War Room (20 page)

“You built the wall yourself, Tony.”

Her heart was racing now and she could tell this could go really badly. She took a breath, tried to find a way to go that they hadn’t been before. Tried to see the good in him rather than just look at the bad.

“Look, I know you’re trying,” she said. “I think you have a good heart and you’re turning toward us.”

“You think?” he said, a little hurt, like a kid who thought he had done well at making a bed that turned out lumpy.

Before she could respond, he put up his hands in defense. “You’re right. You’re always right.”

“I’m not trying to be right here.”

“But you are. And I see that. This is why I’m suggesting we go to the pastor or whoever. I want to work this out. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove you can trust me. We just need a referee. Somebody who can help us hear each other and not fight the same battles over and over.”

She nodded and her heart calmed. She liked those words. They were strong and comforting. And they matched the same way she felt.

“So who was the woman in Raleigh?” she said. Her mouth felt dry from the emotion that throttled her. Part of her didn’t want to know. Part of her wanted to just move on and forget the past and tell herself it had no bearing on the present or future. But the other part, the bigger part, wanted to know everything. Had to know everything. She braced herself for the truth.

“She works for Holcomb,” he said. “She was handling the contract we had signed.”

Was that all?
Elizabeth thought, but she didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, waiting for the truth.

“We were going through the contract together and she had a meeting scheduled, so I suggested we go to dinner.”

“Is that something you’d done before?”

“Every contract is different
 
—”

“No, I mean, with women you worked with. Have you gone to dinner with other women?”

He thought for a moment, and that unnerved her. He looked like a little boy who had stuck his hand in the cookie jar just as his mother walked into the room.

“I don’t recall going alone. I mean, there were times when a group would get together at a conference. This was the first time I’d actually . . .”

“You’d actually what?”

Tony took a breath and threw his shoulders back. “It was the first time I’d actually felt like I wanted to pursue someone else. I don’t do one-night stands, Liz. I’m not
that dumb. But I think I’d finally given up on you and me. And this woman was attractive and I thought I would test the waters.”

Elizabeth hadn’t been prepared for the pain those words would bring. He was talking about the night she’d prayed so hard. The night she’d really believed that God was working.

“Go on,” she said. “What happened that night?”

“We were at a restaurant having our meal. I thought it would kind of break the ice between us. But there was no ice to break, really. She was ready. After dinner she suggested we go back to her place and open a bottle of wine.”

Elizabeth’s jaw dropped. “And what did you say?”

“I said I was fine with that. I mean, it surprised me because she didn’t seem like the type who would just jump at somebody.”

“I guess you were wrong,” Elizabeth whispered. Her heart was heavy now and the forgiveness she had offered seemed more conditional with each word that slipped from his mouth. This was going to be a lot harder than she thought. “What’s her name?”

“Veronica.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
Veronica? You were going to fall for a Veronica?

“What does she look like?” she said.

“She’s a little younger than us. Pretty.”

“You mean younger than me, right?”

“Elizabeth, don’t get defensive.”

“Don’t tell me how to get. I can react to this, okay?”

“I agree
 
—you can react, but I want you to know nothing happened.”

“What do you mean nothing happened? You were at a restaurant alone together. You talked and laughed and maybe played footsie under the table. Then you went back to her apartment for wine.”

“I didn’t go back with her. I got sick. Right after the meal
 
—it was the craziest thing. I can’t explain it. We finished the meal, she was ready to go, and I got this feeling in my stomach. I barely made it to the bathroom before I tossed my cookies.”

That made her feel better. The image of Tony in the bathroom heaving his expensive dinner made her wonder if it was food poisoning or something God had done. Did food poisoning work that fast? Jesus had turned water into wine and calmed a storm, so He could certainly turn a stomach. That almost brought a smile to her face.

“I stayed in the bathroom for a while
 
—and when I came out, I told Veronica I couldn’t go with her.”

“But you wanted to.”

“Liz, don’t hold this against me.”

“I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me. I’m sorry if this gets a little messy, okay?” She was raising her voice. She put up her hands and waved them down, like she was bringing a plane in for a landing. “What did she say?”

“She wanted me to come to her place anyway. She said she could take care of me.”

The bile rose and Elizabeth wanted to scratch the woman’s eyes out. Another woman trying to take care of her husband. But she couldn’t have said that if Tony hadn’t initiated the dinner.

“She knew you were married?”

“I didn’t bring it up, but I didn’t take my ring off. And I mentioned we were having problems.”

“That was convenient. Alone on the road, your marriage in trouble, a lonely man, and a woman named Veronica.” She said the name like it was a curse word.

“Liz, I feel terrible. I haven’t wanted to tell you. I want it to just go away.”

“But you know Missy saw you. And she told me.”

He nodded. “Right. But I would like to think I would tell you this at some point whether you had found out or not.”

“I’d like to think that too,” she said. “But we can’t know that, can we? We’ll never know if you would have told me because we don’t live in a world of alternate choices. You can’t step in a time machine and come home.”

“No. All I can do is tell you the truth and pray that you’ll forgive me and give me a chance to let you trust me.”

He could have yelled at her and told her she was being obtuse or overbearing or unforgiving. That had happened before. Seeing him here on his knees showed there really was progress, but there was no getting around the hurt she felt. She kept picturing him with
Veronica
at the restaurant. Veronica who wanted to nurse him back to health. Veronica who had a bottle of wine chilled and waiting.

“How could you go out with somebody else while we’re still married?” she said.

He shook his head. “I don’t know how I could go for anyone but you. I guess I thought we were over. I thought our marriage was hopeless because every time we were with each other, we fought.”

“You promise nothing happened?” she said.

