Love, Then Faith: A Novel

By Elaine Medasie

It is three weeks before Christmas in 1982 when Joe Grant spots an electric candle in a dark apartment window across from his complex in a Washington, DC suburb. For nearly an hour he stares at it, completely mesmerized by its simplicity. There is no question that the unexpected distraction is a welcome relief from his self-imposed lonely existence.

Night after night, Joe becomes obsessed with keeping his vigil of the candle. One evening, the living room drapes finally open and reveal the young woman who lives in the apartment. Fascinated, Joe continues his watch until after Christmas when Peggy Rustover at last glances up and realizes she is being observed. Although she is initially frightened, Peggy soon realizes that Joe is just a lonely soul looking for a friendmaybe more. But Peggy has a boyfriend and Joe is battling a tragic, painful past. When they eventually meet over a pot of soup, neither have any idea that it is God who has brought them together and that it is He who will help Joe overcome his fears and doubts to love again.

Love, Then Faith shares the poignant tale of two strangers who meet in the most unlikely of ways and embrace the power of Gods love and grace to help one of them rise above a tragic past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480865136

Elaine Medasie

Elaine Medasie has been writing heartwarming stories, books, plays, and poetry ever since high school. She currently resides in Claysburg, Pennsylvania. Love, Then Faith is her debut novel.

Book preview

1

Seated on his dark brown couch beside a sliding glass door, the blond-haired man watched a television game show. Beyond the open drapes, a strange flickering light across the parking lot caught his attention. Turning toward it, he realized someone was placing an orange electric candle in their kitchen window. The plugged-in light created an eerie path as it wandered about the darkened window before settling into place on the sill.

It was three weeks before the Christmas of 1982. This wasn’t the first decoration he saw among the thirty apartments in the three-story U-shaped complex, but it was one that intrigued him. He ignored the noisy game show and continued gazing yonder at the lone candle. A sudden despondent ache forced him to look down. His cheek muscles flexed as he clenched his teeth, warding off another depressing, melancholic onslaught.

After successfully crushing the assault, he looked up and concentrated on the television. Within minutes curiosity gained prevalence, making him focus on the candle until he willingly stared at it. The candle’s warm glow enticed a vulnerable spot inside him.

For nearly an hour he stared at it, being mesmerized by its simplicity and temporarily tranquilized from his self-imposed lonely existence. Even the thumping noises of the neighbors above didn’t distract him.

Ten months earlier he had moved from Ohio, and since that time he’d kept to himself. Although he worked as a mail clerk for a government insurance company in nearby Washington, DC, he easily ignored the otherwise occupied office workers on his two rounds of delivering mail to their desks. He mainly stayed in the mail room, sorting mail for the one hundred workers on the fourth floor.

Here at the apartment, he’d remained indoors during the first few months. However, as the evening light of the long summer days lured him outside, he’d begun taking walks around the ten complexes and adjoining parks, often exchanging brief greetings without forming any friendships.

It was during the summer that the elderly Mr. Cashman had come to know him. Living in the apartment below, Mr. Cashman at first stopped the blond-haired man before his ascent on the stairs. Many small chats led to what was the closest thing to a friendship that the blond-haired man now enjoyed, but he was glad Mr. Cashman couldn’t take the exertion of climbing stairs.

As fall approached, the lack of people to greet along the course of the blond-haired man’s walks bothered him. He’d begun going to local shopping malls, where he discovered people seated on benches who were willing to converse without the burden of friendship. That satisfied him for a while.

He then scanned the apartments facing his for a friendly face among the occupants. Finding none, he’d abandoned that search over a month ago. Until this night no person nor any feature of any apartment captured his interest as the single orange candle. It seemed like a light beckoning him, but for what reason he did not know.

On the following Friday night, restless anger enveloped the blond-haired man. During the week the candle in the dark window seemed to lift him to, if not happier, at least peaceful spirits. However, on Friday night the window remained dark. He wished whoever lived there would plug in the candle, but it stayed unlit that night and the next. Throughout the week the drapes on the nearby sliding glass door were open, but his attention never strayed from the candle when he glanced over.

