Winter Winds (15 page)

“You’re holding hands,” Ryan accused.

Trev lifted their joined hands and looked at them as if surprised. “So we are.” He let their hands fall, though he still held tightly to hers. “That’s because Dori’s my wife.”

“Your wife?” Ryan squinted at Trev. Then he folded his arms over his chest and studied Dori. He looked back at Trev, accusation in his gaze. “I thought you went to visit your sick Pop. That’s what you told me.”

“And that was true,” Dori said. “I know because I was there too. Pop’s my Pop too.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. “Jeepers, she is your sister!”

Trev shook his head and tried to clarify the situation for the first of what would undoubtedly be a million times before they were finished. “Pop raised both of us, but we aren’t related.”

“What?” Both Ryan and Todd looked confused.

“I’m adopted,” Dori said. “That’s the easiest way to explain it.”

“Oh.” Both boys nodded, satisfied.

Still Ryan eyed Trev uneasily, and Trev knew exactly what was
on his mind.
What about me? Do I have to go now that you’ve got a wife? Go where?

“Do you want to come home now?” Trev asked the boy. “Or do you want to spend the night with Todd as planned?”

A tension in Ryan eased at Trev’s words. “I’ll stay at Todd’s.”

“Yeah, my parents are taking us bowling,” Todd added.

“Sounds like fun. Have you ever bowled?” Trev asked Ryan.

“Nah, but what’s to it? You just roll the ball down the alley and knock over some pins.”

Trev didn’t laugh. Ryan would learn soon enough that it wasn’t quite that easy.

Todd bumped Ryan with his elbow. “Let’s go.”

Ryan looked at Trev who nodded. “You guys go on. I’ll–We’ll walk Jack.”

The boys took off at a run, but Todd’s words drifted back clearly.

“Wow, wait until I tell Mom about Pastor Paul’s wife! And poor Angie.”

D
ORI TOOK HER HAND BACK
as soon as the boys turned the corner. “Poor Angie?” That buxom, blonde Betty Boop from the motel?

Trev looked her straight in the eye. “There is nothing between Angie and me. There never has been. There never will be. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a married man.”

The snap in his voice took her aback, but she refused to let it show. “Does anyone here know you’re married?”

He shook his head. “No one. Even Phil only found out yesterday.”

“So if we hadn’t met the Warringtons this morning, I could have gone back to California.” Fate could be so fickle. She wouldn’t even consider the idea that the Lord had put the Warringtons there to keep her here.

“If you wanted to go back on your word again.” His tone was sharp.

She held her chin high, making believe that the words didn’t hurt. “Like you’d care.”

“Oh, I’d care all right.”

Her heart jumped. He’d care!

“Pop doesn’t deserve to be treated so shabbily a second time.” The chill in his voice matched the chill in the air.

Anger welled in her. “Don’t you make me the fall guy here, Paul Michael Trevelyan. I’m not the one who broke his vows.”

“No, you’re the one who ran like a coward before I even had a chance to talk with you and work things out.”

The word
coward
shot straight to her heart. She hadn’t been a coward. She had been a young wife who didn’t know what else to do. “You thought a few words would erase the betrayal?”

“Betrayal?
Don’t you think you’re blowing things a bit out of proportion?”

Dori glared at him. The man had no shame, no sense of guilt, no life ethos. That she had pined for him for six years suddenly seemed the utmost in pathetic. “Just because you think Christ forgave you doesn’t mean I have,” she spat.

“No, you haven’t.” He spoke through clenched teeth, the muscle in his jaw jumping. “You’ve wound your self-righteous hurt around yourself like Lazarus’s grave clothes, and just like Lazarus, you’ve begun to stink.”

Dori stepped back as if she’d been struck. “How dare you!”

Suddenly Jack whined. Dori frowned down at him. He looked from her to Trev and back, his agitation plain to see.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked the dog, her voice abrupt. Jack stared at her, his soft brown eyes full of worry.

Then awareness hit and her head jerked up. She and Trev were fighting like fishwives right out on the sidewalk for anyone to see and hear. A great image for a pastor and his wife, but she refused to blush. She had right on her side.

