I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.
I drew in a breath and released it through my mouth. Once, then again. My pulse began to slow. After another breath, I straightened and looked about. Traffic flowed on the street beyond the parking lot, green lights turning amber, amber lights turning red, red lights turning green in timed succession. As if everything were normal and right in the world when I knew good and well it wasn’t.
Seated in his wheelchair in the family room, the telephone pressed to his ear, Brad waved at me when I entered through the back door later that afternoon. I returned the wave, then looked to see what was cooking in the kitchen. I’d been so upset after my run-in with Fran that I forgot to eat lunch. Now I was ravenous. I lifted the lid on the Crock-Pot. Some sort of stew made with tomato sauce, onions, potatoes, and hamburger. Nothing fancy but it smelled delicious.
“Hi,Mom.”
I turned toward Emma.
“How’d it go today?”
I shrugged. “Not great. I only filled out one application. I either lack the skills or the educational requirements for most things I’m interested in.” I set my purse on the counter and slipped out of my shoes, scooting them into a corner with my big toe.“But I’m going to enjoy doing the makeover on Susan’s house. I spent a couple of hours at her place this afternoon, and I’ve got a number of good ideas.”
“That’s good.” Emma tipped her head toward the family room. “Dad’s had a pretty good day. His ribs hurt, and his leg’s starting to itch. He’s talking to Pastor Mike right now.”
“I won’t disturb him then.”
“You didn’t let Pastor Mike know that Dad was hurt, did you?” Censure was back in her tone.
I opened the refrigerator and removed the pitcher of iced tea.
“You should have called him,Mom.”
“I know. I . . . forgot.”
Emma came to stand beside me, placing her hand lightly on my upper arm. “It isn’t like you to forget stuff like that.”
No, she was right about that. It wasn’t like me not to do the right thing in the right way at the right time. But nothing in my life was as it was supposed to be. I wished she understood that.
I wished everyone understood it.
Emma released a soft sigh. “I’d better go home. I’ve got to get dinner ready for Jason. I’ll be back in the morning. Is nine o’clock still okay?”
“Yes, I think that’s plenty early.” I took a sip of tea. “I’ll go fill out any applications for job possibilities, then I’ll go back to Susan’s. She’s taking tomorrow afternoon off so we can make decisions about new carpet and what colors to paint the walls.”
“Do you plan to be out all day? I thought you might want to be back earlier tomorrow.”
I rubbed my forehead with the fingertips of my left hand. “I really don’t know how long it will take, Emma. Is it important for me to tell you now?”
The silence in the room grew thick. I looked toward my daughter and found myself condemned in her eyes. Why, I couldn’t say. For no good reason I could think of. After all, she’d volunteered to stay with her dad while I was working, and working was what I would be doing with Susan tomorrow.
“No,” she answered. “I guess it isn’t important. Not to you, anyway.” She turned on her heel and strode into the family room.
“Hold on a second,Mike,” I heard Brad say. Then he accepted our daughter’s kiss on his cheek, thanked her for all she’d done, and told her he would see her in the morning.
Emma didn’t look my way a second time as she headed for the front door. A second or two later, it closed behind her.
I didn’t know what I’d done to earn another round of Emma’s anger, but I was tired of it. I was tired of being judged by someone who hadn’t a clue what it was like to walk in my shoes.
I went upstairs to change out of my businesswoman’s job-hunting attire, replacing it with jeans and a loose-fitting top. Then with a practiced hand, I swept my hair off the back of my neck and caught it with a clip.
Would I be happier if I left him?
My heart stuttered, then began to race. I turned my gaze toward the mirror above the dresser.
Even the Bible gives me a pass if he was unfaithful.
“Do you want a pass?” I whispered.
My reflection didn’t answer.
Sleepless, heartsick, I left Emma’s old bedroom some time after two in the morning and walked down the hall to the master bedroom. There, I stood in the darkness, staring toward the empty bed. The bed I had long shared with my husband. Tears slipped from my eyes and made slow paths down my cheeks.
I missed Brad more than I could say. I missed the easy camaraderie we’d shared. I missed his teasing, and I missed teasing him. I missed the times I would lie in his arms, just before sleep overtook us, feeling secure and loved. I missed his warm breath on my skin as he whispered those proverbial sweet nothings in my ear. I missed the way he used to read something in the Bible and then share with me what the Lord had shown him about applying it to his own life. I missed watching old movies together, a bowl of popcorn on the sofa between us.
Sniffing, I moved toward my side of the bed. The side that had been mine throughout our marriage. I pulled a tissue from the box on the nightstand and dried my eyes. Then I lifted the top sheet and comforter and slid into the cool softness that awaited me.
Lying on my side, I reached across to Brad’s side of the bed, touching where his pillow should have been, where he should have been. When I pressed my face against the sheet and breathed in, I caught the scent of him, a whisper of his favorite cologne.
A tiny sob escaped my throat.
I didn’t want to be alone.Not in this bed. Not in my life. But how could we mend all that was now broken between us? It seemed so impossible.
