A Sad Soul Can Kill You

by Catherine Flowers

  Even though Lorenzo had been faithful in attending his counseling sessions, they were still not on speaking terms. Her heartbeat quickened. What did he want to talk to her about? “Talk on,” she said without looking at him. She wanted to give him some of his own medicine, treat him like he’d treated her on so many occasions when she’d wanted to talk to him. “I’m listening.”

  “Can I come in?”

  Her body stiffened. “For what? You never want to come in any other time.”

  “I want to talk to you in private.”

  “Serenity’s at school,” she said as she continued to flip through the magazine.

  Lorenzo sat down on the bed next to her and watched his wife flinch as he gently took the magazine out of her hands. “I have something to tell you,” he said.

  Tia’s heartbeat sped up even faster. What is it now? Another woman? Another man? She looked at him. He was holding his head down, and she could tell something was wrong. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’ve been concentrating on a lot of negative things for a long time,” Lorenzo said. “I had this automatic release shield in place. It was kind of like my own protective mechanism, but after awhile, I just kept it up all the time and it caused me to become cold and cynical.”

  “No kidding,” Tia said sarcastically. “Is this what you learned in counseling?”

  Lorenzo raised his head. “Please,” he said softly, “don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”

  Tia’s neck stiffened. There was something different in his tone. There was a tenderness in his voice that she hadn’t heard in a long time. It made her feel uncomfortable, but she also sensed that it was genuine.

  “God has a purpose for me,” Lorenzo said. “I’ve been traveling on the wrong road for a long time. Now, I’m trying to get back on the right path, and I realize part of my journey is going to have be a solitary one.” He looked at her with tears in his eyes. “But I realized something else too. It doesn’t have to be a lonely and hostile one.”

  Tia’s chest rose and fell quickly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Tia,” he took a deep breath and continued, “when I was eleven years old . . .”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Hours later, Lorenzo was amazed at how cathartic it felt to relinquish his secret to his wife. It wasn’t just the telling of it; he had already done that twice—once to his parents, once in counseling. It was finally being able to share it with her and discover that she was not going to judge him or blame him for what had happened.

  He’d made the decision to trust her, and it had not been a mistake. After he had finished telling her his story, Tia cried with him and rocked him in her arms. She was his blessing, and had been all along, but he had been unable to see that. He held onto her tightly. It was an awful thing to throw away a blessing.

  “Today,” Lorenzo said, “my counselor told me things would get better with time. And they already have.” He wiped the tears from Tia’s face. “Now, it’s about to get even better.”

  “What do you mean?” Tia asked.

  “On Sunday, when the pastor offers the call for salvation I’m going to rededicate myself to Jesus,” Lorenzo said. “And I want to be baptized again.” He smiled. “All things new.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Tia said as her eyes became misty all over again.

  “You know,” Lorenzo said, “counseling helped me to look at the shredded pieces of our marriage, and my life in general . . . which caused the shredded pieces of our marriage.” He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  “Instead of dealing with my issues, I took pills. Instead of trying to heal, I numbed up, and I pushed you and Serenity away in the process. But now,” he pointed to his forehead with his index finger, “now I realize that I just can’t afford to keep letting my mind stay weighted down with all these dark and gloomy memories from my past.”

  Tia sat with her hands in her lap and listened.

  “It’s like the counselor said,” he continued, “if I’m going to live in the past, then I may as well still be there or be dead because that’s not living.” He paused. “The funny thing is, after I fell and ended up in the hospital, I was wishing God had just let me die.

  “Now, I want to live,” he said. “And if I’m going to live, then I need to live freely!”

  Tia marveled at the change in his demeanor. He’d left the house one way and had returned a completely different person. She wanted to hug him, but doubt crept in. Had he really changed that much? She remembered his reaction the last time she tried to hug him in the hospital and decided against it.

  Her grandmother’s words came back to her: “get rid of those secrets.” Tia had seen and been a recipient of the damage caused by secrets. Now, after hearing Lorenzo let go of a secret he’d carried around with him for practically all of his life, Tia knew she would have to confess her wrongdoing if she were ever to have a chance at living freely . . . with or without Lorenzo.

  Her heart was beating way too fast. “I’m proud of you, Lorenzo,” she said. And before she knew it, she was crying heavily.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked gently. “Why are you crying so hard?”

  She started to hyperventilate. “I . . . did . . . a . . . terrible . . . thing.”

  “Tia, calm down,” he said, placing his hand on her back. “What did you do?”

  “Something . . . really . . . wrong.”

  “What?”

  “I . . . met . . . another . . . man.”

  “You met another man?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  She lowered her head.

  “Did you sleep with him?” he repeated firmly.

  “Yes,” she said without looking up.

  Lorenzo remained silent. “When?”

  “Back in January,” she said softly.

  “Do you want to be with him?”

  She raised her head quickly. Her eyes widened. “No,” she said. “It only happened once, and I realized it was a mistake.” She stopped crying. “I realized that no matter how bad our marriage was that still didn’t give me the right to be unfaithful to you.” The tears returned. “I just wanted you to love me, but you kept pushing me away.”

