“Please?” It sounded like her face was pressed right up against the door. “I need to see you.”
Becca pitched a pair of shoes toward a suitcase, a heel thudding on the wood floor.
“Please. I know you’re leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Send a text,” Becca called out. “Or better yet, a picture from Paris.”
“Please. I’m not leaving until you open the door.”
Rather than risk her making a scene in the hallway, Becca opened the door just wide enough for eye contact, nothing more.
“Can I come in?”
“No. Whatever you want to say, you can say it from there.”
Pippa waited until someone passed by in the hallway and then said with a low voice, “I just wanted to say again that I’m sorry and that I’m gutted over everything.”
“Gutted? Why? You got what you wanted.”
“Can I please come in?”
With a frustrated sigh Becca flung open the door, then returned to packing. Pippa closed the door behind her. “Simon and I are done.”
Becca rolled up a pair of tights and stuffed them between some sweaters.
“Becca?”
“I’m sorry you won’t get to go to Paris.”
“That’s it?”
Becca shrugged. What else did she want her to say? That she was happy? Surprised? Sad for her? She was none of those things.
“I just felt too guilty, you know, every time Simon and I . . .”
Amazing, how that guilt hadn’t prevented her from sleeping with him in the first place.
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you in case, you know, with it being your last night and everything that you might want to . . .”
Becca spun around. “Want to what?”
“I don’t know . . . say goodbye to Simon?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Pippa was not.
Becca shook her head, speechless. Was that all sex ever was to Pippa? A bit of fun? A distraction? Was that all Pippa thought it had been to her?
She removed from her closet the sequined cocktail dress Pippa had helped her pick out for the dinner cruise. “Tell you what,” Becca said, tossing it to her, “you keep this, okay? A goodbye gift. You’ll get way more use out of it than I will.”
If Pippa caught the barb, she didn’t respond to it. Instead, she fingered the sequins. “Text or email or something?” Pippa said after a few moments of awkward silence. But it was clear from the expression on her face that they both knew Becca wouldn’t.
There was one place in London her mother had loved more than any other, a place Becca had told herself she would not go. But she was so worked up after Pippa left that she needed something that might soothe, and music might soothe, especially music offered by a choir her mother declared sang like angels. On her last night in London Becca wanted to be somewhere her mother had been. So she rode the Tube to St. Paul’s and walked to the cathedral, carillon bells boisterously ringing the top of the hour from a nearby church tower. She paused to listen beneath the branches of a large evergreen and glanced up at the massive dome, a masterpiece of architecture and engineering. There would be music at the evensong service but no sermon. What she didn’t want was a sermon. What she needed was peace. What she hoped for was a sense of presence, a connection with her mom.
Just as she was ascending the front steps, her phone buzzed with a text. Simon. After a moment’s hesitation, she read the words on the screen: Terrible mistake. Need to see you. Want you to come with me to Paris. Please say you’ll come. Waiting for you.
Weak in the knees, Becca lowered herself onto a step out of the way of foot traffic and read the words again. And again. And again. She leaned her head against a pillar and closed her eyes. She could cancel her flight. She could. It wasn’t too late to cancel. She could go to Simon’s flat and scold him and then forgive him and spend the summer in the most romantic city in the world, far away from the sorrow of Kingsbury and a lonely, empty house.
She could.
She typed the words, “On my way,” then paused, her finger hovering over Send.
Could she?
Could she really?
She stared at the screen. One little word would make all the difference. “Home,” she typed. On my way home. We’re done.
And she pressed Send.
Hannah
The last time Hannah was waiting for Becca to appear at the end of the concourse, she was waiting with anguished impatience and worry, Meg having been whisked away by paramedics after collapsing—there, right about there—on the terminal carpet. When Becca emerged this time, her dark eyes were not wide with terror but diminished with weariness or sorrow. Unsure whether she would welcome an embrace, Hannah rested her hand on Becca’s shoulder and said, “Welcome home.” At this, Becca collapsed, sobbing, into Hannah’s arms.
“How’s she doing?” Nathan asked when Hannah returned to the house.
“Okay. She insisted she wanted to be by herself, so I didn’t push anything.” She leaned forward to rub Chaucer’s muzzle between her hands. “Some of her high school friends are home from college, so that helps. She doesn’t have to be alone if she doesn’t want to be. And she’s already lined up a barista job at a coffee shop where she’s worked the past few summers. She starts this weekend.”
It’s not Paris, Becca had said with a rueful sigh, but at least it’s something. Something familiar in the midst of everything that had shifted with cataclysmic force.
“Did she say anything about Simon, about what happened?”
“Nothing.” Curious as she was, Hannah had avoided asking any probing or manipulative questions. If Becca wanted to confide in her, then she’d do so when she was ready. “I invited her over for dinner tomorrow, but I don’t think she’ll come.”
“At least she knows you’re here. That’s no small thing.”
Hannah didn’t argue with him. But how she wished she could do something more for Meg’s girl.
