The Wedding Chapel (6 page)

He missed those days. Missed filling his life with meaning. But nine years ago, when he turned seventy-four, he heard the bong of time in his chest and knew it was time to hand over the reins of Rock Mill High’s football program to a younger man.

Tom Meyers was doing a good job of it too. Hadn’t won a national title yet, but it was harder today than in Jimmy’s day.

As he walked to his truck, his thoughts bounced from football to the chapel, to Keith’s proposition. He was a young buck, this real estate agent, and a good man as far as Jimmy knew. His daddy had played on one of Jimmy’s championship teams.

Settled behind the wheel, Jimmy fired up the engine, then paused with his hand on the gear shift. His old chapel . . . The memories surfaced . . .

Shoot fire, he had forgotten the chapel key.

Leaving the truck engine idling, he traced his way back to the house, crossed the kitchen to the living room, then made his way up the stairs. In his room, under the dormer eaves, he opened the narrow half door leading to the attic and climbed up.

Stooping down, he reached through the dark, retrieving a small cedar box. When he raised the lid, the scent of the wood enhanced his memory.

“What are you going to do with the place?” Dad had followed Jimmy into his room, not willing to leave it be.

“Lock it up.”

“After all your hard work? Jimmy, let it be useful—”

“I’m locking it up since you wouldn’t let me burn it.” Jimmy searched his dresser for something, anything, he could use to store the key. He spied a dust-covered cedar box he’d made in Sunday school eons ago. Popping it open, he dropped the key inside.

“You won’t always feel this way,” Dad said. “She might come back.”

“Yeah? Did Mama?” It was a low blow, but anger threw mean punches.

“What have I been telling you? Don’t be like me. Move on. Find another gal.” Dad moved to the door, his wide, large
shoulders rounded down with the weight of the conversation. “Just promise me you won’t throw away the key.”

He wasn’t talking about the metal piece in the cedar box. Jimmy knew it. Falling on his bed, stretching out, locking his hands behind his head, he nodded. “I won’t . . . I won’t throw away the key.”

Returning the box to its hideaway, Jimmy shook away the fragrance of the past. But he had thrown away the key. To his heart. While the physical key to the chapel remained, Jimmy kept the letter of the law but not the grace.

He squeezed the key against his palm. “Sorry, Daddy.” Even at eighty-three, he missed his father.

But today represented a new chance. To pass the key on, give the old chapel the life it never had. It was too late for his heart but not for the chapel’s. Not his dreams for her.

But did he have the courage? Jimmy wouldn’t know until he opened the door and stepped inside his past for the first time in a long time.

With that in mind, Jimmy left the house, nurturing a sense of purpose. Perhaps the Divine was intervening, answering an unspoken prayer in his heart.

He drove slowly down the street, the slightest touch of fall painting the edge of the green hills.

He jutted his elbow out the open window and caught a whiff of burning firewood. Change was in the air, and it had him hankering for something he could not see nor touch.

Turning off Dunbar Street onto River Road, Jimmy headed north for three short miles.

Along the sloping hills, another housing development seemed to have popped up overnight. Heart’s Bend hardly looked the same
in recent years, what with Nashville expanding her borders and stretching northwest, posting new construction all over Jimmy’s rolling hills and along the Cumberland River.

He’d lived out this way for so long he felt personal about the land. Back in the day, he’d wanted Daddy to buy the property surrounding their house. He managed to set money down on the first track when ole Rise Forester Sr. came along and gobbled up the rest.

Now his son, the scalawag Rise Jr., was selling to anyone who could buy. Word was he had no choice. He’d blown through the family fortune in a couple of decades. Not to mention he was a mean cuss. What he did to his kid, Jack . . .

Jimmy shifted in his seat, twisting his hand on the wheel. He’d coached hundreds of kids in his forty-five-year career, but Jack Forester remained a standout in his mind. Jimmy had gotten the chance to coach him right before he retired. The boy worked hard, played hard, studied hard. Did everything that was asked of him all the while being tossed from foster home to foster home. And his durn daddy watching it all go down, doing
nothing
.

The road to the chapel peeked out from underneath overgrown summer shrubs and Jimmy steered onto his property, a gem of a place smack in the middle of Forester’s holdings.

