Slow Moon Rising (21 page)

Dad reached across the space between us, grabbed the back of my chair, and pulled it toward him. I felt his arms wrap around me. As easily as I'd done when a girl, I rested my head against his broad chest. Even with my stuffy nose, I was able to breathe in the scent of him. It comforted me like a memory of a summer's morning from my childhood. I hiccupped several times and Dad chuckled. “Oh, my baby Boo. You know I love you, right?”

I nodded.

“Then listen to the old dad. If you decide you want to try to work this out, I'm here for you. I can suggest a good therapist. A Christian therapist. She's the mother of one of my patients. This woman and her husband work together, and I think you'd both like them.”

“Okay.”

“But if you decide this is not going to work, I've also got the name of a good attorney. And I'm here for you, every step of the way. Anything you need.”

I wiped my nose with the handkerchief. It wasn't as rough as the paper towel, but the newness of it scraped against my sensitive skin. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“What would you do?”

I felt his chest heave out. In. “I'd give him a chance, Boo.
I think you have a lot to salvage. And I know . . . I
know
. . . that the Lord can . . .” His voice trailed.

I raised my head. Looked up into his face. He appeared pained by something. Something deep. I knew my father loved me. Loved all of us beyond measure. The fact that my agony affected him in such a way nearly did me in. As if I weren't “done in” enough already. “Dad?”

He cleared his throat. “Kimberly, the Bible has a line in it. A most incredible line. I think a lot of Christians overlook it.”

I sat up straight. Wiped my nose again, though it was now dry. “What is it?”

“It's from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Colossians 1:17 says, ‘He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.' Do you know what I think that means?”

I shook my head.

“I believe that, before the world was formed by his Word, he knew that you would marry Charlie. And he knew that Charlie would do this awful thing. He knew how it would divide your home, crush your heart, and sever your vows. But he wants you to know that, in his hands, he can bring all this back together. And when it comes back together, it can be better than it ever was before.”

“I believe that too, Dad.”

“I know it. It wasn't always perfect with your mother and me, you know. We both made our mistakes within our marriage, and God still managed to hold us together.” He smiled. “Either that or it was just your mother's stubbornness.”

I tried to smile. “Yeah. Mom's. Sure.”

“Well, that got me a half smile anyway. Okay, then. Take a step. One today. One tomorrow. Maybe two the next day.”

“Can I take a step backward every so often?”

The skin around Dad's eyes crinkled. “Sure.” He stood. “Let me get you the name of the counselors.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

While he was gone I took deep breaths. I was still angry. And hurt. And I wasn't sure how I was going to walk back into the house and face Charlie. I also was not sure how Charlie was going to react to counseling.

But, I decided, if he wanted to stay with me and the boys, he would go. We obviously needed help. Him more than me. I supposed.

I pulled into the garage. Turned off the car. Charlie's car was parked next to mine. He was home.

I slipped out of my Honda CR-V while the garage door jerked toward the cement floor. I closed the car's door. The garage was enveloped in shadows. I moved deliberately toward the door. Opened it. Stepped into my home.

Charlie sat at the kitchen table. His left arm rested on the tabletop, his hand around a coffee mug printed with WORLD'S BEST DAD in bold black lettering. The room smelled of coffee and cinnamon rolls. I glanced over to the coffeemaker to see half a carafe. To the stove to see a plate of half-eaten Pillsbury rolls dripping with creamy white frosting.

“I got hungry,” he said.

“So I see.”

“You look terrible.”

I laughed. I didn't mean to, but I did. And it wasn't because I was amused.

“Been to see your father?”

“Yeah.”

“Kim . . .”

I held up my hand. “Wait. I want to say something.”

He took a sip of coffee. “Okay.”

I stood glued to the spot where I'd stopped upon entering the room. I kept my eyes fixed beyond Charlie to a small table where a framed photo of our family stared back at me. It had been taken by Heather outside her home after a Sunday afternoon get-together. Four happy members of one contented family. At least three of us were.

“I don't want to talk about what happened. I only want to talk about what to do . . . where to go from here. And I think we need help. I think we need to see a counselor. Dad gave me the name—”

“No.”

My eyes shot to his. “What?”

“I'm not seeing a counselor.”

I should have known. I
did
know . . .

“The fact is, Kim . . . what I tried to say to you before is . . . I'm done here.” He breathed deeply through his nostrils. “And I want a divorce.”

June 2010

Dad was right. In the nearly two years since my divorce from Charlie had been final, we'd done nothing but test each other with our individual decisions. He found it impossible to settle down and act like an adult, and I found it even more difficult not to interfere in his life. Subsequently, I was forever questioning my sons after their weekends about what they did and who they did it with. Namely, I wanted to ascertain whether or not another woman was sitting in the place that had, at one time, been solely mine.

