Secrets over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  He knew that. His dad had told him that for years. It was sort of his standard spiel, one he said came from living with the consequences of his own shut-down heart. “Once you’ve had one,” he always said, “you have no trouble identifying one.”

  Zach hadn’t exactly ignored those talks, but he’d pretty much brushed them off, thinking they didn’t apply to him. Now he wasn’t so sure. “Want to go with me?” he asked. “To church, I mean.”

  “No, I think you need to do this with Caroline. Just go talk. See what she wants.”

  “Wonder why she wants to go to church. . . . That doesn’t make sense to me, especially since the affair was with Elise. It seems like Caroline would just want to see me and let out all of her anger. Let me have it, maybe. And then tell me what she thinks we should do.”

  “Don’t even try to make sense of it, Son. You’ve got to remember that Caroline is grieving too. She has a right to grieve, and grief like this doesn’t have sense. It doesn’t have a playbook. It just is. And there is no telling how Caroline’s grief will need to express itself. What you have to do is give her the freedom to do that, however she needs to.”

  Zach sat up and slid his feet from the bed. “You’re right. I know you are. She said I could come by the house and get some stuff, so I’m going to head on out.” He looked down at his slept-in clothes. “I’ll shower and change while I’m there.”

  “You go. I’ll wait right here until you get back.”

  Zach leaned down and kissed the top of his father’s head. “Thanks, Dad. I might need that.”

  Zach waited until Scarlett Jo’s neon presence at the door disappeared before he made a beeline for the church. The first strum of music had begun, and he was grateful to know that Elise and her husband wouldn’t be here. Otherwise, he was certain there was no way in the world Caroline would have come. In fact, he figured that even if they stayed together, first on the agenda would be a new church.

  He spotted her near the front, much closer than they usually sat. That struck him as a little odd. But he walked quickly to her row and scooted in next to her.

  He glanced her way, not sure what to expect. She didn’t acknowledge him. He wasn’t quite expecting that.

  As the young man on the platform strummed his guitar, soft worship music permeated not only the farthest corners of the room but, truthfully, some of the farthest regions of Zach’s heart. The words resonated.

  He had listened to this song a thousand times yet never really heard it. It talked of how God was jealous for him. How God’s love was as intense as a hurricane yet full of mercy. He heard that message now, maybe because he needed it now. He closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, real emotion raged in his soul. It was foreign and real and frightening and beautiful. To feel something—really feel something—felt good.

  He slid his hand over to try to touch Caroline’s. His finger grazed hers, and she quickly moved hers away. He brought his hand back and remembered his father’s words. Then he tried to give her permission to feel whatever she needed to. He also gave that permission to himself, and remorse seemed to be the river that was flowing freely.

  Jackson came to the platform and began to pray. Other soft voices joined in from sporadic places in the sanctuary offering their agreement.

  “I sense the Lord doing something in hearts this morning.”

  Zach opened his eyes to make sure Jackson wasn’t staring at him. Did he know? Jackson’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Zach’s shoulders relaxed.

  “I know we don’t usually do this, but I’m going to open the altar up to anyone who would like to come this morning. Something tells me that people’s hearts need to be ministered to. Encouraged. Healed.”

  Zach watched as a few people left their seats and knelt on the concrete floor around the platform. Then he became aware of Caroline moving beside him. She pushed past him into the aisle, then began to walk toward the front. He wondered if he should follow. Pray with her, maybe. When she got to the front, he waited to see if she went to Jackson. Fear rushed through him again at the thought of her telling the pastor what he’d done.

  But she didn’t move toward Jackson. Instead, she turned at the altar. And for the first time that morning since their phone call, she spoke. “I think my husband should be at the altar this morning.”

  Zach felt the air leave his lungs in one fell swoop. He thought for a moment his knees would buckle. He caught a glimpse of Jackson’s face, which now was keenly aware.

  Caroline went on. “Because he apparently finds it far more enjoyable to sleep with other women than with his own wife.”

  Gasps bounced around the room like Ping-Pong balls on a hardwood floor.

  “Yes, I caught him Friday night with a woman, and here he is, pretending to be a good Christian.” Her words came out like steel. If he were driving a tank, he couldn’t have made a dent in her anger. “Apparently he thinks that you can betray your marriage vows and still be a pillar of the church. That a commitment to love, honor, and cherish is nothing more than a suggestion. Well, I have a suggestion for you, Zach Craig.” And that was when she looked at him. “You can stay here and face the embarrassment that you deserve for being the hypocrite you are.”

  With that she marched down the aisle, right past him, and headed straight for the door. Zach’s eyes followed her disappearing form; then he turned to find every eye in the house glued to him. How could they help it? Freak shows were like bad car accidents. You had to look. And this was as good as a head-on collision.

  Zach’s feet seemed stuck to the floor, his body heavier than a Biggest Loser contestant at the first weigh-in. He simply could not move.

  Jackson spoke quickly. “I’m going to ask everyone to bow their heads. I think this is a time for some introspective prayer. Jared, please come back and lead us in that last song you were singing.”

