Pocketful of Pearls

by Shelley Bates

  “I was arrested, but it turned out the girl had a history of abuse, and of making such accusations in order to get attention.”

  “Once again, we blame the victim,” Dinah snapped. “You told me yourself that’s what abusers do.”

  “I’m not an abuser, Dinah. I’m just a little shortsighted. I didn’t see it coming. I sincerely thought she wanted tutoring for a paper about the plays of Aphra Behn.”

  She snorted in disbelief.

  “Yes, the police agreed with you. At first. But I was completely cleared. I see that Phinehas neglected to search the newspaper archives for the articles that reported on my exoneration.”

  She turned away and opened the barn door. “I’ll go write your check. Feel free to take my dad’s—Morton’s—clothes if you want. I certainly don’t need them.”

  “Dinah, please.” He reached for her arm, but she jerked away.

  “You could have told me,” she choked. Her face was twisted with distress. “You could have explained. But oh no, you let me go on and on about my own problems and completely shut me out of yours.”

  “Why would I burden you with all that ugliness?” The words burst out of him. “You had enough to bear.”

  “Let me be the judge of how much I can bear, Matthew. Let me do the thinking for myself.”

  “And what would have happened? Exactly this. You getting upset and asking me to go.”

  “Maybe. But maybe on those long nights when I was crying on your shoulder, you could have shared a little. Could have talked things out with me.”

  He gazed at her, completely at a loss as to why she would want such a thing. “I don’t understand. What happened in California is irrelevant to us now. I was innocent. I’m still innocent. Don’t let that mistake come between us, Dinah. Please.”

  “It’s not that.” Her voice shook. “It’s the fact that I gave you everything and you gave me nothing. You know everything there is to know about me and what do I know about you? Friends, family, education, history? Next to nothing.”

  “I can tell you all that. I thought we had time.”

  She made a sound of frustration. “It’s not the facts that make the difference, Matthew. It’s the willingness to share them. To exchange pieces of ourselves, don’t you see? It’s happened to me again. I give my pearls away and I get nothing back. I suppose I should thank you for not throwing them on the ground, at least.”

  He had no idea what she meant.

  She opened the door and jerked her chin in the direction of the hired man’s suite. Her face was set, with fear stamped on it the way it had been when he’d first arrived. “Go on. Pack your things and I’ll drive you to the bus station. And make sure you close the door behind you. On top of everything else, I’m going to have to break Schatzi of the urge to visit you now.”

  With that she marched outside and swung the door shut. The chickens, seeing him as their last hope, gathered around his feet and looked up at him, murmuring encouragement.

  “What am I going to do, my little friends?” he asked them, his voice thick with despair. “How am I going to make her see?”

  The chickens had no reply. But there was One he could turn to when the waters of loss threatened to overwhelm his soul.

  Lord, you’ve brought me to this place and to this woman for a reason. Give me wisdom. Give me guidance, please, Lord. Help me know what your will is, and oh Lord, give me the strength to do it.

  Shortsightedness had been the least of his mistakes. He had blithely told his friend Paolo that he thought he could help Dinah by listening. So he’d just sat there like the God she had once believed in, accepting everything she brought to him and giving nothing back. It had never occurred to him that he might have allowed her to listen, that in sharing his pain she might be able to alleviate it. Instead, he’d been all wisdom and benevolence, dishing out advice as though it were his place to do so, setting himself up as another selfish father figure in the long line she’d already had to deal with.

  Oh, Father, forgive me. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  Outside, the door slammed on the family’s Oldsmobile, and someone started it up and backed out of the yard. On the other side of the barn, he heard the doors slide open and then the truck engine fire up. Everyone, it seemed, had somewhere to go today. Meantime, he had not done what she’d asked him to.

  It took only a few seconds to pull his few shirts off their hangers and to roll up the pair of pants that had belonged to Morton. His books went into the pockets in his backpack they had become used to, and his toothbrush and comb into a plastic bag.

