The Shadow of Your Smile

by Susan May Warren

  “Why did You do this to me?” Lee looked up at the starless night, rain spitting on her face. “Why did You do this? Why couldn’t You have spared him?” She wanted to curse, but the power of her anger frightened her. She cupped her hand over her mouth. She didn’t expect an answer—she had stopped listening years ago.

  Shoot, she’d probably broken her purse. When she stepped into the crusty snow lining the highway, she nearly fell, the ice scraping her ankles, but she plowed through to the beach. The shiny stones crunched under her footsteps. Her purse lay like a dead goose; she picked it up and smoothed her shaking hand over it.

  It wasn’t fair. None of it. Noelle had a perfectly good man she couldn’t even remember. And Lee had no one. Not even her hometown.

  She closed her eyes, sank onto the ground and pulled up her knees, not caring that the stones turned her to ice. She’d spent three years trying not to break down, and . . .

  Her own sobs had the power to hollow her out.

  She sat there, shivering, not caring that she might get sick. Why care? No one else did.

  Lee pulled her hands into her sleeves. She couldn’t feel her fingertips. Exhaustion wrung through her. Oh, she was tired. So very tired of trying to survive.

  She closed her eyes, put her forehead on her sodden jacket.

  Listened to the waves churning on the shore, the water pelleting her coat.

  Listened to the steady thump of her heart.

  So very, very tired.

  Get up.

  She raised her head, listening. Not a voice, more of a sense.

  Get up.

  She stared out over the lake. Far off in the distance, a row of lights revealed a laker, probably headed to Duluth. The lights pierced the darkness like eyes.

  Go home.

  What if Derek was there waiting for her?

  She found her feet, trudged back to the road, her entire body sopping wet now, so cold she’d begun to tremble.

  Go home.

  She stared at the pavement as she forced one foot in front of the other.

  Lights spilled over her, along with the sound of a motor creeping up behind her. She didn’t turn, not wanting to see anyone she might know. Anyone who might confirm the awful sense of abandonment as they splashed past her.

  The car pulled ahead of Lee, veered to the shoulder, stopped. The driver’s door opened and a figure got out. “Is that you, Lee?”

  Lee stared at the woman in the darkness. “Liza?” She ran a pottery shop next to the bookstore in town. Lee had an entire collection of her seagull pottery at home, the ones with Bible verses scrolled into the design, and had at one time taken classes from her. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m house-sitting for Edith Draper up the road a ways.” Liza came closer, squinting as the rain doused her. “You’re soaking wet, and—” she reached out, grabbed Lee by the arms—“you’re shivering. Get into my car right now.”

  Lee’s teeth had started to chatter and she put up no fight as Liza drew her around to the passenger side, all but shoving her inside. She hated to turn the interior of Liza’s car into a swimming pool. It was an older model, a Bonneville, maybe, with plush velvet seats and the defrost cranked to high. Liza turned the heat up to blazing when she got in. She took Lee’s hands and held them in her warm grip. The kindness of the act warmed Lee more than the car’s radiator.

  “You’re freezing to death,” Liza said. “What are you doing out in this storm?”

  Lee’s teeth had reached a low-level buzzing. “I . . . I wassss . . . attttt . . . the game.”

  “Was that your Jeep I saw back there?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Wow, I’m glad I came along. You’re a mess.”

  “Th-th-thank you.”

  Liza grinned. “I meant that in the nicest of ways, of course. Let’s get you home.” She pulled out onto the highway. “By the way, I was at the game too. Great game. So sad for the boys. Derek did a fabulous job.”

  Liza was at the game? And . . . afterward? Lee looked at her, searching her face for judgment. “Did you hear . . . the fight?”

  Liza said nothing for a long moment. Finally, “I think it doesn’t matter what the town thinks, Lee. What matters is that you were on the road alone tonight, in the freezing rain, and you didn’t call for help.”

  Oh, so she had been there. But really, who did Lee have to call? Besides, she was tired of being needy. Needy got her humiliated by the entire town.

