Safe from Harm (9781101619629)

by Evans, Stephanie Jaye

  • • •

  About an hour later I pulled out of the garage and Annie grabbed something from the garage freezer before slipping in next to me. She waited expectantly, and when I didn’t back the car out, she looked at me.

  “What?”

  “What’s that?” I gestured to the foil-wrapped package inside the Ziploc bag.

  Annie waited a beat, her eyes on mine. “What has it been the last four hundred times I’ve pulled a package like this out of the freezer?”

  “Pound cake.”

  “It’s pound cake this time, too.”

  “Liz is diabetic,” I said.

  “Oh, shoot. That’s right. Okay, then, Mark and the kids can eat it.”

  “Annie, there’s no sugar in the house. It’s a hard-and-fast.”

  “It’s a wha . . . oh, forget it.” She opened the car door and took the five steps to toss the cake back into the freezer. She stared into the interior for a moment and then slammed it shut. Once back in the car, she slammed that door shut, too.

  “We’re going empty-handed, then. I sometimes have some cheese straws frozen but there have been three showers over the last month and I’m flat out.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It would have been nice,” she said. “It’s hard for people to get mad at you when you’ve handed them a homemade pound cake.”

  I smiled as I turned the corner. Pound cake diplomacy.

  The Pickersley-Smythes don’t live far from us, you can walk there in fifteen minutes if you take the greenbelts that cut across neighborhoods, or detour across the golf course. It’s about ten minutes by car. But it’s a different neighborhood and the homes cost more than three times what ours would sell for—and we couldn’t afford our house if we had to buy it at today’s prices.

  Their two-and-a-half-story red brick wasn’t one of the biggest homes in Sweetwater. It was an older home—by Sugar Land standards. The landscaping was mature and the oaks full grown and you would have had trouble believing that where the house stood there had once been fields of rice—when I was a kindergartener, that’s all there was out here.

  We sat in our car for a moment before we faced the Pickersley-Smythes.

  “Do you want to say a prayer, Bear?” Annie said.

  “I’ve been praying ever since I woke up this morning. Let’s get it done.”

  Liz met us with a smile, which was a better start to this meeting than I’d hoped for, and showed us into a small sitting room that held a love seat piled with decorative pillows, two chairs, a low table and about four hundred pictures of Toby and Tanner being blond and photogenic. There was a white Persian cat sitting on the love seat. He slipped out of the room when we came in.

  I said, “Is Mark here, Liz? Could he join us?” Because I only wanted to tell this story once.

  “When we saw you drive up, he went to wake up the girls.” Liz made a small adjustment to the bowl of roses on the table. “They were having so much fun last night, we let them sleep in. Teenagers.” She smiled, the picture of the calm and indulgent mother.

  Annie looked at me and I hesitated and we heard a tumble of steps down the stairs followed by Mark’s more measured tread. Toby and Tanner burst into the room.

  “There’s no Jo,” said one of the three-year-olds, hopping to a stop at his mother’s knees. He was pleased with himself—the first to bring this unexpected news. Liz licked her thumb and wiped at something invisible on his immaculate face.

  “Jo gone,” said the other, confirming the news. “Phoebe is still sleepy.” He put his hands together, laid his head on them and made a snoring sound. His brother gave him a push, but he ignored him, snoring louder.

  Mark came into the room, smiling, but looking puzzled.

  “Hey, guys—I don’t know where Jo’s got to. I checked the bathroom, too.”

  The first twin said, “Jo gone! Jo gone!”

  Annie said, “She’s home, we—”

  Now the second twin joined in on the chant, “Jo gone! Jo gone!”

  Mark said, “You picked her up early? Then—”

  “Jo gone!”

  “The girls had a disagreement last night,” I said. “That’s why Annie Laurie and I wanted to—”

  Liz’s smile had stretched and thinned. “This can’t be over that blender mess, can it? I explained to Jo that we have a hard-and—”

  “Jo gone!” They were accompanying themselves with a hop-kick dance step.

