Seventy Times Seven

Jay Walcott smiled gently, touched his lips to Becky’s forehead, turned and left.
A new dress tucked securely under her arm, she hurried out the door of the boutique. She cannoned into a couple passing the shop.
“Watch it,” a man complained irritably as he grabbed her to keep himself from falling, “Ah, er, Becky?”
Wes? I didn’t know you were in town.” Of all the people to run into, her ex-fiancé
Wes Abernathy. It was as if a malevolent genie had popped her former fiancé out of a bottle. She hadn’t dated anyone but Carson, since Wes had stormed out of her trailer several years ago. She sighed. She was so looking forward to going out with Jay, but seeing Wes was giving her second thoughts. Jay would be the first one since three or four years ago when she had gone out a couple of times with Carson. He would still date her, but she wasn’t attracted to him. It wasn’t fair to raise his hopes that she might ever feel anything stronger than friendship for him. Besides, it was important to her that he wasn’t a Christian. She thought about that for a minute. When she compared the character of Carson to that of self-righteous Wes, though, she understood something. No wonder Christ ate with the publicans and sinners.
She had been attracted to Wes, and now, she was even more attracted to Jay Walcott. Jay Walcott exhibited the traits of character she’d always admired, but did one ever really know another person? She thought she’d known Steve, and she thought she’d known Wes.
She never blamed Wes for not attempting to help with her problem—or even ending their engagement. What had been difficult to forgive had been what he had done after the engagement ended.
Wes had been, and probably still was, a charismatic individual. During his courtship both she and six-year-old Jimmy had become enamored with him. It was after the engagement was broken, though, that she’d learned the man’s true character.
“I’m breaking the engagement, Becky.” His last vicious statements were indelibly written in her memory. “I’ve been called to do God’s work, and I know he doesn’t want me to ‘unequally yoke’ myself with a freak. Helplessly, she had watched as he continued to attend Peter’s church for the next three months. She told people who asked that the broken engagement was a mutual decision. “We just weren’t suited.”
She hadn’t realized that Wes was telling something entirely different to Peter and the other people in the church community. Then, one morning the church busybody sidled up to her, and said, “You really shouldn’t have led poor Wes on like that you know.”
Charming Wes had even fooled Peter. “Sis, I know you really cared for Wes, and he said he’d work with your problem. Why’d you break the engagement?”
“I didn’t. He did. He told me that God didn’t want him tied to a freak.”
“But—“
“You should see Wes when he’s not so charming and gracious,” she replied sardonically.
“Maybe you should return his ring, then.”
“I don’t have it. He asked for it back and I gave it to him.”
“What?”
“I haven’t had it since he broke the engagement.”
“But,” he said chagrined, “he came to me to borrow five hundred dollars, and told me that he’d allowed you to keep the ring so you could sell it for money to make repairs on your trailer, and he let me know the ring cost five hundred dollars.
“I hope you didn’t loan it to him.”
“No, I gave it to him,” Peter shook his head, sadness etching lines around his eyes.
“I’m not very good,” she said, “either at picking men or judging character, am I?” Then she related Wes’s treatment of her and Jimmy the day before he left.
“How come you don’t come and see us no more?” Jimmy had asked.
Wes leaned down and whispered venomously, “Because you’re a little brat.”
Jimmy started to cry.
“Becky,” he said as he straightened up, the vicious words belying his benign looking smile. “I would not have ‘spared the rod’ with that son of yours. Thank goodness, I won’t be saddled with him.” She had been shocked. How could she have so misread someone’s character. She had not seen him again until today.
She glanced at the dress. Could she be strong after all? But no, Jay wasn’t like the others. She grasped the dress tightly as she walked back to the office.
After running into Wes Abernathy, she faced subtle threats from her boss, Lloyd Crookston.
Later, she was startled when Lloyd entered her office and spoke.
“Becky, have you got the Gordon file?”
“No,” she said, and looked up as he reached over and picked up Jimmy’s picture.
He gazed at it a minute and then put it down. He didn’t comment, but Lloyd Crookston had a mind that always noticed every detail, and always figured out a way to use that detail to his own advantage.
“Where did he get those unusual gray eyes, Becky? They don’t look like yours. Are they like his father’s? You never did say who his father was, did you?”
“No, I didn’t, Lloyd.”
“Who is his father?”
“What does this have to do with the Gordon file?”
“I could find out, you know.”
“You could, but why would you want to? Why would you think it important? Besides, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Why? Was he some kind of celebrity?”
“You might say that,” she said nonchalantly. The last thing she needed was Lloyd finding any connection between her and the Walcotts, especially her and Jay.
After this past Sunday afternoon, Becky realized there was another reason for keeping her distance from Jay Walcott and his family, and she need look no further than Jay’s mother.