Читать книгу Gabriel's Discovery - Felicia Mason - Страница 14

“That’s why I wanted you to visit Galilee, Reverend Dawson. It’s one thing for people to make a financial commitment to a nameless, faceless charity or cause. It’s something else entirely when you can make the personal connection. When you can look into the eyes of someone who needs help or talk to someone who has been helped.”

Gabriel considered what she had said. This time he didn’t mistake the censure in her voice. It was a quiet but definitive reproach. “What have I done that makes you so hot under the collar?”

There was a time to be coy and a time to be blunt.

Folding her arms across her chest, Susan stared him down. “It’s not what you’ve done, Reverend. It’s what you haven’t done.”

Since he’d been called to Good Shepherd, Gabriel’s focus had been on getting to know community leaders, assessing the congregation’s many needs, and encouraging members to take part in the whole church, existing programs as well as ones he proposed. In addition, he had to stay a step ahead of all the matchmakers who filled the pews. He had a vision for the church, one that he’d promised to implement when he’d been hired as pastor. So he didn’t take too kindly to Susan Carter’s assessment of him as a slacker.

He leaned back in his chair, steepled his hands and met her direct gaze. “What is it, Mrs. Carter, that you see I’m not doing?”

Rising, Susan came around her desk and faced him. “For starters, don’t you think it’s odd that so many of your members or regular visitors call the Galilee Women’s Shelter home? You asked me about the odds, but you didn’t ask the next obvious question.”

“Which is what?” He folded his arms. Then, recognizing the defensive gesture for what it was, he carefully placed his arms along the chair rests.

“Have you given any thought to how you and Good Shepherd might reach out to those women and others in need?”

“I take it you have a proposition?”

“Not a proposition, Reverend. A reality check.”

He shifted in his seat, bristled at her characterization. “My feet are firmly planted on a solid foundation, Mrs. Carter.”

“Let me show you the community. Let me show you what we’re fighting every single day.”

She leaned over and pulled from a stack of file folders a single thick file. Handing it to him, she said, “That’s just the last two weeks of articles from the local newspapers, The Gazette and the Colorado Springs Sentinel, as well as the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Street crimes, domestic violence calls to police—up. Drugs and crimes that can be directly attributed to drugs—up. The problems here in Colorado Springs have the potential to spill into other areas. Containment is what city officials like Mayor Montgomery are after.”

Gabriel flipped through some of the clippings. He’d read many of the same stories and had seen television news reports, yet he hadn’t connected the dots in quite the same way as Susan.

“What’s the trickle-down effect of this?” he asked, holding up the folder.

“The woman who ran in here earlier,” Susan said. “That’s trickle-down. An increased number of women and children seeking shelter. More and more children and teens left alone, fending for themselves, they find solace in the very thing that’s destroying this community.”

“Drugs?” he asked.

Susan nodded. “And gangs, where they find the family or the bonding they don’t have at home.”

He glanced at more of the newspaper articles before closing the folder and placing it on her desk.

“Let me show you the human effect.”

He nodded once. “All right.”

When he left the shelter after almost two hours, Gabriel had a handful of handouts featuring statistics, demographics. But he hadn’t seen these statistics. Susan was right. He hadn’t been out in the trenches.

That would change tomorrow afternoon.

Susan wasn’t sure she’d gotten through to him, but she knew one thing for certain: he’d gotten through to her. She chided herself for getting distracted by his eyes, the color of dark chocolate and so penetrating that she wondered if anything ever got past him.

She thought herself prepared to impartially lead Reverend Gabriel Dawson on a tour of the Galilee Avenue area the next day. She’d dressed carefully—for both the minister’s benefit and to acknowledge that they’d be doing a lot of walking—in a pair of blue pants, a cream twinset rimmed in blue, and comfortable flats.

She’d expected him to show up in one of his designer-looking suits, clothing that would immediately peg him an outsider in the neighborhood, as maybe a cop or a government worker. Susan’s mouth dropped open when he stepped into the reception area.

“Gorgeous, isn’t he?” Jessica said.

