I am afraid at this point I was bubbling over with sobs because I hadn’t even gotten to the very worst thing of all. Timothy’s betrayal. His eyes were wide, taking in the information about Dr. Margaret.
“And the worst thing is….” Now choked gulps of grief overcame me, but I soldiered on. “The worst thing is I saw you…with her…”
“With who?” he asked.
“That tall thin woman with dark hair who looked like a model that you had your arm around about two hours ago. That’s who!”
I pulled back so his hands fell off my shoulders. He dropped them to his lap, shock on his face.
“When? Where did you see me?”
“Does it matter???” I cried. “I saw you. I thought you wanted to marry me, and maybe I was a fool not telling you yes sooner but it turns out I was just a fool thinking anyone wanted to marry me at all. Especially you. And now you found someone else. Someone who looks like a model…and I don’t!!!!” Snot was dribbling down onto my lip. I backhanded as much of the weepy mess away as I could but the firehose of misery was gushing by now full force. No stopping it.
“Not telling me yes…sooner?” he asked.
“Yes. NO! What does it matter? You found some beautiful, dark-haired model and couldn’t wait around for my answer, even though you told me you would.”
Bo was still silent. You would think that she would have had something to say in this show of her mistress totally falling apart and dripping out of every orifice in her face. However, she lay in my lap, still and quiet, watching me with calm eyes, and then turning her head to watch Timothy’s response.
“Did you want to tell me yes?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. You found someone who didn’t work at an abortion center I bet, or lost her innocence to a monster, or bounced around from juvenile court to remedial foster care. She didn’t look like she did anyway.”
“Actually,” Timothy said, “She just finished six months of detox. She is clean for the first time in a decade.”
“So now you are free to love her!” I wailed.
“I have always loved her,” Timothy said.
At this, I buried my head in the dog on my lap, heaving with what I am sure were heart-wrenching sobs.
“But if you said yes, if you mean yes, you will marry me…”
“Not now!” I cried, “How could you even think I would marry you if you toss me aside when your girlfriend kicks drugs??”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said, his hand on my quivering back.
That registered though my misery.
Who was she then? A hooker?
“She’s my sister,” Timothy said. “Well, technically my half sister. My mother only recently learned about her. I knew of her my whole life because I was sneaky and good at following clues. I should have told you about her…but I could not betray my mother’s confidence. She was nearly destroyed when she learned about this secret sin of my father. To have the community know of it was more than she could bear. I wanted to tell you…I just couldn’t.”
More secrets. Everywhere I turned, someone was hiding something.
The truth of the story of Adam and Eve, hiding in the Garden from God in the aftermath of their sin took on even greater significance. All the sorrow that followed hiding in sin and shame! Was there no one who was not hiding something??
“Please forgive me,” Timothy said. “I wanted to tell you about Eva. I just could not.”
My crying slowly subsided. I got up, dumping the still silent Bo to the floor. Grabbing a paper towel from the kitchen, I blew my nose with a very unladylike trumpeting honk.
Timothy stood up and came to me, wrapping his arms around me. I held the paper towel to my face and resumed crying.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
I was not going to be a fool forever. No more hiding. I nodded and whispered, “Yes.”
Chapter Seventeen
There were of course many positives in being Timothy’s fiancée. But one immediate bonus is when Mr. Zeller called the following day to let me know he would check his calendar and get back to me regarding a meeting, Timothy told me he would be with me for the entire debacle. He didn’t say debacle but I feared that is what it would be. I was very nervous of what the meeting might reveal, and to have someone on my side was very comforting. Also, he pulled out a pretty spectacular diamond ring. He had apparently had it in his pocket when he came over, praying I would be ready to answer his question.
In fact, he told me he had carried that diamond in his pocket ever since asking me, just in case I called and said I was ready to be his bride. He said the past two weeks of silence he kept wanting to call me, but just didn’t know how he could NOT mention Eva if he spoke to me. He’d also been consumed with midterms (like I suspected) and trying to help Eva make decisions about where/what she was to do next.
We talked a long time that night that I became his betrothed. After he slipped the gorgeous ring on my finger, I asked if there were any more secrets he needed to tell me about because now was the time. He assured me there were none, unless he should divulge that Dumbo was allowed on the couch AND the bed.
To which Bo replied: “Wuvvvv orfffff.” (Of course.)
