Free Donovan’s Angel by Peggy Webb

in
church, even if it were not his, would have reminded her of
Paul.
    She was wheezing when she completed her
morning workout and plopped down on her backporch steps.
    “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she
wondered aloud. “I guess I didn’t sleep too well last night.” She
rubbed Aristocat’s shiny coat.
    He endured the attention briefly before
walking away to sit in his favorite spot by the birdbath. Baby, who
thrived on affection, bounded around the corner of the house,
bringing yet another gift to his mistress.
    Martie absently scratched her puppy’s head as
she contemplated the fence that separated her from the
parsonage.
    “If I didn’t already love this house and this
town, I would move,” she confided to her pet. “It wouldn’t be the
first time.” Her hand moved to stroke the healthy pelt on Baby’s
back. “But even if I went to the moon, I would still remember the
way he smiles with his eyes . . . and the sound of his voice . . .
and the way he looks in the moonlight.”
    The loose skin sagged around Baby’s face,
giving her a mournful look as she lifted her head to study her
mistress. Suddenly she gave a sharp bark.
    Martie looked from her pet to the soggy
offering at her feet. Gingerly she lifted the mangled garment.
    “Good grief!” she cried. “The minister’s
shorts!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Paul, in clerical collar and black robe, sat
behind the pulpit and scanned the church pews for Martie. As the
organ swelled to a mighty crescendo, his heart plummeted. There was
no silver-blond head among the congregation. The joining of the
congregation and the organ in a majestic “Amen” brought his
thoughts back to the service.
    He lifted his eyes and whispered, “I’m only
human, Lord.”
    o0o
    Martie spent most of the day moving the
preacher’s shorts around. First she tossed them into the garbage
can. Then, feeling cowardly, she fished them out and left them in a
soggy heap beside the back door. Something would definitely have to
be done about them; she just couldn’t figure out what that
something was.
    She selected her favorite book of Walt
Whitman poetry and carried it to the sunroom. But right in the
middle of “Sometimes with One I Love” she put the book down,
marched through the house, and picked up Paul’s shorts. They were
still damp from Baby’s mistreatment. She looked inside the
waistband at the label: Medium, 32-34.
    Just what she’d thought. The shorts dangled
from her hand as she considered the possibilities of Medium, 32-34,
all of them attractive.
    Then, feeling guilty, as if she had barged
unannounced into his bedroom and seen him naked, she put the shorts
into her washing machine and started the cycle. As she dumped in
the detergent she decided to return the clean shorts via the
tree.
    While the shorts washed she had an afternoon
snack and revised her plan. She would put them in a box and send
them to him by mail. An act of cowardice, but necessary for
self-preservation.
    She changed the shorts to the dryer, then
returned to the sunroom, where she picked up her book and tried to
immerse herself in Walt Whitman. The shorts kept intruding. Even
her favorite, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” couldn’t
completely occupy her mind. By the time she got to the line, “A
thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to
die,” she knew what those echoes were. They were Paul’s shorts,
screaming evidence of the man she was trying to forget.
    She replaced the book on the shelf and
transferred the shorts from the dryer to a shelf in the closet. But
even with the door shut, they still warbled at her. She snatched
them out again and decided to patch the holes Baby had made. Sewing
was not her forte, but she had never seen anything that she
couldn’t try at least once. She had a moment of indecision over
whether to use the red or the green thread, those two being the
only colors available; but once she had selected the red, she
tackled the project