“Open the trunk,” she ordered. “I’ll get my suitcase and go inside.”

“I’ll take it in for you,” Trev said, voice brusque.

She threw a scorching look his way. “Don’t bother. I can manage fine on my own. I’ve done so for six happy, trouble-free years.”

However it was quickly obvious that apart from a tug-of-war right here in the street, Trev was carrying the suitcases. She grabbed her laptop and followed, muttering imprecations all the way up the walk.

He took her things upstairs to what was obviously the master bedroom, dropping them on the beige duvet that covered the queen-size bed. Jack hairs covered the duvet. Beyond the bed she
saw the French doors and the white-railed porch. In other circumstances and seasons, it would be wonderful to lounge out there and enjoy the sea air, but not today. Now the chill outside was only slightly lower than that inside.

“I’ll sleep on the couch in my office,” Trev said, his voice still stiff with anger. “I’ll clean my things out this evening,”

“Good. You do that.” She was very glad he didn’t plan to share the room with her. She couldn’t deal with more nights like last night.

“That’s Ryan’s room.” He pointed across the hall, then waved toward the room at the front of the house. “That’s my office.”

She glimpsed the couch he’d sleep on against one wall, and turning her back to him, she began fiddling with her small roll-on. They stood, mere feet apart, as estranged as they’d ever been. She thought she heard him sigh. It was all she could do not to cry.

“I’ve got to take Jack for a quick walk before I go see Barry and give Mary a quick visit.”

She gave a curt nod. He hesitated a minute as though he had something to say, but on another sigh, he left. She listened to him and Jack thump their way down the stairs, and she heard the front door close quietly.

She sank to the bed and buried her face in her hands. What had just happened? She and Trev had never said ugly words to each other before. Never. As adults they were behaving worse than they ever had as kids. Less than twenty-four hours together, and they’d attacked each other mercilessly.

Feeling defeated and sad and unaccountably to blame—
Wait a minute here. I’m the injured party!
—she left the master bedroom and wandered slowly around the house. The only room she avoided was Trev’s office. It felt too personal, too private to invade.

Ryan’s room was awash in strewn clothes and boy toys. A small TV sat on a card table with PlayStation 2 hand controls leaning against it. A pile of game CDs made a small Leaning Tower. Another pile of CDs, music this time, and a portable CD player had been thrown on his pillow. A backpack lay just inside the door, its sides bulging with books. A small wire bookshelf was filled with paperbacks including
The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
, and several Stephen Lawhead,
Randall Ingermanson, Kathy Tyers, and Karen Hancock fantasies. All were obviously read and reread.

In the bathroom, ugly, mud-colored towels were tucked helter-skelter into racks, but at least they weren’t on the floor. Dori automatically straightened them. She noted that the sink and the tub were clean as were the toilet and the floor around it. A cleaning lady was the only possible answer.

She slowly went downstairs. She’d been so upset and angry when she stormed into the house that she’d seen the living room through a red haze. Now she studied the dark green sofa and matching chair. They were angled to give a good view of the TV, a surprisingly old-fashioned unit.

Beside the chair on an end table sat a pile of books, the top one open and splayed facedown to hold Trev’s place. For they were obviously his. Some were popular Christian titles she was vaguely familiar with, but several were theological books of a highly academic nature. She picked up the top one and read some of the parts he’d underlined in yellow.

She replaced the book with a thoughtful frown. Never in a million years would the old Trev, the Trev she remembered, have read a book about the implications of the Incarnation. Or—she glanced at the second book in the pile—a book on bioethics and the evangelical community. In a flash she comprehended a fact she had acknowledged but not understood before.

Paul Trevelyan was not the same man she had known and married.

Just as she wasn’t the same woman.

She sank into his chair and stared at the blank TV screen. What did these changes mean to her? What did they mean to the next six months?

After a few minutes with no answers, she got up and wandered into what was supposedly a dining room but had been made into a weight room. A weight bench sat along one wall, the bar resting on its supports, large disks attached to the ends. Along another wall other weights of varying sizes lined a shelf shaped like a V.

Well, that explained the broad shoulders.

