Stardust Miracle

by Edie Ramer

  But Sarah had only asked one thing. She wanted to know what she and Trey did last night. And Becky had said ‘no.’ Thinking she knew everything. Just as her dad and Jim had thought when they told Becky how to live her life.

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her gaze. “Yes, we did it.”

  Sarah’s head tilted up at Becky, two lines between her eyebrows as if she didn’t know what Becky was talking about.

  Becky took three steps to the table and sat down. She needed something solid beneath her butt when she said this. “You asked if Trey and I did it. Yes, we did do it. We had sex.”

  Sarah’s jaw dropped, her eyes widened. Trading sad for stunned. As if Becky had broken a water balloon on her head.

  “I feel guilty about it,” Becky continued, “but it was after you went to bed with the sleeping pill.”

  Sarah blinked. Her lips pressed together. Becky cringed inside. How to handle this was not in the chapter on counseling she’d read. Not that it said ‘Don’t talk about your sex life to a bereaved person’ in any of the books. It was just assumed that the counselor had more sense.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” Becky started to get up.

  A hand clapped onto her shoulder and pushed her back down. Sarah sat across from her. “I want to hear about it. All about it.”

  “I’m not good at talking about sex.”

  “Just answer me. He’s better than Jim, right?”

  “Like I said before, Jim really liked getting blow jobs.” Becky made a face. “I’m thinking of sending Diana a thank you email.”

  Sarah laughed outright. The kind of laugh where, if she had coffee in her mouth, it would’ve spewed out. “You should. I’d love to see it.”

  “And maybe I should Cc the church members.”

  Sarah gave a shriek of laughter, but it had an edge of hysteria. As if tears weren’t far away. “Jim is a selfish asshole. Let the whole world know.”

  “I see that now.” Becky swallowed a lump in her throat. This conversation was bringing to life the hollow place inside her. But if it helped Sarah get through the day... “I don’t know why I stayed with him so long. They say the wife has to know all along, but I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t think he was that...well, passionate. I just knew there was something missing...”

  “Decency?” Sarah suggested.

  Becky shrugged. “On the surface Jim seems perfect. But it’s all just surface. Underneath that surface, he’s...”

  “Rotten?” Sarah suggested.

  “Inauthentic. I felt like an actor in a show he’d made up. Like I was living in a sitcom, pretending to be this perfect minister’s wife – only I wasn’t as good an actor as he was. That’s why so many of the congregation didn’t rally around me.”

  “Fuck them.”

  “They don’t want the truth. They want to believe in a Leave It to Beaver world that Jim and Dad represent. Even though there never was a real world like that. But I lived it with him.” She looked up at Sarah, astonished that Sarah was comforting her when it should’ve been the other way around. “I was purposefully blind. I didn’t want to see what he was.”

  “You were indoctrinated to serve.” The sadness streamed back into Sarah’s face. The grief. “Daddy did that to you.”

  Becky nodded, an ache clogging her throat. And her heart. But she knew her ache was tiny compared to the one in Sarah’s heart right now. Then Becky said out loud what she suspected Sarah had already thought. “I wish it were Jim instead of Marsh.”

  Sarah’s face crumbled. “Or Daddy. I shouldn’t say that. I’m an awful daughter. I’m an awful person. I’m a bitch. A selfish bitch.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” Sarah got to her feet and turned.

  Becky surged up. Sarah was moving toward the hall. Becky stepped after her. In an attempt to distract Sarah, words Becky had never in her life thought she’d say blurted out of her mouth.

  “Trey’s condom tore.”

  Sarah snapped around, her eyes bright. “Really? Do you think...”

  “No. Yes.” Becky’s hands covered her abdomen. “It’s too early to tell anything. And it’s unlikely.” She wouldn’t get her hopes up. She wouldn’t do that to herself.

  But her hands still remained over her belly. Protecting whatever might be cooking inside.

  “You never told me the problem,” Sarah said. “I heard it was you, but was it really Jim? Is he too busy getting blow jobs to procreate?”

