A Jar Full of Light

by Rae Walsh

  “All right, Bruce,” George said, shifting into lawyer mode. “We’ll go find our girl and bring her in for a report. I advise you to cuff Cam until we know more, okay?”

  “Right,” Bruce said. “I’ll do that. Little Theresa Grant, that’s despicable.”

  “Apparently she’s little and mighty,” Sheldon said. “She got away.”

  They drove the road toward home, and it wasn’t long at all before they saw her marching down the street. Daniel stopped the car, but Sheldon was outside before the car even stopped moving. He sprinted to her, calling her name.

  She spun, wild-eyed, but slumped in relief when she saw him.

  “Tazzy,” she said, her voice broken.

  “Don’t worry, sweetness,” he said, reaching her and pulling her close. He spoke into her hair. “Daniel told us everything, or at least what he knows.”

  She pulled away and looked at him, her eyes haunted. “There’s more than he knows, so much more,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this all by yourself,” Sheldon said.

  “He threatened to kill you,” she said.

  He saw her lovely pale face with a cut over one temple, bruises already beginning to show along her jaw. He felt such intense love, such fierce anger that he groaned aloud again.

  “He couldn’t kill me,” he said. “I can’t be taken from you. Anyway, the police have him now. And we need to go to the station to give a report.”

  “I can’t...”

  Sofía, George, and Daniel arrived beside them, and George reached out carefully and touched Theresa’s face, turning it so they could see the bruises in the streetlight. Sofía reached out for Theresa’s hand and held it.

  “You got away,” George said. “You left him there, unable to walk. You can do it. I’ll be with you if you want me as your lawyer. Or, I can be there tonight, and you can hire another lawyer. We need to nail this bastard. He can’t do this again, to you or anyone else.”

  Theresa gazed at George for a long minute, then at Sofía. She looked at Daniel, then at Sheldon.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go to the police station. And I want Sofía to come with me. But no offense, George.”

  George started to lift his hands, but Theresa kept talking. “I want Mercy as my lawyer,” she said. “Have you seen her in court?”

  Sheldon felt a grin spread across his face and saw answering smiles on the faces of the others.

  Together they walked to the car, and as they drove to the police station, Sheldon said one more repeating prayer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Mercy turned out to be the perfect lawyer for Theresa. The older woman did not let Theresa get away with a single reason for going easy on Cam or moving away from prosecution.

  “I totally understand,” she told Theresa. “You have a disorder, and you were threatened and afraid back then. It makes sense that you didn’t press charges before now. But fifteen years is long enough, and that man needs to be in prison. He needs restraining orders whenever he gets out of prison. He needs to never come near Aveline again.” She paused. “And we are definitely pressing hate crime charges.” Cam had confessed to the vandalism, though he still insisted he and Theresa were only friends. It would be a long road to justice for Theresa.

  Just two days after the kidnapping, Theresa and Maddie drove to Faith’s office for a joint counseling session. With help from Faith, Theresa told Maddie who her father was. It was nearly as horrible as Theresa had always dreaded, with one surprising difference.

  Maddie was somehow okay. The information did not unravel her in the way Theresa had feared. After Theresa finished telling Maddie, in the simplest terms, what had happened, Faith spoke. She talked to Maddie about having violence in one’s history—how to process it, grieve over it, and move on. She told Maddie that it could take many years. Maddie listened quietly, now and then wiping a tear away. Then they waited for Maddie to speak. The fourteen-year-old sat in silence for a long time, then finally she said something.

  “I’m glad I’m finding out now,” she said. “I don’t think I could have handled this when Mom and I were still alone. But we have so many other people around us. I don’t think this will overwhelm my feelings about family. We have Sam and George and Sheldon. I want them to be the father-y people in my life. Not Cam.”

  She stood up suddenly, flinging herself at Theresa.

  “Mom!” she said through tears. “I’m only hearing about this, but you had to live it! Knowing this, I can’t believe you agreed to come back when I asked you to. You’re so brave. I can’t believe you did so well, making our life safe, all these years.”

