Stepping Into Sunlight

by Sharon Hinck

  I threw a pillow in the general direction of the door and he scooted away, laughing. Despite the headache, I grinned and shook my head. “Lord, he’s a charmer, that one. How did I get so blessed?”

  I propped up and pulled my Bible onto my lap along with my notebook. Residue of the nightmare still twisted in my mind like a nest of snakes. Psalms would help. Those psalmists understood terror. My concordance didn’t have an entry for post-traumatic stress or for fear of losing my mind. But I found a good chapter about God’s protection and comfort. I read slowly and chose one verse to repeat again and again. If I could memorize one sentence to carry through the day, maybe I’d make it.

  I copied the verse into my notebook along with a quick prayer. “Heavenly Father, your laughter lightens every heart. Thank you for making little boys and hamsters and giggles. Thank you for helping me laugh again. You are so tender and patient. I know you understand.”

  “Mom! I can’t find my math paper.”

  My feet hit the ground and I gave my Bible a soft pat. In the corporate world, executives faced the tyranny of the urgent. In my world, I faced the tyranny of the missing homework. But the brief time with God had begun to unwind some of the snakes from my brain, and a few even crawled away to leave me in peace.

  Once Bryan’s bus pulled away, I poured myself a second cup of coffee. Alex might be bringing Starbucks, but I needed fortification sooner than that. I even brought the mug into the shower with me. That was a mistake. Jasmine shampoo did nothing for the flavor of Folgers.

  Still, the caffeine and shower chased away my headache. Humming, I pulled on jeans and a sweater. I blotted my hair and ran a comb through it. Then my fingers took the place of the comb’s teeth as I paced the house. Alex wouldn’t arrive for another hour, and each minute gave me time to build anxiety. I scrubbed the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, plumped the living room pillows, and played a few rounds of solitaire on the computer. Even that failed to hold my interest. Maybe I’d overdone it on the caffeine.

  Finally, a car door slammed. I peered around the living room curtains. A thin man in a leather jacket walked up the sidewalk with two takeout cups. I pulled the door open.

  “Penny?” His throat sounded thick, as if he were getting over a cold. “You look exactly the same.”

  I’d forgotten the copper glints in his mahogany-brown hair. Now I was surprised by the feathery accent of silver that joined them. His skin hung loosely over the bones of his face, as if he’d gained and lost weight several times. But when he smiled, the hangdog look disappeared and I recognized the brother from my childhood. He held a cup out toward me. “One large breakfast blend with cream. As ordered.”

  “Thanks.” I finally managed a smile and took his offering, glad that with our hands full, I wouldn’t be expected to hug him. Our family had never been huggy, and I definitely wasn’t ready to throw myself into an embrace with this man I barely recognized. “Come on in.”

  Alex wiped his feet and strolled into the living room.

  I closed the door. “You’re taller than I remember.”

  He gave a surprised laugh. “I haven’t grown. Maybe it’s like going back to your childhood home. Everything looks bigger than you remember.” He set his coffee on the table and shrugged out of his jacket.

  We settled on opposite ends of the couch.

  “So how was your visit to the childhood home?” I asked. “Was Mom playing Cleopatra?”

  He smiled. “Queen of denial? Yeah. Some things haven’t changed.” He leaned back, at ease. No hint of apology or remorse.

  My blood began to burn and veins in my neck throbbed. “So,” I said tightly. “How was your drive? Good weather for it?”

  He drew a deep breath. “I can see it’s eating at you. Get it over with. Ask me the questions you need to ask.”

  Hold it together, Penny. He knocked over your sand castle, but don’t come up swinging.

  “Okay. I’ll ask.” The word caught and I cleared my throat. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you ever tell us where you were?” I stopped before the sting behind my eyes betrayed me with visible tears.

  “Those were tough years.” He picked at a thread on his jeans, a small tremor of his hand revealing that his own emotions weren’t as placid as I’d thought. “I felt like a defective car part. Everyone kept trying to fix me. I . . . I resented it.”

