by Nancy Moser
He set his jaw. Then he fled.
She yelled after him, “I’m calling the police!”
Merry heard footsteps on the porch and drew her knees tighter to her chest. The doorbell rang.
She didn’t answer it.
“Merry? It’s me, Officer Kendell.”
She uncurled herself and answered the door.
Ken studied her. “You okay?”
She nodded.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“Can I come in?”
She let him in, yet found herself backing away from him.
He seemed to sense her unease and stood his ground. “Tell me what happened.”
She told him the story and led him into the backyard. He took notes.
“You say that was a shrine?”
She cringed. She’d never intended for the entire world to know. “You ever lost someone close to you, Ken?”
“My grandfather died last year.”
“That’s not the same.”
“I suppose not.” He dropped it. “We’ve got a call out for Jered’s truck, and I’ve sent someone to his house. When we find him, we’ll bring him in and—”
“I don’t want him arrested.”
“But he destroyed…” He nodded toward the backyard.
Merry was torn. This new fear of Jered was real, and yet he was still Bailey’s son. He was misguided, needy, almost pathetic. She came to a compromise. “If you find him, bring him in and let me talk to him—with you there. I’ll decide the rest later.”
“We can do that.” He put his notepad away. “And Merry? About that other thing…the girl?”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been more than fair, giving you way too much time.”
“I know, Ken. And I appreciate it.”
“I have to do my job.”
“I know.”
“So what’s her last name?”
“I still don’t know. And you can be sure she won’t tell.”
“Then I’ll have to proceed with what I have. Contact Kansas City. Give them a description of her.”
The weariness Merry felt before the Jered incident overtook her. “Do what you need to do, Ken. I’m tired of fighting it.”
Merry took the elements of the shrine into the house. She looked out the kitchen window at the backyard. There was no way a stranger would know anything of importance had ever existed out there amid the rakes and old flowerpots.
Perhaps nothing of importance had.
Merry looked at the pitiful collection of memorabilia on the counter. A few torn pictures, Justin’s monkey, a couple of candles. Lou’s pocket Bible. Were these things she should bow down to? Worship? Jered had called it sick.
She’d argued with him, but was he right? Were these things unhealthy, keeping her anchored in the past, in her grief? If only there were rules about grief, giving hallmarks of emotions the bereaved should feel at one month, three, six. As it was, grief was way too volatile and hard to handle, like pinning down a breeze, a wind, or a tornado.
She sank onto a kitchen chair and pulled the monkey into the crook of her arm. She fingered the pages of the Bible, finding an odd comfort in the swish-swish of page against page. At least she’d stopped Jered before he’d ripped it apart. She noticed a red ribbon, cutting through the pages. Why had she never looked at the page before?
She turned to it now. It was in the book of Revelation. One verse was marked, 21:4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
No more death or mourning or crying or pain.
I wish.
But even as she closed the pages, she let another thought nudge the doubt toward trust.
Maybe…
Jered drove too fast.
But not fast enough.
Each memory fueled the accelerator, the could-have-saids and should-have-saids assaulting him like pointing, jabbing fingers.
He’d blown it. His little side trip to Merry’s as he was heading out of town had blown everything. He had no choice. He had to leave.
And stay away.
For how long?
It would depend on whether his father died.
He’s my dad. He can’t die!
The tears made him mad, and the anger made him drive faster.
Twenty-one
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit,
while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes
so that it will be even more fruitful.”
JOHN 15:1-2
THE MORNING AFTER THE JERED INCIDENT, Merry called the Manson house searching for him. So far, none of the Steadfast police officers had seen him or his truck. He’d vanished. Unlike Sim, who’d had to resort to buses, Jered had his own wheels—wheels that could take him a long, long way from home.
He was such a confused and confusing kid. His destruction of her shrine unnerved her, and she’d racked her brain trying to figure out why he would do such a thing. She came up empty. She’d been a friend, listening to his dreams, helping him as much as she could. Something his own mother would do if she were here.
If she were here.
She shivered, and as the phone at the Manson house rang for the twentieth time, she hung up, feeling more relief than regret.
“Merry?” Sim stood in the kitchen doorway. “Ready to go see Bailey?”
Not really. What could she tell him about Jered? What should She tell him?
Claire opened her eyes and saw a spider climbing the wall. I need to call the exterminator.
A few more seconds of wakefulness reminded her she wasn’t in her townhouse. She was staying in a room above Harold’s garage, where spiders were welcome. She looked at her watch, then looked again. Eight forty-six in the morning?
Yet instead of feeling panic at the late hour, she grinned and stretched, wallowing in the first truly good night’s sleep she’d gotten since coming to Steadfast. She stopped in midstretch as she remembered the reason for her contentment.
