Trusting Him (10 page)

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Human contact. In prison this kind of human contact doesn't exist. Four years of not being held, of not holding. That can drive a person nearly as crazy as always being surrounded by gates, fences and walls."

Her heart clenched. She didn't know what her next move should be. His hands were on hers. She wanted to hold him.

As fast as the thought came, she tried to fight it back. Michael didn't need a moment with her. She didn't need one with him. They both had things to work through and neither of them needed casual moments just to feel good.

Her heart was in disagreement.

When Michael's hands moved to her hair and then slid down to cup the back of her neck, she didn't argue, didn't try to pull free. The past no longer held her in a fearful grip.

A car horn honked and a group of teens driving by yelled her name. Michael groaned as she pulled away.

"That was embarrassing." She bit down on her bottom lip, carefully avoiding eye contact with the man standing in front of her.

"No, not really." He lifted her chin. "It felt too nice to be embarrassing."

"Yes, but I'm the one who has to answer questions." She lifted her purse, holding it so that the light from the streetlamp shined in on the contents. "And I need to find my keys."

"Nothing happened, Maggie."

"You're right, I know that, but I do have to think of the kids."

She dug through the contents of her purse, her hands shaking. The dark made it difficult to see anything. The orange glow of the streetlamp wasn't a lot of help.

"Problem?"

"Hold this." She handed him lipstick, old grocery receipts, a package of gum and her small can of mace.

"In your ignition, maybe?" He cleared his throat. "Is this mace?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She looked up, her mouth dropping open as she searched for an answer. What did she say about mace and fear of the dark? She sighed. "I'm single. I spend a lot of time on the road and I like to know that I can protect myself."

The mace had been a gift from Faith.

She looked through the window for her keys. "No, not there."

Whispering a silent prayer for help, she searched again and found them buried in a side pocket. Michael held out the lipstick, mace and wadded-up receipts, but he took her keys. He unlocked the door and handed them back to her as he opened it for her to get in.

"I'm glad you have mace. It pays to be safe."

"A friend thought I needed it." Sliding into the worn seat of her aging sedan, Maggie smiled up at him. "I'll see you tomorrow at church."

"Yes, of course you will."

His cell phone rang. He flipped it open, frowned and then offered an apologetic smile. "I have to take this."

He walked away. She didn't purposely try to hear the conversation, but a few words drifted her way. "I don't know if I can…maybe I could do it" and "I'll meet you."

"I have to meet someone," he explained when he rejoined her.

"This late at night?"

He looked away, but not before she saw a flash of something that looked like guilt. "Yeah, this late at night."

"Michael, do you need help?"

His eyes flashed dangerously and he slipped his cell phone into his pocket. "Of course I don't need help. There's absolutely no reason for you to worry about me, Maggie."

She didn't need to worry. He made it sound like the most reasonable thing in the world. She did worry, though. She worried that he would get hurt. She worried that
she
would get hurt. The only one she could really protect was herself.

The only way to do that was to put distance, emotional distance, between herself and Michael Carson.

"M
aggie, is that you?"

Maggie kicked off her shoes and turned to lock the front door before answering her grandmother. "Yep, it's me."

She walked into the living room, knowing what she would find. Her grandmother looked up from the pieces of quilting she held in her lap. Another masterpiece for the shop her grandmother consigned to. Betty Gordon had managed for years to supplement her income by selling the handmade creations.

Maggie bent to inspect the beautiful pieces of antique rose and pale yellow cloth interspersed with cream-colored lace. The wedding-ring pattern in the quilt was one of her favorites.

Grandma smiled and looked over the top of her glasses. "Do you like it?"

"It's beautiful. I would say it's one of the best you've done, but I think you get tired of hearing that."

"This one is special, though. It's for you. I thought you would like it for your hope chest."

"Grandma, I don't have a hope chest and you know it. Now why would you make me a wedding-ring quilt when I'm not even dating?"

