A woman called him on the phone on our anniversary, and he phoned her back. She stayed in a motel. She made a trip here, and David agreed to see her.
“Abby?”
Right when I needed my husband the most, he didn’t think he loved me.
He’s thought about that for nine years—nine years—before he said anything.
The birds twittered in the tree for a long time while they watched. At last Abby said aloud, “When I asked him if he had second thoughts about marrying me, he wouldn’t deny it. He wouldn’t say that I was wrong.”
Viola leaned forward on the walker, which tottered with her slight weight. “Oh, honey.”
“You know what happened yesterday, Viola? Braden forgot his baseball cleats for practice so I had to drive home to get them. Down where the road makes that jog by Puzzleface Ranch, this… this moose came out in front of me. The whole time it was happening, I kept remembering David saying to me, ‘Apply the brakes and hit the animal square, Abby. Worse thing you can do is to try to swerve. When you swerve, you catch the right front fender on it and then you flip.’ The whole time it was happening, I was saying, ‘Okay. Okay, David. I won’t swerve, I promise. I’ll plow right in.’ ”
“When you asked him about it, about him having second thoughts, he didn’t say he was sorry he had married you, did he?”
“This policeman saw me slam on the brakes and he stopped me to make sure I was okay. The moose was fine. But, I couldn’t…I started crying… and I said, ‘My husband’s had an affair and isn’t this ridiculous? I’ve been so strong in front of everybody, and with a total stranger, I break down?’ ”
“Because there’s a big difference in that, don’t you know? Between David having second thoughts then, and not being sorry now?”
“He had his affair after we got married, Viola. And he’s a Christian man.”
“Well, goodness. You think just because he’s a Christian man, he’s got to be perfect?” Viola left her walker on the sidewalk and began to make her way without it. “You think because he did it after he got saved instead of before, you think that makes him any less forgiven?”
“No,” Abby said, “but it ought to make him changed.”
Viola had settled herself on the pine stoop. She slapped the planks beside her. “You just set here a minute and listen. You just set here. Those ladies over at the shelter can keep.”
Abby sat as she’d been told.
“The worse trouble you can get into, you know, is feeling something strong and lecturing yourself that you’re not supposed to be feeling it. Christians have a bad way of doing that—thinking they’re supposed to live above something and not letting it touch them.”
“I’m not even trying to be good, Viola.”
“Disappointment? I can’t feel that, I’m a Christian. Hate? I can’t feel that! I have to be good.”
“I feel betrayed. And angry. And rejected. And hurt. I thought we had been happy. I thought we had done so well.”
“You feel what you’ve got to feel and you admit you’re feeling normal human things and then you tell God you’re willing to let Him stir around with those human things and do something supernatural with that. You certainly don’t try to stir around with them yourself.”
Abby bent forward on the steps and gripped her ankles. She turned her face toward the sun. Viola continued.
“Because if you don’t, if you nurture that betrayal and anger and hurt, that’s when you get separated from where you’re supposed to be. That’s when you get separated from the Father.”
Nothing I’m standing on is solid, Lord. Nothing around me is the way it seemed to be. Abby began to rock, hanging on to her ankles. “I don’t know how to have it and not nurture it, Viola. I don’t know how to stop it from playing over and over again in my mind.”
“Humph,” Viola snorted. “I can tell you a story about that.”
“What?”
“You know Hoyt and Alvie Strong down the street?”
“Sure I do.”
“Well, Alvie got excited about planting herbs not long ago. Brought this long terra-cotta pot home from Spudville. Filled it full of dirt and set it out on the porch. Then her sister came to visit and she never got time to put anything in.”
Abby still rocked.
“Something started growing up out of the dirt. They were asking all the neighbors ‘What’s this?’ and nobody knew. Not until Deputy Clarkson stopped by and said, ‘Go get rid of that thing, Hoyt. You’re growing marijuana on your front porch like it’s an herb garden.’
“ ‘How can that be marijuana?’ Hoyt said. ‘Alvie’s been feeding it Miracle-Gro.’ ”
That story brought a little smile. Abby wagged her head, laid her chin on her knees.
“That’s the way it is, then,” Viola said. “Let God do the rest. He already knows what you’re thinking. He already knows what’s growing in your dirt.”
“Oh, Viola.”
“You just don’t look for anything extra to feed a weed with. You don’t give it anything that’ll make its roots go deeper.”
Chapter Fourteen
The telephone call came early Wednesday, only minutes after David had left for the bank and Abby had stepped in the shower. When she first thought she heard a ring, she had soap in her hand and was working up a wet, loose lather over her shoulders, dousing off the suds. Lord, what does it matter if I’m nurturing what I’m feeling? I’m angry and I’m hurt and I’m… I’m justified.
She drizzled water over her knees and focused on soaping her feet. Lord, how could I ever lay that down? She ran a washrag along the sleek curves of her arms, and passed it twice, three times, around the nape of her neck.
The phone rang again. And again. Abby turned off the water and listened.
Whoever it was wasn’t giving up. She climbed out of the shower dripping wet. She toweled off as best she could and wrapped the towel around her middle, then opened the door to the bedroom and picked up the phone. She balanced the receiver between her ear and her shoulder blade. “Hello?”
