“Did you read Proverbs 22:3?” she asked.
“I did.”
“A good husband will repair his house while the weather is fair, and not put it off till winter,” she said. “A careful pilot will take advantage of wind and tide, and put out to sea before a storm arises.” She spoke in a cold monotone. Like someone on some serious medication. “We must make every day the day of our repentance. To make good use of our time, so that when we come to die we may have nothing to do but to die.”
She was speaking as if to someone far off. He stayed quiet and let her talk.
“Your new job will kill you,” she said.
And her sad eyes hardened even more.
He had to ask, “In what way?”
“Are you married?”
He shook his head. “I was. But she killed herself.”
He hoped that commonality might drop some of the barriers between them.
“Then you know exactly what I’m feeling.”
He nodded. “It was eleven years ago. And I still feel the pain.”
“Did you have any idea she might take her life?”
Not a question he’d ever been asked before, by anyone. Mainly because only a few knew the truth about Paula’s death. But he’d certainly asked himself that a thousand times. The truth? “I had no idea at all. But the tendency ran in her family.”
“Peter’s too. He was so strong in many ways, and so weak in others. But I never thought he’d leave me or his children.”
He decided to try again. “What did you mean by Proverbs 22:3?The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.”
“It’s not always smart to be headstrong. Sometimes the smarter course is to avoid a bad situation altogether.”
“Why does any of that apply to me?”
“My husband was a fragile man who refused to seek solace with Christ, and chose instead to rely on the perils of man.”
“So you learned my name and address and came to see me on my first day back in town to warn me that unless I seek the Lord, my job will kill me?”
“I prayed hard first. Then God told me I should do it.”
He could see she believed every word. “What else did God tell you?”
“To give yourself freely to heaven. To allow Christ to lead you. My husband could not do that. Can you?”
He didn’t answer her. Because his beliefs were none of her business.
“You don’t have the Lord in your life?” she asked.
Apparently, what he’d at first thought was a genuine warning about something unknown was nothing more than a grieving widow trying to find some semblance of peace wherever she could. Be that with the Bible, God, or attaching herself to a total stranger.He’d seen it before in the faces of clients looking for something or someone to blame.
This had been a waste of time.
He stood. “I should go.”
She reached out and gripped his arm. He froze and stared down at her, suddenly realizing that being alone here with this woman was not a good thing. This could take a bad bounce. So he told her, “I believe.”
“Then pray with me. For my husband. And for you.”
