Reverend of Silence

by Pamela Sparkman

  He looked at me askance before saying, “I came here right after meeting Abigail. I knew she would be the girl for me. I would come here every day and practice gathering my nerve to introduce myself.” His cheeks pinkened at the admission, but he went on. “And after I lost her . . .” He swallowed. “I came here . . . to be alone. I could yell and scream and . . . cry. No man needs an audience for that. Only twice did Sam ever find me here. I think he figured out this was my tree . . . my space. He stayed away so I could fall apart. I loved him for that. He only came to the house to search me out. I look back on that now and I have many regrets. For a solid month, I pushed him away.” Noah bowed his head. “I was just so—heartbroken.” He thumped his chest.

  “You still are,” I said, my own heart breaking for my brother.

  “I still am,” he admitted.

  “Find a way, Noah. Find a way to be with her. Do not let Mr. Clive keep you from her.”

  He nodded, misery etched across his brow.

  I held Noah’s gaze. “Does Sam have a tree? Is that where he is?”

  “Sam’s tree is the woodshed. You should let him have his time with it.”

  “How much time?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “An hour or two. Maybe three.”

  “So he can fall apart?”

  Instead of answering, he asked, “Don’t you have a tree, Lucy? Everyone needs a tree.”

  I looked across the field, holding back my tears. “I suppose Sam is my tree.”

  I pinched my eyes closed and let my head fall against the old hickory. Noah took my hand and scooted closer to my side. I moved my head to his shoulder. We stayed like that, the two of us, underneath that giant tree, until the sun began to set, and then Noah walked with me as far as the woodshed before we parted ways.

  “What do I say to him?” I asked, suddenly feeling uncertain.

  “You don’t have to say anything.” He kissed my forehead. “Just be you and just be there.”

  I felt like an intruder, an interloper. But I had to believe Noah wouldn’t have brought me to Sam’s woodshed if he didn’t think it was all right to do so. Walking up the two wooden steps that led up to the door, I waited a beat before knocking, needing to steady my nerves and take a deep breath. However, before I could do either of those, the door swung open, and both Sam and I gaped at each other with wide eyes, resembling two skittish animals who’d happened upon one another in the wild unexpectedly. My hand went to my throat as though I was going to clutch a set of pearls I did not own. Sam’s gaze followed the motion and lingered on my exposed flesh. I suddenly felt too hot, too vulnerable, too exposed. Even though I was completely attired, and he was most assuredly . . . not. His blond wavy hair was a chaotic mess, and his coat and waistcoat had been cast aside, leaving him in only his shirtsleeves and trousers. He was dishabille, and I’d not been prepared to find him in such a state.

  I looked away and told myself I was being ridiculous. This was Sam. Not some stranger in the woods.

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  Sam’s brows drew taut when he noticed how I trembled. He stepped aside and allowed me entry. The woodshed was not what I’d expected because it wasn’t a woodshed at all. It had been repurposed into a cozy little retreat. An old door served as a desk that rested upon two wooden barrels, one on each end. Personal items were scattered on top. In the back corner, a makeshift bed sat on the floor using piles of straw and old bed linens. A candle inside a jar glowed on a small windowsill. I glanced over my shoulder with a raised brow. Sam had closed the door and was watching me closely, hands gripping the head of his cane.

  Turning fully around, I asked him, “What is this place?”

  “Noah and I found it when we were kids.” His eyes panned around the room. “You like it? It’s taken me a long time to make it look this . . . habitable,” he finished with a smirk.

  I couldn’t help the smile that stole across my face. “Yes, it’s . . . quite charming.” Though my smile was fleeting when his smirk fell, like it had been held up by string and cut with a pair of sewing shears.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  “Noah. Are you mad?”

  Sam gave up his spot by the door and walked toward me, his gait awkward. I supposed it always would be. When he was less than a foot away, he stopped. “No. I’m not mad. I just wasn’t . . . when I heard footsteps, I was surprised. That’s all.”

