by Rachel Lee
Sam felt his throat tighten with a sense of loss. He missed his mother. He’d been missing her since the day Elijah cut him off. Oh, Belle had called him on the phone regularly, keeping in touch, but he’d never set eyes on her again. And that was Elijah’s fault.
His eyes felt hot as he looked at his father.
“I miss her, too,” Elijah said, as if he’d read Sam’s face. He nodded to the rocker. “Every time I look at it I miss her.”
Sam didn’t answer, because he knew if he did he was going to say something about how his father had cut him off from his mother. And he didn’t want to get into that now. He was, he told himself, past it. But like any man dealing with a poisonous snake, he wasn’t fool enough to give the snake another opportunity to bite him.
Elijah seemed to be waiting for Sam to say something, but when he didn’t, he offered, “Would you like to join me in a soft drink?”
Sam suddenly remembered Elijah’s passion for anything carbonated. The man would even drink club soda straight on occasion. And tea. Iced tea with heaps of sugar in it, so much that Elijah had to stir the glass every time he went to take a sip, and it would still settle a half-inch thick at the bottom. “Uh, no thanks. I have to finish handing out the fliers.”
Elijah nodded slowly. “I understand.”
Sam had the feeling that he’d said the wrong thing; but Elijah had always given him that feeling, and he was past worrying about it. Or so he told himself.
He hesitated a moment longer, feeling as if he ought to try salvaging something from this ruptured relationship, yet also feeling that there was nothing left to salvage. The old man hadn’t changed. Look how he’d reacted last week after Sam had saved Joe. More concerned about the type of person Sam had saved than about anything else. Elijah hadn’t changed one little bit.
Shaking his head, he headed for the door. Some things could never be salvaged.
“Sam.”
Elijah’s voice stopped him, but he didn’t turn to look at his father.
“Sam.” Elijah repeated his name, sounding oddly helpless. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was…upset.”
“Sure.” Sam turned. “You’ve always been upset with me from the time I can remember. I was never good enough for you. Never. And now you’re going to expect me to count the value of a human life by whether you think the sin they’ve committed is beyond redemption? I don’t think so.”
He heard his father call his name again, but he was already out the door, striding across the street to Mary’s house. He expected no better from her, since she seemed to be on his father’s side, for some unknown reason. God, he would never understand a woman’s mind. All of a sudden he didn’t feel so bad about not having called her in a week. Complications like this he didn’t need.
He rapped sharply on Mary’s door, an official sounding thud. She answered a few moments later and looked at him expressionlessly. “Yes?”
He handed her a flier. “Recommendations in case we have a fire in the vicinity.”
“Thank you.” She accepted the flier, started to close the door, then hesitated. “I’m glad to see your legs are okay.”
“They’re fine.” Turn and leave, he told himself. But now he couldn’t even use the excuse of work. He was done for the day. And for some strange reason his feet felt rooted to the spot.
“Are you always so unforgiving?” she asked.
That about did it. Something in him seemed to crack wide-open. “What the hell are you talking about? My relationship with Elijah is none of your damn business.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t,” she said frostily. “But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about you and me. You’re still angry that I defended him, aren’t you?”
Well, he was. And the realization didn’t sit too comfortably on his shoulders. “You answered the door like you didn’t know me.”
“How else was I supposed to act? You take me out to dinner, kiss me like there’s no tomorrow, then walk away and don’t ever call again. I’m not a disposable tissue, you know.”
Now he was feeling about two feet tall, and he didn’t like it. But there was no question that this time he deserved it. “I’m sorry.”
“Really? Well, I suppose I can be about as forgiving as you are.” She started to close the door.
“Mary, please.”
She paused. After a moment she looked at him and sighed. “Oh, hell, come on in.”
Mary didn’t swear. He’d already figured that out, and it had him minding his own language, at least when she was around. If she was swearing, she was really unhappy with him.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Have a seat,” she said, nodding toward the sofa. She didn’t offer him any refreshment, and she took the rocker, well away from him. And then she didn’t say a word. She wasn’t going to make this easy on him.
He supposed he didn’t deserve for her to. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Can I plead confusion?”
“Sure, why not.”
Unyielding. He got a glimpse then of the steel in Mary’s spine. He had to admit he admired it, even when he was in trouble because of it. The thing was, he didn’t know how to begin.
With his father, he supposed. It was the one point of certainty in the midst of something that felt like insanity.
“Okay,” he said. “My father got my dander up.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m sure you can see why.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Yes, I can. But I still think you misunderstood the direction of his real concern. And I am not a Pollyanna.”
He had to admit that hadn’t been a nice thing to say. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
“You ought to be. Calling names is a juvenile way to argue.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. “I admit I was mad. And I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said. And I acted like a two-year-old, not calling all week. I was…”
What was he, exactly? He wasn’t sure he could answer that question. Pissed at his dad, certainly, but there was nothing new in that. Pissed at Mary? Maybe a little, because she had tried to defend his father. Pissed at himself? Most certainly. He never should have kissed her.