She walked to the bench, glanced over her shoulder even
though she knew no one was home but her, and yielding to curiosity, lay down on the bench. She placed her feet flat on the floor and her chest under the bar. She gripped it with both hands and pushed upward. Nothing happened. She rubbed her hands together, gripped the bar again, and pushed. Nothing budged, not even an inch.
Wimp!
She climbed to her feet and turned to the kitchen.

Again neat and clean but barren. She opened the refrigerator. A half-full half gallon of 2 percent milk. A container of Philadelphia Cream Cheese and a tub of cottage cheese. She pulled out the cottage cheese and checked the date. Only three weeks past. She slipped off the lid and found no interesting green growth inside. Somehow she felt tricked. There should be green slime, lots of it, so she could sniff at Trev and his life.

On the kitchen table sat a leather-bound copy of Oswald Chambers’s My
Utmost for His Highest
. It was as obviously used as any of the books in Ryan’s bookcase, as the navy leather Bible Trev had read last night. She could see Trev sitting here each morning, his coffee beside him, as he read one of Chambers’s thoughtful devotions. Did he read them aloud to Ryan? Would he read them aloud to her? Did she want him to?

What a warm, cozy, domestic scene that was, even in the starkness of the unadorned kitchen. For a minute its appeal was overwhelming.

What are you thinking, woman
? Taking herself firmly in hand, she opened all the cupboards and examined what was in them. The least she could do while Trev was off pastoring was go to the grocery store. She would show him that she was not a cowardly runaway but a competent woman who was more than up to the challenge before them.

List finally compiled, she looked around the stark kitchen and thought of her warm, inviting kitchen in San Diego with its yellow and white gingham curtains, yellow plaid wallpaper above the countertops, and the white cabinets with their glass doors that showed off her yellow dishes. She thought longingly of the plants that sat on the windowsill above the sink and the African violets that bloomed continuously before the sliding glass door that led to her minuscule deck, where she grew containers of cyclamen,
salvia, gerber daisies, trailing ivy, and petunias.

She’d have to call Meg and make arrangements for the care of the plants while she was gone. Or should she have them shipped here along with Trudy?

No, that was too much of a commitment, one she wasn’t yet willing to make. Not until Trev got down on his knees and begged her forgiveness.

She eyed the phone resting on the counter. Should she call Meg on that phone or her cell? Put the bill on Trev’s tab or hers? She grinned. He might as well get used to paying for her. She didn’t have a job anymore to pay for herself.

“Dori, sweetie!” Meg’s voice warmed the air waves. “I’m so glad you caught me. I was about to leave the shop in April’s capable hands for a couple of hours.”

“You and Ron going out on the town?”

“I wish. No, we were going to your place to pack it up.”

“What?” Pack it up?

“Randy has a gig in New York City starting Wednesday, and he’s going to drive all your things east for you rather than take a plane. That way you’ll have your car and Trudy in no time at all. And your clothes and plants.”

Dori didn’t know what to say, but she felt panic rising in her chest. Why was everybody making her choices for her? And choices that seemed so final.

“Randy and a musician friend will be coming together, so they can drive straight through.” Meg laughed. “They have to be in New York by Wednesday, so you’ll probably see them sometime late Tuesday, bleary eyed and weary. You can put them up for the night, can’t you?”

“Sure,” she answered weakly.

“They’ll be so tired that the floor will be fine,” Meg assured her. “Oops, got to go. Ron’s beeping for me.”

Slowly, carefully Dori set the phone back in its cradle. Her hand was shaking. When had she lost control of her own life? And how had it happened?

She felt like the prisoner in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” when the walls started closing in on him. She shuddered. She had to get out of this house! But where would she go?

The list fluttered in her shaking hand.

The grocery store!

She grabbed her coat, hat, gloves, and purse and was out the door before she remembered that she didn’t have a vehicle. With a snarl she went back inside and grabbed the phone book. She looked up car rentals and was surprised to find one in Seaside. She dialed the number.

“Sure, we got cars to rent,” said the man who answered. “Come on down and look.”

“If I could come down and look, I wouldn’t need to rent a car, now would I?” Dori said, the very soul of reason.

“Oh. Yeah.”

She waited for him to offer to bring her a car, but no such luck. “What kinds of cars do you have available?”