Of course, the story that she had told Marta about her dad wasn’t true. But the discussion about her no longer having a father had touched way too close. She had been raised in a single-parent home after her mom had died when she was a baby.
Dad had done his best…
Had he?
Tara broke free from the path her mind had begun to descend. She needed to deal with Marta.
Okay … maybe somehow I can turn this into an advantage. Maybe play on her emotions some more. She started pacing, anger surfacing again. Regardless of the truth about her dad, she had given her—given them—real ammunition; an area of her life to target with prayer! I hate you, old man!
Tara’s emotions began to flair. She walked over to the lone closet in the room and pulled out a small duffel. From it she withdrew her felt pentagram, an amulet, her pentagram necklace, and her floor mat. She wouldn’t need her grimoire this time. She had this spell memorized. Time to exact some more discomfort on dear, precious Marta.
I don’t think those fingernails of hers are quite short enough yet.
Sorry about last night,” said Marta. “I just didn’t feel like going back out after my afternoon with Tara.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay,” said Brent. “Do you think I should call her?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. Part of me says yes, that she probably needs to talk with someone, but another part of me says that I saw something about her—or in her—that needs to be prayed about.”
Brent and Marta sat at a table outside of Mocha Manz on the Millsville Square. It was a warm day, one that would ordinarily beckon them out to do something more eventful than just sit at a café sipping coffee. But the mood was hushed, and neither felt like doing anything but talking. So, for now, they would enjoy the soft breeze and people-watch while conversing.
“Well, couldn’t I do both? I could pray on my way out to Pittston,” Brent said.
“Brent, I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
“Why do you say that? I’ve heard everything you’ve said. Tara’s upset about her father; either that or she’s upset about the conversation the two of you had. Maybe both.”
“No, Brent. It’s more than that somehow. There’s more to it.”
“Then, what? Help me figure this out.”
“Figure it out? I can’t figure it out! That’s why I called you, remember?” Marta’s voice was starting to rise. She was starting to feel her own temper begin to flair.
“Good grief, Marta! Don’t you think you’re blowing this thing a little out of proportion? She’s hurting. She probably needs someone to lean on, that’s all.”
“And you’re that someone; Brent Lawton, all-around good guy? The one who’s willing to jump into whatever the problem is to save a strawberry blonde?!”
Brent’s jaw dropped and his lips parted slightly. He sat there staring at Marta apparently not knowing how to respond.
Marta cringed and closed her eyes. Oh no. What have I just done? After a few moments she opened them again and saw Brent’s lips pressed tightly together.
“Brent, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
“You’re jealous?” Brent half asked, half accused, in what he believed to be a moment of clarity.
“I am not jealous!” she said with another increase in volume.
“Then what would you call that statement? That sure sounded like jealousy. I think it was jealousy. It was jealousy, wasn’t it?”
Marta stood up from her chair, but immediately had to grip the table as a wave of dizziness hit her. She closed her eyes and wavered.
Brent stood up and quickly walked around the table. “Marta, you all right?”
Marta lowered herself back down into her chair and put both hands flat on the table. “Whew. That was a big one.”
“A big … what? I’ve never seen that happen to you before.”
“Oh, it’s just a dizzy spell. I probably just stood up too fast.” Changing the subject, Marta said, “Brent, I’m not jealous. We’re friends. Neither of us has any illusion about anything more than that. But I do love you, and I do care about you.”
“Well, I love you, too.”
“Good. Then listen to me.” She paused for effect. “Just listen.” Marta opened her eyes and looked straight into Brent’s. “I haven’t said anything before, but I think I need to now.”
Brent looked hard into her eyes and furrowed his brow in concentration. She knew he was listening now. “There’s something wrong with Tara. I’m not talking about her broken relationship with her father or her lack of relationship with the Father. There’s something else. It’s been playing on my spirit from almost the moment that we met her. There’s something dark going on in her.”
Brent interrupted, “Marta, come on…”
Marta cut him off. “Brent, don’t!” She made a slight turn of her head in warning, her eyes narrowing, never leaving Brent’s. “There’s something that she’s hiding. You don’t have to believe me, but I hope you will. I believe the Holy Spirit has been keeping me alert to her.”
Brent’s patience was coming to an end. “Alert about what?”
“At first I thought it was just me, not giving her a fair chance. I felt like I was just being an unaccepting little girl who didn’t want you to have another playmate. But it’s been over a month, now, and every single time that I’m around her, I get this … I don’t know…”
“Say it. You’re getting a check, aren’t you? A check in your spirit.”
“Yes. A check in my spirit.”
“And why has it taken you over a month to say something?”
“Would you have believed me, Brent? I mean, you’ve been ga-ga over this girl since day one.”
“I have not!”
Brent closed his eyes and hung his head, immediately remembering his conversation with George the previous day. “Yes…I have been.” He sighed. “You’re right.”
Brent looked up at Marta again and asked, “But do you really think that I’ve been blinded by her?”
