by Lyn Cote
You must tell him everything.
Sunny did not know where the thought had come from and she most certainly did not want to do what it said. But would anything less work? This was not a time for half measures. She must make this man understand and help her to work matters out so she wouldn’t lose Noah or this place that had become their home.
How could she again face strife as she had when they’d helped Bid’a ban? Turning down Old Saul would garner even more censure.
I love Noah. This has wounded him. And I can’t let him suffer without doing everything to keep him, make him whole.
“You wish to speak to me in confidence?” Old Saul suggested.
She nodded woodenly. Her heart thumped, making her feel sick again. If she told him the truth about herself, there would be no going back. She would be exposed and in this man’s power.
Saul reached out and grasped her hand. “Trust me.”
“I was a prostitute.” The four simple words burst through her, shaking her so that she shuddered. She gasped for air.
Saul patted her hand. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you’ll see why I can’t be a preacher’s wife. It isn’t fitting.” The shaking continued. She clung to him, expecting him to shove her away, but Saul kept her hand in his, gripping it firmly.
“I find it hard to believe that you were in that trade. You don’t have a hard look about you.”
Sunny understood what he meant. The hard veneer of many of the women she had worked with had hidden deep wells of sorrow. But she’d had a mother who’d loved and protected her as much as she could. Maybe that had made the difference, kept her from becoming hard.
The guilt she’d carried for years overwhelmed her, wanting at last to be spoken. “My mother was a prostitute, too.”
Each word cost her. “I’ve always felt guilty about that. You see, when she realized she was pregnant with me, she told the father...”
“And he abandoned her.”
Sunny nodded, sick at heart. “And her own father shut her out of the family.”
Old Saul exhaled long and slow. “I’m so sorry.” He paused. “So you were born into that life?”
Holding back tears required all her strength. “Yes. My mother died when I was fourteen and I had no other way.”
“Just a child.” Saul kept her hand and patted it with his other. “You poor child.”
His sympathetic tone helped her breathe, helped her go on. “So you see, I can’t be a preacher’s wife. Not after what I’ve done.” She forced herself to look him in the eye. Would he keep her confidence? Or was her new life now ruined?
“No one will ever hear this from me,” he said solemnly as if reading her thoughts.
She drew in a ragged breath, still shaking. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Does Noah know this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But he wanted you for his wife?”
“Yes.” And I don’t know why.
Old Saul nodded. “Have you ever heard the story of David and Bathsheba?”
His abrupt change of topic caught her off guard. “No, I’ve never heard of them. Are they in the Bible?”
Old Saul squeezed her hand and shifted his position in bed. “Yes. And a sad story it is. David was a young shepherd boy who grew to be a man of God and God set him as king over all of Israel. David was handsome and he took many wives.” Old Saul looked at her. “That was when a man could have as many wives as he could afford. And David had become rich.”
Sunny tried to keep her focus on what the man was saying, but so far it didn’t mean anything to her.
The old man paused, sighing. “To give you the main part of the sad story, David forgot God and took another man’s wife in secret. That was Bathsheba. Then she found herself pregnant while her rightful husband was off to war and unable to father the child. So David had her husband killed in battle.”
“This is in the Bible?” Sunny had a hard time believing this. “A man like that?”
Old Saul looked directly into her eyes. “Yes, a man like that. God called David ‘a man after his own heart.’ And he was an ancestor of Christ. But even though David knew God, he committed both adultery and murder.”
“What did God do to him?” She couldn’t have guessed that there were sinners in the Bible.
“God confronted David with his sin. And the child conceived in adultery died.”
Sunny sucked in a sharp breath and glanced toward the door, cold with fear. Would God take Dawn?
“Do you know what God did then?” Old Saul prompted.
Sunny was afraid to even shake her head no.
“After David confessed his sin, God forgave David and Bathsheba, and blessed them with another son, who became a king known as Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived.”
Sunny tried to absorb this but couldn’t. “I don’t understand.”
“Psalm 103 tells us, ‘as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.’ Have you confessed your sins to God?”
“He knows them.” Sunny felt defeated. None of this made sense.
“Ah, you speak wisely. God knows our sins. Did you repent of your sins—not just adultery but everything else?”
Sunny gave this some thought. “I did.”
“Then He forgave you and wiped your sins away.”
Trusting this man who had not been shocked by her past, she asked the question that had plagued her since meeting the Gabriel family. “I don’t understand. How can He just wipe them away?”
“God can do things we can’t. Let me show you a bit of how He thinks of us. Dawn is your child. Is there anything she could do that would cause you to stop loving her? Would you put her out of your house?”
“No. Never.” Had her grandfather loved her mother at all? He couldn’t have, not if he sent her into a life of prostitution.
“God is our father. Your mother’s father may have put his daughter out but God never did.”
“Then why didn’t God help her stay out of the saloon?” Why did I end up there?