  Everyone respectfully and kindly followed Jackson’s direction. And before Zach knew it, Jackson was by his side, hand underneath his arm.

  “Come on, Zach. Let’s you and I get out of here.”

  Zach was grateful for the hand. Without it, he wasn’t sure he would have made it out the door. When the sunlight hit his face outside the darkened sanctuary, it seemed to illuminate every piece of him. And he was certain that every square inch of Zach Craig had now been fully exposed.

  Caroline’s car was gone. But now Zach was finding his anger. She had set him up. She had planned this entire thing simply to embarrass him. At least his girls hadn’t been there, and as best he could remember, she had never mentioned Elise’s name.

  He paced in a small circle in the parking lot. Jackson was standing at the front door of the church, talking to the associate pastor. In a minute he joined him in the parking lot.

  “I’m thinking you need a drink,” Jackson said, his strong hand gently touching the back of Zach’s shirt. Zach felt the wetness of his own perspiration as he did.

  “Jackson, you can’t handle the kind of drink I need right now.” Zach’s hands were on either side of his head, fingers laced through his hair. Cicadas screamed from the trees as loudly as the voices in his head.

  “Come on. Let’s go talk.” Jackson led him toward his own car and opened the passenger door for him. He asked no questions, simply drove Zach straight to his house and walked him inside to his home office.

  “I’ll get you some tea.” He pointed to a leather sofa across from his desk. “Why don’t you sit there and try to catch your breath.”

  Zach sat, but he felt like his chest would collapse—or explode. The pressure was suffocating. He had never felt this way before.

  He had prided himself on his reputation. People saw him a certain way, and that was how he wanted it. He had been the superb athlete and student in college. He was the wonderful father who coached his girls’ softball teams. He was the great spouse and the talented attorney. That was who he was—how people knew him. And in one brief span of sixty seconds, Caroline had shot all of that to smithereens.<
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  He got up from the sofa. He couldn’t sit. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. To escape, run, hit something. He just needed some way to release this pent-up volcano.

  Jackson stood in the doorway, two glasses of iced tea in his hands. He extended one to Zach. “Drink. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

  Zach took the glass, the chill immediately discernible to the touch. He lifted it to his lips and let the cool liquid race through him, hoping to extinguish the upcoming eruption. The ice collided in his half-empty glass as he lowered it to an Ole Miss coaster on the leather-topped side table. He let out a heavy sigh.

  He kept his body in motion. Jackson sat on one end of the sofa and watched Zach as he paced.

  “I’m wrecked, Jackson.”

  Jackson pressed his tall, lean frame against the back cushion of the sofa and crossed a foot over the opposite knee. “I’m thinking that’s probably an accurate description.”

  “What am I going to do? My wife just told the entire church I’m an adulterer.”

  “Yes, she did.” Jackson paused. “Want to tell me what’s going on with you?”

  “Oh no.” Zach shook his head wildly. “You should be doing the talking. You should be telling me to repent or something. You’re the pastor. So preach.”

  Jackson leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I’m just a friend right now, Zach. There will be plenty of time for me to be your pastor. But for right now, I just want to listen. You can tell me as little or as much as you want.”

  Zach returned to the sofa and finally sat down, calmed by Jackson’s solid presence. But he didn’t know where to start, what to tell the man. A part of him longed to blurt it all out. Another part wanted to cover for Elise, keep her from experiencing what he had just gone through. But was that even possible at this point? If Jackson knew, maybe he could prevent this disaster from getting worse.

  Maybe.

  He kept his eyes down, and his words came out measured, as if he were protecting a client. “It happened over time. I didn’t set out to cheat on Caroline. We were just in such a yuck place, you know?” He raised his head quickly. “It’s not her fault. I’m not saying it’s her fault. It’s all my fault. I’m the one who couldn’t keep my pants up. There is only one person to blame here.”

  Zach looked at Jackson and studied his face the way a defense attorney would a jury. It held no judgment, no anger. Nor did it hold pity. What it held was very similar to what his father’s had held—a kind of knowing compassion. He didn’t understand how Jackson came by it, but it was there. And in this moment he was grateful for it.

  “I’ve ruined our lives, Jackson.”

  Jackson let out a soft chuckle and leaned forward. “No, you haven’t. Not yet. What you do from now on will determine whether or not you have ruined your life.”

  Those words startled him. He hadn’t thought about it quite that way. But Jackson was right. “I’ve got to go find Caroline. I’ve got to make this right. I’ve got to fix this.”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together with a nod. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea—eventually. But I’m not sure Caroline really feels like talking right now. So how about we talk about you? When is the last time you’ve paid any attention to your heart, Zach?”

  Zach felt his brow furrow. He didn’t understand. “I’ve only been paying attention to myself, don’t you think? I’m thinking that narcissism is what has me here.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But you’ve got to find out. I think what is more important than working on your marriage right now is working on yourself. You can’t give Caroline anything of value from yourself until you’ve figured out what is going on with your own heart.”

  Zach shook his head. “Have you been talking to my dad?”

  Jackson laughed. “No.”