On Sunday night around nine o’clock the candle was relit. His heart secretly rejoiced at its return to life, and his cold being was easily seduced by its inviting warmth. Instead of sitting on the couch, he stood at his second-floor glass door to view the candle in the equally high apartment diagonal to his right.

Snowflakes began falling and obstructed his view as they gradually increased in size and number. While straining to keep his vigil of the candle, his attention was drawn to the living room drapes as they opened. A young woman stepped to the sliding glass door.

Amid muffled sounds of his overhead neighbors scrambling to their window, the man examined the woman. She stood still, but her head moved occasionally as she looked skyward, or straight ahead, or down at the parking lot and shrubbery below. Although the season’s first snowflakes kept him from clearly seeing her face, he could tell she wore a skirt and blouse. Able to see her silhouetted outline, he detected no faults in her hourglass shape, but she didn’t interest him in a romantic way. She seemed quite content, like him, in viewing something as simple as falling snow.

Thereafter, the electric candle took second place in his observation. The next night he watched the young woman set up what looked like a real Christmas tree on a low table beside the sliding glass door. Carefully she poured water into the tree holder. Then she wound colored lights around the four-foot tree. After hanging shiny ornaments on various branches, she draped tinseled garland around the tree. After each task, she stepped back to view her work. Sometimes she rearranged an ornament; sometimes she was pleased enough to clasp her hands in delight.

On the top she cautiously positioned an angel, whose robe became illuminated when it was plugged into the other lights. Finally, icicles were lifted from a nearby box. Rather than throwing bunches on the limbs, she diligently suspended one strand at a time.

From his seated position, the blond-haired man watched her tirelessly continue the chore. She had short brown hair parted in the middle and feathered back on either side, with a few strands falling onto her forehead. The pastel glow from the tree lights brought an ethereal beauty to her face as her curved lips reflected what he thought must be an inner happiness. Suspecting that her apartment was warmer than his, he shivered slightly.

When she crossed the room opposite the tree, he could no longer see her. He thought she must have sat down to enjoy her accomplishment, because the room remained vacant of movement for a long time. Later he watched her arrange a red cloth around the tree base and over the table.

As Christmas neared, several more of the other brick apartments displayed colorful lights, some flashing, around their balcony railings and sliding glass doors. The occupants of most of the apartments in the complex placed what looked like artificial trees at their window openings. The blond-haired man had no decorations of his own, nor did he feel the urge to purchase any. Instead, he contented himself by watching across the parking lot as the woman daily set colorful wrapped packages beneath her tree, filling the table and then putting the rest on the floor.

Most of the time her drapes were open, but seldom did she appear in the section of the room he could see. He left for work before her, but he arrived back at the Virginia suburban apartment a half hour ahead, and he watched for her. From that shorter distance he saw that she was prettier than when distantly viewed. She wasn’t flighty or fast; her steps were sure and graceful. She dressed well, so he thought she must work in one of the numerous offices in DC.

She went somewhere each weekend. Over the long Christmas holiday weekend, he missed her. Even though he didn’t know her, she’d become a friend willing to share the warm glow of her candle and tree. The absent person and unlighted tree evoked no overwhelming emotion, but as he glanced over often at the dark kitchen window, a clawing desolation groped within him.

Restless, he tried overcoming that feeling by concentrating on the television, but the TV failed to distract him. Christmas surrounded him, haunted him, bringing memories from the past. It was the same desperation he’d experienced back in Ohio. Despite no longer having his Bible, he found that the same verse that had motivated him to move here came again to his mind. It was the psalmist crying out for deliverance: Oh that I had wings like a dove for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.

The apartment complex was the perfect wilderness in which to be free from the past and, if one so chose, from the present. He had allowed the orange electric candle to violate that freedom. Cautious in his relationships with people, he’d never suspected that an inanimate object would attract him more than a human being.