  When he took a last look around the cozy kitchen and living room he’d begun to think of as his little harbor of peace in the wilderness of the world, he saw that Schatzi had followed him in the open door from the barn.

  A lump formed in his throat as he knelt down to stroke the soft golden feathers. “Good-bye, little friend,” he said softly. “Take care of her for me as best you can.”

  Then, mindful of what Dinah had said, he slung the pack over one shoulder and picked the bird up. He closed the door carefully behind him with one hand, which put Schatzi off balance. Her normal contented bubbling sound became a squawk of distrust and she leaped from his arm, flapping to a landing on the floor of the dark passageway. Then she took off at a run for the rest of her flock, who were milling around the feeder on the other side of the barn.

  The lump in his throat swelled in fresh pain.

  He had no way to make amends for his clumsiness with her, either.

  DINAH KEPT HER mouth shut and her foot jammed on the gas pedal as they sped down the highway toward town. Matthew had tried to speak once or twice, but with Tamsen in the back trying out her vocalization skills it was easy to freeze him out. If she let him say anything, her heart would melt and she’d beg him to forget what she’d said and stay.

  But she’d made up her mind. He’d broken her trust and now he had to go and that was that. She couldn’t even think about the howling pain in the region of her heart, or the sick dread in her stomach at the thought of having to face Phinehas’s third condition alone. She even felt as though she ought to apologize to Schatzi for sending him away, but some childish jealousy held her back on that one. Schatzi could just get used to the real alpha bird in the flock—Dinah.

  She parked the truck outside the bank, where she could see Claire at the counter through the picture window. Next door, the coffee bar was doing a rousing trade, some brave souls even drinking their lattes at outdoor tables. Across the street, people browsed in Rebecca Quinn’s bookshop, Quill and Quinn.

  Everyone looked so normal, while her world was splintering all around her.

  “It will just take a moment to cash this and close the account,” Matthew said before he slid out the door.

  Dinah looked out her own window and caught sight of her mother going into the post office on the corner. Her arms were full of red, white, and blue “Priority Mail” boxes, and someone held the door for her while she maneuvered them all inside.

  What was going on? Was she sending presents to everyone she’d ever met? In the middle of April?

  Dinah popped Tamsen out of her buckles and locked the truck. Holding the baby, she crossed the street and pushed open the post office door with her hip. Her mother was already at the counter with her pile.

  “Mom,” she said in a low voice, “what’s going on?”

  Elsie looked her up and down, and nibbled the inside of her lower lip. Then she seemed to come to a decision.

  “I’m mailing my things to my customers,” she said.

  Dinah stared at her. Tamsen waved an arm and grabbed a pen out of the postal guy’s pen holder, and she took it away from her without looking. “What?”

  “The baby clothes. I’ve been selling them for a couple of weeks now. Well, Matthew has. These are all going to the people who ordered them.”

  “Selling them?” Dinah was getting tired of sounding like a parrot, only able to mimic, not think.

>   “Our hired man has many talents, in case you haven’t noticed. I took pictures of the clothes on Tamsen—yes, you’re Granny’s pretty model, aren’t you, love?—and Matthew had them scanned at the stationery store. Then he made a Web site and is selling them on something called eBay, too. He looks after all that, though. I just fill the orders.”

  “Matthew?” Come on, Dinah. Get your brain in gear.

  “Yes. He’s got a little computer in the barn, you know. I know we’ve been taught that the Internet is a window into wickedness, but it sure is handy when a woman has to make a living and all she knows how to do is cook and sew.”

  “Mom, I just fired Matthew.” There. That was something sensible to say. Besides, technically it was her little computer. And it was still sitting in the hired man’s suite.

  Now it was her mother’s turn to stare in astonishment. “Fired him? Why?”

  Why? It was completely impossible to explain why. She finally settled on the easiest part. “He was arrested for sexual abuse earlier this year.”

