Rachel laughed softly. “I spent a lot of nights like that. I’d lay there and look up at that ceiling and I was just so angry with God, you know? I mean like, ‘I’m so done with You’ angry. It was tough. I’m not going to lie, and sometimes I wonder how I even made it through that.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“And then sometimes I wonder when the next impossible thing is going to show up.”
The breath left Dani’s being. “Well, that I can imagine.”
“Oh?”
She shouldn’t say anything. She didn’t even really know Rachel. “Yeah. It’s like my parents’ mess right now. I swear every time that phone rings, and it’s my mom… It takes everything I have to answer it even though that’s the very last thing I want to do. And I feel horrible about that, but she is just… ‘Did you hear what your dad did now? How could he do this to me? Why would he do this?’ And I don’t have any answers.” She let out a breath that pulled up stinging tears. “I’m not exactly thrilled with what he did either. How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t want to trash him, but I don’t know how to defend him either.”
When Rachel said nothing, Dani softly sniffed the stupid tears back into her.
“That must be really rough,” Rachel said, her words no more than a breath. “You know, I used to think normal people didn’t have problems.”
“Normal people?”
That plunged Rachel’s words into silence once again. Dani really wanted to ask again, but she didn’t want to push.
“A long time ago my family before this one was… well, we were pretty messed up. Mom and Dad both gone. I was raised with my grandmother until she died of cancer, and the Murphys adopted me.”
Horror once again swiped Dani’s breath. Here she was pouring her sad little tale out to this woman, this paragon of strength who had endured so much. “Wow. I would never have guessed that.”
“I’ve begun to think we all bury the worst parts of our stories, trying to look normal to everyone else.” Laughing, Rachel moved up the door. “Like I’m going to lead with all of that. ‘Hello, I’m Rachel, and my life is a complete mess.’”
“But it’s not now,” Dani said quickly, and part of her was praying that would be the truth.
Rachel dragged in a breath and let it out slowly. “No. Not right now. Right now, it’s pretty great, but then I always think…”
“Think?”
Shaking her head, Rachel kept sanding although she was very good at avoiding eye contact. “How long will this last, you know? What’s the next bad thing coming? Will I be able to withstand it?”
“Well, now that I know,” Dani admitted. “It’s like at work. I think things are going okay, and then BAM! Chaos. It would be nice to be prepared for it, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.”
“Yeah, you and me both.”
Dani let that settle between them for a moment. “So what’s up with this Bible study with the guys anyway? Is it me, or is that just a little weird?”
This laugh was heartier. “If you want to know what I think, I think it’s Caleb’s secret weapon of how to deal with me.”
“Deal with you? No. He should be thanking his lucky stars for you and what he has.”
“Oh, I think he does that too, but honestly, I don’t think I made it all that easy on him.”
“Playing hard to get?”
“More like impossible.” Rachel shook her head, her ponytail swinging. “I was convinced there was no way this would ever work. Not that I’m still convinced, but at least now I’m willing to go with it.” Her sigh was short and accompanied by a shrug. “He and Pastor Steve got really close while we were going together. Lot of advice, I think. It’s all good though. It’s really helped.”
“That’s good.” Dani thought about her own marriage. It was nothing to write home about. Two lives living in roughly the same orbit. It wasn’t what she’d ever expected marriage to be like. “So you don’t think they’re studying the Bible?”
“I think they’re studying life.”
“Life?” Dani asked, not at all sure what that meant.
“Yeah, like how to do life better. That’s what I get from what Caleb’s said anyway.”
The understanding that she hadn’t even bothered to ask, not to mention that Eric hadn’t bothered to tell her knifed into the center of Dani’s heart and ached there.
“If you hang around Pastor Steve very long, you get lots of lessons about life,” Rachel said with a laugh. “I don’t know how Jane stands it sometimes. But he’s a good guy. Took me a while to get that, but he is.”
Dani puzzled on that comment, leaving the previous more disturbing ones behind. “So he wasn’t always like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he was. I’m not sure I really knew him when he first came. I was just in high school, so church was just something we did on Sundays or when I helped out with garage sales and stuff. When I went off the rails after high school, it was really tough to come back here because I felt so judged by everyone, maybe especially by him though I don’t know that that was his fault. I see now that probably wasn’t his heart back then. I think it was more how I felt about me and how I thought everyone else must feel too.”
The disparate thoughts were starting to swirl and become uncatchable. “I don’t understand.”
However, Rachel didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It’s… kind of hard to explain, but I’m learning that the world aligns around with what you believe. So if you believe you’re trash, you assume everyone else believes that too, and that’s what you assume they mean when they say things.”
“Things like…?”
“Like, ‘Good morning, Rachel. We’re so glad you could join us.’ And you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, right. Like you really believe that.’ But you fake smile back and shake their hand and say how happy you are to be home even though it’s the very last place on the planet you want to be.”
Dani wasn’t at all sure how Rachel kept nailing so perfectly all the things she had always felt but never really thought she should.
