Redemption 03 - Return

by Smalley, Gary; Kingsbury, Karen

  Luke gritted his teeth. He’d missed a lot since moving out. He didn’t have a clue what was going on in his sister’s life. Now she had HIV, and anything could happen. She could get AIDS and be dead in a year or two.

  The thought made his head pound.

  Until now his choices this past year had made him feel free in a proactive sort of way. If life couldn’t be explained with faith and a belief in God, then at least he was doing something to figure out a different explanation, a different philosophy. A different religion. Wasn’t that the point of the clubs and meetings, the Freethinkers Alliance? But here, now, in light of Ashley’s admission, the past year felt anything but freeing.

  It felt ugly and selfish and ignorant.

  Whatever she wanted to tell him about Reagan, the news was nothing to what she’d just said. She had HIV?! She was his favorite sister. She couldn’t be sick. He closed his eyes and let his head drop into his hands. An image flashed across the expanse of his heart. He and Ashley, maybe five and nine years old. She stood behind him, helping him hold a basketball the right way.

  “Like this, Lukey.” She’d given his right elbow a gentle nudge so it came in toward his body some. “Now bend your knees and push the ball up.”

  He did as she told him. The ball made a perfect arc up toward the basket and swished neatly through the net. “I did it!” He could see the little boy he was back then. Fist raised in the air, he flew into Ashley’s arms, and the two of them jumped up and down together.

  He blinked and stared at his lap as the memory lifted. She’d always loved him more than any of the others, but after Paris he’d treated her like…like he hated her. How many years had they lost because of his narrow-minded Christian views? And how many years would they have left if she got sick now?

  “Ashley, I’m so sorry.” He looked at her, and with his free hand he reached for her fingers. “You need to tell Dad. He…he can help you. They can do a lot more these days.”

  “I know.” She was quiet for a moment, and the muscles in her jaw tensed. “Listen, that’s not why I came. The HIV convinced me I had to tell you the truth.” Her eyes searched his again. “Luke, I saw Reagan.”

  He was still reeling from the news about her health. Now what? Another attempt at getting him to call Reagan? Most of the Baxter family seemed to believe if he’d only get ahold of Reagan, he’d be the person he’d been before.

  “You…saw her?” A burst of adrenaline shot through his veins, and his fingers trembled. He didn’t have time to question his reaction, why he was feeling this way when he’d convinced himself he no longer cared about Reagan, no longer loved her. “When? What did she…did she call you?”

  “She and Landon are friends now.” Ashley ran her tongue along her lower lip and gripped her knees. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

  Luke held his breath. So she’d seen Reagan. Was that enough to cause her this kind of anxiety? He rested his arm on the back of the bench. “What aren’t you saying?”

  She planted her elbows just above her knees and covered her face with her fingers. “Luke—” slowly she dropped her hands and stared at him—“she has a baby.”

  Everything around him seemed suddenly frozen. Sound…movement…time. All of it stopped so he could concentrate on the single word screaming at him, echoing through his heart and soul.

  Baby?

  He remembered to breathe, but he could feel the blood leave his face, sense his skin becoming cold, clammy. “Ashley…” His voice sounded strange, as if someone else were talking for him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” She straightened and turned so she was facing him. Her brow lowered, and her struggle was written across her face. “She has a baby.”

  He stared at his sister, searching her eyes for any sign of teasing or trickery. But her expression shouted the fact loud and clear. It was true. He stood and took four long strides away from the bench. With his back to Ashley, he grabbed fistfuls of his hair and stared at the sky. Reagan had a baby? How was that even possible? She hadn’t been back in New York a year yet.

  Then, like a slap across the face, it hit him. He spun around and walked the distance back to Ashley. “Tell me Landon’s not the father.”

  A sad laugh played on her lips. “That’s what I thought.”

  “He’s not?”

  “Luke—” her face grew more intense than before, and her eyes pleaded with him to understand—“the baby’s yours. Your son.”

