Homefires (55 page)

I turned my wooden head and peered at him through leaden eyes. “You’re not just any man, Kirk. You’re a man of God.” I watched it wound him, glad that it did. He needed to feel some of what I felt.

I felt like a squeezed out lemon. All substance gone, leaving only an empty, dried rind. Kirk slid over and pulled me into his arms. I stiffened and pushed against him, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Janeece,” his voice was rough velvet, “I made a terrible mistake, but I’m not crazy enough to let go of you. Please – please try to find it in your heart to forgive me.”

His big hand took my chin and guided it around until our gazes locked. Oh, it hurt so dreadfully to look into the face I loved above all others. Even humble and repentant, he was splendid. Manly and all quiet dignity and I began to cry and he held me, soothing and crooning to me.

“I love you, Neecy,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my hair, my cheeks, eyelids and finally, capturing my lips. My tears continued to flow. Crazy thing was, he was the only one who could fix my pain. He, who’d caused it. “Do you love me?” he asked in an uncertain, little boy voice.

I laughed, a harsh, hysterical sound. “Of course I love you. Love doesn’t just
stop
. Why do you think this hurts so much?
Huh
? I wish I
didn’t
love you,” I hiccupped a sob, then finished on an exhausted whisper. “It wouldn’t be as bad if I didn’t love you.”

“Honey,” Kirk’s arms tightened and he leaned to look down into my face, eyes dark with pain. “If there’s anything you want to know, ask. I don’t want any more secrets. It was hell...” He shook his head and gazed off. Then he looked at me again, determined. “Once Roxie seduced me, she resorted to emotional blackmail to keep me dangling. You need to know that. The times you saw us together, I was appeasing her – praying she wouldn’t destroy us. I never wanted you hurt. Now, I want everything clear between us.”

I turned my head to stare out the window, woozy with exhaustion and confusion. My terror was gone. Desolation replaced it. Facts swirled through my mind. The worst had happened. I faced yet another struggle: to survive. I thought of the recent abortion. Tears puddled up again, then spilled over.

“That’s why you felt different about the baby – ”

Kirk resisted me pulling away. “No – I told you why I didn’t want you to go through – ”

“But Kirk,” I peered at him through tears, my mouth in rictus between words, “always before, everything about our making babies was so spiritual...so sacred.” I bawled then like a three-year-old who’d lost her doll, with Kirk’s arms holding and bolstering and his voice murmuring I knew not what, only
that it lulled me into quietness once more. “I knew. In my gut, I knew something had changed.”

“Janeece, listen to me.” Kirk turned to see me better. “You’ve got to believe me when I say that the thing – between me and Roxie – had no bearing on that situation. I told you then, and I’ll say it again,” his eyes darkened and speared mine, “I couldn’t bear to lose you.” His emotion-rough voice, this time, pierced my haze. Suddenly, during that heartbeat, he was my Kirk again and when he hauled me against him, I closed my eyes and breathed strength from him.

“Honey?” he rumbled softly in my ear, “You’re not going to leave me,” he raised his head and gazed into my eyes, “are you?”

I looked at him, heavy-lidded and addle-brained, hardly knowing where I was. And I let out a sound between screech and howl, a crazy bray of a laugh that ended on a sob. “Kirk! I’ve
never,
for one moment, considered not being with you.” I gulped and swallowed another siege of hysteria. “That makes me crazy, doesn’t it? I shouldn’t love you – don’t even know if I
do
love you. I don’t know
what
I feel anymore.”

“Neecy,” he cupped my wet face in his hands, then lowered his head, reverently, to kiss me. “I’ll make you love me again. I promise you, you won’t be sorry.”

The next day, Sunday, my body moved about from sheer habit. Having slept very little, if at all, I charged on adrenaline one minute, crashed the next. My emotions gave no warning when they’d do a column-left, column-right or an abrupt to-the-rear march. I simply rode them, a Lamb Chop moppet jerked around betwixt Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Strangely, the anger protected me from myself. Defiance kept tears at bay during church, kept my back straight and my eyes unwavering. Made me present myself strong and all put together. Often, during his message, Kirk’s gaze sought and held mine. I had nothing left from which to draw, so I returned his soft little smiles with stony stares or averted my gaze altogether.

When I’d
snapped – was it only yesterday? –
the lights inside me disconnected, leaving cold, dank emptiness. Anger had ambushed me so brusquely, was so alien to me, I had no defenses
against it. No prior knowledge armed me, so fury propelled and steered me, spewed words from my mouth, turned me silent as death and made me cynical.

Cynical.
For the first time ever, I saw Kirk through the eyes of a stranger. Because, to my way of thinking, he was. The Kirk I thought I knew, the one who’d vowed, “
I’ll always love and protect you, Neecy
,” didn’t exist.

“Why did you lie, Kirk? That day, at church, you said there wasn’t anything between you and Roxie.” I’d reminded him through the hellish night before, as we lay side by side in bed, talking softly so the children wouldn’t hear.

Kirk’s tortured face, all angles and dusky shadowed planes, creased deeper. “Because, Neecy, I didn’t want to hurt you.” He reached over and slid his fingers over my arm. I stiffened and moved away. “Can’t you understand that?”

“Please, honey,” his voice vibrated with emotion, “don’t pull away.”

I tried to relax, to be sensible.
Sensible? Ha!
“Well, it didn’t work. I hurt.”

