Secrets (40 page)

“High roll goes first.”

He’d meant for her to toss the dice and move, but if it was an issue, they’d roll for that honor. She rolled high, then shook them in her little cup again, got a five and a three. One man out and three paces forward. She obviously didn’t mind going first if she won the right. Just don’t do her any favors. What had he gotten into?

They played two full games, which was his limit. He was not at all surprised Rese played to win. Parcheesi was truly soporific, but she showed no sign of flagging. “Getting sleepy?”

She sighed. “Are you?”

He had enough in him to search the tunnel once more. Unfortunately, she looked anything but ready to curl up and snooze. He set the game board aside and adjusted his position on the love seat. “Come here.”

She looked surprised, but scooted over and leaned against him.

He curled her into his arm. “Favorite ice cream?”

She shrugged. “Dad brought home vanilla in a tub that lasted for weeks.” She narrowed her eyes. “But I have a vague recollection of pink and green peppermint-candy sugar cones.”

“Your mom?”

“Maybe.” She turned slightly. “Favorite movie?”

“
Braveheart
.”

She drew her knees up. “The battle scenes?”

He shook his head. “The archetypal sacrifice of the Christ figure.”

“Christ figure?”

“Patterned after Jesus giving his life for the world. An innocent one who dies for others.”

She grew still. “Like Tony.”

His stomach clenched. “Yeah. Like Tony.” He hadn’t expected that assessment from her. Tony would have had no thought that day but to help and serve; Tony, so set and determined. Death would have surprised him like someone jumping out from behind, but he’d know its face. And that day it was as calculating and without conscience as Satan himself.

She raised her knees and rested her chin. “Does it still hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish the pain went away.”

He rubbed her back along her spine. “It helps to remember the good times.” Because there were too many others that drowned him in regret.

The silence stretched. Then she sighed. “I’m going to see Mom tomorrow.”

So that was it. He tried to imagine learning someone you believed dead was alive. He knew the dread of hoping against all odds that a loved one was still alive. It had taken weeks to admit that Tony was not coming out of Ground Zero, longer by far to fend off the rage of his loss.

But Rese had the chance he would never have. She could find her mother, see her, talk to her, tell her things everyone would say given one more chance. Death was overturned for her. A rush of bittersweet joy filled him. What wouldn’t he give to learn Tony was alive? To grip his brother’s hand, to grab him close, to thank him for being there, for always being there.

It could be different for Rese. There were things she didn’t understand yet. It wouldn’t be easy getting the answers. And he sensed she knew that. “Are you ready?”

“I have to be. I guess it was good to wait through the weekend, but now there are all the questions and decisions.” She looked into his face.

“It doesn’t all have to be done at once.”

She didn’t answer, just leaned her knees across his lap in a girlish position he found endearing and tender, two words he struggled to attach to Rese.

“Do you ever lie, Lance?”

His heart hit his ribs with a thump as his hand rested uneasily on her side. “To you?”

“To anyone.”

He wrenched his thoughts off the tunnel and the key and the box. He hadn’t lied about any of it.
Or his purpose there?
He was doing his job, and more. He swallowed. “When I was, oh, seven or eight, I went through a phase of lying to my mother. Sometimes I lied just to see if I could make her believe me.” He’d been too deft and convincing for his own good. “But she caught on and said she couldn’t trust me anymore.”

He sent her a glance, hoping that wouldn’t put the thought into her mind. “I didn’t realize what a big deal that was until it started playing out. In every imbroglio with Tony or my sisters, she’d take their word over mine, even though they never told the whole story. She’d look at me sadly and say,
‘I’m sorry, Lance. I can’t believe you.’
”

He expelled his breath. “I saw real fast how badly I’d messed up, swore I’d never lie again and begged her to trust me.” He still remembered the warmth of her hand on his head.
“All right, Lance. We’ll start over.”
“And she did.”

“Did you still lie to her?”

“Not in any way that mattered. I’m sure I only told my side of the story, but I never intentionally lied again.” Even when he’d had cause, as he had too many times.

“I lied to my dad.” Rese rested her head against his collarbone. “I didn’t see it as lying, but as keeping the secrets.”

Keeping secrets
. A cold weight settled inside.

“It was all part of the pretending, the ever-changing shades of reality.”

He cupped her knee with his palm. “What secrets did you keep?”

She sighed. “All kinds of things. Once, Mom set fire to a neighbor’s rosebush.”

Whoa. “Really?”

“I didn’t see her do it, but I’m pretty sure. After the cruel things Mrs. Walden said about Mom, I thought she deserved it.”

“Then why lie?”

Her brow puckered. “I don’t know. It was like we lived on two levels. It was shades of gray for Mom, but black-and-white with Dad. That’s why I expected the truth from him.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the truth. Or know what to do with it.”

“But he wasn’t just my dad, he was my hero.”

And heroes sometimes fell.

“After Mom was gone, he became everything I needed. Not always what I wanted. There’s a difference. It wasn’t warm and cuddly. But it was solid.” Interesting choice of word.

She glanced sideways. “You’re not anything like him.”

No, nobody would call him solid.

“He’s the one I would never have doubted.”

As she doubted
him
?

“What if everything I thought about him is wrong?”

Lance stroked her knee with his thumb. “ ‘Everything’ is pretty broad.”

“But it’s like your mom told you. If you can’t trust someone, how would you ever know what’s true and what’s not?”

He frowned, not liking where this was going. “Maybe it’s all shades of gray, choosing what to tell and what to hold back.”

“My keeping Mom’s secrets was not the same as what he did.” Her face pinched.

He squeezed her knee. “Maybe he was keeping them too.”