  He felt his heart fall from his chest and hit the ground. Tears stung his eyes, and his jaw dropped as he sucked in a sharp breath.

  The baby was his?

  How could the baby possibly be his? The truth cornered him, staring at him until he forced himself to look. As he did, denial stepped aside. What was he thinking? Of course the baby was his. Reagan would never have been with another man after their brief encounter. Not in the wake of losing her father.

  The bench looked a long way down, but he dropped to it and felt the dirt beneath his feet turn to liquid. His mouth opened, but for the longest time no sound came out, no words. Nothing that could adequately convey what he was feeling, this strange disconnected sense that all of life had ceased and yet at the same time it was racing ahead at warp speed.

  “I wasn’t going to…”

  Luke closed his eyes and gave a light shake of his head. Two streams of tears fell onto his cheeks and ran into his beard, but he couldn’t lift his hands to wipe them. They’d been together just one night…one time. He’d lost track of how many days he’d tried to call her, and then finally he’d given up.

  Never…never once had he considered that she might have gotten pregnant. That she’d returned to New York terrified, devastated at the loss of her father, only to find out that she was carrying a child.

  Their child.

  How must life have been for her? What did her mother think, learning about Reagan’s situation so soon after Mr. Decker’s death? And what about her pregnancy? Had she been alone with her concerns, her fears? Had the delivery gone smoothly, or had it been a difficult birth? Questions lined themselves up at the front steps of his mind, as far out as he could see.

  His fingers tightened into fists, and he pressed them against his eyes. “Reagan.” Her name was more of a moan, and he let his head drop again. He clasped his hands at the back of his neck and stared at the ground. I should’ve been there, Reagan. Why didn’t you tell me? How could you keep this from me?

  Ashley was saying something, something about Reagan. Her words ran together like a rush of waves crashing in a stormy surf. He lowered his hands and forced himself to concentrate. If Ashley had seen Reagan, then she must have some of the answers.

  “Luke—” her voice was patient, gentle—“are you listening?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded and another wave of tears spilled from his eyes. “Sorry. What?”

  Ashley hesitated. “I was saying that she wanted to tell you herself.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “But I couldn’t wait. It’s been…well, it’s been too long.” Tears glistened in her eyes, too. “Your little boy needs you.” She tilted her head. “Reagan, too.”

  A whole new rush of possibilities slammed around Luke’s mind, and he needed answers more than air. “Did you see him?” A sob was lodged in his throat, and he could barely work his voice. “The baby, I mean?”

  For the first time since their meeting, a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “He’s beautiful, Luke.” A sound came from her that was more laugh than cry. “He looks just like you.”

  The moment Ashley said the baby—his baby—looked like him, the idea became more than a source of shock. It became truth. He squinted, his entire body shaking. “I’m…I’m a father?”

  “Yes.” Another laugh slipped from her throat, and this time her eyes sparkled. “You have to see him.”

  Again the questions practically sent him to the ground. What would the Baxter family say now, now that he’d gotten Reagan pregnant and had
a son? As soon as they knew, the pretense of his past would be gone forever. They’d know it wasn’t September 11 that had changed him.

  It was September 10.

  The onetime good-boy image would be gone for good. What would his parents and sisters think, and what would Pastor Mark at church say when he found out?

  More than that, why should he care even a little what they thought?

  “Luke, talk to me.”

  He’d let himself drift again, oblivious to whatever Ashley was saying. “It’s too much…” He fell against the bench and dropped his head back this time, shielding his eyes with his hands.

  His questions took a different direction, one that pretty much knocked the wind from him. If he had a son, then he needed to see him, needed to see Reagan and find out why she’d kept the truth from him. But what did that mean for his freethinking future?

  No doubt Reagan hadn’t stopped believing in God. If he visited her now, wouldn’t she expect him to become a part of the baby’s life? Her life, even? Luke stopped the stream of questions long enough to consider that.

