Isle of Hope

by Julie Lessman

  During the day when Jack and the girls were at work and Davey at school, Tess and Adam would talk and pray over coffee before she left to make her rounds, a habit they’d once enjoyed so many years ago. Then when she’d leave for her hospice calls, Adam would leave for the Salvation Army Homeless Shelter in Savannah, volunteering as many hours as his diminishing energy would allow. “As long as I can drive, I can minister,” he’d argue when Tess begged him to stay home and rest, always refusing “her coddling” with a wink and a smile. But she knew the effort took its toll when she’d find him collapsed on his bed in the afternoon, desperate to recharge in order to spend evenings with family. She sighed, the sound melancholy as she stirred the butter with a wooden spoon. Who would have thought that cancer could heal?

  Removing the pot from the burner, she poured half of it over small bowls of popcorn before toting them in on a tray. Passing them out, she handed the last one to Davey, who sat happily on his daddy’s lap while her daughters cuddled close on either side with Jack on the far end. Legs crossed on the coffee table, Adam glanced up with a tired smile, nodding toward the big-screen TV. “Thanks, Tess, but you better hurry—you’re missing the best part.”

  She glanced at the screen where Dragon was stalking Donkey, then back at the sofa, and couldn’t help the misty grin that inched across her face. No, this was the best part, she decided—the sight of her family crowded side-by-side on their oversized sectional like a package of marshmallow peeps. Not unlike the ones they were presently devouring, frozen since Easter. Shaking her head, she hurried back to the kitchen to prepare the final refill bowl, humming to herself until she heard the sound of Beau’s bark through the open screen door. Followed, of course, by the slider when Ben let him in.

  Ben.

  Hand poised on the microwave door, she froze at the memory of the pain she’d caused the man that she loved. More laughter filtered in from the living room, and Tess was suddenly heartsick over the path each family had traveled. Sagging against the microwave, she put a hand to her eyes, lids sinking closed over the way sin had devastated their lives.

  If only Ben hadn’t turned his back on his wife and daughter. If only Lacey hadn’t run away to cover up her sin. If only Adam hadn’t cheated. If only she’d forgiven him sooner and given a second chance. If only Jack hadn’t left the faith. Things might have been different and so much pain and hurt may have been spared. Moisture pricked. “Oh, God, if only we could blot out all the mistakes that we made …”

  As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.

  A tear slithered into the crook of her smile at the Scripture she’d give Ben every time guilt would rear its ugly head in his mind. Because no matter her failings or those of her family and loved ones, God’s mercies were new every single morning, redeeming each of their lives on a daily basis. Not His perfect will, maybe, but His permissive one, girded all the same with His unfailing love and infinite mercy.

  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning …

  “Tess, are you … all right?”

  She spun around, embarrassed for Adam to see the tears glazing her cheeks. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said quickly, swiping at her eyes before she opened the microwave door. Retrieving the last bag of popcorn, she tore it open and poured it into a backup bowl, avoiding his gaze as she streuseled the remaining butter. “Almost done.”

  “You’re crying,” he said quietly, a hint of alarm in his tone as he moved in close. “What’s wrong?” He gently touched her arm, voice thick with that same tender care that had made him so good as a pastor … a husband … a father. Head bent, he studied her with a crease in his brow. “Is this too much for you, Tess? Me living here?”

  “Oh, no, truly!” She patted his hand and squeezed, whirling quickly to wash her hands in an effort to deflect the sheen in her eyes. “I was just thinking how wonderful it is having you here. You know, spending time with the kids just like …” Against her will, her voice cracked, and with an unwelcome swell of tears, she doubled over when a sob broke from her throat.

  “Just like it used to be before I blew it,” he whispered, voice gruff with remorse. “Like nothing had ever happened to destroy all the joy that we had.”

  Mouth clamped to ward off another sob, she nodded, unprepared for the floodgates that opened when he gently tugged her into his arms. “Forgive me for all the hurt that I’ve caused.”

  She nodded dumbly against his chest, his once-familiar scent wringing more water from her eyes. Tucking his head to hers, he gently stroked her hair while she wept for all they had lost.

