Though Logan said nothing, she was fully aware of him standing behind her.
But she couldn’t deal with him right now. Logan was a part of her past. She had come here to find out what her father wanted and, if her father’s reaction to Logan was anything to go by, she had best keep him and her father separate entities. Best excise Logan right out of her life.
“Glad to have helped.” The cold note in his voice settled her wavering emotions. “And if you want to help me, I would appreciate it if you would stop messing with Billy’s mind. I’m his brother and I think I know better what’s best for him than someone who doesn’t even live here anymore. He’s going to college. He’s getting out of this town.”
The next thing she heard was the sound of his boots walking away from her, each thump of his heels driving another wedge between them.
It was better this way, she thought, taking in a long, slow breath. Better for her.
I wasn’t with her.
She couldn’t think about that now.
The words created a peculiar hope she didn’t dare nurture. That was all stuff from the past. She was here to clear up her and her father’s relationship. She was finally making progress and she was thankful for that.
Everything else from the past was best left there.
* * *
“The team is doing a bit better.” Sarah held her father’s hand. “I promised the boys if we won the next tournament I would take them out for pizza. I thought we could go to that new place in town. The one that Cal Chernowsky started up. You remember Cal? He used to work at the car dealership. I think he sold you that blue car you always hated. You always called it Cal’s Car.”
Sarah gently massaged her father’s veined hand lying lifelessly in her own. The therapist told her it was important to try to stimulate the right side of his body as much as possible and that casual conversation was the best way to maintain a connection with her father. Though the question “Why did you want me to come?” burned to be asked, she banked the urge. These moments gave her something that Marilee usually had with her father... sharing the ordinary moments of her life as her father listened.
“I’m hoping they do well.” She was hoping especially that Billy would do well. She knew Logan would be watching.
The entire time she spoke, her father looked intently at her. She couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not, but she liked to think he was.
She had been spending more time with him lately and, between visits to him and time she spent figuring out new plays for her team and going over stats and videos, her days were full.
She enjoyed coaching more than she thought she would. It was a challenge she felt she was rising to quite well. And knowing that Logan and a few other parents didn’t think she could do it made her even more determined to prove them wrong.
“Sarah...Marilee...” The words came out as more of a sigh, but Sarah understood them to be her and her sister’s names.
“Sarah and Marilee,” she repeated, to show that she understood. Just in time she stopped herself from praising him, like one would a small child. Mentally he was as sharp as ever, the physiotherapist had said. He had warned her and the rest of the family not to patronize Frank and treat him as if his thought processes had been affected.
“I talked to Brent,” she said. “He runs the sound system and makes CDs for people who can’t come to church. He said he would make some up for you. If you want.”
He nodded. “Good...I like...good...”
Sarah squeezed his hand in encouragement. Her Uncle Sam had told her that for the past half a year her father had stopped going to church. He hadn’t said anything to his brothers about the reasons. This had confused her as much as her father’s unexpected note had.
In all the years she lived at home, rain or shine, sleet or hail, snowstorm or sickness, Sunday morning at nine-thirty he would call them down from their rooms and off to church they would go. Sometimes Marilee had been whooping it up a bit too much and she would plead illness and stay home. But Sarah, always trying to emulate her father, would go with him. Even those times when she was genuinely ill herself.
Trying too hard, Sarah thought. Always trying too hard.
“Do you want me to read to you, Dad?” Sarah asked as she gently placed his hand back on his lap.
“Please,” he said, followed by a little nod.
Sarah glanced around the room, but today the only book on her father’s bedside stand was the Bible. Her father had Bibles scattered through the house. One in his bedroom, one in his study. This edition was the one he always read from after supper, the one Uncle Sam had picked up and brought to her father a couple of days after his stroke.
Sarah opened it up, the soft crackling of the light paper drawing out memories of her father bent over the book, reading aloud, his voice filled with conviction and authority.
As she leafed through the Bible, she found a monthly devotional put out by their church. The theme for this month, in keeping with the coming Christmas season, was Waiting with Patience.
Not her strongest point these days. It seemed everywhere she turned, her patience was tried. By Billy, by her father’s illness.
By Logan.
She opened the booklet to the reading for the day and turned to Isaiah 40—a reading often used during the time of Advent. She cleared her throat and started reading. “‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for.’” The passage resonated deep within her, teasing out memories of Christmases past. She had heard these words so often but now, reading them aloud to her father who had called her back home, it was as if she heard them for the first time. As she read on, she let the words wash over her.
“‘...He tends his flock like a shepherd...carries them close to his heart... He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of the world to nothing... He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak...they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.’”
The phrases settled into Sarah’s mind and, like water, they gently seeped between the cracks of the brittle facade she had sculpted over her memories. Behind that facade lay pain and sorrow that she hadn’t wanted to drag into this new phase of her life.