“I don’t know. We are told that God always provides a way of escape. Maybe your mother didn’t know to look for that other way. I don’t know her heart. But I do know your heart, Sunny Whitmore.”
This confused her more. She tilted her head as if questioning him.
“You have a loving, willing, humble heart. And you want to please God.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But I never know how I’m supposed to feel. How does it feel when we are forgiven?”
He gripped her hand again. “It isn’t about how you feel. It’s about God being the one who can and does forgive. Sometimes a person will feel something when they come to God with a repentant heart, but not always. Yet that doesn’t mean the person isn’t forgiven.”
Sunny held the older man’s large hand in hers. She turned over all he had said in her mind. “I just have to believe I’m forgiven? Like having faith in God?”
“Exactly.”
“Noah doesn’t know that,” she said haltingly. “He thinks he’s guilty of murder because he fought in the war.”
“Your husband is a man capable of deep feelings and unwavering conviction. He sacrificed much to fight for the end of slavery, was willing to give his life to accomplish that. Nevertheless, it’s time he put that war to rest.”
“How?” She listened intently, hoping.
“He must do what you have done. Have faith in God. Have faith in God’s power to forgive and to heal.”
Sunny had heard some of this from the Gabriels but not how it worked, how it demanded faith. “It sounds too simple.”
“It is. The world likes to make God and faith hard but what’s real, what matters, is very simple.”
She shook her head. “But having faith is hard to do.”
“Yes, it’s giving up control. Letting God do it for us goes against our nature. We want to have to do some made-up penance. We humans are strange beings.”
The two sat, their hands still clasped. And Sunny did feel something, a lightening of her spirit. I am forgiven, she repeated, trying to believe it, etch it into her heart.
“I don’t know what Noah is going to do. He just up and left. He said he couldn’t be the preacher,” Sunny told Old Saul.
“I know. I saw it in his eyes. I feared it when I read his name on the slip of paper. But I trust that God knows what He’s doing. He has plans for Noah. For all of us.”
“What if Noah doesn’t want to follow God’s plans?”
“When God laid choosing a successor on my heart, I prayed long and hard. And I’ve been praying ever since I read Noah’s name aloud. I think that Noah is listening to God, has always been listening to him. A man who is sensitive to God would take killing men harder than a heedless man. Do you see?”
Sunny pressed the man’s hand. “Yes, Noah takes everything seriously.” And then Dawn came to mind, pulling herself up using Noah’s pant leg. Sunny grinned. “Except when Dawn makes him happy.”
“The blessing of children. A child’s love is so genuine and without reservation. And we don’t have to do anything to reap it. A true boon.”
“So my past...doesn’t mean I can’t be a preacher’s wife.”
“No, I think it will make you a kind and understanding preacher’s wife.”
The way he said the words, she thought he really meant them. She glimpsed herself as forgiving and being able to show forgiveness to others.
The older man patted her hand. “God’s at work in Noah. Just love him and respect him as I know you do.” The older man’s eyelids drifted down. “I’m sorry, but I need to rest now,” he murmured.
Sunny rose. “Thank you, Old Saul.” She bent and kissed his cheek. “You’ve given me peace about my past.”
She turned to fetch her daughter and head home. She would pray the whole way and let God handle this—this was certainly more than she could work out. She had found some answers, but the answers just seemed to raise more questions, one of which plagued her most of all.
Would Noah be there when she got home?
* * *
Noah finally glimpsed the thin smoke of his fire above the surrounding trees. From ahead he heard his dog bark in welcome and run forward through the brush. Exhausted, Noah waited for Neechee to reach him. When she did, he stooped down to receive her joyful wiggling and wagging. She licked his hands and his chin and barked, almost appearing to smile. “You’re my girl, Neechee. Yes, you are.”
The dog’s affection helped him steady a bit more. How long have I been gone? He gazed at the sun that now had sunk well past its peak.
He still carried a solid chunk of iron in his gut. His head ached. His mind felt like newspaper soaked in water, limp and easily torn. How far he had walked before he’d turned back, he didn’t know. But he’d been walking for hours now. Hunger had finally turned him toward home, feeling used up.
All he wanted was to sit down at his own table and lift Dawn onto his knee. Sunny might want to talk but if he didn’t, she would let him be. It was one of the things he most appreciated about her—she could be quiet with him.
He rubbed his temple with the flat of his hand and tried not to think about that little slip of paper that had turned his life upside down. He trudged the last half mile toward home, forming a simple apology to Sunny for leaving so abruptly. He couldn’t think past that, how to confront this thing that had broken and shattered him.
He forded the stream, stepping on rocks one by one while Neechee splashed beside him. Then he passed his fenced garden, noting the green shoots had grown at least another inch this week. How could he even think of leaving this place? He’d done too much to make this place home. But what would people say when he refused Old Saul? The chunk of iron in his stomach weighed heavier.
He stepped into his clearing. The oxen grazed, tethered to their stakes. But his horse was gone.
