The Blue Bottle Club (31 page)

Please, stop,
Ellie pleaded silently. She fought the urge to crawl under the pew. Did these strangers know
everything
about her life?

But Potter didn't stop. "Ellie has recently lost her mother; I conducted the funeral and a number of you attended those services. We want you to know, Ellie, that we love you and support you in your time of grief. Please stand so we can all see you and know who you are."

Ellie froze in the pew, unable to move. Everyone waited. At last Tish grasped her elbow and helped her to her feet, and she stood there exposed while a hot flush of embarrassment crept up her neck and into her cheeks. "Th-thank you," she stammered, and sat down as quickly as possible.

Reverend Potter went on with a few announcements, then reached to the seat behind him to retrieve a worn hymnal. "Let us rise for the opening hymn, a great old song by Charles Wesley—number eighty-six, 'Jesus, Lover of My Soul.'"

Ellie heaved a sigh of relief. The service was finally beginning, and she would no longer have to be the center of attention. As a heavyset woman moved to the piano and began playing the song with great gusto, Ellie leaned over and scanned the unfamiliar words in Tish's hymn book:

Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high,
Hide me, 0 my Savior, hide, 'Til the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide, O receive my soul at last!

Ellie tried to sing, but the notes clogged in her throat and she fought back unexpected tears. It was as if the hymn had been chosen—or perhaps even written—especially for her. In all her years at Downtown Presbyterian, she had never heard anyone refer to Christ as "Jesus, lover of my soul," and the bold, unaccustomed intimacy both shocked and attracted her. But it was the other words that struck a nerve most deeply in her soul. For Ellie James, recent years had been an unrelenting assault of rolling waters and high tempests. The storms of life had overtaken her, and she had found no haven to give respite to her weariness.

A deep, nameless longing welled up in her, accompanied by huge tears that, in defiance of her attempts to contain them, streaked down her cheeks and fell in silent droplets at her feet. All around her, the congregation sang out heartily, oblivious to Ellie's distress.

Her eyes skipped forward to verse two:

Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, O leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head With the shadow of Thy wing.

Whoever this Charles Wesley was, he had looked into Ellie James's heart and laid bare her secret pain.
Leave, 0 leave me not alone,
her mind echoed. She had been alone too long. Alone with Mother. Alone with herself, with her own hopelessness and determination and, yes, even bitterness. Only once had she reached out—to Rome Tucker. She had trusted him, believed him to be the answer to her isolation. But Rome, too, had betrayed her. Who now would cover her defenseless head? Who would be her refuge, bringing support and comfort? Where could she hang her helpless soul and stay her trust?

When the hymn was finished, Ellie sat down and tried to focus her attention on the rest of the service, but with little success. She heard, as if from a great distance, the reading of Scriptures, the voice of Reverend Potter as he preached. But little of it sank in. She cradled the hymnal in her lap, her eyes fixed on the words, her heart crying out for consolation, like a fearful child calling for her parents in the night.

And there, sitting in the pew between Tish and Maris Cameron, Ellie James became a child again, thrust back in time. She wept for her daddy, long dead, who had never been there to wipe away her tears. And for her mama, who had been physically present but too concerned with other things to pay her any mind. Then, in a moment of terrifying realization, she saw herself as her mother had been in the ten years before she died—still breathing, still eating, still going through the motions of everyday existence, but not truly alive on the inside. And she wept for herself, for her irreclaimable childhood, for all the wasted years.

On her left, Maris shifted in her seat, and Ellie became conscious of the conclusion of Reverend Potter's sermon: "In Matthew 23, Jesus mourns over the people's resistance to the truth, saying, 'How I've longed to gather you under my wings, the way a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you refused.' We need God's tender mothering, dear friends. We need God's protective fathering. Let us refuse the call no longer."

The words resounded in Ellie's soul:
Gods tender mothering, God's protective
fathering.
Could it be possible that the Almighty would do that for her—be the father she had lost when she was nine and the mother she had never really found? Could God, as the hymn promised, provide a refuge from the storm and a place to hang her soul?

Ellie didn't know for sure. She was certain only that her childhood faith, the rituals and social customs she had been brought up with at Downtown Presbyterian, weren't enough. But if there was more, if the God Reverend Potter talked about and Charles Wesley wrote about could really bring her to a place of peace and safety, she was willing to give it a try.

Her eyes drifted to the hymn book, still open to number eighty-six, on her lap. The third verse of Wesley's hymn read:

Plenteous grace with Thee is found, Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound, Make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art, Freely let me take of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart, Rise to all eternity.

Ellie blinked back the last of her tears and managed a faint smile.
Plenteous grace? Healing streams? A fountain of life springing up within her
heart?
It sounded too good to be true. She might simply be setting herself up for another fall, making herself vulnerable to yet another crushing blow.

But at this point, she had little left to lose.

The rickety, wooden, folding chair swayed every time she moved, and Ellie began to wonder if she would ever make it through this church dinner without dumping an entire plate of fried chicken and potato salad onto her dress. A few tables had been set up in the churchyard to accommodate the food and the diners, but there was not nearly enough room for everyone. As an honored guest, she had been escorted to a chair; now she wondered if she might be better off sitting on the grass.