“I can’t tell you how it happened,” Rachel continued, “but being around them, especially Sage and Caleb, I guess I’m learning that trying to be that image-thing doesn’t work. It just makes you feel like you’re never real with anyone. I think that was the hardest thing, learning to be real, to tell someone about Nathan and all the junk we went through. But the more real I became, the less I heard ‘other things’ when people asked how I was doing or how Mom was doing.”
“It’s so strange.” Dani wasn’t sure she should say it though it was burning in her soul. “You are so different in person than I thought you would be.”
“Uh-oh.”
“No. It’s a good thing. When we first started, I would never have come out here and tried to help with this.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I would’ve been too worried I’d mess it up.” She thought it through and decided to give voice to what she never had. “Eric just jumped in and wanted to help with everything, which is weird because he didn’t even want to do Attabury in the first place.”
“Oh?”
“No. Attabury was totally my idea. I think everybody else thought I’d lost my mind. At first I didn’t really care what they thought. Then I started kind of agreeing with them. I mean, have you seen that place?” She laughed. “But once Eric got here… I don’t know… he… changed.”
“Good change or bad change?”
She wondered if she should admit her misgivings about the morning. Freefalling with no net would have felt less risky. “Like earlier when Derek and Jayc weren’t here. I think it really freaked him out.” She shook her head. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him like that, like he was really worried about them.”
“He doesn’t strike me as someone who doesn’t care.”
“That’s just it. He does care, but in his own way. Eric’s always been the introvert in our relationship. I was always the crazy on
e, the ambitious one because I thought that was the only way to be a success, get out there, knock some heads together, get it done. Not that he didn’t want to succeed, but I really think most of the things we got were because I wanted them, not because they were important to him. Like Attabury. He would have been perfectly fine not to ever so much as see that place, but because I wanted it…” A new understanding began to seep up, soaking into her soul. Maybe Eric always had cared so deeply. He’d just not ever shown her how much. That made her sad and also dragged along some hopelessness with it. Maybe all this time she had blamed him for the lousy state of their marriage and the problem was really her. She batted that thought back and away. How could it be her fault? She put everything she had into this marriage and then some. She gave until she couldn’t give anymore. Yes, to be a success but also to make life nice for him.
Anger slipped to the surface, and she blinked the tears back. No. None of this was her fault, and worse, it was now beyond repair.
“How’s that going?” Rachel finally asked, breaking into Dani’s thoughts.
“Oh, good. Another twelve hours, we ought to be about halfway done.”
Rachel laughed. “Well, a little progress is better than none.”
When the Bible study broke up, Eric and Caleb headed over to Attabury and got to work on the windows. Eric was mighty glad Caleb had an extra pair of gloves because what wasn’t broken was a splintered out mess.
“It’s a good thing they boarded these things up,” Caleb said as he pried the frame from the window in the hallway. “There wouldn’t be anything left of this place if they hadn’t.” The wood splintered away from the nail, and he went to work prying it out as well.
“Honestly I wasn’t sure there was anything left here to save,” Eric said, watching and waiting for his turn to help.
“I wasn’t sure either.” Two more nails came out, and a large piece of the frame came out. “I thought you guys were nuts when I first saw the place.”
“You? I thought we were nuts.” Eric’s gaze went from the window up onto the wall. “But now… I don’t know. I’m kind of falling in love with the possibilities.”
Caleb grinned at him. “Took you long enough.” He took a look at the project. “Okay. I’m going to go outside and break it loose from out there. You stay in here and guide it out.”
With a nod, Eric agreed. “Just show me what you want me to do.”
Because Derek and Jaycee hadn’t come, Eric and Dani accepted Rachel’s invitation to eat at their house once again.
“Okay,” Dani said when Caleb showed up with Eric after five. “But we’re going to cook this one.”
“Oh.” Worry pummeled Rachel’s expression. “You don’t have to.”
“I know, but you all have done so much for us. We want to pay you back.” Her gaze slipped to Eric’s and barely held. “Isn’t that right?”
He looked at her and the clouds on his face parted, revealing the happiest smile she’d seen on his handsome face in a long time. “Right.” Nodding, he crossed his arms and looked back at them, standing together arm-in-arm as they did so often. “We’ll just get cleaned up here right quick, go pick up some groceries and be over there in… what?” he asked Dani.
She calculated the time with no problem. “An hour and a half.”
“Okay,” Caleb said, glancing at Rachel. “Sounds good to us.”
By the time they got to the grocery store, Dani’s time frame was stretching badly. “So you think we could do those enchiladas you made that one time?”
In the driver’s seat, Eric glanced at her as they made the turn and bumped into the little store’s parking lot. “Uh, yeah. Sure. I think that sounds great.”
Dani pulled out her phone. “Do you remember the recipe? I don’t want to forget anything and have to come back.”
He put the SUV in park and smiled at her. “Hey, it’s dinner. How bad can we mess this up?”
With that, he hopped out, leaving Dani on the concerned side for so long that he made it all the way around to her door before she got it open. When he opened it for her and put out his hand, she wasn’t at first sure what he was even doing. “Well, this is different,” she said, and there was a hard edge to the statement as if she was punishing him for something.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged and shut the door before following her in.