Thirty
I MET SUSAN FOR LUNCH AT A RESTAURANT NOT FAR FROM Lowe’s, our first shopping destination.
As soon as the waitress took our orders, Susan leaned forward, arms on the table. “You don’t look as excited about redecorating my place as you were yesterday. What’s bothering you, girlfriend? Spill.”
“Nothing new. Just the same things.” I looked toward the ceiling in the far corner of the restaurant. “I can’t find a job. Hayley won’t take her dad’s calls. Emma is angry at me for not behaving differently. Whenever we’re together, Brad watches me with wounded eyes. And I don’t know which way is up anymore.”
Susan nodded but said nothing.
I drew in a ragged breath. “Do you think it’s possible for a marriage to be repaired once trust is lost?”
“Anything’s possible, Kat. But making a marriage work isn’t easy in the best of circumstances. When they’re not the best . . .” She shrugged.
Tears threatened, and I concentrated on forcing them back into hiding.
Susan wasn’t fooled. “Listen. You want some advice?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure it was true. Not if she said something I didn’t want to hear.
“Kat, women stay with men for all kinds of reasons. Some good. Some not so good. You? I think you’ve stayed with Brad because of what the Bible says. Without your faith, I think you’d’ve hightailed it out of there long before now.” She paused as the waitress delivered our drink orders, then played with the paper on her straw for a few moments before continuing. “You know what? I envy you. Maybe if I had half your faith, I’d’ve stayed married to Ogden and we could have made it over those bumps we had in the road of life. He wasn’t a bad man, you know, or a bad husband. He was a pretty decent guy, all things considered. He loved me when I let him.”
My surprise must have shown. I’d never heard Susan express regret over her divorce. Either one of them.
She waved her hand, as if trying to erase what she’d said. “Here’s what I meant to say: get over yourself. Fish or cut bait.”
I leaned back against the cushion of the booth.
“Be married or don’t be married. Just quit being . . . uncommitted to eit
her one. That’s not fair to anybody. Not to your girls or to Brad or to yourself. Shoot, it’s not even fair to your best friend.” She touched her collarbone with the fingertips of one hand, as if I needed her to remind me who my best friend was.“I’ll root for you and Brad to make it, or I’ll root for you to make it on your own. But what you’re doing now? Waffling back and forth, feeling sorry for yourself without doing what you need to change things? It’s hard to root for that.”
Softly, I said, “Why not tell me how you really feel?”
She laughed, and I managed a wry smile in return. More might have been said, but our waitress arrived with our meals. I was grateful, for by the time the girl left, I was ready to steer our conversation to carpet and wall paint and away from me.
“Tell me what’s happened since you were last here,” the counselor said at the beginning of our one-hour session.
As I detailed the events of the past week—my run-in with Nicole at the store, my move into Emma’s old room, our children’s anger, the way I’d felt in church on Sunday, Brad’s accident, my job search, Susan’s less than gentle words of advice over lunch—I thought of Eeyore, the gloomy blue gray donkey from Winnie the Pooh. Was I starting to sound like him?
“Everything feels so out of control.” I reached for a tissue. “Susan says I’m waffling back and forth, that I’m just feeling sorry for myself. I guess she’s right. I do feel sorry for myself. I want things to be as they were before all of this began.”
“Katherine, have you thought about why you distrust Brad when there is no evidence against him, except for Nicole’s word?”
That seemed an odd question. Of course, I had. Hadn’t I?
Donna gave me a knowing smile. “We can’t always alter our circumstances, and we can’t control how others behave or think, no matter how hard we try. Our focus must be on what we need to change about ourselves—our attitudes, our words, our actions—even if our circumstances and the other people in our lives remain the same.”
“What if I don’t know what I need to change about myself?”
“Ask God to show you.”
Ask God. Yes, I should do that. I should pray about it. But if God answered, I feared I wouldn’t know it. There was too much noise and confusion in my head these days to hear a still, small voice.
I arrived home around three o’clock in the afternoon. Emma’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which surprised me. She hadn’t told me she’d be leaving early. I parked my car in the garage, gathered the carpet samples and paint chips along with my purse, and headed for the back door.When I opened it, I heard music playing on the stereo.
“I’m home,” I called.
No answer.
I stepped into the kitchen and dropped my things on the nearest counter. As I turned, I saw a bouquet of long-stemmed red and white roses on the table. I moved toward them. The air was thick with their sweet fragrance.
There was a small envelope in the clear plastic holder, stuck in the middle of the bouquet. It was addressed to me. I reached for it, wondering who would send me flowers and why. Then I opened the envelope and pulled out the gift card.
For the first 25 years. May we find even more happiness in the next 25. I love you. Brad.
My eyes darted from the card to the wall calendar. How was it possible I’d forgotten our anniversary? I was the one who remembered all of the milestones in my family’s lives. And to forget our twenty-fifth? Impossible! And yet it was true. No wonder Emma was mad at me.
From behind me came the sound of throat clearing. I turned to face my husband.
He didn’t look much like the groom I’d met at the end of the church aisle on our wedding day. Not with the skin around his eyes tinted black, purple, and yellow. Not with several days of dark stubble on his jaw.
