the sand. A sick knot tightened in his gut. He wanted to support Petra and would do whatever it took to protect her welfare, but what could he say? Loss nipped at his nerves. More importantly, John Peters was wrong for someone so sweet and yielding. He was intimidating. Not just because his wealth had allowed him to buy half their town and rent it back to the locals. Nor the unrest he’d caused by buying the fishing co-op and then reducing fishermen’s incomes to turn more profit. His formidable presence and righteous manner were stultifying. This joining couldn’t be God’s will.
Nathan swallowed. Perhaps his own desires shaped that unflattering interpretation of John. He coveted his good fortune in winning Petra. He’d need many hours on his knees to come to terms with this.
“I haven’t answered him yet,” she said, chewing her bottom lip.
That was something.His hand tightened around hers, and without a word, they walked again in synchrony and silence. If she married, she’d no longer be free for their regular Sunday afternoon beach walk. He couldn’t imagine going without her.
“You love him?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“I care for him. I admire his strength and morality. It could deepen to love. Perhaps it already has.” She shrugged. “What do I know? I’ve never been in love.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened. All the more reason to oppose this marriage. Still, he couldn’t help but be pleased by her answer.
“Marriage is not something to be rushed into,” he cautioned. “Whatever you need to help you decide, let me know. I’ll always be here for you. As your minister and as your friend.” And as someone who loves you more than life.
She prodded his arm with a finger. “You’ve always been my most loyal friend, but it’s hard to think of you as a minister.”
“After five years of training? I thought you’d be used to the idea by now.” He tugged the tips of her hair. They slid through his fingers like corded silk. “It’s hard to imagine you out of pigtails, yet here you are, a woman fully grown and more beautiful than this sunset. Many men will want to marry you, Petra. You don’t need to accept the first offer. Any man would be a fool not to love you.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “So you love me?”
“Always.” Did she see him as a man? Finally?
She dropped his hand and stooped to pick up a shell. Her lithe body moved with the grace of a thousand ballet classes, lessons he’d teased her about unmercifully in their teens. She lifted the shell’s pearly pink side to her ear.
“Do you think the sea will tell me the right answers if I listen carefully,” she asked with a laugh.
His fingers curled into his palm to stop from reaching for her. Her lips were the same soft shiny pink as the shell. He longed to lift them to his ear, to have them whisper words now lost forever.
You’re more than a friend. Words he’d been so sure must someday come.
He dropped his attention to his work-roughened hands, striving to remember his allotted roles. Friend and minister.
“I think you must listen to the small voice inside you,” he said, adding speed to his steps. He needed to increase the distance between them and reduce the temptation to touch her. “God will give you your answers if you listen to your heart.”
“Oh.” She stopped.
He turned to see why and caught her frowning at her watch.
“I’d better listen to the time. It’s quarter to six already. John will be waiting.”
“Tonight?”
“He’s meeting with the fishermen about their demands for higher fish prices. He wants me to help diffuse their anger, and since I know shorthand, I promised to take the minutes. It’s years since I used my secretarial skills and John says we mustn’t squander our gifts by sinking them in idleness.”
Nathan waved a hand at the colorful sky. “Perhaps you squander God’s sunset by cramming yourself in the stuffy indoors while He’s showing us His glory.”
“All the same, I’d better go. A promise is a promise, and John hates people to be late. Goodbye. God bless.”
“Goodbye.” The word rang like a death knell. Petra could not leave him and marry John Peters. The whole idea was anathema. “You’ll take your time to consider John’s offer, won’t you?” he called after her.
She stopped. Turned. Wrung her hands. “I have three weeks,” she said.
“Three weeks?” She must be joking. His pulse slammed through him and throbbed into his neck. “You can’t!” he yelled, then reigned himself in. “I mean, that’s too fast for such a major life decision,” he continued in a softer voice.
Judging by the uncertain flutter of her golden lashes, she wasn’t sure about it either, or perhaps he saw only what he wanted to see.
“Not all men are as patient as you,” she said.
If only she knew.
“John wants to marry before he leaves for Hong Kong. He’s taken a position as treasurer of the church’s Asian missions and will be based there for the next six months. To oversee the cannery’s operations here while he’s over there he’ll need my help, so it’s best if we marry before he goes. A married couple works more efficiently.” Her voice was flat and lifeless, as if she quoted someone else’s thoughts.
Nathan’s heart sank further. A hurried marriage to the wrong man and she’d be going away. How had such a perfect afternoon ceded to an evening in hell?
“So that gives me three weeks to get married and ready to travel. No time to waste on being fickle and indecisive.”
Nathan gulped and cast around for anything to delay her. “What about planning the wedding? That takes time.”
Her feet shuffled and she looked away. “We only want something small. I must go now.”
She blew a kiss as she had each week he’d known her. It was nothing more than friendly affection and yet he hugged the gesture close. Perhaps it was as much as he’d ever have of her.
He waved goodbye, but quickly dropped his hand to hide its telltale trembling. The strain of keeping his feelings hidden from her perceptive eyes was almost too much to bear. When she ran from sight, he let his shoulders droop forward, swamped with misery. It couldn’t be God’s plan for him to give her up.
The dying sunlight screeched fingernails of pink and orange down the heavens as he paced the cool wet sand alone. Cold, restless waves flung themselves on the beach over and over. They teased his bare feet, then clawed their way back, dragging runnels in the sand. Instead of the usual calming presence of the Holy Spirit in this place, he battled want, heavier and more pounding than the surf. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing this walk with Petra each week. Of losing her. The emptiness weighed on him like deep water. If only his desires would turn to salt like Lot’s wife so he could leave them here and march away unencumbered into God’s will. He was too late to act on them. Petra had promised herself to another.
As shock deepened to despair, he sank to his knees on the coarse sand. Why did he have to want her so much? Why, if he was never to have her?
He opened his mouth to pray, but rather than words, a groan fell from his lips, the murmuring of heartache too raw and bloody to find shape. He caught his face in his hands and fell prostrate on the sand, gasping for air.