Susan started, dragging her gaze off the minister, who stood chatting with Christine at the front desk. “I…He—” She cleared her throat and started again. “We’re going on a walk around the neighborhood.” As if to prove her words, she snatched up a stack of the shelter’s brochures.

Jessica grinned at her.

“What?” Susan snapped.

“Oh, nothing,” Jessica said. Susan’s sudden ill-temper made her smile.

“And why are you even here?”

“Just dropping this off for you, boss.”

Susan rolled her eyes at the “boss” label. Though she was, she always viewed herself as more of a battlefield coordinator.

“Enjoy your date.”

“It’s not a date,” Susan said. “I’m just showing him what we do.”

“Whatever you say,” Jessica said with a smirk.

“Good morning, Reverend,” Susan called out, approaching him.

“Hello there. Good to see you again.”

His eyes took in her appearance and he smiled. Susan was grateful she’d spent a little extra time on her makeup this morning. Not, she told herself for the umpteenth time, that that had anything to do with Gabriel Dawson.

Liar, liar. Pants on fire. The line the twins used when they played a game came to her and Susan’s mouth quirked up in an involuntary smile.

“Have fun,” Jessica called.

Gabriel lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

The day was just right for this sort of outing. The city had been blessed with a week or two of Indian summer and people were out and about, taking advantage of the warmer days. Before long, chilly temperatures and then out-and-out cold would descend on the city. For now, however, they could enjoy the reprieve.

“This is one of my favorite things to do,” Susan said.

“Walk?”

She nodded. “There’s nothing like fresh air. That’s one of the reasons I love Colorado so much. Of course, I’ve never been anywhere else but here, but I’m glad this is home. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“I’m starting to feel the same way,” he said. “I’ve been here for three years now, and wonder what took me so long to make my way to this part of God’s country.”

Susan directed their path. “We’ll head up Galilee, then turn down some of the side streets.” He fell into step beside her, walking on the street side of the walk. “Three years? I thought you’d just arrived in Colorado Springs a few months ago.”

“I am new to this city, but I’ve been in Colorado since I got out of the Marines.”

“What brought you here?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “The lure of fresh air. That and snow.”

“Well, we get a lot of that. So you should be thrilled.”

“Tell me about how you got started working at the shelter.”

Susan looked up at him, wondering if she should tell the whole story, wondering how or if he’d judge her if he knew. A moment later, she realized she couldn’t be anything except totally honest. Not only did she pride herself on being a woman of integrity, but also he needed to know that she knew what she was talking about.

She handed him one of the brochures. It featured a woman and child embracing as they shared a book together. “We’ll be passing these out today,” she said. “Not too long ago, I could have been that woman on the cover.”

For just a moment he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what you think,” she said. “My husband got caught up in drugs. Even before that, he had a temper. He could get really ugly when he was angry or thought he’d been slighted in the least bit. I was the outlet for his anger.”

Gabriel’s mouth tightened. “You’re still together?”

“No,” she said. It could have been a trick of the light, but Susan thought she saw his jaw loosen a bit when she said that. “He died a few years ago. He OD’d.”

“So that’s when you took up the crusade to save other women?”

“I’ve never thought of my work as a crusade, but I suppose it is,” she said. “And to answer your question, no. That came a long time later. After the healing. After living in the shelter. After rededicating myself to the Lord and getting my life together.”

Not comfortable being the focus of their conversation, she deftly turned the tables. “You were in the military.”

Gabriel nodded. “Marines.”

“Semper fi and all that.” She glanced up at him. “What does that mean anyway?”

“It’s short for semper fidelis, always faithful.”

Susan smiled. “Really? I like that. It works on a couple of levels, including a faith-based one. So how’d a big, strapping marine end up as a minister in Colorado Springs?”

“Being faithful to my calling,” Gabriel said. “I’ve always ministered to people whether I was ordained or not. But accepting the call to ministry in this way enabled me to put my own faith on the line for a higher cause.”

“And people shooting at you in a war isn’t a higher cause?”

The edges of his mouth curved up. “Yes, but…”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “Just messing with you, Rev.” They paused in front of a house, all of its first-floor windows boarded over. “It’s been a real tragedy to see what’s happening to our city. It’s turning into something like the ‘killing fields’ you probably encountered overseas.”

