The Breaking Point (37 page)

Renee stood, snatched up her blanket, and strode through the crowd to her car. She threw the blanket in the trunk, slamming the lid. But the action didn’t make her feel any better.

No matter how good things went between the two of them, she always seemed on edge. Always prepared, at the first sign of trouble, to bail. To throw her hands in the air and say, “See? See how impossible this is? We’ll never change.”

Trouble was, she thought as she unlocked the car door and slid onto the seat, Gabe was changing. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him react without anger. Wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with an obstacle between them with an attitude of kindness and understanding rather than irritation.

Her hand paused halfway to putting the key in the ignition. She glanced up, caught her reflection in the rearview mirror. “And it wasn’t the first time you goaded him into the very behaviors you keep telling Steve you hate.”

She let out a sigh and slid the key into the ignition.

Gabe was learning to control his anger. She should be thrilled. Instead, she realized, she was angry.

Angry that while he’d found a way to get beyond the struggles—or at least start to do so—she seemed mired in the past, unable or unwilling to let go of how things used to be.

And she was terrified that would never change.

J
ULY
1993

IT’S HOPELESS. WE’LL NEVER CHANGE.

Gabe stood in the drizzling summer rain and knew the chill wasn’t coming from the warm drops falling from the sky. He’d been cold long before the rain started. Cold to the bone.

For years.

But these last seven months …

Gabe jammed his hands into his coat pockets. Seven months. Seven months since he’d packed up his life and moved out of the apartment he and Renee had shared.

Seven months, three days, fifteen hours, and twelve minutes to be exact. He didn’t know how many seconds. And he counted that a victory. A small one, but a victory nonetheless.

Within a few days of agreeing to separate, Gabe had moved out of their apartment and into a spare room at Oren and Grace’s
house. Gabe still couldn’t believe they’d just opened their home to him, welcomed him like their son rather than some pathetic loser.

The thought had barely formed when Gabe heard Steve’s voice admonishing him:
“You have to watch that self-talk, Gabe. Don’t give in to the tapes that play inside your head.”

He had to admit, Steve was just what the doctor ordered. When Gabe first met the man who’d agreed to be his and Renee’s counselor, he hadn’t been sure he could help. Hadn’t been sure anyone could help. And he’d been angry that not only did he have to go to two sessions a week, but there wouldn’t be any sessions with both him and Renee for the first few months. He’d tried arguing about that. How were they going to work things out if they never saw each other? But Steve had been firm.

“Being together isn’t what matters now, Gabe. What matters is the work you and Renee have to do on yourselves.”

In the end, Gabe had been glad it was just Steve and him. Steve seemed to understand what Gabe was feeling, to know what he was thinking, sometimes even before Gabe did. He saw past all Gabe’s defenses, all the things Gabe did without even realizing to keep his real feelings, his real self hidden. Acting, playing a role … none of it worked with Steve. But what surprised Gabe even more than Steve’s ability to see through him was the fact that Gabe was relieved. Relieved he could be himself.

Steve had helped him sort through a lot of garbage deeply ingrained in his head, his heart—stuff that Gabe now knew had convinced him that no one could love him, that had kept him feeling like a failure no matter what he did or how hard he tried.

Some habits died especially hard.

A shiver crab-walked through him, and Gabe looked down. He was soaked. Gee, maybe he’d get lucky and catch pneumonia.

Self-talk, Gabe.

Some habits didn’t want to die at all.

He turned and walked to a bench Oren had built at the back of the yard. Several Adirondack chairs were next to it. Renee would have chosen one of those. She loved those chairs, but he preferred the bench.

Opposites at every turn, that was them.

He forced himself to focus on the yard rather than his frustration. It was a big yard, and Gabe liked coming out here, just to have time to himself. Something Steve had helped him realize he needed. Decompression time. Time to get his heart and mind straight before he tried to deal with anyone.

He leaned back against the seat. Yeah, regardless of what happened between Renee and him, he was grateful for the time with Steve.

It had been difficult—

Gabe’s laugh was rough. Difficult, nothing. It had been torture. Gabe still recalled his reaction when Steve told him point-blank that he had to let go of the barriers, the defenses that he had built inside himself.

He’d almost walked out then and there. The mere thought of letting the barriers down made his palms sweat, his stomach cramp. If he hadn’t had them as a kid, as a young man, he wouldn’t have survived. He’d be locked up in a loony bin someplace.

That or dead.

And now, here was this guy he’d just met, sitting there and telling him he was supposed to just let go? Just
“be yourself”?

No way.

Yet again, Steve seemed to read the direction of his frantic thoughts. “Gabe, holding your emotions in check, not letting anyone inside, not letting yourself trust—even your anger, your rages—those were important safeguards when you were
a kid. At the very least, they kept you sane. At the most, they kept you alive.”

Finally somebody understood! “Darn straight they did!”

Too bad his victory didn’t last long. Steve fixed him with that look, the one that said,
Get ready, ’cuz you’re not going to like this
, and fired the shot that almost did Gabe in.

