She poured the milk in mugs and took them to the table. He joined her and dropped into a seat adjacent to hers. When she added the chocolate, its rich smell soothed her. The crowning touch was tiny marshmallows. She remembered when Ronny couldn’t say the word clearly.
And, as always, when it was ready, they clanked cups. “I love you, buddy,” she said hoarsely.
Tears formed in his eyes. “I love you too, Mom.”
“We’ll get through this, Ron.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“I’ll do better this time, if I have the chance.”
“God will give you the chance, honey. I know it.”
“Then I’ll do better.”
“I believe you.” Behind him, a picture of his father grinned out at her from a silver frame. She swallowed back the emotion. “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.” When I can do it without crying. It was important not to cry.
“All right.”
He seemed relieved as he finished his drink, kissed her on the cheek and headed upstairs.
Beth sat alone in the kitchen, thinking about her son. At least he had a mother to stand by him when he did stupid things. And she’d be there forever, no matter what, because she loved him and because she’d gone through this kind of thing alone.
That would never happen to her child.
She picked up Danny’s picture and stared at it. God, she just wished she had someone to share this with.
Chapter 2
*
IT WAS ALMOST one A.M. by the time Linc returned to his apartment. As he traipsed up the rickety steps to three small rooms over the church’s garage, weariness accompanied him like an old familiar friend. He’d been up since six in the morning, grappling with his sermon for Sunday, visiting Mrs. Temple in the hospital, and taking care of the hundreds of other details that were his sole responsibility in the congregation.
They were blessings, he reminded himself, not burdens. And he had a gift for being a minister here in Glen Oaks. His ability to handle the odd church, with its interesting and sometimes eccentric assortment of parishioners, was one of the reasons God had sent him here, Linc was sure. Sometimes, he wished he knew the rest of God’s plan, but that mostly remained a divine enigma.
With a sigh, he unlocked the door and dragged himself into the living room. He cursed softly as he stumbled on his baseball glove, bent over, and tossed it onto the frayed chair. He’d played catch with some of the boys in the empty lot earlier that night. Like many of the kids in Glen Oaks, they needed a role model. When Linc had needed someone to emulate at a critical point in his life, God had sent former diner owner and all-around savior, Tony Scarpino, who’d rescued both him and Beth. Now Linc was paying back some dues. For that and for other things.
Just as he collapsed on the worn but comfortable couch, he caught sight of the blinking light on the phone. Messages. Lord, give him strength, he wasn’t up for this. Church members called at all hours, and Linc met their needs no matter what the personal cost. But before he went to sleep that night he’d wanted to think about this newest development with Ronny and how he was going to help his sister. Stretching out flat on the sofa, he pressed the answering-machine button, closed his eyes, threw his arm over his forehead, and listened.
“Reverend Linc, it’s Connie Smith.” One of the more active members of the church. “I wanted to remind you the Ladies’ Aid Society is meeting tomorrow morning at nine in the fellowship hall. We hope you can start us off with a prayer.”
He could do that.
“And please,” she said stiffly, “ask Mr. Portman not to clean during our meeting.”
Poor Henry. He was one of the volunteers who helped keep the church running. Many of them made more work for Linc, but he’d never deny them their contribution. He made a mental note to watch for the silent, but dedicated, man before nine.
Be-ep.
“Reverend Grayson, this is Rosa DeMartino.” Rosa sounded sad tonight. “I won’t be at the women’s group meeting tomorrow. Something’s come up.”
Damn . Linc could guess what that was. Her husband, Sam DeMartino, had openly opposed Rosa’s involvement with the newly formed women’s self-esteem group that Linc had begun. And Linc was worried about the situation between the couple. He was afraid of missing the signs, like he had with his friend Annie. His guilt over Annie’s situation still haunted him, mostly in the early morning hours like now when you saw your mistakes, distorted and magnified as if you were looking through a fun house mirror. Sometimes, he ached with the need to share his insecurities with a partner, to have someone to help him clarify things and make the hours of doubt less lonely.