Dad was also right about another thing: Bunni Berno was a flash in the pan. She removed her kids from the team and, I heard later, moved to Tampa. She never even bothered to return to another game.

But Heather did. She came to every practice, no matter what was going on in her own life, and kept a watch so I wouldn't have to.

After Bunni there were others, but none I had to see. I only had to hear about them from Chase and Cody. Heather had
stopped coming to the soccer field by then, which was just as well. It seemed to me that, over the past few years, she'd started drinking more often in the afternoons, turning herself into the socialite I knew she really wasn't. More than that, it was changing her personality. I didn't like the idea of her driving when sometimes she couldn't walk without bumping into something, usually me.

Eventually, Charlie had all but stopped coming to practices
or
the games, unless they fell on his weekends.

As the boys' new summer schedule loomed, I became more fretful of the time they'd spend with their father—their court-appointed four weeks of visitation in which I didn't see them at all. It wasn't healthy, I'd complained to my attorney, to Dad, to Anise, to anyone who would listen, for my sons not to see their mother at all for four straight weeks.

They all agreed, but Charlie's attorney—a snake in the courtroom if I'd ever seen one—was quick to tell the presiding judge that “four straight weeks” did not mean I could not contact them by phone or
ask
for, say, dinner with them. And, he countered, the four weeks after Charlie's were time they spent with me without seeing their father, so it was all fair. The point was to have, basically, four uninterrupted weeks with our sons and without each other.

I'd managed to survive two summers like this, but this year my concern grew based not on the length of time away from me but from the length of time with their Casanova father. I took the matter up with the court, to ask that if Charlie was going to have this time with his sons, it should be
with
his sons.

I lost miserably. So much so, the judge granted an extra
week to Charlie. After all, he'd missed spring break, Charlie told the judge. Never mind the boys had
asked
not to go and Charlie had said he was fine with that. Now—now that he needed something to use against me, he claimed he'd wanted to be with them but was
kept
from them.

Of all the . . .

Dad insisted I use this time for a trip to Cedar Key. His excuse was that, since our longtime housekeeper Eliana had recently died, he needed to find someone to take her place. I'd argued about it, telling him that (1) I didn't want to return to the place that always reminded me of Mom, more so than even the house I'd grown up in, and (2) he could always call someone in Cedar Key and find Eliana's replacement. But Dad was insistent, so much so I couldn't argue with him.

Whatever plans Dad had for me in Cedar Key—whether to find a replacement for Eliana or to just get away from it all—on the very first night there I ran into my old high school flame, Steven Granger. Seeing him was awkward at first, but then we began to see each other socially and, within too short a period of time, I found myself dealing with old feelings as well as new ones.

For one, Steven made me take a good, hard look at losing Mom. For another, he made me take an equally hard look at losing him, which felt like the most difficult of all. I found myself welcoming him into my life and shutting him out, often within the same hour.

Dad and Anise's elderly neighbor Patsy became my lifeline to understanding myself and to helping me return to a better relationship with God. She showed me a way of life in Christ
that went beyond sitting in the pews on Sunday and saying grace before a meal or prayers at bedtime.

One Saturday morning, I'd had a particularly difficult phone conversation with Heather in which she told me she thought Andre was having an affair. I suppose she thought that, with my history with Charlie, I'd jump all over her accusations. Truth is, I was less concerned about that than I was about her drinking and some recent bizarre behaviors. Already, before lunch, I could hear ice clinking in a glass. Before we hung up, we had a rather brutal argument about it.

I went to see Patsy for advice. I found her not feeling well. In fact, in need of a doctor. I did what any good daughter of a pediatrician would do: I called Dad. He suggested I drive her to the nearest town with a doctor. Shortly after, Steven called. I told him what was happening, and in no time, he arrived at Patsy's with a medical doctor who happened to be vacationing in Cedar Key. Dr. Willingham wrote a prescription for Patsy, and then Steven walked him back to his car.

While they were out, I called Dad again. “Steven came with a doctor who is vacationing here and took care of Patsy. I'm sorry I haven't called you back already. The doctor is just leaving.”

“Steven?”

My legs grew weak; I hadn't yet told Dad about Steven. About seeing him . . . dating him . . . feeling a little bit crazy when I was near him. I took a deep breath and tried to sound nonchalant. “Steven Granger. You remember him, don't you?”

“I remember him, yes. How is it that Steven Granger knew about Patsy?”

“I know what you're thinking, Dad. He just happened to call after I talked to you and—”

“Why was he calling you?”

I swallowed. “Because, Dad. We have a date tonight and—”

“You have a date tonight?”

“Dad, are you going to interrupt me every three words or are you going to let me finish?”

A moment of silence passed before he said, “I'm listening.”

