Secrets over Sweet Tea (29 page)

Zach felt overwhelmed by all that he’d been hearing. “But what about Scarlett Jo?”

“She was a wreck. She basically begged me to leave her. One minute she wanted to rip that baby out of her, and the next minute she grieved over the fact that she would even think such a thing. She was so confused, so sad. But I made the decision then and there that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and this was the baby we’d been given. However it got here, it was ours now. And we were going to fight our way through this.”

“Where do you even start with something like that?”

“For me it started with deciding to trust God in the middle of everything that was going on.”

“And for Scarlett Jo?”

“Well, you know my wife.” Jackson laughed. “She’s not the type to give up easily. But it took her a long time to get to a better place. She never enjoyed one moment of her pregnancy. We got married on our scheduled day, and she’ll tell you to this day if it weren’t for the pictures, she wouldn’t even remember it. Then when Jack was born, she could barely look at him. Her face in those pictures, Zach—her face tells the whole story. She’d completely lost her heart.”

“But you didn’t feel that way?”

“Oh no.” Jackson shook his head and smiled, remembering. “When I saw my son’s face for the first time, I knew I wanted him to have my name. He looked nothing like me. But he’s so much my son, Zach—so much inside him is mine. Scarlett Jo pretty much let me care for him for the first year. She could barely take care of herself. She didn’t laugh. She barely smiled. She didn’t do any of the wild and irreverent things that made me fall in love with her. She just did stuff.”

“What do you mean, ‘did stuff’?”

“Well, she’d clean the house. She’d do the laundry. She’d go to the grocery store. She volunteered at the library and the hospital. She didn’t care what she did as long as it wasn’t with Jack. But all the time, she was running from her pain.”

“Then one day I came home and saw Jack in Jackson’s arms, and I heard that baby say
da-da
. And something about hearing that word come out of his little mouth was like a sword to my gut. I looked at my Jackson and saw how great he was with the baby. I mean, here was a man who wasn’t even related by blood, and he’d loved Jack from the moment he saw him.”

“Oh my.”

“And I thought, that child is part of me. And I have done everything imaginable to avoid dealing with this pain that I’ve gone through, and it has stolen so much from me. My wedding. The birth of my first child. The first year of my boy. It took so much . . .” Her voice trailed off, and now her tears were falling. “And I let it.”

“But you fought through that, Scarlett Jo. That’s so apparent.”

“I did fight. Hard. And I vowed that I would never let anyone steal from me like that again. That once I’d reclaimed my heart, no one would take one more day from me. No one would keep me from enjoying my family and enjoying my life.”

“What happened to the guy who raped her?” Zach asked.

“They caught him. He was a kid from town who had way too much to drink and a crummy enough life not to care. But Scarlett Jo faced him head-on at the trial, and they sentenced him to twenty years in prison.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever have to see him again. But then—”

Grace’s hand shot over her mouth as it all came together for her. “Oh, Scarlett Jo! Fred?”

Scarlett Jo nodded. “I’ll never forget that face.”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Scarlett Jo stood quickly, and the swing wobbled again. Grace went to plant her tennis shoes on the ground, but one of
the wooden slats caught the cuff of her jeans and jerked her leg. She pulled it free before she could fall off.

“Well, you couldn’t have known,” Scarlett Jo said. “But what’s done is done. And now I need to go make dinner.”

Grace grabbed her robe. “Wait, Scarlett Jo. Wait. You can’t go back to hiding.”

When Scarlett Jo turned, tears had left wet streaks down her face. “I don’t want to go through any of that again, Grace. I’m too old for that.”

“Scarlett Jo, you’re forty.”

“That’s halfway to death. I don’t want to go through another court case. And I don’t want Jack to know anything about that man being around here.”

“Jack doesn’t know?”

“Yes, he knows how he was conceived. He even knows his biological father’s name. But he has never tried to contact him. And I don’t want him to.”

“You can’t protect Jack from this forever.”

Scarlett Jo’s face reddened. “Well, I sure can protect him from this for now.” With that she walked into the house and closed the door. Hard.

Jackson hit the white ball into the hole on the seventh green, then pulled it out. He and Zach picked up their bags and began to walk again.

“But she’s bad right now, Zach. I think it’s mostly about Jack. She had thought we’d be able to protect him from that man for at least twenty years; then suddenly he was right here in town. I don’t think Jack has any desire to talk to him. We’ve
been very honest with him, and he’s never shown the slightest interest in meeting his biological father. But something about seeing him made all of it real again for Scarlett Jo, and now she’s just . . . scared. Seems like she’s scared of everything.”

Zach readjusted his bag. “And what about you, Jackson? How are you in all of this?”

“I want to know why he’s here. That’s all. I don’t need to kill him anymore, if you’re concerned about that.”

Zach laughed. “I guess that’s a relief. I don’t usually do criminal law, and I’d rather not change over because of you.”

Jackson clapped him on the back. “No, all I’m really concerned about is that Scarlett Jo might let this take her down another horrible path. I’ve been there, done that. And we worked too hard to come back to life.”

“She’s an amazing woman, Jackson. I didn’t fully appreciate her for a long time.”

Jackson’s chuckle came out in a burst. “Scarlett Jo can definitely be an acquired taste.”

“Well, the more I’ve seen of how, um, vibrant she is and how great you two are together . . . it makes me see how messed up Caroline and I are.” Zach stopped. “I just brought this right back to me, didn’t I?”

Jackson shoved him. “Shut up.”