Grandma shrugged and managed to look slightly guilty. Maggie sat in the recliner next to her grandmother's rocking chair. She watched as the needle began to work through the fabric, guided by aging hands that weren't always steady.

Her grandmother was getting older, and that sometimes frightened Maggie. The two of them were a family and had been since Maggie's mother died thirteen years ago. That had been a strange turning point for her, to lose her mother and then to come here, to constant stability, to someone who was always there.

"What brought that frown?" Grandma looked up from the quilt, the threaded needle held just above the cloth.

Maggie looked up and smiled. She didn't want to discuss where her memories had taken her. If she closed her eyes she could still remember being a frightened child, wanting to be rescued. She could remember her mother, lucid and loving, and then manic, searching for a fix.

"Maggie?" Her grandma was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.

"Just trying to decide what you're up to. Is there a new single guy at church that I haven't met?"

Grandma focused her eyes on the needle as she once again guided it through the material. She remained silent, feeding Maggie's belief that she was up to something.

"Come clean. What's up? You haven't entered my résumé in some single's group, have you?"

"I would never interfere, not with God's plan or His timing."

"You're wasting your time, Grandma. I'm not even thinking about marriage. I'm happy here with you."

"Of course you are, you're settled and you're comfortable. That doesn't mean this is God's will forever. Our plans aren't always the same as His."

The words stung. She would never dream of trying to live outside of God's will. She was single because she wanted to be single. Greg had been her last real relationship. He had taken what wasn't his to take. He had taken her sense of self. He stole from her, and now when she taught the kids about abstinence, she thought about that night and about how sometimes the choice is taken from a person.

And she also thought about second chances. Forgiveness did that for a person. It meant new opportunities. What had happened with Greg had not been her fault.

"Maggie?"

"Yes, Gran?"

"Just checking to see if you're still with me."

"I am. But, Gran, you have to understand. I really think that being single is the right thing for me. At least for now. I love working at the church, with the kids. But they keep me busy, and that doesn't really leave time for dating."

"Maggie, you keep yourself busy. You could go out, but you spend your nights over there, doing whatever you do."

"I work." She smiled at her grandmother. "And you're right, I kill time over there when I know you're not at home."

Her grandmother let the quilt rest on her lap and pulled off her glasses. Understanding shone from her gray eyes and she smiled.

"You haven't made a mistake, Maggie. You thought Greg was worth investing in." She pointed with her glasses. "He didn't deserve you. He didn't deserve for you to believe in him. But someday you'll find a young man that you can count on, someone who will always be there for you."

Maggie looked away, unable to face her grandmother for fear she would read something into a look. Maggie had never told her what Greg had done, and how much he had taken. "You're right, Gran, there are some really good men out there. I just haven't found the right one. It obviously wasn't Greg."

"Greg Lawrence was never the right one for you. I was so glad when you broke things off with him. I never trusted that boy."

Maggie wished she had listened to those warnings when she'd first started dating Greg. In her innocence, and her desperate need to feel loved, she had believed that she could change him. Now she knew better. Instead, she had been the one to change.

Grandma reached across the end table and touched her hand. "I just want you to have the kind of love I shared with your grandfather. You deserve that kind of love."

"I would love to have that, Grandma. I'm not sure if it will happen. The older I get, the more I wonder."

Maggie could have mentioned her mother and the choices she had made, but she wouldn't do that to her grandmother. Maggie's mom had taken a turn during her college years, falling in love with Maggie's dad, only to be left behind when he went back home to Chicago, to a family that expected something of him, something more than a girl from a poor, working-class family.

Tonight Maggie had felt more like her mother than ever before. She had walked through the doors of Michael's home and into a world where she knew she didn't belong.

"It will all work out, Maggie." Grandma said it like it was an indisputable fact.

Maggie turned away from her grandmother's probing gaze and focused on the wall across from the chair. Focusing on a twenty-year-old photo of her mother, her eyes burned and she told herself that tears were silly.

