Wildflowers from Winter (34 page)

“Do you have reason to feel guilty? It was Tom who decided to take his life, wasn’t it? It was Tom who decided to play God. He was an unrepentant sinner, Ruth. Please don’t follow in his footsteps.”

Bethany’s hand fell to her side, her mind whirling around the pastor’s words.

“I know, but I didn’t make it easy for him. I kept pestering him. I was so worried about our future with him in that wheelchair. He was depressed, and all I did was urge him to seek God’s forgiveness. Every time I did, things just became worse.”

Bethany’s heart thumped against her breastbone, her mouth as dry as cotton.

“You were right to urge him. He should have listened. But he didn’t. He made his choice. And people who make that choice go to hell. Do you want to follow him?”

Bethany reared back, as if she’d been slapped. She hurled herself off the front step and jumped on her bike. Her two legs pumped, fueled by the urgent desire to escape Fenton’s words. She fled from their implications. She pedaled until her lungs burned with the intensity of a raging bonfire. Only when the blood pounding in her ears reached its peak, did she collapse in a heap of exhaustion on the outskirts of town, right beneath that green population sign. Right in front of Jorner’s General Store.

Even there, amid haunting rows of corn and the gravel road, Fenton’s words slithered around her throat and choked her with their inescapable, sickening truth.

Her dad killed himself.

And her mother was a liar.

He hadn’t accidentally drowned in the bathtub. He had deliberately removed himself from the world. He left her behind, and according to the
man with the black stare, sentenced himself to an eternity of fire. Too weak to face Pastor Fenton, too weak to win back his wife from the leader of First Light, too weak to overcome his injury, he’d taken the coward’s way out. As Bethany sat on the shoulder of the road, the truth bore down on her thin, twelve-year-old shoulders. It bruised her soul and tore open tender scars that hadn’t yet healed.

Shuddering, Bethany pulled herself from the horrible memory and sat perfectly still, until the peach horizon turned inky blue and the moon shone between the rustling leaves.

When she was a child, Pastor Fenton stood behind the pulpit every Sunday, his presence magnetic and larger than life. Her father had eaten his words like maggot-infested communion, shrinking beneath his judgment as if it were the ultimate truth. Her mother revered Fenton. Loved him. Treated him like God. And Bethany had no reason to think he wasn’t. In her little-girl mind, God and Fenton were one and the same. She had no idea how to tell the two apart.

Until now.

Seeing him so weak and fragile on that stretcher cracked the foundation of her beliefs. Beneath a star-strewn velvet sky, something simple, yet profound, shifted into place. Pastor Fenton was not God. He was a man. A broken, fallible man. Somehow, like her parents, she’d made him into something more, when all he’d ever been was flesh and sinew.

A horse whinnied in the distance. Her phone buzzed. It was a text from her mom. Fenton was stable and in room 236.

Bethany wondered if Mom had turned delusional. Did she really think Bethany cared what condition Fenton was in or where he was staying? Did she really not understand how much Bethany loathed him?

Laughter approached in the form of three boys, most likely twelve or thirteen. They didn’t notice her at all as they walked past with their cowboy boots and bags of taffy and rolls of tickets and sunburned cheeks. When
Bethany turned to watch them go, she startled. Evan stood off to the side, watching her.

A humid breeze made strands of hair dance around Bethany’s cheeks. She tucked them behind her ear and wrapped her arms around her legs. Evan had watched her since the paramedics arrived, transfixed by the emotions scrolling across her face. When she turned and walked away, he had every intention of going after her. Except Robin wasn’t feeling well, and he and Gavin had to work out how she’d get home. As soon as Gavin escorted her away, he took off in the direction Bethany had gone. Hoping to find her. Needing to find her.

And now here she was, sitting beneath a tree on the outskirts of the fair.

“I’m glad I found you,” he said.

She looked away, off into the distance. He had no idea what Pastor Fenton meant to Bethany or her mother. He didn’t know what ties bound them together. He only knew what he saw—the pain on Bethany’s face as they loaded him into the ambulance. Although he’d made a deliberate effort to detach himself during the last few weeks, to overcome whatever pull she had on him, he could not ignore the urge to go after her tonight.

He joined her beneath the tree and sat by her in the tall grass. “Are you okay?”

She looked at her fingers curled around her shins.

“I’d love to know what you’re thinking about,” he said.

A trace of a smile whisked over her lips and fell away. “God, actually.”

Her answer slipped through his awareness. He’d never met anyone more hardened to the concept of a loving Father than the woman sitting next to him. Except maybe himself four years ago. It was one more reason in a list of plenty why he shouldn’t pursue her. “What about Him?”

“I’m just trying to figure out who He is.”

“Have you reached a conclusion?”

She sighed and rested her chin on the top of her knee. “I guess I know who He isn’t.”

He had never talked with Bethany like this. So intentionally unguarded. In the past, she’d granted him access to her psyche only during times of distress—fierce emotional outbursts—usually provoked by him. It had never been like this. With her sitting beside him—calm, reflective, open.

She picked a clover from the ground and twirled it between her fingers. “He’s not Pastor Fenton.”

“You thought He was?”

“When I was kid I did. I guess the belief sort of stuck with me.” She shrugged. “But he can’t be God. Not now. Not when he’s lying in a hospital bed.”

Evan sifted through her words, piecing them together. When the puzzle was complete in his mind, it spelled out a simple question. One that rarely came with a simple answer. One he asked her a long time ago, on a rock by the creek. Only she hadn’t given him an honest answer then. “Bethany, why are you so angry with God?”

She furrowed her brow. “Because I hate what God does to people.” She stared down into her lap. “At least I used to.”

Evan didn’t speak. He sat by her side and waited.