  “Good heavens. Well, was he guilty?”

  “No.”

  “So what did you fire him for?”

  “I just don’t want him around any more. He broke my trust.” And my heart.

  Elsie took her change from the postal employee and led the way out the door. “You don’t. Well, goodness, missy, some of us might. How am I going to run my business without his brain, not to mention his computer?”

  “That computer is mine.”

  Now it was Elsie’s turn to stare at her. “Is it, now. And here I was feeling guilty about letting Matthew talk me into this. Not that I’m not enjoying it,” she added. “But I felt I had to hide it from you. I guess now I don’t.”

  “I think we’re done hiding things from each other. The truth has set us free, hasn’t it?”

  They had reached the Oldsmobile. “But for some reason that doesn’t apply to Matthew?” her mother asked. “Where is he? I’m going to tell him he isn’t fired after all. I don’t know what you were thinking. If he wasn’t guilty and he’s been a good friend to you, what would you want to get rid of him for?”

  “Mom, don’t.”

  But it was too late. When Elsie marched down the street to the truck, Matthew was nowhere in sight. Dinah went into the bank while Elsie put Tamsen into her seat.

  “Claire, did you see where Matthew went?”

  The customer at Claire’s window gave her a dirty look for interrupting his transaction. “He said he had to catch a bus. I told him he’d better hurry—the one to Richmond went through at three o’clock.”

  Elsie was right. What was the matter with her? She had pushed Matthew away the way she pushed everyone away who got close enough to really see her. She had branded him with the same label the newspapers had. She was quick to judge when he had not judged her. And she had been unkind when he had been nothing but gentle toward her.

  She was an idiot and she needed to fix that, right now, before it was too late.

  Dinah looked at her watch. Three fifteen. But the bus station was just on the next block and around the corner. There might still be time.

  As she pushed the bank’s glass and steel door open, she heard a roar and the Richmond bus accelerated down Main Street and picked up speed as it passed the old apple-processing plant where the discount store was going to be.

  Dinah stood on the sidewalk and watched her only chance for happiness roll down the highway, leaving nothing behind but the choking smell of exhaust.

  HAD IT NOT been for Matthew and the gifts he’d given her during those black nights when she’d emptied herself of ugliness the way she had purged her body of food, Dinah wouldn’t have been able to bear it when Phinehas called. Of course, Elsie did the expected thing and invited him to dinner. If not for Matthew and his unselfish acceptance of the horror that had been her life, she would not be able to sit across the table from her abuser and make small talk while her mother served Dutch apple pie.

  She had accused Matthew of keeping himself from her, but maybe, she thought now, it was more a case of the poor man not being able to get a word in edgewise. Had she asked him about his family and friends? Had she shown interest in his passion for seventeenth-century literature? Had she made even the smallest attempt to enter into his life the way he had wholeheartedly entered hers?

  No.

  No wonder he had left without a word in his own defense. She hadn’t given him a chance to do that, either.

  But if God had given her Tamsen as a reason to live, then Matthew had given her the tools to live by. Courage, honesty, and above all, the knowledge that she was worthy of love. Not the twisted reflection of his own ego that had passed for love with Phinehas. But real, unselfish, generous love that reached out, even when it wasn’t wanted.

  The kind of love God showed when he sent his son to an earth that didn’t know him and didn’t care to. But God did it anyway. And Dinah was determined to as well.

  “I got your message from Melchizedek,” she said calmly to Phinehas when Elsie went out to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. “I’ve fulfilled two of the conditions.” To her own detriment and sorrow.

  “And what about the third?” Phinehas cleaned the last of the vanilla ice cream off his plate with the tines of his fork. They were using Grandma Simcoe’s silver—she of the Simcoe Schnozz.

  “I’m afraid not, Phinehas. There will only be the two. You don’t have the right to ask the third of me.”

  “And you have the authority to tell the Shepherd of your soul what he has the right to do?” His voice was as calm and smooth as oil on water.