Isolating himself by closing his drapes only made him more anxious to see if the candle was relit. He wasn’t relieved of his agony until nearly ten o’clock Sunday night, when the candle was relit for an hour. The woman’s living room drapes remained closed, but he saw the shadowy outline of the lighted tree. He didn’t mind not seeing the person inside; he was grateful for the relighting of his lifeless friend across the way.

The woman kept her candle and tree up until after New Year’s Day. The next night he watched her carefully take the decorations off the tree, her face not as contented or happy as several weeks previous. Last of all she unplugged the electric candle and took it from the window. With its disappearance, the blond-haired man felt condemned anew to his cold loneliness.

The second Sunday night in January he watched the parking lot as usual for her blue car to return. Though the candle wouldn’t be glowing after her arrival, he felt the urge to watch anyway. Once the car parked in a space after nine, he saw the young woman get out, retrieve some things from the back seat, and with her arms already full, open her trunk to get a suitcase. Carrying a heavy load, she slowly walked to her section’s entrance. Soon afterward her windows lighted, but the drapes stayed closed that night.

Throughout the week he looked over. Her drapes opened every evening, but he saw little movement. The kitchen lighted early, probably as she ate supper, and then remained dark. Friday night through Sunday the apartment was, as usual, dark and empty.

The next Sunday night after the woman lifted her suitcase from the trunk of the car, she looked up and saw the blond-haired man watching her.

2

On the third Sunday in January as Peggy Rustover closed the trunk of her car, she looked up and saw a man’s figure behind a second-floor sliding glass door. Although he was several car lengths from her, she could tell he was looking at her. Initially she thought nothing of it; someone was just looking outside. Without waving or making any friendly gesture, she turned and carried her belongings to her apartment building entrance.

Trudging the stairs to the second floor, Peggy smiled, remembering the good weekend visit she’d had with her family in Bedford, Pennsylvania. The Christmas spirit seemed to linger in the Rustover home long after the holiday—no post-Christmas blues until February. Then the harsh weather, often snow imprisoning, made them irritable over the weekends. Maybe this winter would be different.

After opening the door to her living room and switching on the light, Peggy went to the bedroom, where she deposited her coat and her suitcase filled with clean clothing. Then she took the food her mother had sent along to the kitchen, set a bag of cookies on the counter, and put the other items in the refrigerator.

Peggy partially filled the tea kettle, placed it on the stove, and returned to the bedroom. There she put away the clothes she’d laundered over the weekend. Just as she finished, the kettle whistled. She made herself a cup of cocoa and took it and a cookie to the table by the window. As Peggy ate, she looked outside at the apartment diagonal to her right. The man was still standing there, and his silhouetted head seemed cocked toward her. Realizing he was watching her, she quivered.

The cookie and the hot cocoa vanquished that sensation and put her mind at ease. Peggy believed that only Danny would want to watch her. He was her boyfriend back home. They dated the latter part of their senior year and the three years since then. Though not engaged and seldom talking about marriage, they took for granted that someday they would be married. Until then, they decided to save their money for some sort of beginning security.

Danny Sinclair, bashful but carefree, lived and worked on his dad’s farm. His tousled brown hair that was parted on the side displayed indented waves where his cap normally circled his head. Recalling Danny’s wide smile and the sweetness of his breath from bubble gum, Peggy had a warm feeling of not being alone. Merely thinking of him incited an acute elation and made her forget about the man across the way.

The next day after work when she parked her car, she glanced upward. The man in the second-floor apartment was there. Although he was in the shadows because the sun was now behind his side of the complex, Peggy saw the vague contour of his head peering down at her. She got out of her car, determined not to look up. At the entrance door, she turned. He was still watching. Quickly she entered and bounded up the stairs to her apartment.

Inside she opened the living room drapes to view the sunset. Looking over at the other apartment, she saw the man still gazing in her direction. She backed out of his sight. A frightening shiver raced through her as she hid for several minutes behind the drapes, making her miss seeing the sunset.

Feeling a chill as the sun’s radiance vanished, Peggy roused. She chided herself for being afraid. What was there to be