  Becky laughed. Funny how it had hurt so much a short time ago. Now leaving him was the best thing that happened to her in a long time.

  “No, it’s me.” For once it didn’t hurt to talk about it. Maybe because what Sarah was going through was so much more horrible. “We had fertility tests done.”

  Maybe because now she had hope.

  “You’re sure? He could’ve been fudging the test. Jim’s ego is as big as...well, Dad’s.”

  Becky grimaced. “They’re two of a kind. But I read his report. His sperm are healthy and swimming just fine. I just don’t have a lot of eggs.”

  “It only takes one.”

  “The one we needed didn’t show up. I wanted to adopt, but Jim wanted to wait.”

  “I bet he’s sorry now. He doesn’t have that hold on you. Jim won’t remain single forever. When he hooks up with someone else, Dad won’t stick with him.”

  This wasn’t about Jim. “I don’t care.” Becky turned her head away, because she was a liar. Sometimes she didn’t care that her father turned on her. Other times she felt grief like a knife twisting in her chest.

  Even now, though she could see what her father was and how he’d taken advantage of her, the strings were still there, tugging at her heart. Wanting his approval and his love.

  A car door slammed on the street. The phone rang. Sarah looked out the front window. “In a minute you can tell Dad to his face.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Her father wasn’t alone. While Sarah answered the phone, Becky stood on the front porch and crossed her arms. She felt like a knight guarding the castle from marauding intruders.

  “Hello, Dad.” Becky nodded at Jim. She would show him chilly politeness. Nothing more. She brought her gaze back to Carl. “Why are you here?”

  “To talk to your sister.” Carl stepped up, but Becky didn’t move aside for her father even though he stood inches from her. So close she could see the pores in his skin. The lines on his face. The fading in his narrowed blue eyes. The pinched nostrils. The pressed-together lips.

  A man unhappy with the person he was staring at.

  The unhappiness was mutual.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “I’m her father. She has to talk to me.”

  “You’re too late, Dad. Too late for both of us.” She raked her gaze over him and then at Jim behind him. “I hear there’s a strip bar in Wausau. Why don’t you two boys head over there? It’s a bit early, but you might get lucky.”

  “Becky!” both men exclaimed at once.

  Choked laughter came from the open door behind Becky. “It’s okay,” Sarah said. “Let them in.”

  Twisting her upper body, Becky gave Sarah her ‘what now?’ look, narrowing her eyes to see Sarah through the tiny crisscrosses of the screen.

  “That was Joy on the phone,” Sarah said.

  Becky nodded, getting the message. Joy must’ve seen Carl and Jim drive up to the curb. If she could see them, so could Cody. Sarah wanted to get this party out of sight.

  Becky backed up to let the two men step inside. Sarah led them into the living room. When the men sat, Sarah remained standing in front of the window. Becky stood beside her. Two against two.

  It was horrible to feel that their father was against them. Their family wasn’t just fractured, it was broken into tiny pieces that would take an army of therapists to glue back together – and they would still end up with holes and extra pieces that didn’t fit anywhere.

  Carl got to his feet again, and then
Jim did, too. Monkey see, monkey do, Becky thought. Then she realized that at that moment she was mimicking Sarah in her defiant, the-hell-with-you attitude, and she held back a laugh. Yes, she was a monkey, too.

  Looking at Jim right now, she was very happy she’d been up to her own monkeyshines. With two men. Though not at the same time.

  The thought gave her a secret pleasure.

  Then it hit her that he must’ve thought the same thing about his ‘women’ while looking at her every morning as she served him eggs over easy, the way he liked his eggs, even as she spread his favorite blueberry jam on his toast.

  Inside her belly, she felt a twist like a corkscrew turning.

  She’d been a fool.

  “No matter what happened between us, we’re family,” her father said.

  Sarah touched the back of Becky’s hand, stopping her from shooting back a sarcastic remark. Becky glanced at Sarah, but Sarah was staring at her father...not saying anything. Her mouth closed. Her eyes were open but with a faraway gaze, as if she looked right through him.