“Sunny!”
He hurried to the cabin and pulled open the latchstring. The faint scent of salt pork and beans hung in the air. The pot still hung high over the banked fire. But no Sunny. No Dawn. Neechee whined at his feet.
“Where did they go, girl?”
Noah stood in the middle of his cabin. For that moment he stood alone, bereft, exposed to God.
Help. I need her. I need them. Help me.
He sank onto the bench and held his head in his hands. The old scenes of battle raged through him—cannon roaring and shaking the earth, bugles, drums blaring, black powder fog choking and twisting, angry faces screaming and cursing. The tumult overwhelmed him.
Neechee barked and ran out the door. The soft sound of horse hooves came. Noah wrenched himself from the past and hurried outside. He ran to help Sunny down and lead the horse to the lean-to. Dawn slept in the sling peacefully. With an arm around her he walked Sunny into the house and then lifted the baby into his arms.
The love he felt for the child and her mother swept away everything like a spring flood. “I love you, Sunny. And I love this child.” He couldn’t have held back the words if he’d tried.
Sunny threw her arms around him. “I love you, too. Oh, Noah, I’ve wanted to tell you for so long.”
He turned from her and gently stowed the child in her hammock.
Then he turned back to his wife, his dear wife.
For a moment shyness caused him to hesitate. Then that, too, was swept away. He must be near her, hold her. He felt his love for her flow through him, forceful, demanding. “Sunny,” he said, his voice becoming husky.
She buried her face against his shirt. “I was so worried,” she said.
He lifted her chin and bent his lips to hers. “My sweet Sunny, my sweet wife.” He thought to kiss her gently but yearning swept him up in its current.
She clung to him and kissed him back.
He breathed in her lavender scent and fresh strength flowed through him. What he had been powerless to change had come right. He lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the ladder to the loft. “Sunny, my sweet, please...”
She smothered his entreaty with a kiss, a kiss that breathed into him her love and gave him life.
Sunny, my sweet wife.
Chapter Sixteen
In the loft of the quiet cabin Sunny lay in Noah’s strong arms—her husband’s loving arms—replete. She didn’t want to move or speak, fearful of disturbing their perfect peace. Nothing separated them in this moment, one she would treasure all the rest of her life.
“I’m sorry, Sunny,” he murmured.
She couldn’t think of what he was apologizing about. “For what?”
“For just leaving like I did. You didn’t deserve that.”
With the back of her hand she stroked his rough cheek. She loved the stubbly feel of it. “I was worried. I didn’t know what to do.” Then fear swirled cold in her stomach. Better to confess what she’d done right away. “I went to see Old Saul.”
“All by yourself?”
She loved the concern she heard in his voice. “Yes, he was the only one who could help. He was the only one who could change things.”
Noah kissed her temple. “My brave Sunny.” Then he stilled. “Did he have a way to let me out of this?” The thought of what had been asked of him still defeated him, but here, now, with Sunny in his arms, he could face it.
“He said he’d pray about it.” Sunny paused. She must tell him all. “I told him about my past.”
“Why?” Noah increased his hold on her.
“I didn’t think I could be a preacher’s wife afte
r what I’d done.” Shame warmed her cheeks.
Not for the first time Noah wished he could make up for the life she’d been forced to live. The idea that men were free to sow their wild oats with impunity but a woman must stay pure or be ostracized had never made sense to him. The double standard was cruel, heartless and the woman always paid the price.
“Sunny, I don’t think like that.” He kissed her soft ear.
“I know.” Her gratitude prompted her to snuggle even closer. “Old Saul told me about David and...I can’t remember her name...it’s in the Bible.”
“Bathsheba. About their adultery?”
“I can’t believe that something like that is in the Bible.”
Noah laughed harshly. “There’s worse than that in the Bible. God doesn’t pretty up how people do to each other and to themselves.”
Sunny ran her fingers through his hair. She sensed the hurt in his tone had more to do with him than David. “Old Saul said that God forgets our sins and wipes them away. ‘As far as—’”
“‘—the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.’” He’d heard it since he was a child. Why didn’t he believe it?
Again Sunny heard the pain and regret under the words. “I don’t understand it, either. But I’m going to have faith that God has forgiven me. Noah, we can’t hold on to all the bad things that have happened to us. You’re a good man—”
He tried to interrupt.
She pressed her fingers against his lips. “You are a good man, not a perfect man.”
He tried to interrupt her again.
She kissed away his words. “Look at me, Noah,” she demanded.
He obeyed her, amazed a little at her fierceness.
“Most men looked at me and saw a cheap harlot. But you looked at me and saw a wife, a woman you wanted to have with you, by your side. When I look at you, I see the most honorable, most kind, man. You’re hard on yourself, Noah. Do you know more than God?”
That stopped him. “What do you mean?”
“If God says He forgives us, do we know more than He does?” She held her breath, hoping this would connect in his mind, too.
