Sacred Revelations (31 page)

He starts to hand me the keys to the front door of the house, but I wave them away, looking across the road to the church. Without thinking, without looking both ways to cross the street, I cross the road, pulled by memories stronger than the emotion that kept me away so many years. I feel rather than see Lion following me. I climb the few steps to the front doors, pulling them open, knowing the doors won’t be locked. It is a poor church in a poor town, there is nothing to steal, and aside from prayer or shelter, there is little reason to go inside. My father wouldn’t deny either for the sake of security.

Tall, glass-paned windows line both sides of the main sanctuary, the view outside grey, dark clouds and bare-limbed trees; there is no beautiful stained glass in this church. White walls, high ceiling, no artwork, just rows and rows of antique pews as old as the building built in the early eighteen-hundreds. I walk between the high-backed wood seats, so simplistic, minimalist, not cushioned for comfort, and remember the hours I spent here, growing up, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday bible study, Wednesday’s midweek service, and the Friday evening choir practice. The others who attended this church were my family until I left—leaving because I was too ashamed to face any of them ever again.

I feel their judgment here, even though I am alone. I can see their faces in my mind, fingers pointing accusingly, mouths turned down in contempt. Sinner, fornicator, murderer.

I do not see God in my mind, I do not feel his outrage. He was there, with me, through all of it. God knows the truth. I didn’t run from him, just the people who sit in these pews Sunday after Sunday.

I run my fingertips across the gleaming wood, following the main aisle to the pulpit. I pass it, veering right, going into a small alcove to pull open a sheltered door. The wood sticks, swollen with time and neglect, but a hard pull releases it. The stairway is dark and spider webs hang from the ceiling, but neither my fear of darkness or insects deters me.

Lion won’t follow me here.

No one has been up this staircase in decades, except me, and since I’ve been gone, none but the ghost I know remains.

I hear wood creak as Lion sits down in one of the pews. At the top step, I stop, wrapping my arms around myself. Freezing air flows in through the open arches, my wet T-shirt sucks around my body, clinging, adding to the chill. I take the final step, placing my hands on the cold metal of the bell. It is covered with a thin film of ice, proving it’s not my imagination that it is colder here, it really is, the temperature dropping fast.

Sitting down, I cross my legs and hold my cell phone in my lap, willing it to vibrate. Knowing it has only been about five minutes since I hung up, questioning how long it can take for a fucking plane to land. I don’t want to be alone here. What was I ever thinking? Coming here? Dear God, why did I come back to face all of this?

My father is dead. Can I admit that I don’t care? Can I admit that? Father forgive me, but I miss the man who once loved me. Loved me when I was sinless . That was a long time ago. Cold, I curl into the wall, wrapping myself in arms and legs, hearing my mother’s voice in the shrill sound of the breeze whistling through the arch of the windows. Sophia.

“The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling-away from species virtue, every crime against one’s own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious, and makes us despise ourselves.”

-Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

Garrett

Mist turns to ice hitting the windshield of our rental car. Welcome to winter inOhio . God, I loveSan

Francisco . Thomas keeps Kitten company on the phone, using the ear piece as he drives. I try to remain calm, inhaling nicotine, exhaling. Wondering wearily why I am making my lungs suffer for my sins. I cannot believe I am inOhio . I could have put this trip off an entire lifetime. Inhale, exhale smoke rings.

Puff, puff, puff. Thomas hits the interstate; I exhale smoke just like Daddy did when I was a child.

Three perfect rings. Only then it was a game, not a bad habit. “Catch the rings on your finger, son, and make a wish. Make it a good wish, Larry.”

I can almost see myself then, sitting on his lap, in blue shorts with suspenders over a short-sleeved oxford shirt, white knee socks, and the very best Buster Brown leather oxfords, not forgetting the horrible Dutch boy haircut. Is it any wonder I am what I am?

“Are you okay?” His hand leaves the gear shift to pat my knee, our eyes meet, and I realize he’s talking to me not her.

“Ask me again on the flight home.” I offer a weak smile.

“It doesn’t have to be this hard.” He rubs my leg. I cover his hand with mine, still holding the cigarette between my fingers.