  “No,” I said.

  Mark corralled the twins. “Go ask Phoebe to put on Bob the Builder for you. Tell her Daddy wants her to get dressed and come down.”

  The boys ran off singing or screaming the theme song, “Bob the Builder—Can we fix it? Bob the Builder—yes, we can!”

  Mark sat down across from us and laced his fingers over his stomach. “What’s up, Bear?”

  Liz kept her smile, but you could see it was a struggle. She spread her hands on her thighs and leaned toward us. “I may have upset Jo a little bit when I found the kids messing around in the kitchen, I—”

  Mark put a hand over hers. “That’s not why they’re here, Liz. It’s not about the Kool-Aid.” He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  I cleared my throat. Annie gave my knee an encouraging squeeze. I said, “Yesterday Phoebe came to see me at the church.”

  “What time was this? Before they went to the movies?” Mark wanted to know.

  “It was before lunch—”

  “During school hours, then?” His forehead was puckered.

  “Yeah. She said she wanted to talk to me, which, of course, was fine, I was happy to, ah . . . See, church policy is that I don’t meet with women, ah, girls . . .”

  Annie said to Liz, all woman to woman, “Bear doesn’t meet with any woman one on one—I mean, there’s a couple of rooms up at the church that are soundproofed, so what you say is private, but they have a glass wall so nobody can misinterpret what’s going on. Or Rebecca, you’ve met Rebecca, haven’t you, Liz? Rebecca will stay in the room with Bear and whoever.”

  Mark said, “Phoebe wanted to talk to you about what?”

  I said, “When Phoebe said she wanted to talk to me—”

  “What did she want to talk to you about?” said Mark. “Is something wrong?” He turned to his wife who had gotten very still.

  “Well, we never quite got there, because . . .” I stopped because I could hear someone on the stairs, a slow, soft thump thump. We all waited.

  Phoebe slouched into the hall, looked in at us. Her eyes were smudgy with makeup, but I was glad to see her cheek didn’t bear the mark of Jo’s slap. She wore a pair of crumpled boxers and a green T-shirt that had KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON printed in white across the chest. After a quick scan, she turned away. She stood with her back to us, her hands on her slim hips. Phoebe gave a gusty sigh, and said, “What?” It looked like she was asking the dining room.

  Mark said, “Phee. Come in.” She didn’t move but Mark waited and she finally turned around and made it as far as the doorjamb where she propped her lean frame. She looked at no one, her arms were crossed and her thin, white hands cupped her elbows.

  “I thought Jo was going to spend the night?” her dad said.

  “She changed her mind.” Her eyes flickered over the pictures of her half brothers. I didn’t see any pictures of Phoebe displayed.

  Mark said, “Why did she change her mind? And what did you go up to the church for? What did you want to talk about? Is there something wrong? You haven’t said anything to me.”

  Phoebe gave me a slow look. In it was a lot of anger over yesterday’s humiliations and my dismissal. I was about to pay for that ineptitude—I could see it coming and I started to lift myself out the mass of cushions I was sunk in.

  I opened my mouth to tell Mark and Liz what Phoebe had said to Jo, my
idea being that it would be better for them to hear it from me first, for me to meet this head-on, but Annie Laurie gave my knee a restraining squeeze, and I sat back down. My course wasn’t clear enough for me to override her.

  Annie said, “Phoebe?” Phoebe looked at the ceiling with its ten inches of crown molding. “Jo came home with a wild story. I wonder if she misunderstood you? Jo can be so dramatic, and she doesn’t always stop to think.”

  Phoebe looked at me again, and her eyes narrowed. I thought, Here it comes . . . but then her eyes met Annie’s.

  There was no accusation in Annie’s eyes, no mockery, no dare. Annie’s eyes were grave but open and loving. Phoebe met them full-on. The anger fell away and what I saw in Phoebe’s face then was grief. Another loss, this substitute mother who had been put out of her reach because of my careless girl.

