Spring Rain

by Gayle Roper

  She stopped, buried her face in her hands, and cried from the depths of her soul, God, oh, God! How do we unravel this without causing great pain?

  It wasn’t God who slid his arm about her waist and pulled her to him, but David, surely sent by God to give her the comfort she craved, the support she needed.

  “I’m here,” he said. Just, “I’m here,” and her eyes filled with tears. She turned into him and clung, her hands clutching his jacket. He wrapped his arms about her and rested his head against her hair. For a long moment neither said anything.

  Then, “I saw the picture.” His voice was gentle and quiet, just above her ear.

  She nodded against him, glad she didn’t have to explain. “They could be twins.”

  “Yeah, they could.”

  She took a long, uncertain breath and leaned back. When the wind slapped her face, she felt wet cold and realized with surprise that she was crying. She reached up to wipe her face dry.

  “Let me.” Still holding her with one arm, David dug into his pants’ pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. He wiped the tears off the right side of her face, then the left. His sweet concern touched her heart.

  “You have a wonderful bedside manner, Doctor,” she murmured with a tremulous smile.

  “I bet you say that to all the doctors.” His hand slid down her arm to take a firm grip on her hand. “Come on. Let’s walk.”

  It’s funny, holding hands with David, thought the part of her brain still capable of analyzing in spite of the emotional chaos whirling within. It’s so different from Will, but it’s so comforting, so wonderful. And I thank You, God, that he’s here for me now. To go through this with no one … She shuddered and thought of Leigh fighting all her battles for all those years alone. Julia’s heart broke while her respect for Leigh soared.

  She and David came to a jetty marching across the sand and into the water, a static boulder army waging unrelenting warfare with the enemy sea. They slogged through the thick, dry sand to the landward end of the great rocks and walked around them. And there on the other side at the edge of the sea, sitting motionless, was the pair of oystercatchers Clooney had mentioned. Their black feathers gleamed in the sun, and their great bright orange beaks looked too long and too heavy for them.

  Julia’s breath caught at their beauty. Life might have turned upside down, but even so there were wonder and hope and the glory of God’s hand. The birds slowly spread their great wings and lifted off, their white wing and tail patches glowing. They banked to the left and flew out of sight around the bay side of the island.

  She looked at David and saw the same wonder on his face. Impulsively she grabbed him around the middle and hugged. He was so kind, and he was here, a caring man who wasn’t going to let her go through this crisis alone. Then, embarrassed by her audacity, she drew back quickly. He looked at her and smiled his slow smile. One hand lifted to her face and brushed some of her windblown curls back. Of course the wind grabbed them immediately and tossed them right back where they had been. David fingered one.

  “Talk to me, Julia,” he said as his fingers played with her hair. “Tell me what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.”

  She closed her eyes a minute, wondering at the miracle of emotions that allowed a person to experience the sweetness of his concern and the pain of that picture at the same time.

  “Clay has to be Billy’s father.” She swallowed. “It sounds so bald, thrown out like that, but that’s the way it must be.”

  David nodded. “I agree. At least I agree that with such a strong resemblance between Will and Billy, there has to be a genetic connection. Is there any way that Leigh’s family could be connected to Will’s through some distant relative or something?”

  Julia shook her head. “Mom Wharton was very much a genealogy buff. We have family trees tracing the Wharton family back to the midsixteenth century. There’s no possibility of an old Spenser-Wharton connection.” She sighed. “Any connection appears to be in my son’s generation.”

  David nodded and squeezed her hand. “You have to eliminate all possibilities.”

  “How could he?” she demanded, all of a sudden overcome with anger at her son. “Tell me that, will you?”

  David just looked at her.

  “Not that,” she said, waving away the obvious. “I understand how he could be attracted to Leigh, how they could be together. It breaks my heart because I know how young they would have been and how lost she was at that time. But I understand. I cannot understand though how he could just ignore her afterward.” She felt the tears on her cheeks again and brushed impatiently at them. “I thought he had more character than that.” She looked into David’s solemn eyes. “I thought we’d done a better job than that.” The last was the merest whisper. Even saying it tore her heart.

