“No.” He turned away, as if to escape her touch.
She refused to allow it. She followed him, her stroking hand offering the comfort he didn’t seem to want. “You said you saw the man who killed her. Then the police know who it was?”
“They don’t know anything. I don’t know anything!” He pushed her hand away. He could not tolerate her touch. His throat was blocked with emotion; his head was threatening to explode. And her touch, the soft warmth of her hands, was threatening to send him over the edge.
“Then it was just a figure in the shadows?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He sat up straight and opened his eyes.
“Well, I do,” she said softly. “Because it’s eating you alive. And I’m not going to let that happen. You don’t deserve it.”
“You don’t know what I deserve.” He rose on unsteady legs and found his way to the window. The room, which had seemed pleasantly warm when he’d first come in, now seemed unbearably hot. He opened the window and stared out at the gray streets below.
“You don’t deserve to suffer,” she said. “I’ve tried leaving you alone. I thought you’d tell me about your past in your own good time. But you won’t. I know that now. You’ll keep it locked inside you to fester. I’m tired of being shut out.”
“Are you?” He turned. “Believe me, it’s for the best. You don’t want to be where I am, Garnet. It’s not a fit place for any human being, especially not one like you.”
“Like me?”
“That’s right. You’re so full of life, and I’m so full of regrets.”
She folded her arms. She was standing beside him, but not close enough to touch. She knew what a mistake that would be. “Tell me about them.”
“Leave it alone.”
“No. I don’t think so. I think it’s time we faced each other the way we really are. You see shadows in your dreams? I see them every waking day. I see them every time I look at you. I want to see the real Thomas Stonehill. I deserve that much.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do know. Exactly.”
He turned away again and slammed the window shut. Then he leaned against it, his cheek against the cool glass, and shut his eyes.
He had no right to keep his past from her. Not anymore. Their marriage had never been real, yet in more ways than he could have guessed, it bordered on reality. If he’d learned anything from his years with Patricia, it was the mistake of not sharing. Patricia had died because he had kept the most essential parts of himself from her.
“You look at me, and what do you see?” he asked.
She felt for words, discarded them. “A voice crying in the wilderness,” she said at last.
“You’ve been to Deering Hills to see Candy and Francis. Have you passed the Deering Hills Community Church?”
“It's not possible to go through Deering and not pass the church. The town’s practically built around it.”
“I was pastor there for six years.”
She whistled softly. The mega church was a phenomenon. It sat on a hill like an ancient temple. The parking lot took up a square block. A fleet of buses and vans was parked along the roadside to gather in the faithful on Sunday mornings.
“We had six thousand people on our local mailing list,” he said, “and another six thousand nationwide who subscribed to my sermon series. The attendance on Sundays doubled the first year after I was called. We went to three services the second year, two in the morning, one in the evening. The third year I began my own radio show to reach the people we couldn’t fit in the pews. My fourth we added two wings and knocked out a wall to double the capacity of the sanctuary. During my final year we were looking into a television ministry.”
“And then something happened,” she said.
He faced her. “I always wanted to go into the ministry. My family is influential. One brother is a vice president in the family bank. The other is an attorney in an old, old Philadelphia firm. I was the youngest, the one who didn’t fit in. Eventually my parents saw that I wasn’t going to change my mind. I wanted a pulpit, and I wanted to be heard. So I went to seminary, but my father told me that if I was going to pursue this nonsense, I’d better be the best damn minister in the business.”
“And were you?”
“I went to seminary at Harvard. I did postgraduate work at Yale. I interned in one of the largest churches in New York, and while I was there, I married the bishop’s daughter. Patricia’s mother died when Patricia was a teenager, and she took over her mother’s duties without a blink of an eye. She was perfectly suited to become the wife of an upcoming star in the denomination. She knew exactly what to say, what to do, in any situation. She could listen and lead-unobtrusively, of course—and she could entertain. She looked wonderful in the front pew every Sunday, refined, feminine, prayerful. The only thing she couldn’t do was get my attention.”
He turned to the window. “She wanted children. I was in agreement, just as long as she assumed full responsibility. Children are an asset to a minister’s image, but congregations don’t, as a rule, understand that they also need some of a father’s time. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Patricia couldn’t get pregnant. We were never sure exactly why. She had several problems that were corrected, and I had none. We followed all the rules. But she never conceived.”
“That must have been difficult for you both.”
“I didn’t have time to be concerned. In a way, I guess, I was relieved. I was climbing the ladder so quickly I didn’t want anything to slow me down. And Patricia was such an asset, I didn’t really want her to be sidelined by children. But she wasn’t relieved. She was devastated. I realize now that she saw motherhood as a role that had nothing to do with her image as a minister’s wife. She knew by then that she would never really have my attention. I was focused totally on my career. She expected children to give her the love I didn’t have time for. When she couldn’t have them, her life no longer had meaning.”
