Always There: Christian Inspirational Romance Read online

  "Hanging in there. You know I've dealt with my grief over losing Ted. I gave that to God months ago, but Jilly still has questions. Maybe Lillia can talk to her," Elise said referring to their trusted children's pastor.

  "Maybe, but I think it's something that will get easier with time. Once you guys get on the road, I bet she'll have her attention diverted for awhile. This next year is going to be amazing. I'm going to miss you something fierce, but I know you need to do this for Ted. And yourself," she said with a sad smile. Sandy had loved Ted too, and it was hard for Elise to keep the pent up anger and frustration at her husband’s action a secret from her friend. Sandy knew a little about the financial situation, and of course the foreclosure, but Elise had too much pride to tell her just how broke they really were. With just a few thousand in her bank account, and a fully paid off used RV, Elise felt like a poor college student just leaving home. Gas for the RV was going to be hard enough, and she hadn’t even started thinking about how they would live for much more than six months before she would have to get a job.

  "No, this is all for Ted," Elise said with a laugh. "In fact, I bet he's getting a big kick out of this whole moving fiasco right now. He knows that the whole RV idea was not one that I wholeheartedly embraced. Actually, when he told me his plan two years ago, I think I said something along the lines of 'I don't camp unless it involves room service'," Elise giggled. It was hard to balance the good memories with the one day he ruined it all. The truth was that she still had a heart filled with love for Ted, and she tried to understand what he was thinking - what he was feeling - but it was still too raw.

  "I can totally hear you saying that," Sandy said, bringing her back out of her thoughts. "But, seriously, I think this time together as mother and daughter is going to be so special. I kind of envy you just having one child you can focus on. My brood would never be able to live together peacefully in a motorhome!" Elise smiled. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean anything by it..." Sandy said reaching out for her friend's hand after realizing that she pointed out her inability to have more kids with Ted.

  "It's okay. I’m not upset. You don’t need to walk on eggshells around me.”

  "I know it's hard to imagine now, Elise, but one day you will probably find a new love, get married and have a whole passel of snotty nosed children." Sandy always knew how to make her laugh.

  "Doubtful. I think God had one soul mate in mind for me, and it was Ted." As soon as she said it, she knew in her gut that it wasn't the truth. Her first idea of a soul mate escaped her many years ago, but she didn't like to think about him. The wound in her heart was still fresh, even all these years later. And though she loved her husband with her whole heart, there was always a little hidden part of her that loved someone else. A man who never loved her back, at least not in that way. And the first man to leave her.

  Shaking off the memory, she remembered the favor she needed to ask Sandy. "Do you mind taking Jilly tonight? I need to tackle the attic, and she will just be right in the middle of things."

  "Of course! No problem. I'll take her and Megan to a movie and dinner. Can I help you with anything else?"

  "No. I think I just need some time. You know, to say goodbye to my home," Elise said with a sigh. "We had so many dreams here, Sandy. Right over there, in that chair, is where he was sitting when I told him I was pregnant with Jilly. And that hook on the fireplace is the one that held his stocking. I never could get the darn thing out of the wood," she said laughing through the painful memory. "And that stain by the sofa? That's from a particularly dark cup of grape juice that Jilly spilled while they wrestled one Saturday morning."

  Sandy walked over to her friend and pulled her into an embrace. Elise quietly sobbed into her shoulder, unwilling to let those old grief stricken waves of tears to overcome her with Jilly upstairs. Just then, she heard her bounding down the stairs again. The two women quickly broke apart.

  "Auntie Sandy!" she squealed.

  "Hey, Princess! Guess what? It's girls' night!"

  "It is? What does that mean?" she asked, totally ignoring her mother and running into Sandy's arms.

  "Well, it means I'm taking you and Megan to a movie and dinner and then maybe ice cream!"

  Jilly giggled with delight as Sandy explained all of the fun they'd have while Elise quickly used a paper towel to dab her eyes. Within a few minutes, Sandy was ushering Jilly out the door for the sleepover and Elise was looking around her house. Alone. Quiet. It was almost suffocating.

  Pictures that used to line the walls were now boxed up, and the echo of her every movement ricocheted around the house like lightning. She quickly decided that she needed the distraction of the attic and started up the dark stairway.

  Ted had always been the one who dealt with the attic. After all, there might be spiders up there - or worse - and she wasn't one who liked bugs of any kind. Thank goodness her motorhome would hopefully keep them at bay... at least that was her assumption. Once again, her confidence was getting shaken. What in the world had she done? Given up her memories to make new ones in a motorhome with her child? Would people wonder if she was some kind of gypsy or quasi-homeless person? And yet, she knew her choices had been few once the full understanding of their financial situation was thrust into her lap just two weeks after Ted was buried. The call from their accountant left little to her imagination, and then there were the threats from his business partners. It was all too much to handle.