Once she had recovered from the emotional turbulence generated by the worship service, Ellie actually found herself enjoying the covered-dish dinner. A number of people had come up to her and expressed their sympathy over the loss of her mother, but they didn't, as she had feared, raise the issue of Rome Tucker or try to probe into her private life. Some she recognized as having attended the funeral or brought food to the house afterward, and she did her best to thank them graciously without bringing down an avalanche of gushing sentimentality.

She was awkwardly trying, for the third time, to eat from her plate and at the same time balance her iced tea glass when a shadow loomed over her. "Here, let me help." A graceful hand reached out and rescued the tea glass just before it spilled.

A tall, handsome woman stood before her, clad in a simple but elegant navy dress, with salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from her temples. "I'm Catherine Starr." She smiled, and her brown eyes crinkled with laugh lines. "You're pretty good at this juggling act."

"Not really." Ellie returned the smile. "If you hadn't come along just now, I might have thoroughly embarrassed myself. I'd do better, I think, if I were closer to the ground." She looked around at the parishioners lounging on the grass.

"Then come join me," the woman offered. "I've got a place over there, under that tree." And in a minute or two they were settled in the shade on an old blue and yellow quilt.

Ellie stretched her legs out and propped her tea glass against the tree trunk. "Much better. Thank you, Mrs. Starr."

"Please, call me Catherine." She took a bite of chicken and regarded Ellie. "How are you holding up?"

The question startled Ellie, and she frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

Catherine waved a fork. "We have a wonderful group of folks here at the church," she said. "Except that they can be, well, a bit overwhelming to a newcomer. A little too much compassion and concern sometimes makes visitors uncomfortable, you know?"

Ellie grinned. "Ah, yes. I see what you mean."

"I'll bet you do. I've tried and tried to get Matthew to quit putting new people on the spot like that—forcing them to stand up and be gawked at. But he's convinced it makes them feel special and honored. What it really does is give the members a chance to descend on them after the service with, shall we say, an abundance of goodwill."

Ellie found herself instantly comfortable with Catherine—her quiet voice, her no-nonsense candidness, the way she looked you in the eye without flinching. A quality of trustworthiness and honesty surrounded the woman, and Ellie felt instinctively that Catherine Starr would neither back down from her convictions or try to impose them upon anyone else.

"I must admit, this is a very friendly church," Ellie said at last. "Not at all what I'm accustomed to."

"Which was?"

"Downtown Presbyterian. I was a member there years ago—I'm probably still a member, at least technically. But I haven't been to church in years."

A shadow passed over Catherine's face. "Your mother. Yes. I was sorry to learn of her death. You may not have known it, Ellie, but you've had a lot of prayer support—from this congregation, anyway"

Ellie's first instinct was to put up her fists and fight—at least emotionally. To shout that she didn't need their Christian charity, or their pity. To tell this woman, this whole congregation, that she hadn't asked for their prayers and didn't particularly appreciate them invading her privacy by discussing her troubles behind her back. But suddenly she realized that they meant well, and without warning she was struck with a sense of awe, to think that strangers—people who didn't even know her—had spent time and energy and attention seeking the Almighty's intervention on her behalf.

And their concern hadn't stopped with prayer, either. How many of them had come to her mother's funeral? How many had prepared and brought food for her during the days after Mama's death? One man—she didn't remember his name and probably wouldn't recognize him if he were sitting right in front of her—had even weeded the garden and brought in the vegetables for her. No, they hadn't just sat by idly praying. They had put their faith into action for the sake of a stranger who wasn't even related to any of them.

"I appreciate everything this church has done for me, Catherine," Ellie responded after a moment. "I'm just not certain how to repay all of you. Or even quite how to respond."

Catherine threw back her head and laughed heartily. "But Ellie, no repayment is necessary. Nobody even expects you to respond in any particular way. Don't you see?"

"No, I
don't
see." Ellie's voice came out testy and irritable.

"It's grace," Catherine went on as if she hadn't noticed. "Grace isn't something you earn."

Grace. The words of Wesley's hymn echoed in Ellie's mind.
Plenteous
grace with Thee is found . . .Let the healing streams abound. . . .

"So," Catherine was saying as she set her empty plate aside, "what do you intend to do now, if you don't mind my asking?"

Oddly enough, Ellie
didn't
mind. Coming from Catherine, the question didn't seem intrusive or probing—just interested, and concerned. She sipped her iced tea and considered her answer. "I honestly don't know," she said at last. "I've spent the past ten years caring for Mama and figured I'd go on doing it forever. Then in the last few months everything changed—" She paused. "You know about Rome Tucker, I suppose."

"Yes." Catherine nodded somberly. "I gathered from the things he said that he loved you a great deal."

"Well, that's history now," Ellie snapped, a bit more abruptly than she had intended. "Water under the bridge, or over the dam, or wherever it is that water is supposed to go."

"And so—?"

"When Rome left, he took with him any plans I had made for the future. I'm feeling pretty much at sea now. I only know that I can't stay in that big old house alone. I'm going to sell it as soon as possible."

Until that very moment, Ellie had not made a final decision about selling the house. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, an invisible burden lifted off her shoulders. It was the right thing to do; she knew it immediately.

"Are you sure?"

Ellie nodded. "I'm absolutely certain, Catherine. The place is far too big for me, and it's too much upkeep. I'm not sure where I'll go or what I'll do. Tish thinks I should go back to school, but I don't think I can do that now. I only know that I have to get out of that house. There are too many ghosts there." She shook her head. "I'm just afraid it might take forever to sell. It's so huge—not the kind of home most families want or need."