by Lois Richer
“How can you being in that chair be good?” Mac demanded, irritated by Dave’s acceptance.
“I wish you’d at least glanced at the stuff our bosses have been flooding us with since the accident.”
“What’s the point of rehashing it?” Mac demanded.
“For one thing, you could have spared yourself the pain of walking around with so much guilt.” Dave shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry you’ve gone through this, buddy.”
“Why are you sorry?” Mac felt like he’d missed an important piece of life.
“Because the faulty engine wasn’t the only finding from our accident, which you’d know if you’d read my emails or listened to the CO’s messages.”
Confused, Mac stared.
“Our accident wasn’t a mistake. I believe God placed you in that pilot’s seat for the exact reason that you would push the aircraft as hard as you did. And I believe we crashed because God didn’t want us to be blown to bits. Because He has things for us to do.”
Mac stared as Dave explained that not only was the engine faulty, but that engineers had discovered several months ago that under certain conditions it malfunctioned and blew up.
“We crashed before that happened.”
“Meaning—” Mac couldn’t quite assimilate it.
“Read the emails,” Dave ordered, then leaned forward. “The bottom line is that you didn’t lose your hand for nothing, Mac. I’m not in this chair for nothing. Because we crashed, servicemen and women using that aircraft survive. They won’t suddenly, inexplicably blow up.” He smiled. “If that wasn’t enough, God has brought us into a different place where we can serve Him. Yes, you disobeyed and we crashed, but He used that for good, for both our good.”
Mac let the words percolate in his head, felt them melt some of his frustration at not knowing God’s will.
“Because of the accident, I’m finishing my counseling degree, so I can help troubled kids. I’d forgotten how much I loved working with kids.”
“I’m happy for you.” Mac clapped Dave on his shoulder, truly elated that his friend had found happiness.
“Thanks. But it’s not just me. Ever consider maybe our accident was also part of God’s plan to redirect you?” Dave tilted his head to one side, a quizzical look on his face.
“Not even once.” Mac’s thoughts flew over the past few months, remembering the aunts’ advice to take one step at a time. Running the ranch, doing the trail riding—that was God’s plan for him?
From the other room, Adele’s chiding voice to the twins broke into his thoughts and cast a chilling pall of worry. He still had to make her understand why he’d delayed telling about Gina. That meant he’d have to reveal his cowardice. Mac shrank from disclosing his deepest flaws, but Adele was all about truth.
“I’ve thought about your new direction a lot, Mac.” The intensity of Dave’s stare didn’t diminish. “I’ve heard how you’re liaising with The Haven. I’ve seen the results you had with Eddie and others, heard about the care you show each of them, how you try to find something special to teach them so they all come away with a feeling of accomplishment. Could that be your ministry?”
Mac wasn’t sure.
“Seems God’s given you a side benefit of being home on that ranch you love.”
“He has?” Mac frowned.
“Adele,” Dave said rolling his eyes. “The childhood chum you never stopped blabbering about during all those fly hours we shared. That’s God’s doing, too.” Dave’s smirk gently mocked him. “You get to spend time with the lady you’ve always cared about, because of our accident. The Lord works in mysterious ways, my friend. Now, let’s go get the ladies and have coffee. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
Mac hadn’t seen Dave for months. Though he longed to talk to Delly, to explain enough to erase her look of utter disappointment in him, he also wanted to hear how Dave had figured out God’s will.
“Got time for a java?”
“Let’s do it.” Mac doubted Adele would object to a few more minutes with her sister. “Where?”
“Here. I just got a fancy new coffee machine.” Dave led the way to his office, pausing only to explain the plan to the sisters. “Gina brought Christmas cookies. They’re delicious.”
“How do you know that?” she teased, following him down the aisle.
“Oops.” Dave invited them into his office and began making coffee.
Mac silently studied Adele as she sat Francie and Franklyn on the floor beside a coffee table and produced juice boxes from their backpack. She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t have to. He’d known her long enough to know her smile was forced and her usual spunk diminished. She turned her back on him as she chatted with Gina.
Mac accepted his coffee with a heavy heart. Delly wouldn’t forgive him anytime soon. He coaxed Dave to talk more about God’s will. It would give him something to think about on what would probably be a long, chilly ride home.
Delly’s anger at him wasn’t exactly a surprise. Adele Parker didn’t tolerate untruth. Ever.
That was one of the things Mac loved most about her. But love meant truth.
It was time Mac came clean about everything to this woman he loved.
And then what?
Chapter Thirteen
It was late by the time they left the city. The twins, tired after their long day and full of spaghetti dinner, now slept in the back seat of the truck. Their soft snores emphasized the silence in the cab until Adele couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“When did you intend to tell me about Gina?” A miasma of emotion whirled inside. She couldn’t seem to right her badly shaken world.
“On the way here.” Mac sounded hesitant.
“That’s easy to say now,” she accused.
“But it’s true. You don’t yet know the reason I didn’t say anything.”
