Beyond 4/20

by Heaton, Lisa

  John had already been making arrangements, having his assistant Irene get some surprises in line. “We can spend a long weekend at the New York apartment. She can see some of the sights, and we can take her to see The Lion King. She’ll love it.”

  John’s excitement caused her to reconsider. “I suppose you mean this weekend?”

  “Yes. Ask Tuck and see what he says.”

  Chelsea drove out to Tuck’s place feeling a sense of dread and even a touch of a sick stomach. As excited as the thought of taking Lucy to New York made her, she was just as nervous about asking Tuck. She didn’t dread his response; it was more the look on his face when she asked.

  Pulling down to the barn rather than the house, she figured she would have a better chance of catching Tuck there and alone. Mostly, she wanted to make sure she talked with him before Lucy got wind of it. If Lucy knew, Tuck would be forced to agree, and Chelsea would never purposely put him in that position.

  When she stepped out of her car and moved through the barn gate, he was standing just inside the doorway of the barn wiping his face with a bandana. From the sweltering July heat, he was covered in sweat, his white tank soaked through.

  “Hey,” she called out.

  Clearly, by the smile on his face he was glad to see her. She felt the same. Since she had been with John, she rarely was able to speak to him. After all the time they had spent together once she returned home, not being with him at all unsettled her. She missed him.

  “Hey.”

  It was nothing to see Chelsea anymore. She came around so often to pick up Lucy that it didn’t bother him the way it used to. Mostly it was just drop-off and pick-up, but at least he was able to see her. When John came along with her, even that didn’t carry the sting it once did. She was happy, and that made him happy.

  “I wanted to talk to you without Lucy around.”

  “Okay.”

  She was wearing a little yellow sundress and looked so pretty that it caused his hands to tremble, so he quickly tucked them in his pockets. He considered how many times he had heard her dad call her Sunshine over the years. That’s exactly what she looked like with her bright and sunny dress. Just the sight of her caused him to feel warm all over, maybe even a bit expectant, as if maybe something good was about to happen. It was one of those rare days when she wore her hair wavy, and the waves bounced playfully as she moved in his direction. Simply, she made him smile.

  “Since Lucy’s birthday is after school starts, what would you think if she went on a little trip before school? Just a long weekend.” She felt terribly uneasy in asking, and already regretted agreeing to do it.

  Before the wedding, Tuck had allowed Lucy to go with Chelsea to pick out her dress, but that was just a day trip. Besides that Lucy had spent the night with Chelsea more times than he could count, but never had she been gone for days. That bothered him a little. Unsure why, he rubbed his chin and pondered on it.

  “Where are you thinking of going?”

  “New York. We would like to take her to see The Lion King on Broadway.”

  Broadway? His little farm girl going to see a show on Broadway? That was something he would never be able to show her. Heck, he would likely never take her to New York or most anywhere. The farm consumed his days so vacations weren’t possible. Chelsea and John could do all the things for Lucy that he couldn’t. Tuck realized that was what bothered him most. With their kind of time and money, they would always be Lucy’s favorites. Who could blame her? He was just Dad, the one who stuck to bed times and rules about too much candy.

  Throwing his arms up in the air, Tuck exclaimed, “Sure! Sounds like a great trip.”

  His tone wasn’t at all what she expected. He was upset, so she stammered, “No. Maybe it’s not a good idea after all. I mean, soon school will be back in session.”

  As Chelsea began to back-peddle, Tuck recognized how selfish he was being in worrying about favorites. He tried to sound more supportive. “Go. It’s not something I’ll ever be able to show her.”

  It was exactly what she had hoped to avoid, making Tuck feel inadequate in any way. Shaking her head, she said, “We can do something different for her birthday. I’m sorry; I’ve overstepped my bounds by asking.”

  Her eyes were tender as she spoke, and he knew she would do most anything rather than hurt him. If he knew one thing, it was that she loved him. They had been like family for most of their lives. As far as her feelings for Lucy, how could he not love her even more for how much she loved his little girl?

  Lowering his head, his voice softening, he said, “No. You haven’t overstepped your bounds. You’re the only mama she’s got.”

  Biting at her lip, Chelsea tried to blink away tears. He was hurting and that hurt her. Because he was so sweet and so kind, really the best dad she had ever known, suddenly, regret flooded her heart and blame threatened to drown her. It should have never been like this, and she knew it. It was her fault. There should never have been conversations about her taking Lucy anywhere without him.

  Tuck moved in closer, hovering over her. He knew the answer but asked the question anyway, “Why didn’t you just come home?”

  Without having to ask, she knew what he meant.

  “You were supposed to come home once you graduated. I waited for you. It was supposed to be you, Lucy, and me. This was supposed to be our family.”

  He began to cry and felt really stupid about it. As often as he tried to dig his way out of what was supposed to be, most times he felt he only sank deeper into it. She was like quicksand, pulling him under, taking his very breath away.