  Theresa couldn’t speak for a few minutes. “You made it all worth it,” she said when she could trust her voice. “You have always been beauty and safety amid the hard places. God kept us, somehow, all this time.”

  Theresa had another session with Faith the next day, on her own. Faith had studied up on ASD, and they talked together about how it had affected Theresa, both in good ways and bad, in the trauma of her life. The ability to just keep going had helped, and the naivety had hurt her.

  “I read that people with Asperger’s are some of the most resilient in the world, despite meltdowns and all that comes with the disorder.”

  Theresa smiled faintly. “That’s nice to hear,” she said.

  “Do you think you can tell the difference between a safe and unsafe person now?”

  Theresa smiled. “Your mom asked me the same thing, recently.” She frowned, looking at her hands. “I think in some ways, I have made a firm rule, rather than understanding the difference. I said to myself that it was just that everyone was unsafe. People were unsafe. Rather than seeing that the truth is that some people are trustworthy...”

  “To a point,” Faith interrupted.

  “Yes, to a point. And some people should never be trusted.”

  Faith nodded.

  Theresa looked off into the distance through the window. She thought of Sheldon, how he had automatically received the same distant treatment as every other man, many times, simply because she could not trust. She thought of the day after the kidnapping when he had come to visit her.

  “I love you,” he told her, standing on her porch with flowers, tears in his eyes. “I have always known it, but yesterday I couldn’t bear the fact that I hadn’t yet told you. If you had been hurt in a worse way...” he put his hand over his face.

  “Tazzy,” she said softly. He looked up and began to step forward, but she put a hand out to stop him. “Taz, I can’t... I’m not ready. Can you give me some time to think about everything?”

  She saw his face, how it twisted and bent. She saw his fists clench and his brief nod. He handed her the flowers, touched her hair briefly, and left.

  She saw it again as though for the first time. Sheldon always listened when she asked him to leave. How had she not seen it? Theresa told him no. She had already kissed him and snuggled with him, given him reason to believe they would get back together, and then she had turned away his profession of love, again. She had to turn him away, she had to get her head together. But he had listened to her. He always did.

  Driving home after the session, Theresa took in the colored lights up on the houses. It was nearly Christmas, and the play would happen in just a few days. Theresa sipped at her thermos of tea as she drove the curves, memories flitting through her mind.

  Sheldon sitting with her at the edge of the lake, toddler Maddie in his arms.

  “Who is her father?” he had asked, slipping his hand into Theresa’s.

  “I can’t tell you,” she had said. “I can never tell you.”

  He had looked at her for a long moment, then looked back at the tiny, sleeping girl.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Holding her hand. Reading her poetry. Finding the things she loved best for the shop. Bringing her a perfectly ripe tomato. Sheldon gave and gave, demanding nothing.

 
Theresa pulled the car over and got out. She stood on the side of the hill, looking down into the valley around Aveline, the lake like a jewel on one side, the houses clustered up into the hillsides. This was Theresa’s town again. The menace was gone. He would never be able to come back. Theresa felt as though she could actually fully live in her body again—stretch her limbs, walk with her head up, not worried that the wrong person was watching. It would take some practice, though.

  “Let’s talk about beauty,” Faith had said that day, watching Theresa closely.

  “What about it?” Theresa had asked.

  “Why won’t you accept your own beauty?”

  “Do you find it easy to accept your own?” Theresa asked.

  “I’m the therapist here, not the client,” Faith said, grinning. “But sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. I’m not exactly accepted as universally beautiful, the way you are, so it’s different.”

  “What?” Theresa was horrified. “You look like a painting. You are the most beautiful person I know.”

  Faith laughed. “Oh, Reesey, I remember that you always told me that. I just mean that I get stares for a lot of reasons, and not always because men think I’m pretty. But really, this is your session. It’s not time to talk about me. Why don’t you like to be beautiful?”

