Amongst The Flames: A Contemporary Christian Romance (Embers and Ashes Book 1) (16 page)

I
won’t lie. I was skeptical of the change in Megan after she arrived back home. I was helping with the boys around the house on my days off and spending time with my family instead of my friends. But something still felt off about our relationship. There was something missing. I wasn’t sure what it was. We were going to church three times a week and I had cut all the excess time out of my life with friends, but a couple rare occasions when I’d get together with them for golf or poker. Not because Megan asked me to, but because I felt my priorities had changed.

One afternoon a few months after Megan had came back, we found ourselves deep in a sticky and hot August heat wave. The kind of heat that hits you like a brick wall when you walk out into it and all your clothing instantly sticks to every part of your body. Megan was out with the boys at a friend’s house that had air conditioning while I was at home waiting for the repair guy to fix ours. Plopping onto the couch to relax after helping Megan into the car with the boys, I took a deep breath in as the box fan blew the warm air about the room. I spotted my Bible on the bookcase across the room. I hadn’t been reading as much as I was previously. I had fallen off track a little.

Flipping the Bible open as I stood there at the bookcase, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a notebook sticking out from underneath the bottom of the bookcase. That’s strange, I thought to myself as I bent down to investigate. I hadn’t ever seen the notebook before.

Pulling it out from underneath, I opened the notebook to find it was a journal of Megan’s. It was a detailed account of our relationship. Flipping to the beginning, I took my seat back on the couch to read, setting my Bible aside.

July 2, 1998

Today, I met the man I will marry. He’s a firefighter, and while he’s not Hank Hillman, he’s downright gorgeous! A smile like one I haven’t ever seen before and the kindest eyes I have ever looked into! His muscles bulge from the sleeves of his tee shirt and he was so sweet to me... But Daddy said I can’t date him, but the look Cole gave me today made me think it doesn’t matter what Daddy says. My heart wants Cole Taylor.

Xoxo

Megan

Smiling, I flipped through the dates and entries until I saw one marked during our time of separation. My heart about stopped as I flipped backwards to avoid reading it. Do I read them? I wondered. Do I need to? Should I? I have a right to know, I told myself. She is my wife and we were married during that time! I stared long and hard at the journal entry of when she packed up and left and debated on turning the page to see what really happened in Seattle. Just a little peek won’t be bad… Or would it? Glancing over at my Bible, I saw the little folded piece of paper sticking out from the edge of the papers. It reminded me of talking to Micah. Everything must be funneled through God, I thought to myself.

Suddenly the phone rang, breaking my concentration. It was Micah.

“Hey Brother, you and the family want to come to a barbecue this evening? About six?”

“Sounds great,” I replied. “What should we bring?”

“Just your smiles and your appetites!”

I grinned as I closed the journal. “Would you read a secret diary if you found one that your wife wrote?”

Silence came from the other end of the phone as I heard Micah move about on the other end. Hearing a door close on the other end of the phone, Micah asked, “What’d you find?”

Glancing over at the notebook, I said, “Some kind of journal I didn’t know about of Megan’s… it details everything about what happened in Seattle… I just want to know what really happened and I have a feeling that journal will tell me what I want to know.”

“Don’t read it,” Micah insisted. I could hear his wife come inside the room he was hiding in. She beckoned him to come to the store with her. “We’ll talk later, Cole, just don’t read it.”

“Okay,” I replied with a nod as I kept my eyes glued to the mysterious journal.

After I hung up with Micah, I returned the notebook to the spot underneath the bookcase in which I had found it. Returning to the couch, I wiped the sweat from my brow and cracked my Bible open.

As I was unbuckling Justin from his car seat in the back of the truck, I could hear Micah’s screen door open and Denise call out to us. “Micah’s just around back, Cole. Megan, you can bring that macaroni salad right into the kitchen, babe.”

Megan had Bradley in one arm and the salad in the other as she walked up the sidewalk to meet Denise at the doorway. “Cole said we didn’t need to bring anything, but I wanted to anyway… hope that’s okay?”

“Of course it is,” Denise said, smiling as she held open the door for her and Bradley to come through.

“Og!” Justin shouted as I put him down on the gravel. Turning to see where he was pointing, I spotted Lucy, Micah’s golden retriever.

I nodded, “Yep, that’s a dog,” I said, latching my hand to his. We came around the side of the house and to the back where Micah was firing up the barbeque on the back porch a few paces away from a picnic table that sat under a big oak tree.

“Hey, Brother,” Micah said.

“How’s it going?” I replied as I released Justin’s hand to let him go play in the yard.

“Good.” Micah grabbed the scraper to clean the grill and glanced back at the closed sliding glass door off the porch. “You didn’t read the journal, did you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No… but I sure wanted to.”

Micah began cleaning the grates on the grill as he shook his head. “There’s nothing but pain in there… You don’t want to read that part.”

“That part?”