  When he cried, she couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. He was right. She was supposed to come back. It was supposed to be them. All along she was supposed to marry Tuck and be Lucy’s mama, but she had forfeited that family when she chose to stay in L.A. Once she met John and fell for him, that ended it all.

  Nodding, acknowledging that he was right, she cried even harder. Finally, she whispered, “Forgive me.”

  Knowing how wrong it was, Tuck wrapped his arms around her anyway. His heart was so broken and his arms felt so continually empty that he could do nothing else. He had known all along that she belonged in them.

  “Of course I forgive you.”

  For a moment, he held her while they both cried. Finally, though, sobbing aloud, he admitted, “But, I’m stuck here in this place of loving you, and I don’t know how to get out. I’m drowning in it most days.”

  Filled with such guilt at the pain she had caused him, she buried her face in his chest, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  From the moment she knew about Lucy, she was prepared to stay with Tuck. Had the forced marriage with Lindsey not happened, they would have married and raised Lucy together. Even after his marriage was over and after her years away, she could have come back and they would have lived out a life together, fractured, not at all what they had dreamed of early on, but still they would have been a family. As much as the earliest blame fell on Tuck, the latter blame was hers. She directly disobeyed God when He said to go home, and because of that disobedience, Lucy wasn’t hers. No matter how much she wanted her to be, she wasn’t.

  For Tuck, that moment brought with it the oddest sense of clarity and peace. She was supposed to come home. He wasn’t quite as crazy as he had come to believe. There were moments over the past years when he truly questioned his sanity. That sense of knowing she was supposed to be his and all the time he spent waiting was at least validated when she acknowledged she knew it, too. Just as his decision to be with Lindsey altered what was supposed to be their lives together, her decision not to come home ended it entirely.

  While they both were to blame, ultimately, their ending rested on his shoulders. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  But sorry didn’t change anything for either of them. No matter how right it felt to hold he
r, she belonged to another, a man she loved and his daughter adored. Everything was broken beyond repair.

  After a few moments more, Chelsea left with him insisting she take Lucy with them to New York. Truly, it would likely be her only opportunity to do something so exciting, and Tuck would never prevent her from going. How many seven year olds were offered such a gift? Because Chelsea was in Lucy’s life, Lucy would have occasions to do things most girls could only dream of. If he wanted anything for his daughter, it was an exceptional life. Maybe he wasn’t the one who would actually give it to her, but his yes made it possible.

  Once Chelsea was gone, Tuck took some time alone to get himself together before going back up to the house. As much as he had tried to believe he was no longer waiting, deep down he was. Maybe this was what he was waiting on, to know the truth. Whatever the case, he was truly ready to let go. Chelsea loved John and was extremely happy with him. John was able to give her a life, and Lucy too, that he would never be able to give them. He loved them both enough to want what they wanted, and they both wanted John.

  Letting go, however, didn’t equate with moving on in a new relationship. He had already learned his lesson on that front. Things had gotten so out of control with Allison that he refused to step back into another relationship, not anytime soon, maybe ever.

  After a couple of months with Allison, one night when Lucy had been staying with Chelsea, he and Allison had gone back to her place after a movie. He never intended to go in, but she kept insisting. Before he knew it, she was in his lap, facing him, and trailing soft kisses down his neck. It wasn’t the first time she had come on so strongly, but each time before he was able to break away. That night, though, he faced the agony of having seen John and Chelsea embracing on the porch when he arrived to drop Lucy off, and because of that, he was devastated and had thought of little else over the course of the evening with Allison.

  Not only that, since he hadn’t been with anyone since Lindsey left and since he had experienced the emptiness and frustration of being alone for so long, he quickly found himself drawn into her, unable to get untangled from her arms and legs. The moment escalated so quickly that it was he who lifted her and carried her to the bedroom. Switching off the light, and just as he had done many times before with Lindsey, he pretended. In his mind and in his heart, it was Chelsea he made love to.

  Afterward, feeling consumed with guilt and regret, he sat on the side of her bed, praying, wondering how he had so easily fallen again. All that kept rolling over in his mind was, Be careful when you think you stand, lest you fall. He thought he was beyond that place of falling for such temptation.

  When Allison draped herself over him, kissing him again, he shrugged her off and stood. Putting his pants on, much more harshly than he should, he told her it was a mistake. At his rejection, she went ballistic. He could hardly blame her. Because he was pretending, his actions gave her the impression that he cared much more deeply than he did. All the while, he touched her as if she were Chelsea, caressed her as if she were the one he had waited on since he was fifteen years old. Of course Allison was hurt and confused when suddenly, there he was, half-dressed and telling her what they had just experienced was a mistake. He could see how heartbroken she was. Eventually, she began hurling insults about Chelsea and him, screaming at him, and finally crying. The moment took him instantly back to his last months with Lindsey. It was surreal and terribly painful, so much so, he felt physically ill.

  How he had treated Allison was wrong and he knew it. Trying to calm her, to make her feel less used than she actually was, he stayed with her for the night. It was the longest, most fitful night of his life. He didn’t sleep. Instead, he lay there praying, wondering what promise of God he had forfeited that time.