  Theresa stared at her friend, still slightly horrified by the thought that she, Theresa, had some sort of universal beauty that Faith didn’t. But it came to her, as Faith must have known it would have, that she had always associated beauty with attention from Cam. Of course.

  “I don’t know that I can untangle it all and tell it to you easily.”

  “I just want to suggest that you love beauty. You are an artist. Maybe you can start inhabiting yourself as you would put love into making a pot. Maybe you can look at yourself as a piece of art, rather than thinking of all the ways people have tried to make your beauty theirs. It doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to you.”

  On the hillside, Theresa held her hands out and looked at them. Her own body. Her own self that belonged only to her. Theresa had imagined that if she hated herself and the attention she got, she could avoid Cam’s jealousy and scrutiny. Theresa had never wanted it.

  But this was herself. Theresa’s body. God had made her, just like he made the lake in the distance, that body of water that she loved so much. God had made her beautiful, and he had never forced her to be with him, just as Sheldon had never forced her. Theresa felt shaky and exhausted, but somehow, very hopeful. Things were shifting inside of her.

  She remembered Sheldon again, one day when they had gone out onto his boat. Lying in the prow on a long summer afternoon, his curly hair sticking up from the wind. Looking over at her, smiling.

  “What?” Theresa had asked. She and Sheldon had been dating for about six months by then, and Maddie was with Dorothy for the day.

  “I’m wondering if you have any idea how lovely you are,” Sheldon said.

  Theresa felt the instant inner retreat that happened when anyone called her beautiful, the feeling that she wanted to go inside and lock the door. But she forced herself to keep looking at Sheldon. He was the beautiful one, she thought, with his gentle eyes and full eyelashes, and the way he seemed to hold himself very still.

  “You make me think of the sunrise,” he said. “The way the whole world seems colorless without the sun. That’s like the before, before you come into a room. And then the sun comes closer and closer to the horizon, and immediately color makes the whole world beautiful. That’s you in a room. Your beauty doesn’t make other people less beautiful. Somehow everyone seems more radiant when you are around. They want to reach for you. It’s what I love most about you.”

  She reached her hand out and touched his face, and he smiled at her, dimples flashing in his cheeks. He caught her hand and kissed her palm.

  She shivered now, thinking of it. Then she got back in her truck and drove down the hill into town. She had an idea.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  That evening, Theresa was covered in clay, caught in a feverish whirlwind of creation. Thinking about light had overtaken her as she finished the drive from Billers. By this time, Theresa had sculpted many of the pieces for her show. She wouldn’t name them, of course, but they took after people in her life. Vessels. All of them meant to carry different types and different amounts of liquid, the way people were all different, with different capabilities. She thought she would actually fill them all with something different when she held her show.

  Yet, as she had carried out her work, she had been increasingly distressed by her own vessel. It seemed too damaged to hold anything, with huge swathes of structure missing.

  At the viewpoint, looking over Aveline, though, Theresa had remembered the light. Sunlight revealed the colors and beautiful shadows of each object in the world. Theresa’s vessel did not hold the same sea as her mother’s with its wide and generous basin. Or Katie’s with her deep channels, or George’s vast reservoir, which seemed to be as large as a bathtub.

  No, Theresa’s vessel was more of a jar. Yes, it was broken, but it held light, like the lanterns in the garden, or the lamps in her home. It was made to contain a lot of light.

  She was rolling slabs for the light jar when the doorbell rang. Theresa froze, reminded herself that Cam was in jail, and left it for Maddie to answer. Hearing voices, she turned as Sam, Katie, Sofía, and Dorothy walked into the yard, arguing as they came.

  “You’re already back at work?” Sam said. “I thought you were resting. And what have you done to Sheldon?”

  “I know we talked about this already, but I’m still struggling, Reesey,” Dorothy said with a hoarse voice. She sounded as though she’d been crying again. “How could you keep this from me?”