No, not somebody. Margo. Eve to his Adam.
Another beep. “Hi, handsome. It’s me. Um, it’s midnight. Either you’re out taking care of your flock, or you’re dead to the world asleep. If it’s the former, call me when you get in.” Linc frowned as Margo’s voice quavered on the last word. “No matter what time it is.”
Fully awake now, he sprang up from his supine position and punched out her number. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, honey,” he said casually. One of the first things he’d figured out early on about Margo was that she spooked easily. “What’re you doing up at this hour?”
“I could ask you the same, Rev.” It was good to hear the sass in her voice. That husky teasing tone had driven him nuts as a teenage boy.
“Saving souls, as usual.” He fingered the nubby couch fabric. “What’s going on with you?”
Ignoring his question—she did that whenever she wasn’t ready to talk—she asked, “Anything I should know about?” Their shared history made the question normal.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. I was gonna call you tomorrow. Ronny’s in trouble again.”
“Oh, no. Tell me.”
Briefly Linc sketched out Ronny’s newest escapade to his mother’s best friend.
“Damn that kid’s behavior.”
Linc chuckled. “Pot calling the kettle black, Mary Margaret?”
Use of her full name made her laugh. “I guess. How’d Bethy take meeting Quaid face-to-face?”
“Like a trooper. She’s too strong.” He grinned, though the circumstances were dire. Somehow, Margo always made things better. “Beth told Quaid about our checkered past.”
Margo sputtered, “She what?”
“Apparently he asked why there was no animosity between us and Ron. Beth came right out and told him.”
“He’d find out soon enough.” A brittle edge slipped into her voice. “The sanctimonious Glen Oaks grapevine is still milking that, I’m sure, even after all these years.”
Complaints about the town, and the church, were a familiar part of her catechism. Rightfully so, he knew. Her mother’s skewed view of God and Christianity had almost destroyed Margo.
“I don’t know how you put up with it,” she added.
“My personal penance.” That and hearing about you with other guys. “So, why’d you call this late?”
“We missed Sunday’s phone call.” Since they’d parted company when they’d graduated from New York University fifteen years before, they’d spoken on the phone every Sunday night all through his divinity school training, her move to the Midwest to get away from him and his God, she’d said heatedly, and even after she got married; that had been the hardest time for Linc.
The hardest period in their relationship for her had been when he’d accepted this ministry in their hometown. She’d come to New York unexpectedly for his graduation. After the outdoor ceremony, he’d taken her and Beth to dinner in the Village and when they were finally alone, Margo had begun to tell him what he’d prayed for years to hear. I left Guy, Linc. I’m moving back to New York. Maybe we can…
He’d stopped her words with his fingers against her lips. It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, telling her he was returning to the town she despised. To embrace religion, which she saw as a curse upo
n mankind. She’d refused then, to finish what she’d begun to say. In his lowest spiritual moments, Linc still argued with God about the timing of her change of heart. Naturally, like every time he squared off with his Maker, God won. Linc never had a prayer of beating Him out, but it didn’t stop him from trying.
“Linc, did you doze off? I asked you a question.”
On cue he yawned. “Nope, I’m here.”
“Christ, that church is draining you.”
“Don’t swear, honey. It makes me mad.”
In a serious tone she said, “I hate to make you mad.”
“Then tell me why you called.” He hesitated. There were a lot of minefields between them, most of which they were both pretty good at sidestepping. One, Linc always skirted the most carefully. “How was your business trip to Boston?”
A long, thoughtful pause, giving Linc time to picture her. He could imagine her stretched out on her five-hundred-dollar bedspread in her expensive co-op on New York’s Upper East Side, maybe a little jazz crooning softly from her stereo in the corner of her bedroom. She was probably wearing her favorite bedtime outfit—silk pjs or nightgown. In college, she’d often worn his T-shirt and boxers, as they were roommates—and more—all four years. Deep red hair, the kind found in a Renaissance painting. Big cat eyes that got almost green when she was angry or aroused. A body that, in his street days, he’d called stacked. Thoughts of her body made him uncomfortable. As usual. No doubt about it, Margo was more tempting than all the scarlet women of the Bible put together.