  “The only authority I have is over my own body,” she replied steadily. “And I choose not to allow you to rape me any more.”

  Silence fell in the dining room, punctuated only by the sound of running water from the kitchen as Elsie filled the reservoir in the coffee maker.

  “It grieves me that you still view your service this way.” Phinehas laid his fork carefully on his plate, so that it didn’t clink. “It used to be a willing service. Now you heap ugliness on it.”

  “Let’s call a spade a spade, Phinehas. I was never willing. Never. I told you I would not make it public if you never touched me again.”

  “You broke your word. So anything you ‘told’ me is null and void, my dear.”

  “How did I do that?”

  “You had that attorney serve me with the notice, as if I had any connection with that child.”

  “You can deny it all you like, but it doesn’t change the facts. You chose to show the notice to Melchizedek. Our deal still stands. I won’t make the third sacrifice. And I will go public if you don’t stop.”

  “Are you threatening me again?” All the music had leached out of Phinehas’s voice, leaving it harsh and flat.

  “No, not at all. Just telling you the truth. I take it our discussion is closed? Would you like some coffee?”

  “Our discussion is not closed. It’s obvious to me that you have forsaken God and given yourself wholly to Satan. I have no choice but to call the Testimony of Two Men. This very evening, in fact.”

  GOOD THINGS COULD take a whole lifetime to come. Bad things, however, could be arranged in half an hour.

  If ever there was a time when Dinah could have used love and support, it was now. But Elsie had retired to her room in tears after unsuccessfully begging Phinehas not to make those calls. And Matthew? Well, her selfishness had done a fine job of chasing him away just when she needed him most.

  It’s not God throwing lightning bolts at you, she reminded herself as Owen Blanchard’s car rolled into the driveway, joining that of Melchizedek. It’s Phinehas. You can fight this. Only the truth is spoken in this house now. You have nothing left to lose, so you may as well say it out loud. God is a God of truth, not lies and covering up. He is with you.

  He had to be. Otherwise, how could she sit here in this dining room chair so calmly as Phinehas, Melchizedek, and Owen filed into the living room a
nd seated themselves in three chairs facing her? In fact, she was more than calm. She was filled with a quiet joy brought on by the knowledge that she had done the right things all along, and with the shield of her newborn faith, she could take on anything they had to throw at her.

  Owen Blanchard looked unutterably weary, she thought as he seated himself. His suit was as crisp as ever, his shirt and tie impeccable, a nice contrast with red-gold hair that had faded over the last year or so to a sandy gray. It couldn’t be easy for him as Elder. All the girls from the two favored families except one were either Out or Silenced, and the one remaining, his wife, Madeleine, was at some kind of asylum getting treatment for a disorder no one wanted to talk about.

  Strange that it was the girls this was happening to, Dinah thought suddenly. Is it because we’re the only ones able to struggle free of generations of tradition and open our mouths to speak the truth?

  Phinehas pulled Morton’s Bible from the end table next to the easy chair, opened it, and began to read.

  “Jesus said in the eighth chapter of John, ‘And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true.’” He looked up at her. “Dinah Traynell, we have called the Testimony in response to your unwillingness to support the leadership of the Elect of God. You may choose two of us to decide your case. Who will you have?”

  “Melchizedek and Owen,” she replied. That was a no-brainer. Why should she choose Phinehas when he had engineered the whole thing and was determined to get his revenge for her daring to tell the truth? Not that either Melchizedek or Owen would go against what he wanted. Her “case” was probably already decided. She pressed her knees together and tried to invite the spirit of peace into her heart. She was going to need it.

  Phinehas handed Melchizedek the Bible, open on both hands, and the latter flipped further along in the New Testament. “Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter five. ‘But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.’” The Shepherd’s voice was heavy, the way he said grace at the table. As a little girl, Dinah had always thought he had a stomach ache. Maybe he did now. “‘For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.’”