  Why on Earth was she giving up her quiet, stable life for one on the road instead of finding some small apartment in the not-so-nice part of town instead? Would she really be able to pump waste into a hole in the ground? Would she be able to set up the balancing jacks and all the other nonsense the RV training guy had explained? Oh, Lord, how was she ever going to do this?

  She sat down in her grandmother's wooden rocker and took a deep breath. Maybe she could summon the spirits of all of the strong women from her family. Her great great grandmother had even been said to have fought a bear with her hands and an axe to protect her children in the mountains of North Carolina back in her day. Surely, she could drive an RV for a few months. She had been plagued by anxiety about this huge life step for weeks. She questioned herself at every turn, and she prayed about the oddest things now.

  "Dear Lord, please don't let me forget to bring the clean water hose...."

  What?!

  She could just imagine God sitting in heaven, prayers flying past him at the speed of light, and suddenly receiving hers. "Clean water hose?"

  But she also knew God cared for everything in her life, and that clean water hose was no different.

  She thought about the excitement in Ted’s eyes when he’d signed the papers to purchase the RV. She didn’t share his level of excitement, but she was okay with the purchase since she knew he’d be doing all the heavy lifting, so to speak. She would just do the cooking, like she already did most nights at home anyway, and keeping up with Jilly. At least that had been the plan. But, as she’d been repeatedly reminded, plans don’t always pan out.

  She had always believed that God’s plan was perfect, even when we don’t understand it. But she would have been lying if she said her faith wasn’t shaken by her husband’s death. Her foundation was supposed to be God. He was her rock, at least according to all the platitudes she’d always uttered to other people. But the last few months had her questioning whether she really had true faith in Him. Or was she just some Sunday School automaton who said what everyone wanted or needed to hear? When it really came down to brass tacks, what was she made of?

  Procrastination setting in again, she stood up and walked to the first box. She recognized this one as one from her mother's house. It was old and dusty, but she remembered her mother keeping it in their attic when she was a kid. She opened it and started looking through all of the old preschool coloring sheets her mother had saved of hers. There were old Thanksgiving crafts from first grade and report cards from fifth grade. Maybe her mother was a bit of a hoa
rder, but she was still glad to see these things.

  She laughed as she realized that her creativity apparently never extended to artwork. Everything she had drawn as a child looked like a crazy person with no hand control had done it, but her mother had loved these pieces of painted paper enough to save them.

  She spent about an hour sorting through similar boxes, tossing a lot and saying audible prayers to her mother, thanking her for the memories and apologizing for needing to scale down her belongings.

  It was time for a break, but she decided to go through just one more box. This one didn't look as dirty and was in a nicer box. When she opened it, her breath left her for a moment. Him. Her past. Her best friend. Her heartbreak. It all came back. A smile spread across her face for a moment at the memory of him. And then the tears came.

  Chapter 2

  Grief is a funny thing. It hits you at the oddest times and in the oddest ways, but the strangest part of this wave of grief was that it wasn't for Ted. And that alone made her feel a little guilty. She didn't know how many minutes she had been sitting there, but the sun had started to hide itself behind the big oak tree in her backyard, and that meant it was close to dinner time. Why was she still sitting on her knees on the dusty attic floor staring at the inside of a box? Why hadn't she managed to reach inside and pull something out yet?

  Maybe it was guilt. Or maybe it was anxiety. Either way, she seemed frozen, and that made no logical sense to her. After all, it had been years - over a decade - since she had even been in contact with him. She had gone through all of life's major events without him. Getting married. Having Jilly. Losing her husband. He was nothing more than a memory. Everyone has them, right? She talked to herself for a few more moments before finally reaching in and touching the item on top - a photo taken of the two of them at high school graduation.

  They both looked so full of life and hope and friendship. She'd never known a friendship like the one she had with him. People never understood their bond, and she had never been able to find it with anyone else. Including Sandy. Or her own husband. She had loved Ted so much, but even he knew she had a part of her heart that would always be broken by the loss of such an important relationship in her life.

  She dug further into the box, finding old movie stubs, report cards and yearbooks. And then she saw the one thing she was wondering if she had lost for good. The printed program for her 7th grade school play. To most people, it wouldn't have stood out in a box full of more important mementos, but to her it was the beginning point. The day that she would meet the person who would forever change who she was.

  September 1991

  Elise was going to die. She was sure of it. Right there on the stage in front of her 7th grade classmates, she was literally going to stop breathing and go to see Jesus. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, she thought. After all, her mama said heaven was an amazing place.

  Still, dying at twelve years old on the stage of a 7th grade play seemed kind of a silly way to go out. I mean, what would her obituary say? Girl dies of embarrassment?

  Twelve year old Elise Davenport wasn’t exactly a wallflower, but she wasn’t one who wanted to be the center of attention either. No, she preferred the in-class accolades of her teachers who fawned all over her because of her supposed superior intellect in her gifted classes. That’s the kind of attention she wanted; not the attention of her student body staring at her while she was performing Oklahoma with a bunch of other middle school students.