“You’re home earlier than we expected,” he said. “Emma went to pick up a cake.”
I glanced at the flowers. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect you to.”
That made me feel worse. “You shouldn’t have spent the money.”
“Maybe not. But I spent it anyway.”He rolled his chair toward me.“I wanted you to know how much I love you. I wanted you to know I’ll be here for you. I’ll do whatever it takes, Kat, to still be your husband twenty-five years from now.”
I thought of something my dad used to say when I was young: “Katherine, today’s the first day of the rest of your life. You can change your future by the choices you make today.” As a teenager, I’d thought the axiom hokey, but now I heard the wisdom behind the words.
A longing overtook me. A desire to reach out and stroke the stubble on Brad’s jaw, to kiss his blackened eyes, to tell him I loved him too.
“Fish or cut bait,” Susan had said. “Be married or don’t be married.”
“Ask God to show you,” Donna had said about my need for change.
“You can change your future,” my father had said.
What was I supposed to do now?
Emma didn’t stay long after she returned from the bakery with the cake—carrot cake with sour cream frosting, “Happy 25th Anniversary”written across it in red. She gave her dad a kiss, then gave me one too. I hadn’t been sure she would.
“I’ll see you both in the morning,” she said on the way to the door.
A few minutes later, I went upstairs and closed myself in Emma’s room. I paced from the door to the dresser to the door to the dresser. A storm of thoughts, feelings, and memories rushed through me.
Then, emotionally spent, I dropped to my knees beside the bed. “God, will You show me?”
For the longest while, I waited, strained to hear His answer. But I heard no voice. I had no vision. It seemed I was not destined to hear God the way others did.
And then, ever so slowly, there came upon me a simple moment of knowing something I hadn’t known before.
Since the day of Nicole’s appearance on Channel 5, I’d wanted—no, expected—God to rescue me, to make the troubles stop and go away, to restore my life to what it used to be. But here in this room, on my knees, I realized that I needed God more than I needed rescuing. I needed to draw closer to Him in the storm more than I needed to be taken out of the storm. Perhaps the realization had begun when Susan said she envied me my faith, and deep in my heart—too deep to recognize at the time—I’d feared the faith I had was too little, too whispery thin, to be envied. Was it even the size of a mustard seed?
Tears dropped onto the bedspread.
Somehow I had to find Him before I could find any of the answers I sought.
Brad
BRAD HAD THOUGHT GIVING HIS WIFE FLOWERS WAS A good idea. He’d thought the cake would please her. Now his confidence was shaken. He’d bungled things again. He’d failed again.
He rolled the wheelchair close to the window and gazed out at the back lawn. “What now, God? How do I fix things?”
Let go.
He stilled, waiting, listening.
Let go.
He released his breath, letting it out slowly, until he felt empty. No, not just felt it. He was empty.
Let her go.
That couldn’t be God’s voice he heard in his head and heart. God wouldn’t tell him to let Katherine go. That couldn’t be how his prayers would be answered. And yet he knew it was the Lord speaking to him.
“Brad?”
His heart thudded. It hurt to breathe, and it had nothing to do with cracked ribs.
“Brad?”
He turned the wheelchair around to face the entry to the family room. There she stood, looking pale and sad. She’d been crying again.
“I . . . I need to go away for a while. A few days. Maybe a week.”
Let go. Let her go. The pain in his chest intensified.
“Will you call Emma after I’m gone? I know she’ll come and stay with you until I get back.”
Are you coming back? The question lodged in his throat.
Her smile was brief and tentative. The
n it was gone. “She’ll be mad at me, but ask her to please understand this is something I need to do.” She took a step closer to him. “I hope you’ll understand too.”
He didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. But when he looked into her eyes, he saw the storm in her soul, and like it or not, he knew he had to release her if she was ever to find her way back to him.
He cleared his throat, hoping his voice wouldn’t crack when he spoke. “Will you make sure someone knows where you are so we don’t have to worry?”
Again that tentative smile. “I called Annabeth. She’ll know how to reach me.”
Her words lessened his fear.
Katherine reached out, touching his cheek with her fingertips, little more than a whisper against his skin. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He watched as she walked toward the door that led into the garage. There, she picked up a suitcase and her purse, then glanced over her shoulder at him. One last wistful smile, and she was gone.
After the rise and fall of the garage door, Brad closed his eyes. “Whatever else happens, Father, heal her hurts. Even if it means she never comes back to me, draw her closer to You and make her heart whole again.”
And so he let her go.
Thirty-one
THE CABIN NEAR PAYETTE LAKE HAD BEEN IN THE Sorenson family for four generations. Annabeth offered it to me the instant I told her I needed to get away for a few days. Perhaps she could tell from the tone of my voice that there was a storm brewing inside me.
The forest was thick with shadows by the time I pulled up to the A-frame cabin with its cedar-shake roof and large weathered deck that wrapped around two sides. When I opened the car door, the mountain breeze brushed against my skin, the scent of pine needles teasing my nostrils. As I released a breath, some of the tension eased from my neck and shoulders.
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