by Terri Kraus
That’s how this is, she thought. Knowing God is like that.
And as she sat in the silence, she could feel a thousand pieces, the pieces of her life, falling into place. She could feel the miracle, the beautiful picture emerging, the puzzle coming together, as the Light came and illuminated the words in her heart.
Forgiving is not forgetting;
it is letting go of the hurt.
—Mary McLeod Bethune
Forgiving turns off
the videotape of pained memory.
Forgiving sets you free.
—Lewis B. Smedes
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IN THE DARKNESS, a Roman candle poofed and sent a glowing red ball wobbling up into the cold night air. Chase and Elliot stood in the yard—five minutes to midnight, a box of matches at their feet and a bag of illegal Roman fireworks on the porch. Ethan had purchased them from a friend who traveled down south and bought them in Tennessee or Florida.
Ethan tried not to be the sort of parent who too closely monitored his son, nor the kind of parent who closed an eye to serious infractions, either. He remembered shooting off fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve as a child, and using dangerous fireworks—the sort that might blow off a finger or two if handled improperly.
But Roman candles offered a more benign celebration. They were neither noisy nor explosive, and only moderately dangerous. With each glowing orb they sent skyward, Elliot and Chase would “ooh” and “aah” in unison, knowing that excitement over a Roman candle was sort of childish, but that they were sort of excited anyway.
Both boys, too young to be invited to a real New Year’s Eve party, were spending the night with Ethan. He’d allowed them to rent a few scary movies (nothing too terrifying) and a few brainless comedies (nothing too graphic), and had stocked his refrigerator with nacho fixings, sweet snacks, and pop.
Ethan had been invited to two New Year’s Eve celebrations, which he obviously had turned down. One was at Joel’s house.
“A bunch of people will be there,” Joel had explained. “I think Marcy is making her special chili. You want to come?”
The other was a tad more formal, with an engraved invitation to a Ring in the New Year Fete at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. It was signed in gold: Emily Harrington. She added, also in gold pen,
I would love to have you be my guest, Ethan. Let me know and I’ll make arrangements for you to spend the night.
Ethan wondered if a coded message might be hidden in her few words. He read them through several times and didn’t sense an underlying assumption. Nevertheless, he did not show the card to his son. Chase would not have understood. He did the right thing, however, and called Emily. He got her voicemail and left a message that he appreciated the invitation but could not make it.
What would I have worn to a conservatory? And just what is a conservatory, anyhow?
Now Chase and Elliot each carried lit Roman candles. They held them aloft like the Statue of Liberty holds her torch and ran up and down the deserted street. Glowing red and blue and green balls fuffed into the air as the boys called out “Happy New Year!”
Their calls to celebrate were almost drowned out by the louder fireworks that echoed up and down the river valley. Apparently, more than a few people had made stops in Tennessee or Florida or wherever south they had traveled this year.
Ethan stood on his porch with his work coat pulled around him tight, watching the two boys slide on the fresh dusting of snow on the street and welcome, officially, a new year to the town of Franklin.
He smiled, but it was more of a relieved smile than a smile that actually welcomed the New Year.
Ethan would wind up in Pittsburgh soon after New Year’s, much sooner than he had ever anticipated.
Snow fell gently over the streets of the neighborhood where Cameron grew up. It was just the right sort of snow—snow that made the scene pretty and picturesque but didn’t seem to lie heavily on the street and make driving dangerous.
She did not like driving on snow, was not very adept at winter defensive-driving techniques, and winced every time the weatherman mentioned a possible snowstorm. She had returned home to Philadelphia for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. No snow had been forecast, and she had taken a week’s worth of vacation, leaving Franklin early in the morning of Christmas Eve day, heading east and south, and had made it home in just over seven hours. Her father always quizzed her on the duration of any trip; when her parents visited her, they made it from their home to her apartment in just under six hours, despite her mother’s pleas for more frequent stops.
“Seven and a half hours, Daddy, but I stopped twice for gas, once for lunch, and once for coffee,” she’d reported when she arrived home.
Christmas included a whirl of relatives and family parties and friends stopping by and obligatory trips to grandparents and two visits to the huge King of Prussia Mall. On New Year’s Eve, it had begun to snow. Cameron had been invited to a party by an old high school girlfriend. Her parents, knowing how she felt about winter driving, offered to give her a ride there on their way to a late dinner and midnight celebration with friends at their country club.
At the party, Cameron was introduced to a young man, Alan Bradley, whose name seemed so familiar. A recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he seemed eager to fill Cameron in on everything that had transpired in his life. She felt good seeing old friends—good, but odd in a way as well. Many of her friends had stayed in the area, within a few miles of West Chester, and had commenced starting their lives in earnest. Of course, many of them had married, and already had their first child.