“The trip was interesting.”
She said no more. Always a clue to her state of mind.
“Did Pretty Boy wine and dine you?” Linc usually tried to hide his dislike of Margo’s colleague, Philip Hathaway; in meditative moments, he even admitted to himself and to God that he was jealous. Tonight, he was whipped, so he wasn’t as quick to camouflage his un-Christian feelings about the jerk.
For eight years Margo had sung Hathaway’s praises. As Executive Vice President and right-hand man of the CEO of CompuQuest, the computer firm where she worked, Hathaway had escalated her career fast and a little too carefully for Linc’s taste. If the guy hadn’t been married with two daughters, Linc would have been more concerned. But with her background—Margo’s father had been legally wed to another woman when her mother had gotten pregnant—Margo would never become involved with a married man.
“Linc, did you hear me? I said Boston had a lot of nice restaurants and things to do.”
Not what I asked . “Oh, good.” After waiting for her to say more, and she didn’t, he asked, “Did you get the account?”
“Yes, Philip handled it beautifully. Laufler’s gave us the whole shebang.”
“Wonderful.” He asked God’s forgiveness for lying. Sinking back down onto the couch, he stared at the ceiling. He could hear a tree limb bat against the window outside. “So you’ll be busy?”
“Yes, but I was hoping to see you soon.” A long pause. “I miss you.
A chorus of angel voices couldn’t have sung sweeter words. “I miss you, too.
“Can you get away for a weekend and come up again? I loved having you here after Christmas.”
“Not right now, honey. That was only a few months ago. A minister can’t be gone on too many Sundays.” Especially one in his circumstances. He’d taken this job with a ragtag congregation ten years ago knowing he’d be minister, mechanic and all-around handyman; knowing what the demands on him would be. Though most of the time he believed it to be an opportunity from God, tonight, tired and alone, everything felt like an obligation.
“Ah, yes, of course. Mother Church. She sucks you dry, Rev.”
Margo said church like most people said cancer—with horror and a lot of fear. Though she loved Linc, she despised anything to do with religion. Understandably so, after her mother turned born-again and took her twelve-year-old daughter to live in a cult-like commune just outside of Glen Oaks. When Virginia had died ten years before, Margo had still been estranged from her.
“No rest for the wicked,” he joked, trying to lighten the pall that was cast over their conversation every time they discussed his calling and spiritual beliefs.
Again, there was a confessional-like silence on the other end. Finally, Margo spoke. “You’re the only truly good man I know, Linc.”
Linc sat up straight and hiked the phone to the other ear. “Margo, something is wrong. Tell me.”
“I’m just tired…and lonely tonight.”
“Come home, then.”
She snorted. “Glen Oaks is not my home. It’s just the place I grew up.”
Very fast , Linc knew, since he’d been partly the cause of her quick rise to adulthood. He’d given her her first cigarette, her first swig of Jim Beam, her first joint.
And, God forgive him, her first taste of sex.
“Bad choice of words. Come to see me, then.” When he got no response, he said, “And Beth. The Council’s meeting Friday night; she could use your support. You know how Ronny adores you.” Still no answer. So he asked for God’s understanding and added, “Annie told me the next time I talked to you to tell you to call her. She’s tried to reach you several times.”
“Is she all right?” He heard the distress in Margo’s voice, shared it. They were both protective of Annie Lang after what she’d gone through. Of all of them—the kids of Glen Oaks who’d been hell on wheels in their teens—Annie had suffered the most from her disastrous past.
“As right as she ever is.”
“Linc, Annie’s problems are not your fault.”