  “But they only—”

  “I know. They were trying to help. But I hated it. I did the only thing I could think of. I left it all behind. Escaped the weight.”

  “What weight?”

  “Of causing so much grief. Of being the ‘problem.’ ”

  “But where did you go?”

  He sighed and some of the weight he’d worked to escape pressed on his shoulders. “I made some stupid choices. Chased away my demons with drugs the doctors had never tried.” He gave a crooked smile. “Not a great way to find sanity—but it held back the pain for a while.”

  “Drugs . . . ?” Instead of shock and contempt I felt sadness and a strange understanding. Hadn’t I wished for something to muffle my misery in the past weeks?

  He misunderstood my silence and raised his chin. “I’ve been clean for years. One day at a time and all that.”

  “Good for you. That takes a lot of courage.”

  He blinked and relaxed deeper into the cushions. “Don’t put me on a pedestal. I have lots of regrets. But I turned things around about six years ago.”

  Six years? And even after that, he never let us know he was alive. My jaw clenched. “Back to my original question. Why? Why did you cut us all out of your life? Couldn’t you have sent a postcard? Anything? Do you have any idea what it felt like?”

  He looked away from my virulent words but didn’t interrupt as I flung each question across the space between us.

  “After you got clean? Why didn’t you call then?” I hugged my knees against the pain in my stomach.

  “By the time I got to a place where I might have been able to handle seeing the family, so much time had gone by I felt . . . ashamed. Ashamed of where I’d been. Ashamed of all the time that stretched between us. Does that make any sense?”

  “Sort of.” Some of the nettles of rejection and disappointment fell from my skin. I’d done something similar after the shooting. I’d been driven to the ground by fear, guilt, and anger, and I’d done all I could to pull away from people. He’d struggled for years before dropping out of sight. Coming back must have terrified him.

  I reached for my coffee cup and hid behind it to take another sip. “Maybe I would have done the same thing. But still . . . all those holidays without you. You missed my wedding. You missed Bryan getting born, his baptism, all his birthdays.” The nettles still embedded in my soul began to throb again, so I stopped talking.

  “I know.” His eyes met mine. They were clouded with emotion, but also held a dull tint of jaundice. He didn’t look well. “I’m really sorry.”

  The coffee burned in my stomach and I swallowed hard. Is that why he’d come back? Was he seriously ill? Dad or Mom or Cindy would have told me if . . . Wouldn’t they? “Why now?” A lump of dread tried to choke me while I waited for his answer.

  chapter

  27

  “NO, NO, NO. ”HE reached forward and touched my arm, then quickly withdrew. “Nothing like that. I know I don’t look great. Hepatitis, among other things. But I didn’t come back to stage some tragic death scene.” He grinned. “Mom thought the same thing. I should have worn a shirt that said, ‘I’m not dying.’ ”

  I forced an answering smile, but it came out as a wince. “Not funny, Alex.”

  “Sorry. Look. I know I have a lot to explain. But it’s your turn. I want to know how you’re doing. I got some garbled version from Mom—just enough to make me worry.”

  My lips flickered upward without effort. “I can imagine.” Suddenly, Alex slipped back into place as my older brother—the brother I’d always confided in when I was a little girl. I took another gulp of coffee
and launched into my story of Tom’s deployment, the challenges of moving to a new part of the country, and the shooting. He was easy to talk to, although I skated carefully away from my fears that I might break down one day as he had. A comment like that didn’t seem very polite.

  He listened with his whole body, focused like an English pointer on a duck. I finished my summary with the recent visit to the police precinct. He nodded with something like admiration. “Imagine: all my years on the street with no efforts at personal safety, but it’s my cautious, reliable sister who’s nearly shot. The world’s a funny place.”

  “Yeah. Real funny.”

  He sobered. “Is it getting any better?”

  “It was rough for a while, but I think I’ve just about got it licked.”

  Alex watched me. He didn’t take my confident statement as a hint to brush aside the topic. Didn’t hurry to a new subject. Didn’t offer advice. Just waited.

  A quiet voice nudged me. Tell him the truth.