  She held up her hands to the heat pumping from the vents, not answering.

  “I remember when Mona married Joe. I was secretly devastated. We were best friends, did everything together. Worse, I had to find a new place to live and fix it up myself. I was so angry at her—and angry at myself for being angry. How could I resent her for her happiness? It wasn’t her fault. But I was angry that God hadn’t given me a man, too.”

  Liza shook her head. “Men are a little hard to come by up here in Deep Haven. But God’s given me something beautiful while I wait. I’ve had an intimacy with Him, because I’ve needed Him so much, that I might not have had if I were married. Yes, of course I’d like to get married. This world is designed for couples. But God has filled that empty place, overflowed it, even. That was when I started my white line of pottery, vases and pitchers and coffee cups with Psalm 16 written on them. David says to the Lord, ‘Apart from you, I have no good thing,’ and that God fills him with joy in His presence. It helps me remember that I’m not alone.”

  She braked as they came to Lee’s driveway. “This is your road, right? I remember when Clay ordered that pottery set for you for Christmas. I delivered it here.”

  Lee nodded.

  “God never intended for us to go through life alone. It feels like it sometimes, but every time I get that urge toward self-pity or desperation, I think of it as an invitation for a deeper relationship with God. The point of life, in marriage or singleness—even widowhood—is that it should bring us to that intimate relationship with God. And that relationship should fill us—all the way up to our secret and ashamed places—so that we are overflowing with love for Him. Then we stop searching. Then we are filled with joy.”

  Joy. Lee hadn’t felt it in so long that she’d forgotten the feeling. The joy of holding her newborns, the joy of seeing Clay after a long day on the job, the joy of standing on the lakeshore on a summer night, the waves on her toes, Clay roasting marshmallows at the fire pit.

  Joy was what she’d had. But joy could be her future, too. She had survived—nobly, but not well. Perhaps it was time to lean near to God, let Him be her provider, the husband to the widow.

  I’m sorry, God, for not letting You in to heal me. For substituting everything else for Your intimate love. The prayer pulsed inside her, only the beginning of what she had to say.

  Liza pulled up to Lee’s house. Derek stood at the window. As Lee reached for the door, Liza grabbed her hand. “I don’t want to find you out in the freezing cold ever again, Lee. You hear me?”

  Lee smiled, but Liza didn’t. She dug into her pocket, still holding Lee’s hand, and slipped a card into it. “And if you start to think you’re alone, I’m happy to remind you that you’re not.”

  Lee managed a trickle of a nod. She got out, and as Liza backed down the driveway, Derek opened the door. He stood silhouetted in the light, grief on his face. Then he ran out, barefoot, onto the driveway. “Mom!”

  She met him at the end of the walk, let him throw his arms around her, let him apologize into her ear.

  “Of course I forgive you, Derek.”

  He held her as the night cried over them, and Lee realized that she was no longer cold.

  You should have never left Deep Haven. Because clearly, it’ll fall apart without you.

  Emma’s words singed the back of his brain, turning the drive home from St. Paul into one giant shouting match.

  A singular shouting match.

  Except Emma was winning.

  Your father is at home, is
n’t he? Isn’t this his problem?

  He needed to turn off her voice in his head.

  You’re just afraid that he’ll fail. That he won’t find her. That something worse will happen to her.

  Maybe he was. But his father had failed before. And he’d failed big.

  You don’t seriously blame him for the shooting.

  “Stop talking to me, Emma,” Kyle muttered. He turned on the radio, flipped through the stations, found nothing in this no-man’s-land so far north of the Cities. He hit the CD button and Emma’s first song queued up.

  “The sky cried, and I wept,

  For the hope I had lost in time . . .”

  “The Rain Song.” One of Kelsey’s first, and Emma put it to a soulful ballad. It could draw him in with its husky, intoxicating sweetness.

  “My faith twisted, out of control.

  Or so I thought.

  And as I rained . . . I sang.”