  “Because my dad is here, and he said basically the same thing.”

  “Smart man.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure I know what working on myself means. I don’t know where to start with something like that.”

  “You take one day at a time,” Jackson said, “and you go on a search for your heart. Let me ask you this: if Zach Craig could do anything on the face of the earth that his heart desired, what would it be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when you were a little boy, what did you dream of doing?”

  Zach felt the muscles in his face relax. He hadn’t even realized the tension they had carried until that moment. He felt the edges of his mouth turn upward. “I wanted to be a football coach. High school. Maybe teach an American history class or something. But to coach kids, on and off the field—that was my real dream. I always wanted a boy.” Zach hadn’t expected those words to come out. He hadn’t even known they were in there.

  Jackson gave him a soft smile, his dark eyes as warm as his presence. “I’ve got five you can borrow anytime.”

  Zach shook his head. “I don’t know where that came from. I love my girls.”

  “I love my boys, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t had the desire to hold a little girl in my arms. To have one wrap her arms around my neck and call me Daddy. We all have dreams. My question for you is, when did you give up on yours?”

  Zach was quiet for a minute. As he rummaged through the dreams he had mentioned, he realized he wasn’t really sure when he’d decided to let them go.

  “Okay, let me make this a little clearer. We come into this world with this carefree child’s heart. It’s open. Alive. It’s connected with God and believes anything is possible. It doesn’t know much fear, and it has this kind of abandoned wonder. But then at some point—I don’t know when, maybe in high school, maybe in college, maybe after we graduate—something happens to us. Maybe we’re abused or bullied in school, or we have trouble living up to family expectations and start to worry we don’t measure up.”

  Zach immediately thought of his girls, of Caroline. How Joy perpetually pointed out Lacy’s faults. How Caroline lived in such fear of her own mom. Was that what Jackson was talking about?

  “So many things can happen to us in the course of our lives,” Jackson continued. “Marriage is harder than we thought. Jobs change. Finances shift. People betray us, or we fail at something we really wanted to do. And with each challenge, piece by piece, our hearts begin to shut down. We begin to lose that fearless sense of possibility as we shift into survival mode. We lose track of who we are, what brings us joy. We begin to feel shut off from God because the heart is where we connect with him. And we may eventually shut down to the point that we have to go out and seek some artificial stimulus just to feel like we’re alive.”

  “So you’re saying that I—”

  “I’m saying that a man who is connected with the heart God placed in him doesn’t have an affair. A man who has closed off his heart to such a degree that he doesn’t want to feel anymore—that’s the man who’s likely to have an affair. He does it because he doesn’t want to deal with the pain of where he really is and no longer cares about the consequences of his behavior.”

  “Or just doesn’t want to think about them.” Zach gave a little growl of frustration. “That’s what really gets me. I know better. I see the consequences of behavior like this every day in my office. But I just sort of pretended they didn’t apply to me.” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “That worked out real well, didn’t it?”

  Jackson’s face registered understanding. “Zach, I think more than anything you need to go on a search for your heart. If you don’t find that, then you won’t have anything to offer Caroline anyway. To go back to her now and try to fix your relationship without first fixing your heart will not do either of you any favors.”

  “So what do I do instead?”

  “You can start with being honest. Tell her exactly what you’ve done and why you did it. Admit you’re a sinner if you want—the kind of sinner you wanted me to accuse you of being—and beg her forgiveness.”

  Jackson said that with a sm
ile, but then his expression grew serious. “And yes, you do need to confess your sin to God and ask his forgiveness for both the adultery and for not guarding your heart. And here’s something else to consider. Until you reclaim your heart, Zach, what you’ve just done will likely happen again. So if you want to salvage your marriage, the best thing you can do to protect yourself and Caroline from any more pain or humiliation—”

  Under his breath, Zach muttered, “Humiliation.”

  “—is to tell her about the journey you’re on to reclaim the man God designed you to be.”

  “I honestly can’t imagine saying something like that to Caroline. She’ll think I’m a freak.”

  “You think she’ll have any worse thoughts about you after that conversation than she does right now?”

  That was the first time Zach laughed. “You’ve got a point.”

  Jackson leaned toward him. Zach noted the deep tracks embedded at the corners of Jackson’s eyes, lines he was certain had been chiseled from experience so rich it couldn’t help but leave marks. “I believe in the man you were created to be, Zach. You’ve just got to decide if you do.”

  Zach rubbed his hands on his legs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this looks like.”

  “You’re better off if you don’t. You’ve had enough pictures of how you thought life should end up. Doesn’t look like they’ve done you any good this far.”

  They kept talking for another forty-five minutes. When Zach finally stood, Jackson followed. “How did you learn this stuff?”

  “Let’s just say it takes one to know one.” Jackson reached over and wrapped Zach in his arms. The embrace was real and strong and sure—everything that Zach wasn’t. When it was over, Jackson walked with Zach out to the car and they made the drive back to the church so he could pick up his car.

  He climbed out of Jackson’s black Tahoe, then leaned inside again. “I’ll need you in this.”