Because kissing her had filled his dreams for a week now, and along with the waves of desire that nearly overwhelmed him every time he thought of how she had felt in his arms, a wave of panic would also nearly drown him. Care like that again? Only if he had a lobotomy.
So what was he doing trying to make peace with her?
“Well,” she said briskly, as if the conversation was over, “I forgive you. Don’t let me keep you from your appointed rounds.”
He knew with gut-deep certainty that he couldn’t leave things like this. No way. He would be miserable for days. Weeks. Maybe even months. Longer than that he refused to allow. He had to set things right with her, though he was damned if he knew why.
“I’m done with my rounds. I saved you for last.” It was a big admission, but he couldn’t tell how she received it. Her usually expressive face was revealing nothing right now.
“Am I supposed to feel flattered?”
Ouch. This wasn’t going well at all. Not that he could blame her. If he hadn’t lost his mind and kissed her, he wouldn’t be in this pickle right now.
But Sam was a nice person. A good person. And he didn’t at all like feeling that he had wounded Mary. She didn’t deserve it.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling like a broken record. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that I wanted us to have a chance to talk. So I could apologize. I behaved badly.”
She looked down at her folded hands for a moment. Finally she said, “Maybe I behaved badly, too. I mean, I shouldn’t get involved between you and your father. You know him better than I. It’s just that I saw how worried he was until you showed up, and he wouldn’t be the first man I’ve known to express his worry by getting angry and acting like a jerk. I teach classrooms full of that type
.”
She was right, of course. He was guilty of a bit of that himself, and he’d known plenty of other people who were, too. But Elijah?
He supposed he ought to think about that. Except that thinking about Elijah always made him so angry he couldn’t think straight. Now how did you noodle over a problem like that?
“I guess,” he said slowly, “it would be fair to say I’m not entirely rational where my father is concerned.”
She gave a half smile. “I guess I should say that I can see why not. What he said to you when your wife died was awful.”
“It was,” Sam agreed without elaboration. What was there to say about it? Elijah’s words had rung like a death knell in his heart.
“Of all people, a minister ought to know better than to say something like that,” Mary said quietly. “I’m sorry, Sam. I can understand why you don’t think his anger was driven by worry. I should have recalled that before I defended him.”
Sam shrugged. “You’re a kind person, Mary. You want to see the best in everyone.”
“Maybe it’s just a bad habit.”
“Don’t start thinking that way. You keep right on thinking the best. Most of the time you’ll be right.”
Then he felt an uncomfortable prickle of conscience. He was making it sound as if his father had no redeeming qualities at all, and that wasn’t true.
“My father…” He paused. “My father’s not a bad man. Not at heart. I know that, even though we have some serious differences. He was raised in a spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child house, and he pretty much carried that over to raising me.”
“He seems like an angry man.”
“He is. The way he was treated as a kid…well, today we’d call it child abuse and take the kid away. He did better than his own father, but he stayed pretty angry. Angry at injustice. Angry at sin. Angry at pretty much everything.”
“Including you.”
“I’m sure I deserved some of it. I was no angel.” He rose from the couch and walked over to the window, pulling the curtain aside and staring across the street. The lights were on at his father’s house, but no one was visible in the windows.
Mary spoke. “You can’t blame yourself for your father’s problems, Sam.”
“I don’t. But…I think the real problem was that because I deserved his anger so many times, I thought I deserved it all the time.”
“And so you felt as if you had no redeeming qualities?”
“Maybe. I know I felt I couldn’t do anything right. Sometimes I even gave up trying.”
“That’s understandable.”
He heard the rocker creak, then saw her reflection in the window glass as she came to stand behind him. “I’m sorry, Sam. No child should have to deal with that.”
“It wasn’t all bad, you know. He was proud of me sometimes, like when I preached my first sermon when I was thirteen.”
“You preached at thirteen?” She sounded amazed.
“It’s not unheard of. Although now I wonder what I could possibly have had to say at that age that anyone else needed to hear.”
“Sometimes we just need to listen to children. To know what’s in their hearts and minds. It’s a good thing.”
“Yeah. Except he supervised the writing.”
“Oh.”
He saw her head bow a moment. Then she raised it again. “What would you have said if you’d written it?”
“After all these years, how would I know? I chose the text, though. It’s funny, because I heard my father refer to it last week when he was lecturing someone. ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
“That’s a revealing choice.”
“I guess. I was raised to believe that anything I did wrong was my fault, and anything I did right was because of God. So inherently I was bad and could only be good when God stepped in.”
He saw Mary shake her head. “I hope you’ve gotten past that.”
“I don’t know.” He dropped the curtain and faced her. She looked at him, sorrow in her gaze. Then, with a sigh, she returned to the rocking chair. “You know, Sam, nobody’s all good or bad.”