“But there were other things she could have done.”
“She knew that.” He watched Garnet’s image in the glass. She was standing just behind him now. He turned so the real woman was visible.
“She tried to talk to me,” he said. “She really tried. I made promises and didn’t keep them. There was always a meeting I had to attend, a hospital to visit, a sermon to prepare. There was never time to get away with her to plan our lives. My life was fine the way it was. I refused to understand that hers was not.”
He was still facing her, but he shut his eyes again. “Then one evening she came to the church to see me. She never made it to my study, but I found out later that she had come to tell me she was leaving me. She had confided that much to a friend. Afterward, the friend made sure to let me know. The police put together what must have happened after Patricia got out of her car. She started toward the front door. When she got there, she was accosted by someone. There was a struggle. That much we know. She wasn’t the kind to struggle, but I think by then she was distraught. She was tired of standing by and letting others rob her of everything that mattered. So when the man went after her purse, she fought him. The police think he shoved her. Hard. What we know for sure is that she fell backward and hit her head on the corner of the entryway. She probably died instantly.’’
“Thomas.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“I stayed at church until almost midnight. I wanted my sermon the next morning to be perfect. There was to be a meeting of the board of deacons after the service. The television ministry was to be discussed. I wanted everyone going into that meeting to know that I was worth whatever funds we had to raise, that my ministry would be a credit to the church. When I came out the front door, I stumbled. At first I didn’t know what had caught my foot. Then I saw her....”
“I’m so, so sorry, Thomas.” She put her hand on his arm.
He jerked away. “Why? It’s fine to be sorry for Patricia. She died without having a chance to l
ive. I made sure of that. But don’t be sorry for me. I brought it all on myself with my greed and vanity. I stole her life and used it for my own purposes!”
“She had choices, too.”
“And when she decided to exercise them, she died.”
“But how could that be your fault? You didn’t know she was coming to see you that night. Maybe if she’d stood up to you sooner, she’d be alive today.”
“It was not her fault. I rode over her. I molded her into the image I thought I needed in my ministry, just like her father did before me. She never stood a chance. I never once thought about her needs. Don’t you see what that says about the man I was? I wasn’t thinking about her, I wasn’t thinking about the people I was ministering to, I was thinking about myself. And Patricia died because of my sins!”
“You have this all out of kilter.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Some part of him wanted to believe her. A larger part knew he was guilty and would remain so until the day he died. “I’ve had years to put it in perspective. I resigned my pastorate the day of Patricia’s funeral, and then I left the state. I spent two years wandering. As far as my family and friends knew, I was dead. I took any job that came my way, slept in doorways if nothing did. I drank my way through a hundred gallons of rotgut liquor, but I sobered up after six months. I wasn’t even a successful drunk. Alcohol just made my nightmares worse.”
“What happened then? What brought you here?”
“I found out that you can’t run away from who you are.”
“And who you are is a man of God, with God’s message to proclaim.”
He met her eyes this time. “No.”
“But isn’t that where your story is leading? Isn’t that why you came back? Because you knew you had something to offer? That your own experiences had taught you about the pain, and you wanted to start a church in a place where you were really needed?”
“That part’s true.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I’m not a man of God, Garnet. There hasn’t been any God inside me since Patricia died.”
She still didn’t understand. But she did understand that now his eyes were not empty of emotion. They brimmed with it. They burned with it.
“I’ll make it simple,” he said. “I stand up on Sundays and preach. And I say what’s in my heart. I talk about ways people can change their lives. I talk about the community coming together to make things better for everyone. I tell stories about men and women who have done that throughout the ages. But I don’t pretend those messages come from God. Because I gave up on God the day He gave up on Patricia. I can no longer speak with assurance about something I don’t really believe in.”
“You don’t believe in God?”
“That’s as close to the truth as anything, I guess.”
He was struggling to hide his feelings, but nothing could hide his torture. “I don’t believe you,” she said, and she didn't.
“Sometimes I don’t believe myself. I don’t believe I have the gall to speak of things I no longer understand. But when I stopped speaking of those things, I was in hell. When I came here and began to speak of them again, I put hell on hold. I can make a difference in the Corners. Maybe I can even keep someone else from suffering the way I suffered, the way Patricia must have suffered.”
“But how did you... ? How could you... ?”
“I woke up one morning and realized that even if I have nothing else left of all those years in the ministry, I could still do some good in the world. I’ve been trained to counsel, trained to preach and organize. I could use that training or I could sleep in doorways. And put that way, the choice seemed simple.”
She still didn’t believe him. She knew he was telling the truth as he saw it, but there was more behind his words. She could sense as much, even if she didn’t know what, exactly.
“So I resumed a life of sorts, here in the Corners. I send cards to my family from time to time, and they do the same. They’d prefer not to acknowledge my existence, but they’re too upstanding to give in to that impulse. Most of my friends and colleagues still don’t know where I am, and I’ve preferred to keep it that way.”
