Contingency (Covenant of Trust) (39 page)

*******

Wednesday, January 25

Chuck sat in
one of Phil’s office chairs, watching the door, waiting for Bobbi. “She’ll be here,” he said. “I’ve never known her to miss an appointment with anybody.”

“I’m sorry I’m late. Ted called one of his notorious last minute meetings.” She dropped her bag in the floor behind her chair, and slipped her coat off.

“Here, let me get that,” Chuck said, reaching for her coat. She let him take it, and almost smiled at him. He hung it on the coat rack behind Phil’s door, and the uneasy feeling about today’s session intensified, squeezing his chest.

After an opening prayer, Phil pushed back from his desk. “Don’t hesitate to correct me, but I feel like we’re at an impasse. I’ve been reviewing my notes, and we’ve covered everything more than once.” He shifted in his chair and looked at each of them. “Well, everything except one issue.” Phil dropped his eyes down to his notebook.

“The why,” Bobbi said.

“I think it’s time,” Phil said. “Bobbi, you’ve said from the very beginning that you needed an explanation. Is this still the case?”

“I’d like to hear it from you, Chuck,” she said, turning toward him, “rather than relying on my imagination and the speculations of others. I’m sure you didn’t wake up that morning and decide to commit adultery. I want to hear the process.”

Chuck swallowed hard and nodded. She wasn’t ready, despite what she said, or what Phil believed, but he didn’t know how to postpone it without looking like a weasel.
God help me.
He dragged his chair around so he could face her.

“Let me say first, that things have changed. I love you in a way I didn’t comprehend before, let alone practice. My feelings have changed. My priorities have changed ... Just don’t use the past to project the future, please.”

He took a deep breath, and glanced at Phil. His pastor’s nod did nothing to calm him. “It started because I was in a stagnated routine.” Bobbi squeezed the arm of her chair, so he tried to explain, to soften the blow.

“That was my fault, I know. I understand now that if I love you the way I should, that can’t happen, but I didn’t. I thought that was what marriage was like after that many years.”

Bobbi’s eyes bored into him and he felt sweat beading across his back and chest. “When Tracy began working at the firm ...” Bobbi flinched when he said Tracy’s name. “I was immediately attracted to her, and because I was emotionally compromised, I didn’t recognize the danger in that. I watched her walk. I noticed what she wore every day. I looked forward to being in meetings with her.” He took another deep breath and dropped his eyes.
Please, Bobbi, don’t explode.
“And I began to imagine what it would be like to be with her.”

“You mean you began to fantasize about having sex with her,” Bobbi said with sharp disgust.

“Yes,” Chuck whispered. Her eyes narrowed and her grip on the arm of the chair tightened. “This is hard enough. Please, let me get through it.”

“No, I
asked
to hear this.” She waved her hand for him to keep going.

“The ... lust ... was a mental compromise. Added to the emotional compromise I’d already made, it was just a matter of time before I made a physical compromise, too. Tracy flirted with me, fed my ego.”

Bobbi’s jaw flexed and her eyes locked on his with an unblinking glare.

“I thought things like, ‘Bobbi doesn’t listen to me like this.’ I looked for any excuse I could find to justify my thoughts. ‘She’s all wrapped up in her career now. She doesn’t even need me.’”

“I cannot believe you!” Bobbi slammed her hands against the arms of the chair. “This is the best you come up with? All this counseling, and it comes down to I didn’t make you feel needed, so you slept with the first girl that flirted with you!”

“That’s not what I said! You’ve got to hear me out. You owe me that much.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Bobbi spit at him, jabbing a finger toward his chest. She grabbed her bag and stood up to leave.

“Bobbi, sit down!” Phil spoke with a force Chuck had never heard, even in the fieriest sermons. The tone in his voice stunned Bobbi and she did sit back down, her face flushed. Phil let out a sigh of frustration. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have … I’ll leave if you’d rather talk to Chuck alone, but I’m not letting you walk out of here. This can’t go on.”

Bobbi didn’t say anything and she didn’t move her eyes from Phil’s as he spoke. “I warned you both from the beginning that this would be hard, that it would hurt, but you have to deal with all of it.” When Bobbi dropped her eyes, Phil turned to Chuck. “All right, go on.”

Chuck’s pulse pounded. It would get much worse before he finished. He took another deep breath and wiped his palms on his pants. “It wasn’t much of a stretch to go to a physical compromise next. I took a lot of stupid chances, working late with Tracy in the building, calling her at home to ask her questions. I sent all the wrong signals.”

Bobbi shook her head, but didn’t say a word.

Chuck glanced at Phil, but found no subtle encouragement in his pastor’s eyes today. He cleared his throat and continued. “She gave me a set-up. She told me about this ceiling fan in her living room. She wanted to add a light fixture to it. She asked me for the name of an electrician, knowing I’d volunteer to do it. You were out of town, so I had the perfect opportunity. I thought I could get it out of my system.”

