Emilie Richards - Endless Chain

“No sermon,” he promised, “and end of subject.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve replaced the dogs with something a shade more refined?”

“Like a porcelain cocker spaniel?”

“You know me so well.”

“Not as well as I hope to again.”

She nudged his hip with hers. “Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder?”

He unlocked the front door. Their sex life, or lack of it, was no longer a subject of real debate. He was a heterosexual male with all the requisite urges. They had been lovers in the days when their wedding date was on the calendar and their invitations at the printer. But now that the date was long past and the invitations interred at a Georgia landfill, they no longer made love.

When he didn’t respond she settled her hip firmly against his, brushing it back and forth. “I’m always ready and willing.”

He closed his eyes, and for a moment, temptation was the only thing on his mind. His body responded exactly the way she had known it would. She was not as convinced of the need for abstinence as he was. “How can I talk to the youth group about controlling their budding sexuality if I’m not controlling my own?”

“You’re an old-fashioned man.”

“Who needs an old-fashioned commitment and a wedding date before he takes his woman to bed. And that’s pushing liberal as it is.”

She moved away, and they were no longer touching. “Just for the record, I wasn’t intending to lecture your youth group about our sex life. Or lack of it.”

It was time to change the subject. “Brace yourself.” He opened the door and stood in the opening to fend off his dogs. He thought they were relatively well-behaved for young, slobbering dogs. He loved the three of them unreservedly.

“Nice dogs,” Christine told them, screwing up her face. “Nice pen outside?” she asked Sam.

Christine’s parents, former Georgia governor and congressman Hiram Fletcher and his wife, Nola, had two spoiled shih tzus that Christine adored. Sam was astute enough to recognize the difference.

“I’ll be back.” He whistled for the dogs, who, having ascertained that Christine did not have food or affection to offer, covered the distance to the kitchen in great leaping strides. Or rather, Shad and Shack did. Bed, who weighed all of thirteen pounds, followed as fast as she could.

He returned a few minutes later to the sound of forlorn howls from the dog pen. The dogs were too well-behaved to continue for long.

Christine had made herself at home in his kitchen, and she flipped on his coffeemaker as he entered. He began to open all the windows. “Have you had lunch?” she asked.

“I’m not even sure I had breakfast.”

“I’m starved. I had to be at the airport at dawn. I’ve been up forever.” She opened the refrigerator. “Want an omelet?”

“That’s a lot of trouble. I have some leftovers. I did a stir-fry last night.”

She peeked over the top of the door. “You made it?”

He tried not to smile. “Uh-huh.”

Her eyes widened. “I’ll do omelets.”

He was perfectly satisfied with his own cooking and never understood why others weren’t. There had been a time in his life when the meals he now prepared for himself would have tasted like five-star cuisine.

“I’ll do toast,” he said.

She considered a moment. He could read her indecision. “Christine, I can toast bread, I promise.”

She shrugged and dove back into the contents of his fridge. Sam hoped she wouldn’t remove everything inside. From experience, he knew he would have to replace anything she took out, as well as wash and dry every plate, cup and frying pan. Christine liked to cook, but she did not clean up after herself. She had never needed to and couldn’t see why she should start now.

He thought of Elisa, who cleaned up after anybody who would let her.

Christine closed the refrigerator door, eggs, milk and cheese cradled in her arms. “I checked in before I came looking for you. I like the inn. Quaint and tasteful. I suppose it will keep people from talking.”

Mostly, as they both knew, Christine sleeping somewhere else would keep Sam from succumbing to his fiancée’s considerable charms.

“I’m glad you decided to come.” He took a loaf of bread from the cupboard, a knife from a drawer and a butter dish from the counter. Then he made himself comfortable at the small kitchen table and started spreading butter from one crust to the other.

“I didn’t want to.” Christine began breaking eggs into a bowl. “But I missed you. I don’t see why you haven’t been able to get away and come home.”

He didn’t remind her that Atlanta was not his home and probably never would be again. He didn’t remind her that he had a job that required his presence on weekends. She knew both and chose to forget them whenever the facts got in the way.

“I’m coming to see you next month,” he reminded her. “For Torey’s wedding.” Against his better instincts, he had agreed to help preside at a ceremony in his former church for one of their friends.

“Well, I’m here now. But the whole time I was packing, I thought about that fundraiser Savior’s Church did in the last year of your ministry there. Do you remember?”

He remembered all too clearly. At the time he had been the assistant minister of The Savior’s Church, one of Atlanta’s oldest and most influential congregations. He had given an invocation that had prompted the wealthiest members to fund a fledgling television ministry. Just two months later, they had begun televising their early-morning service, at which he almost always presided. The church’s membership had increased substantially because of it.

In case he didn’t remember everything, Christine hit the high points. “City Grill catered the dinner. We had Kobe beef and smoked trout. We flew in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for entertainment.”

He remembered that part too well. The African-American members of the band had been in a distinct minority that night.

She flicked on a burner and reached for his one and only frying pan on a rack above the stove. “I wore an outrageous red dress by Zac Posen. He was brand-new on the runways back then, and I knew he was going places. The air reeked of politics. Daddy introduced you to Sam Nunn during dessert. Daddy told him that one day you would be the next Georgia senator named Sam.”

He waited until she was clearly done, using that time to slip the bread onto the rack of the tabletop toaster oven. “I suppose the point of this trip down memory lane is to draw a contrast between that night and the one to come?”

She faced him, her back against the stove as the pan heated. “A Mexican fiesta, Sam? In some damp field in the middle of nowhere? To raise money for what? Books and crayons for immigrant kids? It’s a noble cause. I hope you get enough money to buy crayons in every color of the rainbow. But this isn’t where you belong, and you know it.”

“Don’t you mean it isn’t where you belong?”

She didn’t deny it. “That, too.”

“You didn’t have to fly in for this. I didn’t expect it.”

“Sometimes I want to shake you silly. Are you trying to misunderstand?”

“Chrissy, I may not have left Savior’s Church of my own accord, but I have a job here, and I’m grateful after everything that I do.”

“And I’m not.” She turned back to the stove and poured the beaten egg mixture into the pan. From this angle her wild red hair hid her shoulders, but he knew they were hunched in frustration.

He rose, went to her and put his arms around her, resting them just below her generous breasts. For a moment all he wanted was for things to be the way they once had been.

* * *

Elisa appreciated honesty, even if she no longer practiced it. Two minutes into the trip back to the trailer park, she knew she liked Helen Henry. Some people decided late in life that pretense was too much work. They simply said whatever they wanted in the short time that was left them. Elisa suspected this was not the case with Helen. Helen had probably been truthful her entire life and scared away a lot of people in the bargain.