  The thought sent chills down his spine—but chills that were more good than bad. He’d never stopped loving her, missing her. But he could hardly pretend to share her faith. Freethinking meant he had the right to his own viewpoint, separate from hers. What if that made her turn away from him again? This time maybe forever? Would that be fair to him, fair to the baby?

  Worst of all was a truth that stood like a fortress between this moment and his future: He was nothing like the young man he’d been when he was dating Reagan. They’d had everything in common before that awful Monday night, and now they had nothing but memories.

  Memories and a baby boy.

  He thought back to when he was five or six years old. Ashley had taken him by the hands and spun him in circles three feet off the ground until his feet flopped behind him. The sensation was like flying, exhilarating and dizzying, but eventually her hands grew tired, and she dropped him. Luke had hurt his head and bruised his knee.

  He felt the same way now. Spinning high and out of control, but this time he was a hundred feet in the air—dizzy and afraid and breathless. With no way to tell what would happen when he hit the ground. At some point pain was bound to hit, pain that came with not knowing about Reagan’s pregnancy, not being there in New York to share the past year with her. Not seeing his son born. Not knowing whether he’d ever hold him, or watch him grow up, toss a ball with him, or teach him to drive. The kind of pain that would make his gut ache and place a mountain range along his shoulder blades.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  His sister’s voice broke through to him, and he lowered his head enough to see her. Answers to most of his questions would come in time. But his sister had to know the answer to at least this one: “What’s…what’s his name?”

  Relief muted the concern in Ashley’s expression. “Thomas Luke.” Her voice was a gentle whisper. She searched his face. “Reagan’s calling him Tommy.”

  Thomas Luke? She’d named the baby after her father…and after him?

  Luke could do nothing but stare at Ashley. He would somehow survive the coming days, months. Years. Because the moment he’d heard the boy’s name—heard his own name as part of it—the questions stopped, and his heart found its way back into his chest. He knew this because where there had been numbness, for the first time that afternoon he felt pain.

  A massive, suffocating pain that made him doubt he could stand up under it. Pain bound to stay with him, holding him captive until something very special and amazing happened.

  Until he held his son for the first time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HIS PLANS CAME TOGETHER with amazing speed and clarity.

  Ashley promised she wouldn’t tell anyone else in the family about the baby, and after that Luke went home and spent the night on the sofa, lost in thought.

  By morning, the shock had worn off.

  In the light of day he did what any freethinker would do: He charted a course of action with his head and believed that at some point his heart would follow. For the next four days he attended class and took his finals, just as he’d planned. Not once in that time did he sleep with Lori, and twice she asked him about it.

  “I need space,” he told her. “Something I’m going through.”

  Since his talk with Ashley he’d known that no matter how liberal-minded he planned on becoming, the idea of an open relationship, multiple partners, and sex as self-expression simply didn’t hold water.

  The entire notion was insane. That he’d bought into it even for a time made him doubt his ability to think—freely or otherwise. Before they went their separate ways, Ashley told him about the man who was Cole’s father. By the sounds of it, he could’ve been a guest speaker for the Freethinkers Alliance—different partners every few weeks, sex for recreation. Whatever felt good.

  But look where it got Ashley. Not enlightened and freed from society’s rules, but saddled with a virus that could kill her.

  No, he couldn’t stay with Lori another day. He didn’t love her, and even after months of trying, he didn’t see life through the same, strange glass she did. Now, after four days of thinking things through, his heart had indeed followed. He was certain about his decision. Thursday night he called Ashley and asked if she would put him up until he found someplace else to live.

  “That way I can see Cole more,” he told her. “And take a trip to New York. Whaddya think?”

  Sweet relief filled her tone. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  On Friday, when Luke and Lori met back at the apartment for lunch, he knew what he had to do. He couldn’t even call Reagan, let alone run off to New York City, while he was still living with Lori Callahan.

