by Arlene James
“That’s on him!” Brooks erupted, instinctively parking his hands at his waist. It was an intimidation tactic, he knew, serving to make one look larger, and he already made two of the silly woman, but the stance kept him from reaching out to shake her. “Eva didn’t cheat on him. It was the other way around. But you sound like you blame her.”
“She chose him,” Donna grumbled.
“And you have obviously chosen to punish her for his mistakes,” Brooks shot back. He shook his head at Eva. “No wonder you didn’t want to go to church when I first met you.”
Eva flapped her arms. “What does that matter now with Ricky gone?”
“Ricky’s gone?” Donna echoed.
“He ran away from his father’s house,” Eva revealed, sniffing.
Donna folded her hands. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Rick Allenson is a disgrace to men everywhere, and you just blithely hand your son off to him.”
“She did not,” Brooks defended hotly. “She tried to spare her son the same horror that she went through herself.”
“Oh, please,” Donna scoffed.
“She has her mother’s disease,” Brooks informed the old biddy. “She thought she was dying, and she didn’t want her son to have to watch it.”
For a long moment, Donna said nothing, but her clenched jaw gradually softened somewhat. “What do you mean?”
Eva crossed to the tweedy sofa, slipped off her coat and sank down, rubbing her temples. “Do we have to go into this now? I’m so tired.”
“Yes, we do,” Brooks said, glaring at Donna. “How old were you when your mother died, Eva?”
She shrugged. “Thirteen.”
“So you weren’t much older than Ricky when she became ill. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning she was very near your age when she became ill, too.” She blinked at him as if she’d just now considered that. “It is an inherited condition,” he explained gently before asking, “Who took care of you then?”
“Aunt Donna. We always lived with Aunt Donna.”
“So this was your only support system during your mother’s illness and death,” he said.
“Yes.”
He went over and stood next to her, sliding his hand over her luxurious pale hair. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said gently. “I didn’t really understand until now. You were very much alone, weren’t you?”
“I had Ava,” she said in a quivering voice.
“Your twin.”
“Yes.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Just twenty-two. And when you married?”
“Twenty-four.”
“And you had Ricky at twenty-five,” he said, amazed that she’d waited even those two years to marry, as alone as she must have been.
“Ask her how old she was when she and her sister left home,” Donna insisted self-righteously. “Just ask her.”
“Eighteen,” Eva said firmly. “We left the very day we graduated from high school.”
“Ungrateful, wild, willful,” Donna pronounced. “Couldn’t wait to meet boys and wear their short skirts and—”
“Escape your hatred,” Brooks interrupted smoothly. Donna looked stunned.
“I treated them like my own!” Donna insisted.
“Perhaps you did,” Brooks said. “That doesn’t mean you loved them.”
“Love us?” Eva whispered. “She hated us. Ava wouldn’t even see her when she was dying.”
“I didn’t hate you!” Donna cried. “I wanted to...make amends, but she wouldn’t let me. She shut me out.”
“You shut us out,” Eva accused tiredly. “You always shut us out.”
“I don’t understand,” Brooks said. “Most women love their sister’s children.”
Her face suddenly contorted. “How could I love them? My sister and my husband’s children but not mine!”
“What?” Eva looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“She really never told you?” Donna demanded. “Not even on her deathbed she didn’t have the nerve to confess what she’d done? Seducing my husband away from me!”
A heavy silence filled the room, the kind that follows an explosion.
Chapter Thirteen
“Mama was sixteen when we were born,” Eva exclaimed.
“Old enough to know better,” Donna insisted. “I took her in when our mother died, and how did she repay me? My husband and I were grieving that we couldn’t have children when she crawled into his bed, then the two of you were born!”
“What you really mean,” Brooks stated flatly, “is that while you were grieving because you couldn’t have children, your husband crawled into your little sister’s bed.”
“And then ran off as soon as her condition became obvious,” Donna wailed, “leaving me to raise his mistakes!”
Eva fell back on the sofa, her hands slapped to her head. Brooks sat down, sad and weary to his bones, and gathered her into his arms. “And you’ve punished Eva, her sister and their mother for his sins ever since.”
“Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children,” Donna began quoting.
“Oh, stop it,” Brooks scolded. “You can misapply Exodus all you want, but it doesn’t justify your attitude and behavior. What about Mark? ‘And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in Heaven may forgive you your sins.’ Or would you rather be angry than forgiven?”
“Mama died,” Eva wept, “and what life did she ever really have? She worked and she stayed home with us. That’s all she ever did until she got sick, and then she s-suffered. You made sure of that! You made sure she knew she was a burden and a bother the whole time she was sick. I used to hear her praying to have it over with! And I didn’t want Ricky to see me like that.”
“Ricky will never see you like that,” Brooks promised, holding her tight. “Even if the surgery doesn’t work—and I have every confidence that it will—your son will never go through what you have. He’ll never be alone or unloved or friendless. I promise you.”
“Blzzllgull,” Eva said, suddenly looking panicked. “Awlzekhub!”
“No!” Brooks exclaimed. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I was afraid of this.”
