The Breaking Point (22 page)

Gabe rocked back on his heels, then struck a waterproof match and held the flame to the small tower of kindling and wood in front of him. The flame caught, then grew.

He turned back to Renee. She was so still. He moved to kneel beside her and tugged her mittens from her hands. Her skin was ice cold. Gabe rubbed her hands between his, willing his warmth into her body. He scanned her face, noting the slightly blue tinge to cheeks and lips that usually were rosy with life.

Please, God, please … don’t let me lose her.

Dark thoughts uncoiled inside him, striking with a poisonous precision. Now
you pray and say you trust, eh? Funny how you’re always too late with too little, Roman.
Always
apologizing. Never doing it right the first time. You’re worthless. A failure as a husband. As a Christian. Why should God even listen to anything you have to say?

Gabe dropped Renee’s hand and went to toss another piece of wood onto the small fire. He stared at the flickering flames, then moved back to Renee’s side. He opened his coat and wrapped it around her, tucking her in against his body, ignoring the pain gnawing its way through his throbbing head.

If only he could ignore the guilt eating at him as well.

He should have reached Renee sooner. Maybe if he’d left Bo behind or hadn’t taken so much time deciding what to stuff into his pack, he could have pushed himself more. So what if his head hurt? He should have gone faster—

Stop it!
He leaned his head against the hard bark of the tree behind them.
I did my best.
His throat constricted, and he
swallowed hard as chills shook him, ratcheting his shoulders into knots, sending the white-hot pain singing through his head again.

I did my best …

It was the truth. But that didn’t help. Not when he knew it might not be enough.
But then, it never
is, is
it?

Gabe turned away from the dark thought, but he couldn’t dredge up any kind of denial. How could he, when he knew it was true? His best wasn’t good enough.

It never had been.

L
ATE
M
ARCH
1980

THE CRIB WAS A THING OF BEAUTY.

Renee could hardly believe she and Gabe had made it. She ran her hand along the smooth rails, loving the feel of it, the warmth of the wood tones.

“Pretty amazing, huh?”

“Fit for a king.”

“Or a queen.” Gabe folded his arms around her, and they stood there, content to be together.

One night she and Gabe had been out window-shopping, when he stopped cold. They were in front of a furniture store, and there in the display was a beautiful crib. Gabe studied it for such a long time that Renee finally tugged on his sleeve.

He looked at her—and grinned. “You up for a challenge?”

With that they launched into a project that took most of their
evenings, but neither of them minded. Renee loved being together like that, working together to make something for their little one.

Besides, it was a nice break from college and classes and homework. Renee had known finishing college while pregnant wouldn’t be easy, but she was determined to do it. Working on the crib helped motivate her to get through her reading or paper writing in record time.

And now, the crib was done. They’d finished it just a few days ago, and finally, tonight, they moved it into the baby’s room. It was the finishing touch on a room Renee already loved.

They’d painted it a pale green. “Just in case your son is a daughter,” she’d told Gabe when he asked why not blue. Characters from Winnie the Pooh beamed down at them from the walls, and Renee had painted soft puffs of clouds on the ceiling.

Gabe put the tiny mattress in the crib, then stepped aside as Renee draped the fluffy Winnie the Pooh blanket in place. They fastened the musical baby mobile Gabe’s mother had given them at the head, then stepped back and surveyed their handiwork.

The room was perfect.

Renee leaned against Gabe’s solid arm. They had come so far. When she’d first told him about the baby, she could tell he was stunned. She was so afraid he would walk away, that she’d never see him again. But the next morning he was there, at her door. They went for a long drive and talked. She’d been shocked when he told her he was leaving the seminary but glad he’d made that decision before he knew about the baby. At least that wasn’t her fault.

Finally he pulled the car to the side of the road, turned to her and took her hands in his, and asked her to marry him.

She’d dreamed of such a moment, longed for it, imagined how he would sound, how she would react. In all those imaginings,
it had never been like this—Gabe so quiet, so … resigned. She studied him, looking for the warmth, the tenderness, but it wasn’t there. Nothing was. No joy, no fear, no anger. Nothing.

That frightened her more than his rages ever had.

She called her parents that night to tell them she was getting married. She didn’t tell them about the baby. She couldn’t. They’d know soon enough. She forced a note of excitement into her voice as she talked with her stunned parents, then wondered that she had to do so. No, she and Gabe weren’t getting married under ideal circumstances, but they were getting married. She should be happy.

Once again her mother seemed to hear what Renee wasn’t saying. Last night as they’d talked, she asked Renee, “Are you sure about this, honey?”

“About getting married.”
Please … don’t let me start crying.
“Of course, Mom.”

“We’d like to get to know him first.” This from her father, who was on the extension phone.

Renee heard the slight reproach in his quiet words, and her heart fell. She wanted so badly to tell them everything, to tell them why she and Gabe had gotten engaged, why they were getting married so quickly.