  “I’ve asked your forgiveness, Tess, for all the mistakes I’ve made, and God’s as well, but the truth is, I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.” Emotion all but crippled his words. “It s-seems the closer I draw to God, the d-deeper my sorrow grows over the pain that I caused.” Pulling back, he lightly brushed a strand of hair from her face, studying her with grief that clearly matched her own. “Sin may be done in secret, but its pain travels well beyond. And believe me when I say, cancer is nothing compared to the ache of hurting you and my family.” He stroked the curve of her face, his red-rimmed eyes piercing hers with an agony she understood all too well. “Please forgive me, Tess—I was such a fool, and a cocky one at that.”

  Her lips trembled into a smile. “Of course I forgive you,” she said softly, her words hoarse and nasal like his. “But I share in the blame, Adam, because if I’d just quit my job—”

  He chuckled, rubbing her arms with a gleam of affection. “You may as well concede, Tess, in a contest of blame, you don’t stand a chance.” He rubbed his temple with the pads of his fingers. “You know, I always thought I was stronger than most.” A weak grunt parted from his lips as he eased himself down in a chair, his color suddenly pale. “Clearly a case of ‘pride goeth before the fall.’ And then I fell and learned just how very weak I was.” His gaze lagged into a faraway stare, face haggard as if he were wrestling with demons from his past. He continued in a monotone, his words as dull and listless as his expression. “As if that weren’t bad enough, I ran away, too proud to admit I was wrong, too selfish and cowardly to stay.”

  A tremor traveled his body. “When you and I went through that rough patch, Tess, over my insistence that a pastor’s wife shouldn’t work, my pride got the best of me. Then Karen came to me for counseling, and I told myself she needed me and you didn’t, because you were always so very strong …” He looked at her then, torment carved into every feature. “I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, wondering how I could have fallen so far, but the truth is, like Satan, I was blinded by pride. Convinced I knew best for Karen and me, and guilty enough to want to sanction it all with divorce and remarriage.” He shuddered and shielded a hand to his eyes. “It didn’t take long to figure out that unrepentant sin does not a marriage make, and by the time we both realized that, it was too late …”

  Her body shuddered along with his. “I’m not condoning what you did, Adam, because you were wrong, but I should have forgiven you sooner. I should have given you another chance when you finally came back, but I was so hurt …”

  “I know,” he whispered, “and no one can ever blame you for that, Tess.”

  She looked up, sorrow cramping her face. “I do.” The muscles shifted in her throat. “The truth is both of us put ourselves first before God and our children, Adam …” His face blurred as her lips began to tremble. “And I truly couldn’t live with myself, or even stand, if not for God’s grace and strength shoring me up.”

  The faintest of smiles shadowed his lips. “I know.” He reached for her hand, giving it a gentle press. “How well I know. It took cancer for me to finally embrace my own weakness, to fully understand that when coupled with faith, it’s the key to God’s strength in my life.”

  A fractured giggle tripped from her lips as she swiped at her face. “Goodness, then I must be a virtual pow
erhouse.”

  His smile turned tender. “Good to hear,” he said softly, “because I’m counting on it.”

  “Hey, guys, the movie’s almost over, and there’s talk of a game of spoons.” Jack sauntered into the kitchen with his empty glass and bowl, tossing the kernels in the waste can before putting both in the dishwasher. Avoiding his father’s gaze, he smiled at Tess on the way to the back door. “I think I’ll spare myself some gouging by wetting a line on the dock instead.”

  “You don’t want to play?” Tess asked, knowing full well movies at a safe distance were one thing, but cozy card games with contact were a different story when it came to his father.

  He paused at the door, his smile losing its luster when he glanced Adam’s way. “Naw—if I’m gonna wrestle something, it’s gonna be a monster striped bass on the new lure I bought.” He managed a grin aimed solely at Tess. “But I’ll try to get back in time to patch any wounds.”

  The door slammed behind him, and Adam’s weary sigh carried across the kitchen. “I don’t blame him, you know. I revered my own father. If he’d done to me what I’ve done to Jack, I’m not sure I’d be so quick to forgive either.”

  “He’ll come around, Adam. It’s just a matter of time.”