  He’d been open about his own struggles. I didn’t need bravado with him. A fellow visitor to the dark valleys wouldn’t despise me for admitting my fears. “I had a really bad nightmare after I went to the police station. And last night—” I clamped my lips together. Idiot! Don’t bring up mental hospitals.

  “Spiders? Snakes? Swirling down the drain at the neighborhood pool?” he teased.

  I sputtered. “Those nightmares were your fault. You told me that if I didn’t kick hard enough, the drain would suck me down. I had bad dreams for months.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, but you learned how to swim.”

  I stuck out my tongue.

  “Watch out or your face will freeze that way. Come on, sis. It helps to talk.”

  A throw pillow captured my attention, and I fingered the fringe along the edges. “In the dream I was in a hospital. A mental hospital.” I glanced up.

  His brow furrowed. “Ooh. Super deluxe nightmare. That’s about as bad as it gets. What happened?”

  “Some orderlies were dragging me to a room where they were shocking people. I couldn’t get away. They were going to scramble my brain cells, and I kept fighting.” I shook my head. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

  “No. Electro-convulsive therapy is a scary idea.” His voice rasped, and he reached for his coffee and drained it.

  “Did you . . . did they . . ?”

  “Yep. I should have known Mom and Dad never told you. They were horrified when the doctors recommended it. Appalled that neighbors might find out their son was that defective.”

  “Oh, Alex. You were never defective. You were brilliant and sensitive and so terribly sad. There were days when I wanted to yell in your ears—force happy thoughts into that sad place inside your skull.”

  He grinned. “It probably would have worked better than everything else they tried. But why were you having nightmares about ECT?”

  I gnawed a cuticle on my pinkie finger. “Maybe because I’ve been so . . . unpredictable lately. I kind of figured it would be my turn next.”

  “Your turn?”

  “To go . . . you know, crazy.”

  To my surprise he leaned back and laughed. “Penny Penguin, you are the sanest person I ever knew. You can’t have changed that much in all these years.”

  I hadn’t heard that nickname in decades.

  “Oh, yeah? Well what about not being able to sleep for days, and then spending weeks doing nothing but sleeping. And the botanical garden—some guy bumped me and I thought I was having a heart attack . . .” Suddenly, my words couldn’t come out fast enough. Alex had plenty of experience at the frayed edges of sanity. I told him each bit of evidence that I was nuts. No matter what I admitted, he didn’t seem alarmed. He continued to nod, listen, and reassure.

  When I ran out of proof of my frazzled mind, I rubbed my temples where my headache had reasserted itself. “You can see why I’m worried. I’ve even been going to a support group.”

  He didn’t laugh. “Sounds like a good plan. I wish I’d accepted help sooner. But Penny, you’re not crazy. You’re having a normal reaction to incredible stress. You’re already improving.”

  “I forgot to tell you about the tinfoil helmets I made so the aliens couldn’t read my thoughts.”

  His eyes widened.

  I grinned. “Gotcha.”

  He groaned and clasped his head, tilting back to look at the ceiling. “For this I drove all the way to Virginia?”

  I giggled. “Are you hungry?” We’d been talking for over an hour, and lunchtime was creeping closer.

  “Now you’re talking.” He surged to his feet. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  I sent him down the hall and hustled into the kitchen to whip up some fried-egg sandwiches. He’d loved them when he was living at home.

  A few minutes later he meandered into the kitchen and sniffed the air with appreciation. “I should have gotten in touch a long time ago.” Behind the breezy words, a shade of genuine regret colored his voice.

  “Make yourself useful. Can you get out the iced tea?”

  “Got any Coke?”

  I stiffened. “I don’t drink it anymore. I was at the convenience store to get some that day . . . when the . . .”

  Instead of a murmur of sympathy, he tsked. He found two glasses and squeezed past me to open the fridge. “Sis, you’re doing a great job healing, but you know there’s something you still need to do.”

  “Drink Coke? Puh-lease.”

  He laughed. “No. But you said you haven’t gone back. Where it happened.”

