Evie set the tray on a small table and poured the tea. After handing one mug to Bryce, she settled into the swing beside him.
He rocked gently back and forth. "I’ll go slow so we won’t spill the tea," he reassured her.
She closed her eyes, welcoming the warmth of the mug in her hands. The swing swayed rhythmically with the slight tap of Bryce’s feet. She sipped her tea, listened to the night sounds of the quiet street and tingled in awareness of the man beside her.
"I’ll toss out some ideas." The rumble of his deep bass vibrated through her body.
She assumed she would hear one of Bryce’s lectures. He harangued her on a regular basis during that last year of high school. A pang of regret pierced her. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t turn her from her wild ways.
"Does the Lord test people?" he asked. "And if He does, am I getting an F?"
Feeling uncertain and inadequate when it came to issues of faith, Evie wished Jessica hadn’t gone to sleep. "Life isn’t like school."
"All right, let’s say it’s based on the point system and I’m getting close to the maximum number."
"No. The Lord doesn’t hand out parking and speeding tickets. He doesn’t take away your license."
"He puts you in everlasting pain."
Evie winced. She’d questioned Jessica on almost that identical point. At least she knew the response to that one. "He loves you. He made you and wants you to spend eternity with Him. He’ll forgive you. He’ll never abandon you."
"What if you lose your faith in Him?"
"Because of your father?"
"Not just my father." He put his feet down and stopped the swing. He lowered his head. "There’s more to it."
She waited, but in the tense silence he didn’t seem to want to lay his soul bare. That might be a good thing because she didn’t know how she would handle it. Perhaps the tension of his job weighed on him.
"Everyone doubts," she said after a few moments. "You must simply go on trusting the Lord and praying."
"That doesn’t work." A touch of sorrow welled in his deep brown eyes as he leaned back, sliding one hand along the top edge of the swing. Warmth radiated off his skin, just inches from hers. "I thought, since I was a Christian, the Lord would make things easier for me. He hasn’t."
"Sometimes the Lord has other plans. Better plans," Evie stumbled through an explanation.
"I haven’t read the Bible in a long time, but last night I went through the Beatitudes. It didn’t help. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’...I thought that’s what I was...but I’m not...not by any stretch of the imagination."
"You’re trying to be a peacemaker. That’s what counts." Evie’s throat ached. In doing his job, he’d put her in jail. She swallowed hard, but though her eyes grew misty, she must be brave. "The whole point of the Beatitudes is that the Lord promises a great reward in heaven, even if we have a tough time here on earth." Evie wished Bryce took his problem to Pastor Strauss. The pastor knew so much more about being a Christian than she ever would. "The Lord never promised that everything would be easy, but He did promise to be with us, each one of us, all the time."
"The Lord does not send replies," Bryce muttered.
"He does, but you have to listen."
"I’ve dealt with people who claim to hear the Lord. They are always mentally unstable."
Evie’s courage failed her.
💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗
You can find THE KEEPER'S SECRET at all the major ebook distributors.