When asked, Cameron told people she was from Philadelphia, even though she really wasn’t. She actually had grown up in West Chester, a suburb of Philadelphia, but if she said West Chester, people wouldn’t know where it was, and then she would have to say Philadelphia anyhow.
And in fact, her parents’ home was closer to Goshenville than anywhere else, but Cameron was positive that no one ever heard of Goshenville, which was a few miles north of the larger town of West Chester.
The party was in Goshenville at a pretty, upper-middle-class colonial that her older brother would refer to as the Leave It to Beaver house. It was white with dark green shutters, a sunroom, and a finished basement, complete with a bar, a foosball and a pool table. Drinks had been set out on the bar, bowls of chips and vegetables with dips were scattered about, and plates of warm appetizers made their way around the room. The noise level wasn’t quite as high as a high school party, but it was loud—lots of people talking, lots of women and men Cameron’s age laughing loudly, the sort of loudness one hears after a few drinks, with some of the laughter on the shrill side.
Cameron learned that Alan Bradley had just joined the firm of Brooks, Bradley, and Kenney, specializing in injury law. “I’m not a partner yet, but my father says that if I apply myself, in a couple of years, well, the sky’s the limit.”
Alan told her a lot about his law school experience, which, Cameron later reflected, seemed to revolve around spring breaks spent partying in Cancun and on ski trips to Aspen.
The party began to break up at 2:00 a.m., much earlier than college parties, she noted, and much to the displeasure of Alan and his single friends. When Alan offered her a ride home, she checked first to make sure he was sober enough. Since it was still snowing, she was relieved that she didn’t have to drive.
He implored her to come with him to another party in “downtown Philadelphia. One of the junior partners has this way cool loft with an incredible view. We could really chill out there.”
Cameron wondered why she begged off, saying that she was tired and would be leaving town the following day and had to pack. It was a weak excuse, but it was the only excuse she had. It felt odd. She was intrigued by the idea of doing th
e “downtown thing” again, but at the same time, she was repelled by it. She realized that living in Franklin, she didn’t miss the excitement of big-city life as much as she thought.
During the ride home in his new silver BMW SUV, Alan asked—repeatedly—when she would be back in town “so we could get together, you know, and maybe pick things back up where we left off.”
Whatever that means, she thought as she got out of the car. “Maybe at Easter,” she had answered.
He walked her to the door, grabbed her waist, and began kissing her, even though she had done nothing to encourage him. She succeeded in keeping it very short, clearly shorter than he wanted and enough for him to try a second time.
She was prepared and gently ducked under his clumsy embrace. “Good night, Alan. Thanks for the ride.”
“I’ll call you in …”
“Franklin.”
“Yeah. The Derrick, right? I have your card, right?”
“You do.”
“And you have my card, right? You can call at the office anytime. Okay? We’ll call each other then?”
And Cameron agreed with him. She thought it might be the only way she would be able to shut the door and stop more snow from blowing in on what had been her grandmother’s Oriental rug in the foyer.
The following morning, New Year’s Day, Cameron mentioned the young man from the party to her mother.
“Alan Bradley?”
“Yes.”
“From Goshenville?”
“Yes.”
Her mother furrowed her brow. “Is he younger than you?”
“I think so. Maybe. He just graduated from law school.”
“His father is a lawyer?”
“Yes,” Cameron answered, bewildered a bit by her mother’s questions. “Some multiple-name law firm. He said he’ll be a junior partner there soon.”
Cameron’s mother nodded, folded her hands in front of her, and looked down at the table. “That’s Betty and Robert’s son. The Goshenville Bradleys.”
Cameron shrugged. “I guess.”
Her mother was quiet. Cameron had the feeling that she was disturbed and wondered why. She didn’t have to wonder long.
“Alan was one of your younger brother’s best friends … back in first grade. They went to preschool and kindergarten together.”
That was why.
And as soon as she said it, Cameron realized that it was the first time in years that her mother had mentioned her younger son, even in passing. She looked at her mother’s face and tried to read the emotions there. For the first time, she could see the lines, the shadows, the toll that the years of grief and loss had taken on it. Cameron was sorry then that she’d said something to bring her little brother to her mother’s thoughts today, on the first day of the New Year, when all things should be bright and positive and hopeful. But she knew thoughts of him were still never far from her mother’s mind.
Cameron wanted to tell her everything—about the guilt, about being forgiven, being free from the past, and all that was taking place in her heart.…
She tried to mouth the words … and simply could not get them out. Not now, at least—not this day.
But she was sure that she would … someday. Someday very soon.
On January 2, Ethan’s cell phone rang, surprisingly a few minutes after seven. Joel never called this early. CeCe rarely called. Chase was upstairs. He scrambled to flip the phone open.
“Willis here.”
