Authors: Carolyne Aarsen
“Right. Anneke, can you run upstairs for Daddy and get the piece of paper sitting on the bathroom counter? It has lines and
writing on it.”
“Sure!” Anneke jumped up from the puzzle she and Nicholas were putting together.
“I've been finding the paper this prayer is written on lying on the table, on the back of the toilet tank, tucked in the pocket
of his pants.” Leslie turned to me. “You'll hear the edited version tomorrow when you come to church with us.”
“Come to church?” I released a quick laugh. “You're kidding, right?”
Leslie's features froze into an expression of entreaty, and I knew precisely what she was thinking. I had seen the same look
on her face when she wanted me to tell Hay ward Atkins, who was in my chemistry class, that she had a crush on him.
Could you please cooperate without making a big fuss over this?
“So…” I gave Leslie a bogus smile as visions of sleeping in rapidly slipped away. “Uh… what should I wear?” I asked, for lack
of a more profound question.
Leslie's face reflected her relief. “I'll help you figure that out tonight.”
I thought of the random clothes I had tossed into my knapsack and realized that I would probably be scamming an outfit from
her anyway.
Nicholas got up from the puzzle he was now bored with, and as he reached for a cookie, I saw faded scars on his arm.
“What happened to Nicholas's arms?” I asked Leslie.
She frowned, then glanced at her son. “Scars from the meningitis rash he got last year.”
Guilt washed over me like a tidal wave as I thought of him lying in a hospital bed last summer while I was incommunicado.
Going to church was the least I could do for my sister and her family.
T
he door to my bedroom cracked open. Light sliced across the darkened floor. “You awake?” I heard Leslie whisper.
Without waiting for an answer, she ran across the floor and vaulted herself onto my bed, her grinning face landing inches
from mine.
“Aren't you in the wrong room?” I said, making my voice croaky so she'd think she'd woken me up when, in fact, I'd been lying
here wide awake since I said good night an hour ago. Too many thoughts for too little brain space.
“I was finishing up a scrapbook page, and Dan went to bed ages ago.” Leslie clicked on the little bedside light, turned, wiggled,
and wobbled, settling herself in. “So. Talk to me.”
The sight of her face, inches from mine, beckoned beloved memories. After each special event in our lives, she would jump
on my bed when Mom was asleep and bark out her curt demand. I always complied. But this time her request chased all lucid
thought away.
“I had a good day,” was all I could come up with.
“It had an interesting start.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled back a bit, her eyes intent on mine. “What do you think of Jack?”
“I would bet money I'm not his type.”
“Really? That's good, then.”
“And again I say, what do you mean?”
Leslie rubbed the side of her nose. “Well, it's just that he seemed interested in you…”
“Right.”
“Oh, c'mon. Don't tell me you didn't notice. You've always had this power over guys. Everywhere you go, guys fall for that
long curly hair, that cute nose, and the hint of freckles. You look so sweet and innocent…”
“Which we both know I am not.”
“I don't mean to put you down.”
“Really?” I tried for a smile. “You're doing a pretty good job.”
“I did say you had a cute nose.”
“Where are you going with this?”
She sighed, then wriggled her own cute nose. “I could see by the way he was looking at you that he likes you. He thinks you're
interesting.” She held up a warning finger. “Which you are. You're fun, you're pretty, you like to joke…” She put her hand
on my shoulder and squeezed, as if preparing me for her next onslaught. “I'm so glad you're here, and I enjoy having you around.
But I'm not dumb. I know that once this court thing is over and you've paid me back, you're going to get itchy feet and head
out again. You'll be gone.”
“You should be writing horoscopes.”
“That's against my newfound religion.”
“There's lots of good money in telling people that Venus is on the cusp, which means financial success or romance is in their
future.”
Leslie laughed, then grew serious. “I can't predict the future. Only God can. But I'm pretty sure that your future is down
the road once you're done here. And Jack, well, he's been through a tough relationship with a girl who said she was going
to settle down in Harland and then left him. He even bought a house.”
“Very astute of him. Real estate. Good investment.” Leslie's veiled warning made me duck and deflect.
