A Match Made in Texas Read Online Free Page B

had to somehow help him find his way again. Was that God’s purpose in bringing Stephen Gallow into their lives? Would Gallow’s condition and her attention to him help Hub realize that he should and could reclaim his own life?
    She paused in the grand foyer at the foot of the stairs to gaze through the window at the side of the bright yellow door with its formal black trim to the boxy little red convertible that was her one extravagance in life. It was the only thing she had not given up when she’d quit her job and moved from her apartment into her father’s house to care for him after his heart attack. She’d sold every stick of furniture that she’d accumulated in her twenty-four years, such as it was, and even gotten rid of the contents of her kitchen because the one in her father’s small, two-bedroom frame house did not have room for her things. At the time, she’d told herself that it was necessary. Now, with Hub constantly comparing her to her aunts, who had 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 evenquoted 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 achina 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