And yet...comfort...peace...strength to the weary...your sins are paid for. The words resonated and she traced her finger over the passage as if to absorb it through her skin.
She would have to read it again when she was at home. Try to find where to put them in the life she was living now. She had tried to keep God at a distance and had managed to do that away from home.
But now that she was in Riverbend, God seemed determined to find her. If not at church, then here, in this hospital room. Only thing was, she didn’t know if she was ready to face Him yet.
Sarah looked up at her father, who appeared to be smiling at her. He reached out with his good hand and Sarah caught it, sharing this moment with her earthly father.
“Sarah...I...forgive...”
Sarah’s heart quickened. Had the passage she just read worked a miracle in him? Had God touched him in some way?
“Yes, Dad. What are you saying?”
He squeezed her hand, his grip surprisingly strong. His eyes were intent on hers and she sensed that he wanted to say something important.
“I forgive you.” His words, punctuated by sighs, came out more clearly than before.
He was saying he forgave her? For what?
“Are you saying you forgive me for staying away?” She squeezed back, wondering where this was going. Was this why he had summoned her home?
He shook his head, looking agitated.
“I...forgive...for Marilee...” He leaned forward; sweat beading on his forehead with the effort of his speech. �
��I forgive you for Marilee...for Marilee dying...I forgive you...”
He looked deep into her eyes.
“You’re saying you forgive me for what happened to Marilee?”
He squeezed her hand and nodded, his relief evident as he fell back in his chair.
Ice slipped through Sarah’s veins as the impact of his words settled.
“What did I do that needs to be forgiven?” she asked.
“You...not...stop her.”
Sarah let go of his hand and sat back, wrapping her arms around her waist, struggling to reconcile what he was saying with what had happened to her sister. “How was I supposed to stop her? What could I have done?”
“I forgive...” he repeated, looking genuinely puzzled.
“Was this what you wanted to tell me?” she said as realization dawned. “Did you send me that note because you wanted me to come back here to Riverbend so that you could grant me forgiveness for something I couldn’t help?”
“I forgive...for Marilee,” he repeated, looking agitated.
As Sarah looked into her father’s eyes, she felt as if, once again, her world had fallen down around her. As if the life she thought she was rebuilding by coming here at the behest of her father was a sham, built on sand now washed away by the words her father had struggled to say. Words of forgiveness for a death she already harbored so much guilt over. Even though she intellectually knew she wasn’t to blame, her self-recriminations and second thoughts whispered otherwise to her. For days, weeks after Marilee died, Sarah had gone over that evening again and again, wishing she could turn back time. The phone ringing at two o’clock in the morning. Marilee asking Sarah to come and get her.
But Sarah was going to be the good little daughter and not break curfew. So she told Marilee she wasn’t going to pick her up.
If she had disobeyed her father, if she had listened to those other voices telling her to help her sister...
If she had simply stood up to her father and chosen her sister over pleasing him...
Sarah gathered her tattered emotions around her, wishing she knew what to say. Yes, to some degree it was her fault, but to have her father voice her own self-reproach and to add fuel to its fire by forgiving her?
She couldn’t breathe. She got to her feet and pulled her coat off the back of the chair she had been sitting on. “I did what you wanted me to that night, Dad. I stayed home because you told me to. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Marilee...”
Her heart grew cold. “Yes. Marilee. Do you know where she was going that night?”
Don’t do this, a tiny voice called out, drowned out by the swirl of anger filling Sarah’s mind.
But she couldn’t stop now. She was like a train hurtling toward its destination, carried on by the momentum of anger and hurt and disappointment.
“Do you know where your precious Marilee was? She was at a party. She was going to meet Logan Carleton there. Only Logan didn’t come. He wasn’t there.”
Logan wasn’t there.
Her focus shifted momentarily, but she carried on, her emotions beyond reasoning. “I couldn’t have stopped her from going and if I had gone to pick her up when she called I would have been disobeying you. I lost a sister that night. Someone I loved. And now you’re going to tell me that you forgive me? As if I haven’t felt guilty enough? As if I haven’t lived through any pain, any sorrow, any tragedy myself?” She yanked her coat off the chair and stabbed her arms into the sleeves, her heart thudding like a jackhammer in her chest. She held the fronts of her coat in her fists, her knuckles white as a new sorrow coursed through her body.
Her father stared at her.
He didn’t get it. He really had thought that he was extending her a gift, and, maybe in his mind, he had.
But for Sarah, she felt as if the burden she already carried had only gotten heavier. He didn’t care about her. Even after all this time, it was still all about Marilee. It was as if she were a footnote to his life that he should attend to.
Snatching her purse off the floor, Sarah ran out of the room.