“He's a great guy. I don't want to see him hurt.”
“He's not interested in me, Leslie. So your little lecture was a waste of our precious, and as you so perceptively said,
short
time together.”
“I didn't mean to hurt you, Terra.”
I pressed my hand against my heart. “The truth always hurts, honey. Besides, a churchgoing guy is definitely not my type.
And that whole cop thing? Major turnoff.”
“You've always had this anti-cop thing. Where did that come from?”
“Childhood hang-up.”
“From Mom, then,” Leslie said with a dismissive snort.
“I had my own experiences with policemen.”
“Like the time that social worker and cop came and you locked the door and pretended to be Mom so they wouldn't think we were
alone?”
“And others.” I caught her by the hand, willing her to understand. “Mom had it right, Leslie. We were better off as a family.
I did what was necessary to keep us together. To keep us a family.”
“If you want to call that a family. I still believe if Social Services had gotten involved in our lives, we would have been
in a better place.”
My mind flashed back to the little girls I'd seen on my first day in Harland. That could have been Leslie and me in the back
of that police car. Somehow I didn't think it mattered how beautiful a house they went to; their first preference would be
their own mom and their own home.
“What would you have considered a better place?”
Leslie's soft smile showed me that she hadn't noticed the tinge of anger in my voice.
“I used to imagine that we lived in a house with a yard and a dog…”
“Exactly what you have now,” I said quietly.
“Yeah.” Leslie wriggled again. Hugged me again. “It's nice to have you here in my house, big sister.”
I smiled back and gently touched her face. “It's nice to be in your house. I missed you.”
“And I missed you.”
I knew she meant the comment as a gentle echo of what I said, but her simple words drove a wedge of guilt deep into my heart.
I took a long, slow breath and clutched her shoulder, squeezing, as if by doing so I could convey a small portion of my regret.
“You need to know that I'm sorry,” I whispered, taking the plunge toward the real reason I was here. “I'm really, really sorry
I wasn't here for you. With Nicholas.”
Leslie held my gaze, then nodded slightly. I was glad she didn't offer me immediate absolution. That would have made my confession
seem cheap and meaningless.
“I'm sorry, too,” Leslie said finally, her voice a whisper in the quiet that had sprung up between us. “I missed you and wanted
you here. I had Dan's family, and they were great, but I needed my own flesh and blood. My own family.”
I gave her a wan smile, offering her regret and sorrow space to settle in and be acknowledged.
I caught her clasped hands between mine, covering them. “We don't have a lot of family, do we?”
“I've got more than I used to.”
Leslie's quiet comment reminded me of her now-extended family.
“And very, very occasionally that woman we call Mom.”
Leslie sighed. “I wonder how a person can abandon her own children.”
Now we officially needed to move on.
“Remember how we used to make plans?” I said quietly, letting the past sift through the present. “How we had such a definite
idea of what we wanted our lives to look like?”
“I remember cutting pictures out of catalogs and pasting them in our dream books.” Thankfully, Leslie was willing to play
along.
“You did end up with the dream, didn't you?” I asked. “The house, the kids, the husband.”
Leslie's gentle laugh underscored my melancholy. “I saw it as more of a nightmare at first.”
“So you said in your e-mails…”
“But I know I'm in a good place. I love Dan more than ever. My kids aren't a burden.” She laughed, burrowing a little deeper
into the pillow. “Well, not all the time. I have help and support in taking care of them. I've discovered faith…” She hesitated
there, giving me an apologetic smile. “I still feel a little funny talking about God and… my relationship with Him. I know
you don't feel the same way… probably don't even care… I should probably be evangelizing you…” She let out an embarrassed
laugh and stopped there.
I wasn't ready to be on the receiving end of her evangelizing. Church tomorrow would be enough for me.
“But, Terra, I found something when I found faith,” she continued, obviously not done with the God stuff. “Something big and
deep, with roots in eternity. And I know you're not comfortable with me talking about all that God stuff,” she said, resting
her hand on my shoulder. “So I'll stop now.”