  “Julia.” David pulled her to him. “Don’t. It’s not your fault. Clay was grown, at least grown enough to make his own choice.” He rested his cheek on the crown of her head. “You and Will did a wonderful job. You were wonderful parents. I know. I saw you both with those boys. I saw you with each other. And I saw a couple who loved each other, loved their boys, and loved and faithfully served God.”

  His affirmation felt so good, a soothing balm on her emotional wounds. “But we failed somewhere, David.” She stepped back and looked at him. “We must have. First there was Ted. Now there’s Clay.”

  He studied her a minute, then looked out to sea. “It’s easy to feel like you failed as a parent even though rationally you know better.”

  She nodded. “That’s it exactly.”

  He held out his hand and she took it. They walked quietly for a minute.

  “I understand what you’re saying because I’ve felt the same way myself.” His voice was soft, like he was making a great confession.

  Julia blinked. “About what? Your girls are wonderful. And Adam was a wonderful boy.”

  “But I let him drive when I shouldn’t have into circumstances he wasn’t ready for.”

  Julia stopped and turned to face him. “Do you mean that all these years you’ve blamed yourself for the accident that killed Adam and Leslie?”

  David shrugged. “I bought him the car. I let him drive on roads he wasn’t skilled enough to handle.”

  “And I suppose you set up the driver who was speeding and lane hopping and who clipped Adam’s front bumper and sent him into the skid?”

  “See? Rationally I know I didn’t, but emotionally I keep thinking that if I’d prepared Adam better, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  She rested a hand lightly on the front of his jacket. “Why do you think they call them accidents?”

  He smiled sadly at her and nodded. “What it really comes down to,” he said, “is that we do the best we can with the help of the Lord, but our kids’ choices and their fates are ultimately theirs, not ours. And they are ultimately responsible to God, not to us, for those choices.”

  She shivered as a fierce gust raced down her collar. “But even when we know we’re not really responsible, we still have to live with the consequences. Or in this case, Billy has to live with the consequences.” She blinked against the too-ready tears. “Ten years without a dad because my son didn’t own up to his responsibility. David, that breaks my heart.”

  David had no answer for her. He merely took her hand again, and they walked until they came to the next jetty.

  “Come on.” David climbed up on the rocks, pulling her after him. They passed the Keep off the Jetty sign and, jumping from rock to rock, made their way to the end of the breakwater. Seawater swirled on both sides of them, the algae that clung to the rocks rising and falling with the gentle ebb and flow of low tide. They stood side by side, hands clasped.

  “I have a grandson,” Julia said, staring at the horizon. She turned to David with a blinding smile. “I have a grandson.”

  He grinned down at her. “I don’t know about this, Julia. Do I want to keep dating a grandmother?”

  “Are grandmother
s allowed to date?”

  He put out an arm and drew her against his side. “This one better be.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder, and they stood silently, comfortably.

  She spoke first. “You know, I keep thinking about Leigh. I think I understand why she never said anything to Will or me about Clay, but at the same time, I feel hurt that she couldn’t trust us enough to tell us. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so,” David said after he thought about it for a minute. “Certainly she didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Julia gave a bubble of laughter. “Oh, my. I wonder what she thought when Will and I first started showing such a strong interest in her. There she was, pregnant by Clay, and suddenly his parents were in her face almost every day. In fact, I made it a point to go through her line at the Acme literally every day. She must have been beside herself trying to figure out what was going on.”

  “Did you ever ask her about the baby’s father?”

  “When we first found out she was pregnant. She just said he wasn’t an issue. We didn’t push.” She smiled wryly. “We didn’t want to seem intrusive.”

  David nodded. “Unfortunately an uninvolved father is not an uncommon scenario. Of course you never questioned her comment.”