“This came for you today,” he said, offering her an envelope immediately identifiable by the uneven handwriting. Hannah pried it open along the seam. With all the other things that had required her attention lately, she had forgotten about the note she’d sent. How kind of Loretta Anderson to respond.
Dear Hannah,
I’ve had my share of heartaches over the years, but few compare to my sorrow over your news about our Meg. She was the daughter I never had, and I loved her with all my heart. Thank you for letting me know. It’s been many years since I’ve seen Becca, but please know that I will be in fervent prayer for her as she grieves and tries to find her way. I know how much her mother adored her and how much Becca must be suffering right now.
I’m grateful for the gift Meg was and continues to be to so many. May God comfort all of us who were privileged to call her friend.
Peace to you,
Loretta Anderson
“You okay?” Nathan asked as she tucked the note back into the envelope.
“I will be,” she said, and reached for his hand.
Thursday, April 30
10 a.m.
I’m sitting in the labyrinth courtyard at New Hope on the bench where Meg and I first sat together last September in a bower of late summer roses. The whole world is greening. I don’t remember ever noticing so many shades of green before. Maybe we notice resurrection more keenly when we’re emerging from the valley of the shadow.
I just met with Katherine for spiritual direction for the first time since the wedding. Before I went I looked back in my journal to see what we talked about the last time we were together in February. I had told her about my struggle with endings, and she had recommended keeping company with Jesus as he said goodbye to loved ones. “Do not cling.” That was the word I needed to embrace in the midst of everything that was changing so rapidly. “Do not cling.” An Easter word to Mary Magdalene and to me.
We talked about that today, all the ways I’ve been invited to let go with ope
n hands and to receive with open hands. We talked about Easter as a season, not merely as a day, and what it means to share in the power of his resurrection even while we share in the fellowship of his sufferings. Dying and rising. This is our daily rhythm. Day after day after day. We die. We rise. And sometimes we discover, by God’s grace, that the darkness we thought was the shadow of death is instead the shadow of the Almighty, covering us with his wings.
Katherine asked me what it was like to preach again. I told her that the words might have sounded similar to words I’ve preached before, but they flowed from a different, deeper place. “Integrated,” she commented. That’s a good word. I preached from a place of having come to glimpse God’s love for me in the depths of my being, and so I was able to offer that hope to others. By confronting some of my own woundedness the past nine months and exposing those wounds to others, I know the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his resurrection in deeper ways. I know his wounds take in my hurts. And my scars can reveal his glory.
I told her, too, about some of the responses to my message. A few people thanked me for not giving an “Everything’s great because Jesus is victorious over the grave!” sort of sermon. They thanked me for the reminder that we hold the sorrow and the joy in the same overflowing cup and trust that Jesus reveals himself in each. Christ IS victorious. And we still groan in our sufferings. This, too, is Easter. I told Katherine about a young woman who came up to talk with me after worship. She wanted to show me the scars on her arms from where she had cut herself as a teenager in self-loathing, in depression. She was so numb in her soul, she said, she needed to feel physical pain. Now she counsels teenage girls who struggle with the same impulses. That’s the kind of stewardship of sufferings we’re called to. That’s the kind of stewardship I want to embrace in ever-deepening ways.
When I expressed that longing, Katherine asked what was stirring in me about desires for ministry. “Do you want to return to pastoring?” she asked. I do, if God has that for me. But what amazed me as I sat there with her is that I don’t feel anxious about it. I don’t feel the need to grab for something as a source of identity and significance anymore. And that’s a paradigm shift I couldn’t have imagined when I arrived in Kingsbury. “Just give God nine months,” Steve said last August. I had no idea what God would form in me during that time. I still don’t have a full picture. I know I’ll need to find some type of employment to help with our monthly expenses. It’s been a gift to have the time off from work, but it’s time to return. I’m not assuming I’ll be able to receive a paycheck from a church, but I know I’m called to ministry. Maybe that means the next step is tentmaking. Or hospital or retirement home chaplaincy. God knows what we need to live on, and I want to approach this prayerfully with Nate.
Here’s one thing I do know: I want to be alongside others as they explore what it means to notice and name the presence of God in the midst of all the ordinary circumstances of a day. I want to be alongside others to encourage them to know the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God, to rest in the love of God. To celebrate and savor it with joy. I stare at the labyrinth, at the flower shape in the middle, and I’m reminded that what I want is not to wear myself out delivering flowers to Jesus or to others but to keep Jesus company as he gives the flowers away. Lavish, abundant, beautiful signs of his love. That’s what I long to do.
Katherine says that sounds like a call toward the ministry of spiritual direction, and she may be right. Charissa may be right. That may be a next step forward while I explore employment opportunities as well. Watch and pray. Those are ongoing words for me. Watch and pray.
The Holy Land group leaves on the pilgrimage next week. Katherine asked where I would like her to pray for me. I was so touched by that. I had hoped to pray there myself, to walk in the footsteps of Jesus with Nate. With Jake. I asked if she would pray twice: once in Cana for our marriage and once near the Garden of Gethsemane for me, that I would continue to have the courage to say, Your will be done.
