A Morning Like This (32 page)

I have a right to confront her in anger. Lord, I have a right to accuse her of sleeping with my husband
.

A figure in a white cotton sweater and a pair of jeans finally unfolded from the driver’s side and came moving up the driveway
in the mist. The woman’s blonde hair was streaming, a magazine unfolded, crooked to keep the rain off, over her head.

Abby shoved Brewster back inside the front door and shut him away to make him be quiet. Through the heavy wooden door, she
heard him still going at it, his deep voice frantic.

The word came from someplace deep inside her, somewhere unguarded and surprising, an entire thought unformulated and unbidden.

When you ask for My love, beloved one, you ask to set more of yourself aside.

I’m angry, Father. I’m hurt.

You aren’t asking not to be angry, are you? You’re asking Me to take charge.

Here the woman came, and the two of them stood face to face in the rain. “Is David Treasure here? Is this his house?”

“Yes.”

“Is he inside?” A step forward that Susan Roche had no right to take.

“You’re looking for Samantha?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll be back in a little while.”

“They? Who’s they?”

“My son,” Abby said. “My husband.” A hesitation in which they each held the world in their eyes. “And your daughter.”

Susan still held the magazine, a current issue of Better Homes and Gardens, high over her head. She laughed self-consciously,
brought it down, and folded it wetly beneath her arm. “Abigail? Is it you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hello.”

Neither of them knew what to say. So Abby did the only thing she knew to do: she brought Susan in out of the rain.

While the woman took time drying off in the bathroom and Brewster prowled suspiciously through the house, Abby opened the
freezer door and stared inside. She thought, she’s here, and surely I can’t be expected to cook for her. Of course, there
was that frozen Stouffer’s lasagna. David hated frozen lasagna. That would be the perfect thing.

Abby zipped open the box and read the instructions, which proved indecipherable in her state of mind. Remove film cover from
tray. Bake on cookie sheet in center of oven. Let sit for five minutes for best flavor.

She leaned her head against the cabinet. No. No.

And turned to find Susan standing behind her, watching.

I choose to give this to You, Lord. I do. I choose. Take it
.

“I could ask you to forgive me,” Susan said defensively, “but it wouldn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

For a long time, Abby stood silent, her teeth biting into her lower lip.

“I’ve gotten my daughter out of it. I don’t regret one moment.”

Abby pressed her knuckle against her mouth.

“The prayer was nice,” Susan said. “And you probably expect me to ask for forgiveness, but I’m not going to. I’ve raised a
wonderful daughter.”

For a long time Abby stood waiting, not trusting herself to speak.
That’s beside the point
, she wanted to say. Then words, from somewhere other than herself, began to pour forth.

“I don’t expect anything from you, Susan,” she said quietly. “I know you feel like you need to say something or explain, but
I want you to know that you don’t have to.”

“You don’t—? I don’t have to?”

“No.”

Those two sentences, and it seemed as if some dam inside Susan had come crashing open. Her face crumpled. She stopped trying
to make herself clear. Instead, “I was so young then,” she said, crying, free to react from her heart. “Oh, Abigail. That
was when I thought everything in the world belonged to me.”

“I see,” Abby said. “I see.”

That’s exactly where they were standing when Abby’s husband entered the house with his children, and looked from one woman
to the other.

David took off an hour early from the bank the next afternoon to cut firewood for the church. He stopped by the house, where
he knew Abby wouldn’t be, loaded up a dented can of gasoline, and set out to tune up his cherished Husqvarna chainsaw.

He removed the bar guard, found his sharpening file, and ran it with smooth precision over each blade along the bar. He worked
the choke and adjusted the throttle, hit the Smart Start feature, and tested the chainsaw’s center of gravity.

He couldn’t stop thinking about his daughter, how much he loved her already, how sick she was.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Abby and Susan in the room together, a portrait of his infidelity, a divided house.

He gave the engine a test run. As the chainsaw rumbled, David searched for reprieve in all 6.1 horsepower of the engine in
his hands, the way it revved to the speed of 12,000 rpms. He pointed the bar at a two-o’clock-angle and closed his eyes, enjoying
the smooth, powerful vibration before he switched it off. He set the throttle lock, replaced the bar guard, loaded it into
the back of the SUV along with the little pouch of sharpening tools, and started on his way.

He and the kids had come back to the house yesterday, never having seen a lick of rain, as boisterous as blackbirds, as wet
as otters, with Wyoming mud splattered all over their legs, ready to tell Abby stories.

And there had stood Susan Roche, as if she belonged in their living room, talking to Braden, hugging Samantha, wagging that
little girl back and forth in her arms, while Abby stood to one side, looking stricken.

He didn’t begrudge anything Susan had done, except not telling the truth sooner.

He was grateful to her for raising Samantha.

But she’d told him she was staying at the Elk Country Inn. He’d never pictured what it would feel like to walk into his home
and find Abby playing hostess to her. These were the rooms where they had built their lives together. This house had long
been their place of joy and safety. Good things and bad things both,
he
was the husband. He was the one who had unlocked the door and let everything in.

