Precedent: Book Three: Covenant of Trust Series (16 page)

“
Yep.” He grinned and laid the magazine on the table beside him. “So where do you want to go?”

“
Oh no. Any young man who endures the humiliation of the imaging center should at least get to choose the restaurant.” Choices paralyzed her.

“
I feel like spaghetti. Want to go for Italian?”

“
Always.”

“
And it wasn’t that bad.” He held the door for her and unlocked her car door before walking around to the driver’s side.

“
Even so, you must have something major to discuss.”

“
At the restaurant. I can’t talk and drive at the same time.” He grinned again, and his eyes twinkled.

Maybe lunch with Jack was just what she needed. Maybe for an hour or so, she could lay everything else aside and just soak in his energy. When he turned toward Antonio’s, her favorite restaurant, he watched her until she smiled.

He checked his watch. “It’s not too early for you to eat, is it?”

“
No, this is fine. We won’t have to wait for a table.” Jack held the door for her, then when they reached the table, he steadied her chair so she could sit. “I must be hungry. Everything smells wonderful.”

“
Joel and I used to say they should make perfumes that smell like food. Guys would be much more responsive to pot roast than some dumb flowers.”

Bobbi shook her head. “Now I know why you don’t have a girlfriend.” She flipped the menu open and held it at arm’s length. “I don’t know why I even look. I can’t resist the manicotti.” She laid the menu to the side, then looked across the table at him. “You seem happier than you’ve been in several weeks.”

“
I don’t know about that,” he said. “I guess I’m just confident that you can help me.”

“
Don’t bank on it.” He had his hopes pinned on her, and there was no way she could come through for him. She sipped her water to buy some time. If she had any wise words, she’d use them on herself. He sat across the table looking like he’d had his hands smacked for reaching in the cookie jar. Great. She took another gulp of her water and dove in. “So you’re still struggling with Brad and Shannon?”

He sat up and scooted his chair closer to the table. “I keep praying, and reading, trying to find some kind of answer, but there’s nothing. So why won’t God answer me unless I’ve done something wrong?” He dropped his eyes. “Just like Shannon said.”

“
You and your dad.” Before she could say any more, the waiter returned with their drinks and salads. Bobbi opened a package of sweetener and poured it into her tea, stirring it slowly. “Shannon validated your fears, so you’re buying everything she says. Your dad’s the same way. She told him this was all a curse he brought on us, and he swallowed every bit of it. It’s a lie.”

She tasted her tea, decided it was sweet enough, then laid the spoon beside the glass. “I want you to get this, Jack. Brad is not dead because of anything you did or didn’t do. Brad’s gone because we live in a sinful, fallen world, full of sinful people who behave in terrible, evil ways.”

She watched him blink and nod. He needed to hear more, but she wasn’t certain she could go on. Three or four sentences had been her absolute limit. “That’s the only way I can make it make sense to me. Maybe it will be easier when someone is finally arrested for it.” She took a long drink from her tea. “I wish I knew what God was thinking when He let it happen.”

“
You’re mad at God?”

Was she? Maybe. Probably. Yes. “I can’t believe that there wasn’t any other way for Him to accomplish His purposes than to take my son. He didn’t have to do this.”

Now that she’d opened the door, the rest of the indictment spilled out. “Your aorta is three centimeters, just this big,” she said, indicating the width of her two fingers. “Anywhere else on his body, and Brad would have lived. It was such an implausible shot—” She gulped her tea and pushed the threatening emotion back down. “But that’s not helping you.”

“
It helps more than you know. At least I’m not the only one who thought that.”

“
It’s not a good way to think.” The church answer. The mother answer. Paste on a happy face and tell everyone you’re blessed. She sighed and tried to come up with something that would help him. “Jack, the times I’ve felt like God wasn’t listening to me happened for one of two reasons. I wasn’t listening to Him, or He’d already told me the answer and I was ignoring it because I didn’t want to do what He’d said.”

“
When? I didn’t think you ever had to struggle with doing what God said.”

Poor, deluded boy. “Believe it.”

The waiter brought their food, and Jack watched until he was out of sight, then he turned back to her. “I’m sorry. It was with my mom, wasn’t it?”

She pulled her plate closer and stabbed at the pasta. “Sweetheart, I don’t know if it’s really appropriate for me to discuss your mother.”

“
So how much older do I have to be?”

She sighed and laid her fork down. Sure, why not tell him exactly what she thought of his mother? Shatter him. Alienate him. Let him blame himself for all of that, too.

“
Your mother . . .” She pulled her napkin from her lap and dabbed at the corners of her mouth, stalling. “When your mother came back, all that pain, it churned right back to the surface.” She pushed at her food, avoiding Jack’s eyes. The same eyes Tracy had. “Truth is, I was terrified. I was afraid for my family.”

“
Afraid of my mom?”

Bobbi raised her eyes long enough to nod. “Donna, Donna Shannon told me it was because I’d never forgiven her for the affair. I was sure she didn’t want it, and wasn’t convinced she deserved it.”

“
But you did it.” No trace of recrimination in his voice, he was encouraging her.

“
The morning you were baptized, that’s when I talked to her.”

“
And she was dead the next week,” Jack said quietly. “Do you think it made a difference to her?”

“
Who knows? Your mother was so guarded. She wouldn’t let anyone get close to her, and she wouldn’t open up to anybody. She was the most tragic person I have ever known. There was help and healing all around her, but she completely rejected it.”

His silence convicted her. She’d overstepped. Mercifully, he changed the subject. “Dad said you were gonna retire.”