  “Jim isn’t family,” Becky said.

  “Though your sister left Jim,” her father said to Sarah, ignoring Becky, “he’s a part of our family. He has been since he was a child. His father was like my brother. The church has been part of our lives, too. Your mother and I were married there. You and Becky were christened there. Your mother’s buried in the church graveyard.”

  “So, what’s the point?” Becky asked.

  Her father’s face reddened but he still kept his gaze on Sarah. “I came with Jim to make the funeral arrangements. You don’t have to worry about the expenses. I’ll take care of it.”

  Sarah frowned. “The church hasn’t been a part of my family’s life for more than eight years. And neither have you.”

  “I’m sorry for the separation, but you need me now and I’m here for you. I’m your father. The one you can count on to take care of you and your children.”

  Becky stepped forward. Though his gaze remained on Sarah, Becky spotted a nervous twitch in his right cheek. Good, he’s not as confident as he sounds, she thought furiously. His whole body should twitch.

  “I’ll take care of myself,” Sarah said. “And my children.”

  “And the person who took care of Sarah before she married Marsh is right here.” Becky jabbed her index finger at her breastbone. “And I’m ready to do it again.”

  Finally her father looked at her, his expression annoyed. “Don’t act as if I was absent while she was growing up. I was there, too.”

  “When it was convenient for you.” Becky heard the wobble in her voice, the seesaw of anger and hurt.

  “When you were home, you were always telling me what I was doing wrong,” Sarah said, stepping up to Becky’s side. “I used to be glad when you left.”

  “You were a difficult child.” He planted his black leather shoes apart, his chest puffed out. “You have a son. What are you going to do when he gets out of hand? Tell him what a great kid he is?”

  “I’ll still love him.”

  “I loved you.”

  “You turned your back on me. You think throwing a few dollars at me now will make me forget that?”

  “I admitted I was wrong.” He looked from Sarah to Becky. “I wasn’t a perfect father or a perfect husband. I’m trying to make up for that now.”

  Becky stared at him stonily. She didn’t look at Sarah, but she felt Sarah giving him the same death stare.

  His cheek twitched again. “Maybe I was too harsh on you.”

  “It’s too late,” Sarah said. “I’ve gone on living my life without you in it.”

  “Honey, you need me.”

  “You’re wrong. You think because Marsh is gone, I’ll crawl back to you and ask you to take care of the poor widow and her son?” Her voice thickened. “It’s not going to happen. No way.”

  Glancing at Sarah, Becky saw the splotchy redness on her face that always bloomed before she started to cry. She’d been like that when she was a chubby baby and now she was a full grown woman, and that hadn’t changed.

  Becky faced her father. “That’s enough. You’re upsetting Sarah, and I want you to go. Both of you.” The look she gave Jim should have seared a two-inch part through his perfect hair. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”

  “To offer your sister comfort.” Jim couldn’t quite look her in the eyes, and she knew the real reason he was here – because her father had insisted.

  “The only comfort you can offer either of us is to take him out of here.” She jerked her chin toward her father.

  “Becky, I hurt you, too. I should’ve been...more understanding.” Carl frowned, as if apologizing gave him a pain in his belly. Then he put out his hands in a pleading manner that made Becky’s skin itch like red army ants were crawling along the inside layer. “But we can all change. I’m changing. Jim is changing.”

  “Stop!” Sarah’s voice filled with tears. “I can’t handle this right now. Becky’s right. Just go.”

  Becky stepped closer to Sarah, touching her arm, letting her sister know she wasn’t alone.

  “You’ll need money.” Carl took out his wallet. “I’ll give you money.”

  “No.” Sarah put her hands behind her back.

  “If she needs money, she can have mine,” Becky said. In the second of silence following that remark, as a muscle in her father’s cheek twitched again, she heard a car pulling up to the curb outside.

