Second Chance in Dry Creek by Janet Tronstad

Author:Janet Tronstad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Gracie was sitting in a pew, with Tessie snuggled next to her, safe in the blessed silence that surrounded her. The Sunday-school hour had finally ended, with each child assigned a role in the skit for Friday’s harvest dinner. And all of the adults, except for her, were now in the back reception area having a final cup of coffee or tea before coming back into this part of the church for the eleven o’clock worship service.

Even more importantly, someone, generally the father, had come to pick up each one of the youngsters from the class area. Disaster had been averted. She’d emptied the juice bottle and put it in the trash. She’d swept up the cracker crumbs and the torn tissues Tessie had left behind. She’d checked to be sure the one little girl was doing okay with the boy Calen had forced her to pair with, and saw she had stopped crying.

Gracie worried briefly about costumes, until the boy who was so interested in prisons had told her that Mrs. Hargrove had paper masks and colored blankets for them to wear to represent the different animals.

And now Gracie sat here with the sun streaming down on her face as it came through the stained-glass windows. She wondered briefly if the reason Mrs. Hargrove enjoyed her class so much was because of this sweet feeling of relief when it was over for another week.

Tessie stirred beside her and Gracie straightened up to look around some more. An oak pulpit stood at the front of the church and a mauve carpet spread out from beneath it, running between the pews until it reached the wide door to the outside. She suddenly remembered the many times she’d seen brides walk down that carpeted path. They were visions of loveliness.

“Oh,” Gracie muttered to herself in disgust. She hadn’t expected the reminder of brides to bring her back to earlier thoughts about trust. How could something so lacy and lovely turn on her? The sun wasn’t so comforting anymore.

Fortunately, Calen was not there to make her feel worse. She knew well enough that taming the children had not been her biggest challenge of the day. She had failed in some major way this morning and it had nothing to do with the story of Noah, unless one considered that God had asked Noah to do something so difficult it had seemed impossible.

Almost as impossible as her trusting Calen to support her in the Sunday-school class.

She knew the man wanted her to trust him, but how could she? He was asking for more than trust just for this morning, too. Where would she be if she went around trusting every man who asked her to?

Gracie looked up and saw that someone had walked to the piano with a hymnal in her hands. When the woman turned her head, she could see it was Doris June. Mrs. Hargrove’s middle-aged daughter wore a navy suit and her blond hair was perfectly in place. When Gracie looked closely, though, she could see that the other woman’s face was pale and drawn.

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