  “Mrs. Cade, are you sure I can’t just run the lights or maybe help with sound?” she pleaded to her music teacher. Mrs. Cade was an older woman, set in her ways and unbending on the rules.

  “No, ma’am. You have to be graded for this, Elise. We’ve been over this. The play counts as forty percent of your grade this semester.”

  The portly older woman was the epitome of the stereotypical old-timey teacher. She wore her gray hair in a bun and seemed to have an unending supply of long gray wool skirts. When she walked - or waddled rather - her skirts were so stiff that they just housed her legs but made no movements of their own. Her glasses were always pushed the edge of her substantial nose, and Elise often wondered how they didn’t just fall off and topple to the floor in front of her.

  “But, Mrs. Cade…”

  “Child, don’t argue with me,” she said sternly with her finger pointed. “Children are to be seen and not heard.”

  “Then why am I in the chorus?” Elise asked without thinking. Oops. Mrs. Cade pulled off her glasses and squinted her eyes.

  “Very funny, Elise. How would you like for me to talk to your mother?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Cade. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” Elise dropped her head and walked slowly back to her spot on the stage. She was grouped up with three other girls to make up the chorus. First, there was Lydia Jackson. She was by far the loudest girl in school, in love with her own voice, apparently. Then there was Sophia Jimenez, and Elise couldn’t understand her thick Spanish accent so she just nodded in agreement whenever Sophia spoke. Finally, there was Tiffany Sellers, the most popular girl in school and the worst singer she’d ever heard. Honestly, if she had been ogled by all the boys because of her singing abilities, Elise was sure all the boys were tone deaf.

  “All right, children, quiet down. We will begin our rehearsal today in just a moment, but first I want to introduce a brand new student.”

  Oh, great, Elise thought. Another poor soul added to this train wreck of a play. She knew she wasn’t having a very good attitude, but honestly things weren’t so great at home right now so her attitude was suffering.

  Her parents got along fine, but her Dad was acting weird lately. She didn’t know what was going on, and her mother seemed tight lipped about it. Her father appeared to be growing distant, and sometimes he came home really late at night. He seemed tired a lot, and they no longer played together outside in the evenings or even on Saturdays. He slept late too, come to think of it.

  “Benjamin Campbell,” Mrs. Cade said loudly into the now hooked up microphone, jarring Elise out of her daydream and back to the present.

  A boy, shorter than she was, stood beside Mrs. Cade and didn’t look up. Truth be told, he looked a little… poor. Elise hated to think it because she was taught never to judge a book by its cover, but it was hard not to notice his tattered clothing and disheveled hair. She wondered if his parents really cared how he looked.

  While she was again lost in a daydream, she noticed Mrs. Cade walking her way and bringing the boy with her. Oh no.

  “Elise Davenport, this is Benjamin Campbell. He’s new to our school, so I’m assigning you as his partner for today. Please make him feel welcome, and show him what we’re doing with the play.” With that, she walked away, practically pushing Benjamin into her.

  He stood there, still looking down, and Elise felt trapped. She wasn’t one to chat with people she didn’t know, but she felt sorry for the kid. Thrown into a new school. Thrown into a play. Wearing those clothes.

  “Hi, Benjamin,” she said softly reaching out her hand as her mother had always shown her to do when she met someone new. He cocked his head up a bit and looked at her hand.

  “Ben,” he said softly. “I hate the name Benjamin.” She thought she heard a small chuckle as he reached and took her hand. Looking up finally, she noticed his unusual face. Chiseled features, stunning blue eyes. Like two crystal clear oceans staring into her dull brown eyes. For the first time in her life, the air seemed to catch in her throat.

  “Ben it is, then,” Elise said trying not to shake. Why was she shaking? Maybe she needed to eat more at lunch tomorrow. “Welcome to Carson Falls Middle School. Where are you from?”

  He brushed the hair from his eyes and smiled. “Just the next county over. Our area got rezoned, and I was forced to change schools.”

  “Well, you seem thrilled about it,” Elise said with a laugh as she sat down on a bale of hay that was a prop on the stage. He sat down next to her.

  “I don’t li
ke change,” he said.

  “Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

  “So what’s the deal with this play, anyway?” he asked as the main characters ran through their lines with Mrs. Cade on the middle of the stage.

  “It’s forty percent of our grade, and it’s stupid,” she said crossing her arms.

  He eyed her closely and grinned. “I think I like you, Elise Davenport,” he said as he elbowed her lightly.

  And she thought she liked him too.

  June 2013

  Elise rubbed her fingers along the edges of the program. All of the memories of meeting Ben came flooding back to her. His eyes haunted her even now. They were unforgettable, as if staring straight through her soul. Yet, just as with Ted, she hadn’t known him at all apparently.