The thought found an uneasy resonance that she fought with everything in her. She’d rather be indignant. How could you tell a child her mother had died? Live as though that person no longer existed? Anywhere. He didn’t even give her the myth of heaven.

“You’re tied in knots again.” Lance rubbed her neck.

Rese closed her eyes and sank into his fingers. No one had ever touched her that way. After days of backaching work, the most she could hope for was a hot soak in a tub. Lance’s fingers found the ropes and smoothed them into jelly, but the thoughts weren’t as easily conquered. “It wasn’t right.”

He didn’t argue, just kept rubbing until the warmth coursed down her neck to her spine and sank inside. He cared about her. Working in the shop, with his words inflaming one emotion after another, she had grappled with the thought.

She had believed Dad cared. He took care of her, but was that the same? “How can you trust anyone if lies like that can be so real?” Lies and other things.

“I don’t know, Rese.”

She’d expected something else, some assurance that there was a way.

“I know there is truth. But it takes faith.”

Faith. Believing the invisible. Trusting the unseen. She recoiled at the thought, but what if he was right? “Explain it to me.”

He turned her by the chin and studied her face. “Okay. But let’s do this.” He eased her down across his lap, cradling her head in his arm against the end of the love seat. “Now I can see if you’re falling asleep.”

“Not likely.” Her position was way too vulnerable, like Baxter rolling over at Lance’s every glance. Her first instinct was to shove herself up and establish equal ground, but she resisted. With her head in the crook of Lance’s arm, and a clear view of his face, perhaps she’d grasp something that until now had eluded her.

After a moment, he said, “It starts with love. With an all-sufficient being creating humankind, people to govern and guide, to help and sustain, but most of all to know and love.”

She’d heard the story of creation and the “fall” from her mother. She remembered the book now, a glossy hardback with brightly colored pictures, fruit and fig leaves and fairytales. She had heard that story and others one summer at vacation Bible school, but even then she’d had reservations. Lance didn’t try to convince her of the details; he gave her the essence instead.

“Once people rebelled, it broke the bond. There was no way they could fix it, bring back what was lost. Sin is in the world. Bad things happen. That’s reality.”

She stirred. “Good things happen too.”

“Good things happen. But only because God didn’t give up on it. He looked at this thing He’d started and the pitiful beings who’d lost the perfection He’d wanted for them and had mercy.” He touched her chin. “As you had mercy on me.”

“What?”

“I broke your rules. You could have canned me, but you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to.”

His smile showed everything he felt, right there to see. She loved that transparency. She could trust it.

He brought his finger to her lips, the softness of his touch mesmerizing her. “And God didn’t want to can us either. So He made a way to come back into relationship. He took all the guilt onto himself.”

“I thought that was Jesus.”

“Jesus is God, and don’t expect me to explain the Blessed Trinity. Jesus became man and died for us. The Christ, taking onto himself the sin of the world.”

“Like William Wallace in
Braveheart
, dying to make the Scots free.”

“In a big way.” Lance smiled. “Real big.”

She closed her eyes and thought about it. “So if he did it, why isn’t everything back the way it was?”

“Nothing broken can be unbroken.” Lance traced the line of her jaw. “It’s renovation. He made a new way, despite the death and suffering we brought on ourselves.”

Renovation. Keeping the heart of it, but making it new
. Bringing them through the death and suffering … as the presence had brought her through the near death and terror of that horrible night? She jolted awake. “Lance.”

“It’s okay. You can sleep.”

She shook her head. “I think I’m afraid to because … because I almost died.” It came to her now with a new clarity.

“When?”

“The night my mother … went away.”

“When the furnace malfunctioned?”

She nodded. “I was in my room. Mom had made me go to bed early, and I was afraid.”

“Why?”

“Because Walter was there. And she’d been crying and promising him she loved him. He was dragging her around.”

“Dragging?”

She searched her memory. “It’s how it looked.” Though Walter’s part was invisible, of course.

“So you went to bed scared.”

“And somewhere in the night, I knew I was dying. But there was something there, some
one
. A presence telling me not to give in, to fight it, to resist.”

“Your dad?”

“No.” Rese looked into his face. He’d think her crazy like Mom. “Nothing I could see, but I knew it was there. It made me hold on until Dad rushed in and grabbed me up and ran outside.” And now she had a flash of memory she hadn’t recalled before. Her mother standing outside. How could she be if…

Rese shook her head. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No.”

“People always looked as though I might be. They called Star and me the Looney Toons.”

“You’re not loony.” His eyes were warm and certain. “But you are blessed.”

“Blessed?”

“Who do you think was there with you?”

She couldn’t say it. “But why? We never prayed, never went to church.” Mom’s storybook was one of many, and there were others she’d liked more. “One session of vacation Bible school doesn’t count for much.” Even if she had said the little prayer they gave her to let Jesus into her heart.

“He loves you, Rese.”

What did that mean? She wanted to see it, know it was real. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Believe it.”

“That’s the hard part.”

“You already did the hard part. Admitting your need.”

“I was a child; I was scared.” Would she do it now? Even then she had tried to be what everyone else needed: Dad’s sensible girl, Mom’s sensitive daughter, her own best friend.

“You trusted. You just didn’t know who.”

She had trusted the presence. In the dark silence of her room she had begged someone to help her, though she only guessed her danger. Inside she’d sensed her utter helplessness and cried out. She closed her eyes and pondered that. Had Jesus saved her?

Like the guy inside the whale, she’d been carried to safety. It was Dad’s arms, but what had brought him there in time? Someone bigger. A heavenly father? It wasn’t just physical safety she’d felt. Had her soul recognized the Lord and clung?