  For days afterward, he prayed, asking for forgiveness, mostly for how he had treated Allison. It was the meanest thing he had ever done, well, besides breaking Chelsea’s heart. It bothered him so much that he eventually went and talked to his pastor about what he had done. It took him weeks to get to a better place, and in that time, he slowly tried to ease out of the relationship with Allison. What a mess that was.

  As time passed, the Lord helped him to see that it was more than physical desire that caused him to fall. It was the deep and never-ending ache inside him that cried out to be comforted. All he thought of was Chelsea with John. They were making plans for their future together, taking his daughter shopping for a dress, and he was alone. He had no one. For that brief time, he wanted to not feel so alone. Once the act itself was over, however, it left him much emptier and more depleted than he had ever experienced. Even worse, for a season he felt far from God, the only true comfort he had ever known.

  In those years after Lindsey, while waiting for Chelsea, he had prided himself on the fact that someday he could tell her he had not been with another woman. As if he might somehow be able to make up for his earliest failure, he decided that he wouldn’t fail her a second time, but he had. He failed himself and God as well.

  What happened with Allison did cause him to feel distant from God at first. Eventually, though, it ironically brought him closer to Him than even his first fall with Lindsey. The way the Lord dealt with him so gently as he sought forgiveness, Tuck discovered a new and life-altering facet of God’s grace. He found that the more he needed grace, the more was available to him. God’s grace was to him like a winding river. You stand and look at it, certain you are taking it all in, but then you journey a little farther, take another stumble, and find an entirely new and vast dimension to it.

  Just after he married Lindsey, Tuck spent a tremendous amount of time on his face before God. Early on, he struggled to accept God’s forgiveness, but as time wore on he realized it wasn’t God’s forgiveness that he was unable to find. It was acceptance of the consequences of his choices that was keeping him strapped to the floor. God had freely forgiven, but the aftermath of having sex with a woman he didn’t love or want to marry was a reality that he had to live with. He was in constant pain over losing Chelsea, and in addition to that, he was married to someone he truly didn’t like.

  Once he figured out that forgiveness did not necessarily go hand-in-hand with a repeal of consequences, he learned to spend his time with God on current, more pressing matters, namely, getting through each day with Lindsey. If anything came of his sin, it was a closer relationship with God. Just as it happened after Allison, Tuck found that grace discovered was a means to deeper intimacy than he had ever previously known, and with each new revelation of the depth of God’s grace came a greater desire not only to know God more, but to obey Him more faithfully. Maybe that was why his sin with Allison was so devastating. Had he not already experienced the consequences of such a thing? How could he have fallen so easily?

  That day as he watched Chelsea drive away after their long, sad embrace, he was making a commitment to himself. He would focus on Lucy while she was young and steer clear of relationships. Maybe someday, when she was older, he might consider love again, but not until then. Life was complicated enough with her having such a fractured family. How things currently were seemed to be working for her, so he was determined they should remain the same for Lucy’s sake.

  After leaving Tuck’s place while on the way home, at one point Chelsea was crying so hysterically that she finally had to pull over into a parking lot. She sat there for some time considering the past and how negatively it was impacting the present. Choosing what she wanted over what she knew she was supposed to do was what got them all where they currently were. As much as she had hurt Tuck, her guilt was much deeper concerning Lucy. Just as if it were yesterday, she could recall that precise moment when she found she truly despised Tuck’s little girl.

  Over Christmas break the year before she graduated, Chelsea was home for the holidays with her family. As usual, she went with them to the Christmas Eve service. She saw Tuck there that night, and the sight of him nearly took her breath away.
He smiled at her during the service; she smiled in return. As soon as she did, she turned away quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen what she was feeling. In all the times she had seen him over the years, at church or in town, that moment was the first time she ever experienced such longing for him, longing to be what they once were. Her heart was pounding and her hands trembled in anticipation of talking to him after the service. Taking another quick peek back in his direction, she found he was still looking at her. He winked. She grinned at him and winked in return. For that split-second, they were them again, that playful and flirty couple so deeply and irreversibly in love.

  During the remainder of the service, she felt the most unusual sense of coming home, like really coming home. For the first time, she felt at peace and unembarrassed about being in the same room with him. They had been friends since they were little children, and finally, she allowed that to be the foundation of where they might begin again. Sighing within, she realized a relationship between them may never be romantic in nature after all that had happened, but at least she was willing to allow him to step back into her life and be her friend. If a romantic relationship did happen – her heart beat even more erratically at the thought of him holding her again – then so be it. As long as she had tried to convince herself that she was over him, she found she wasn’t, supposing she never would be.

  The undoing of all those thoughts came after the service ended. Though he had never done so in all those years past, Tuck found the nerve to approach her and talk. For fewer than three minutes, there was this easy and nostalgic conversation between them. It felt right. Then his daughter came running up to him and wrapped her arms around his legs, calling out, “Daddy.” Giggling, she began to tell him about her birthday party for Jesus. Tuck bent down and spoke to her softly and really listened to the things she told him.