As she spoke, a faint echo of the emptiness I'd tried most of the past ten years to eradicate sounded deep in my soul. The
idea that there was something more than this world— something beyond and above it. The yoga classes tried to fill that void,
but I grew impatient with the facile answers and mumbo jumbo. Any of the other remedies I'd tried gave me healing with no
depth. The self-help books, the motivational tapes, the false intimacy of casual dating, all skimmed over my pain. The life
I was working at wasn't functioning.
But God? From what I knew, He required a whole lot more than a quick read, a class one night a week, and a vague promise to
practice.
“Hey. Terra. Where are you?”
I tossed her a quick smile, ready to move into another place. “So I'm guessing you threw your dream book away.”
“I did.” Leslie lifted her head a fraction, her eyes boring into mine, as if burrowing into my brain. “Why did you come?”
“I told you.”
“You didn't hitchhike across three states just to ask me about my dream book or hang up clothes with me or work at a diner.”
As our gazes locked, a sense of urgency propelled me forward. A desire to spill out all the things I had been holding back.
“Please tell me. I'm your sister.”
I licked my lips, then fortified myself with a long, slow intake of oxygen. “I didn't answer your e-mails right away because…
well… I was having troubles of my own.”
“What kind of troubles?”
It was a blank question, asked to maintain momentum. I twisted the blanket around my hands.
Leslie pulled the blanket away and wrapped her hands around mine. “What kind of troubles?” she repeated.
I gently stroked her thumb as I struggled to find some secure mental footing.
Don't tell her. Not after all that Christian talk. She won't understand.
It was her next whispered “Please” that tipped my resistance.
I took in a long, slow breath of preparation.
“I was living with this guy.” I spoke quietly, gently easing the words out of the pain of my past. “We weren't married. I'd
been with him before, but I left him. Well, we got back together again, which was a mistake.”
Leslie said nothing.
“It was a mistake because he was abusive.”
Leslie's hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, honey.”
And then Leslie's arms were around me, holding me tight, anchoring me to our joined pasts.
I pressed my face against hers, letting her sympathy wash over me. For the first time since I'd seen the faintly patronizing
looks from the nurses in the hospital, I felt my grief being given consideration.
“I wish I had known. I'm so sorry.”
I kept my head down, guilt and shame, like two dark parentheses, bracketing my life.
Leslie stroked my shoulder with her hand, making soft, soothing noises. “I wish you had told me.”
“When I got out of the hospital, I found out about Nicholas,” I said quietly. “There was no way I was going to put my own
problems on your shoulders.”
“Hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I don't want to talk about it.” I couldn't tell her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“But to have to deal with that all alone…” Her voice broke again, and her obvious sorrow nudged more guilt my way. “I wish
we could have been there for you.”
I wished I could cry. Anything to loosen this horrible knot of pain in my stomach.
“I left him, then moved back once because he begged me to. He said he couldn't live without me. But I found out that what
he couldn't live without was someone to kick around. He threatened to kill me if I ever left him. Trouble was, I was afraid
he would kill me if I didn't. So I ran away. And came here.”
Leslie wrapped her arm around my shoulder, drawing me close. I leaned sideways, drinking in the attention, a balm for my parched
loneliness.
I couldn't tell her any more. I just couldn't.
A
re you sure this outfit is okay?” I hissed, grabbing Leslie's arm.
Leslie pulled her attention away from the lady she was talking to in the church foyer and gave my outfit a cursory glance.
“You look fine.”
Hardly fine,
I thought, tugging on the skirt. Leslie was still a little shorter than me, so instead of hanging demurely at my knees, the
skirt I'd borrowed from her stopped a few inches above them. I had topped it off with a camisole of my own and then toned
down the streetwalker look with a sedate sweater Leslie had gotten from Gloria as a hand-me-down.
As I looked at the women accompanying their husbands into the church building, all I saw were suits, suitable dresses, or
dress pants and blazers. Some of the younger girls were dressed a little more casually, but they were teenagers, and I suspected
their choice of clothing was the result of a battle their parents had wisely decided to forgo.