“What doesn’t have to be this hard?”

“You, facing your ghosts. Embracing the past so that it doesn’t hurt our future.”

Our future. It seems like non-reality that we agreed to a ménage à trois for real, an absolute working threesome. I’ve never been in a poly relationship, although I guess, in a way, what I had with Tony was poly. I was monogamous, except for the scenes I did at work, sexual but never crossing the line to sex; Tony, with his steady stream of boy-toys, was always discreet, or so I thought, thinking we kept up the appearance of happy, committed couple.

I accepted Tony for who he was, so why is accepting this arrangement with Kitten and Fyre causing me to feel odd?

“Do we need to talk about this before we see her?”

“Is she still on the phone?” I ask.

“Lost the signal five minutes ago.” He looks at me hard; I inhale, hand shaking.

I hold the tobacco in my lungs, wishing it was more than tobacco, hissing around a burning exhale of smoke. “It isn’t necessary for us to say anything else…not until we get Kitten back toSan Francisco . It isn’t like we can make this happen. She may not want this.”

“Kitten wants this.”

“No, Kitten wants you and her. She may even think she wants me and her, but the reality is, until we put it into practice, it’s all theory anyway; and I know for a fact she’s never said anything about you and I, or the three of us together.

“You’re scared, get over it. And we both know we’re not talking about our relationship with her. That’s not what you were thinking about. Who’s here? Mother? Father? Ex-girlfriend? Who’s the ghost who has you scared white as death?”

I look at him hard, not liking what he’s saying, but understanding. Thomas has always had the ability to see through my façade. I’m jolted as he pulls into a driveway I wasn’t even aware we’d approached. I look at the two-story white-frame house and try to imagine Kitten growing up here. We’re here to rescue her; my drama is just going to have to wait. Turning back to him, I find him looking at the house too.

“Let’s get her out of here, my ghosts can wait.”

“Can they?” Car parked, Thomas turns to me and I make the mistake of looking into his eyes. The pull is there, even after years of hiding from it. I can’t deny the chemistry between us, the physical attraction.

Suddenly, it can be mine, if I just accept that it can be, assuming Kitten agrees. I open my mouth but no words come out. I put my lips back together and lean in close to him, close enough to smell his cologne and soap and the warm, masculine scent that is his alone. He comes an inch closer, so that our foreheads touch, our eyes meet. “Get us both out of here with our sanity intact and then we’ll talk about relationship strategy.”

“I can do that.” He winks.

I kiss his jaw quickly before pulling away. “Let’s get our girl.”

Stepping from the car, I toss the cigarette butt, squashing it beneath my heel. I’m really surprised Thomas didn’t say anything about the cigarette. I stopped years ago, for Tony. When I was with Thomas before, I smoked, too much, and he put restrictions on my smoking—that I didn’t do it while I was with him. I shouldn’t have grabbed the pack in the airport lobby, but they were there, and I really needed the distraction. Sleet hits me in the face and I hold my arms out to it, letting it lash me, enjoying the sting.

Thomas climbs out and, facing me, shakes his head. “You’re insane.”

“I am Ice.”

We both turn toward the screech of wood against wood, seeing the doors to the church across the road fly open. For a second it is an idyllic scene, rustic church caught in a storm, dark gray clouds and fading sunlight casting an odd halo over the steeple, ice mixed with snow blowing lateral. Then I see Kitten and the scene isn’t idyllic anymore.

She races down the steps and across the road, an icy gust both propelling her and holding her back. I’m hurt that she goes to Thomas first, but then I see just how needy she is, arms and legs wrapped around his middle, holding on for dear life like someone drowning. This isn’t about us. This is more, much more than the problem we left inSan Francisco . I close the gap, wrapping around her from behind as Thomas holds her from the front. Between us, she is soaked through to her skin, her bare arms tinged blue, but she isn’t shivering. She should be shaking involuntarily, her body’s auto-pilot self-preservation mode to keep her internal organs warm.

The pellets of ice sting my face and hands as I rub her arms briskly. I state the obvious, “We need to get her inside and warm immediately!” Thomas is already balancing her with one arm under her hips and yanking her wet T-shirt off her body with his free hand. She isn’t wearing a bra, so she is bared completely for the moment it takes to free her of soggy fabric. She immediately goes back to hugging him tight, her face buried against his neck. I pull off my leather jacket and wrap it around her.

