“Mitch,” she told him every few shows, “I haven’t played my songs for you yet. Don’t you want to hear them?”
“Yeah, sure, baby.” He’d lean in and kiss her long enough to take her breath away. “Maybe at the next stop, okay?”
But at the next stop he’d say the same thing.
Next time, baby … we’ll look at your songs next time.
The routine was identical in nearly every city. After the shows, Mitch would spend the night with her. And in those moments she could barely remember what city she was in, let alone her parents’ warning or the girl she used to be. Every now and then she thought about her forgotten faith and the promises she’d made as a young girl—promises to stay pure and set apart, to wait for her wedding day. But the longer she stayed on the road with Mitch Mullins the more distant that girl and those promises became.
A shudder passed over Sarah and gradually she pulled herself from the memory. The early days were the hardest to relive, but they were part of the story, part of the ritual all the same. Not because Sarah missed those days, but because without them there would’ve been no story at all.
That night she lay down on the pillow and struggled to get comfortable. Her breathing was shallow and stubborn, more so than before, and her tired heart beat slower than usual. When sleep finally found her, it wasn’t with dreams of Mitch Mullins and the three ornaments already on the tree. It was with silent prayers and bits of her song, and a single thought she couldn’t quite shake.
If God was going to let someone be changed by her story, her song, then where was her caregiver, Beth? The young woman had to be the right one, so why hadn’t she come to hear the story?
The more Sarah thought about Beth, the more she became certain of something. Three days earlier, she had seen a look in Beth’s eyes, something she couldn’t quite identify. But now, now Sarah knew where she’d seen the look before, and that could only mean one thing. Beth was in trouble. Maybe with a child or a parent. Maybe with a spouse, but she was in trouble.
Because the look in her eyes was a rebellious defiance—the same type of look Sarah herself had carried back in 1941.
B
OBBY
B
ALDWIN
couldn’t sleep.
Beth was on the sofa, probably snoring under a mound of blankets the way she’d slept most nights since her announcement. At first Bobby hadn’t minded. He was mad at Beth, frustrated with her. How dare she make a decision that would so swiftly and totally end their family?
But that night Bobby felt sick to his stomach and his heart ached. Now that he’d had time to think about the situation, he knew the score. Beth was serious. She was going to leave him after Christmas and nothing was going to stop her. Because of that, lately he walked around in a state of shock and desperation—frantic to find a way to turn back the clock.
He might be upset with Beth; he might not like her demands or the way she made him feel inadequate as a husband. But he loved her; with all his heart he loved her. He couldn’t imagine living without her and Brianna—not for a week, let alone a few months or a year. Maybe forever.
The prospect of giving up his family was more than he could take, worse than he’d ever imagined. Even now—late at night with an early work shift in a few hours—the idea of losing them sat on his chest like a cement truck.
Beth was going to take his Brianna away and he could do nothing to change her mind. Sweet Brianna, who adored climbing into bed between the two of them. Brianna, who clamored about in the kitchen every Saturday while he made her Mickey Mouse pancakes. Brianna with her Eskimo kisses and
Hold-me-forever-Daddy
hugs.
How would he survive without her? Without either of them?
Brianna would be asleep now, dreaming about Christmas, sprawled out beneath her fairy princess bedspread. He slipped his feet out from under the covers, grabbed a crumpled sweatshirt from the floor, and threw it on. The house was chilly, more so than usual. He shivered once and snuck out the bedroom door. Without stopping, he passed a sleeping Beth and tiptoed into Brianna’s room.
For a moment he stood there, silent, barely breathing. The moonlight splashed through her window and across her face. She was so pretty, such a delight.
“Hi, Brianna.” He walked to her bed, his voice softer than a whisper. He eased himself onto the edge of her mattress and stared at her. “Daddy loves you, honey.”
Sitting there, looking at his only child, Bobby felt a lump rise in his throat. How many days like this did he have left? Times when Brianna would be sleeping under his roof? Life was bound to play out predictably from here, wasn’t it? Divorce had a sameness about it, a brokenness that repeated itself no matter how many people chose it.