  She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a loaf of bread and a plastic container of some pasty thing. Hummus, maybe, or fresh-ground almonds. Something earthy. Lori had given up eating meat now and joined Vegan Outreach, another campus club. The food she was buying this month was all soy, texturized vegetable protein, and seaweed. Things Luke had never considered eating.

  “Animal fat clogs the channels of cooperative thought,” she told him a few weeks back. “We need to free animals of that burden.”

  Luke had stared at her and wondered why he’d ever moved in with her in the first place. Eating healthy was a good thing—his parents raised him that way. In fact most of the time his mother ate a vegetarian diet. But more and more, Lori saw every aspect of life as some sort of enlightenment opportunity.

  He watched her now as anxiety gnawed at him. How would she take the news? Not that he was sad about it. Not at all. He also wasn’t hungry. A leftover cheeseburger sat in the fridge, but he would wait until later to microwave it. Better to avoid a lecture on freeing the cows.

  She set her lunch plate on the table and sat down across from him. “Not hungry?”

  “I’ll eat later.” He leaned his forearms on the oak finish. “Hey, Lori…” His mouth hung open, but the words got tangled up in his throat.

  A small pile of the pasty stuff sat on the side of her plate, and she was dipping some strange-looking vegetable into it. She stilled for a moment and lifted her eyes to his. “Yeah?”

  Luke hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. “I’m moving out this weekend.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Moving out?”

  “Yeah.” He dug his fingers into the palms of his hand. “Taking my stuff.”

  “On a trip?” Her tone was a mix of confusion and mild amusement. “Just bring a suitcase.”

  Luke stroked his chin. “I’m not taking a trip, Lori.” He exhaled hard through his teeth. “I’m leaving. Moving out.”

  Lori set her vegetable down and stared at him. “You mean for good?”

  “Yes.” He pursed his lips and tried to read her reaction. “It’s over.”

  “Oh.” She sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. “What…did the almighty Baxter family get to you? Convince y
ou I was a bad influence?”

  Lori had spoken badly about his family before, and he’d always agreed. If she said they were controlling, he could think of a hundred times when he’d been controlled. When she called them ignorant, he found himself nodding along, remembering the times when they’d believed and prayed even when God—if there was a God—did nothing at all.

  But now her remark wedged itself like a shard of glass between the newly softened crevasses of his heart. How dare she say that about them? The “almighty Baxter family”? He clenched his fists a bit tighter. “Look, Lori—” his voice sounded calmer than he felt—“this isn’t about them; it’s my call.”

  “No!” Her indifference turned to anger. “It is about them.” She waved her hand in the air, as though she were searching for a hook to hang the blame on. “A freethinker would know that relationships have ups and downs.”

  “This isn’t a down time, Lori.”

  “Of course it is.” Luke heard something in her voice he hadn’t heard before: panic. Lori was nothing if not confident and collected, completely sure of who she was and where she was going. “You’re mad about my night with that guy, the abortion. The whole thing.”

  As soon as she said the words, Luke knew she was wrong. All he felt about those events was relief. A sense of deep gratitude that he hadn’t been the father, and a strange sadness for the unborn baby. A sadness not in a moral sort of way but because the baby had never had a chance.

  Sort of like Reagan’s father.

  What he didn’t feel was jealousy or anger. Not even a bit. Luke cocked his head and willed her to make this simpler for both of them. “Those were your choices; I’m fine with that.” He reached out for her hands, but she jerked them onto her lap. “It’s just time.”

  The anger in her eyes changed to a deep, almost childlike sadness. “What about—” she gave a light shrug—“what about freethinking, different partners, the perfect relationship?”

  With each passing hour, the idea of such an arrangement sounded more ludicrous. Sickening, almost. “What are you saying, Lori?” His tone softened, and his voice fell a notch. “That you’d rather have me stay and date other people?”