Down a short, lean path, the truck broke into a bright, magical clearing, and the chapel rose from the earth and commanded the devotion of everything around her.

Jimmy breathed in. She was a beauty. Like her inspiration.

Majestic with her stone walls and weather-worn beam trim, the chapel drank in the sunlight through the cupola, then reflected it back out through the windows. The canopying beech and cottonwood trees stretched leafy branches over the slanted slate roof, creating a thicket of serenity.

Pulling alongside a thick carpet of late-summer grass, Jimmy
stepped out of the truck, easing the door shut. “Hello, old friend,” he said, a cord of emotion in his voice.

The breeze shimmied through the trees and coiled on the ground as if in response.
Hello to you too, old friend.

His boot heels crunched on the gravel as he made his way to the pebbled concrete walkway—the final touch he’d put on the chapel thirty years ago. He used to visit about once a year, making sure she still stood whole and unbroken.

But one year had turned to two, two to three . . . Now Jimmy reckoned he hadn’t been out here in six or seven years. And when he did come, it was only for a quick inspection. He hired Andrew Votava to keep the grounds trim and in shape. But otherwise . . .

He regretted his absence now, seeing how beautiful she became with time.

Stepping up on the minuscule portico, he pressed his hand against the sun-warmed gray stone.

She was part of him, this place. He’d deposited his sweat, his tears, and his heart here. And buried them with time.

At one point he saw the chapel only as a monument of sorrow. He’d intended to burn her to the ground until Daddy intervened.

“Finish what you started. Make peace with it, son.”

He’d finished the construction but never made peace with it. No, for years he clung to anger and fed bitterness like a hungry bear. Until he woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and realized he’d become the man he never wanted to be, never even
tried
to become the man he dreamed to be.

He’d been content in his crotchety ways, being the tough yet winning coach, the old bachelor.

Then Peg Branson died four months ago, which sparked a new interest in religion for Jimmy. He realized he was an old man hoping to get into heaven but doing little to ensure his entry. He’d been
darkening the door of Grace Church ever since. Even managed to read through the New Testament. Jesus had a whole heap to say about the dangers of being bitter.

Peg’s funeral stirred something else in Jimmy—a desire to make peace with her sister, Colette. He’d searched the packed sanctuary for signs of her coming to say good-bye to her sister, but to his disappointment she only represented herself with a large bouquet of flowers.

The river of hurt ran deep between the sisters. Though Jimmy never understood all the whys. He had his own river to manage.

“Mr. Westbrook, Coach . . .” Keith Niven approached, waving, with a young African American woman accompanying him. So engrossed was Jimmy in his reverie that he hadn’t heard Keith’s car pull in.

“This place . . . Wow!” Keith shook Jimmy’s hand with a force that needed reckoning. “This is Lisa Marie, my associate. Man, Jimmy, when did you buy this place? I didn’t even know it was
here
.”

“Nice to meet you.” Ignoring Keith, Jimmy shook Lisa Marie’s hand. She was pretty, with a sharp eagerness and an intelligent glint in her eye.

“Mr. Westbrook,” she said. “This chapel is incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you build it?” Keith shoved back his jacket to anchor his hands on his belt. “I’m like,
bam
, blown away.”

“Dug up the foundation the summer of 1949, right after I graduated high school.”

Keith whistled. If he wanted to win over Jimmy, it was working. He loved anyone who loved his chapel. “What in the world . . . Summer of ’49, huh? What inspired you?”

“A photograph, really.” And a girl. But Jimmy would leave off with the short, simple answer. “I had a drafting class in school and made the wedding chapel drawings my project.”

“So it
is
a wedding chapel?” Lisa Marie said, swatting at Keith. “I told you.”

Keith narrowed his gaze at Jimmy. “Why a wedding chapel?”

“Because—”

“What’s her name?” Lisa Marie said.

Jimmy cleared his throat. “H-her name?”

“Of the girl who inspired a high school boy to design a wedding chapel.” So he wasn’t so transparent.

“What’s this?” Keith elbowed his way between Jimmy and Lisa Marie. “There was a girl?”