I turned toward the door to see Steven stick his head in and say, “I'll be right back.”

I nodded. He closed the door behind him.

I walked briskly into Patsy's kitchen and sat in one of the chairs at the table. “Dad,” I said, crossing my legs. “I don't understand the tone of your voice. Steven Granger is living here now. His father had a heart attack last year, and he moved back down to help with the business. We ran into each other, he asked me out, I said yes, and that's that.”

“Not a good idea and you know it.”

“Dad—”

“Hear me out on this one, Kim.”

My jaw flinched. “Okay.”

“I've never seen you so hurt in my life as you were at the end of your senior year.”

“You mean other than when Charlie left me and the boys?”

“Well, of course. But you were older then. Steven was your first love, and he ripped your heart out.”

“You sound more like a mother than a father.”

“A father doesn't forget that kind of heartache when it's his little girl who's crying.”

I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. I leaned over as
though in pain. “That's sweet, Dad, but I'm not a little girl anymore.”

“I know that. But you're still
my
little girl.”

I smiled but remained silent.

I heard him sigh. “Well, then. Does it feel like it did twenty years ago?”

I straightened as I laughed. “Honestly? It's not as hormonally driven.”

“I didn't need to hear that.”

“I know you didn't. But . . . we had our second date last night. He got me to take pictures with his camera, Dad. And he made me laugh.”

“I haven't seen Steven since you were kids.”

“Well, he's not a kid anymore. Neither am I. And I don't know what all this means or where it will lead, but I have to tell you. I'm more than a little willing to find out.”

“Just be careful, sweetheart.”

“I will.” I heard Patsy coughing from her bedroom. “Dad, I need to go check on Patsy. I'll call you later, okay?”

“Take it easy, Boo.”

Later, after Steven had brought the prescription back and we'd agreed on pizza for dinner and that it should be eaten at Patsy's, where we could continue to keep an eye on her, I made a call I'd dreaded.

My brother-in-law answered with, “Hey, Kimberly.”

“Oh, the joy of caller ID.” I pulled up my feet to rest them on the aqua-painted railing.

“That and I've half-expected your call.”

I wondered what he meant but decided against asking. Andre—a brilliant mind if there ever was one—was too astute for someone like me to challenge. “Are you able to talk right now?”

“It's as good a time as any.”

“Are you at work?”

“No. I just pulled up to the library, to tell you the truth.”

The library. It didn't seem like an Andre kind of thing to do on a Saturday. My stomach churned, half from hunger and the other half from concern. “Oh.” I took a deep breath and plunged right in. “I talked with Heather this morning . . . more or less . . . and I'm very worried about her, Andre.”

“Me too. I'm worried about her too.” He paused. “I love her, Kimberly. I don't know what she's told you, but I want that much said before we go any further with this conversation.”

I watched as a small flock of seagulls glided past me. They called to one another in screeches I was all too familiar with.

When I didn't say anything, he asked, “How's Cedar Key?”

“It's good. It's real good, actually.”

“Heather told me she was surprised you'd gone. She told me about what happened when you were kids there. About Steven.”

“Oh, did she now?”

He chuckled. “Anything to take the focus away from her and her problems.”

I took another breath. “Well, since you've now brought it up, do you mind telling me what's going on with the two of you?”

“Did she tell you I'm having an affair?”

Right to the point. Wow. “She thinks you are.”

“I'm not.”

I closed my eyes at the revelation, praying he was telling me the truth. Charlie and I had been donned the perfect couple, but no more perfect than Andre and Heather.

“Can I be honest?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“You and Charlie . . . do you know how often Heather held our marriage up to the mirror of yours?”

“What? No.”

“Yes. If Charlie so much as winked at you during a family dinner, I caught it when we got home. ‘Why don't you ever wink at me like that?' she'd ask. ‘Why don't you love me like Charlie loves Kim?' It got to the point where, if I saw Charlie do anything for you, to you, whatever . . . I knew I had to one-up him. That whole ‘new kitchen' thing. It was me, trying to give her the kind of home she wanted because I knew she was comparing our home to yours and to Jayme-Leigh's. Not that she'd ever admit it.” He coughed sarcasm. “I told Charlie one time, I said, ‘Charlie, I'll pay you half my annual income if you'll just
not
be so loving toward your wife in front of Heather.'”

I pressed my hand against my forehead. I was sweating profusely in the afternoon heat but couldn't bring myself to go inside and disturb Patsy. “What did he say to that?”

“He just laughed. He actually said—and I don't say this to hurt you or bring back negative emotions—that if I loved Heather a quarter as much as he loved you, I'd be just fine.”

I scoffed at the news. “Do tell.”

“He was joking, of course.”

“No kidding, Andre.” I dropped my feet from the railing and leaned over, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to turn violent.