All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

hers, too? Surely her job as my assistant hadn’t been the only reason she’d answered my calls. Or why she’d checked up on me when I traveled alone to a campaign shoot. Or why she’d spent hours researching fresh ideas for my next series shoot even when there were plenty of average ideas that could work. She’d gone the extra mile for me time and time again, and what had I done for her in return?

“So . . . do you have a Scripture for us this week?”

“What?” I blinked at Jasmine’s expectant face as the image of Val’s faded once again. “Oh yes. Of course. There’s actually two.”

Just as I picked up the leader’s guide and focused on the meditation Scripture for the week, Clara escorted Sasha back to the table, taking a seat next to her on the bench.

“‘A friend loves at all times.’ Proverbs 17:17,” I said.

“Glo loves that verse,” Wren said. “She even bought a picture with that and put it in the front room of the cottage.”

My chest tingled at the thought of this very Glo-like thing to do.

“The second Scripture is found in John 15:12–13. Can you read that one for us, Sasha?” I took a chance in asking her, as her nonverbal language was still all kinds of off, but she opened her book and read the words in red font.

“‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’” And though I’d read that verse dozens of times, heard it preached in sermons, and seen it written in calligraphy as an Instagram quote more than once . . . it hit me anew in this moment. The enormity of such a command.

I scanned through the next questions, the ones written for a far holier leader than myself, and then closed the book.

“Do you think that’s even possible?” I asked the girls, unscripted. “To love another person in that way?”

Every eye shifted from me to the tabletop.

“I’m not asking because I have the answers. I don’t. Not even close. I’m asking because I’m learning this, too. How to be a real friend who puts someone else’s needs above my own. Even when it’s hard.”

Jasmine lifted her gaze. “I don’t really understand it, either. The love I’ve seen hasn’t looked anything like that. Not between my parents—when I lived with them, anyway. And not even the love I’ve had with friends or boyfriends. Usually it ends because somebody is selfish. Or, I guess, both people are selfish.”

I nodded. “I’ve experienced that, too.”

“So have I,” Amy said.

“Me too,” Monica agreed.

“So what do we do about it? How can we be a different kind of friend? One who loves selflessly?”

Once again the question lingered in silence, and this time it was Clara who spoke up. Likely the only one at the table who could speak to it. “I think we first have to understand just how deeply we are already loved that way—by God. Then we can love each other out of the response to His love for us.”

A profound truth that left a deposit in my soul.

As we bowed our heads to pray at the end of group time, my voice was weak, yet shockingly, my words were not. I wasn’t sure what was happening in my heart, but something most definitely was. And it was something I wanted to embrace for the first time in many, many years.

24

Molly

Parked in Silas’s driveway, I raised my sunglasses to the top of my head, pinning back my hair, which I’d chosen to wear down today. My white sailor button crop pants and airy yellow blouse couldn’t have matched this summer day any more. The few cottony clouds in the sky only added to the perfection of the sunshine and low-eighties temperature.

Silas’s home was a modest rambler, painted a cool gray with crisp white trim, parked on the right curve of a generous cul-de-sac. The shockingly green grass surrounding his house was well maintained and not at all dissimilar from what I’d pictured.

As I climbed his porch steps in my white heeled sandals that ribboned around my ankle in a wispy bow, he opened his front door. My stomach flipped at the sight of his damp hair and the waft of his freshly showered man scent. But perhaps what surprised me most was that he, too, had chosen to wear a yellow shirt today. It was only half as bright as my canary shade, and could possibly even hold a case for beige, but wowzers—if a color could be responsible for making a set of biceps sing like his . . . then I could be convinced to call it purple.

“If I’d known you wanted to match, I would have called ahead to discuss our shoe options,” I said.

He glanced at my feet and chuckled. “I can assure you I have nothing in my closet with a ribbon.”

I smiled but couldn’t help a wandering glance toward the private world of Silas Whittaker’s home.

“Would you like to come inside?” Silas asked with a trace of amusement.

“Oh no, that’s all right.”

“Which is Molly code for yes, but only if I have time to snoop in your cabinets.”

“First of all”—I laughed, holding out my pointer finger—“you don’t know me well enough to speak Molly code fluently yet. And second of all, I was only hoping for a quick glance around. And maybe also to see how you’ve organized your spices and canned food.”

With a sweeping, duke-like gesture, he pulled the door open wide, and I held my breath as I stepped over the threshold and into his home. Had I really just been invited into the home of the same man who’d once rejected my volunteer application at his nonprofit? My life seemed full of irony these days.

I scanned the clean lines of an uncluttered living room, my gaze lingering on the running shoes he’d left next to his front door. I could envision him putting them