  I examined his face for the truth. Pure honesty stared back at me. “Do you want me to stay?”

  He nodded, his eyes searching mine . . . searching, searching, ever searching.

  The space between us thrummed, and the air seemed different . . . more alive in this tiny room . . . like the sensation you got right before lightning struck. I stepped back, needing air . . . needing to breathe. Sam limped to the makeshift bed and lowered himself to it, resting his cane on the floor. Perhaps he felt it too and needed the distance to draw breath.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. Because I wasn’t. There was a tightness in my chest, and I felt too light on my feet.

  “I’m trying to be,” he said.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” After all, that was what I had come for, wasn’t it? I’d let him wander in the dark. It was time to bring him out of it if I could.

  Sam’s eyes roamed my face, that searching expression ever-present. “Do you know what I’ve been wondering about today?”

  “Tell me.”

  “This morning . . . at church . . . you said Mr. Wilkshire had kind eyes. Why did you tell him that?”

  I tilted my head, the question taking me aback. “What do you mean?”

  “He wasn’t being kind to you. Why would you say that to him?”

  “I-I don’t know,” I said, feeling a bit like I was being scolded. Then I straightened my shoulders and pointed my chin up. “Outside of my school and my family, people rarely are kind to me. But he was being kind to you. I chose to be kind in return.”

  Sam never took his eyes from mine. “He was being kind to me,” he repeated.

  My heart beat faster, and I wasn’t sure why. “Yes,” I said. “I believed he was genuinely concerned for you. I saw kindness in his eyes. I wasn’t lying. I only thought to tell him so. What he thought or didn’t think about me was irrelevant.”

  Sam lowered his head and shook it. “Irrelevant,” he signed. When he lifted his head again, he looked somewhere over my shoulder, but his eyes held so much emotion. “You are never irrelevant.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  For a long stretch of time, Sam didn’t respond. He sat on his makeshift bed and I stood some distance away, facing him. When his gaze found mine again, he said, “Is it any wonder why I fell in love with you?”

  My heart was full, near bursting, really. “I fell in love with you too.”

  “And I am the luckiest man in the world for it.” I started to say something, but he interrupted. “What should I do,” he asked, “about Mr. Clive? I can’t let him get away with what he did—with what he does.”

  I lowered my eyes, heartsick for him. “I don’t know, Sam. Find your voice somehow. Make somebody hear you. Make them listen.”

  “Like you did today?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  My brows pleated together. “What did I do?”

  “You silenced the arrogance of a bitter old man, and what’s more, he never saw you coming.” Sam smiled, his eyes holding mine. “You don’t have to be loud to be heard, Lucy Marie Hallison. You taught me that.”

  I swallowed back the tears in my throat. “You hear me because you see me.”

  “You’re all I’ve ever seen. I should thank you.”

  My eyes began to mist. “Thank me for what?”

  “Everything. For coming into my life. For being who you are.”

  “Sam—”

  “Thank you for finding me.”

  “I was afraid,” I said.

  “Of what?”


  “Being too late. Noah made me wait. He told me to give you time. So, I waited. Did I wait too long?”

  Sam’s gaze pierced right through me, right down to my soul. “Not too long,” he said, “but I think we have both waited long enough. Our whole lives, haven’t we?”

  He held out his hand. I was there in an instant, not remembering the steps I took that had separated us, eager to take hold of his hand, but then I was on my back, Sam hovering above me, our faces inches apart. My heart smacked against my ribs at the suddenness of it and a laugh bubbled up, ready to break loose. But the smolder in Sam’s gaze killed any trace of humor, and I was suddenly clamoring for breath because he was stealing mine. This was not the broken man I thought I’d find. He looked like a man who had been to the depths of hell, fought to survive, and came back wearing the flames in his eyes—green irises specked with gold. They were setting me on fire, and I would gladly burn with him, for him, and melt right into him.