“They protected you when you were a kid, but they’re killing you now. And they’re killing your marriage. Especially your anger. It’s no longer a shield, but a weapon. And you’ve got to lay it down.”

Oh yeah, the last few months had been tough. But Steve hung in there, even when Gabe lost it and let his rage roar. And slowly but surely, Gabe made changes. Little ones at first, like agreeing to make himself take a time-out when he felt his anger build, then bigger things, like letting a few trusted friends—Grace and Oren, mostly—see him as he really was. Not as he thought they wanted him to be, but just as him. Gabe. In all his glorious brokenness.

Funny thing, no one had run screaming from the room. In fact, they’d seemed to like him better when he was just being himself. And Gabe found himself relaxing, even having fun.

More than that, he found himself starting to trust. And, as incredible as it seemed, he was more at peace now. With himself. With Renee.

With God.

If only Renee could see that. But no matter how he tried, all she saw was who he used to be. The woman watched for even the slightest slip on his part, the smallest indication that the man she’d walked out on was still there, alive and well and in control.

She’s looking for perfection, God, and You and I both know I haven’t got it.
If he was never allowed to make a mistake, to even
start
to fall back into old patterns, then he didn’t have a chance. He was never going to be what she neede—

He stopped himself. He didn’t even need Steve’s reminder
this time. The tapes were turned to full volume, and for once he replaced the lie with truth. Satan’s lies couldn’t stand against God’s truth—or so Steve said.

Gabe closed his eyes. Might as well test Steve’s theory.

“Don’t get tired of doing what is good. Don’t get discouraged and
give up,
for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time.”

Gabe let the words run through his mind, over and over, relieved when he realized it was all he heard. The tapes had grown quiet. They weren’t shut off; he knew better than that. But at least they weren’t drowning out everything else in his mind.

“Cool …” He turned his eyes to the sky. “I suppose it’s cooler than it was this afternoon, thank goodness.”

Gabe looked to find Oren walking across the grass, coming to join him. As always, Oren was the epitome of unruffled calm. Gabe didn’t think he’d ever seen that steady, ever-present tranquility leave his eyes, his features.

Peace.

Everything about the man spoke peace.

Pierced by a sudden, sharp envy, Gabe straightened. “You forgot your umbrella, Oren,” he said by way of distracting himself from all this man was—and he wasn’t.

“Umbrellas are for sissies.” Oren’s grin was infectious. “Besides, I like these nice, warm rains.” He walked to a pile of wood and pulled out a thick stick about the size of his palm, then came to ease himself down into a chair with a small grunt. He gave Gabe a small smile. “Don’t remember these things being so far down when we first got them.”

He lifted the piece of wood, brushing at it, studying it. “So,” he said, his eyes still on the wood, “I take it you didn’t have a good time with Renee?”

The snort escaped Gabe before he even knew it was coming. “Renee wouldn’t know a good time if it came up to bite
her on the—” he pulled himself up short, then opted for a less offensive word than he’d been planning to use—“nose.”

Gabe fell silent. He waited for Oren to tell him what a jerk he was being, but the older man just pulled a pocketknife from his jacket and started stripping the bark from the branch.

Gabe clamped his jaw, trapping the words that wanted to come tumbling out. Frustration and desperation, apology and appeal. It was all there. He wanted to rant and rave and have the man tell him he was right, that Renee was an unreasonable witch. And yet, despite himself, right on the heels of that desire was the urge to ask Oren what he should do. To beg the older man to tell him how to make things right when they’d gone so terribly wrong.

But he didn’t say a word. This was his problem. He’d spent years creating it, building layer after layer of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Didn’t matter that he’d usually done so without even realizing it. Didn’t matter that he’d thought he was doing the right thing.

All that mattered was he’d messed everything up. So what made him think Oren would want to hear it, let alone try to fix it for him?

No. Gabe was on his own.

As the silence between them lengthened, Gabe looked away. Shifted position on the wooden bench. Plunged his hands deep into his pockets. He kept sneaking glances at Oren, but the man just sat there, hands moving with steady precision as he worked on the wood.

Suddenly Gabe was six again, staring at his silent, brooding father, studying body language, stance, features … anything for a clue to what was going on in the other man’s thoughts. Was Oren mad at him? That last crack about Renee had been a cheap shot, and Gabe knew it. He opened his mouth to say something, maybe even to apologize, but Oren—who had finished stripping the bark away and now started working on
the wood with slow, steady strokes of the knife—spoke first. “You remember the story of Elijah, son?”
Son.

Lord. O Lord …

Gabe’s throat constricted as he leaned back. Son. Oren said it so easily, so naturally … as if he really meant it. Really thought of Gabe that way.

Right. Why should Oren think of you as his son when your own father couldn’t stand the sight of you?

The muscles in Gabe’s chest tightened into a fierce, aching knot.

“Yes, sir.” Oren went on as though Gabe had replied rather than just sat there, staring at nothing, chewing his anger like a pup with a ratty old sock. “That Elijah was something else. Did you know he took his world, and the king—Ahab, I think it was—by storm?”