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “I’m partially to blame for this too. I know I abandoned you emotionally. I checked out. I wasn’t there when you needed me, and I’m sorry. Some people might say I cheated on you too because I chose pills over you. That’s all I wanted. Some people might even say the drugs became my lover. You just had one in the flesh and blood.”

  “Oh my God,” she cried, covering her face with her hands.

  “What? What is it now, Tia?”

  She continued to cry. How could she tell him that the man she’d slept with was the same man who had kidnapped their daughter? “I’m so sorry, Lorenzo. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

  He moved her hands from her face. “Look at me,” he said.

  She kept her head down.

  “Look at me,” he said again as he gently lifted her head up.

  “I’ll forgive you. If you . . .”

  “No, wait,” she said solemnly. “You don’t know the rest of the story.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “The man was our neighbor.”

  Lorenzo’s mind began to race. “Tony?” He shook his head. “Please tell me it wasn’t Tony.”

  “It wasn’t Tony. It was the man next door to Tony.”

  Lorenzo put one hand on his forehead and stretched out his other arm. “Stop! Hold up! You mean the same man who kidnapped Serenity?”

  “I didn’t know,” Tia said. She couldn’t stop crying.

  “Homer?” Lorenzo jumped up from the bed.

  “Lorenzo, wait,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  He stood breathing heavily as he stared down at her. “I need some time to process this,” he said and stormed out of the room.

  Chapter Forty-nin
e

  Lorenzo grabbed his coat and went back out to the garage. He got in his car and called Mark, his counselor.

  “Hello, this is Mark speaking.”

  “Mark,” Lorenzo said to the calm voice on the other end of the line, “this is Lorenzo.”

  “Hey, what’s up, man? Is everything okay?”

  “No, not really,” Lorenzo said, still breathing heavily. “My wife just told me she had an affair with the same man who kidnapped our daughter.” He gripped his cell phone and shook his head. “I don’t know if I can handle this, man.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Mark said calmly. “When did this happen?”

  “She said back in January.”

  “And what were you doing during this time?”

  Creases appeared in Lorenzo’s forehead. He looked at the phone. “What kind of question is that, man? You know what I was doing.”

  “Tell me.”

  Lorenzo was silent.

  “Come on, now,” Mark encouraged. “Don’t get quiet on me now. You’ve been making excellent progress. And you should know by now, communication is the key. So I’m going to ask you again—what were you doing during this time?”

  A lump formed in Lorenzo’s throat. He swallowed hard. “I was getting high,” he said as a heavy sensation settled in the core of his soul.

  “Which means what?”

  Lorenzo hesitated, but he knew where Mark was heading. Lorenzo had come this far and had faced his demons. He could not go backward now. “I wasn’t there when she needed me,” he said quietly.

  “Where were you?”

  “I mean, I was there. But emotionally, I wasn’t.”

  “And do you think your wife knew this man would end up kidnapping your daughter?”

  “I doubt it,” Lorenzo said, “but if she wouldn’t have been messing with him none of this would have happened.”

  “How do you know? How do you know this man didn’t already have his mind set on your daughter? He could have been using your wife to get to your daughter.”

  “I don’t know, but it’s still messed up.”

  “I agree,” Mark said. “That’s why God tells us we reap what we sow. There’s a consequence for every negative action . . . for all of us. For me, it was years of trying to mend all the hearts I broke and the relationships I damaged during my years of addiction.” He spoke slowly into the mouthpiece. “You checked out of life, man. You numbed yourself with pills and neglected your family in the process. What did you think would happen?”

  Lorenzo’s heart felt too big for his chest. “So you’re saying this is all my fault?”

  “Of course not. There you go getting defensive again.”

  “Well, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying your wife has to own up to her wrongdoing as well. And the bottom line is that both of you will have to make up your mind to either come together as a united front or go ahead and give the enemy what he wants, which is to see your marriage completely dissolved.”

  Lorenzo painfully remembered how, when the pain of his past had become too much to bear, he had turned away from God instead of turning to Him. He’d also rejected Tia and Serenity as well. His counselor was right. What did he think would happen? The problem was . . . he hadn’t thought at all. If ever he needed the Lord’s strength—and he had—he would certainly need to call on it now if he and Tia were going to get through this.

  Lorenzo stayed on the phone with Mark a little while longer. The conversation ended with a prayer, and then Lorenzo thanked Mark and hung up. He gripped the steering wheel and stared straight-ahead at the dingy garage wall. He looked at the other two walls on both sides of him; they were just as dingy. He remembered painting each of the walls white shortly after moving into the house. Now, he couldn’t even remember how or when the walls had gotten so dirty.

  Lorenzo got out of his car and went back into the house. He walked into the living room and sat down.

  Tia heard him come in and slowly walked down the steps.

  His back was turned to her as he sat on the couch.

  “Lorenzo,” she said.

  “Don’t talk to me right now,” he said. “Not now.”