  He gauged the road conditions. He’d seen cars spin out, roll over into the ditch on nights like this. The clock pushed past midnight, and his neck had started to ache.

  “I sang of the thing in which I had lost

  The courage to carry on.

  I spoke in song,

  Asking for strength and hope.”

  He could almost see Kelsey at the mic, smiling at him, or sitting on her bed, guitar on her lap.

  “And as I reached the chorus of my words . . .

  I felt Him.

  All around me.”

  But Emma had a voice that could turn him inside out. Kyle had no doubt she’d land a recording contract, move to Nashville. Kyle turned the song up and let the vocals fill the car. Red and blue flashing lights and flares ahead made him slow. He passed a semi jackknifed in the ditch.

  “Drops on my heart, the sky cries,

  Not for me, not for my loss,

  But for what I found . . . in the rain.”

  What had he found? Maybe his own fears. He saw himself making the mistakes of his father and it shook him to the core. No wonder the man had retreated into himself.

  He hated the rain, the darkness, the unpredictability that could surprise a guy and skid him into the ditch. Hated the crimes committed during storms, the way they could wipe away crime scenes, hide suspects.

  Kyle turned off the radio, let the last of the notes find his soul.

  He couldn’t control the rain. Just like his father couldn’t control every person in their town, couldn’t read their minds. Predict their sins.

  You should have never left Deep Haven. Because clearly, it’ll fall apart without you.

  No, maybe he’d fall apart without it. Maybe being a cop in Deep Haven meant he could hold together the world he’d grown up in, where kids rode bikes around town without fear of kidnapping, where teenagers slept out on the rocky beach, where most people kept their doors unlocked.

  Please, God, take away the rain.

  But He wouldn’t. There’d always be rain, always be darkness.

  Chaos.

  Crime.

  Pain.

  But perhaps there was more to find in the rain, if he looked closer.

  He eased off the gas as the car ahead of him braked. It swerved, and Kyle held his breath until it straightened itself.

  His windshield wipers now ran with cakes of sleet, scraping the windshield like fingernails with each pass. He should stop in Duluth, get a hotel room.

  His cell phone vibrated on the seat next to him. Grabbing for his earpiece, he wrangled it into his ear and answered the call.

  “Hey, Kyle.”

  “Dad.” He stiffened, his voice crisp. “Where are you?”

  “I’m headed to Duluth. I think your mom’s going back there.”

  “In this storm? Dad, what’s going on? Kirby called and told me everything. Emma knew it too. You and Lee?”

  “What do you mean Emma knew it too? Emma Nelson? You were with her?”

  “Yeah. We’re sorta . . . we were dating.”

  “Were?”

  “It’s not going to work out.” Saying it made him hurt, right down to his bones.

  “What happened?”

  “Sheesh, I dunno; you tell me. You happened. You and Lee, and Emma knew about it and didn’t tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to know, Kyle. Lee and I weren’t having an affair. We were just—”

  “Oh, please, I can’t wait to hear this. Any sentence that starts out we were just is so full of truth.” He lowered his voice. “Gimme a break, Dad.”

  He waited to hear something sharp and defensive, wanted it, his adrenaline stirring hot.

  “Okay, you’re right. I did spend way too much time with Lee. And yes, I had feelings for her, but it was wrong, and I know that too. I wasn’t a good husband all the way around. You were right that day in the hospital, Kyle. I blew it. But I love your mom, and I want to find her and fix this. I want to put our family back together again.”

  Kyle wasn’t sure why the words from his father made his chest hurt, why his eyes burned. “Good,” he managed. “I’m glad to hear that. Because . . .” His voice shook and he put a clamp on it. “We all missed you a lot.”

  Silence. The rain pattered on the windshield.

  “I’ll help you find her, Dad.”

  A breath in, then, “Thank you.”

  He was about to hang up when—

  “Kyle? You might want to call Emma and tell her you’re sorry that your dad was a jerk and ask her to forgive you for being a little like him.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be like my old man. See you in Duluth.”

