Little Karla;s promice:All my sins remembered

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Since my wife's suicide a year ago, my well-meaning friends made regular efforts to hook me up with various single women. I was apprehensive who the next one night be when I hurried to answer the door. But the person ringing my bell was not my blind date. Karla stood on my porch, looking away shyly, as if she might run at any second. In all the years I had known her, Karla had never come to my door alone, and I found myself looking towards the driveway for her mother. But she appeared to be truly alone. Her simple presence at my door was shock enough, but her attire only compounded my surprise. Karla was an athlete of some renown in our area, and it was widely accepted that she would attend the college of her choice on a soccer scholarship. She was that good, and it was a point of personal pride for me, since I had the privilege of coaching her for two formative years. From the day I first met Karla, standing shyly behind her mother on a soccer field at age nine, I had seen her in a dress one time. Her standard attire was athletic: tennis shoes, shorts, t-shirts, hoodies. Tonight, however, she wore a summer dress of dark blue, with a small flower print. It was lightweight cotton, buttoned from top to bottom in the front, and showed definitively that Karla had transformed from a young girl to a young woman. Her legs were encased in nylons, and she wore sandals with tall heels, which exaggerated the muscles in her calves unnecessarily. Her hair was pulled up and back and she had curled the ends. Though Karla typically did little to enhance her appearance, I always knew she was a pretty girl. Seeing her now, she took my breath away, and all I could say was: Karla.

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