“Shuntlefewk!” she cried, shaking her head as he eased away and rose.
“It’s all right,” he told her, moving toward the door. “I came prepared. Wait here, and try to stay calm.” He ran out to the car, glad he hadn’t removed his overcoat, and grabbed the blue travel bag, sprinting back to the house with it.
Donna sat on the edge of the sofa, awkwardly patting Eva’s hand. She slumped in the corner, her eyes half-closed, her breathing shallow. Brooks had tried to see to it that she stayed hydrated during the trip, but her obvious exhaustion tore at him. He fell to his knees next to her and quickly assembled the IV pole, then tied a tourniquet around her biceps and plumped up a vein before pulling on gloves and opening up the IV kit. Only after he had the medication flowing and the bag hanging on the pole did he take her blood pressure, perform a cursory examination and then inject a second medication into the IV line.
“You just need to rest, sweetheart,” he told her, smoothing her glorious hair away from her beautiful face. “You’re exhausted. The medication will take the pressure off, and sleep will renew your strength. When you wake, everything will be better. Then we’ll go bring your son home. Until then, I’ll be here praying.”
“I will, too,” Donna said quietly, and Brooks saw Eva’s hand squeeze hers. He had no idea what had passed between them in the few moments he had been gone, but they seemed to have reached an uneasy peace for the moment.
Eva lifted a weary ga
ze to meet his and mumbled, “Zzllttll.”
Somehow, he knew exactly what she meant, and he chuckled to show her that her worries were for naught. “I’ll rest, too. Promise.”
She closed her eyes, but then her aunt burbled, “Oh, Eva, I’m so sorry!”
Eva sighed. “Koogilltay.”
“She knows,” Brooks said, smiling as her eyes at last drifted closed. He’d never before realized how blond her lashes were and how very thick, like tiny curved brushes.
Dear God, he thought, how I love this woman! Thank You. No matter what happens, thank You for bringing her to me.
Injecting the IV line with a mild sedative was a dirty trick, and he might well pay for it later, but Brooks would not risk Eva’s health further. She needed sleep, and she was going to get it. After the small med bag emptied, he had Donna turn down a bed for Eva and carried her to it. Then he stretched out on another bed, fully clothed, in another cold, dingy room in the small house and prayed himself to sleep.
He woke a few hours later to the smell of coffee and padded into the kitchen, the only truly warm room in the place. Donna actually made him breakfast and let him use the shower. Clean, shaved and freshly dressed, he returned phone calls and sat alone on the sofa in the living room answering emails via his smart phone until Eva finally wandered in, looking rumpled and sad, about one o’clock in the afternoon.
She came straight to the sofa, crawled up onto it, looped her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, whispering, “He hasn’t called. I checked my phone, and I called Chatam House just to be sure he didn’t try to reach me there. The police haven’t come up with anything, either.”
“We’ll find him,” Brooks said, kissing the top of her head. “How do you feel?”
“Okay. Better. Miserable. What did you give me?”
“A sedative. I won’t do it again without your permission. Let’s get some coffee in you, then you can shower while I find you something to eat.”
She sighed. “Might as well.”
“Then we’ll go pack Ricky’s things,” Brooks said. She lifted her head, a slight crease between her brows. “He’s going home with us,” Brooks pointed out. “Might as well be ready. Right?”
She smiled wanly. “Right.”
“Then we’ll talk to Ricky’s friends, actually go see them. They ought to be home from school by the time we’ve finished the packing.”
“You’ve thought about this, planned it all out.”
He nodded. “I emailed Jared, asked for an address. Haven’t heard back yet, but the kid’s got to check his email sometime.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck again and kissed him right behind his ear, giving him a big grin and lovely shivers all the way down to his toes. “Thank you. For everything.”
He patted her knee as nonchalantly as he could manage. “Come on. Aunt Donna is not Hilda, but the coffee is good.”
Eva didn’t hurry, and Brooks saw no reason to rush her. When she was ready, they stopped off to pick up some boxes and drove over to the Allenson house. Dorinda let them in, confirmed that they had heard nothing from Ricky and disappeared without a word when Eva stated their intention to pack up Ricky’s things. To Brooks’s surprise, however, Rick Sr. showed up about half an hour later. He stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb, glowering at them. Eva gave him no more than a cursory glance as she folded Ricky’s clothes.
“You’re obviously not here to stop us,” she observed.
“No.”
“Just making sure we don’t take anything of value to you, then.”
“Look, Eva,” Rick snapped, “he’s done nothing but complain since you left him here.”
“Really? Well, I suppose he was used to having a parent around.”
“That’s not fair,” Rick insisted. “You didn’t have anyone to concentrate on but him.”
Brooks felt his jaw drop, but he managed to keep his tongue still as Eva slowly turned to face her ex.
“So you’re saying that you can’t manage having two people in your life at one time.”
Allenson pinched his nose. “It’s not that. The thing is, my wife is simply too young to raise a ten-year-old.”
Brooks could not resist. “Well, then she’s too young to be married to you, isn’t she, seeing as how you have a ten-year-old. I mean, he was on the scene before she was. Right?”