  “And Billy doesn’t look like the twins. We had no reason to ever look so close to home when we wondered. We knew Ted was her special friend, but clearly only a friend. We never gave Clay a thought.”

  She paused, brow furrowed in thought. “But now that I think about it, I can see that through the years, Leigh had done everything she could to avoid Clay. It wasn’t a big problem when she lived in Glassboro. It’s got to have been more of a challenge since she moved here. When he did come home, she and Billy frequently went away for the weekend. If they remained at home, she stayed away from the house. And since Clay’s been here these past couple of days, I now see how prickly and cautious the two of them are around each other.”

  “All signs of a history,” David said.

  “All signs.”

  A wave gurgled up to Julia’s toe. David took her hand, and they climbed back down to the beach and began walking toward home.

  “So now what do you do?” David asked.

  “I don’t know. I talk to them, I guess.” Julia detoured around one of Clooney’s holes. “But I need to think for a bit about what I’m going to say. And I need to pray.”

  David stopped, and she turned to face him.

  “Have I told you how special I think you are?” he asked.

  She smiled. “You’re the special one. I came out here a wreck, but you’ve talked me through things, and I feel much more in control, at least for the moment. Thank you.”

  She turned away and began walking toward the house. He followed, but not before she had seen more than “special” in the way he looked at her.

  Oh, Lord, considering everything, I don’t think I can deal with the depth of affection I see in his eyes at this moment, but I don’t want to be without his comfort. Does that make me terrible?

  And feeling torn, she waited for him to catch up. They were walking through the dunes to the yard when a terrifying thought struck her.

  “David, what will all this do to Billy?”

  Seventeen

  SUNDAY EVENING the phone rang, its shrill call filling the small apartment.

  “Don’t answer, Billy,” his mom called from the kitchen. “I mean it.”

  “Mom! Why not?” The phone had been ringing off and on all day, and now it was night, and it was still ringing and driving him crazy. He couldn’t stand to hear a phone ring and ring like that. Phones were meant to be answered. They made no sense otherwise. She made no sense.

  They’d been having such fun just a few hours ago laughing at Uncle Ted and Clay in those silly pictures. Then Grandma Jule and Dr. Traynor disappeared all of a sudden, and Clay got all grumpy and started looking out the windows.

  “It’s okay if they’re together. He’s nice,” Bill said, but Clay didn’t listen.

  Then Mom found a picture of Uncle Ted and Clay in their graduation robes with those stupid flat hats on their heads and got very quiet. Pastor Paul tried to move the box of pictures from between her and him, probably because he could tell Mom was upset about something, but Clay leaned over and dug into the box so he couldn’t. Then Pastor Paul sighed and left. Clay walked him to the door. When he came back into the room, Mom shot him a dirty look.

  When Bill found a picture of Clay by himself at graduation, his diploma in his hand and a goofy smile on his face, he hooted about how silly those graduation hats were. Clay came over to look, the start of a smile on his face. He studied the picture, looked at Mom, then lost his smile. She wouldn’t look at him though and boom! Suddenly she grabbed Bill by the arm, and they were leaving.

  “But I haven’t finished the pictures!”

  “Another time,” Mom said.

  “Good-bye, Uncle Ted,” he yelled as Mom dragged him out the door, but Uncle Ted was too busy studying one of the pictures to even look up. “Good-bye, Clay,” Bill yelled next, but Clay was too busy watching Mom.

  Since then he’d been sentenced to hours of the phone ringing and ringing.

  “Come on, Mom. Answer it! You’re being ridiculous.”

  “No, Billy. We are not answering the phone.” She clicked on the garbage disposal.

  “Bill. It’s Bill.” He stared at the ringing instrument, then at the kitchen. Keeping his voice low even though the disposal ground on, he said, “What if it’s an emergency? Huh? What if someone really needs to talk to us, like Grandma Jule needs help with Uncle Ted or something? I think I should answer just in case.”

