A Match Made in Texas- By Arlene James Page 0,69
around her greenhouse one day early next week. Then Hypatia made her contribution.
“Perhaps, Stephen dear, since you are again ambulatory, you would consider attending church with us tomorrow? It would thrill us to have you there.”
He tried to smile and make light of it, as if it were nothing more than taking in a movie or playing a round of golf with his buddies, but the moment felt somber, almost monumental. He couldn’t quite pull it off with the necessary insouciance. Instead, he merely nodded and quietly said, “I think I’d like that.”
Hypatia patted his hand, Mags beamed, and for a moment he thought Odelia might cry, but then she burst into gay laughter, waved her hanky in the air and all but dived into a particularly sumptuous chicken pot pie.
“You should all know,” he said around a bite of that same tasty dish, “that I’m plotting to kidnap Hilda.”
The aunts laughed, while he secretly wished that it could be Kaylie, but Kaylie, he had come to realize, would have to be won, and that he could never do on his own, but only by the grace of God.
After dinner the aunts watched the hockey game with him. Ahead two games to one, the Blades lost, allowing their opponent to tie the series. Stephen’s disappointment was tempered by the sweet expressions of commiseration that the three old dears heaped on him.
“They’ll get ’em next time,” Mags offered hopefully, patting his shoulder.
“You’d have beat them!” Odelia insisted, squeezing his face between her hands.
Hypatia merely smiled benignly and advised, “Never doubt that God is in control, Stephen, and working for the benefit of all.”
He wanted to believe that with a desperation that frightened him, and that night he besieged heaven from his bed, asking for everything under the sun, from the team winning the Stanley Cup to keeping his position with them, from Kaylie’s father’s approval to deserving her father’s approval, from the strength to win her to the strength to lose her. And finally he found the strength to do something else.
At three o’clock in the morning, he called his mother.
Daylight found Stephen tired but strangely serene. He dressed himself in the new navy-blue suit pants, a royal-blue shirt and a gray silk tie, black socks and one black shoe. Tossing the jacket over his shoulder, he took up his crutches and made it downstairs in time to share breakfast with the aunties, which they ate at the butcher-block island in the kitchen. As Sunday was a day of rest, the sisters did for themselves, allowing the staff as much freedom from their duties as possible. Chester, however, drove them to church, Hypatia riding in the front seat with him. Mags and Odelia—decked out in bright yellow with huge black buttons, black pumps with yellow bows, a black straw hat with a curled brim and black and yellow beads dangling from her earlobes—rode in back with Stephen. They all sported the latest in sunshades.
To his surprise, Chester, Hilda and Carol all attended church elsewhere, preferring, as Hypatia put it, a less formal evening service. The aunts chose to attend an early one. Chester left them at the main entrance. Odelia fussed over him, helping him into one sleeve of his suit jacket and adjusting the drape of the other side over his cast and sling. He kissed her cheek, and she giggled like a schoolgirl. They walked inside, as strange a quartet as anyone had ever seen, surely, and doffed their sunshades, tucking them into pockets and purses.
A whirlwind of introductions later, Stephen found himself seated at the very front of the soaring whitewashed sanctuary with its oddly elegant gold-and-black wrought-iron touches. The aunties kindly left him on the end of the aisle, with space to stretch out his leg and also for another person or two.
He fought every moment not to turn his head to look for Kaylie, but when another body dropped down onto the pew next to him, he turned with a smile, fully expecting to find her there. Instead, a distinguished-looking, fortyish fellow with medium brown hair and streaks of silver at his temples returned his smile, black eyes twinkling through the lenses of his silver-rimmed glasses. He had a very authoritative air about him, aided by the tan linen vest that he wore with a white shirt, brown suit and red tie. As he possessed the distinctive Chatam cleft chin, it came as no surprise when Odelia leaned close to whisper, “One of our nephews, Kaylie’s