In the dash lights he looked gaunt and for a moment she felt sorry for him. But Mac had lied to her about her sister’s possible whereabouts when he knew how much finding Gina meant to her. There could be no excuse for that.
Couldn’t there? The voice in her head inspired a flicker of guilt. No reason she could forgive him?
“It’s all tied up with my crash.” Mac’s hand tightened on the wheel. His shoulders tensed, as though he was reliving the horror.
Adele wanted to reach out and comfort him. But she couldn’t. Mac no longer seemed like her best friend. Now a distance gaped between them that she wasn’t sure could ever be healed.
“It doesn’t matter.” She wished she’d never started down this track. She’d thought she loved Mac. But how could she care about a man who deliberately lied to her?
“Please, just hear me out.” Mac sounded desperate, but pride pushed away any tenderness she felt.
“Why? So you can rationalize your lie, or make up a new one? Why couldn’t you be honest with me?”
“I couldn’t be honest with myself.” His grated words confused her.
“Meaning?” The sheer anguish flooding Mac’s dash-illuminated face made her gulp.
“I caused the accident, Delly,” he said hoarsely. “Dave’s injuries are my fault.”
She stared at him.
“One of the reasons I did so well in my job was because I’m a risk taker. Or I was,” he corrected softly. “Every time I flew, I took too many risks, disobeyed orders, basically tried anything that would get me the attention I needed. And I needed a lot of attention.”
“Because?” Adele wasn’t sure where this was going, but she clung to the hope that his explanation would somehow absolve his dishonesty.
“I had so many doubts about leaving school, joining the military. Recklessness chased them away.” He swallowed as if his throat was dry and he was desperate for a drink. “My buddies called me Ace. I had this sense when I flew, as if the plane talked to
me. And I kept sensing something was wrong with the last jet. But I couldn’t figure out what. So I took too many chances and Dave paid for it.”
“Gina said you rescued him. She said that’s what caused your injury.” The loss of his hand and part of his arm was an injury? Adele mocked her understatement. “Dave told her that when you pulled him free of the wreckage, a part of the wing fell on you, severing your arm.”
The visual image of it made her stomach queasy.
“That’s what they told me in the hospital, too. I thought they were trying to make me feel better.” Mac shrugged, lips pursed. “I don’t remember that. All I remember are his screams. He was on fire, burning up right in front of me. The man who prayed for God’s blessing before every flight, who constantly asked for God’s will to be done—he was covered in jet fuel and he was dying. Because of me.”
The disgust resonating through Mac’s voice silenced Adele. She didn’t know what to say, how to help him. But then the memory of years of yearning for her sister hardened her heart.
“That doesn’t explain—”
“When I woke up four days later they’d amputated my hand and my arm. I had internal injuries, broken ribs, cuts, bruises and partial loss of memory.” Mac’s words came hard and fast, as if he pushed them out to avoid feeling. “But I was way better off than Dave.”
“But he was very friendly. He doesn’t seem to hold anything against you,” she murmured.
“He should hate me. I thought he would. That’s why—” He stopped, gulped.
“Why what?” That pause made Adele sit up and take notice.
“I never spoke to him after the accident. Not after I was released, not in the ten months since the crash. I never apologized or said I was sorry for ruining his life. Like a coward I ran home and hid.” He glanced at her, his face set. “It’s been eating at me for ages.”
“You didn’t visit him? But I thought you said Dave had been your best friend?”
“He was. That’s how I treated my best friend.” Loathing tinged Mac’s voice. “You don’t have to say it, Adele. I’m disgusted with myself.”
“Then when you found out Dave was working at the same place as Gina—”
“The first time I called, the receptionist called him to the phone. I recognized his voice though we didn’t speak.” Mac turned his tortured eyes on her for a second, revealing his inner pain. “I couldn’t tell him who was calling, Adele, not out of the blue without having said anything for months.”
“So you hung up. And you never told me about the center or that my sister might be there?” Adele demanded.
“The woman said Gina Parker was not there,” he mumbled half-heartedly.
“So you keep saying.” She exhaled. “I’m sorry for the guilt you carry about Dave. I’m sure it’s been awful for you. But, Mac—” There was no other way to put it. “You deliberately kept information from me that could have led me there sooner. Gina was there. It’s the same as lying.”
“I intended to ask Victoria to take you there, just to make sure.” The way his chin tucked into his chest screamed guilty.
“Don’t make it worse.” Fury raced through her.
“I’m not.” Mac glanced at her. “I was working up to telling you about the center today, but the twins—”
“That’s the thing about deceit, Mac. It’s always everyone else’s fault. My parents blamed Gina and me for their lies and their fights and broken relationships. For everything that was wrong.”
“Please, Delly. I didn’t intend— You have to forgive me.”
“I have to?” How could her best friend betray her, withhold information? “Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Adele laughed. Actually it was more of a painful gulp than laughter. “No, you don’t.”
“I do love you.” Mac pulled in to the driveway of The Haven, where the Christmas lights illuminated the house and yard like a welcoming embrace. He braked and shifted into Park before he turned to face her. “I love you, Adele,” he said very quietly. “I think I have for a long time. I just didn’t know it.”