“First, Brent, answer something for me. How many times can you remember in the three years we’ve been friends that I’ve said something to either deliberately hurt you or keep you from being blessed?”
“You’ve never done either,” he said. It apparently gave him pause. He looked to be choosing his next words very deliberately. “Marta, I trust you. You’ve never given me any reason not to.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “If you say there’s something wrong that I haven’t been able—or willing—to see, then I will take it seriously.”
Marta took a deep breath and let it out in relief. “Thank you for trusting me, Brent. I just believe that whatever is going on with Tara is going to take more than just a casual prayer as you drive over to see her.”
“Okay. Fair enough. Then we’d better get to it.” Brent looked to reflect for a second then said, “How about we go to Belle Meadow Park, find a nice grassy area and do some praying there?”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea. It’ll be the best thing we’ve done all day.”
4:10 P.M.
SITTING ON A throw that Marta kept in her car, Brent and she stretched out on their sides facing one another, propped up on their elbows. There were only a few other people in the park, probably because for most it was a work day.
The park was surrounded on three sides by woods, sort of like being in a huge horse shoe with the parking area at the open end. The field was well-manicured and several pavilions dotted the edge of the woods where, tomorrow, people would be having family gatherings and cookouts. Marta and Brent elected for an area near the center of the horse shoe where they could enjoy the greatest amount of space available to them as they prayed.
Brent opened them up. He knew that once he began to pray that all of the pettiness of previous arguments would fall dead to the side. When he prayed he wanted it to matter. He wanted it to be effective. He wasn’t going to allow mental garbage to releg
ate his prayers to being just a bunch of chatter.
Truth be told, he was happy to have a prayer partner regarding Tara. While he had most definitely been praying for her, he’d also been tripped up in the midst of his prayers with fantasies that he had to force out of his mind. Marta’s presence offered reinforcement to his prayers—that whole “where two or more are gathered” thing that had previously been missing.
Come to think of it, Marta and he had prayed very little together regarding Tara. They had mostly just agreed to pray about her salvation whenever they thought about it. Scripture, though, had a couple of other things to say about the issue of effective prayer:
If two or more come together, the Lord will be in their presence. And if any two people will focus on one thing in prayer, it will be accomplished by God. There was obviously something about agreement that the Lord really wanted his people to grasp. Now, at last, in addition to these two nearly-overlooked aspects, they would add some fervency into the mix.
The three components—unity in cause, agreement on the target, and inexorable resolve—would come together to create a powerful weapon in a battle that they still did not see coming.
Tara wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden. It wasn’t a physical thing. It was more a feeling of loss; something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She felt isolated. Melancholy set in as she was struck with the sense of overwhelming loneliness.
Stephanie was at work, so she didn’t have anyone to talk with—not that she really wanted the woman’s company. They had had another “discussion” that turned out to be another ultimatum: “Drop your plans for the Christians.” Of course, she wasn’t about to do that.
Having nowhere to go, Tara had spent the past hour sitting in a comfortably-padded rattan rocking chair on the front porch. As she sat watching the occasional car pass by, an uninvited memory from her past enveloped her thoughts.
She was twelve again. It was one of her favorite memories…
“Daddy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“When I get married, will you give me away?”
Her dad smiled. “Absolutely, but very reluctantly. I’m in no hurry to lose my little girl to another man. He’d better be a real good guy.”
“Yeah. I think he’s going to be like Richard Collier.”
“Who?”
“Oh, Daddy,” she said shaking her head. “Richard Collier. The man in ‘Somewhere in Time.’”
“Oohh… of course. How silly of me. So he’s the man for you, huh?”
“If a man was willing to travel through time to find me I’d marry him.”
Her dad laughed. “Yeah, I’d have to say that I’d be pretty impressed with him, too.”
“But you’ll be there?”
“Be where, sweetheart?”
“At the church, Daddy!” she said in mock annoyance.
He laughed again and drew her into a tight hug. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Tara snapped out of her flashback and felt tears running down her face. Her body convulsed with an involuntary sob. Then the floodgates opened and she wept; her soul pouring out in irrepressible torrents. “Oh, Daddy… Daddy… Why?”
SATURDAY,
JUNE 20 – 1:31 P.M.
“I THINK I found the perfect place,” said Brent into the phone with no small amount of enthusiasm.
“Okay, well, don’t keep me in suspense,” responded Tara. “Where will we be spending four or five days of our lives?”
“Shawnee State Forest. Ever heard of the place?”
“Yes! It’s supposed to be beautiful! It’s right on the Ohio River, right?”
“Yep, that’s the place. There’s a state park there with a couple of lakes where we can park our vehicles for a small fee. And, get this; there are 60 miles of backpacking trails in the forest. Not that we’re going to hike all 60.”
“Sounds to me like you found a great area. Have you told anyone else yet?”
“No, not yet. I’ll give Marta a call when we hang up.”
There was a long pause, then, “Brent, can I tell you something? Something that needs to stay between us?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What is it?”