“You’ve been so alone.”
“Now you know what an impostor I am,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You wanted the truth, and you’ve got it. Our marriage isn’t the only thing I’ve faked. My entire life is as counterfeit as a three-dollar bill.”
She looked at him for a long time. She saw the same man she had known. A man of integrity. A man of courage. A man of compassion. The blue eyes that could snap with life when he preached were desolate now, as if by admitting the truth he had doomed himself. But they were the same eyes.
“We have a celebration dinner waiting for us,” she said at last.
He shook his head. “What do we have to celebrate?”
“The first day of our marriage.”
He shook his head again.
“I was married to a stranger,” she said. “Now I’m married to someone made of flesh and blood. And I like this man better.”
“Garnet...”
“Thomas.” She smoothed his hair off his forehead. He brushed her hand away, but she wasn’t intimidated. She touched his cheek. “Something wonderful happened at the church today, even if you can’t see it right now. You made a difference. Dorothy made a difference. Come with me. We’ll toast Dorothy with mineral water and eat our meal in her honor. And we’ll do it as two human beings with a thousand flaws between them who are still, despite everything, trying to do what’s right.”
He stared at her. He had told her his darkest secrets, secrets he had never admitted to anyone. And still she touched him. She strove to heal his pain.
He took her wrist, but he couldn’t push it away. “I could hurt you, the way I hurt Patricia,” he said. “Even in the short time we’ll be together.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Because you’ve admitted you’re human? That you made mistakes? That you have doubts? Those are just more reasons to care about you.”
“Don’t care about me!”
“I’m afraid you’re too late.” She withdrew her hand, but she felt as if she was still touching him. She wanted to ease his pain, to wipe away all his terrible memories and his guilt.
But she had done all she could tonight. She knew better than to say any more. And she knew better than to touch him again, even though she ached to give him solace.
“Now will you come and have dinner with me?” she asked.
He watched her start toward the kitchen. She had disappeared before he realized that he was going to follow. He waited for the all too familiar feeling of defeat. He had failed again, failed to warn her away, failed to make her understand his sins.
But the feeling didn’t come.
“Thomas?”
Even as he tried to steel himself against her, he was drawn toward the sound of her voice.
10
Outside the window a truck gunned its engine in sync with the out-of-tune morning chimes from St. Michael’s blocks away. In fifteen minutes Garnet would be late for work. She had awakened late after a restless night, and judging from a peek at the living room couch, Thomas hadn’t awakened at all.
She imagined his night had been restless, too. Their celebration dinner had lasted into the wee hours. She had borne the greater part of the conversation, but he had relaxed as the evening wore on. She knew how painful his revelations had been, but she believed—or hoped—that it had helped him a little to tell her about Patricia.
It had helped her. She paused in the middle of twisting her hair on top of her head and examined the face staring back at her. She had been so wrong about his first marriage. Thomas did not look at her and wish she was Patricia; he did not even want her to be like Patricia. He had loved his wife—his sorrow would not be as profound if he hadn’t— but she didn’t think he wished for marriage to someone like Pa
tricia again. He needed a woman who would stand up to him, who would insist that she be included in his life. Ironically, when Patricia had finally rebelled, she had died.
The face of a brash, worldly-wise woman stared at Garnet, but this morning she could see more than the obvious. The woman in the mirror had blamed Thomas’s rejection on herself. She had believed herself to be the cause of Thomas’s impotence. He had not wanted to make love to her because she had failed, just as she often had, to be good enough, bright enough, attractive enough.
The worthless teenager who had turned to drugs and alcohol, to absences from school and unprotected sex, stared at her. Garnet knew she had come a long way in the intervening years, but apparently she had not come far enough. She could still let her own perceived inadequacies drag her down. She could still blame herself for things that were not her fault.
“So grow up already,” she said, turning away from the mirror.
In the living room she noted that Thomas slept on. Finn had called almost half an hour earlier to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to walk her to work. He was ill and furious at his body for forcing him to take the day off. She had promised him she would let Thomas accompany her. But Thomas had never gotten up, and she wasn’t about to wake him. Not when he seemed to be sleeping so peacefully.
His arm was thrown over one stubbly cheek. The covers were twisted around his hips, and his pajama shirt was unbuttoned. She studied him, but not dispassionately. Naming what she felt when she looked at Thomas wasn’t easy. Desire wasn’t broad enough. Love was too frightening. Yearning? Well, perhaps that was closest.
She yearned to be held in his arms. They were strong arms, arms that could hold back the world as well as embrace it. She yearned for the intimacy of passionate nights and lazy, sensuous mornings.
Thomas was all man, yet he claimed not to be able to consummate their marriage. What secrets were still locked away inside him?
They were married. Husband and wife. But she had never seen him without his clothes. She let her gaze rest on him for another moment; she knew if he awoke, he would see longing in her eyes.
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