One Prayer Away (3 page)

“So you don't miss your dad anymore?” Mitchell asked.

“Every day of my life.” Chris pointed at his father's picture on the wall. Aside from an oil painting of a fisherman at sea, it was the only wall decoration in his sizeable office. “I still love that man. But now, a year and a half later, I don't get depressed when I think about his death. I know Dad is in a much better place. The joke in all of this is that he used to tell me all the time, as a kid, that I couldn't fool him with any of my childhood shenanigans. He said nothing I did was new. Whatever I could think of doing, he had already done before, and there was no place that I could go that he hadn't been first. I laugh about that now because even when I get to heaven, he would have been there before me.”

“Chris.” His secretary interrupted their chat when she slightly opened the office door. “Your next appointment is here.”

“Thanks, Barbara,” Chris said. “Give me five minutes, and then send him in.”

Mitchell looked down at the watch on his wrist. “I suppose we got a little off track and didn't cover all of the interview questions.”

“I guess.” Chris smiled. “But we covered enough for me to work with. I have two other appointments this afternoon,” he continued as he stood and extended his hand toward Mitchell. “I'll be in touch.”

“Thank you.” On his way to the exit, Mitchell passed the applicant who had arrived on time, thus interrupting the talk that had made him feel more like a patient than a
prospect. The man wore a pin-striped black suit and sported a leather portfolio that hung from his shoulder. Glancing at his own face in a mirror on the foyer wall, Mitchell realized that the only thing hanging from his shoulders was the emotional baggage he'd been carrying around for more years than he cared to count.

He remembered not having much hope for the position when he left Chris's office. He was sure that the lie he'd told to cover his undisciplined recent past didn't do much to increase his chances. But Mitchell was wrong. By Saturday night, Chris had made his decision, and miraculously, he'd rejected the well-dressed gentleman who Mitchell was sure would get the position and had somehow decided that the still-broken man with the sordid past was the best one for the job.

Two weeks after Mitchell began working with Chris, he accepted an invitation to join him for worship services at the local church he attended. That Sunday, the preacher spoke on David and how he, though thought of as the least in his father's household, was chosen to be king. In some strange way, Mitchell felt as though he could relate to David. When he went home that day, he read the entire Scripture on David and realized that, like David, he too had been chosen over those who looked the part. Somehow, through Chris, God had chosen him. It would be another month before Mitchell would make the walk from his place on the fifth-row pew to the altar. He could still remember Chris waiting for him with open arms as he made his way back to his seat after he surrendered his life to Christ.

That day—the day he invited Christ into his life—all of the guilt and shame of Mitchell's past existence were erased. He'd been able to move forward with renewed spirit and a determination to make the next segment of his life better than the previous. Mitchell's hard work had truly paid off with great rewards. Living a life free of alcoholism
and having a steady, well-paying job for the past three years had afforded him the clear head and the resources to get everything back that he'd loved and lost during his years of living in the cloud of a drunken stupor. Everything, that is, except Virtue.

Three

G
ood morning,” Chris called through Mitchell's open office door, snatching Mitchell's faraway thoughts of his first Christian experience back to the present.

It had been a long night, but even though Mitchell had only gotten a few hours of sleep, he felt rested and refreshed. For hours last night, he'd sat up and watched the flames lick hungrily at the wood in front of him. He didn't use his fireplace often, but when he did it seemed to render a certain level of calm to his innermost being. He'd fallen asleep on the sofa in the warmth that the flames shared with his living room, but he was permanently stirred only three hours later.

A year ago, he'd had the home that his grandparents shared completely remodeled to give it modernized comfort without taking away the welcoming feel that their presence had given it. The fireplace in the living room was one of the memorable aspects of the house that he wanted to keep simple. Other than adding a custom-made wooden mantel, it remained unchanged.

“Good morning,” Mitchell replied as he began moving from the spot where he'd stood for so long that his legs had begun to grow numb.

“Is it cold enough out there for you?”

Mitchell laughed and then said, “The weatherman said that it would be unusually cold for these parts for the next several days, and he wasn't kidding. It's freezing out there.”

“And it's going to get even colder as the week progresses,” Chris said. “I heard that we may even get snow in some areas.”