  She didn’t reply. He smirked to himself. That means she must agree. He grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello. Spenser residence,” he said, but more softly than he’d ever spoken into a phone before. She had ears like a rabbit, and it’d be just like her to hear even over the rumble of the disposal and the gush of the water.

  “Is this Billy?”

  “Bill. Yeah. Who’s this?”

  The man ignored his question. “Have you seen Terror lately?”

  “What?”

  “You know, kid. Your dog.” The man sounded impatient.

  “He’s not my dog. He’s Clay’s.” Why was the man calling about Terror? Was something wrong? Had this man found him wandering or something? But how would he have gotten out? Or if he was out, how would he have gotten off his chain?

  Bill’s hands got clammy as a scary thought hit him. Maybe somebody sneaked up and unhooked the dog! He would run off if that happened. What if he got hit by a car? He was so little and fast a driver might not see him until it was too late. What if he was lying in the street somewhere bleeding and crying?

  “Is something wrong with him?” He swallowed to get the wobble out of his voice. “Is he hurt?”

  “Not yet, I don’t think,” the voice said, and Bill heard a wicked chuckle. “But you’d better check the jetty before the tide gets any higher.”

  Bill went cold all over. He dropped the phone and ran wildly down the steps, out the door, and across the yard. He charged through the dunes and across the beach. He didn’t stop until he was climbing on the jetty.

  “Terror! Terror!” He couldn’t see the dog anywhere.

  He tried to see to the end of the dark jetty stones as they marched into the sea, but he couldn’t. It was very dark out here on the beach, the moon hidden by clouds. The only illumination was the dull, deep gray wash reflecting off the heavy clouds from the bright lights of Atlantic City in the distance. All he could make out about the jetty was the white foam of waves breaking around invisible rocks.

  He stood absolutely still for a minute, listening. Was that a bark he heard over the rushing and breaking of the waves?

  “Terror! Where are you, boy? Come here. Come to Bill.” He slapped the side of his leg, then realized the dog could never hear the slap over the water’s noise.

 
; Then he heard it, weak and far away but definite. A bark. A terrified bark. From way out on the jetty.

  “Come on, boy,” he called again. “Come to Bill. You can do it. You can make it back here.”

  More barks, but they didn’t move toward him like they would if the dog was coming. They stayed far off and eerie.

  He’s stuck out there!

  The thought raced through Bill’s mind as he climbed over the first black rocks. Somehow the little dog had caught a foot or something, and he couldn’t get free. Bill’s mouth dried as he realized that the pup could drown out there, wet and scared and alone, if he didn’t save him.

  “I’m coming, boy,” Bill called. “I’m coming. I’ll get you. Don’t be afraid.” As he talked, he began a cautious trek across the uneven assortment of great rocks. It was so easy to run and climb and jump on them in the daylight. He and Mike did it all the time. It was spooky at night when you could barely see where you were putting your foot. The last thing he needed was to step into a hole between rocks and get stuck too. He’d never be able to help Terror then.

  He jumped across a large gap between two rocks and rushed to the next rock. The darkness hid what in daytime was a mere bump in the rock’s surface, but now it reared up and ambushed him. He tripped over it going full speed and went down. He threw his hands out to protect himself as he pitched forward, and they hit space. He came to rest with his belly teetering on the edge of the rock and his chest, head, and arms tilted downward. His hands were actually dragging in cold seawater swirling at the bottom of the cleft between the rocks.

  He lay gasping, his chest tight with fear. He felt like he might never breathe again. How had he missed bashing his head?

  Terror barked. No, Bill decided. He squealed, fear lacing the sound.

  I’ve got to help him! God, help me!

  The water in the cleft gurgled higher, covering his arms to the elbows and slapping him gently in the face. Bill lifted his head and raised his hands. He reached out. His fingers touched the rock in front of him, and he pushed. He slid back on the rock where he half lay until he could leverage himself to his knees. He was wobbly when he stood, and his right knee hurt like blazes, but he was all right.