A beat went by, then two, and no one said a word.
“Hello. Hello?” The whir on the other end, which meant long distance. “Who is this?”
“I’m sorry,” the voice finally came, as breathy as a whisper. “I’m calling to…” The woman hesitated. “Mrs. Treasure?” Another long pause. “Abigail Treasure? Is this you?”
Of course it is, Abby almost said with sarcasm. Who else would it be answering my phone? “Yes, this is Abigail.”
She hadn’t dried off nearly enough. Droplets were sliding down her legs. She shivered and futilely tried to swipe them with a corner of the towel.
“This is…” A pause. A woman’s voice, one that Abby vaguely recognized. “I don’t know if you know me. But I think you do.”
Abby froze, her towel clutched in her fist. Reality hit her and her legs turned to mush. Of course. Of course. “Yes, I know who you are.”
“This is Susan. Susan Roche. I didn’t know if you knew my name.”
Abby made a long, slow descent to the floor. “No. I didn’t.” She flattened her back against the bed and sat there. “Now I do.”
A rush of words. “I know David has explained it all by now. He said he did.”
“Yes.” How strange, hearing another woman speak her husband’s name in such an intimate way. “He has.”
“Is it…? Do you go by Abigail?”
“Sometimes I do. Yes.” Abby waited. She listened, interpreting the other woman’s silence. “I’m sorry,” she said after there was nothing left to do but to speak again. “I really don’t want to talk to you.”
“I can understand that. I feel the same way.”
“Perhaps you’d better tell me why you’ve called, then.”
A moment, and then all pretension of pride was gone. “Well, I need—” All false respect gone, any false posturing Susan Roche might have intended. “I need you to tell David something. I need you to tell him that Samantha is mis
sing.”
“Who?” And then Abby realized. “Oh, I—I see.”
“I thought he’d want to know.”
A chill shot up Abby’s spine. “Yes, I’m sure he will.”
“Will you tell him?”
It seemed so surreal, discussing this subject in such a formal way. As if they were struggling through cloudy, chilling water together. “Of course I’ll tell him. Of course I will.” She hesitated. “Do you feel free to give me any details?”
“She was at camp. A good camp. Camp Plentycoos, where sick children go to spend a week and remember what it’s like to be normal again.”
“She disappeared from camp?” In spite of Abby’s contention with this woman, she couldn’t escape a mother’s pity as well. This is awful. What would I feel like if this were Braden?
“Sam was so excited because they were sewing beads on moccasins this session. And she had a paint horse named Oliver with the sweetest brown heart on his forehead. I thought it was going to be so good.”
“Do you have any idea—” Abby couldn’t go on. What did you ask at a time like this? Do you know if she left? Do you know if somebody took her?
“She stuffed pillows in her sleeping bag last night so they’d think she was sleeping. No one realized it until she missed breakfast this morning.”
“Did she leave a note or anything? Do you think she ran away?”
“No note. No nothing. If she’d gotten a ride from somebody and tried to come home, she would have been here by now.”
“You know I’ll tell David. I’ll go tell him right now.”
“That’s what I was hoping. I would have just phoned him at the office, but I didn’t want him to be alone when he hears—”
Abby glanced at the clock. Gooseflesh raised on her arms. Yes, that’s exactly where David would be this moment. Susan Roche knew David’s schedule just as well as his own wife did. Abby stared at the fist tangled around the phone cord as if the gnarled, curled knuckles twisted into a ball weren’t her own.
“There’s more for you, too,” Susan stammered. “There’s something else you need to hear.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if he’s told you or not. David wrote me a letter last week.”
Abby’s voice, threadlike. “A letter?”
“In it, he said he wanted to meet Samantha, that he wanted a chance to be a father to her.”
“I see.”
No, David wouldn’t have told me about that. He wouldn’t have told me. It’s just another thing.
Inside, Abby became dry bones, burned ashes; if someone tried to touch her raw edges, she would cave in on herself. More choices they hadn’t made together. More deception and prevarication, while he struggled to cover what he’d done.
“I just—”
“It’s okay. It’s really okay.” Although it wasn’t. “You don’t have to say anything else.”
“I didn’t show his letter to her. I didn’t want to speak to her about her father at all. I was still thinking what I wanted her to know.”
“You’ve been hiding her father from her?”
“What good does it do, to unsettle her life like that? When we don’t know how long—”
Susan went mute again. It rattled them both, hearing each other’s breathing on the line. Abby kept thinking, Here she is. The one who has carnal knowledge of my husband. The one—besides me—who’s given birth to his child.
One minute of silence passed, then another and another. Their words hung between them, tangible, unspoken.
My family is falling apart because of you.
My daughter has a right to get well, if someone can help her.
He was with you when I thought he cared about me.
He wanted your marriage to work so I never told him the truth.
Two women who had knowledge of the same man, one for a season and one for a lifetime, trying to make sense out of where such uncommon ground brought them.
