Beyond Love

Planned

[Rachel]

"...and it wasn't there after I checked it the second time," I explained quietly, cupping a hand over the receiver whilst heading down the street and taking a turn. "Right after whoever it was that got to it before I did and, you, too, must be curious? I wouldn't have imagined the number of enemies he'd made along the way to be... well. That many, to say the least."

"You'd be surprised, Rachel. I know I was. Hadn't expected to tempt someone in their inner circle with only double digits on the line. Apparently, they weren't so reluctant to bring him down either, for some reason."

I tried to recall the characteristic footsteps and scented perfume worn by the stranger who'd swapped the contents of the folder with falsified documents. Nothing of importance seemed to jump out at once.

"So it was you, then," I sighed, lowering my hand and upping the volume a little just so that I could hear Trudy over the crowd I was about to pass. "You handled it."

"Indirectly, yes," I could hear the shuffling of papers over on her side. "But I wouldn't have been able to without their existing hatred towards Honeycutt in the first place. It's a skill, you know. Learning to use the things around you that already exist to your advantage."

I laughed quietly, interest piqued by the scent of fried crisps wafting down the street. Curious and a tad exhausted from all the earlier action and anxiety, I followed it.

"You're not wrong. But I do think it is all part of the faith and trust we should have in the Lord to pave our paths as well," I pointed out, coming across a line snaking out from a corner of the street. A take-out chippy. "And perhaps that is why he put you on my side, too.

"Because recently, everything's... everything's been happening on its own accord and I've never felt so relieved and restored and soothed but—but I... well, of course I trust His judgement and all and so everything that's been unfolding cannot possibly be wrong in any way but for some reason... for some reason, although it's been the case for the past twenty-three years of my life, I've! I've never felt so odd about having my prayers answered and everything else going just the way I've hoped it would!"

Joining the queue amidst our conversation over the phone, I clasped my purse under my arm and waited to be served, strangely craving the cheap fragrance and crunch of battered dory all of a sudden.

"You're being too kind, Rachel," Trudy laughed over the phone, seemingly ecstatic. "Of course you trust His judgement, no doubts about that. You always have, and that is why you're being rewarded in the first place. Nothing's wrong. Don't you worry."

Though it was nice of her to say so, something inside me begged to differ and brush aside her safety blanket of compliments. Everything was far too right that it was all beginning to feel rather wrong. But perhaps it was this very doubt in my prayers that served as the true test of it all and by doubting so now, I would thus be failing it.

"Maybe you're right," I sighed in the end, observing that the queue was being cleared at a surprisingly fast rate. I'd shifted up to the front in a matter of minutes and was next up to place my order for chips. "Maybe I am being a little too doubtful about sinners. Either way, it shouldn't be up to me to decide who gets punished and to what extent. I should leave it to Him."

The customer before me walked away from the truck with a serving of piping-hot fish and chips, making way for myself to move up with an order. "A serving with cheese on the side, please."