Tears wouldn't bring her mother back and she would never be her daddy's little girl. Childhood dreams faded, leaving pain-filled memories of a child who spent too much time alone and too many nights afraid.

"Honey?"

"I'm fine, Gran, really I am. I have forgiven Jacob Simmons." She paused there, not even sure how she meant to end that statement. She had even forgiven Greg. She had forgiven her mother. Words were difficult to find and she ended by shrugging her shoulders, hoping to let the conversation die.

"We have to keep praying for your father." Grandma's answer seemed too simple.

"Of course, we'll keep praying."

"Don't say it like you don't believe." The warning, spoken in a subtly soft voice, couldn't be ignored.

"You're right, but I guess sometimes I don't believe it. Sometimes I don't want to pray for him." She smiled at her grandmother, who had resumed her sewing. "It really is a beautiful piece, Gran. I'll treasure it forever."

The needle continued to work through the fabric. Her grandmother kept her head bent over the scraps of fabric, illuminated by a circle of light from the table lamp. "I only want you to be happy."

"Thank you." Maggie rose from her chair and leaned to kiss her grandmother's cheek. "I really need to get to sleep."

"Good night, honey."

When she walked into her room she paused to look out the window. The sky was dark, covered with a thick blanket of clouds that blocked the moon and the stars. Michael was out there somewhere.

She didn't want to think about him, but she couldn't help wondering what he was up to and if he was okay.

Two hours after leaving Maggie at the church, Michael pulled up to Jimmy Grey's apartment. He glanced up at the darkened windows of the second-floor apartment as he got off the bike, and for a second he reconsidered. He even felt a little bit guilty as he knocked on the door. Not too guilty, though, or he wouldn't have knocked.

He could have gone somewhere else. Maybe to Noah's. But if he went to Noah's he would have to explain his reason for not wanting to go home. Would Noah, who seemed to like his loner existence, understand that Michael needed someone to talk to? Not that he wanted to talk about Vince and how it felt to pretend that he was being drawn back into that life. Instead he wanted to talk about the real world that other people lived in, the one with families and careers.

And he didn't want to tell his brother that he didn't think he was strong enough for what he'd gotten himself into. He wanted to be strong enough. If he backed out now, he would never know.

The door opened, the chain grabbing and keeping it from opening more than a few inches. A dim light from inside spilled out, lighting the step. Michael shrugged. Jimmy didn't speak, just opened the door and motioned him inside.

"You look like a man who could use a…"

"Don't say it and don't offer." Michael brushed a hand through his hair and plopped down, uninvited, onto the leather sofa.

"What's going on?" Jimmy lowered himself onto a stool at the bar that separated the living area of the condo from the kitchen.

"Not much."

"You show up at my house in the middle of the night because nothing is wrong? Not buying it, my friend."

"I'm not trying to sell anything, so there's nothing for you to buy." He leaned back, closing his eyes and wishing he hadn't done what he had that night. "Look, Jimmy, I'd really like to talk, but I can't."

"Okay, you can't talk. Does this have anything to do with Katherine?"

"A little, but she's just a small part of it."

"So…"

"I just wanted to hang out, maybe talk about something other than what is going on."

Jimmy smiled at that. "Oh, sure, of course. We could talk about the price of gas or maybe about politics."

"Aren't those the things that other people talk about?"

"Sure, other people do. We could talk about church. People talk about that, too."

"Jimmy, when did you become a cynic?"

"When my mother took off and left me to take care of my dad. That wasn't supposed to happen to my family. We weren't perfect, but I never thought we'd fall apart."

Michael let go of his own concerns. Maybe he wasn't here for himself. Jimmy needed a friend, too. Something normal, maybe that meant just being a friend for the night.

"I'm not very interested in going home tonight," Michael admitted. "And we haven't really had a chance to talk. Have you heard from your mom?"