A man clears his throat behind us. I turn, Thomas doesn’t even look up. He whispers into Kitten’s ear and I hear her laugh softly. I’m so pleased to hear her laugh that I don’t even care what he said.

Recognizing Lionell McCain, I am pleased to see that his nose is no longer as perfect as before.

“There are neighbors here—with children—watching. I think that could have waited until you were behind closed doors.”

His lips are blue, ice hitting him as hard as us, but he seems oblivious.

“Is this how you treat guests in this part of the world?” I demand, spoiling for another go at his nose.

“You let them get hypothermia?”

He lifts his hands and backs up. “She won’t talk. She won’t go inside the house. What was I supposed to do?”

I shake my head and look away, irritated that he is here. Irritated that Kitten came here to him.

Fyre opens the car door and puts Kitten in the back seat. Tugging on my arm, he pushes me into the back seat with her, commanding, “Get her warm, now, whatever it takes.”

He climbs in the front seat and closes the door against Lionell, who rushes forward to say something.

Thomas ignores Lion, pulling out of the driveway. Kitten curls against me and I am shocked anew at how really cold she is. I don’t have to tell Thomas to turn the heat on full blast, as soon as he has the engine running, he turns it as high as it will go. He turns to face me, nodding at Kitten.

“Where to?”

I pull Kitten closer. “Where to, baby?”

“I d-don’t know,” she answers, chattering. “Anywhere b-but here.”

Taking her face in my hands, I hug her face, warming her, leaning in to kiss her. Her eyes and nose are red and swollen. As much as I want to ask her what’s happened, I don’t. I kiss her, willing her to kiss me back, teasing her lips with my tongue until she submits and opens her mouth to me. Her lips are cold but my greater concern is that her tongue is cold, telling me her core temperature has dropped. “A warm hotel room would be a good start.”

I push her down in the seat before pulling my own shirt over my head and lying over her. The only thought on my mind is getting her warm.

Amazingly enough, the small town has a choice of two hotel chains, Red Roof Inn or a Residence Inn, and that because the interstate passes over town, literally. Thomas pulls into the parking lot of the Residence Inn and, in less than five minutes, has us registered. He returns with the key to a ground-floor room and only glances in the backseat to determine how things are with Kitten. That I am lying over her body, our naked chests skin to skin doesn’t warrant comment. If she wasn’t shivering so hard, I might have found a way to enjoy the moment, as it is, I focus on using my own body heat to warm her.

Moving the car to park closer to our room’s door takes a few moments because of the maze of buildings, but once the car is parked, I roll aside for Thomas to lift Kitten into his arms. I settle my leather jacket back around her bare shoulders before racing to the door and sliding our keyless entry card.

Inside, I’m delighted by a room that is exceptionally fresh and clean, always a nice bonus and, from the older exterior, I’d had my doubts. Thomas doesn’t pause to look, carrying Kitten from the car directly to the bathroom. I follow close behind, kneeling to run water into the plain, white porcelain tub while he helps her out of my jacket and the rest of her clothing before helping her step into the tub. She cries out as she sits in the tepid water. “It’s too hot.”

“It’s not too hot baby, you’re too cold,” I cajole, watching Thomas struggle with her only a minute before she is pinned in the tub, warm water covering her thighs. I slowly increase the temperature as the level of water rises and her body adjusts to the warmth.

“It is too hot!” she insists and Thomas silences her with his mouth, kissing her and holding her in the barely warm water. She fights, splashing even more as the water rises and grows even warmer, but he holds her in, both our shirts soaked by the time she calms down. With the water as high as the tub allows it to go and as warm as I dare make it, she slouches against the back of the tub, staring into space.

Thomas kisses her forehead and stands. “You two be good. I’m going to go make a few calls to get our jet readied and bring back some food. I want to get us out of here as soon as possible.”

He looks from me to Kitten, lying still and silent in the tub, lost in her own world. His words seem to break into her thoughts though, because she looks at him, a delayed reaction. “I can’t go.”