Jill smiled in response, then went out and drove home to Beauview. She went into her townhouse in stunned silence, came to a stop in the center of the living room and moaned, clutching her head between her palms. She dropped to her knees, but no prayer would come. How could she talk to God when He had deemed her unfit?
Had they all known? Her parents, her aunt who kept her through the pregnancy and daily reminded her not to grow attached? “God knew where I needed to be.” Such innocent words, yet they tore open her spirit and left it writhing in pitiful shreds. Worthless, they cried. Worthless.
CHAPTER
13
Morgan loved the rugged shore of the Santa Barbara coast. The public beach, a couple miles south of his home, was not that great, and his narrow strip at the base of the cliff could hardly be called beach at all. But the view and the power of the sea—that was worth every cent he’d spent on his coastal property. He sat a long while on his balcony, long after the citrine and ruby hues had faded over the water, and now there was only the restless sound of it. He nursed a snifter of Courvoisier in the starlight and thought of Jill.
It had taken a lot for her to come to him, to find and tell him the truth an? ask his help. All for a child she’d sloughed off at birth. But Rick’s words were true. It could not have been easy for Jill to stand up against her parents and have the child. It meant embarrassment for the family, especially one so “Christian.”
Morgan well remembered their condemnation. He might have been the anti-Christ, not a foolish kid in love with their daughter. His youth bore no consideration, nor the fact that Jill had willingly participated. No, he was the accursed, and she …
He raised his glass. “Here’s to you, Jill, my sweet fall from grace.” He drank her toast, thinking of her eyes awash with tears, and how he’d wanted to kiss them away. “Blissful iniquity.” Strange how porous the self became in the still of night. His chest constricted and he took the brandy into his throat as he took the night into his soul.
Jill opened her swollen eyes to the tapping on her window. What? She rolled out of bed, crossed the room, and pushed aside the curtain. Dan. He motioned to her, and she trudged to the front door and admitted him. “I’m not running today.”
He chucked her chin. “You look awful.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you sick?”
Yes. Unto death. “No.”
“What is it, Jill?”
She headed for the kitchen, poured two glasses of orange juice, and sat on the iron stool at her counter. Dan took the other stool and swigged down a gulp of juice. Jill let the tangy sweetness refresh her mouth, though it was a surface reaction at best.
“Tell me what’s up.”
“I don’t feel like talking.”
Dan rolled the juice glass in his large palms. “It’s Morgan Spencer.”
He spoke the name as he might some punk he’d run down and cornered.
She raised her eyes. “It’s not Morgan. It’s …” She drew and released a breath, stood, and walked to the glass door. The morning was damp, the sky dull. The wind would blow it clear, but then the sun would reveal everything in sharp chiaroscuro. She didn’t want to see clearly. She didn’t like what she had seen already.
Why was Dan here? Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? She closed her eyes. “I doubt my faith, Dan. I don’t know what to believe anymore.” She glanced over her shoulder at him.
His face was kind and frank. “Maybe you’ve just grown up. Isn’t that from the Bible? When I was a child I spoke like a child, but now I’m a man?”
Jill’s soul constricted. Was that it? Was she finally seeing through a myth? Was Shelly right, that there was no difference between those who believed and those who didn’t? They were all in the same mire, mucking through the best they could? She tried to think of one definitive prayer God had answered.
Maybe Joey calmed because she held him, not from any divine favors dropped from heaven. All those countless prayers she’d uttered were probably waving out into space in unending futility. It was nothing. A great empty nothingness.
She looked back out into the milky sky. Was there no heaven beyond? No hell beneath? Or was it something more profound than her limited faith could frame? Prove yourself to me. Make me know.
Dan stood and crossed to her. “Things happen that open our eyes. I gave religion a try, but it never made any difference. I find my own answers now.” He took her waist in his hands, his badge cutting into her shoulder blade. He pressed his cheek to the side of her head. “Why don’t we run?”
“In your uniform?”
“I brought a change.”
She leaned into him and shook her head. He kissed her hair, her ear. She pulled away. “Stop it, Dan.”
He let her go. “What’s the matter?”
Couldn’t he see she was a wreck?
“I thought we’d solved it, Jill. The things that stood between us.”
She turned and looked into his face. What conclusion had he drawn?
He spread his hands. “If you’re done with your concerns and I’m done with mine …”
“What are you saying, Dan?”
He caught her shoulders. “Your faith is no longer an issue, and I don’t have to prove myself competent to please a woman.” His face was earnest. “We’ve taken away the obstacles. That’s how life works.” She pressed her fingertips to her temple, then shot her gaze through his eyes. “Obstacles? Do you understand I’m questioning everything I am?”
He rolled his eyes. “Jill …”
“Get out, Dan.”
He let go and stepped back, then picked up his hat and left. She drained her glass of orange juice and got into the shower. Motions. She had to go through the motions. The hot water removed the night’s film from her skin, but inside, her spirit was limp. She shampooed and bared her teeth to the water, filled her mouth and swished.
