Page 1 of To Believe In You
1
Lina didn’t have a good track record for trusting the right people, but she did have some idea of whonotto trust. Matt Visser hovered near the top of that list, but a lack of time and alternatives had dispatched Lina to Visser Landscaping. She had no choice but to offer him a job.
She twisted the ring on her right hand. Grandma, who’d passed the heirloom to her, had dealt wisely with Dad, a relationship far more complex than Lina would ever have with Matt. She could cope. Shewouldcope.
Beyond her windshield, stores of wood chips and gravel flanked the lane that extended from her parking space to the two men who worked on the far side of the yard. Both wore matching green T-shirts and khaki shorts. From the distance, tattoos appeared to cover one guy’s arms.
That had to be Matt.
Awestruck’s former bass guitar player.
Two years ago, when she’d learned he had been fired from the rock band, relief flooded her. He and his addictions had been nothing but trouble, and she was struggling to believe he’d changed as much as Awestruck’s manager, Tim, now insisted. Tim claimed that, because of all Matt had overcome, he might be the right person for the position in more ways than one.
Matt’s story did make quite the cautionary tale.
Ifhe’d changed his behavior, he could be a real asset.
But that seemed like a big if. How often did people completely transform?
God could do anything.
Theoretically.
But what had He done in Matt’s case? Only time would tell.
Ten-foot-tall concrete partitions separated each landscaping material from the next. Stray wood chips and gravel dotted the asphalt lane. A few steps from her car, a stone bruised her heel through her flats.
The tattooed man hoisted himself onto one of the partitions and pulled a sapling from a crack. He tossed it down to his partner—a teenager, she realized as she covered some of the distance.
Matt leapt from the wall onto the pile of finely ground gravel. He scrambled to the top of the cone-shaped mound. From there, he engaged in an animated conversation with the teen. By their hand motions, they appeared to be planning a stunt.
Pushed by a sticky August breeze, the cap sleeves of her top rippled against her arm, and one of her curls swung across her forehead.
The pair hadn’t seen her yet, and if she waited for the situation to play out, she might spare herself the trouble of asking for this favor. Laid up in a body cast, Matt would be useless to her. She crossed her arms over the high waist of her jeans and stopped to observe.
A third man in a company T-shirt stepped into view at the far end of the drive. His path angled toward Matt.
The stunt planning was hard to decipher until the simple, common cadence of the words, “Okay. Here we go.”
Matt lifted his arms over his head, lowered them, lifted them again, all in slow motion.
The latest bystander rushed closer with a shout, as if to intervene.
Undeterred, Matt whipped his arms forward and around. His body tucked and circled mid-air.
A front flip.
During his time with Awestruck, Matt had once fallen off a lift during a show. If that man had attempted a flip on such unforgiving terrain, he would have killed himself.
Now, though the partition blocked her view of his feet, he appeared to land upright before he slid out of sight.
Lina resumed her course toward the men.
Half a second later, to the teenager’s guffaws, Matt stumbled away from the bottom of the gravel, shouted, and lifted his arms in victory.
“That was awesome!” The kid met him with a high five. “Where did you learn to do a flip? Can you teach me?”
“Matt!” Panting from the exertion of jogging up, the other man tossed his hands in exasperation.