“Ethan. I am so sorry to call you this early. No one gets up this early, do they? I know I don’t. At least not often. Unless I have to. And today is one of those days.”
The voice was several sentences into the conversation before Ethan recognized it.
“Hello, Emily. How was your New Year’s Eve party?” He attempted to be polite and gentlemanly.
“Perfectly … wonderfully … dreadful. It would have been fun if you had been here. But since you weren’t, it wasn’t,” she answered with a bit of a pout in her voice.
Ethan had no idea how to take that, so he did his best to ignore it.
“But that’s not why I’m calling,” she continued brightly. “The fact that you turned me down for New Year’s means you must say yes this time.”
Ethan measured his words with care. “You first have to tell me what it is.”
“Well, you simply must be here this Saturday. Remember the big old house I’m restoring? I told you all about it at dinner. I have a bid—two bids—for the work and I don’t think I trust either of them. I am afraid they might simply see me as a meal ticket and bump up their numbers to cover the cost of their children’s orthodontist or college education. So I simply must have you come down for a single day. I’m going to the house Saturday, and I want you to walk through it with me and look at the bids and help me determine what really needs to be done and what doesn’t.”
Ethan started to sweat—not really sweat—but he could see this might be trouble.
Almost as if she had read his thoughts, she quickly added, “Ethan, I won’t hold you to anything. You can be assured of that. I simply need a professional person who is well versed in restoration to tell me if some of the things they say I need are really and truly things I need, or not. You can do that, can’t you? It’s not like I’m asking you to take the job, though that would be nice—very nice. Be a sweetheart and come down on Saturday. Please. You’ll be rescuing me, Ethan.”
Ethan wondered if she might be using him to play one contractor off another. It didn’t sound like it, but it had happened often enough to make him nervous.
“I’ll pay you for the entire day—your hourly rate, travel time, meals, and any other expenses, Ethan. I really do need you. I have lots of friends in the business, but none of them know anything about old houses like you do. I really need you.”
Her words, at least now, sounded most sincere.
“Okay. I can do it. Give me the address and when you want me.”
Leaving Franklin at six in the morning was not the way Ethan wanted to spend the first Saturday in January, but at the end of the day, he would be several hundred dollars richer, he reasoned, and at this point in the Carter project, a few hundred dollars would prove to be a substantial sum in the Willis bank account.
Not a huge city, or even a major metropolitan area, Pittsburgh still intimidated Ethan. The freeways confused him. The heavy rush of traffic always going ten miles an hour faster than Ethan thought prudent intimidated him. The geographical layout of the city intimidated him. Someone said the only way to know your way around Pittsburgh was to be born there. Ethan knew his way to the zoo, since he and Lynne had taken Chase, and the stadium, because he and Chase went to a Pirates game a few times. They’d gone to the Carnegie Museum once last year as well to see the dinosaurs.
But Emily’s house was near none of those landmarks. It was south of the city, across the Monongahela River. He took the 79 South Freeway, which led him smack into downtown. Even with pages of MapQuest directions, finding the Smithfield Street Bridge was horrendous, having to navigate a thicket of one-way streets and construction closures. He hated not knowing where he was and the best way to get to his destination
Eventually, he found his way to Mount Washington, looming over downtown, and to Emily’s house. He parked his truck and got out and stretched, trying to relieve some of his nervousness, and looked around.
The house was a magnificent example of an Italianate Victorian, with angled bay windows and large eave brackets under the flat roofline. It had a square cupola and a Corinthian-columned porch. It was a disaster, at least from the outside, but still magnificent. It stood three stories high, on the south side of the street, an open lot between the house and Pittsburgh. The city and the stadiums and the three rivers lay several hundred feet below. He could see why Emily had bought it
. The view alone was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the house—well, the house was another story. Ethan could easily see that it had once been a prize. White aluminum siding had been added poorly, and all the exquisite trim work had been painted a cold, flat white, so its details were all but lost. The house should not have combination storm and screen windows, Ethan knew, but it did. It didn’t want a rickety staircase leading down from what Ethan surmised was its second-floor apartment, but it had that as well. The place needed a vintage fence and new landscaping. A new walk and two new entrance pillars, which were cracked and crumbling, were also needed. All these things quickly became crystal clear to Ethan, even as he stood fifty feet away.
He imagined the worst for the inside.
“Ethan! You came! You are such a dear.”
Emily nearly bounced down the sidewalk, having exited her red Jaguar. She embraced him on the street, tighter than he imagined was appropriate between a client and a consultant. Ethan wanted to pull back, thinking that she shouldn’t be hugging him where everyone could see, but then remembered that he knew not a single person in Pittsburgh, other than Emily, so he relaxed.
“Let me show you inside my money pit. I bet you already think it’s horrible and I am a fool for thinking of restoring it, right? Am I right? Just light a match, right?”