“I know that now. I think.”
“I hope you do.” Her face grew shadowed. “I’ve thought a lot about it. Probably because I deal with young people at the most difficult stage of life. But it seems to me that when God created us, he didn’t make us little gods. He made us human. He created a flaw in us—and if he put it there, maybe it’s not a flaw at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“We try, we stumble, we fall. We’re not perfect. As I tell my students, the only time we fail is when we don’t get up, dust ourselves off and try again. And sometimes I think that if we were all perfect, God would fall asleep at the wheel out of boredom. As a priest friend of mine once said, ‘God loves a good story.’”
“I like that.” He returned to his seat on the couch and crossed his legs, left ankle on his right knee. His gun belt was digging into his side, so he shifted a little and tried to ignore it.
“I like it, too,” Mary agreed. “It doesn’t always help, though. Things still…hurt. Sometimes almost too much to get out of bed in the morning. But if you think of watching a movie, how interesting would it be if everything in the story went perfectly? How many movies about perfect people who never have problems would we watch?”
“Very few.” He smiled crookedly.
“And not only would God fall asleep, so would we. Or we’d die of boredom.”
“That’s an interesting way to look at life.”
“Sounds good, doesn’t it? Much harder to actually keep that perspective when things go sour, though.”
He laughed because it was so true. “Amen to that. But it would always make sense in retrospect.” He liked the way she thought about things. Either she was indeed the Pollyanna he had called her last week, or she had learned from experience. And something about the way she looked suggested to him that she had learned from bitter experience.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about her past—her marriage, in particular—but he swallowed the words. This accord between them was too new for him to risk upsetting it by prying. So he let the thought drift away on the gentle tide of comfort he was beginning to feel in her presence and promised himself that he would learn more about Mary later.
She seemed more relaxed now, too. As if their talk had eased some concern of hers. Maybe all she had needed was to be reassured he wasn’t the total cad he had appeared to be.
So why was he reacting like a cad? His body was so aware of her again, so hungry for her touch. It had blown up out of nowhere, it seemed, needing only a moment of comfort to erupt like a smoldering volcano. Just like last time. But he wasn’t going to react the same way. He wasn’t going to grab her and kiss her and then walk away. Heck, he wasn’t even going to get to the grabbing part, let alone the kissing part.
Because he had nothing to offer her or any other woman, however much he might want one. Most specifically her. His body might be waking up after the long night of grief, but his brain knew better than to listen. Too much pain down that road.
And he was beginning to sound like a broken record, even to himself. How many times did he need to remind himself? He wondered if he wasn’t protesting just a bit too much.
Mary, apparently having decided to truly forgive his churlish behavior, asked him if he wanted any refreshment.
“Water, please,” he said. Having a drink would give him an excuse to stay longer. He assured himself it was simply that he didn’t want to go home.
She returned with a glass of ice water for each of them and sat down again. “I saw you go into your father’s house,” she remarked. “Did you get to talk?”
“Not much.” He squirmed a little inwardly as he admitted that the brevity of the conversation had more to do with him than Elijah. “I guess I wasn’t in a mood to listen.”
“You don’t make many excuses for yourself, do you?”
“Sure I do.”
She shook her head. “I know excuses. You’re taking the full blame for the lack of conversation on yourself. You’re not even suggesting that the years of misunderstanding between the two of you might be at fault.”
“Misunderstanding?” He repeated the word, musing about it a bit. After a few minutes he said, “Maybe it was misunderstanding. On both our parts.”
“Some, maybe. And some may have been the typical unfortunate result of a father who wanted his son to turn out even better, while following in his footsteps.”
Sam arched an eyebrow at her. “That’s an interesting spin.”
Mary smiled. “I’ve see a lot of teenagers dealing with a lot of parents. There’s a great deal of conflict at that age, as kids are getting ready to break away from the family. Some of it’s there in every family, but it’s worse in families where one or both parents try to maintain the kind of control they had when their children were small. And a lot worse when a parent wants a child to follow a certain path.”
“I can testify to that. Nothing but being a preacher would have been good enough.”
“And that’s the last thing you wanted to be?”
He gave a quiet snort, almost a laugh. “I got to see the job from the inside. A preacher should be a man of conviction, but when he has a family to feed, he winds up being a man of mainstream conviction, regardless of his private thoughts.”
“You’re saying your dad sold out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to some extent. I know that he had to be careful which ox he gored, because if he gored the wrong one, he’d have the elders at his door to call him back in line. They were particularly unhappy about sermons on the evil of wealth.”
She arched a brow. “Wealth isn’t necessarily evil.”
“Of course not. Some people do a lot of good with their money. But no matter how he worded it, they’d get their dander up, saying he was implying that simply because they were well-off, there was something wrong with them. He never seemed to know how to answer that one.”