“Baby, nothing happened but me losing everything I ate that night and then some. I was miserable. I can’t even look at fettuccine on a menu and not feel queasy.”

You poor thing,
she thought. “Has she called you? Did you get in touch with her the next day?”

“I was going to text her and apologize, then I deleted it.” He pulled out his phone. “Wait. It’s still in my drafts.” He held the phone out to her and she read the message. “I never sent it. And I never called her back.”

“Why not?”

“I think it’s because I knew it was wrong. I knew it wasn’t good for me or her to go down that road.”

“What if she calls? She’s going to call, you know.
Veronicas
always call again once they’ve been stood up.”

“I won’t answer. That’s not an option anymore. And I don’t need to be in any more meetings with her because I don’t work with Holcomb.”

The last words seemed to bring a curtain down on his face. Then he looked up with some new thought. “Listen, if you want access to my phone, if you want to check to see if I’m telling the truth, you can look at it anytime you
want. E-mails. Facebook. Whatever. I’m an open book from here on out.”

She nodded and looked at the book balanced precariously on the chair’s arm. This was a good way to build trust. How long it would take, she didn’t know. She wished she could turn the pages to that chapter, after all this was done and over, but life wasn’t like that. You couldn’t skip ahead. You had to live it.

“I’m pretty tired,” she said. “I think I need to go to bed.”

He put out a hand and helped her up. “Thank you for listening. For hearing me out. I appreciate it.”

She nodded and tried to smile.

“I’ll let you know what the pastor says. I’ll call tomorrow
 
—or maybe send an e-mail tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

Later, Elizabeth lay in bed trying to push down the image of Tony in the restaurant. She pictured Veronica as some voluptuous vixen with a low-cut dress and come-hither eyes, batting at him. Probably thin and leggy. How could she compete with that? But he had said he wasn’t interested in Veronica. Elizabeth didn’t have to compete. He was interested in her again. He was doing the hard work of rebuilding and wanted to meet her in the middle, but here in the middle was the struggle. Like two parties negotiating the sale of a house and finding problems with the roof or an air conditioner that leaked, she was having a hard time negotiating with her own heart.

It all came down to trust. In the end she had the choice to trust or not trust Tony. It was a decision totally in her power. And ultimately that trust was a reflection of what she believed about God. This was something Clara had told her early on.

“This problem with Tony is more about you than it is about him,” Clara had said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that God is taking you somewhere you may not want to go.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to go?”

“Because it’s hard. And messy. You will find out things about yourself that you don’t want to discover. You will find out things about your own heart that you don’t want to change. You see, everybody wants to make the problems in their life the fault of somebody else. We need a scapegoat. It’s easier that way because you get rid of the goat, you get rid of the problems. Or you turn the goat into a handsome prince and your life is different. Nobody wants to look at the goat in the mirror.”

“So you’re saying my problem is not Tony? It’s me?”

“I’m saying God is using Tony to help you dig deeper. If you let God take you to this place and you are fully there with Him and willing to change whatever He wants you to change, there’s going to be new life.”

“I’m confused,” Elizabeth said.

“I don’t doubt it,” Clara said. “You can influence Tony. You can pray for him and ask God to work in his heart.
You can love him with the kind of love only God can give you. But you can’t make decisions for him. You can’t change him. You can only allow God to change you. You can change the way you think about him and yourself and God. You can believe the truth about the power of God and join Him in what He wants to do.

“Really, what I’m talking about here is the difference between you working hard to change things and revival. I hear people talking a lot about revival and what they want God to do to change society and the culture and how much sin there is in Hollywood and everywhere else. I pray for revival. But I’ve lived long enough to know that it doesn’t start with anybody but me. Right here.” Clara pointed a bony finger toward her own heart.

“If you find yourself getting anxious, nervous, questioning whether Tony can change, you’re not really questioning him, you’re questioning whether God has the power to do what He said He could do.”

Elizabeth rose from the bed quietly, Clara’s voice ringing in her memory. Tony’s breathing was heavy. He could always fall asleep so fast and she envied that. She went to her closet, closed the door, turned on the little light, and stared at her handwriting on the walls.

“Oh, God, I want to trust You,” she prayed. “I want to believe in You and Your power and not try to make all this happen myself. Would You give me the faith to really believe? Would You give me a love for Tony I don’t have?”

And then it hit her. The doubt she had about Tony,
the questions about Veronica were important. She had to deal with those. But what scared her the most was the doubt she had about
herself
. She wasn’t sure she could accept Tony and forgive him. She wasn’t sure she could fully love him
 
—because that meant she was exposed, her heart unprotected. She wanted to hold back some little part of herself, but love meant becoming fully open, fully vulnerable to someone else.

There was a quote she had seen, something that Clara had written down . . . No, it was in one of her Bible study books. She was sure of it now, and she knew which shelf the book was on. Tony was asleep and she didn’t want to wake him, but she didn’t want to wait to read the quote.

She turned out the light and crept into the bedroom, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. She got down on all fours and crawled to the bookshelf, pulled four of the studies out, and retreated to the closet. Finally she found the quote she was searching for, from C. S. Lewis’s book
The Four Loves
.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket
 
—safe, dark, motionless, airless
 
—it will
change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

That sent Elizabeth to 1 Corinthians 13. She went through the chapter picking out the words that stood out to her and asking God to make her patient and kind. She didn’t want to keep a record of wrongs, but it was so hard. Patience was sitting vulnerably in God’s waiting room. Kindness was how you lived out to others the way God loved you. She read through the whole passage praying individual verses, and the words came alive. She intuitively knew that this kind of love was not something she could do on her own. It came only with strength God provided, so she prayed God would empower her with that kind of love and understanding for Tony.