Yeah, sure . “Well, why don’t you come to Glen Oaks this weekend and see how she’s doing in person?”
“Are ministers supposed to use blackmail?”
No, and they’re not supposed to lust after old girlfriends, either. “My God will understand.”
Unfortunately, Margo didn’t believe his God existed. And if there was anything Abraham Lincoln Grayson knew without a shred of doubt, it was the reality of his God.
“I wish I believed that,” she said flippantly.
“I wish you did, too.” After an uncomfortable silence, she said, “I’ll think about taking the train up on Friday.” They chatted for several more minutes, until Margo yawned and so did he. “Well, talk to you Sunday, I guess.”
“Unless I see you first.”
“ ’Night, Linc. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
And that, he told himself, as he plunked the phone down into its cradle, was precisely the problem. Linc did indeed love her. But not as she’d meant the declaration, as a friend. Nor even the love-everybody type his Christian doctrine professed. No, Linc loved Margo in a carnal, passionate way. He loved her like a man, with bloodlines tracing back to Adam, David and Lot. The devil could taunt him all he wanted with that frailty, but nothing would change it.
Still enervated, Linc rose from the couch and wandered over to his desk. It was old and scarred but served its purpose. He dropped down in the flea-market chair, propped his feet on top of a pile of paperwork, linked his hands behind his neck and closed his eyes. He was bone weary but he knew if he went to bed, he wouldn’t sleep. He never slept well after he talked to Margo.
Nope, he’d lie there in bed or on the couch and remember. Sometimes it was the radiant sparkle in her eyes when she discussed her latest project. Sometimes it was the long span of her legs encased in black stockings. And sometimes he went to the past. It was then that his sins haunted him, emotional bullies that took on a life of their own in the middle of the night.
“Damn!” he said aloud. If only he could undo what he’d done all those years ago—starting with introducing his sister and his friends to street life. Linc had been their leader and couldn’t bear to think of the criminal activities he’d instigated for the Outlaws, as they’d pretentiously called themselves.
He glanced up at the wall over his desk. Hanging on it was a hand-carved oak cross. Margo had given it to him when h
e’d graduated from divinity school. It meant so much to him because he knew how she felt about religion, yet she’d transcended those feelings to buy him the gift. How appropriate—this wooden symbol of atonement. Because where Margo was concerned—and Beth and Annie—Linc had much to atone for.
Deciding he needed some focused prayer tonight, he stood, found his way in the dark to his bedroom, stripped off his clothes and lay on the bed. Its springs protested his weight loudly as he sank in, closed his eyes and linked his hands behind his neck again.
Once Linc had discovered that prayer was simply having conversations with God, he’d settled into comfortable and frequent dialogues. Though a few of his professors at Union Divinity School would have been outraged at this definition of prayer, others would have expected it from Linc, their most unorthodox graduate student.
Margo thought he was crazy.
Speaking of which, buddy.
Yeah, I know. She’s on my mind too much.
No, not too much.
You aren’t upset about the, ah, the fantasies, are you?
Sex doesn’t upset me, Linc. I invented it, remember. And when it’s loving and good, it’s fine by me. You know that.
Well, I’m just making sure. They’re pretty prevalent lately.
As usual, you’re too hard on yourself. You’ve done a lot of good this week.
Not with Rosa.
Ah, Rosa.
What’s going on with her?
That’s why I sent her to you. To figure that out.
You still won’t give me any answers, will you?
No, but I’ve given you the heart and soul and mind to find them on your own.
Should I go over there tomorrow?
What do you think?
I think it would be a mistake. She’s afraid of her husband and I’d make it worse.
There are other ways to help her.
She needs someone to listen to her mostly.
Yes, just like Margo.
Back to her again.
You never leave Margo. You carry her around in your heart wherever you go. You always have.
Remember Wuthering Heights? Where Catherine says she is Heathcliff? Sometimes, I feel like that. That we’re a part of each other
Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set Page 63