“
I turned the paperwork in a couple of weeks ago. They’ll approve it at the next board meeting.” Don’t try to explain it or justify it. Leave it there.

“
I don’t blame you,” he said. “I haven’t told Dad yet, but I’m not sure about going back to school this fall.”

At last. What he really wanted to talk about. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. I don’t even know if religion is the right major anymore.”

“
Because Brad’s gone?”

He nodded. “I was going to follow him and work at the mission. I had it all mapped out.”

She had to give him something to go on, something to work toward. “Sweetheart, why don’t you ask Brad?”

“
What?”

“
You have his notebooks and his Bible. He wrestled with going to law school or seminary. Maybe he wrote down the process, or something that crystallized it all for him. Maybe that will help you.”

Jack leaned back and grinned, the twinkle returned to his eyes. “Mom, you are brilliant.”

* * *

Friday, July 11

Bobbi sat at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee. The morning paper lay beside the placemat, still unread. When Chuck came in a moment later, he smiled at her, then poured himself a cup of her coffee. That meant he had some proposition he expected her to go along with. He wanted her to see they were on the same team. They were drinking the same coffee after all.

“
I made reservations for seven,” he said, as he slid into the chair across from her. He’d left his suit jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. Casual, no pressure. Surely, after all these years, he understood she was on to him.

“
Chuck, I love you. I am extremely blessed to be married to you, but I’m in no mood to celebrate our anniversary right now. We can go out when Shannon comes home.”

“
You can’t put your life on hold this way.”

“
Nor can I go on with some stupid routine and pretend that everything is normal.”

“
I’m not asking you to pretend anything.” Chuck gulped coffee. She’d stung him with the insinuation that their anniversary was part of a stupid routine. “So we’re staying home tonight?”

“
You can do what you want.” Bobbi pulled the newspaper close and made a pretense of reading it.

“
Great, it’s settled then. Seven o’clock.”

“
Chuck—”

“
No, we’ve been under emotional siege for a month now. We need a break.”

Before Bobbi could protest further, the phone rang, and she reached for it.

“
Mom,” Joel said. “I think we’ve decided to grill out Sunday after church for Ryan’s birthday. Will that work for you?”

Ryan’s sixteenth birthday, and she completely forgot. “Umm . . . yeah, Sunday’s fine.”

“
You sure?”

“
It just slipped up on me, that’s all. What can I bring?”
What can I have Chuck pick up that can be dumped in a serving dish so it looks homemade?

“
Dad and Jack.”

“
Seriously, Joel.”

“
I’m very serious. We’ll take care of everything. Just come.”

Bobbi frowned and rolled her eyes. “What do you want Dad to bring, then?”

“
Ummm, Dad can bring a salad or something, but you better not help him.”

“
You are incorrigible.”

“
Yes, I am. Oh, happy anniversary. You guys going out?”

“
Under protest, yes.”

“
Why don’t you want to go out?”

“
Aside from the obvious?”

“
Mom,” Joel said gently, “punishing yourself isn’t going to bring Shannon home sooner.”

“
I’m not punishing myself.”

“
Are you punishing Dad, then?”

Tired of defending herself, tired of being admonished for her grief, she snapped. “When you have kids of your own, maybe you’ll understand.” In the heart-squeezing silence that followed, she realized how deeply she’d cut Joel. “I’m so sorry. That’s not what I meant at all.”

“
We’ll try to eat about one.”

“
Joel, please—”

“
We’ll talk later, Mom. I have to go now.”

Bobbi laid down the phone and buried her face in her hands. She felt a touch on her arm. “He knows you didn’t mean it,” Chuck said.

“
He practically hung up on me,” she said, raising her head. “What a spiteful, cruel thing to say. Is that who I am now?”

“
No,” he said, taking her in his arms. “It was a slip. You would never hurt Joel or any of us.”

“
Never say never.”

“
Bobbi . . .”

“
I’ve seen too many things here lately that I never dreamed would happen. It’s like all of a sudden I don’t understand the rules or the boundaries anymore.”

“
You’ll get your bearings back.”

She shook her head. “I feel like a monumental failure.”

“
Honey, we’ve been through this. Shannon . . . It was because of me. I came down too hard on her.”

“
No, she left because I never taught her how to cope.”

“
But she’ll come home because you taught her what real love is, what family is all about.”

Bobbi leaned back in her chair and took a long drink of her coffee. “Chuck, I want to get Ryan a car for his birthday.”

“
What?”

“
My grandson is turning sixteen. I want to get him a car.”

“
We never got our kids cars when they turned sixteen.”

“
Grandchildren are different.”

“
You’re setting a ridiculously high standard for our future grandchildren.”

“
Do you realize how old we will be before any other grandchildren hit sixteen? This may be our only chance.”

“
You’re serious.”

“
Completely.”

“
You’re not going to want to buy somebody a car every time you think you’ve hurt someone’s feelings, are you?” Chuck asked, raising his eyebrow.

“
There’s no question that I hurt Joel’s feelings. Can’t we buy a decent, used, high school kid kind of car out of that money market account?”

“
Yeah, but Bobbi, you never do anything impulsive. Is there something else going on?”

Prove to Joel that she really did think of Ryan as theirs. Deflect attention from herself. Do one thing right. “No, I just really want to do something special for him. He’s a wonderful young man, and I don’t think he realizes that.”

“
I’ll talk to Joel first.”

Bobbi rolled her eyes. “That’ll ruin the surprise.”

“
Even so,” Chuck said.

“
I want to go car shopping before dinner this evening.”

* * *

Chuck pushed his office door open, but before he could set down his briefcase, his phone rang. Christine waved for him to pick up, which meant it wasn’t work-related.