  He smiled, the effect almost sad despite the glint of tease in his eyes. “Yeah, I know, but unfortunately, that’s one thing I don’t have a lot of, so I’m not looking to waste what I have.” He lumbered to his feet, seeming to age in the course of a few minutes. “Tell the kids to start without me, will you? I’ve got a hankering to do a little fishing of my own, with a bait that will make Jack’s lure look like child’s play.”

  Tess cocked her head, giving him a squint of a smile. “Yeah? Well, your son’s not a gracious loser when someone out-fishes him. Not sure if reeling in the big one is the best way to win the boy over.”

  Adam made his way to the door, the sudden square of his shoulders reminding her just where her oldest son had gotten his keen sense of competition. Like Jack, he halted with a hand on the door, flashing that cocky grin he’d always employed in the past before he walked away with the win. “Wanna bet?” He delivered a sly grin that couldn’t help but make her smile, right before he gave her a wink. “It is if the ‘big one’ is him.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Jack sat on the edge of the dock, fishing rod limp in his hands as he stared aimlessly into the water, landing a fish the last thing on his mind. Somewhere down the bank an owl hooted, the melancholy sound in perfect sync with his somber mood. A splash caught his attention twenty feet out, and the silvery shadow of a dolphin flipped in the moonlight, chasing some of his gloom away. It sliced into the deep with a whisper whoosh that rippled the waves, soothing his soul like few things could.

  Especially tonight, when his father’s presence in the house churned his stomach as much as the tugs and barges roiled the Skidaway River. Sure, he wanted to make Lacey and his family happy by clearing the air with his dad, but there was a lot of air to clear before any of them could breathe easily. He grunted. Who was he kidding? This was an “Adam” bomb ready to blow, tainting the air—and his life—with deadly radiation. Still, he’d made an attempt—for the people he loved—at getting along with the one he didn’t.

  All week his comments to his father had been rare but civil, allowing him to hover on the perimeter of his family’s closeness without ever getting too close to the man who had damaged his respect beyond repair. And yet, deep down in his gut, he couldn’t deny he still hoped and prayed for a miracle. A miracle to restore his father’s life … as well as Jack’s respect.

  “You should know better than anyone—there is no hope without forgiveness.”

  Expelling a weary sigh, he kneaded his temple with the pad of his fingers, a silent anger seething beneath the surface of his mind. He scowled at the moon. Of course Lacey was right, but it didn’t mean it would be easy.

  Or imminent.

  Lashing his line out of the water, he recast with a clamp of his jaw, wishing she had come over tonight instead of hanging out with Nicki. He could certainly use some of the calming effect she always provided since his father arrived. Her tender touch. Her soothing words. Her powerful prayer. He sucked in a deep draw of marshy air, expanding his lungs with the peace and joy of knowing Lacey would soon be his, a tranquility in and of itself.

  The dock creaked behind him, and his heart jumped, praying that his thoughts had just conjured up the woman he loved. “Lace?”

  “No, Bud, it’s Dad.”

  Dad.

  Jack’s body calcified to the dock like barnacles on the hull of a boat, his next cast as stiff as the rod in his hand. “You looking to fish?” he asked, not bothering to turn around.

  “In a manner of speaking.” One of the Adirondack chairs squeaked with age as his father apparently settled in. “I was kind of hoping we could talk.”

  Eyelids slamming shut, Jack stifled a groan. “About what?”

  As if he didn’t know.

  “About the mistake I made,” his dad said quietly, the gentle lap of the water against the dock in stark contrast to the pounding of Jack’s pulse.

  Rod whipping back to arc his line, Jack’s mouth skewed. “Which one?”

  He waited in strained silence, fully expecting the lengthy pause. What he didn’t expect was the humility. “We don’t have that long, Son,” his father finally said with a hint of humor, “and neither do I.”

  Realty crashed like whitecaps onto the shore, sinking both his eyelids and his hope. His father was dying. The awful truth strangled his emotions for the hundredth time that week.

  “So let’s focus on the biggest mistake of my life, shall we?” His tone was matter-of-fact, somehow coming off both humble and strong.