Apple-scented steam rolled over the mirror and walls when she opened the curtain and stepped out. Rascal meowed outside the door, and she opened it just as the phone began to ring. Jill scooped Rascal up and dropped him on the bed as she picked up the receiver. “Yes, I told him to leave, no I won’t reconsider, and no I don’t need brownies or milk or a shoulder to cry on.”
“Okay,” the woman’s voice said.
“Hello?” Jill caught the towel to her mouth.
“This is Anita Rawlings. I wanted to let you know Angelica’s sick and won’t make her tutoring today.”
“Oh, Anita.”
“It’s okay, Jill. It sounds like you could use a day off.”
Jill drew a shaky breath. In truth, she might lose her mind. “Thanks for calling, Anita.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll pray for you today.”
Jill said nothing. They’d spoken in the past about faith in general terms, the usual platitudes. Did she want Anita’s prayers? What difference did it make? “Thanks.” She hung up and pulled on her running shorts, sport bra, and tank. She tied on her Nikes and headed out the sliding glass door. It was backward to shower and then run, but since she was not teaching after all, she had to do something.
She slid the door shut and hurried past Shelly’s patio. She thought Shelly had been watching Dan leave. Most of her life was a drama for Shelly, but if she’d been thinking, she’d know her friend would not be awake yet. Brett was probably just getting up and starting his morning routine before Dan joined him to go to the station. Dan had allowed time for a run.
Jill reached the path and stopped to stretch. Already the air was muggy. The cornfields might love it, but it oppressed her as she started to run. Or was it more than the air? Her own spirit was muggy, weighing her down. She forced her legs to move in a steady, constant battle over lassitude. Each stride was one more than the last. She could do that much. Too many things were out of her control, but she could make her legs run.
Just over an hour later, she left the park and headed back to her patio do
or. She blew the bedraggled bangs from her face as she passed Shelly’s, noting the cruiser outside. She’d almost made it by when Shelly opened the door and called to her, holding a yellow-green lollipop as a bribe.
The last thing she wanted was to go inside with Brett and Dan there. Why weren’t they at the station already? Shouldn’t they be gone? But maybe it was earlier than she thought. She went through Shelly’s door and met the lollipop straight on. “What’s this one?”
“Your suggestion. Kiwi-pineapple.”
Jill took the sucker and glanced at Dan standing in Shelly’s kitchen, one hip to the counter, eating an éclair. The sweet did not help his expression as the lollipop would not help her. Get out were strong words to him.
Shelly put on a mock New York accent. “Taste it already.”
Jill licked the sweet obediently, identifying pineapple at once but less kiwi. How did kiwi taste anyway? She’d only named that flavor symbolically. Dan gobbled the éclair and dabbed cream from his fingers onto a napkin. Should she say something? Apologize? No, it was better that they face it. They couldn’t remain in limbo, neither together nor apart. At least this way it was settled.
Brett came out of the study with whatever he’d needed to retrieve. He nodded and the two of them headed out the front door. Jill followed Dan with her eyes, but neither had said a word.
After he left, Shelly hung her head to the side. “I see I’ve missed something.”
Jill stared at the lollipop. “What have you missed, Shelly?”
“Gee, I’m not real sure. Whatever it is that has Dan acting like Robocop around the woman he loves.”
“We’re friends.”
“No. Huh-uh. That was not friends. That was devastation in a uniform.”
Jill looked up. Honesty was always best with Shelly, and the sooner the better, or she’d wheedle it out anyway. “He asked me to marry him; I said no.”
Shelly’s face formed just the expression Jill expected. “He asked you—I thought you said you weren’t in love with Morgan.”
Jill sighed. “Could you please give me more credit than that? My whole life is falling apart. It’s hardly the time to get married.”
“But, Jill.” Shelly dropped to a chair. “Do you know what it took for him to ask you? That was the greatest statement of trust he could make.”
Jill’s heart wrenched. “I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything you can say that I’ll understand?”
Waves of bleak despair washed over her. “I don’t think so.”
Shelly dropped her head to her hands. “You’re on a kamikaze mission.”
Shelly could be right. Since leaving Kelsey’s bedside, a spiraling depression had seized hold unlike anything she’d known since being torn away from Morgan and having her baby alone. Worthless, the voices murmured. When had she ceased to matter? When her marrow didn’t match? When she gave away her baby? When she gave up her virtue to Morgan? She was so empty, she couldn’t cry even if she’d let herself.
Shelly must have caught her expression. “You are not spending the day alone. I’ll call in.”
“You don’t have to do that, Shelly.”
“You’re more important than Cartier Confections. The boss can answer her own phone for one day.”
Jill hadn’t the strength to argue. She held out the lollipop.
Shelly eyed the sucked sweet. “Do you think I want that?”
Jill realized what she was doing. “No, I guess not.”
“You didn’t give me your opinion. Here I had them create your very own flavor, your ‘I’m on vacation’ flavor to double with our Maui coconut cream—”
“It’s good, Shelly.”
“And utterly irrelevant in the scope of life.”
That actually brought a ghost of a smile. “Something like that.”
“Go shower while I inform the president her assistant needs a personal day to deal with something infinitely more important than sucker flavors.”
Jill obeyed. Spending the day with Shelly might just be what she needed.