He nodded as he hung the scraper back on the barbeque and shut the lid to let it warm up. Turning around, he motioned with a nod towards the picnic table as he walked towards it.

As I joined him at the table, he said, “You should talk to her about it and ask to read the parts of where everything started falling apart for her. You’re lucky to have something as intimate as a journal.” Micah glanced back at the house for a moment as his lip tightened. “I’d kill to be able to have had something like that back when Denise and I were struggling.”

“What do you mean?”

Micah adjusted in his seat and leaned in. “Your wife didn’t just step out on you one day, these things don’t just happen. It’s a process, and while you might be interested in knowing what happened in Seattle, you should concern yourself more with what happened in her heart over the course of time to lead her to that point.”

“What if she’s lying about Seattle? What if there’s more to the story I’m not getting?”

He shrugged. “Is that going to change anything?”

I pondered for a moment. There wasn’t anything really in that journal that would change my decision to stay with her. I wasn’t staying with her because of the story I heard from Seattle. I was staying for our marriage and family. “Well, no… I guess not.”

“Exactly. If you are going to make this marriage work, you gotta forgive and let go of the Seattle trip… You gotta set your sights on God and love her like Christ loved the church.”

I nodded. “Is reading the entries about where the breakdown began really going to help?”

“It could… It’ll give you some insight into Megan and the way she works.”

The sliding glass door opened and Denise and Megan came out with a plate of burgers and a couple bags of chips. Micah leaned back to a relaxed position and smiled as the gals made their way to the picnic table.

“I got the recipe out of the rookie for the Widow Makers, so we made them,” Micah said.

“They’re good,” Denise said as she set the plate of burgers down next to the barbeque.

Micah stood up and joined his wife over at the barbeque. He planted a kiss on her cheek as he opened up the lid. Megan bent down and kissed me on the cheek as she put her hand on my shoulder. Megan asked, “Did you want something to drink? They have soda inside.”

“What kind?”

“Cola, lemon-lime…”

“I’ll have a cola,” I said to her with a smile.

She went back inside and Denise came over to the picnic table as Megan disappeared inside. “I’m so happy she’s back in town.”

“Where’s Bradley?” I asked, trying to divert the conversation elsewhere.

“He’s inside with Jasmine,” Denise replied. “She pulled out some toys of hers that were in the basement so the boys had something to do.”

I nodded. “That’s kind of her.”

“She loves kids,” Micah said. “She wants to be a teacher when she grows up.”

“That’s great she’s thinking about the future like that.”

“Yeah, it’s weird to hear about what she wants to be doing when she’s an adult… she’s getting old so fast,” Micah said.

Megan came back out and called out to Justin in the yard. “Stay out of the rocks. They don’t want them in their yard, honey!” Glancing over at Justin near the shed, I saw him stop dead in his tracks as he dropped the rocks in hand and went running over to Megan at the sliding door.

Picking him up in her arms, she came over to the picnic table and set the cola down in front of me. “I’m going to take Justin inside to play with the toys Jasmine pulled out for them,” she said, leaning down and kissing me on the cheek.

“Okay,” I replied. Denise followed behind Megan on the way back inside and shut the door behind them.

“How’s all this going to work?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Micah asked.

“I’m still struggling to trust her… I just get this feeling something is not right still.”

Micah brought his hands together and said, “Time has an amazing ability to heal past hurts. God might forgive and forget our sins, but we, as humans, on the other hand can never fully forget. Have you been sticking with your Bible reading and drawing closer to God?”

“It’s hard to stick with… I mean it’s spotty, you know… here and there. We’re not really fighting and it feels like we’re doing okay most of the time.”

He nodded. “You have to make God a priority in your life. Do you forget to eat? Drink? Go to the bathroom?”

“C’mon… reading your Bible and eating is not the same thing,” I said.

“No, they aren’t. But God needs to be as important to you as eating. Praying and Bible reading should not only be something we just do when we feel moved or remember. It’s our connection with our Creator. You start losing sight of God and falling away from Him, and it’s not guaranteed you’ll fall back into the same issues with your wife, but it is guaranteed you’ll fall off track from his design for marriage. It’s a three part relationship in marriage. You, God and your spouse.”

Nodding, I sighed.

“Don’t get discouraged, Cole. The Christian walk is a lifelong journey and every day is new. That ‘off’ feeling will fade away with time the more you draw closer to the Lord.”

After getting the boys into bed that night at home, I requested Megan to come out back with me. I built a fire for us in the fire pit and the clear night was full of brightly shining stars. It was perfect. We took a seat in a couple of lawn chairs near the fire.

As I gazed at my wife, she looked breathtaking in her little jean shorts and her white tank top. Her hair was pinned up, revealing that neckline I loved so much.

“What do you want to talk about, Cole?” she asked looking over at me. The fire’s reflection was playing across her face. She looked so beautiful in the lighting.