  Theresa sighed. “Listen, let me wash up, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen. Help yourselves to tea or snacks, if you can find them.”

  Theresa took her time washing her hands, trying to shift from creating mode to socializing mode in her mind. When she made her way into the kitchen, Theresa found Sam and Dorothy sitting at the island while Katie rummaged through the tea drawer, holding up choices, and Sofía searched the cupboards for snacks.

  “Cold care? Does anyone have a cold? Peppermint? Oh yes, that sounds perfect...” she held the tea bag up to her nose and sniffed it. “Never mind; actually, that doesn’t smell good at all.”

  “I’ll make a pot of rooibos,” Theresa said, taking the tea basket from her. “That’ll be easier, and then these angry pants won’t have to choose.”

  “Yes,” Katie said, and went to sit beside Sam on one of the kitchen island stools.

  Theresa warmed the pot and eyed her family. Maddie snuck through the room behind them, widening her eyes at Theresa before shutting her bedroom door behind her without a sound. So much for solidarity, Theresa thought. She couldn’t guess what Sam or Katie were thinking, but the look on Theresa’s mother’s face was easy to interpret. Her mother was furious. Theresa had no idea why. Sofía seemed fine, humming to herself while she shook some crackers onto a plate.

  “Easy question first,” Theresa said. “I’m working because I feel inspired and because it helps me to rest.”

  “You can’t possibly rest if you’re tired out from making stuff. And you repainted that wall I worked so hard on...” Sam started to protest, throwing his arms out. But he closed his mouth when Katie put a hand on his arm. Sam muttered a bunch of words that Theresa couldn’t hear, then shrugged. “Okay, it’s your life,” he said.

  “Nice of you to remember it,” Theresa said, smiling despite herself. Katie grinned at her. Maybe there was a little solidarity left in the world.

  “Mom,” Theresa went on. “I’m not sure what to tell you. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I should have told you.” Tears started slipping down Dorothy’s cheeks, and Theresa walked around the table and gave her mother a hug. “I was bound up by fear. I’m sorry that I didn’t know what to do.”

  Her mother cri
ed, and though Theresa was dry-eyed, she ached with deep sorrow. She didn’t know if she was capable of opening up about the hardest things. It didn’t come naturally to her, and she realized that her mother had never experienced the kind of confidences that perhaps she had dreamed of. Dorothy wept and then accepted a tissue from Katie and blew her nose loudly.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said when she had pulled herself together. “I should have pushed harder. I knew there was something odd about the pregnancy, but I figured you were just ashamed of a one-night stand or something.”

  Theresa held herself by the rib cage. Sofía caught her eye. Theresa knew what she was thinking. There was a world of difference between a little shame over a one-night stand and abject terror over being stalked and raped.

  “It’s hard for you to communicate very difficult things, isn’t it?” Katie asked softly. “Just like it’s hard for you to express happiness over very, very good things, like the studio.”

  Theresa glanced at Sam and saw a strange expression creep over his face.

  “Sam, did I not tell you how much I love my studio?” She suddenly saw. Her mother was upset because she felt as though she wasn’t a good enough mother to tell. Her brother was cranky because he thought she didn’t value his hard work. And Katie? Katie seemed fine. She was sitting peacefully, holding her hand gently against her belly.

  “Sam, the studio is the most beautiful thing that I have ever, ever had in my whole life. I wish I could show you how much I love it. Me not knowing how to tell you that has nothing to do with you. It has to do with me and my differences. Mom, the same goes for not being able to tell you about the... rape.” She said the last word very softly, and her mother reached out and caught her hand. “It has nothing to do with you not being a good mother. You have been such a good mother to me. I see it more and more now that I’m the mother of a teenage girl.”

  “As for Sheldon. I’m in love with him. But I’m terrified, and I don’t know how to tell him. I needed time to figure out my thoughts, but I understand them now. I want to be with him forever. I’m going to show him somehow. And as for you, Katie... what do you have to tell us?”