But she couldn’t. They would be so disappointed in her. So she’d said everything she could to calm her parents’ fears—and her own.

As the days went by and they planned their wedding, Renee kept watching Gabe—and her disquiet grew. She couldn’t explain it, but whenever they were together, he seldom spoke. She was always the one to initiate conversation. Mostly he sat back, listening as she talked, nodding when she made decisions, shrugging when she asked him what he thought or wanted.

“I don’t know much about weddings,” he said more than once, a shadow of the grin she loved so much touching his
mouth. “What matters most is what you want.”

She’d always teased Gabe, telling him that if he wanted to make her really happy he could just let her have her way all the time. Well, he was doing exactly that, and it was driving her crazy!

What concerned her most, though, was that they didn’t pray together anymore. The few times she’d asked Gabe to pray for them, he just told her to do it.

It was as though a part of him had died or gone away. As though, despite the fact that he hadn’t walked away—he was still there, planning their marriage and life together with her—some part of him had closed off to her.

And to God.

She’d prayed about it, searched Scripture for wisdom, even tried talking to Gabe about it, but he just looked at her with those empty eyes and said he didn’t know what she was talking about. He was fine. He was excited about the baby. Looking forward to their life.

Renee didn’t believe a word of it.

The only time Gabe seemed remotely like himself was the night he suggested to Renee that they elope. To say the idea had surprised her would be an understatement. She stared at him, stunned, but her heart melted when he came to take her hands in his.

“Hon, it’s hard enough for kids today. I don’t want our baby … our child—”

When he broke off, too choked up to continue, Renee reached up to frame his face with her hands. “Gabe, what is it?”

The sorrow in his steady gaze had almost broken her heart, but there had been warmth there, too, and that sent her pulse racing. This was Gabe. This was the man she knew and loved.

His hands covered hers as he went on. “I don’t want our child to start his life under a stigma. His parents should be married.”

Renee wasn’t sure when they’d decided the baby was a
he, but that’s how they’d been referring to him. “He’ll still be early, Gabe. People will still talk.”

He nodded. “Some will. But if we marry now, he’ll only be a little early. We can say he’s premature, and no one can say different. Not for sure.”

Though Renee’s heart had broken at the loss of yet another dream—how she’d longed for a church wedding, with all her friends and family to share in the celebration—she knew he was right. They owed it to their child to do this.

So she pushed aside her doubts and nodded, telling herself the smile on Gabe’s face and the warmth in his eyes was better than any wedding. She considered calling her parents, letting them know—then discarded the notion. She couldn’t give them the opportunity to talk her out of it.

A few days later they were at the courthouse, waiting in a pale green room with several other couples for their turn in front of the justice of the peace.

When the clerk called first Gabe’s name and then hers, Renee stood and followed him into the aisle, up to the front of the room. She clutched at her bouquet of flowers, trying to still the tremors that seemed to have taken up residence in her hands, her knees, her stomach. But as she moved into position and looked up at the black-suited man before them, one overwhelming thought rose from Renee’s heart, surging through her, mowing down with startling ease her desperate attempts to repress it.

What am I doing?

She wanted to scream at the man intoning the wedding ceremony, to tell him to stop. To wait just a minute. Give her a chance to think. She wanted to turn and race from the room.

But she didn’t. She just stood there, happiness pasted onto her stiff face, nodding in all the right places, and finally reciting the vows she’d loved all her life, had waited so long to say: “I, Renee, take you, Gabe, to be my lawful wedded
husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death parts us.”

In minutes it was over. The justice beamed at her and Gabe, pronounced them “husband and wife,” and told Gabe he could kiss his bride—and to please pay the clerk on his way out the door.

Renee choked on a laugh. She’d gotten married at a drive through. Okay, a walk-through. She shook her head. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

There was no honeymoon, of course. They just went back to the apartment they’d rented earlier that week—a spacious place with an abundance of windows and deep-toned woodwork on the top floor of an older home—and fixed a meal of soup and sandwiches. That night she lay in bed next to the man who was now her husband, listening to his even breathing as he slept. Only then, in the stillness of the small room, did she let her emotions flow.

Regret, grief, self-pity, anger … they all took turns wrapping themselves around her heart and squeezing. Renee pressed her fists to her damp eyes and tried to rub away the emotions, the pain, but nothing she did helped.

You’re just tired. Get some sleep. Things will be better in the morning.

In a way, she’d been right. Things did get a little better. When she called her folks, they were shocked at first, then recouped quickly.

“We love you, Renee. And if you love Gabe this much, I’m sure we’ll love him, too.”

Quick tears had thickened her words. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Tell you what, Ren, when you guys come to visit us in a few weeks, we’ll have a reception, okay? I mean, seeing as we didn’t get to have the big, blowout wedding.”

She focused on her dad’s attempt at humor, doing her best to ignore the tinge of hurt in his voice. “Sounds good to
me, Boppo.” She choked back a sob. “I can’t wait to come home.”