“I didn’t like what believing in God did to the people I cared about. It destroyed my father and turned my mother into a cowering shadow.” She picked the leaves off the clover, dropping them one at a time to the ground. “Christianity ruined them.”

Evan stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his hands. “I don’t know your mom very well. And I never knew your dad. But what you just described … Bethany, that’s not faith. Believing in Christ—knowing Him—it’s not about fear. It’s about freedom.”

Bethany looked at him, and the desire to scoot closer ballooned inside his chest. He wanted to heal whatever wounds Fenton had scratched into her soul. To erase her hurts and make her new. But just like his family couldn’t save him during his angry years, he knew he couldn’t save Bethany now. This was between her and God.

“Robin said she ‘gave her life to Christ.’ Those were the words she used.” Bethany turned to him, her eyes narrowed. Not with contempt or disapproval or mockery. But with concentration. Like whatever knot she strained to untangle was of utmost importance. “How does giving your life to someone lead to freedom?”

He contemplated her question, chewing it over in his mind while crickets chirped and the night settled between them. “Sometimes letting go is pretty liberating.”

“Letting go, huh? I’ve never been too good at that.”

Oh, how he understood those words. He and Bethany were so very much alike. More than either of them had realized. Both filled with doubts and questions. Both determined to hold tight to life’s reins. Because handing them over meant losing control. And losing control was a frightening thing. “But it’s not impossible,” he said.

She let out a lighthearted huff. “Do you not know me?”

“I know you’ve done it before.” He raised his eyebrow and gave her a nudge with his shoulder. “With me on the dance floor.”

She dipped her chin. “This is a little different.”

“Not as much as you might think.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to let go.”

They were quiet for a while as crickets and cicadas sang their nighttime serenade.

“One thing I’ve learned about God these last four years, He doesn’t often wait until we’re ready.” If he had waited until Bethany was ready to dance with him that night at Shorney’s Terrace, they never would have
danced at all. If God had waited until Evan was done being angry, Evan never would have come back.

She pulled up a few more stalks of clover and swatted at a mosquito that landed on her ankle. “Did Robin ever tell you I tried to drown myself?”

She asked the question so casually, so quietly, he had to replay it in his head to make sure he’d heard right. When he was sure he had, his skin prickled. “No. Why?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

Evan leaned forward.

“I was twelve when I did it. And afterward, everybody in Peaks treated me like a leper. My mother made me go to therapy—she was terrified by what I did.” She took a slow breath. “I think because it was the same way my dad took his life.”

Her words injected a shot of freezing air inside his skull.
Dan’s son committed suicide?
He always thought Dan’s son died from complications after falling from a silo. Not once in their five years together had Dan ever alluded to suicide.

“My mom told everybody it was an accident, but people suspected the truth. I think she thought what I did was God’s way of punishing her.”

Evan pressed his fingers to his forehead, trying to dispel the image of a young girl hurting and ostracized. No wonder she hated Peaks.

“The therapy was useless. I never told anyone why I did it.” She set her elbows on her knees, took a deep breath, and looked him in the eyes. “You want to know what’s crazy?”

He sat very still. Afraid if he moved, he’d ruin the moment and Bethany would close up.

“I did it because I wanted to go to hell.”

She spoke those words to the darkness. They floated from her mouth and hovered in the air like a cloud of electricity, raising the hair on his arms and neck. “Why?”

“Because that’s where Fenton said my dad was, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him being there alone. Even if I hated what he did, he was still my dad. And I missed him.”

Evan’s heart cracked. Broke into pieces for the twelve-year-old Bethany. A young girl who was hurting. A young girl who needed grace, not wrath. A message of redemption, not condemnation. A young girl whose family had been torn to shreds by a man who was supposed to share God’s mercy but abused his position instead.

“I thought maybe if I joined him, then maybe hell wouldn’t be so bad.” She looked at her knees. “It didn’t work, though.”

He shuddered. He had no idea where Bethany’s father was, but he was most certainly glad Bethany was here—at the fair, next to him. He clasped his hands in his lap. Whether to keep himself from going to the hospital and punching a defenseless man in the face or wrapping his arms around this woman, he wasn’t sure. “I’m glad you figured it out, then.”

The lines on her forehead puckered. “What?”

“That Pastor Fenton isn’t God.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “I am too.”

THIRTY-FIVE

S
ince Gavin borrowed Evan’s car to take Robin home, Bethany had to give Evan a lift to the farm. Exhaustion weighed on her as she watched him disappear into the house. His kitchen light flicked on, then off. His bedroom light shone through the second-story window for a few moments before extinguishing. If Evan knew she sat in his driveway for an hour, overlooking her inheritance, contemplating her future, he let her do so in peace.

Velvety blackness shadowed the land, shrouding the farm in a darkened stillness that filled her soul with calm. She looked across the paddock, the pasture beyond, and the spanning rows of corn planted over rolling hills. The humid air and the scent of dewy hay crept into her window, bringing with it a slew of childhood memories.

This farm was a seam, separating her past into a distinct before and after. Her childhood before her father’s accident and her childhood after. Getting rid of Dan’s land would be like tearing out the seam, selling the good fabric in an attempt to destroy the bad. Did she want to do that? The night filled her car and seeped into her pores, filling her with a strange peace. What was she going to do?

By the time she pulled out of the driveway, the clock on her dashboard read 12:05. The time felt significant somehow. Five minutes into a new day. A new beginning. As she drove the back roads, making her way toward
Robin’s home, she chipped at the hardened layers deposited on her spirit like lime, searching for herself in all the tiny fragments. Over the past ten years, she’d expended so much energy pushing forward, forging ahead, building an impressive facade. Architect. Big-city. A woman with goals, money, expensive clothes, and a nice car. But a facade was just that. A facade. A spurious attempt to cover imperfection, masking the worn-out structure hiding beneath.