“What happened?”

Susan didn’t know if he was asking about the house they stood before or the decline of the city she loved, but the answer in either case was, unfortunately, the same. “Drugs. Too many people indifferent until it’s way too late. Neighborhoods don’t decay overnight. But one day someone in the city looks up and says, ‘Hey, how did this happen?’ It seems like an overnight transformation only because no one notices the slow decline. We all just woke up one morning and our community had been taken over.”

“But it wasn’t overnight?”

She shook her head. “Hardly. My husband got caught up in what was probably the first wave of this epidemic. He killed himself by overdosing on cocaine.”

He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Reggie…” She paused before she said got what he deserved, the bitter words swirling in her head surprising her. After all this time she had thought she’d put the experience with him behind her. She had thought she’d let go of all the anger.

But how could she really? Everything she was today, from her position as director of the Galilee Women’s Shelter to the woman standing here on this street corner with Gabriel Dawson, was a direct result of what Reggie had put her through. If it hadn’t been for the way he’d forced her to grow up, Susan knew she could very well be one of the people she was trying to reach out to.

“Reggie was a man who let his compulsions get the best of him,” she ended up saying.

“You miss him?”

She glanced up at Gabriel. “Not the way you think.” And because that sounded so cold, she added, “Our marriage was over long before he died. He’d been on a path toward destruction for a while, a long while. His death, like so many others, was a direct result of readily available drugs on the street. But if it hadn’t been cocaine, he’d have found some other way to self-destruct. Reggie was just like that.”

She walked up the steps leading to the porch at the house and tucked three of the brochures in the mail slot on the front door.

“It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” Gabriel observed.

The house had the stillness of decay and neglect that said it had been abandoned for some time. Dead leaves, spiderwebs and debris including potato chip bags and mangled beer cans jammed the corners, mixing with peeling paint chips.

“You’d be surprised, Reverend,” Susan said.

She bent to the mail slot and hollered through. “Hello to the house. I dropped some information about Galilee Women’s Shelter in your front door.”

When she turned to go, Gabriel paused.

“What’s wrong?” Susan asked him.

“I thought I heard something.”

As if she were guiding along one of the twins, Susan took his hand. “Come on. You probably did. People coming to see what I put in there.”

Gabriel remained silent as they descended the steps and continued their walk. But he looked back at the house.

“Is there a lot of that?” he eventually asked.

“A lot of what?”

“People living in abandoned homes?”

“In certain parts of the city, yes.”

“And this is one of those parts.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Welcome to the hidden and forgotten underside of Colorado Springs. This would be the part not in the tourism brochures.”

A couple of people sitting on a stoop called out to Susan. She waved, then spotted one of the pillars of the neighborhood sitting on her front porch. Susan motioned for Gabriel to follow. They stepped carefully around an area of buckled sidewalk.

“How are things with you, Mrs. Turner?” Susan called in greeting.

The frail-looking woman sat on a plaid sofa that had seen better days, but looked as comfortable as the woman holding court. “’Bout as well as can be expected for an eighty-year-old blind lady.”

Susan smiled. “You may not have your sight, but you know everything that happens on this block.”

“That’s the truth,” the woman said. “Who you have with you today?”

Gabriel looked startled.

Mrs. Turner smiled. “My eyes don’t work, son. There’s nothing wrong with my nose and my ears. You smell good. Come on up here. This your beau, Susan?”

She blushed, not that Mrs. Turner could see it, but Susan had a feeling the elderly woman knew anyway. She quickly made the introductions. “Nothing like that. This is Reverend Gabriel Dawson, the new pastor at Good Shepherd. Reverend, this is Mrs. Mattie Turner.”

“A preacher, huh?” Mrs. Turner said. “That’s a lot better than what you had before, God rest his soul.” She turned unseeing eyes toward Gabriel. “I used to go to Good Shepherd. It’s nice meeting you, Reverend.”

Gabriel took her hands in his. Contrary to her appearance, Mrs. Turner’s grip was strong and sure. Susan got a kick out of again seeing his surprise.