  He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to mine, softly, but we kept our eyes open. He caressed my cheek with the pad of his thumb. I caressed his scar with the pad of mine. He reduced me to heartbeats and need. Only I wasn’t sure what I needed. I only knew there was an ache growing inside me, and the longer he stared at me like that, with his lips touching mine, the ache grew hungrier . . . needier. His eyelashes lowered as his teeth caught my lower lip, and I felt his chest vibrate and hum. We had shared kisses before. Sweet ones. Innocent ones. This didn’t feel sweet or innocent. It felt like something about to break free and run wild. We had never experienced anything like this before, and my heart clanged inside my chest and pulsed on my lips when they parted underneath Sam’s coaxing and then closed again. We created a rhythm like that, parting, caressing each other’s lips until I thought the fire that ignited within us would burn us to ashes.

  And then his tongue touched mine and I stilled. Sam retreated, searching my face. Let me in, his eyes implored. And who was I to deny him? This man whom I had loved since I was a child and who I would love for the rest of my days. With one fervid nod, Sam lowered his head again, and together we learned how to dance again—with our mouths—with our bodies—with our hearts—with our souls.

  We didn’t need words to communicate. Our hands didn’t try to speak in sign. We spoke in a language that was as old as time itself. And on that night, in that tiny little woodshed, we burned together, and together we rose up into something made whole—into something made new, created out of fire and ash.

  And it was beautiful.

  Love was not hearts and flowers. Ours had never been such. My heart had been broken more times than it had ever been whole. I’d spent most of my life yearning, desiring, wishing, hoping, praying—for more. My love for Lucy had always been this aching beast of a thing—caged—for so long. And then one cruel act, Lucy and I had been nearly ripped apart, and then I had nearly finished the job by pushing her away.

  I supposed it wasn’t a wonder when I finally held her in my arms that the beast inside me roared to life and I didn’t fight to keep it trapped. I’d wanted to set it free. And set it free I did.

  Although Lucy had had her own wild thing inside her. And it had roared to life as well, answering my call. And it was the most beautiful experience of my life because Lucy had said my name. It had slipped past her lips and filled my ears. “Sam!”

  It had surprised me so. I had forgotten how to breathe or why it was important that I should. And then she’d said it again . . . a husky, inelegant sound on panting breaths. And for a moment, I was lost—lost in a memory. We were children again—after I’d met her family for the first time. She had chased me home across the fields . . . when she had stood there, begging me to see her because no one else ever had. I’d wanted her to call out to me then . . . to call my name, forgetting for a split second why she couldn’t. I’d gone home that night and prayed for her and then I wondered how someone I hardly knew could break me so completely. And now, that same girl was calling out my name, and I . . . I forgot how to breathe.

  But Lucy remembered for me. Her kisses were the breath I needed. We were two creatures clinging, needing, yearning. And when our wild hearts had calmed, we had promised ourselves to one another. We would marry. She would be my wife and I would be her husband. We should have done this, I realize, before we gave ourselves to one another. Or perhaps we shouldn’t have let it get that far at all. It was not the done thing, sex before marriage. I was a pastor’s son. I knew better, and I had to force myself to ask Lucy if she regretted it. I don’t know what I would have done if she had said yes. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked into my eyes and said she had promised herself to me a long time ago—in the fields between her house and mine.

  As for Mr. Clive, I couldn’t leave the matter unresolved. I couldn’t. He couldn’t be allowed to go unpunished. Justice still needed to be served. I had taken Lucy’s words to heart. I would find my voice and make someone listen. I devised a plan that I told no one about. It wasn’t something my family and loved ones could help me with anyway. I wasn’t even certain it would work. I wasn’t certain anything would. Powerful people like Theodore Clive could literally get away with murder, or in my case, attempted murder, by buying off other powerful people.