Mosquito Creek Road was bumpy as a washboard and filled with ruts. The farther David bounced along on it, the more distressed
he became. Seeing Susan sitting with Abby was like seeing every transgression he’d ever committed. Seeing the two women standing
together, each with her own child, was like seeing his mistakes magnified and projected on a screen bigger than the one at
the Spud Drive-In. Much bigger.

David found a spot with deadfall trees and parked. He revved up the chainsaw. With every winter-kill tree he found and felled,
with every length of pine and spruce he severed and shoved into the cargo bay of his Suburban, he worked to absolve himself
of his wrongdoing. With every log he lugged and every woodchip he scrubbed out of his eyes with his knuckles, he fought to
release himself from the horrible tug-of-war in his spirit.

David staggered, bearing a massive log that he lugged over and pitched into the SUV. The shock-absorbers gave way an inch
or so beneath the weight of it. His muscles burned. He stood back and gauged the space. He might cram three more small sections
in, then he’d head down to the Christian Center to unload before he came up for a second installment.

And maybe a third.

Two cords he could take credit for, if he could get that much in before dark.

But, all that measuring, and David didn’t make a move toward the next piece of wood. He stood with his feet straddled wide
and his solemn gaze directed toward the bare branches in a dead-standing tree. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how
many pounds of firewood he hauled in, he couldn’t make the sick regret and the longing go away.

I didn’t have any right to be defensive with Abby. Every criticism she’s heaped on me, I’ve deserved
.

Deadfall trunks lay in haphazard disarray around David’s feet. He picked his way through them until he came to one he had
hewn, one that looked like it would fit perfectly into the space left for it. He lugged it over and began to shove it into
place.

How many years have to go by
—

The log barely budged. He put his shoulder to it and heaved.

—
before a man is forgiven?

David pushed with everything he could muster.

Lord, why did You wait this long
—

The log slid in.

—
to let me be proven guilty?

The back filled, David hammered the forest-service permit into one log, slammed the gate, and brushed sawdust off his palms.
He headed down the jarring road, keeping his foot off the brake as much as possible, gearing down because he conveyed a heavy
load. After he arrived at the church and parked in the Hulls’ driveway, he began pitching everything onto the grass, hurrying
so he wouldn’t get caught before he could make another run. But here came Nelson across the yard.

“Need a hand?”

“Naw. I got this. You’ve probably got plenty of other things to do.”

“Sure. I’ve got plenty of other things. But nothing else I’d
rather
do.” Nelson stepped up to help him and, for a long time, the two friends labored side by side, the flying chunks of wood
hitting the ground with hollow, splintery thuds. For a long time David waited before he said what was forcing itself out from
him, everything that was on his mind.

“You think she’s going to die because of my sin?” David asked.

Nelson curled his arms around a huge section of wood and
thunked
it on top of the others.

“You think God’s doing it this way to make me pay?” David didn’t stack two logs in his arms this time. He stacked three. “Christians
get forgiven for what they did before they got saved.” His muscles strained. He let the logs roll off onto the pile,
thunk thunk thunk
, by themselves. “But what about this? I did it after.” Nelson paused and measured the width of the sky with his eyes. David
straightened and crossed his arms. He stood with his legs wide apart and his face turned up toward the pale summer sky and
the clouds that drifted across it like cotton wadding.

“Maybe,” Nelson said to the air above them, “He wants you to stop struggling. Maybe He just wants you to
be
.”

“I’m a man, Nelson. I can’t just
be
.” David turned to the cargo bay and started pitching logs again. “And what about Sam, Nelson? What about all this awful darkness
in her life?”

“What about it, David?” Nelson propped a foot on a stump and hesitated. “You don’t think Christ dying for you was
enough?”

Ridiculous
. “Of course it was enough. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A sin as devastating as adultery, David. Thinking your mistakes are different from everybody else’s, that they’re somehow
bigger. That, because they’re yours, they’re unpardonable.”

More logs hefted, more logs thrown. Nelson kept up, right beside David, chunks of rotten bark covering his yellow shirt.

“He’s bringing you to yourself, David.” Nelson scrubbed sawdust from his eye with one finger. “Humans love us because of what
we are. God loves us because He knows our full potential. Because Jesus Christ died for us, the Father looks at us and doesn’t
see us as we are. He looks and sees everything He created us to be.”

“Oh,” David said. “Oh.” And felt the tears coming to his eyes.

“For God is light,” Nelson said, “and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

Sunday morning at the Jackson Hole Christian Center and two children sat side by side in the chairs, nibbling on peanut-butter
cups that their father snuck them, each of them busily drawing their own separate sketches on a church bulletin.

Braden drew a soldier crouched in a warrior’s stance, with a huge belt, a sword drawn for battle, and an upheld shield.

A little boy’s picture.

Samantha drew little creatures, round and cute, with antennas. Some of them were happy, some were mad, and some were dancing.

Not the type of picture either Abby or David had expected a little girl to draw at all.

Abby did not stand at her chair for the praise music. She sat with her head lowered, her hands curved over the seat in front
of her, as if lifting her eyes to the Lord would have revealed something inside her that she herself didn’t want to see. Something
scraped raw, bruised, broken.