It’s so huge in me, Lord. It’s everything I am right now. Abby began to work on the knot in the phone cord. I can’t look at his hands without thinking how he touched this woman’s body when he was also touching mine. I can’t look at his face without seeing all those pictures of our child without me in them.
Abby was still on the floor, sprawled out with her legs in two directions, leaning against the bed. “I don’t know what I’d do if it was me,” she said with sacrificial honesty. “David wants to meet her for David’s sake, I think.”
“I was looking for something else the other day. Digging through the cubicles in my secretary to find an address book with a phone number. When I went back to check for that letter, it wasn’t where I’d left it. I think she may have found it and taken it. Maybe it hasn’t been there since she left for camp.”
“Oh, Susan.” Abby’s heart practically stopped beating in her chest. “You don’t think Samantha might be trying to get to him? To come here?”
A horrifying thought, one that left them both in silent dismay.
Susan’s voice, even over the miles, rang with terror. “An eight-year-old girl traveling alone? How dangerous is that?”
When the hush fell between them again, Abby’s mind raced to a scary, unbidden place.
Pray for her.
Well, how would that be? I can’t do that. Here, let me pray for Samantha to be safe. And then, worst of all, what if she isn’t? Here, yes, let me pray for your daughter while you know my marriage is crumbling around me.
When you know my marriage is collapsing because of you.
Abby couldn’t turn away from it, this thing bigger and stronger than herself, this thing that compelled her, that made her lungs ache. All the talk that might have come, and this arrived like an apparition, from someplace outside of herself, the hardest to grasp of all.
My love never fails.
The single word came with the riffling of the breeze through the blinds and the rustle of the blue-spruce branches against the window.
I don’t have Your love in my heart, Father. Not for Susan Roche and her daughter. Not for my husband, David. They’ve hurt me. They’ve taken down all I believed in about my marriage and myself.
“Abigail?” came the voice from the other end of the line. “Abigail, will you tell him?”
“Susan?” Abby asked, her voice trembling, feeling terrified. “I’d like to pray for Samantha. Will you let me do that? While you’re on the phone?”
The silence was deafening. The distance clicked and hissed and roared between them.
Then, in a miraculous, gentle voice—a broken voice—Susan answered, “You’d do that for Sam?”
“And for you, too. Please.”
“After all we’ve—” Susan Roche broke off.
“It isn’t me doing this,” Abby answered very quietly. “I couldn’t.”
“Oh, please.” The voice became a child’s voice, eager, desperate. “Please. Yes. There are so many things—”
“Okay,” Abby said. “Okay.”
Over the miles, two women clasped their hearts together before God. One who’d believed in her marriage once and who’d had her trust torn away, the other who’d thought for nine years she might not ever be worthy to be prayed for. And God gave Abby the words to speak, because they were not in her own heart.
David walked into his office and found Abby waiting for him. She stood beside his desk with the photograph of their family in her hand.
She set it down fast. The gold frame toppled and fell flat with a metallic smack on the desktop.
“Hello, Abby,” he said as he stood the picture up again, with an odd twist in his gut because he’d caught her looking. “Amazing how times change, isn’t it?” And he looked at it, too.
“Or how times stay the same,” she reminded him, her voice low. “That picture is the only one from the whole year that had my face in it. Do you realize that, David? I think you went a whole year without looking at me.”
David didn’t doubt it. He didn’t want to lo
ok at her now. He’d gotten so tired of defending himself while she accused him, while she carried her betrayed heart aloft like it was a float in a parade.
“You didn’t even take that one, remember? Floyd Uptergrove did, so we could be in it together.”
“Abby, let’s don’t do this to each other anymore.” He lifted his eyes to hers and she glanced away, as if she hadn’t meant for them to go to this place now. But there could be no other place for them to go. Every time they ended up in a room together, it reared up between them. “It’s hurting Braden more, us trying to hide it. He thinks it’s something that’s his fault. He’s heard us. He’s heard you.”
“Please. David. There’s something that’s more important than this.”
“What could be more important than this?” he asked with acid irony. “What, Abby? Because your pride has cost us everything that there is. Your pride is costing your son’s heart.”
Oh, she wanted to say it. She wanted to bite right back at him and ask, “Who’s pride? Who’s pride is doing all this? It takes more than just one!” It served him right, building up to it this way. He’d been defensive since he’d walked in.
Abby tried for a false lilt in her voice but couldn’t quite pull it off, not with the somber news she bore.
“Susan called.”
That got him. He sat hard in his swivel office chair and his defenses went down. “She did? Susan called? What did she call about?”
Their gazes splintered on each other.
Of course, he thought he knew. “Braden didn’t work? The tests didn’t match?”
She shook her head. “That isn’t it. They don’t know about the test yet. The tests take at least five days. And this one had to be couriered. There’s—”
He came up out of his chair. “Abby, is she…?”
“She’s okay. I—I mean, she’s not… Oh, David. This is so hard.” She began to talk and he could see she was hurrying through the story for his sake. She began with the camp and ended with pillows shoved deep inside a sleeping bag. And even as she shared something this important to him, he felt as if the whole world hung between them, an odd, clear wall like the visitation windows at a jail.
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