Kate Welsh - Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door - Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

Still, those words bothered her and kept her awake. She was the heir to a small fortune. Did that mean she couldn’t go to heaven no matter what she did to earn it? It didn’t seem to fit or to be consistent with Joshua’s evenhanded approach to his faith or with the passage she’d read off his notes earlier. So what could it mean?

She remembered all the books on his desk and her conversation with Josh about how he prepared a lesson. If he could find out what others had read into the Scriptures in those commentaries, then so could she! Surely one of those scholars had answered her questions already.

Luckily, Bear’s night-lights glowed softly throughout the house as Cassidy crept down the hall. She was grateful to the ridiculous dog as she moved down the stairs and into the darkened study. The floor creaked as she tiptoed across the room to the desk. “Please, God,” she whispered, “don’t let Josh find me sneaking around like this. A girl can take only so much humiliation in one night.”

She found references in several books, and after a while she understood that this was one of those passages that the scholars agreed upon. But even so, they all seemed to see different applications in people’s lives.

The first one she read seemed to say that Jesus did not really mean that it was impossible for a wealthy person to enter heaven. The rest followed suit on this, but one author continued on to explain that what Jesus meant was that heaven is impossible to earn or buy. The wealthy tend to think that everything and everyone has a price and that since they can pay that price, they think they can have anything they want. She wondered how many men in her own social circle thought they had already bought their place in heaven through charitable donations.

So, she concluded, salvation is an unearned gift. She couldn’t earn it as she’d thought. No one could.

Further complicating the lives of the rich, another scholar pointed out, are the temptations money brings with it. That was easy enough for Cassidy to grasp. When a CEO friend of her grandfather’s had ordered mandatory drug testing in his company because of falling revenues, it had turned out that drug abuse was rampant in the upper echelon of the company.

Yet another commentary mentioned the way money is almost worshiped in the world of the wealthy and how it is more often than not like a god to them. That was an easy idea for her to translate to her own experience. She’d learned quickly that in the world of cutthroat corporate politics, nothing was more important than the almighty dollar.

Tired of thinking and less content than ever with her life, she leaned her head back onto the big, old desk chair and let it rock back the way Josh had earlier. She closed her eyes and wondered where all this was leading her.

“Cassidy, dear, are you all right?”

Cassidy heard Irma’s voice as if from afar. “What is it?” Cassidy asked, and opened her eyes, blinking in surprise, her mind still in a sleepy fog. “What’s going on?”

“I saw the light on in here and came in to scold Joshua for staying up all night. Instead I found you. What on earth are you doing in here so early in the morning?”

“Doing?” Suddenly realizing where she was, Cassidy sat up. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep myself by using the study without permission.”

“Don’t be foolish. Books are made to be read. You can’t read the print off the pages. So, tell me, what were you reading?”

“Well, last night Josh shoved a New Testament at me and told me to read it in my room. I—”

“Shoved it at you?” Irma cut in and frowned. “Well now, that doesn’t sound like our Josh.”

“He was…um, busy, and I was asking a lot of questions.”

“It still sounds as if he was rude to you.”

He had bordered on rude but Cassidy didn’t want Irma making an issue of it. She forced a smile. “Oh, I wasn’t offended. Really. So, anyway, I took it upstairs and read it, and something bothered me. I didn’t want to pester Joshua again so I tried to sleep on it. After a while, when I heard him go to bed, I remembered the books he’d been using to—” Cassidy halted in mid-thought, horrified that she’d almost revealed Henry and Josh’s secret.

Irma smiled gently. “I know he writes Henry’s sermons. He’s been doing it for over six months. Everyone knows, but Henry doesn’t realize the rest of us figured out how much Josh is doing.”

Loyalty was a beautiful thing to behold, she thought, and let the subject drop. “Well, anyway, he had explained what the books were, so I came down here to look up the passage, hoping that I’d be able to sleep after I found the answer to my question. I certainly didn’t mean to sleep here.”

Irma still didn’t look too happy. “Did you find your answer?”

“I think so. It was about being saved and being wealthy and how hard it is to be both. It was the story of the rich young ruler, and I think I figured out that it’s okay to possess money as long as it doesn’t possess you. And that you can’t buy or earn your way into heaven.”

Finally the older woman smiled. “I’d say you did a fine job of finding your answer. Too bad my son didn’t do his as well.”

“But he did. He was just tired and in the middle of the sermon he was working on. I shouldn’t have invaded his privacy. I guess I’d better get upstairs. Please don’t mention this to Joshua. I don’t want him to be any more annoyed with me than he already is.”

Cassidy didn’t wait for Irma’s response. She fled just as she had last night from Josh. She managed to get dressed and be on her way to Earl’s in less than fifteen minutes.

The hood was up on her car, and Earl was hard at work. “How’s it coming, Mr. Pedmont?” she asked, trying to hide her anxiety.

Startled, Earl straightened and smacked his head on the hood. “Ouch! Oh, howdy. Got to your car in the middle of yesterday,” he said as he wiped his hands on a rag. “Ordered up the fuel filter, but it didn’t get up here till late last night. Figured, Earl, you get up at dawn and you could have the little lady back on the road by nine or ten.”

Cassidy looked at her watch. An hour. She could be gone and out of Joshua’s town in an hour. That was a good thing, she assured herself, and wished she didn’t feel as if she were leaving home instead of heading toward it.

Then she noticed Earl’s frown as he looked back down at the engine. He took his hat off and scratched his head. Then he let out a very discouraged and discouraging sigh. “Weren’t the filter. That’s for sure,” he declared.

“It won’t be done?” she asked, somehow knowing she was doomed.

“Nope. I’d suggest we let the new filter stay in, though. I’d say it was near time to replace it, anyway. Now I guess I’d best send for a fuel pump. It may be that.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“Can’t imagine it could be anything else except maybe the carb, and we really don’t want that.”

“Why don’t we want that?”

“A carb’s an expensive piece, especially on one of these foreign jobs. Ain’t a drop in the bucket on an American car, either.”

No, she had to leave today. She saw the perplexed look on Earl’s lined face and suddenly he didn’t seem as competent to Cassidy as he had. “Maybe I should have it towed to a bigger town. Maybe to a foreign car expert.”

Earl’s crestfallen expression nearly broke Cassidy’s heart. “If you don’t trust ol’ Earl, then maybe you should do that. I’ll ask my supplier to recommend some other fella in some bigger town. Just give me a minute to put her back together the rest of the way, and I’ll make the call.”

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you,” she assured him, even though she didn’t. She hated hurting someone who had been nothing but kind to her. After all, how much damage could he do taking out parts and putting new ones in? The money didn’t matter. It was just that she’d wanted to get away from Josh before she made a bigger fool of herself than she already had. But she’d never been comfortable getting what she wanted at someone else’s expense.