“I’d give my life to go back and not have you know.” He rolled to his back and gazed at the ceiling. “I suppose I’d wrestled with it for so long, analyzed it so thoroughly, seeing how Roxie set me up – I guess I thought you’d see that right away, as I did after the fact. Not that it excuses me. I take full blame for my actions. I prayed and asked God to forgive me. He has. I know that. Then – ” He grew quiet for long moments. “Then, I felt He wanted me to confess to you, ask your forgiveness. Set things right. I’ve felt so wretched for so long...it got to the place I couldn’t pray. Couldn’t preach without feeling like a hypocrite.”

I turned my head to gaze at him through the darkness. He was Kirk again. In that heartbeat, he was my Kirk.

“I’ve got something else to tell you, Neecy.”

I tensed but remained silent.

“Callie knows.”

Ice water filled my belly. “Why – how?” The frigid liquid slithered through my veins.

He sucked in a long ragged sigh and exhaled, then linked his hands beneath his head. “You see – more’s been going on than you know. Cal and I have tried to protect you. Sarah Beauregard saw my car at Roxie’s apartment while you were
gone, during Chuck’s crisis – more than once. Seems she began to ride by there and came up with the conclusion that – ” He broke off. Then gave a disgusted snort. “Well, you know Sarah.”

I stared at him. Regardless of what Kirk had done, I still cared about the ministry. On this, we remained together. “Did she say anything?”

“Tillie came to Cal, upset that Sarah had told her mother about her suspicions. That’s all it took to get a wildfire going.”

So Tillie’s heard, too.
I felt walls closing in, suffocating, exposing me. I sat up, plumped my pillow behind me and leaned into it. “So? Has it spread?”

Kirk joined me by adjusting his pillow, too, and propping upright. “Fortunately, I think Cal was able to douse the rumors by vouching for me...saying she knew about the sessions, had gone with me on some of them.”

“Lying.” I said flatly.

Another long sigh. “Well – yeah. I suppose that’s exactly what it was.”

The aftershock rocked me. “So Cal knows. For how long?” I didn’t know the air had been squeezed from me until I began to gasp at oxygen.

His head swiveled and I felt his green gaze pierce the darkness. “Not long. Honest, honey. I needed somebody to confide in, to steer me. I felt I was losing my mind. I didn’t trust anyone else.”

“Not even another pastor?”

He gave a dry laugh. “
Especially
not another pastor.” The old secretive, cynical Kirk only mildly surprised me. “Anyway, Callie told me I needed to tell you.”

“How did she take it? Your – ” I fought the ball of restiveness that wedged in my belly.

“She forgives me. Didn’t bat an eye. Said we just need to put it behind us and go on with the ministry.”

“How do you feel, Neecy?” he asked, a quiet, concerned appeal in his voice.

“About what?”

“The ministry.”

“You mean about staying on here? As though nothing has happened?”

He nodded slowly, then grew unearthly still, his eyes filled with hope. “Could you?”

I looked away, my heart pounding as though I’d sprinted cross country. “Kirk – ”

“I know it would be difficult, honey, but my life is in this work. My heart. It would mean so much to me if you could – ”

“I’ll have to pray about it, Kirk.” I lay down and turned away from him.

I’d not even dozed after that. With the adrenaline surge, I could go without sleep. For a time, anyway.

Today, as Kirk ended his message and the congregation stood, I found it no easier to reconcile to this turn of events than I had at the moment of Kirk’s confession. I turned and would have left the church without speaking to anybody had Callie not caught up and grasped hold of my arm in the vestibule. “Neecy? What are lunch plans?”

I turned to face her. “I don’t have any.” The words thudded like ice cubes between us.

Cal’s face emptied and she gave me a hesitant, sidelong look. “What’s happened?”

“I know, Cal.” An instant alarm dawned on her face. I slowly nodded. “I
know.”

She touched my hand, gingerly – tentatively. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I shrugged briskly and pulled my hand away. “S’true, you know.”

She stepped back in wounded wariness, her gaze narrowed. “What’s true?”

“The wife is the last to know.” I spun and walked away.

Callie was with Kirk when he got home. “Toby and Heather took off with the Tessners for lunch at the Fish Camp.” He looked around. “Dawn already down for a nap?”

From the sofa, where I sprawled barefoot and indifferent, I took in their together-stance. “Yep.”

Kirk shot me an uneasy, measuring glance. I met it levelly, recognizing and hating the shadow of guilt I saw there. He gestured to Callie, “Take a load off, Cal.”

She took the chair opposite me as Kirk slid onto the sofa next to me, throwing his arm over its back so that his fingers almost touched my neck. I could feel warmth coming from their tips and it stole the oxygen right out of my lungs, leaving them heaving and struggling to refill. When alone, I lulled myself into thinking it wasn’t true, his power over me. In reality, my reaction to his nearness bewildered and distressed me. I shifted, curled my feet under me and laid my head back, saying nothing.

There was not the usual spontaneity today. I didn’t have the strength to care.

Kirk, after long silent moments, began to speak. “Honey, Cal and I have been discussing the ministry and the – situation. I think – ”

My head jerked upright. “Don’t you think this is between
us
– you and me?”

Callie sprang to her feet, palms thrust forward. “I’m outta here, guys. She’s right, Kirk.” She was already in the foyer when Kirk caught up. I heard them murmuring, voices rising and falling. I sat unmoved, unmoving. Disassociated. Not caring if I ever saw Callie again. Or Kirk, for that matter. In that moment, I could have moved into a barn in Shanty Town, with Toby, Heather and Dawn, and faced the tomorrows. Knowing that, I felt an amazing strength begin to flow into me.