  Phoebe’s head dropped. “She could have misunderstood.”

  “Misunderstood what?” said Liz. I think Liz had been afraid this was going to be about her—some revelation that Phoebe could use to put her difficult stepmother in as uncomfortable a position as Phoebe had been put in, living in a home that wasn’t her home, second always to the beautiful twins. If what Phoebe told Jo was true, if those boys had been on their way before Mark had ended his marriage to Jenny, then Phoebe certainly had the ammunition.

  “I hope you don’t feel like we’ve mistreated you, Phoebe, that we haven’t been fair to you,” Annie said.

  That was a judicious word choice—if Annie had said “kind,” I don’t know how we would have come out of this, because neither Jo nor I had been especially kind. Only Annie had truly been that.

  “What did you see Bear about?” Mark said again.

  Phoebe shifted her weight and colored. She opened her mouth, but I cut in.

  “Mark? Can that be private? I want Phoebe to feel like she can come see her minister”—keeping it on a professional level, there—“when she wants to. That okay?” I smiled at Phoebe. Her face stayed neutral—I was all good with neutral.

  Mark glanced at Liz, but he didn’t wait for her yes or no. “That’s fine, Bear. I’m glad she has you to go to.”

  Considering how I had handled her first visit, I was certain it would also be her last. I don’t know how else I could have handled what happened yesterday, but there had to have been a better way. I smiled, slapped my thighs and stood up.

  As we said our good-byes, the boys streamed down the stairs and hung on Phoebe’s arms. They wanted another Bob the Builder show and they wanted Phoebe to watch it with them. Before she could escape with them, Annie Laurie stepped over to Phoebe and put her arms around the girl, drawing her close. Phoebe was taller than Annie, but Annie held her tight and rocked from side to side for a minute. Very slowly, Phoebe put her arms up and hugged Annie back. Annie whispered something in Phoebe’s ear, then pulled back and held Phoebe’s shoulders so she could look the girl in the face.

  “I mean it, now, you hear me?” Annie said. Phoebe’s eyes shone with tears. She nodded and then climbed the stairs with Toby and Tanner.

  Liz followed us out the door, her smile overbright.

  “Well. A lot went on in there but I still don’t have a clue what. I’ve got to tell you, Annie Laurie, I’ve never gotten a hug from that girl. I’ve poured money into her, tried to take her shopping, but she’s never given me so much as a smile or a thank-you, not unless Mark drags it out of her.” Liz stood in front of her beautiful home, trim and toned and dressed like a woman from a catalog. And completely clueless.

  Annie laughed. “She didn’t give me a hug, Liz. I took it.” And then Annie put her arms around Liz and took a hug from her, too. Liz’s arms hung straight at her sides until it was almost too late. Just as Annie Laurie was beginning to pull away, Liz’s arms came up and she clasped Annie to her hard. Annie’s face went soft.

  “It’s going to be okay, Liz. Everything’s going to be okay,” Annie said.

  We didn’t know it as we drove away, but Annie Laurie was wrong. Everything was not going to be okay. Everything was going to fall apart.

  Five

  It started falling apart the next week.

  I left the Pickersley-Smythes’ that Saturday feeling somewhat better about the Phoebe/Jo situation. It suited me to have Annie be my ambassador with the girl. Even if Phoebe had decided not to try to convince the fellowship that I was a rapacious scoundrel, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time with her. She was too unpredictable. Sure, Annie had Phoebe feeling all soft and mushy now, but that didn’t mean she’d be feeling that way tomorrow. Still. I’d give the girl a chance, I told myself. I’d try to be fair, like Annie Laurie had said.

  But I was done being fair with Phoebe Pickersley when I got the call the following Saturday night from one of our summer interns, Jonathon Reece. His was only the first call of many.

  The church hires six to eight interns every summer, college students who are considering the ministry as a profession. We take the selection very seriously because not only are these young people influencing our kids, but we as a church are possibly influencing their decision about whether or not to pursue the ministry. That’s a responsibility, and our vetting process goes on for months before the kids come to work for us. We have our interns chosen by early February at the latest.