* * *
Sarah shifted back and forth in the foyer of the church, glancing over the congregation, trying to find a place as close to the back as possible. She was late and it didn’t look like there were any seats in the back, or anywhere else for that matter.
She could have stayed home, and almost did, but something indefinable called her out of bed this morning. She needed to center herself again and hoped that maybe the faith of her childhood could give her something her father couldn’t.
She wasn’t sure what she would find here, but staying home wasn’t going to fill the booming hollowness that her father’s words had created inside her very being.
I forgive...
The organist moved into the chorus and Sarah realized that if she wanted to sit down, she had to hustle. Her black knee-high boots weren’t made for speed, but she managed to slip into an empty space before the song was finished.
She glanced sidelong as she sat, and her already low spirits shifted lower. She was looking directly at Donna Carleton’s profile.
She looked ahead, thankful, however, for small miracles. At least Logan wasn’t here.
Then a shadow blocked the sun coming in through the high windows and Sarah looked up with a feeling of inevitability.
Logan stood, one hand resting on the pew in front of them, waiting to catch her attention so he could slip in past her.
Of course.
Sarah folded her arms, as if to contain her very presence beside Logan. It didn’t take much to resurrect the feeling of his hand on her face, the roughness of his callused fingertips.
You’re in church, you ninny, she reprimanded herself. Focus.
The minister stood up, grasping the edges of the pulpit with his hands as he looked over the congregation. Sarah was reminded of her Uncle Sam, standing by his fence, looking over his herd of sheep.
“This morning we are looking at forgiveness. How God forgives us and how, during this Advent season, we realize that the greatest gift we receive at Christmas is forgiveness.”
Wrong choice of words, thought Sarah, her father’s voice still ringing in her ears and in her thoughts.
She pushed down the beat of anger she knew could consume her if she let it.
“Let us turn to Colossians 3, verses 12 to 14.”
Sarah instinctively reached for the Bible in the pew ahead of her at the same time Logan did.
As her fingers brushed his, she jerked her hand back as if shocked. Logan simply opened the Bible to the passage, then held it out so both of them could read.
Sarah’s concentration was distracted by Logan’s thumb, pressed against the pages of the Bible, a dark spot on his thumbnail. He’d probably banged it with something, a hammer most likely. Sarah remembered he always had a spot on one fingernail or another from helping his father with his equipment. He’d always told Sarah that the first thing he was going to do when he started college was get a manicure.
“‘...bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you....’”
Sarah shut everything off right there.
Forgive. For the past two days, she couldn’t dislodge the word from her mind.
I forgive you.
That wasn’t what she had prayed and yearned for, had falsely hoped for the first year with every envelope that came with his handwriting on the front. She had given up so much for him. Too much. And for what?
I forgive you.
Marilee again. Marilee still. Her father could not get Marilee out of his mind even after six years.
Logan closed the Bible and in her peripheral vision she saw his hand drop the Bible into the slot, return to his jacket and pull some
thing out. A roll of candies. He held them out to her and, without looking, she took one. Or tried to. It wouldn’t dislodge itself and he reached over with his other hand and peeled back the paper.
All the while she kept her attention on his hands.
She remembered how his hands were always warm. How he would tuck her hands between his to warm them as they sat in his truck, the radio playing, the dashboard lights the only illumination. He used to take her to the lookout point. One evening they almost got stuck in Steenbergen’s field, which would have been embarrassing and difficult to explain. They’d had their first fight that night over the incident. Logan had asked her when they were going to stop sneaking around. Sarah pleaded for understanding. She didn’t dare buck her father. Not yet.
“...forgiveness grants us freedom,” the minister was saying. With a guilty start, Sarah pulled her attention to the service, forced herself to ignore Logan’s arm brushing hers, his legs stretched out in front of him. “And freedom for the captives is one of the strongest messages of Christmas. It is what Isaiah proclaims to us and it is this message that we cling to...”
Freedom. Sarah leaned back in the pew. The word seemed to taunt her. She had hoped that by coming here, by confronting her past, she would be free from the memories that clung and tangled. Memories of her father, of the guilt that stained her memories of her sister.
Memories of Logan.
But with each day, with each experience and interaction, she felt herself more and more enmeshed. She had spent her whole life trying to please her father and to what end? To be told that he forgave her for the death of a sister that she still grieved? After all he had done in her life? All she had allowed him to do, she amended, thinking of the man beside her and their relationship.
She’d had everything planned. Her own little rebellion. She was going to do what her father wanted, then find a way to work around it. She and Logan were going to go to the same college and they would be together away from the shadows and history of Riverbend.
And then Marilee died.
Sarah chanced a quick sidelong glance only to be ensnared by Logan’s dark countenance.
A Family-Style Christmas and Yuletide Homecoming Page 26
