As always, the discussion flowed well. She loved this group of women. She loved the range of ages and experiences, and she loved the way they wanted to dig deeper into God’s word the same way that she did. She never walked out of this class without something very profound coming clear to her. It amazed her because she had prepared the lessons every week herself instead of relying on publications.
After Bible study, she drove the three blocks to her office. Bev didn’t work today, and Irene worked from home on Thursdays, so she would have the place to herself. Which was good. Right now, she needed quiet so she could think.
When her grandfather set up the mission, he did it with the intent to provide groceries for families, pay medical bills, and provide rent assistance. In the last five years, a lot of his time and energy had gone into refurbishing homes to improve living conditions, then building new houses for families. He had arranged with a local bank to finance land at a low-interest rate, with the house serving as collateral. The bank set the condition that the family getting the loan didn’t have to have good credit, but they couldn’t be behind in any payments or have any old debt at collection agencies.
That generated a whole different level of help needed as they worked with potential families to remove debt in a culture where debt was normal. She established a relationship with a Christian organization that helped families with financial planning and signed up all of her potential families for that class. She made it a requirement before they could get a house.
The family receiving the house Labor Day weekend had worked for two years to meet all the qualifications. When Irene started the fundraising process, Jason had stepped forward and promised his firm’s commitment to supplying the bulk of the funding necessary. When she saw him last week, she had not thought about this project. Then a clerk in the accounting office of his firm emailed revoking the promise to pay. Irene went into a frenzy to come up with tens of thousands of dollars needed to build a home for a family of six.
Ken Dixon had come in and saved the day. Maybe she should have learned from her lesson and not put all of her eggs in one basket, but sitting out a little over two months from the day they broke ground with no funding made her rather desperate for help and thankful for his offer.
She walked through the office, past the cubicle areas where the volunteers worked, and into the very back office. Thinking of Jason pulling the funding made her think of the baby. It always sat right there at the forefront of her mind, springing forward without warning. She set her purse and keys on top of her desk and collapsed into her chair. With her hands pressed against her eyes, she said out loud, “Just stop thinking about it. Just work. You have to work.”
Kendunked his tea bag in hot water until it sufficiently steeped, then tossed it in the garbage can. He carried it over to the table where he’d set his plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Once he settled into his seat, he bowed his head, thanked God for the food, then picked up his fork.
As he chewed his eggs, he looked around the living space. He and Brad had spent two years refurbishing the units, and Ken had lived there from the beginning. For a while, Brad had lived with him in the old apartment offices, but once he and Valerie got married, they moved onto his parents’ property and lived in the guest house.
The apartments would change hands on the sixteenth of August. He pulled a notebook out of his shirt pocket and picked up the little pencil he kept in the rings. As he ate, he made notes about the final phase of the project, including removing everything that made this a living area and converting it back to an empty space for cubicles and desks. He’d work around himself for a while but then would have to make other living arrangements. He’d either need to find a house, move to his parents’ castle, or move into one of the empty apartments.
In the middle of a thought about tile and carpet, Daisy’s brown eyes wafted in front of his vision. He felt a tug in his heart that he had never felt before. What was it about her?
He’d never really dated much, just here and there to appease his brothers. Even so, he’d never felt fully comfortable having to sit across from a woman and make conversation. Not so last night. Everything about Daisy made him feel right and centered. He had plans to take her to the jazz festival happening downtown tonight. He didn’t know if she liked jazz, but he did.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he picked up his phone and sent her a text.
Good morning. Looking forward to tonight.
Succeeding in applying enough attention to Daisy Ruiz so he could focus again on his work, he went back to his list. He estimated two more weeks to finish the last unit and then another week and a half to finish this area. He had six weeks before closing, which gave him time for unexpected scheduling conflicts and supply issues.
Once he figured everything out, he emailed Brad all the final specifics. It didn’t surprise him that his brother replied almost immediately, even though it was only six in the morning.
He washed dishes then got ready to leave for work. He loved Wednesdays. Wednesdays usually meant job site visits and breathing fresh air out in the sun instead of conditioned air under fluorescent lights. Today he had to walk through a thirteen-thousand-square-foot mansion on an old plantation right outside of town before he had to go back to work for a post-lunch meeting.
Expecting the nightmare of Atlanta traffic, he left about twenty minutes earlier than he needed to. While on the drive there, his phone sounded the text signal. He used the car’s system to read the text message back to him.
I’m going to have to cancel tonight. Sorry.
After crossing two lanes of traffic to pull over on the side of the road, Ken picked up his phone and called Daisy. She answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Hey Daisy, this is Ken. I got your text. I’m sorry you can’t make it.”
“Yeah, I have an unexpected conflict.”
Ken felt his brow furrow. Something was wrong with her voice. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I’m really sorry.”
He didn’t like her distant, unengaged tone. “That’s okay. We can reschedule. What are you doing on Saturday? My family’s throwing a big Fourth of July party at my lake house, and I’ll be setting off the fireworks. I’d love the company.”
After several long heartbeats, Daisy replied, “I have plans for Saturday, but I can check my calendar to see when I’m free again and get back with you. Sorry to cancel last minute. Goodbye.”
When she hung up, he took the phone off of his ear and stared at it for a minute. Had he done something wrong?
He thought about the conversation about her house. What had prompted him to have such a ridiculous conversation with her? It didn’t fall into the purview of his business to know to whom she made out her rent checks. And he had acted all uppity, saying he didn’t know if he owned that property or not, as if he owned so many properties he couldn’t keep them all straight. Which was true. The number of builds had exceeded his personal ability to track without an assistant and a computer years earlier. He could give minute details about current jobs, but he mentally set aside past projects to make room for new work. Even so, he had come off to Daisy like a braggart, which was well out of character.
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of his seat, and sighed. Had he done something so terrible that it had no hope of getting fixed? Should he call her back?
Feeling decidedly drained of energy, he started back on the road toward the job site. Despite looking forward to this, he finished with the job as quickly as possible. The house looked fantastic, and the interior craftsmanship rivaled anything he had ever supervised before. He sent himself a note to talk to Brad about giving the men on that project a bonus for their hard work and finishing ahead of schedule, then headed back to his office.