  “How long do you think that will last?” Carl’s voice was harsh, no more pleading. “Who’s going to pay for all of this? What about the mortgage? I heard the other driver didn’t have insurance. You won’t get anything there.”

  “That’s none of your business.” Sarah stared between Carl and Jim, her face blank.

  A car door closed, and Becky twisted to gaze out the window behind her. Walking up the sidewalk, she saw Elsa, sunlight tangled in her white-blond hair.

  Becky’s tense muscles relaxed. She had the feeling everything was going to be all right.

  “For the sake of the community, let me do his service.” Jim focused his blue eyes on Sarah, and Becky could feel him amping up the force of his personality. Compelling her to listen to him.

  When he did this, he shone like a star. Channeling his father, who had done the same thing, though his dad had done it without conscious effort. “Marsh had friends in Miracle. People cared about him. They’re mourning him today. A service isn’t just for the family. It’s for Marsh’s extended family. You owe it to his friends to do this.”

  Becky squeezed Sarah’s arm, feeling the stiffness under her fingers. As if Sarah were holding herself together through willpower alone.

  Becky switched her gaze to the man with the real power: her father. Jim and her father were like a politician and his special interest group. The front man and the moneyman. And the moneyman in this instance was the one that pulled the strings.

  “Then it’s a good thing that yours isn’t the only church in Miracle,” Becky said.

  Jim made an incoherent sound but her father’s face turned the color of a pimple about to burst.

  Before either of them said anything more, the doorbell rang.

  Great timing, Becky thought. “Now I’m going to ask you to leave – again.”

  She was wasting her voice. Her father looked out the large living room window and though he couldn’t see Elsa, he saw her Mustang Convertible.

  His face turned from red to purplish red and he stomped to the front door.

  Chapter Thirty

  Becky hurried after her father. He was already out the door, and the screen door clanged behind him. In the puppy room, Goldie barked and puppies squeaked, upset by all the commotion. Becky’s heart thundered in her chest.

  The fury she’d seen in her father’s eyes had brought back a memory she’d forgotten. It was after her mother’s diagnosis. Carl’s home office was in an addition he’d built onto the house. It was his place, and she rarely went into it.
She rarely heard noise coming from it, either. But that night she had. Furniture breaking and someone shouting at her father to stop.

  She remembered she ran to the office, calling ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ She’d thrown the door open and seen the room was wrecked. Papers and folders were scattered over the floor, his office chair overturned and a leg broken. A mounted fish her mother had always disliked lay on the floor along with a picture of the family that was ripped jaggedly, the frame cracked. And cowering in the corner was a man she recognized as their bookkeeper, holding his arm in a funny position and sobbing, begging Carl not to hurt him.

  Reaching the door now, she peered through the screen. Carl and Elsa faced each other, their sides to Becky. At least six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier, Carl glared at Elsa and his complexion blanched. From demon red to vampire pale in less than a minute.

  It reminded Becky of that night.

  “You,” he said, his voice low. “You.”

  The fine hairs on Becky’s nape rose.

  “Hello, Carl.” Elsa sounded amused, as if she didn’t realize she was in danger. “There was a time when you were much happier to see me.”

  “I’m not letting you tear my family apart.” His fury shook Becky. She held her knuckles against her lips to hold back a cry.

  All those years ago, the bookkeeper had scrambled to his feet upon her entry and fled the office. Later, she’d heard that he’d moved his family to Madison. Since then Becky had never seen her father like this – teetering on the edge of a fury that could drive him to madness.

  She didn’t know what had come over him that night. She didn’t know why Elsa caused the same reaction.

  What was between the two of them? What caused her father’s hatred?

  “Let me out,” Jim said, next to her.

  Startled, she glanced up. His face had its pained ‘someone is behaving badly in public’ look. Not that Jim didn’t behave badly; he just preferred to behave badly in private.

  Her feet heavy, Becky shifted to the side, glad to let Jim take control of this. As if her father were a dangerous animal Jim would keep from springing at Elsa.