Sylvester reluctantly lifted his head and looked into his wife’s eyes, not hiding the love he felt for her. Her own eyes were clouded, but he was hopeful because he had felt a bit of a response from her. Not a lot, but enough to give him hope that one day she’d be his again.
“You’d think the woman was leaving you for a year instead of a couple of days,” Pastor said, clapping him on the back. “Why don’t you go with her?”
Sylvester smiled, his eyes still locked with Dawn’s. “Maybe I ought to.”
Pastor stepped in front of him and gave Dawn a hug. “You get going so you can hurry and get back. We’ll take good care of your man here.”
Mother Harris, the eighty-year-old woman who had served as Faith Central’s First Lady for her late husband’s thirty-five-year tenure as pastor, joined them. Rev. Thomas gave the older woman a kiss on the cheek and then moved on to chat with another parishioner. “Dawn, you make sure Francie knows we love her,” Mother Harris said. “And you tell her she’d better not be long in coming to see me either.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dawn said to the older woman. “I’ll give her your message.”
“And you, young man,” she said to Sylvester. “You keep kissing your wife like that. Marriage is hard work, so you’d better have some fun at it when you can.”
Sylvester grinned as the older woman walked off in the direction of Stuart and Mr. Slick.
“I guess I’d better get on the road,” Dawn said.
Still smiling, Sylvester opened the door of the white Cadillac she’d chosen from among the funeral home’s fleet, then closed it after she was inside. “You have your cell phone?” he asked. She held the phone up so he could see it. “Good. Call me if you need me and be sure to call me when you get there.” Without agreeing, she gave him a brief smile, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the restaurant’s parking lot.
Sylvester stood looking in the direction of the car long after it was out of sight. When he looked around, he saw that only Stuart Rogers was still present.
“Some kiss,” Stuart said with a lifted brow. “Does this mean all is well in Amen-Ray land?”
Sly turned to his friend. “I wish. But not yet.”
“Didn’t look that way to me.”
“Looks can be deceiving, Stuart, you should know that. My wife’s a good actress. She doesn’t want anyone to know we’re having problems, so she puts on a good front. Believe me, that kiss never would have happened if we had been alone.”
“Didn’t look like acting to me.”
“That’s because you’re an optimist and you love both of us.”
Stuart clapped him on the back. “That could be part of it. Let’s go get our coffee. I have another meeting later this morning.”
Sylvester followed his friend back into the restaurant, where they took a booth in the back. Though Dawn had warned him not to tell anyone of their differences, Sly had shared the gory details with Stuart because he’d had to tell someone. So Stuart knew about the affair and he knew about the resulting trouble Sly had in his marriage, but Dawn didn’t know that Stuart knew.
“You seem to be hanging in there,” Stuart said once they were seated.
“It’s not like I have a lot of options.”
“You always have options,” Stuart said. He’d said those words when Sly had told him about the affair and how he’d found himself in a situation that was too strong for him.
“So you keep telling me.”
“Are you ready for Francine’s arrival?”
Sly had told Stuart all about his past with Francine and the troubles that were bringing her back home. Stuart hadn’t met her though, since he’d joined Faith Central shortly after Francine had left town. “About as ready as I can be. Her staying with us has an unexpected upside.”
“What’s that?”
“Dawn’s moved back into our bedroom. For purely practical reasons, mind you. She doesn’t want her sister to know we’re having problems.” He ran his fingers around the rim of his coffee cup. “But she’ll know soon enough. We can’t spend all our time hidden in our separate corners of the bed.” He rubbed his hands across his bald head and down his face. “Why did I do it, man? Why did I risk everything the way I did?”
Stuart stirred his coffee. “That’s a question only you can answer, Sly. You probably already know the answer.”
Sly shook his head. “It just happened. One minute I was a happily married man and the next minute I was an adulterer, lying to my wife on a daily basis.”
“Sorry, but I don’t believe it. It doesn’t happen that way. First comes the desire, then the action, then the devastating results. And that’s from the Book of James, not the Book of Stuart.”
“Did it ever happen to you?” Sly asked the question he’d wanted to ask since he’d first told Stuart about his sin. He’d been reluctant to ask it, because he didn’t like to bring up Marie, Stu-art’s wife, who had died about two years ago.
Stuart shook his head. “Not that I didn’t have the opportunity. Women are always available and many of them don’t seem to mind the wedding ring. Some of them even seem to prefer relationships with married men.”
“Tell me about it,” Sly said.
“I never cheated on Marie and I was never really tempted, but I admit some of the female attention was flattering. It made me feel good to know that other women found me attractive.”
“You didn’t let it go further than that, and I did.”
“Hey, I feel you. I’m a man and I understand physical attraction. I also know that just because the attraction is there, you don’t have to act on it. For some reason, you did, and you have to figure out why you did or you may just do it again.”
“Never. I know now that I have too much to lose.”
“You had to know it then too, Sly, but for some reason, it didn’t matter. At least, not at that moment.”