  Interns spend the two summer months living with local families and helping our full-time youth ministers supervise the extra service and recreational activities that we plan for our middle and high school kids during the summer. Jonathon Reece was a twenty-year-old black student from Abilene Christian University, and I don’t mind telling you, I’d actively courted the boy. His grades were better than good and he was a fine speaker, thoughtful and considered. He was entertaining, but he didn’t play to the crowd too much, a hazard when you’re in your very early twenties and you find yourself in a position of authority over kids close to your own age.

  Jonathon could easily have chosen to go to one of the large, prestigious black churches—the Fifth Ward Church of Christ had invited him, and they have more than fifteen hundred members. I understood that even the famed Figueroa Church of Christ in Los Angeles had expressed an interest. But while our church is pretty diverse for a Texas Church of Christ—which means it’s more diverse than “not at all”; we do have a handful of black families—I felt honored that Jonathon had chosen us. When I asked him why he’d picked our white-bread church to spend his summer at, he told me he believed the Lord had led him to our church. He’d put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I think your rich white kids need me, Brother Wells.” He was smiling but his eyes were still and sure. He meant just what he’d said.

  What had really won me over was Jonathon’s essay. We ask our potential interns to put down on paper why they want to serve as youth ministers at our church. Many churches do the same, and most candidates write one essay and then tweak it a little for each church. The papers usually include generic stuff, like how much they enjoy kids, or how their own youth group had left an impression on them (not that any of them were long out of youth groups themselves), same old, same old.

  But Jonathon’s essay was a reflective meditation on the role of a youth minister. He acknowledged that one couldn’t be a youth minister for long before inevitably growing out of the role—and that he saw an internship as the first step on the journey into the role of full-time pastor. He said his mother had always wanted her eldest son to be a minister, but Jonathon’s elder brother had chosen a different road. He was in prison, serving out the last month of a three-year sentence for selling prescription drugs illegally. He’d be out by the time Jonathon was interning.

  Jonathon wrote that he had spent time and prayer examining his heart—as much as he loved his mother, he didn’t want to pursue the ministry as a way to compensate for her disappointment in his brother—and had come to the conclusion that he was genuinely called to the ministry.

  The youth
group retreat to New Braunfels was the first overnight trip for the summer.

  It was June second, a few weeks before Jo would leave for New York, and school had been out for exactly two days. As was usual, the church high school youth group had made the three-hour trek to New Braunfels, to spend two days and nights tubing the spring-fed Guadalupe River. Jo and about two hundred kids from our youth group were there. It would be Phoebe’s first overnighter with the youth group and Jo’s last before heading off to New York City and ballet school. I had made the trip a hundred times myself, in junior high, high school and college. You would be hard-pressed to find a better way to spend a hot Texas summer day than to float along the icy waters between the limestone cliffs that line the river. There are times when the river is nearly tube to tube, it’s so full. Parties will lash their tubes together to keep from being separated—some tie the tubes in a circle and stick a cooler of beer in the center so everyone has easy access, but of course we don’t allow beer on church trips.

  It was a Saturday night, Sunday morning really, and my phone buzzed. I groped for it and saw it was Jonathon Reece calling.

  “Hey, Jonathon—Jo okay?” Next to me, Annie sat up in bed and pushed her hair off her face, looking a question at me.

  “Yeah, she’s fine.” Jonathon’s voice was tight and strained. “Listen. I think I’m in big trouble here.”

  I told Annie that Jo was fine and got out of bed and padded to the family room. Baby Bear heard me and came down to join me.

  “What is it, Jonathon?” I flipped on the overhead fan in the dark room and settled into my easy chair—I’ve dealt with the midnight crisis of faith before.

  “Man. Give me a second.” There was a long pause and then Jonathon’s voice came back on. “I took a second to pray,” he said. “I want to tell it to you exactly the way it went down, that work for you?”