I told him that he needed to hear my whole story, and after he did if he decided he wanted to retract his proposal, I would understand. But I also warned him that I might not return the ring immediately...or ever. It sparkled like Christmas lights on a moonless, dark evening. I could not stop looking at it. Could this really be happening? He told me my story would make no difference, but he knew I would feel better if I bared my soul to him.
It took me three hours to share all the sordid, terrible, evil things that I had done or that had been done to me. Timothy was silent through most of it, but sometimes his eyes filled with tears. He kept his arm around me the whole time, holding my hand.
“So you see, I’m not really much of a catch,” I said when I was done.
“Look at all you have overcome,” Timothy said. “Have you ever thought of that?”
To be honest, no. I had not. I had never thought of myself as a victor. Often I had been a victim. But he made a good point. Most of the time I tended to define myself by my many failures, not my much less common victories.
“Eva did not have an easy life,” Timothy said, “Though it was not as hard as yours. But she tried to commit suicide three times, the last one being the drug overdose that led to six months of rehab. She had not been independent or drug free for most of her life. Her lousy circumstances were hard…but she let them destroy her.”
“She’s beautiful,” I mentioned.
“She is,” Timothy agreed. “Which is half of what landed her in so many terrible situations. But she herself has said she would give up her beauty for one moment of liking who she is inside. She has a long way to go, even though right now she is clean. But look at you!”
He stepped away, holding me at arm’s length. I pictured what he saw. My nose was running and red. My eyes were bloodshot with crying. My hair stuck to the snot smeared on my cheek.
“I am grateful I can’t see myself,” I said.
Timothy laughed, “Look at who you are. You left all that desperate life behind you, are working full time in a job you love, enrolled in college, and about to marry a pretty wonderful man.” He grinned here, waiting from me to react to his atypical lack of humility.
“I got lucky,” I said.
“No seriously, I am the one who got lucky,” he said. “You didn’t give up. You of all people had every right to. But you kept picking yourself up and making a way. In fact, I think it would do Eva a lot of good to talk with you. I think you would inspire her.”
I won’t lie…all that gushing flattery was balm to my soul. It was probably the prettiest picture of me anyone had ever painted. Maybe he was right. If I looked back across my whole existence, there was little doubt I was far prouder of where I was now than certainly I had been during my years in f
oster care and at the abortion center work.
After that deluge of full confession, we sat down and wrote the questions we should ask Mr. Zeller— mostly ones thought of by Timothy. Then he hugged me and told me he had missed me so much the past couple of weeks, but he had not known how he could share what was happening with Eva. So instead, he hid her from me.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I begged. “Don’t hide. If it’s in the open, I think I can deal with anything. What I thought was happening was far worse than what you were hiding.”
He agreed.
Mr. Zeller called two days later to tell me that he was very limited in what he could divulge about my grandmother’s will. She had specified strict conditions under which the will could be revealed and to whom. I asked if anything that I had signed was related to anything in the will. He didn’t answer immediately, which I knew was the answer.
“I am not really at liberty to say.”
“Is Dr. Thanatos at liberty to say?”
“No. There are ramifications in the will if he divulges its contents. I am required to abide by Dr.Margaret’s requests.”
“But Dr. Thanatos made his offer to me knowing about the will and some things in his offer will affect how my grandmother’s wishes are carried out?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know the contents of the will when you first contacted me?” I asked.
“No…not the first time.”
“When did you find out?”
“When I asked him to clarify the statements made should you somehow end the college funding contract.”
“Did what you find out concern you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. I waited at least thirty seconds and said, “Did you hang up?”
“No…I am still here. I have to be honest, Ruth, I am limited in what I can tell you, due to client/attorney privilege. I am representing your father.”
“What can you tell me?”
He would not offer any more information, but said if I still wanted to meet with him, he would set up time the following week. I told him that would be fine, and that Timothy would be with me. No doubt, he was uncomfortable, even sympathetic. Whatever was happening, I believed him when he said his hands were tied. He could not tell me what I wanted to know.
The following day, on the way to work, I saw someone who looked like Lakisha walking in the direction of the women’s center. She was near the corner where long ago I had run into Dr. Thanatos and thought he had been stalking me.
I called her name, not certain it was her. She did not turn, and passing cars obscured her from view and then she rounded a corner out of sight. I didn’t have time to pursue her or I would be late to work. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket though and dialed her number. As it had the past week or so, the call went to voicemail, which was full. I could not leave a message.