She’d said yes to God.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t agreed with Him at other moments in her life, but this time was different. This time it was all-encompassing, like writing a blanket disclaimer for her life: I, Claire Adams, do hereby relinquish all rights to myself.
And so, in the quiet of the room, she said the word again, making the s linger, not wanting it to end: “Yes-s-s-s!”
She whipped the covers off. Today was not like any other day. Today was heady with a new air of possibility. Anything could happen. Anything. All because she’d given God a free hand to do whatever He thought best. All because she’d quit living for man—or herself—and was living for an audience of One.
Audience of One? What an odd phrase, and yet so perfect.
As Claire put on her one pair of pants, three words popped into her head: Biscuits and gravy.
Her mouth watered.
She knocked on the back door and found Harold reading the paper in the kitchen. “Care to join me for biscuits and gravy at the Plentiful, Harold? My treat.”
“You’re going out?”
“I think it’s time.”
“You’re not…nervous about it?”
She realized his question mirrored his own fears. She took a seat across from him. “Maybe it’s time both of us quit hiding out.”
“I don’t hide.”
“Not physically like me, but what about the Shakespeare? What about the scurrying, odd man who isn’t the real you?”
He got up to refill his coffee cup. “I like maintaining a distance.”
“You like hiding.”
He stopped with the pot midway to the cup. “Yes. It’s safer.”
“It’s cowardly.”
He poured his coffee and returned to his seat, looking into the swirling darkness. “O thou monster ignorance, how deformed
dost thou look!”
She put a hand on his. “Ignorance, indeed. You’re depriving people of knowing a wonderful man.”
He shrugged. “Maybe someday.” He turned her hand and squeezed it, then gave it back to her. “But you go. Today is your day to reenter the world.”
So it was.
Walking to the diner, Claire was a little disappointed that cars didn’t scream to a halt at the sight of her, nor did ladies scamper toward each other, whispering behind their hands. The extent of the town’s reaction—if there was any reaction at all—was a double take and a slightly delayed, “Good morning.”
Ah, the delusions of the self-absorbed.
Claire chose a table in the corner.
Annie approached with a coffeepot. “You want cream, right?”
“You remembered. I’m impressed.”
Annie shrugged. “You going for the biscuits and gravy again?”
“Absolutely.”
Annie nodded but didn’t leave. “People been asking about you.”
“What do they want to know?”
“Where you been, for one.”
She thought about saying, “With Harold,” but realized she had no right to blow his cover. “I’ve been around. Waiting for the whole library ghost thing to blow over.”
Annie nodded. “It doesn’t take long. Give us five minutes and we’ll find a new fish to fry.”
“Double-dipped?”
It took Annie a moment to get it. Then she laughed. “We like our scandals extra crispy.” She changed the coffeepot to the other hand. “Breakfast will be up in a jiff.”
Claire settled in. She looked out the window just as Merry’s car pulled into the library lot. Merry got out—and then Sim. They exchanged words at the car, then Sim took the front stairs two at a time, juggling the keys in her hand. Claire checked her watch. It was 9:20. Why were they opening so late? And why wasn’t Merry going up the steps?
When Merry turned toward the Plentiful, Claire’s heart did a somersault. Although she’d wanted to end her confinement, she wasn’t sure she was ready to meet up with her friend—the friend who had taken over her spot in Sim’s life.
Too bad she didn’t have a choice.
Merry nearly missed the curb when she spotted Claire through the window at the Plentiful. Their eyes met, and a rush of conflicting emotions bombarded her. Relief and anger. Joy and anxiety.
She attempted to calm herself as she went through the door. She tried on a smile and hoped it looked better than it felt. Claire lifted a hand in a half-wave. Merry moved to greet her.
“You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
“Where were you?”
“Around.”
Merry nodded, buying time. She didn’t know what to say next.
“Care to join me?” Claire nodded at the opposite seat.
Merry glanced at the library. “I’ve promised Sim a cinnamon roll.”
“You’re opening late.”
“We’ve been to visit Bailey. He had his angioplasty He’s doing fine.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Silence.
Claire patted the place setting across from her. “Please sit. For just a minute?”
How could she refuse? Annie appeared, and Merry ordered two cinnamon rolls to go and let Annie pour her a cup of coffee. The rising steam made her already warm face too hot.
“This is awkward, isn’t it?”
Merry shifted in her seat. “A little.”
“I’m sorry I ran away like that, leaving you to take care of Sim. I’m glad she’s not staying at the library anymore.”
“How do you know that?”
Claire seemed startled, as if she realized she’d said too much. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s a joy. She’s the one who saved Bailey.”
“How?”
Merry explained about the visit to her mother’s and then Bailey’s heart attack. “Have you seen Jered around?”
“Bailey’s boy? No.”
Merry warmed her suddenly cold hands on the coffee mug. “He’s run away.”
“Why?”