  A cold draft hit the back of my neck, and I whipped around to close the refrigerator door—but it was already shut. “That’s not gonna happen. Do you want cheese on yours?”

  “Of course. But, sis, you really—”

  “Nah-ah. Your turn. No food unless you promise to tell me how you got better.”

  “Blackmail! Extortion!” He pulled out a chair at the table in the alcove.

  “This from the guy who hid my diary until I convinced Mom we needed a swing set.”

  “It worked.”

  Laughing, reminiscing, and filling our mouths with gooey egg and cheese, the years fell away. He told me about Cindy’s new baby, how much older Mom and Dad seemed to him, and revealed snippets of how he’d spent the preceding years. He nagged me to consider facing down the Quick Corner and paged through my photo album, admiring my wedding photos and Bryan’s baby pictures. It wasn’t until he glanced at his watch and pushed away from the table that I realized he hadn’t explained how his life had stopped its downward spiral.

  “I need to go, sis. I’ve got a meeting tonight, and my car’s been overheating, so I wanted to take it in to get looked at first.”

  “Bryan is dying to meet you.”

  “I’m free again tomorrow. I could take you both out for dinner.”

  A generous offer. His car was rusty, and his jacket was worn. Wherever the years had taken him, a win on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire hadn’t been one of his stops. “Sounds good. No, wait. I have my victims’ group tomorrow night.” I chewed my lower lip. “Dr. Marci said I should invite you. She thought you’d have some insights for our group.”

  “Insights?” His chuckle was warm. “Sure. Why not? But you still have to eat. What time is the meeting?”

  “Seven.”

  “Okay. I’ll pick you both up at five. Where do you like to eat out around here?”

  “I haven’t had time to try many places.” Eating out didn’t mesh well with agoraphobia, but I didn’t bother reminding him of that. “I’ll do a Google search for someplace close to the victim support center, okay? What do you like?”

  “Anything I don’t have to make for myself.”

  “Maybe there’s a Cheesecake Factory around here. You could do with some fattening up.”

  “So could you,” he shot back. “It’s a deal. Major calories. I’ll be here at five tomorrow.”

  He breezed out the door, and his car sputtered as it pulled away. I collapse
d on the couch. Memories and emotions swirled like dust in a cyclonic vacuum, and I closed my eyes against their force.

  “So, is he big? Does he play football?” When Bryan got home from school, his questions fired at me faster than I could follow in my post-nap fog.

  “He’s pretty tall. I didn’t ask if he’s played football lately. Bryan, where’s the costume information?” His classroom newsletter had warned parents to watch for the list of supplies needed for the upcoming Thanksgiving play.

  “My backpack. Know what? He could stay here until Dad gets home. Then he could fix things, and play football with me, and lift heavy things. Stuff like that.”

  I couldn’t wait to e-mail Tom about Bryan’s description of the male role in the family. “Honey, Uncle Alex has his own life.” Although what that comprised was still a mystery to me.

  “Did he like Gimli and Legolas?”

  “Go get me the costume list.”

  He scampered to his room and back in record time. “How many seconds did that take, Mom?”

  “I wasn’t counting.”

  He huffed loudly and planted fists on his hips. “Count this time.”

  “But I—”

  Paper still clutched in his hand, he tore back up the hall.

  “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi . . .”

  He skidded into me before I reached eight. Triumph flushed his face as he thrust the crumpled paper at me. “I’m fast, aren’t I, Mom? Did Uncle Alex like playing with Gimli and Legolas?”

  I smoothed the page, and my eyes crossed at the long list of suggestions for costume pieces. “He didn’t meet them this time.”

  When the silence stretched, I tore my gaze away from reading. Bryan’s arms were crossed, and his scowl was fierce. “Mom. Why didn’t you show him my hamsters?”

  Think fast, Supermom.

  “I knew you’d want to introduce them to him yourself. He’s coming over tomorrow.”

  Bryan leapt onto the couch, somersaulted across it, and bounded up to stand on the cushions with one foot planted on the arm. “Yippee!”

  Last time I’d watched nature shows on PBS, the silverback gorilla pounded his chest in the same stance.