They went to a movie, but she could not have named it afterward. Then they went to the mall.
“That does it.”
Jill forced herself to focus. “What?”
“This is like Night of the Zombies.” Shelly’s earnest face confronted her. “Since when is puce with polka dots ‘nice’?”
Jill looked at what Shelly had just shown her. The short set was appalling, actually. “No, I don’t like that. Do you?”
Shelly’s mouth dropped open. She waved her hand slowly in front of Jill’s face. “Hello. Anybody home? I mean the real Jill, not some changeling of vacant mind.”
Jill dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry, Shelly. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Shelly moistened her lips. “You need to talk.”
Jill shook her head, but as always, Shelly ignored her. Seated at the café court, a mocha latté between her hands and Shelly’s face before her, Jill realized there was no escape. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Shelly’s eyes softened. “Well, something happened since the last time we talked.”
Yes, something had happened. She had lost her surety of a good and loving God. She had lost the point of her salvation, the relevance. She shook her head. Maybe it was stress overload that numbed her, not the realization that she was worthless in God’s eyes. Maybe even that was delusion. What if there was no God? She’d rather believe that. It hurt less.
“Talk to me, Jill.”
Jill tried to form her desolation into words. She’d made her confession and been baptized at nine. Her parents were so proud, and their approval meant more than any spiritual awakening involved. She had measured up to their expectations and made the false assumption that she also measured up to God’s.
She looked into Shelly’s face. “I think maybe it’s all been a hoax. That, as you said, there is no difference between those who believe and those who don’t. We’re no better off believing than not.”
Shelly threaded her fingers. “What have you always told me? Circumstances don’t matter. It’s what you know by faith that counts. That Jesus Christ gave His life to bring salvation once for all.” It was almost comical hearing the words from Shelly’s mouth.
“My daughter is dying. She’s fourteen. She’ll never have a child. And even if Morgan’s bone marrow halts the disease, there’s no certainty of a cure.” Even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t the heart of her desolation. Her soul rent inside her. “Shelly.” Her voice caught. “Kelsey told me not to regret giving her away, that God knew where she needed to be. With a different mother.” Jill stared into her friend’s eyes. “God rejected me.”
And suddenly her resistance ruptured and pain burst from her in scalding tears. Shelly snatched a wad of napkins from the nearest food booth. Jill pressed them to her eyes until the sobs ebbed.
Shelly spoke softly. “Maybe God did you a favor. Maybe he knew a young girl, alone and immature, could not support the upcoming difficulties in that baby’s life.”
The words were sensible from Shelly’s point of view. Jill acknowledged that much. But shame mingled with sorrow to clog her throat. God saw it, too, what they’d all seen. Unworthy.
Others talked in such glowing terms of their relationship with Jesus. She did everything they did, but she was like the wannabes who hung with the cheerleaders, hoping some of the magic would rub off on them. Jill knew from the inside, there was no magic. It was all illusion.
CHAPTER
14
Noelle was back at the ranch when Morgan returned by taxi a week later. He found her on the couch looking almost well, but he read weariness in her posture. He bent and kissed her cheek. “The prodigal returns.”
“Me or you?”
He smiled. “Now there’s an interesting thought. Done anything worth repenting?” He sat and slid an arm around her shoulders.
She nudged him with an elbow. “I’m too tired even to think of anything.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He removed his arm to a respectful position.
“The good news is, in spite of my pneumonia, the baby grew two centimeters.”
“Two centimeters. Imagine that.”
She rested her hand on her abdomen. “It’s significant.”
“Then good. I’m glad to hear it.” And he was. Noelle’s baby was a beacon of hope, of what it could and should be like. His first awareness of her pregnancy had been difficult, hammering home what he’d given up, what he could have fought to have for himself but had given Rick instead. Now he was just grateful the baby thrived.
“How about you, Morgan? Tell me what’s happening with you and Kelsey.”
Hearing his daughter’s name from Noelle gave him a jolt. Hearing it connected to him brought the ache. With him and Kelsey? Nothing. How could there be? She’d been ripped from his reality before he ever laid eyes on her. Maybe it was some flaw in his nature that made it matter so much. Why couldn’t he just let it go? So he had a kid. So what?
But as the oldest of six, he’d been a natural caretaker. Rick teased that their bane had been the arrival of the little sisters, but he had adored every one of those babies. Mom knew. She’d seen his soft heart and appreciated his automatic nurturing. He would come home from school and let the little girls swarm him. He tickled, hugged, even changed their diapers. He would have made a good dad.
“Morgan?” Noelle touched his arm.
“Yeah.” He gathered in his thoughts. “I don’t know what’s happening with Kelsey. I’ve done my part. It’s scheduled.”
“The transplant?”
“It’s actually called a harvest on my end. Rescue on Kelsey’s. Imagine that, Morgan Spencer to the rescue.”
Her gaze rested on his. “I don’t have to imagine. I know that masked man.”
He looked up at the vaulted ceiling, noted a few cobwebs at the junctions of crossbeams. He cocked his head. “You ought to let me get Marta up here.”
“You’d never get her away from her grandchildren.”
“Wanna bet?”
The Still of Night Page 16