A Match Made in Texas- By Arlene James Page 0,8

cared for their own widowed father until his death at the age of ninety-two, she feared that she had made a big mistake.

Lately, as if sensing her dissatisfaction with the situation, Hub had taken to regularly remarking that not all of God’s children were called to marriage, implying that she had been called to follow in the footsteps of her maiden aunts. He even quoted Paul on the subject, choosing selected verses from I Corinthians 7. Kaylie had heard them so often that she could recite them from memory.

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried…. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit…

But hadn’t Paul also said that every man should have his own wife and every wife her own husband, that man should leave his parents and cleave unto his wife?

Kaylie shook her head. She knew that Scripture did not contradict itself, that it only appeared to when certain verses were taken out of context, but that did not help her determine what God intended for her specifically. She had dated little, too caught up in school and the demands of her family, faith and career to pay much attention to anything else, but she’d always assumed that one day she would marry and have children. Then two years ago, her mother had died at the age of fifty-six after a brief bout with cancer, and six months ago her twice-widowed father had suffered a massive heart attack. Kaylie’s father and three older brothers had all assumed that Kaylie would drop everything and take over Hubner’s care. So she had.

Now, she feared that had been a mistake for both her and her father. Perhaps God’s answer to that dilemma occupied the half tester bed upstairs. Unless presented very carefully, however, her father would see this job as her abandoning him. She did not wish to deceive or disrespect him, of course. He was her father, after all. She certainly did not want to go against his express wishes, but if God willed that she take this job, then she must. The question was, what did God will in this matter?

Kaylie heard the clink of a silver spoon stirring tea in a china cup. The aunties would be in the front parlor, taking tea after their lunch. The aunties “ate simple” on Sundays, so that the staff could have the day off, just as God commanded, but that did not keep them from indulging in their one great mutual joy: a hot cup of tea. Their parents, Hubner, Sr. and Augusta Ebenezer Chatam, had spent their honeymoon of several months duration in England back in 1932, returning as staunch Anglophiles, with a shipload of antiques and a mutual devotion to tea. They had passed on that passion to their eldest daughters.

Just the thought of her aunts made Kaylie smile. They were darlings, all three of them, each in her own inimitable fashion.

Kaylie turned and walked across the golden marble floor of the foyer toward the front parlor. The aunts called out an effusive welcome as she entered the room.

Though chock-full of antiques, Tiffany lamps, valuable bric-a-brac and large, beautiful flower arrangements, the parlor was a spacious chamber with a large, ornately plastered fireplace set against a wall of large, framed mirrors, including one over the mantel that faced the foyer door. The aunts sat gathered around a low, oblong piecrust table, its intricate doilies hidden beneath an elaborate tray covered with Limoges china. Odelia and Magnolia sat side by side on the Chesterfield settee that Grandmother Augusta had brought back from her honeymoon trip, while Hypatia occupied one of a pair of high-backed Victorian armchairs upholstered in butter-yellow silk.

Though triplets, they were anything but identical personality-wise. Hypatia had been the reigning belle of Buffalo Creek society in her day, as elegant and regal as royalty. It was largely thanks to her that Chatam House had endured into the twenty-first century and adapted to the modern era with its dignity and graceful ambience intact. That she had never married, or even apparently come close to doing so, puzzled all five of her siblings, including her unmarried sisters.

Magnolia, on the other hand, had never evinced the slightest interest in romance, at least according to Kaylie’s father Hub, Jr., their older brother. Mags had a passion for growing things and spent hours daily in her cavernous