Beth would leave and at first he’d see Brianna often—several times a week at least. But life would get busy, and eventually Beth would grow tired of Spartanburg the way single people tire of small towns. She would move away, maybe back to Atlanta where her sisters lived, and then what?
Bobby closed his eyes and remembered something he hadn’t thought of in years.
He’d been traveling late one August, going to California to visit his mother before she died. Beth and Brianna had stayed home, since the visit would take place at a hospital and Brianna had only been a baby at the time.
His layover was in St. Louis, and once the gate attendant started the boarding call, Bobby noticed a man and a little boy fifteen feet away. The man was standing, and the child—maybe seven years old—was holding onto his legs, clinging to him as though he never wanted to let go.
That’s when Bobby noticed the woman.
Sitting a few feet back, her expression hard, was a woman whose arms were crossed. The man dropped to one knee and spoke to the little boy, but the woman checked her watch and shifted her position.
Finally a gate attendant approached them, and the man stood. He nodded as the attendant relayed something Bobby couldn’t make out. Then the man pulled the boy into one final hug, held on for several seconds, and bid him good-bye. The boy straightened himself and that’s when Bobby got a clear view of him.
The child was crying, sobbing. His next words were loud enough for Bobby to hear. “I don’t want to go, Dad.”
The man hugged the boy once more, a desperate sort of hug. The two exchanged words and nods and one last embrace. Then the man stepped away and the boy—trying to be stoic—went with the gate attendant toward the jetway. Every few steps he craned his neck around and gave the man a little wave, and the man—his expression strong—made an attempt to smile back.
Not until the boy turned the corner and disappeared did the man break. He turned around, took a few slow steps past the woman, and hung his head against the wall. For a long while—through most of the boarding call—the man stayed there, his shoulders shaking as he cried for the boy.
Bobby watched the entire scene, watched how the woman left the man alone, how she looked pained for him, but indignant. She shared none of the man’s brokenness. What, Bobby wondered, would have explained such a scene? A man saying good-bye to his son? A woman sitting nearby disinterested?
And then it hit him.
The situation was obvious; it was the end of summer, after all. The boy’s parents obviously lived in separate cities—possibly separate states. After a summer with his father, the boy must have been returning home—wherever home was—to be with his mother.
The disinterested woman was probably the new wife.
All of it made sense. And for weeks the image stayed with him—the broken man leaning on an airport wall, weeping, his head buried in the crook of his arm.
A portrait of divorce.
It was the same picture any time children were involved. Oh, sure, at first divorce promised freedom, an answer to every trouble marriage had a way of bringing. But divorce was a lie, a con-artist that moved into a family and stole the little moments, robbing every member blind. It was a hand grenade that shattered lives and destroyed dreams, taking no prisoners along the way.
At least that’s the way Bobby remembered thinking about it at the time.
He never shared the image with Beth, never felt the need to share it. They were happy, right? Why talk about divorce? They’d promised each other forever, and forever was what Bobby expected. They went to church and prayed with Brianna before bedtime. And if their schedules and budgets didn’t allow time for date nights or yellow roses, well then, at least they had Sunday mornings together.
Nothing had changed there, but over time Bobby forgot about the scene at the airport and divorce began to seem somehow more understandable. Not for him and Beth, maybe, but for some of the guys on the maintenance crew at work, guys with issues in their marriages. Not serious issues of abuse or unfaithfulness, but bickering and boredom and a spouse hardly worth going home to.
For them divorce meant the chance for new love, someone more exciting, more sympathetic. For years, despite everything he knew to be true, that’s the way Bobby had viewed it.
Until now.
The nausea within him grew worse and he gave a hard shake of his head. Was Beth crazy? Couldn’t she look ahead and see where leaving would get them? It was her fault, after all. She wanted to leave.