She decided to give the condensed version. “He did some vandalism at my house. I called the police on him.”
“Oh, Merry.”
“I don’t know what to tell Bailey. I’d planned to tell him this morning, but I chickened out.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
For some reason, these innocuous, much-heard words shocked her. It took her a moment to figure out why. “So you’re planning to stick around?”
In turn, this question seemed to shock Claire. “I…I don’t know. I’m kind of waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
The biscuits and gravy came, and Claire took up her fork, though she didn’t take a bite. “During my absence, I’ve had what you might call a God-moment.” She suddenly reddened and gave a little laugh. “Funny, when I try to explain it to someone else, it seems less momentous. And yet when it happened, it was as if the earth moved.”
“You’ve certainly captured my interest.”
Claire took a bite of biscuit and chewed slowly, as if chewing through her words. “I’ve come to realize that the verse that brought me here, ‘sell everything and follow me,’ was only part of something bigger.”
“Actually, you can’t get much bigger than that.”
“Actually, you can.”
Merry listened as Claire told her about the “big question”—and the big answer: yes. As she heard the details of Claire’s progression from giving up everything in the way of possessions to truly giving up everything by saying yes to anything God wanted, Merry’s insides came to attention, as though readying themselves for inspection.
Claire finally took another bite of her food. “It’s so hard to explain the feeling of elation when I woke up this morning and said yes again. I mean, what a way to start a morning, as if anything could happen. And what a feeling of freedom to know God’s got it—He’s got everything. ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’”
Merry laughed. “Loads of people.”
“But He’ll take care of it.” She sat back. “I’m not naive enough to think that just because I said yes to God I’ll never have any struggles. But I do know I’ll be able to handle whatever—and I mean whatever—comes because He’s in charge.” Claire looked sheepish. “I know it sounds trite and simplistic, but it’s because He loves me.”
It did sound trite and simplistic—but it also sounded wonderful. What might happen if she—?
“You look like you want to say something, Merry.”
Did she? After a moment she realized she did. Maybe if she voiced it to someone else everything would be made clear. Clearer. “I think Jered’s vandalism was a good thing.”
“Talk about positive thinking.”
“Let me finish. What I didn’t explain was the thing Jered vandalized was a shrine I’d erected in the backyard, to my family.” She waited for a reaction.
“Continue.”
Claire’s calm acceptance fueled her. “You thought the everything you needed to give up to follow God was your possessions. I’m thinking my everything is my past. My guilt. My grief. As long as I had the shrine, I was holding on to it. But now that it’s gone…”
“You’re free to say yes to the big question?”
“I’m free to think about saying yes.”
“That—” Claire cut off a big piece of gravy-dripping biscuit and put it in her mouth with flourish—“is a start. A very good start.”
Claire paid the bill for breakfast, including the rolls for Sim and Merry. She walked Merry out.
“You coming to the library to see Sim?”
It was tempting. “Not yet. I’m still not sure what my next move is supposed to be, and until I do, I don’t want to insert myself into Sim’s life. Stir things up.”
Merry nodded. “You’ve changed a lot from the woman who grabbed Sim by the scruff of her life an
d declared, ‘We are going to find our purpose. Now! Whether we want to or not.’”
“My intentions were good. And I still want us to find our purpose. The thing I didn’t realize was that hers may not be intertwined with mine.”
Merry touched her shoulder. “I know what a big concession that is.”
“Yeah, well…”
They parted, each woman going her separate way.
For now.
Claire stood in Harold’s kitchen and washed the bowl she’d used to stir up a batch of brownies. When was the last time she’d baked? Suzy Homemaker in the making.
As she rinsed the dishes, she found herself glancing at the telephone. She repeated the glance three times before she stopped to figure out what her subconscious was trying to get her to do.
Call Darla.
She looked to the phone a fourth time. If she called, Darla would want a decision about the commission. Had she made one?
Did recovering alcoholics feel like this? Did they ever feel strong enough to resist the temptation to indulge in their old ways? She imagined temptation would always be there on the outskirts of her reach; but as each day passed, would she become stronger and be able to resist with less effort?
Acknowledge and resist. And find strength in the big yes.
She wiped her hands on a towel and picked up the phone.
She dialed Darla’s number.
“Hey-ya, Darla.”
“We meet again.”
“I’d give you a hug, but my arms won’t reach.”
“How convenient.”
She had to sit down. “Where’s this antagonism coming from?”
Darla took a breath. “You’re off finding your purpose in who-knows-where, while I’m left here to take the heat for your abandonment.”
“I didn’t abandon—”
“Yes, you did. You spent your life getting people to notice and appreciate your talent, then you ran off. It’s like holding a piece of your cheesecake under someone’s nose, letting their taste buds kick into gear, letting them want it, need it, only to pull it away. You teased the world with your talent. And no one likes to be teased.”