  Jack’s fury swelled. Because he wasn’t strong. He was weak, a pillar of faith with clay feet. Nothing more than a fool who built his house on the sand, toppling everything he loved for a moment of lust. Slamming his rod down beside him, Jack sprang to his feet, fists tight as he glared at his father. “Yeah, let’s. Why don’t you begin by admitting what a self-serving hypocrite you were, espousing piety and purity while you did whatever you freakin’ well pleased?”

  His father never even blinked, a strange mix of stark regret and potent love emanating from kind eyes that totally disarmed, quelling Jack with a peace that defied the turmoil in his gut. “You forgot stupid, cocky, shallow, cowardly, and blind, not to mention diabolical for destroying people’s faith.” A nerve flickered in his father’s jaw. “Especially my own son’s, which I assure you, is something I will take to my grave as one of my deepest regrets.”

  Jack’s jaw felt like rock as he stared, blinking rapidly to fight the sting of emotion. “Why’d you do it then?” His voice cracked. “Why’d you destroy our family?”

  A slow, reedy breath escaped his father’s lips that underscored the fatigue Jack saw in his face. “Because I’m a weak man, Jack, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man who thinks he’s strong.” His chest expanded as his gaze trailed out to the water, voice lagging into a low drone threaded with pain. “A charming go-getter from the slums who rose to the top of his class in seminary. You know, the pastor most likely to succeed? And I did.”

  Head bowed, he kneaded the bridge of his nose, lashes spiked with moisture as he closed his eyes. “Wasn’t long before I climbed the ranks, snagging head pastor at Isle of Hope Assembly after your grandpa died and we moved in here with Tess’s mom. So there I was—a cocky poor kid on high-brow Bluff Drive with a beautiful wife, a smart son, two brand-new baby girls, and one of the most enviable pulpits on the East Coast. Speaking engagements rolled in as fast as pledges and tithes, and Mercer University even courted me for a professorship at McAffe School of Theology.” He sighed, the sound fractured by shame. “It seemed I could do no wrong.” His eyes slowly rose to meet Jack’s. “Until I did.”

  He hunched on the edge of his chair, elbows draped over his knees and gaze glued to the weat
hered boards beneath his feet. “You wouldn’t know this because you were mostly away at college, but your mom and I started having problems. Little things at first—arguments over the amount of time I gave to the church for travel, counseling, you name it, basically leaving the burden of home life to her. My answer was for her to quit her job, so the little I was home, I badgered her nonstop, which only deepened the divide. In my mind, I was right and she was wrong, and I made no bones about it.”

  He looked up again, but this time his stare wandered over the water as if he were locked in the past. “I don’t think I fully realized it at the time, but looking back, I can see I was slowly losing your mom’s respect as a pastor …” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “And as a man.” He chafed the back of head. “And because I could do no wrong in my own mind, it was just easier to blame it all on her, to tell myself she was the problem, not me.”

  He lowered his head, as if he couldn’t bear to face Jack’s disdain, a shaky hand obscuring his eyes. “So when Karen approached me about counseling … I didn’t see any harm. As a high-profile pastor, I’d had plenty of women tempt me in the past, but I was wise to seduction, at least the sexual kind, so I’d never had any problem saying no. An inflated state of mind that only fed my pride, apparently, setting me up for the fall. I told myself Karen wasn’t a seductress, but a good friend and neighbor that I cared about, a troubled woman who needed my help.”

  He grunted, the sound laced with disgust. “The invincible Pastor O’Bryen, straining at a gnat, but swallowing a camel. Adept at reading ‘come-hither’ looks in women, but totally unprepared for the seduction of respect and admiration in Karen’s eyes—the exact opposite I saw in your mother’s. Hero worship in the most sinister form, luring me like a lamb to slaughter …”

  His body quivered with a depleting sigh before he rose and walked to the far edge of the dock, hands buried in his pockets while he stared at the river. “Once it happened,” he whispered, “I swore it would never happen again, but of course it did, brick-walling my pride more and more just to keep out the guilt. Until everything came crashing down …” He turned toward Jack with a slump of shoulders and a glimmer of pain. “I lost my wife, my family, my friends, and my church. The only way my pride could cope, Jack, was to cling to the lie that Karen and I belonged together, to believe that I was the one to deliver her from her troubled marriage and she from mine.” He inhaled sharply, releasing it again in a slow, tenuous breath. “So we left.”