He studied Brianna, her little-girl lips and the soft way her chest rose and fell with each breath. It didn’t matter if it was Beth’s fault. Either way, a divorce would touch them all, change them from what they’d been to another statistic.
If Beth left with Brianna, one day he’d be the man in the airport, telling his daughter good-bye at summer’s end, waiting until the following Christmas or maybe an entire year before seeing her again. Only he wouldn’t fall against the airport wall in tears, he’d collapse right there at the jetway. Unable to breathe or move or exist with his daughter leaving him.
The ache in his heart grew stronger and Bobby hunched forward, one hand on Brianna’s pillow.
How had they let it fall apart? He and Beth had been perfect for each other, hadn’t they? In love and excited about a lifetime together? Wasn’t that them? So what had gone wrong? Had Beth found someone else, someone with a better job, more money, and security?
Bobby exhaled and the sound of it rattled his soul. Whatever the reason, this whole mess was her fault. He hadn’t done anything but put in his forty hours a week and show up each night at home. He didn’t drink or gamble or hang out with the guys. He’d never once been interested in another woman, so what was her problem?
“God … what happened?” His words were barely audible. “Why isn’t this enough for Beth?”
He heard nothing in response, no booming voice telling him how he might change Beth’s mind. But a strong sense came over him, a sense that made him long for a look at their wedding pictures, the place where their lives had come together. He kissed Brianna on the cheek, and crept out the door, down the hall to the TV room.
Quietly, so he wouldn’t wake Beth, he scanned the top bookshelf until he saw the brown leather-like cover. Their wedding album. He reached for the book and pulled it out. A layer of dust came down with it. He carried the album to their bedroom, sat at the end of the bed, and stared at the cover.
In golden letters the front read, “Robert and Elizabeth, forever.” Their wedding date was centered beneath.
What was it they’d promised that summer, when the photographer presented them with the book? That they’d look at the pictures every year on their anniversary, wasn’t that it? That they’d take an evening and remember the events and people who brought them together, so that their love would never have a chance to fade, right?
But two years later, Brianna came along and somehow the promise was forgotten.
Bobby ran his fingers over the dusty cover and figured it had been four years since either of them had even thought of the wedding pictures, let alone taken the time to look at it.
Still, he wasn’t sure why he suddenly wanted to see them now, in the middle of the night. If Beth wasn’t interested in staying, a bunch of photographs wouldn’t do them much good.
He opened the first page and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
Beth looked beautiful. She was facing him, the two of them looking like the definition of love. She was beyond beautiful, and not just her face and hair and the dress she wore. But her expression, caught in his embrace, unaware of the camera. Hunger and longing filled their eyes, and a passion that went beyond physical desire.
But even that wasn’t what made him struggle for the next breath. Instead it was the words scrawled at the bottom of the page, a Bible verse he’d used in his vows.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Since Beth’s announcement that she was leaving, Bobby had insisted the trouble was her fault. Her fault for being unhappy, her fault for being self-centered, her fault for even thinking of taking Brianna away from him.
But here, now, those excuses were leaking from his airtight understanding like air from an untied balloon.
Sure, he went to work each day and came home every night. His job had kept them fed and clothed, but what had he done to keep their marriage alive? Slowly, he shut the book, too sad and tired to turn another page.
The book tucked up against his chest, he fell asleep, and for the first time that week it wasn’t with condemning thoughts of Beth and her selfishness.
Rather, it was of his own.
He’d been wrong to let their marriage die. Tomorrow morning he would stop pointing fingers at Beth and start finding ways to love her, the way he’d long since stopped loving her. He had no idea how—in a few weeks’ time—he could find a way to make things right again, but he had to try.
Most of all, he had to find a way to lay down his life for the only girl he’d ever loved.
Beth’s first thought the next morning was that she must have been dreaming. She’d dreamed that Bobby had been creeping around the TV room while she was sleeping, and that he’d taken their wedding album down from the top shelf. It wasn’t until she was fully awake that she realized she hadn’t been dreaming at all. Where the book had been was now only an empty space.