“I told you, I was inspired by a photograph.” Now it was Jimmy’s turn to prop his hands on his leather belt. The same one he’d slipped through his jeans’ loops for the last thirty-six years. The belt was probably older than this whippersnapper, Keith.

“What makes it a wedding chapel, though?” Lisa Marie asked a downright good question. “Why not just ‘a chapel’?”

“Because I said she was a wedding chapel.” Jimmy jutted out his chin. End of discussion. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to meet Keith here.

When he designed this place, he had more than a plan for a building, but a plan for his life, one that included
her
. Because he’d loved Colette Greer more than himself.

And she’d loved him.

“Can we take a look inside?” Keith motioned to the front door.

Jimmy slipped the single key from his pocket, unlocking the door. “Here she blows.” He stood aside to let Keith and Lisa Marie go in first. They exhaled their “Wows” in harmony.

Jimmy moved just inside the door, the emotion in his throat thick and rough. It felt like yesterday that he’d brought
her
here, snow falling all around, the world white and quiet. The world turning just for them.

Lisa Marie glanced back at Jimmy, holding up her phone. “Do you mind if I take some pictures?”

He shook his head. If he was going to sell the place, he’d best let go, let them do their job.

“The craftsmanship . . .” Lisa Marie aimed at the vaulted, exposed beam ceiling, stone walls, and slate floor, capturing image after image. “Did you cut the stones yourself?”

Jimmy nodded toward the part of the chapel’s stone wall he could see from the tiny foyer. “Every one.” And set each one in place too. With joy.

“This is fantastic.” Keith stood under the stained glass window depicting the scene of Christ at a wedding. “Where did you get this?”

“An old church in downtown Nashville. It was torn down during the reconstruction years after World War Two.”

Keith whistled low, trying almost too hard to impress Jimmy. Slipping into the back pew on the right side, Jimmy rubbed the ache out of his old bum knee and inhaled a long breath.

The midmorning light cascaded through the cupola to the chapel floor where tiny diamond sunbeams floated and drifted in the wide swath.

“Coach, what did you intend to do with this place?”

Marry my girl.
The thought no sooner skidded across his mind than he heard
it
. The resounding
thump-thump
of a heartbeat. So strong, so thorough, Jimmy gripped the pew in front of him and struggled for a deep breath.

“Coach, you all right?”

Jimmy nodded, rising, inching his way out of the pew and toward the door. The drumming . . . the reverberating
thump-thump . . .

He had to get out of here. Escape. How was it possible? That sound? After so many years.

“Jimmy . . . Mr. Westbrook?” Lisa Marie’s call trailed him through the chapel.

The first time he heard the thumping was sixty years ago, when Peg came by that day with her boy. He thought he was trapped inside an episode of the
Haunted Hour
. Or was experiencing a latent bout of shell shock. He’d only been home from Korea a couple of years.

But the sound was . . . real. All too real. Too close. Resounding in his chest. In his ears. And in a way Jimmy couldn’t explain, it felt life-giving.

The sound, from wherever it came, gave him hope. But that hope fruited nothing except to make him wonder if he’d darn near lost his mind.

And he’d been to Korea. Faced the enemy’s gun. But nothing spooked him like the sound of a living heart beating.

As far as he could remember, he’d not heard the sound since that day with Peg. Now, after sixty years, he heard it again?

Outside, he gulped the air. Dang if he wasn’t too old for this sort of shenanigan.

In the yard, Keith and Lisa Marie caught up to him. “Coach?”

“It’s yours if you want to buy it.” It was time. At eighty-three he needed to be rid of lingering, silly boyhood dreams, rid of that
sound
. He’d be the very definition of a crazy, foolish old man if he didn’t let her go.

“Yeah, we want to buy it.”

A stony sensation filled his chest. “Wh-what’re your plans?”

Lisa Marie glanced back. “I didn’t see any electricity—”

“Ain’t none. Gotta use candles and lanterns.”

“Oh my,” she sighed, smiling at Keith, then at Jimmy. “This is the most romantic place I’ve ever seen. Keith, we can sell this.”

“Coach, we can have it listed by next week.” Keith leaned
toward him, encroaching on his personal space. Jimmy gave him a light shove in the chest.

“Hold up now, let me think about it.” Maybe selling didn’t appeal as much as he imagined.