Once inside she went into we’ve-got-to-get-this-done-fast mode. “So did you use corn or flour tortillas?” She grabbed a cart and shoved it ahead of her. “I’m guessing red sauce, ground beef. Did you use a package mix or was it something else for the seasoning?”
As Eric followed her around the grocery store like a whirlwind headed to Oz, he marveled at her ability to shop and question at the same time. Half of the questions he never even got answered before she went on to the next one.
“I’m thinking we could get some avocadoes too. Just for the adults. I don’t think the kids would eat that. In fact, maybe we should pick up some chicken strips for the kids. Her kids are so little. I’m not sure they’d be into enchiladas.”
Realizing he didn’t even have to comment to keep the conversation going, Eric simply got what she told him to get, and very quickly, they were headed up to pay.
“Ah, crud,” she said when she pushed the cart into the check-out line. “I left my purse out in the car.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s cool. I’ve got mine.” He saw the look of annoyance cross her face. “What? It comes out of the same account. It’s not like it matters.”
Still she didn’t look at all happy. Crossing her arms as the cashier rang the purchases up, she stood for a second before putting her fingers up to the back of her neck. “I sure wish we had an actual recipe. I’m so bad at cooking without one.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s kind of fun cooking without one.”
She huffed her displeasure as he handed over the credit card. Checking her watch, she shook her head. “We’re going to be so late. I can’t believe it took this long.”
“It’s fine,” he said, really wishing she wouldn’t spoil this with her over-dramatics. It was dinner at a friend’s house. How critical to life could it be?
Turned out, he had no idea how critical-to-life it could be. At Rachel’s, Dani insisted he help her so Rachel wouldn’t have to lift a finger. That was fine on its face, but working with her like this was not his idea of fun. He put too much seasoning in the meat, nearly didn’t brown it right, put the red sauce into it before she was ready, and set the oven temp for 350 rather than the 375 she wanted it at.
By the time the enchiladas were cooking, he was beginning to hate Pastor Steve for this suggestion. How in the world was he supposed to love on a prickly porcupine with her quills out all the time?
“We really need to clean this up,” Dani said, washing and wiping. “I’m not going to let Rachel’s kitchen in a mess.”
Well, he wasn’t either but clearly she thought he would if she let him.
“If we get these pans washed now, we can put them away afterward.” At the sink, she ran the water, and he sighed, trying really hard not to.
“Something smells delicious,” Caleb said, coming into the kitchen and going over to the refrigerator for a drink.
“I just hope it turns out,” Dani said, speeding through the words. “We didn’t really have a recipe.”
Caleb laughed. “As long as it’s edible, I’m not complaining.”
Thankfully it was edible. In fact, it was really good, but Eric wasn’t about to say that because she kept apologizing for every little thing. She was making them all uncomfortable, and he didn’t have a clue how to make it stop. When supper was over, she insisted they do the dishes and let their hosts relax. However, Eric’s nerves were so on the edge of fraying, he wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea.
“Here. You can wash this,” she said, holding out the pan the enchiladas had been in. “I’ll just put this in the refrigerator for them for Monday or something.”
Without question, Eric got started.
“I wish we had thought to get something for desert. Brownies or something.” She sighed. “I knew I was forgetting something.”
He sighed as quietly as possible. “It’s fine.”
“Well, of course it’s fine now. I just wish I had thought about it. That would’ve been nice to have for them.”
Who was he to argue?
The rest of the evening was at least semi-enjoyable, but by the time they got out to the farm, Eric was about one thin stick away from losing it. “So are you thinking about church in the morning?”
“Well, of course. We can’t not go now.” She shook her head like he was insane for thinking they could, and she got into bed. “Caleb said you got several of the windows in today. Are you going back tomorrow after services?”
“Yeah. For a while.” He couldn’t wait.
Chapter 17
“This morning,” the pastor said from the front of the church the next morning, “I want to talk a little about the model Jesus set out for us when He washed the feet of His disciples. First, here is the King of the Universe willingly humbling Himself to be what amounts to a servant to those who are following Him. I’m sure they were in shock that He would even think to do such a thing. I can hear the murmuring and gasps of concern now, can’t you?
“So Jesus sets about washing their feet, and I want us to pay particular attention to two sub-stories within the main story. First of all, Jesus washes the feet of every person there, and if you read the text carefully, Judas has not yet left. Now, Jesus makes it plain later on that He knows Judas’s heart. He knows what Judas is about to do. Yet in an act of purely selfless love, He chooses to wash Judas’s feet anyway. He doesn’t withhold His love from this man who will betray Him. He loves him. He washes his feet.
“We’ve talked about unconditional love before, and I think this is one of the supreme examples of it in the whole Bible. Basically Jesus says through His actions, ‘I choose to love you no matter what you do to Me.’ Think about that from our standpoint for a minute. Jesus says the same thing to each one of us. ‘I choose to love you, no matter what you do to Me.’ No matter how much we fail Him, no matter how many times we mess up, no matter what our pasts look like or our presents are filled with, Jesus Christ loves us enough to love us anyway.”
Raising Attabury: A Contemporary Christian Epic-Novel (The Grace Series Book 5) Page 24