  Noelle had never feared thunderstorms. As a child, she would lie in her bed, covers tucked up to her chin, delight rippling through her as lightning crackled and thunder rumbled through the house.

  No fear, just an awe at the power, knowing she was safe in her home.

  Even the ice storm didn’t frighten her now, despite having to drive Eli’s truck at nearly half speed to Duluth. She’d watched the ice form on the windshield, the calming rhythm of the wipers nearly wooing her to sleep.

  No, she didn’t fear the storm.

  She feared the aftermath. The cleanup. The debris in the yard, the broken fences, the shattered trees.

  Once, in her yard, a giant cottonwood had fallen, the branches shearing off like amputated limbs. She couldn’t bear to see it and had avoided the backyard for a month until her father cleared it.

  Noelle didn’t want to return to a life where Eli had betrayed her and figure out how to forgive him.

  She wanted, frankly, to forget.

  She reached the hotel long after midnight, put the room on her credit card and tried to sleep in a large, lonely bed that refused to surrender warmth. Instead, she rewound the fight in her head until she finally arose before dawn and watched Venus blink to life in the dark sky. It settled her a little, like a hand over her heart.

  She’d found Eric and his number on her cell phone, under the recent calls made. By ten o’clock she had dressed and found his office at the Duluth Art Institute, located in the old train station downtown. As she parked in the lot and hiked to the brown cobblestone building with Gothic turrets, a giant arched door, it nudged something inside. Yes, she’d been here before.

  Maybe he’s your lover. Eli’s voice scraped through her.

  Oh, please, she hoped not.

  She took the stairs to the fourth floor and found the offices of the institute. Eric Hansen’s secretary recognized her, greeting her and offering her a seat on the slick black and metal sofa. Abstracts along the lines of Picasso hung on the wall. Behind the secretary, out the window, she could see the harbor, the dockyard busy now that the ice had broken.

  “Noelle. I’m so glad you called.”

  Tall, good-looking, with curly brown hair, glasses. Eric wore a tweed jacket, jeans, square-toed shoes. And a smile that said they were friends.

  She swallowed. He ushered her inside.

  His office overlooked Lake
Superior on two sides, a sleek black desk angled in the corner, a row of pictures behind it on the near wall, gallery style. A black sectional sofa made of leather and steel matched the one in the lobby and sat opposite a pair of orange molded chairs.

  The place smelled modern, new, although paintings from all genres filled the walls—abstract, modern, impressionistic, even classical and Renaissance styles. She could stand for hours taking each one in, analyzing the techniques.

  “How are you? I was concerned when I didn’t hear back from you.” He didn’t sit at the desk but found a place on the black sofa, unbuttoning his jacket, crossing his legs, like they were here for a friendly chat.

  Noelle sank into an orange chair. “I had an accident.”

  He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward. “Are you okay?”

  “Getting better, but that’s why you didn’t hear from me.”

  He was an attractive man, maybe midfifties, and he had groomed, precise hands. They folded now in front of him.

  She searched for a feeling, anything inside that might alert her to their . . . relationship? But of course, nothing surfaced.

  “Well, have you decided?”

  Decided. What? To leave her husband for him?

  “I can hold your position for a couple more weeks if money is an issue. We just need your confirmation one way or another. These positions are coveted and we have a long waiting list. And of course, if you still want housing, we can arrange that also.”

  Oh. Oh! Her breath leaked out and for the first time, she found a smile, relief breaking through her chest. “I’m a student here.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Not yet, but we hope so. Next year. Is that a yes?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” She touched her temple, her head suddenly starting to ache. She hadn’t had a migraine in weeks. Please, not today. But the truth began to wash over her. She had planned on leaving Eli, on going back to school. Was divorce a part of those plans? Apparently the old Noelle had given up on her marriage as much as Eli had. And she hadn’t cheated on him, but she’d certainly kept secrets.

  “Did you get a chance to look at our financial aid package?”

  “I . . . That’s not the problem.”