“Well, you’re a tall one, aren’t you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Six foot three. It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. You said you used to be a member of Good Shepherd. I’d like to invite you back. We have some innovative programs for members of all ages. I think you might enjoy it.”

“He’s a charmer, isn’t he,” Mrs. Turner said to Susan.

She agreed, but had no intention whatsoever of admitting that. Susan made a noncommittal sound.

“I’ll think about it,” the elderly woman said. “Don’t get around as well as I used to.”

She invited them to sit, then she started telling them about her “great-grands.”

There was no point in rushing Mrs. Turner. When she had a point to make, she made it—even if it took an hour or all day. Susan settled into one of the straight-back kitchen chairs that had been hauled to the porch for the sole purpose of this kind of entertaining.

In addition to squiring the handsome preacher around the neighborhood, Susan’s walk had another purpose. By knocking on doors, she hoped to find the twins’ classmate’s house. Hannah and Sarah thought Jasmine lived in this block, but they weren’t sure. Jasmine, the girls said, wasn’t allowed to have company.

Susan had in her pocket an invitation to a tea party. Granted, there’d been no tea party actually scheduled, but it would be easy to round up a few little girls for an outing. With the twins and Jessica’s daughter Amy, they’d have a full complement. But before she could invite Jasmine and her mother to a fact-finding tea, she had to find them, period.

And if anyone existed in this neighborhood who knew everyone, it was Mrs. Mattie Turner.

“So, what are you two out doing today?” the elderly woman finally asked.

“Mrs. Carter is showing me the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Turner chuckled. “Trolling for lost souls on both ends now, huh?”

Gabriel smiled. “Something like that.”

“How has your hip been doing?” Susan asked.

“Supposed to be just like new,” Mrs. Turner said. “Those doctors just gave me a tune-up and said I’m good for another one hundred thousand miles.”

Susan turned to Gabriel. “You wouldn’t know it to see her moving down the street, but Mrs. Turner had hip replacement surgery a while ago.”

“Slowed me down, it did,” Mrs. Turner said.

They all chatted for a few more minutes about the weather and how Gabriel was getting along at Good Shepherd. Then, when she couldn’t think of a way to finesse her question into the conversation, Susan figured she’d just blurt it out. “While we’re out, I’m trying to find Jasmine Shaw. She’s in the girls’ class and I have an invitation for her. But we’re not sure about the address. Hannah and Sarah think she lives somewhere around here.”

“Shaw?” Mrs. Turner said, stroking her arm. “Shaw. Let me see. Well, years ago, there used to be a Shaw family lived around the block, over on Madison in the first block. But I think they’re all gone now.”

Susan tried to hide her disappointment.

“But wait a minute,” Mrs. Turner said, shifting in her seat. “There was a grandson. Trifling sort, from what I recall. Don’t know if he’s still around or if that’s the right one. It’s the only Shaw I can think of.”

Susan patted the woman’s hand. “I’ll check there.”

“I hope I’ll see you on Sunday, Mrs. Turner,” said Gabriel. “We have two services. One at eight and one at eleven. And we have a van that can pick you up.”

Mrs. Turner nodded. “Do tell. I didn’t know about that. I’m an early riser, Reverend. I’ll think about taking you up on that eight-o’clock invitation.”

“You said you used to attend Good Shepherd, but stopped. May I ask why?”

“Simple enough,” Mrs. Turner said. “Those sermons were deadly. Preacher put me to sleep. I can sleep at home.”

Gabriel laughed. “Well, I promise to keep you awake for the duration.”

The woman nodded. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

Susan kissed her cheek and stepped back so Gabriel could say his own farewell. He instead took Mrs. Turner’s hands in his. It wasn’t until she heard Mrs. Turner say “Amen” that Susan realized he’d been quietly praying with her.

“He’s a good one, Susan,” Mrs. Turner called out as they headed down her front steps. “Keep this one.”

Susan’s face flamed.

“So,” Gabriel said. He fell into step beside Susan, who set a brisk pace toward Madison Street. “What’s more embarrassing for you? Having her think we’re a couple or you being associated with a minister?”