Those words were harsh to Sly’s ears but he knew there was some truth in them. He hadn’t been able to think about Dawn when he was with Fredericka. They never spoke her name when they were together. It was as if he had two lives, one with his wife and one with his woman, and he wanted to keep them both, had actually tried to keep them both. But he’d learned his lesson. He would never again jeopardize what he had with Dawn. “All I need is for her to trust me again. If she does, she’ll never regret it.”
“You have to give her a reason to trust you again. She trusted you before and look what she got. How does she know you won’t cheat on her again given the right circumstances?”
“Because I won’t let it happen. She has to trust that I won’t.”
Stuart shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. You have to show her that she can trust you again.”
“I’ve tried everything,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Stuart pushed his coffee cup away. “That’s probably a good place to be. If you’re like me, it’s only after you’ve done everything that you can think to do, that it occurs to you that maybe you need some help. Want to pray?”
Sly’s eyes skittered around the restaurant. Stuart always wanted to pray in public and it always made Sly self-conscious. It was one thing for a group of men to pray together, holding hands in a circle, but it was quite another for two men to hold hands and pray in the back booth of a restaurant. They compromised by putting a hand on each other’s shoulder instead of holding hands.
“Father, thank you for this time with my brother this morning,” Stuart prayed. “We come asking you for a breakthrough in Sly and Dawn’s relationship. You know both their hearts, Lord. You know the problem, you know the cause, and you know the solution. Please open Sly and Dawn’s hearts and minds so that they can see that solution and walk in it. Make them a stronger team because of what they’re going through. In Jesus’s name. Amen.”
Sly studied his friend, taking in the wedding ring he still wore. He realized that recently most of their prayer time had been spent on his issues, with very little time given to the t
hings that concerned Stuart. He vowed to begin rectifying that imbalance today. He valued the brotherhood that he shared with Stuart, and he wanted their relationship to remain steady. “It’s been more than two years since Marie died, Stuart. Have you thought about getting married again?”
“I’ve thought about it, sure, but I’m not ready yet.” He idly twisted the platinum wedding band on his finger. “I still love my wife.”
“You’ll always love her, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy with someone else.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. My marriage is in awful shape right now, so I’m the worst person in the world to give advice, but you need to give it a try. You can’t withdraw from life. I hate that you resigned from the youth ministry team. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I did,” Stuart said with certainty. “That job is better handled by a couple. Marie and I were a team in that ministry. I couldn’t continue in it without her. I didn’t have everything those kids needed within me. They need that male-female perspective. CeCe and Nate are doing a great job with them.”
“Still, you didn’t have to take yourself out. I don’t think God required that of you.”
“It was best, Sly. One door closes, another opens. I believe that. The Lord will show me what to do next. Besides, I haven’t deserted the kids. I’m there for them if they need me. They know that. I haven’t given up the teen fathers’ group either.”
“Thank God for that.”
“I do thank Him. Daily. The kids fill up a lot of my time, not to mention my heart. I’m a little worried about Monika though. She’s being really clingy with me these days. I’ve tried to get her to confide in CeCe, but she still looks to me.”
Sly knew about the teenager who’d started coming to Faith Central a few years ago. She attended Faith Central but her mother didn’t. “What’s up with her?”
“Teenage angst, as best I can see it. She and her mother are having a rough time. Monika wants to know who her father is and her mother won’t tell her. It’s causing the girl a lot of pain.”
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen,” Stuart said. “The age when girls crave attention from men. I pray she doesn’t start looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Sly knew exactly what Stuart meant and his heart went out to the girl. “How about we spend some time praying for her?”
Stuart nodded and again, with hands to shoulders, the two men prayed.
~ ~ ~
Sitting in the parking lot in front of the Southwest Ohio Mental Health Clinic on Sunday morning, Dawn Amen-Ray finally gave in to the urge she’d fought throughout the nine-hour drive from Georgia to Ohio and through the sleepless night she’d spent in a nearby hotel. She pressed her fingertips against her lips, closed her eyes, and relived the kiss she and Sylvester had shared. She still loved him, still wanted him. Even though he had cheated on her for months, she still loved him. She wondered when she’d turned into such a wimp of a woman. What kind of woman continues to live with a man who cheated on her? A woman who loves the Lord and who believes marriage vows are a covenant between a man, a woman, and God? She certainly hoped so, because that’s the woman she wanted to be.
She sighed deeply. If she couldn’t be honest with herself, who could she be honest with? What kind of woman continues to live with a man who cheated on her? A woman who still loves her husband. She’d loved Sylvester for as long as she could remember, but for most of that time Sylvester had loved Francine. Dawn had done all sorts of outrageous things to get his attention, but he’d never been interested. Though Francine was an attractive woman, Dawn had known that it wasn’t Francine’s looks that had captured Sylvester. No, Sly had chosen Francine because he’d seen that even though Dawn had the better packaging, Francine was the better person. Dawn looked good; Francine was good. That had been the case for as long as she could remember. Her grandparents had often told her that she was “just like her mother” and she’d instinctively known that wasn’t a good thing. From the pictures they had, Dawn knew she looked more like her mother than Francine did, and apparently her personality reminded her grandparents of the wild daughter they’d never been able to control, the daughter who’d died of a drug overdose, leaving them to rear two baby girls in their old age.