  She crossed her arms. “When you talked to me, I listened. Now I need to talk and have you listen. After that, we don’t have to talk anymore.” She shifted her weight. “It’s not like it’ll be the first time.”

  He turned briefly to look at her, then turned back around.

  She shifted her weight again. “For most of our marriage,” she said, “I always wondered if there was something wrong with me. After we got married, you changed . . . or I guess you were always that way. I just didn’t know it at the time.” She stared at his back. “You kept it hidden.”

  Lorenzo lowered his head slightly as she continued.

  “When you would have your up-and-down moods, I always thought it was because of me.” She placed a finger on the side of her cheek. “Now, I know it wasn’t. Now, I know what you were dealing with. But back then, I didn’t, so I blamed myself. And I never knew what to do to make it better.”

  Tia watched the rise and fall of Lorenzo’s shoulders as she leaned back against the wall. “I tried to be a good wife even when you rejected me over and over again, even when you made me feel like I wasn’t enough for you. But a person can only be rejected for so long. I started feeling like a failure because of your rejection and all the things I told myself it meant.” She rubbed the sides of her forehead. “Then I just got tired of trying to please you and be what you needed.” She threw her arms up into the air, “Especially when I didn’t even know what that was.”

  She walked around to face him. “Can you believe I was actually afraid that you would leave me? That’s how much in denial I was.” She put her hand over her heart. “I couldn’t even admit that, emotionally, you had left me a long time ago. And then I told myself I should have left you right after Serenity was born like I had planned to do. But you said things would be different, and I believed you. So I stayed.” She sighed.

  “Our marriage never really had a fair start to begin with. It’s been lopsided for so long that I’m not sure if it’s ever really been balanced. All I know, Lorenzo, is that I loved you, and I would have done anything for you. But you made it clear for years that the feeling was not reciprocal.” She stood in front of him staring at his semilowered head.

  “And now,” she said wearily, “thirteen years later, I find out why. I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I hope you can forgive me just as I’m willing to forgive you.” She did not wait for a response from him. She wasn’t expecting one. She turned to leave the room. “Now,” she said, “I’m done.”

  Lorenzo remained still. The only thing moving was the increasing rise and fall of his shoulders. Done? He looked down at his clenched fist. What did she mean, she was done? It couldn’t be over now. Not when he had finally taken the first steps to get back on the right path. He looked out the window. “You’re going to have to help me through this, Lord,” he whispered.

  He watched the melting ice continue to drip from the gutter just above the living-room window. How many times would he keep messing up? How many times would he have to say he was sorry? He was ready to let it go . . . every burden, every worry, every fear. He wanted it all dissolved—once and for all. He was so tired. “Lord, give me strength,” he said as he slowly rose from the sofa.

  He walked toward the stairs and stopped. What if she was up there packing? What would he say? He held onto the banister and ascended the stairs one by one. The bedroom door was open and he saw her sitting on the side of the bed staring out the window. He quickly scanned the room. There was no suitcase in sight.

  He sat down next to her. “This is messed up,” he said.

  “Which part?” she asked as she continued looking out the window.

  He smiled sadly. “All of it. So much time has been wasted. So many mistakes have been made.”

  “I know.” She took a deep breath. “
I understand if you can’t forgive me. I might not forgive me either . . . at least not right away.”

  “Well, like I said,” he began patting the top of his knee, “I’ve made my mistakes too.” He slowly took her hand and covered it with his own. “But I meant what I said earlier about living and being free. You and me,” he said, “we need to make a fresh start. We did things wrong for thirteen years. Now, we’re going to do it right. This time, we’re going to let God be in control all the way.”

  “Like we should have let Him all along,” Tia said.

  Lorenzo squeezed her hand. “You’re right.”

  The icicles continued to melt away, disintegrating as the freezing temperatures outside began to subside. That night Lorenzo did something he hadn’t done in a long time—he slept in the bedroom, in the bed, with his wife.

  Chapter Fifty

  It had been a cold and brutal winter. Everyone was thanking God that April had finally arrived. The Sparks family was especially thankful to God as they walked through the doors of the First Temple Church. Lorenzo led Tia and Serenity down the aisle to the second row where Tony and his family sat. After she sat down, Tia took a prayer card out of the holder on the back of the seat in front of her. She began writing on it as the choir started to sing:

  “No tears in heaven, no sorrows given.

  All will be glory in that land; . . .”

  As the song ended, the pastor walked up to the podium. “Yes,” he said, “no tears in heaven. Can I get an amen?”

  “Amen,” Lorenzo said louder than everyone else. He looked down the row at Tony. Tony had risen above the pain and misery of addiction and had stayed that way for more than twenty years. To Lorenzo, that really did equate to being delivered as Tony said he was. And that was exactly the kind of freedom Lorenzo wanted.

  He thought about the God-filled testimonies of the others at the Christian-based treatment center. Ironically, it was their strength that had helped him to admit his weakness. It was their willingness to move past their own personal trauma that had given him the courage to speak out about what had happened to him so many years ago. It had been the beginning of his healing, and Lorenzo knew God was all up in that.