To tell you the truth, I am not sure why I was being so persistent in trying to reach her. There was little doubt at this point she had aborted. She was definitely avoiding me. If she had aborted the week before, which was both my and Talia’s fear, it would make sense she was returning to the abortion center now. That corner where I had seen her intersected the road on the path to the abortion center. The check-ups were scheduled a week to two weeks after the abortion to be certain everything was returning to normal. That is what they said, but I knew now nothing would ever be normal after an abortion. Maybe physically things would be ok, but for sure not emotionally. I knew that first hand.
I didn’t know what I would say to her if she answered. I just knew that it was important I speak with her. I didn’t want her to think that because she had aborted she no longer had worth in my eyes. Talia would tell me later that was a very positive thing for me to desire and to understand. She felt it showed healing in the aftermath of my own abortion. There was forgiveness in God. There was healing. I would not be abandoned by God if I returned to Him, and cried out to Him over my sin. He still loved me and longed for me to run to Him.
I guess that is what I wanted to tell Lakisha. If it was true for me, it could be true for her.
Now on the other hand, I had seen many women over my years as an abortion worker who showed no compassion for their child or remorse for their abortion. Some laughed while in the waiting room, and said they couldn’t wait to have this parasite sucked out of them. I didn’t think Lakisha was that type, but I had also believed she would not abort again after the reversal had begun.
By the time I got to work, Dr. Harried had already arrived and was again raking her Feng Shui paths in the gravel.
“What do you think?”she asked.
“It looks good.”
“More peaceful than the last time?”
I examined it more closely. “It is hard to say.” I was not feeling much peace no matter how she swirled the gravel paths but didn’t tell her that. How could I feel peace with all the worry over my grandmother and what that will stipulated, Lakisha, and even Timothy’s sister, Eva. He said she was having trouble finding housing and for now she would be sleeping on Timothy’s couch. He was worried about leaving her alone because he felt she was not yet fully stable. He would hate to have her relapse. She was looking for a job but it didn’t look like she would be on her own for a while yet. She was applying for subsidized housing, though that scared Timothy since he knew drugs were easier to find in some of those projects.
So no. I didn’t feel peace despite Dr. Harried’s lovely paths.
And then our first patient showed up. A young man carried in a large dog, a mutt, whose tongue hung out, a glazed look in his eyes, and his legs flopped about like he was a stuffed toy. Dr. Harried dropped the Feng Shui rake and hurried the young man to the back, asking questions.
The dog’s lethargy started that morning. The young man was evasive in answering her questions about what the dog might have gotten into, what he might have eaten. I was developing strong instincts about when people were hiding something, and this man was hiding something. Something he was ashamed of. It was an epidemic of hiding in the village of Mirror Lake.
I didn’t hear the rest of the discussion because the door to the back office closed on his hesitant answers. Later, I found out the young man had been smoking pot, and the dog had gotten into his stash and consumed half a bag. The dog would be ok, and the young man was not turned over to the police, but Dr. Harried gave him a stern warning.
That was the only stoned pet that showed up. The other cats, dogs, and one pet sloth were all clean, at least as far as drug use. The sloth was surprisingly cute. I had no idea sloths could be pets. Nor why someone would want one. I had read that sloths move so little that moss actually grows on them. Probably not the most exhilarating pet to own.
Later Dr.Harried told me that sloths were the new ‘fad’ pet. There was even expensive and illegal trafficking of sloths. A sloth black market! It was illegal to take them from the wild to make them domestic pets.
“Where would one get a sloth legally?” I asked.
“Licensed exotic pet stores. You need a special license to own one, and there are home requirements. Also you need a vet willing to see you and learn the necessary extra information to keep a sloth healthy. I don’t normally agree to those sorts of things, but this particular family is a little special to me. The owner is my neice…”
“Why would someone want a sloth?” I asked.
“Well they don’t run away…”
I actually thought the sloth was pretty cute, and it hugged the young lady carrying it like a baby with its arms around her neck. It had very long claws and I wondered if that was ever an issue. A glance at a couple of scars on the girl’s arms answered that question for me.
Once the sloth was done with his check up, the day winded to an end. I realized as I was walking home that I had not spoken to Talia. She knew nothing about my official engagement nor my prayer to Jesus. I could not be sure, having never done anything remotely religious, that what happened was all that was needed to be “save
d”, but I suspected it was at least a start.
Leashed to Faith Page 15