As she’d grown older, she’d gotten tired of the comparisons that both labeled her “just like her mother” and challenged her to “be more like your sister,” and she became the wild child that everybody seemed to expect her to be. She smiled as she remembered her grandmother’s often uttered lament “If I weren’t already gray-headed, chile, you’d make me gray.” Her grandparents had been good to her, despite her rebelliousness. She wished she’d had the opportunity to show them that she’d learned what they wanted her to learn. She’d finally grown up and seen the wisdom of taking the path of the virtuous woman talked about in Proverbs 31. Unfortunately, it had taken their deaths to force her to do so.
After their deaths, she quickly grew tired of playing the role of hellion. She realized she wanted what most women wanted: a home, a family, someone to love her, children. She’d even come to accept Sylvester’s engagement to Francine. She loved her sister, despite the petty jealousy she oftentimes felt toward her, and she loved Sylvester. She’d convinced herself to be happy for them, though she did wonder what married life would be like for them. Frankly, she thought they’d bore each other to death within a year, but it wasn’t her place to say so, especially since she couldn’t trust her own motives.
Then heaven had opened and smiled down on her. Francine had left town with the traveling evangelist, an act that had almost devastated both Dawn and Sylvester, but the storm cloud had had a mocha-chocolate lining. She and Sly had found comfort in each other. Friendship had blossomed between them and that friendship had grown into something deeper. At first, she’d been afraid that Sylvester was transferring his feelings for Francine to her, but he’d proven to her over time that he was in love with her, so when he’d asked her to marry him, she’d gladly accepted. She’d contacted Francine with the news, but she’d never heard anything back from her sister. Without her sister to share her wedding day, she and Sylvester decided on an intimate ceremony with his family and the closest members of their church family. It had been the happiest day of her life.
She and Sly had been on their way to having the life she’d imagined for them. They were in love, they shared a deep and abiding love for Jesus, and they worked side by side in the family business. Dawn had followed in her grandmother’s footsteps and taken on the responsibility for interacting with the grieving families, which she considered the “heart” of the funeral business. Sylvester continued in his manager role as the “brain” of the business. Before Francine left, Francine and Sly had shared the manager function, with Francine managing one of their two locations and Sly managing the other. After she left, Sly had taken on both jobs before deciding to consolidate the management function at one location for efficiency. Dawn was proud of the job he was doing. Or she had been. Everything had been wonderful until she’d found out about the affair. Then her world had fallen off its axis. Everything she’d taken comfort in was gone—poof? She still loved Sylvester, there was no doubt of that, but she now wondered if he’d ever loved her. Had their entire life together been a façade? She’d asked herself and God that question many times, but no satisfactory answer had settled in her spirit.
Dawn sighed. It was too much to think about right now. She needed to focus on Francine. How odd that Francine would need to come home at the moment Dawn’s marriage was weakest. Francine had told her that she had no feelings for Sylvester, but Dawn wasn’t sure. The two of them had been a couple forever. She wasn’t sure it was possible for feelings that deep, held for that length of time, to be easily forgotten. Perhaps they only lay dormant until stirred up by some outside force.
“Stop it,” Dawn said aloud to herself. “They’ll be locking you up if you keep thinking this way.”
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Shoving away the negative thoughts, Dawn took a deep breath and got out of the car. Though this facility was one of the better ones—its price tag confirmed that point—she still found it depressing. She’d spent a week here when Francine had first been admitted, with once-a-week visits thereafter, so the place held a familiarity for her.
“Morning, Mrs. Amen-Ray,” the duty nurse, Margaret, said to her. “I bet you’re here to take your sister home.”
Dawn bit back a sharp retort. Margaret was only doing her job, though her perpetual exuberance grated on Dawn like tart lemons on an empty stomach. “I certainly am,” she said. “Is she ready?”
Margaret pressed the button that opened the second set of glass doors. “She’s in her room waiting for you. If you’ll leave your keys with me, I’ll have one of the men load her bags. They’re all ready”
After handing Margaret the keys to the Cadillac, Dawn stared at the double doors, almost afraid to walk through, a feeling that assaulted her every time she came here. As she made her way into the inner sanctuary of the asylum, the antiseptic smell burned her nostrils, making her want to hold her nose. When she reached her sister’s private room, she stood outside the closed oak door and forced a smile on her face. Being strong for her sister and putting on the face of optimism was a role that had been thrust upon her, but one she believed she played with Oscar-worthy skill. She couldn’t let Francine know that sometimes all she wanted to do was curl up in the bed bedside her and let somebody take care of her too.
Confident her smile was in place, she pushed open the door. “So, are you ready to blow this pop stand?” she asked, fighting to keep her smile in place as she met her sister’s eyes. The doctors said Francine was ready to go home, to face everyday living again, but Dawn didn’t like the dimness in her eyes. Would it ever go away?
Francine slid from the side of the bed where she sat, hands folded across her denim-clad thighs in a manner best described as prim. The low-maintenance French braid that had become her trademark hairstyle only added to the conservative look. “I’ve been ready,” she said.
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