A Morning Like This (22 page)

“There’s more for you, too,” Susan stammered. “There’s something else you need to hear.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if he’s told you or not. David wrote me a letter last week.”

Abby’s voice, threadlike. “A letter?”

“In it, he said he wanted to meet Samantha, that he wanted a chance to be a father to her.”

“I see.”

No, David wouldn’t have told me about that. He wouldn’t have told me. It’s just another thing
.

Inside, Abby became dry bones, burned ashes; if someone tried to touch her raw edges, she would cave in on herself. More choices
they hadn’t made together. More deception and prevarication, while he struggled to cover what he’d done.

“I just—”

“It’s okay. It’s really okay.” Although it wasn’t. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

“I didn’t show his letter to her. I didn’t want to speak to her about her father at all. I was still thinking what I wanted
her to know.”

“You’ve been hiding her father from her?”

“What good does it do, to unsettle her life like that? When we don’t know how long—”

Susan went mute again. It rattled them both, hearing each other’s breathing on the line. Abby kept thinking,
Here she is. The one who has carnal knowledge of my husband. The one—besides me—who’s given birth to his child
.

One minute of silence passed, then another and another. Their words hung between them, tangible, unspoken.

My family is falling apart because of you
.

My daughter has a right to get well, if someone can help her
.

He was with you when I thought he cared about me
.

He wanted your marriage to work so I never told him the truth
.

Two women who had knowledge of the same man, one for a season and one for a lifetime, trying to make sense out of where such
uncommon ground brought them.

It’s so huge in me, Lord. It’s everything I am right now
. Abby began to work on the knot in the phone cord.
I can’t look at his hands without thinking how he touched this woman’s body when he was also touching mine. I can’t look at
his face without seeing all those pictures of our child without me in them
.

Abby was still on the floor, sprawled out with her legs in two directions, leaning against the bed. “I don’t know what I’d
do if it was me,” she said with sacrificial honesty. “David wants to meet her for David’s sake, I think.”

“I was looking for something else the other day. Digging through the cubicles in my secretary to find an address book with
a phone number. When I went back to check for that letter, it wasn’t where I’d left it. I think she may have found it and
taken it. Maybe it hasn’t been there since she left for camp.”

“Oh, Susan.” Abby’s heart practically stopped beating in her chest. “You don’t think Samantha might be trying to get to him?
To come here?”

A horrifying thought, one that left them both in silent dismay.

Susan’s voice, even over the miles, rang with terror. “An eight-year-old girl traveling alone? How dangerous is that?”

When the hush fell between them again, Abby’s mind raced to a scary, unbidden place.

Pray for her.

Well, how would that be? I can’t do that. Here, let me pray for Samantha to be safe. And then, worst of all, what if she isn’t?
Here, yes, let me pray for your daughter while you know my marriage is crumbling around me
.

When you know my marriage is collapsing because of you
.

Abby couldn’t turn away from it, this thing bigger and stronger than herself, this thing that compelled her, that made her
lungs ache. All the talk that might have come, and this arrived like an apparition, from someplace outside of herself, the
hardest to grasp of all.

My love never fails.

The single word came with the riffling of the breeze through the blinds and the rustle of the blue-spruce branches against
the window.

I don’t have Your love in my heart, Father. Not for Susan Roche and her daughter. Not for my husband, David. They’ve hurt
me. They’ve taken down all I believed in about my marriage and myself
.

“Abigail?” came the voice from the other end of the line. “Abigail, will you tell him?”

“Susan?” Abby asked, her voice trembling, feeling terrified. “I’d like to pray for Samantha. Will you let me do that? While
you’re on the phone?”

The silence was deafening. The distance clicked and hissed and roared between them.

Then, in a miraculous, gentle voice—a broken voice—Susan answered, “You’d do that for Sam?”

“And for you, too. Please.”

“After all we’ve—” Susan Roche broke off.

“It isn’t me doing this,” Abby answered very quietly. “I couldn’t.”

“Oh, please.” The voice became a child’s voice, eager, desperate. “Please. Yes. There are so many things—”

“Okay,” Abby said. “Okay.”

Over the miles, two women clasped their hearts together before God. One who’d believed in her marriage once and who’d had
her trust torn away, the other who’d thought for nine years she might not ever be worthy to be prayed for. And God gave Abby
the words to speak, because they were not in her own heart.

David walked into his office and found Abby waiting for him. She stood beside his desk with the photograph of their family
in her hand.

She set it down fast. The gold frame toppled and fell flat with a metallic smack on the desktop.

“Hello, Abby,” he said as he stood the picture up again, with an odd twist in his gut because he’d caught her looking. “Amazing
how times change, isn’t it?” And he looked at it, too.

“Or how times stay the same,” she reminded him, her voice low. “That picture is the only one from the whole year that had
my face in it. Do you realize that, David? I think you went a whole year without looking at me.”

David didn’t doubt it. He didn’t want to look at her now. He’d gotten so tired of defending himself while she accused him,
while she carried her betrayed heart aloft like it was a float in a parade.

“You didn’t even take that one, remember? Floyd Uptergrove did, so we could be in it together.”