“Now I get it,” she said, raising a hand. “You so thoroughly impressed her with your abilities, she just had to show her appreciation the only way she knew how—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Then what was it like? Eighteen years, Chuck! Didn’t our life together mean anything to you? How you could jeopardize it for something so cheap? How could you think you could be with her, and go on like nothing happened?”

“I loved my mama and she left me. I loved Daddy and he left me, but he abandoned me emotionally before that. I thought when I met and married you that
finally
I could be safe and secure, that
you
would always love me and be there with me.”

Chuck closed his eyes and raised the side of his fist to his mouth, trying to push the guilt out his mind so he could listen to his wife. She didn’t speak until he looked at her again.

She spoke quietly, but with an unwavering firmness. “The fear never went away, though. It lurked in the back of my mind. Now I find out that the one thing I feared most has happened.” The firmness gave way to sad gentleness as she closed her eyes. “You
have
left me. We just haven’t filed the paperwork yet.”

“Bobbi, if you would just listen to me for a minute—”

“Just ... stop. Everything I believed about you, about us, has been destroyed. You say things have changed, so I should ignore your little indiscretion, is that it?”

“No, I just wanted a second chance.”

Bobbi didn’t respond, but stood up and walked across the room, and stared out Phil’s office window. “And what was it? Two days before you were with her again?” She turned to face him again. “Didn’t you feel the least bit guilty?”

“When I was in college, before I became a believer, I was with a lot of girls, and I never forgot that rush. I figured faith and being married would be enough to control those impulses. I depended too much on my own strength and resolve.”

“We see how much of that you had.” Contempt. That’s what clung to her words. Just like that first night. “But now you’re fixed. Everything is fine and we’ll live happily ever after, right?”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “Chuck, you go ahead. I want to speak with Bobbi. And don’t follow her, trying to explain things. Let her sort this out on her own.”

Chuck grabbed his leather jacket from the back of his chair. “I told you the truth this afternoon. The truth about what happened in the past. That’s not true for the present, and it’s not going to be for the future, either.” She didn’t answer him, didn’t even to look at him.

“I said that’s enough for today.” Chuck had heard that tone from his dad plenty of times, but never from his pastor. He gave Phil a half nod and walked out without taking his eyes off Bobbi.

Phil watched Bobbi
, waiting several long moments for her shoulders to relax and her jaw to unclench. “Can I make you some coffee?”

“It’s gonna take more than a cup of coffee.”

“You did well.”

If she heard him, it never registered. “I’m sorry, Phil, I need to get out of here.” Her hands shook when she let go of the chair.

“Of course, let me walk you to your car,” he said. He grasped the corner of his desk and pulled himself up.

“You look like you’re in pain.”

“Old age. I’ll be all right once I get going.” Bobbi slipped her coat on, picked up her bag, and followed him outside. “Now you know why he did it. How does that change things?”

“It’s worse than I imagined. I hoped maybe he would tell me it was all her fault, that she led him astray.”

“That would be easier to believe?”

“No, easier to accept. I can’t love him any more than I have. If I couldn’t keep him before, how can I now when he’s seen how easy it is to find someone else?”

“Nobody said you had to do the keeping.”

Bobbi picked her keys out of her purse and unlocked and opened her driver’s side door. She threw her purse across to the passenger seat and got in. “What is there to stop him now that he didn’t have before?”

“You should ask him,” Phil said. “The thing is, Chuck has done everything you’ve asked him to. He’s answered every question, taken time off from work, counseled, studied, even seen a doctor. If he hasn’t satisfied your requirements now, he never will.” He paused and rested his hand on her car door. “If you don’t trust the evidence you’ve seen yourself that Chuck has genuinely repented of this, then I don’t know what else we can do.”

“So I either take him back or divorce him?”

“It may be that black and white, I don’t know,” Phil sighed. “Just don’t make a decision based on the emotion of this afternoon.” He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a small envelope and handed it to her. “Give yourself a few days before you read this. We’ll talk about it next time.” Bobbi put the envelope in her purse, with a scowl. “Trust me,” Phil said, closing her car door.

*******

The bags on
the passenger seat and the smell of French fries proved that Bobbi had been through the drive-thru at Wendy’s, although she didn’t remember it. Her memory was locked on a loop of Chuck’s sorry explanations. If he wasn’t any better at making a case than that, it was a wonder the family hadn’t starved. Did he think she was stupid enough to buy the ‘I couldn’t help myself’ defense? Outrageous.

As she turned the corner onto her street, she saw a car in the driveway, and Chuck standing beside it, waiting for her. “Great,” she muttered as she pulled in. She grabbed the food sacks and her bag, then got out, slamming her door. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve heard enough from you today, Chuck. Go away!” Bobbi tried to brush past him, but he took hold of her upper arm. She growled at him, “Take your hand off me.” He jerked his hand back. “You have five minutes,” she seethed and stormed into the house.

She stayed two steps ahead of him until he cornered her in the kitchen. “Bobbi, you’ve got to understand that all those things I said were in the past. That’s not how I feel now.”