Becca
Becca was so exhausted when she arrived from London that she went straight upstairs to her room without thinking about anything else. It was only the next afternoon when she awoke that she discovered Hannah had stocked the refrigerator and cupboards with food, and there were pink and white ruffled tulips in a vase on the kitchen table.
She poured herself a bowl of Cheerios and sat down in the music room on the antique sofa where she and her mother had often watched movies together, the collage of smiling photos confronting her.
She couldn’t do this. Not by herself. She had thought she might have a sense of her mother’s presence with her in the house. But all she felt was her dreadful absence.
She couldn’t do it. Her mother wouldn’t blame her for that. Her mother hadn’t been able to return to her own house after the car accident. She’d told Becca that story, how she went home from the hospital, packed up her life in a couple of suitcases, and staggered back to her childhood home because she couldn’t bear the grief of living alone, surrounded by memories.
Maybe that’s what she ought to do. Leave the house. Sell it. Close the door and never return.
If only she had asked her mother for advice about what to do after she was gone. But Becca had avoided all those sorts of conversations. She had lived in denial—or was it foolish hope?—convinced that her mother would live, regardless of what the doctors had predicted.
“I’ll help you,” Hannah had said many times. “Whatever you need, you can lean on me.”
Becca glanced outside at a yard that would need to be tended to, at chipping paint on eaves and a sagging porch with railings missing. What was she supposed to do with a decrepit old house? She couldn’t be burdened with it. Her mother wouldn’t want her burdened with it. Her mother had always encouraged her wings, even when those wings took her places her mother didn’t approve of.
Her hand shifted from her lap to the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. Her wings. Odd, how she hadn’t made the connection before. Leaning forward, she pulled from the collage the photo of her mother with a butterfly resting on her shoulder. Becca glanced at her tattoo. It was inked in almost the same place as the blue one that had landed on her mother. Maybe it was some kind of sign. A sign of what, she didn’t know. But a connection. A thread weaving them together somehow.
Maybe Hannah could help her clear out the house. It was a tomb. A crypt. And Becca needed to fly. To be free. Maybe the butterfly was the sign.
“Take it slow,” Hannah said on the phone later that afternoon when Becca called to thank her for the food and flowers. “I know it’s hard. But you don’t want to make any rash decisions you might regret later.”
Becca emptied the coffee pot into the sink. “But I can’t take care of everything. I know I can’t. My mom couldn’t, either. She said so after my grandmother died. She didn’t know how much longer she would keep the house.”
“I know. She told me.”
“So what did she expect me to do with it? Did she tell you anything about what she was hoping for?”
“All she said was that she wanted you to finish your senior year. She was really adamant about that. She didn’t want her”—Hannah paused as if reconsidering her words—“she didn’t want you to put your life on hold in any way.”
Becca stared out the window at the chickadees gathered at the feeder. “So that’s my answer, right? Sell the house, go back to school for one more year, and then figure out what’s next.”
Hannah paused and then said, “How about if you join us for dinner tonight, and we can talk about it in person?”
It wasn’t a bad plan. Becca didn’t relish the idea of eating alone at the house, and she wasn’t prepared to sort through any of her mother’s belongings. Not yet.
“It’s pizza night here, an Allen Family tradition.”
“Yeah, okay,” Becca said, and went upstairs to shower.
Hannah
Nathan and Becca had plenty to talk about at d
inner, with her being a literature major and him being a literature professor, with her spending a year abroad in London and him spending a year abroad in Oxford. Their lively conversation ranged from metaphysical poets to favorite Beatles albums. Jake entered that debate enthusiastically, arguing good-naturedly with her about the merits of “Abbey Road” versus “Revolver.” Hannah, who knew nothing about either one of them, listened attentively and waited for natural segues into discussion about Becca’s departure from London, her process of grieving, or her thoughts about moving forward. It wasn’t until Jake excused himself to do homework and Nathan made coffee that Becca shifted gears.
“What if I spend the summer getting everything sorted out and then put the house up for sale?”
“I think it might be wise to move a little more slowly,” Hannah said, “give yourself a year to process everything.”
“Yeah, but it’s a huge responsibility, and I’ll be away at school, and it shouldn’t just sit there empty.” Becca reached for another cookie. “My mom didn’t like the place. She said it felt lonely and sad when she was there by herself. And it does. It’s awful. Like a tomb.”
Hannah had thought of it as a funeral parlor, but tomb was an apt description too.
“Mom didn’t know what to do with it, either. She didn’t feel like she could get rid of all my grandmother’s stuff after she died, so she just stayed trapped, stuck.”
Hannah was going to defend Meg. She was going to say that she wasn’t stuck but praying about what her next steps were when she was struck down with cancer. But she decided to keep this to herself.
“And ever since my mom told me what happened to my grandfather, well—the house just seems especially creepy now. I don’t even know if I can stand it all summer. I might stay with a friend at her flat. She’s got a futon.”
“Might not be a bad idea,” Nathan said. “Surround yourself with people who love you, who can support you through all of this.”
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