Rick glared at him, but then he turned and left them, snarling, “Take anything you want. Take the furniture!”
Eva sent Brooks a taut smile. He shook his head. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“You didn’t say anything that wasn’t perfectly true.”
They finished packing and closing up the boxes. Finally, Eva slung on her coat.
“Let’s go find my boy.”
* * *
Nightfall brought the very lowest ebb in Eva’s spirits thus far. She’d felt sure that visiting Ricky’s friends in person would yield positive results. It did not. They had even gone to Ricky’s new school in hopes of learning who Jared might be, as he had not answered either of their emails, but the school could only promise to speak to Ricky’s teachers, none of whom had seen him in two full days now.
Eva had never felt like such a failure. How could she have been so stupid as to leave her precious son with her idiot ex? What if something had happened to Ricky? He could be dead in an alley somewhere. Even smart boys did stupid things, made bad choices. If that were not so, he’d have waited until she came for him. Of course, if she were not stupid, she’d have told him why she couldn’t come, which led her right back to her failures as a mother.
Then again, how could she have been so stupid as to accept at face value a decades-old prognosis and simply give up on her life and, in the process, her son, on that basis? It had all been so heartbreakingly pointless. And yet she had met Brooks and the Chatams because of it. In a very real way, she had met Jesus Christ because of it. So why was she so scared?
“It’s going to be all right,” Brooks said for perhaps the hundredth time.
“Is it?” she asked wearily. “Where could he be? And even if we find him, what happens to him if I die?”
“Hush,” Brooks told her. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t even think it.”
“How can I help it? I’ve been such an abysmal failure as a mother.”
“Stop it.”
“Why else did he run away?”
“He was unhappy, and he wanted to punish you and his father for making him unhappy. That’s why he ran away.”
“What if something’s happened to him?”
“Then, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Brooks said, “but I refuse to believe it until it’s proved to me.”
“What if we never know?”
“We’ll know. Sooner or later, one day we’ll know.”
“I can’t bear it, Brooks.”
“No one could, but God can, and He will bear it for you. I’ve had experience at this, Eva, and so have you. We survive the unsurvivable because God comes alongside us and helps us bear the burden. He has experience at this, too, you know, losing those He loves. It happens to Him every day.”
“I never thought of that before.”
“Every time a person rejects God, every time a person dies with that rejection on his or her soul, God grieves, just as He rejoices every time one of us chooses Him.”
“I wish that made me feel better,” she said, “but it just makes me feel sad for Him.”
“I understand, but God wants us to focus on the joy, Eva, and when you’re well, we’ll be able to do that. In the meantime, the thing that always makes me feel better is prayer. Come here, and let us pray together.”
“I’d like that.”
They settled into the corner of the sof
a. Where Aunt Donna had gotten off to Eva neither knew nor cared. With Brooks’s arm around her, she settled against his shoulder and closed her eyes as he began to softly speak.
“Father God, thank You for bringing Eva and her son into my life. Wherever Ricky is, please keep him safe and bring him back to his mom well and whole soon...”
“Yes, Lord,” she whispered.
Brooks went on speaking, and she did find comfort in sharing that prayer with him, so much so that when the amens were said she did not move. Neither did Brooks. In fact, he snuggled down and put his feet up on the rickety old coffee table that Donna kept sitting to one side. Eva sighed and closed her eyes, and the next thing she knew it was morning. Somehow, she’d gotten stretched out on the sofa and covered by a blanket, and someone was knocking on the door.
She heard Donna flipping the locks and rubbed her eyes, looking up to find Brooks standing in the doorway to the tiny hall in his stocking feet. He needed a shave and a comb and wore the same clothes as the day before. She pushed up onto her elbow, loving him with an empty, aching, bottomless need that told her she had never truly loved any man before him. Suddenly, she could forgive Rick his infidelity, for if Tiffany was able to love him with one-tenth of what she felt for Brooks, then she could give Rick more than Eva had been able to give him. She heard Donna speaking but had no idea what she’d said, then suddenly Brooks stood very straight, grinning, and she realized someone else had come into the room.
“Ricky?” Brooks asked, as Eva jackknifed into a sitting position, and there he was, her beautiful, stupid, wonderful, exasperating son, accompanied by an adult couple she’d never before seen.
She opened her arms and started to cry. He dropped his backpack and practically fell onto her, crying, “Mom!”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Allenson,” said the man, a tall pudgy fellow with features too small for his big square head.
Eva cleared her throat and tried not to bawl. “It’s Russell. Eva Russell. And I don’t know what you’re apologizing for. You’ve brought my son to me. Thank you.”
They were Jared’s parents, of course, Darren and Lois Hollis. Mr. Hollis explained that he had been out of town on business, returning only the evening before, Saturday, and Jared was not allowed to use the computer when his father was not at home, so he hadn’t seen the emails until that morning. Mrs. Hollis told the real tale, however. Ricky and Jared had convinced her that his parents had been called out of town unexpectedly so he needed to stay at Jared’s house.