Brent heard Tara sigh. “I’m not sure I should even say anything, and you probably won’t think it’s a big deal, but since we’re about to spend so much time together…”
Brent swallowed hard. Here it comes, he thought. This is where my test begins. God, give me strength. Tara’s pause was pregnant with revelation. Brent wondered how he was going to be able to keep this girl at arm’s length, especially if she was about to admit feelings for him. Brent cleared his throat. “Yeah?”
“Well, it’s about Marta,” she said quietly.
“Marta?” Brent didn’t see that coming. “What about her?”
“She doesn’t like me.”
Brent laughed with relief. “Oh, Tara.”
“Please, don’t laugh at me,” said Tara with a tone that caused Brent to stow his grin.
Brent immediately went into damage-control mode. “Okay, Tara. I’m sorry. Tell me what’s going on. Or, at least, what you think is going on.”
“It’s not what I think, Brent. It’s what I know. And what I know is that Marta has it in for me. She is all smiles and sunshine when the three of us are together, but when it’s just the two of us… Thursday she took some pretty vicious stabs at me when we went out shopping.”
“You mean when she brought up your relationship with your dad?”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Marta told me that she might have stepped across an emotional line with you when it came to a conversation about your dad. I’m sure it wasn’t anything intentional.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. My dad? Brent, we never talked about my dad.”
Brent stood in his bedroom looking out his window unable to process the sentence he’d just heard. “Wait a minute. Thursday. As in two days ago. You and Marta went shopping for camping stuff, right?”
“Uhh … Yeah.”
“Marta told me that you got upset with her because she asked about the loss of your relationship with your dad. Are you telling me that never happened?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Okay, I’m stuck. What’s going on?” Brent began to tense up.
“The only thing that you just said that actually took place was that I got upset with Marta. But it had nothing at all to do with my dad. What did she say about my relationship with my dad?”
“Umm … Tara, maybe you, Marta, and I ought to get together to talk.”
“No, Brent!” exclaimed Tara. “You promised!”
“That was before I knew that…”
“… that she was lying?”
“Marta has never lied to me, Tara. Now something’s going on, and I just want to find out what it is.”
“Now, I’d like to find out what’s going on, too. The conversation that took place on Thursday was about you, not my dad.”
“Me?”
“Yes. She didn’t exactly come out and say it, but I know a strongly annunciated hint when I hear one.”
Brent’s heart sank. What was going on and how did he end up being in the middle of it? “Okay, tell me. What did Marta say that’s got you so up in arms?”
“Marta warned me that since I’m not a Christian that…in a roundabout way…she has more right to you than I do.”
Brent was dumbfounded. “What?”
Tara presented another sigh. “Brent, the girl has pretty deep emotions for you, and I was basically told that I’m to keep my distance.”
Brent squeezed the phone’s receiver in his right hand and brought his left hand up to his face, spanning his forehead between his thumb and middle finger. Now it was Brent’s time to sigh. “Okay … Tara? First, I know for a fact that Marta doesn’t have a single romantic notion toward me.”
“Are you sure?” Tara asked before he could get t
o his second assumption. “You mean to tell me that in all the time that you two have known each other she’s never indicated that she wanted to be with you?”
Impulsively, Brent responded. “We’ve only kissed one time, and that was two years ago. And that was something that got us both laughing with the absurdity of the idea.”
“Who initiated the kiss?”
“I did,” said Brent, reliving the moment in his mind.
“And she was hesitant and tried to push away?”
Brent matched Tara with another sigh. “No. That’s not exactly what happened.”
“So, she accepted your approach and your kiss?”
Brent’s heart was beginning to beat harder. “Yes.”
“You men can be so thick-headed sometimes!”
“No, you see,” he said weakly in defense of his argument, “we both burst out laughing—at the same time—because it was, you know, absurd.” Was he defending his memory? Did his memory need defending? He was remembering things the right way, wasn’t he? They both started laughing at exactly the same time, right? Or had she started laughing only because she sensed him starting?
“Brent! Oh, my god! You can’t be that stupid.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that you’re stupid. Blind? Maybe. Stupid? No. But, come on; a girl accepts your lead into a romantic kiss and you think it just gets pushed out of her heart because you thought it was a mistake?”
Brent was speechless. He stood staring at the screen in his window. There was a green fly inside crawling on it. He stared at it as it began cleaning its legs.
“Brent, her story about my dad had to have been some sort of cover, just in case I brought anything up. She ends up being Miss Goodie Two-Shoes while I get taken down a notch and pitied.
“Please, Brent, don’t say anything. I can handle the challenge that she laid down in front of me to stay away from you, but the last thing I want to do is come between the two of you as friends. I’m the outsider here. I hold the sacrificial position in your lives. If it needs to happen, I can be set aside in favor of you keeping your long-term friendship with Marta. I don’t want that to happen, but I can handle it if that’s what’s got to happen. The only reason I brought any of this stuff up was to make you aware, so that you can watch out for it, not to cause a rift between any of the three of us.
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