Zach sidled up to the tee box of the next hole. He took a tee from his bag and pulled out his driver. “Grace Shepherd is that way now, Jackson. She’s so brave and authentic and passionate about life. It’s beautiful to look back to where she was and see where she is now. Such a contrast to Caroline.”

Jackson tilted his head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You been thinking about Grace a lot?”

The words held no accusation. They simply asked a question. But Zach still felt convicted. “Too much,” he answered.

“How is Caroline these days?”

“She’s like a brick wall wrapped in barbed wire.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, right. But Grace—” Zach heard the shift in his own voice—“Grace listens. She laughs. She wiggles her toes like this young girl who’s open to life. And I have to admit, I love being around her.”

“You’ve been around her a lot?”

Zach shook his head. “Not so much lately. I’ve been trying to avoid her—honest. And I’ve been pursuing Caroline, trying to connect with her. It’s just . . . Caroline doesn’t offer me much to want to pursue. I’ll catch this brief glimpse of openness or warmth, and I’ll think maybe there’s hope. But then she pulls it back with everything she has.”

Jackson took out his own club. “You can’t make Caroline find her heart, you know. You’ll just have to wait and see what she does with it. She may do nothing. She may walk away from you and this marriage. And honestly, if she isn’t willing to confront her own issues, I don’t know if you’d even want to go back. But—” he stopped and looked Zach square in the face—“you are still married to Caroline. Whatever interaction you’re having with Grace needs to stop.”

Zach let out a heavy breath of air. He pulled at the collar of the black V-neck sweater that fell loosely over his white polo. “I know. You’re right.”

Jackson laid a hand on his shoulder. “I am so right.”

“What I really want is for Caroline to be that way too, Jackson. I mean, she’s never been what I’d call a free spirit, but
when we first got married, she wasn’t nearly so rigid. She could be spontaneous, even laugh at herself, and the way she looked at me in those early years—” he exhaled a sigh—“I wish she could be that way again.”

Jackson took a practice swing. “The thing is, that may never happen. She may choose to live the rest of her life the way she’s living it now. But you can’t let that stop you from doing what you need to find your own healing. And who knows? Maybe watching you heal and change and discover your heart in an entirely new way will be enough to make her go looking for hers. Now can we please finish this game? If we don’t get going, we’re going to be playing in the—”

They were interrupted by Jackson’s buzzing phone. It was the church secretary. Fred Parton had just entered the church building.

Zach climbed into bed exhausted from the round of golf, his mind still pondering all he had heard and felt throughout the day. The ceiling fan swirled above him, blowing cool air across his face. He pulled the sheets over his chest and placed his hands behind his head.

He wasn’t sure he could ever do what Jackson Newberry had done. Raise a boy who wasn’t his. Love his wife through all that depression. Care for a baby more or less by himself in that season when a child needed his mother so much.

Not kill Fred Parton.

Without a doubt, Jackson was a good man. Grace had called Zach a good man too. But she didn’t know he felt things for her he shouldn’t feel. That he thought about her more than he should.

Like I did with Elise. And then I did more than think.

Jackson had told him from the very beginning that if he didn’t deal with his own sin, his own heart, he’d be right back where he was. Right back in another affair, making a royal mess of someone else’s world. But that wasn’t what was happening with Grace, was it?

Am I fooling myself again?

He knew he wanted his family, wanted them to heal. In the deepest places of his soul, he longed for them to be together again. But most days, in all honesty, he couldn’t imagine that happening. Caroline was this unmovable piece of stone. She could be the fifth head on Mount Rushmore. And he didn’t think he had it in him to chisel his way back to her.

Is there any point in trying?

He lay there in silence, just lay there. It felt like he was waiting for something, though he didn’t know what it was.

Without warning, he felt his face flush with heat despite the air that swept continuously through the room. Tears choked his throat and burned his nose. They had hit the pillow on both sides before he could stop them. And somewhere deep inside, he felt something click into place. A realization. And a desire—a ravenous hunger—to be the man God created him to be.

If he and Caroline were going to rebuild their marriage, that’s what had to happen.

If Caroline refused to work on their issues or pay attention to her own heart, it was still necessary.

If their marriage didn’t make it and there was someone else down the road, that someone deserved a whole man too.

But more than any of that, he wanted it for himself.

He slipped from the bed and knelt beside it, pressing his
burning face against the rumpled sheets. “I’m a mess, you know.” He spoke into darkness that somehow felt alive. “I mean a real mess. I don’t even know where to begin with all of this. But I don’t want to live like I’ve been living.”

The presence moved in—thicker, stronger.

“God, I’ve already told you I’m sorry for my affair and all the people I’ve hurt. And for shutting down my heart. And Jackson says I need to trust that you’ve forgiven me, so I’m going to try to do that. The thing is, I really do want to reclaim my heart. But I think I may be in danger of messing up again. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep on getting stuff wrong more than I get it right. And . . .”

He stopped. He didn’t know what else to pray. So he waited some more.

It’s
reclaiming
 . . . not
reclaimed
.
The words fell softly in his soul. And in that moment he remembered something about Paul in the Bible saying he had to die daily. Jackson had said the same thing.

Reclaiming . . .
Zach felt relief flooding in.

“I want to be a husband to Caroline. I do. But you’ve got to help me close this door with Grace. She deserves an amazing man, a good man. Send her one. And while you’re at it, please make me one too. My girls need that. Caroline needs that. And I want it. I want to be a good man.”

Deep sobs were all he had left. He’d wept just one time through this entire season. But all the tears that should have been shed refused in this moment to be denied.

Zach Craig would cry. And Zach Craig’s heart would never be the same for having done it.