Words Unspoken by Elizabeth Musser Page B

still send him spiraling back and back and back. Way too far back in time. Tate.
    He needed to call to Annie. How long had he been standing there?
    “Mr. MacAllister? Are you all right?”
    He let out a breath, met her eyes, shook his head. “Yes, yes. Come in, Lissa. So nice to see you. Come in, come in.” Trying to calm his heart, he called out, “Annie, our friend is here! Come meet her!”
    Annie hurried to the front door in her apron and blue jeans, wiped a stray wisp of hair from her glistening face, and held out a hand. “Hello, dear. I’m Annie.”
    No-nonsense Annie had a forceful handshake that always took guests by surprise. Lissa’s raised eyebrows told Ev that she was no exception.
    “Nice to meet you, Mrs. MacAllister. Thank you for inviting me over.”
    “It’s Annie. Only Annie. You can call him whatever you want,” she said, winking, “but I’m Annie.”
    “Oh. Okay.”
    “Come on in the kitchen, and I’ll get you something to drink. Hot enough for you? They say fall won’t arrive for another three weeks. You like lemonade? Or iced tea?”
    Ev watched them disappear into the kitchen and busied himself arranging the linen napkins on the table. He never got it right, but tonight it gave him time to recuperate.
    For half a second Lissa was Tate, standing there in those silly black sandals, the ones Mother refused to buy. And so Tate had stolen them. He had pushed Tate’s voice so far away in the past years he didn’t hear her anymore, and honestly life was so much easier like that. He simply could not live with the voice of his dead sister whispering all the time.
    Healing, grieving, yes, these things he had done almost thirty-five years ago. The anger was gone, and good had come from the tragedy. Years and years of good.
    “What are you up to, Lord?” he whispered as he placed the silver knife with the little roses embedded in the handle beside a plate. Thoughts of Tate, though still present, did not interrupt him in the midst of every activity.
    Until Lissa Randall had showed up in his life. When that happened, it was as if the Almighty shouted from heaven, “Ev, my boy, there are still a few things on this issue that we need to deal with. It hasn’t been time until now. But now you need to come back to it. For Lissa. For you. For Annie. For the memory of Tate. For your girls.”
    The absolute gut-level truth was that he had no desire for God to interrupt him in this way. Ev felt that he had a close, intimate relationship with the Almighty. But going back in the past at this time in his life, with his weak heart and failing eyesight, seemed like sidetracking. Unfortunately, he knew all too well that when he dug his heels in too far, the Almighty had a way of sending him sprawling right down on his face.
    “Ev! Mr. MacAllister, are you deaf? We’re waiting for you on the back porch.”
    Annie’s voice jostled him back to the present. He observed the table, fit for a queen, and headed through the living room, into the kitchen, and out the back door to where Lissa and Annie were standing, sipping their iced tea.
    ________
    “Annie’s the brains behind our business,” Mr. MacAllister explained while they ate her homemade blueberry pie. “She does all the accounting, chases down the kids who don’t pay, puts ads in the newspaper.”
    “Do some kids really not pay?”
    “Oh, they never forget for long,” Annie said, wiping the napkin across her face. “What Ev means is that if it weren’t for me, he’d be giving free lessons all year long, and I’d be working at Big Mart as a cashier. Nothing wrong with Big Mart, mind you, but there’s no sense in letting a perfectly legitimate business implode because the instructor can’t do math and is as generous as your shadow is long at sunset. And that’s not a compliment, Lissa. He’d give you his suspenders if he weren’t afraid his britches would fall right off.”
    Lissa liked this odd couple: Mr. MacAllister and Annie. She knew