“Abby, let’s don’t do this to each other anymore.” He lifted his eyes to hers and she glanced away, as if she hadn’t meant
for them to go to this place now. But there could be no other place for them to go. Every time they ended up in a room together,
it reared up between them. “It’s hurting Braden more, us trying to hide it. He thinks it’s something that’s his fault. He’s
heard us. He’s heard you.”

“Please. David. There’s something that’s more important than this.”

“What could be more important than this?” he asked with acid irony. “What, Abby? Because your pride has cost us everything
that there is. Your pride is costing your son’s heart.”

Oh, she wanted to say it. She wanted to bite right back at him and ask, “Who’s pride? Who’s pride is doing all this? It takes
more than just one!” It served him right, building up to it this way. He’d been defensive since he’d walked in.

Abby tried for a false lilt in her voice but couldn’t quite pull it off, not with the somber news she bore.

“Susan called.”

That got him. He sat hard in his swivel office chair and his defenses went down. “She did? Susan called? What did she call
about?”

Their gazes splintered on each other.

Of course, he thought he knew. “Braden didn’t work? The tests didn’t match?”

She shook her head. “That isn’t it. They don’t know about the test yet. The tests take at least five days. And this one had
to be couriered. There’s—”

He came up out of his chair. “Abby, is she…?”

“She’s okay. I—I mean, she’s not… Oh, David. This is so hard.” She began to talk and he could see she was hurrying through
the story for his sake. She began with the camp and ended with pillows shoved deep inside a sleeping bag. And even as she
shared something this important to him, he felt as if the whole world hung between them, an odd, clear wall like the visitation
windows at a jail.

“Ab.” It just slipped out, the endearment he always used with her when something was wrong. He called her his pet name with
no hint of appraisal or judgment; he said it only with a sense of deep need.

“I don’t know what to say, David. I’m sorry.”

“Do they have any idea where she could be?”

“No. Nothing really. Her mother’s posted all the information on an Internet site. And she’s making up posters, getting them
out the minute she can.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, stared at the ceiling as if it would give him an answer. “I want to go out there.”

“David,” Abby said. “You could have told me you had written Susan a letter.”

Like an elk caught in headlights, he froze. “What?”

“That letter. You could have told me about it. You’ve finally told me about everything else.”

“She said I’d written a letter? She told you about that?” He was reacting all wrong to her finding out, and he knew it. He
was playing a game—offense, defense, then offense again, trying to keep his footing.

“I’m tired, David. I’m tired of fishing, asking questions, trying to figure out what you haven’t told me.”

“Well, you know the truth?” he asked. “I’m tired of it, too.”

“Samantha may be trying to get to you.” David realized how odd it must feel to her, being the one who knew of Susan, being
the one to talk to him about his child, his mistress. “The letter’s gone, and Susan thinks she might have taken it. Susan
hadn’t told Sam about you.”

“Oh, man.” He stared at the wood grain of his desk. “Oh, man.”

“David, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Sorry to tell me? Or sorry that she’s missing?”

“How dare you? How dare you ask such an unfair question at a time like this?”

Yeah. Abby was right. “She’s out there alone somewhere. That or worse. I could get in the Suburban. I could drive west, see
if I could find her.”

“The state patrol told Susan to stay home where Samantha can reach her. I’d imagine they would tell you the same thing.”

He stopped wrangling over it for a moment and looked at Abby hard. “Thank you for being willing to get involved. Thank you
for coming to tell me this.”

“Maybe I’m not willing,” Abby said. “Maybe I don’t have any other choice.”

T
here were probably over a dozen places one small girl could conceal herself inside the lockable nooks, crannies, cubicles,
and bins of a twenty-seven-foot Jayco camping trailer, especially when that trailer was packed for a camping vacation with
blankets and pillows and at least fifty pounds of tuna cans, Rice-A-Roni, Ritz Crackers, and marshmallows for S’Mores.

Especially when a friend was helping her.

“Okay,” one small girl whispered to another. “This will work. You can hide here.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure they aren’t going to find me?”

“It’ll be fine. Dad’ll be home right after five and then we’re driving all night long. He never stops except to get gas. And
Mom will be sleeping.”

“Will we be there in a day?”

“No. Sixteen hours, that’s what Dad says. It’s perfect. You hide here all day, we leave tonight and get there tomorrow about
eleven in the morning.”

“What if I make noise or something? What if I sneeze?”

“Last time we went on a trip, we hid Jess Cavender’s Welsh Corgi in here for two days. They never knew a thing until we got
to California and it was too late to send him back. I think he probably barked. Of course, he peed on the floor. You won’t
pee on the floor, will you?”

An insulted shrug. “It’ll be hard, but I’ll try to do my best.”

“If you have to go, push this button before you do.” She gestured toward a little plastic panel on the wall behind the tiny
sink. “And after you’ve gone, you have to punch it again to turn the pump off. Dad always gets mad when we forget to turn
the pump off. It wastes water if you don’t.”

“I’ll turn the pump off, I promise.”

“Okay.” A deep sigh of conviction. “I guess that’s it, then.”

“I guess.”

“We’ll leave in about an hour, I think. Right when he gets home.”