  But they couldn’t buy off everyone, or so I hoped. And that was what I had to hang my proverbial hat on.

  Sam

  One month later.

  I opened the door to the office on the corner of State Street and Main and quietly glanced about, shifting the small package underneath my arm as I shut the door. Five desks and five men filled out the space. Two on either side of the room, and one at the back, facing the entrance. It was the man who occupied this desk, the one at the back, who asked, “May I help you?” The others went on about their daily business.

  I made the short distance across the room, my boots and the thump of my cane on the wood floor seemed louder to my ears. Though it was probably just me and probably just because I was nervous. When I neared the gentleman, I said, “I’m here to see Mr. Davenport.”

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “He’s expecting me, yes.”

  “Your name?”

  “Samuel Burke.”

  “Very well,” he said, coming to a stand. “Won’t you have a seat? I’ll let him know you’re here.” He pointed to a Victorian-style chair upholstered in navy blue with a needlepoint floral design. It looked like it had been plucked right out of a lady’s parlor and randomly set here in this drab little space. It seemed completely out of place. I briefly wondered if it had been someone’s idea of a practical joke to put it there.

  “All right,” I muttered as he marched off down a narrow hallway. I took the seat he’d offered, placing the parcel in my lap and resting my cane beside me. I caught the scrutinizing gazes from the four other men who occupied the office and I offered a smile to each of them. They demurred, eventually smiling in return without nary a word before their eyes fell back to whatever they were involved with. I continued my survey of the room. Bookshelves lined one complete wall, the spines worn and faded. A ladder was needed to reach the top. Some stairs went up and some went down. I thought I perhaps knew where they led. The walls were gray, the desks were worn, and nothing about the space said come in and stay a while. Indeed, it said go away, we’re busy.

  Footsteps from the hallway alerted me to the fact that the gentleman from before was returning.

  “Mr. Davenport is ready to see you now. If you’ll follow me?”

  Gripping my cane, I used it to stand, tucked the package underneath my arm, and followed the gentleman as instructed. I appreciated the fact he didn’t hurry, allowing me to catch up. When we reached the last door on the left, he said, “This is it. Would you like a refreshment? Coffee? Tea, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. . . .?”

  “Lundy. Mr. Stuart Lundy. Mr. Davenport’s assistant.” He was a slender fellow with a pointy chin, thinning hair, and eyes like a mouse, beady
and curious.

  “Well,” I said. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  He dipped his chin and opened the door for me. “If you need anything, just ask. Enjoy your meeting.”

  I pushed the door open and Mr. Davenport looked up from where he sat but did not stand. I stepped further into the room. Light poured in from the one window. Dust floated and danced in the haze behind his head.

  “Mr. Burke. Come in, come in. Please, have a seat.”

  The seat he indicated fit in better in this space than the one in the front office. This one had a solid mahogany frame, upholstered in black leather. I sat, once again propping my cane against the arm of the chair and resting the package on my lap.

  “What did you bring?” he asked, pointing to it.

  I placed it on his desk. His eyes lifted to mine. “Open it,” I said.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s what I promised you. The story for your paper.”

  Mr. Davenport slid the pages out of the envelope, skimmed through the pages, then sat back in his chair. “All I needed were the facts, Mr. Burke. I write my own stories.”

  I angled my head just so. “Not my story.”

  He pointed a long, slim finger at me and shook it. “When you sent a note around last week asking me to meet you at the park, you said you had information . . . one that would shake the foundation of this town. I agreed to meet with you, and at that meeting, you said you could provide me with facts and testimonies that would implicate a prominent businessman of attempted murder.” He tapped the pages with his index finger. “This will take up the entire four-page folio of my newspaper! What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Read it,” I said coolly.

  “Read it,” he repeated. “And then what?”

  “Print it.”

  He laughed mockingly. “I am a newspaperman. If you wanted to write a book—”

  “It’s not a book.”

  “Mr. Burke—”