Adele stared into Mac’s face. She saw the tiny scar at his hairline where he’d been injured in a bronc riding competition in eighth grade and the dimple at the corner of his mouth that peeked out whenever he teased her. She studied his hand on the wheel, strong, capable, generous, with the mark where she’d inadvertently caught him with her fishhook.
Mac was her best friend. He’d been with her through the good and bad. But when she gazed into those lake-water-blue eyes, she knew that what she had to do now would put an end to that friendship.
“I love you, too, Mac.” He moved as if toward her, so she quickly resumed speaking. This was not the time to give in to weakness. “But I can’t afford to love you.”
“What?”
“People who love each other don’t lie to one another, Mac.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping twins, reminding herself of her perfect dream. “I can’t love someone who lives a lie to protect himself. Love means telling the truth, no matter what it costs you. You lied about Gina. I’d always be wondering if you were lying about something else.”
“I’m not lying about loving you, Adele.”
“Maybe not.” But the way Mac shifted told her he was still holding something back. “But neither are you telling me the whole truth. What else are you keeping from me?”
“You want the whole truth?” He glared at her for several moments, then sagged, as if giving in. When he looked at her the pain in his glacial eyes stabbed straight to her heart. “My injuries— I can never have children, Adele. The accident I caused took care of that.”
Stunned, she could only stare at him.
“That’s your dream, isn’t it? Having lots of kids, building that perfect family you always talk about. The perfect life, the perfect home, the perfect family.” His sardonic smile hurt to look at. “I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have any future together.”
“Why?” She was so upset she could barely assimilate what Mac was saying.
“Because I’m about as far from perfect as it gets, and perfection is what you’re all about. Because you’d always be disappointed by me and my shortcomings. I don’t think I could live with that, Delly.”
Adele remained frozen in place as Mac got out, opened the rear door and began extricating Francie. She watched in the side mirror as he lovingly cradled her close, as if she was the most precious thing on earth. His lips brushed across her forehead when she stirred. Then Francie lifted her arms and threw them around his neck.
“I love you, Mac.”
“I love you, too, Francie,” he said.
Adele wanted to cry as he tenderly carried the little girl inside The Haven. She’d held on to her principles; she’d stuck to her demands for honesty. So why did she feel so bad?
Weary beyond belief on a day when she should have been dancing for joy, Adele got out of the cab and began unfastening Franklyn’s seat belt.
“I’ve got him.” Mac edged her out of the way and scooped up the little boy. “Hey, buddy. You’re home at The Haven. Soon you’ll be asleep in your own bed,” he promised in the most tender voice she’d ever heard Mac use. “Here we go now, son.”
Mac walked to The Haven, cradling Franklyn against his chest, protecting him from the cool night air. Adele followed him all the way to the children’s bedroom, where they both helped the drowsy twins don their pajamas and climb into bed. Mac tousled Franklyn’s hair and squeezed his hand. He promised Francie that he’d take her for a ride on his minis soon. After pulling the covers to their chins and whispering good-night, he paused in the doorway, his eyes glossy as he studied the children. Then Mac turned and walked out of the room.
After a moment’s hesitation, Adele rushed down the stairs to call him back, to thank him for taking them to the hearing. To say some
thing.
But all she could see were his taillights disappearing in the dark.
“I can’t love him,” she whispered.
“Can’t, sister mine? Or won’t,” Victoria asked from behind her.
“Oh, Vic. This should be the happiest day of my life,” Adele wailed. “I got custody of the twins and I found Gina.” She burst out bawling. “And I found out Mac lied to me.”
Victoria drew her close and murmured soothing words, but all Adele could think was that now Mac would never hold her again.
* * *
I can’t afford to love you.
Two days later Mac’s parents returned.
And Adele’s words still haunted him.
“Don’t think too badly of her, Mac,” Victoria urged as she waited for the last of the guests to finish their riding lesson. “Her dream of perfection has taken a tough hit and she’s hurting.”
“Hurting because of me, because I wasn’t honest with her.” He sighed, castigating himself for it yet knowing that did no one any good.
“Yeah. Why weren’t you?” Victoria stared at him. “You and Delly have never had secrets.”
Mac almost shook his head. But bottling things inside was the first mistake he’d made. He wasn’t going to make it again.
“Have you got a minute?” he asked.
Victoria glanced toward the bus that would take her guests from the Double M to The Haven. No one waited to board yet, so she nodded and leaned against a fence rail as he told her the entire ugly story of his accident and his actions since.
“I’m sorry, Mac. So sorry. I don’t know what else to say. But at least your persistence helped uncover problems.” She patted his arm.
“Not much consolation there,” he muttered.
“Christmas is only three days away. Maybe that will soften Adele’s heart.”
“She thinks I betrayed her,” he muttered. “That’s unforgiveable for someone who values truth and honesty as she does.”
“There’s also value in understanding and forgiveness.” Victoria touched his arm, her eyes soft. “I’ll keep praying, Mac.”