“It feels cold enough to snow right now,” Mitchell remarked while finally taking a seat behind his desk. He was grateful for the opportunity to break away from his earlier dismal thoughts and get to more pleasant tasks.

With Chris gone to his own office, Mitchell got back to the files that awaited his attention. Barbara was running late today, so he had stepped into the hall long enough to prepare his own hot cup of water before returning to his assigned work space. Winter or summer, hot apple cider was his favorite drink. Perhaps it was the tart sweetness that attracted his taste buds. He'd often wondered if his body had found the flavor to be a feasible substitute for the drink it once craved. Whatever the case, Mitchell loved it and kept packets of the mixes in his drawer to add to the water that the coffeemaker provided.

Coffee had never been his drink of choice. Barbara and Chris raved over the varied, flavored crèmes that they used to give their caffeine kick a wide range of tastes. For Mitchell, it mattered not what international creamer was added; it was still coffee and still distasteful. Once in a while, he would drink hot chocolate, usually on nights when he felt particularly lonely. The kind with marshmallows really comforted him. It was the kind
she
always drank.

“I know you told me a couple of weeks ago that you didn't want to discuss this,” Chris said, walking in and
interrupting a fond memory. “But you and I have talked about almost everything imaginable since the time you started working here. Why is it that you can't talk to me about what happened at Bob's Steak & Chop House?”

Mitchell looked at him without responding. He thought he'd put a permanent end to this topic that same afternoon when Chris rejoined him at the office.

“Come on,” Chris urged. “How bad can it be? You told me about your mom, your grandparents, your boozing, your fear of spiders, your bed-wetting . . .”

“Hey!” Mitchell said, taking a quick look around his office as though he thought someone would hear. “Lower your voice, man. That was traumatic stuff for a thirteen-year-old boy to deal with.”

Chris's face scrunched up into a frown. “
Thirteen
? You didn't tell me you were thirteen. I thought maybe you were seven or eight. A thirteen-year-old is like a grown man leaking all over himself at night, man.”

“Will you close the door on your way out?” Mitchell said, retrieving a folder from his briefcase. But Chris made no immediate attempt to obey.

“My point is that whatever it is that happened between you and this Vicky girl can't be any more embarrassing than that.”

“I don't want to talk about it, Chris.”

Taking a sip from his coffee mug, Chris made a grunting sound. “Well, whoever she was and whatever part she played in your life, she must have been quite the looker. The girl you scared off in your little mistaken identity blunder sure was.”

Dropping his eyes to his desk, Mitchell smiled. Chris was right; Virtue was as striking as ever. He remembered her as a woman who'd always taken pride in her appearance, and that hadn't changed. Virtue stood only 5'5” in height, but her long, shapely legs and her habit of wearing three-inch heels gave her the illusion of a much taller
woman. Her shoulder-length hair was still full of body and moved with every turn of her head. Years of dancing had kept her curves smooth and her body taut. Even in his dumbstruck state, Mitchell had been able to notice all of that before she had fled the restaurant.

Mitchell's lengthy silence sent Chris the message that he wanted to be left alone, but in truth, Mitchell's thoughts had momentarily snared him. He was brought back to himself when he saw Chris walking toward the door. For the first time, Mitchell found himself wanting to talk about a subject that had been taboo for years.

“Her name is Virtue, and there was no mistake made on my part except to run her away seven years ago.”

His words stopped Chris in his tracks, and he turned to look at Mitchell as though he wasn't sure his ears had heard what they'd heard. The chime of the front door alerted them of Barbara's arrival, and Chris closed the door to Mitchell's office and then sat in the chair directly across from his desk. He didn't speak, but his eyes were full of questions. In a matter of seconds, Mitchell answered the most dominant one.

“Virtue is . . . Virtue
was
my wife.”

Losing complete interest in the coffee he'd just been enjoying, Chris placed the still-full cup on his partner's desk and then pushed it to the side. “Your
what
?”

“My wife. The woman who walked in the restaurant used to be my wife. That was the first time I'd seen her since I struck her for the second time during one of my drunken rages.”

Chris was still having trouble processing Mitchell's first few words. “You have a wife?”

“Had,” Mitchell corrected.

“Have . . . had . . . whatever.” Chris shrugged. “How, in three years, have I not known that you were once married?”

“You never asked.” Mitchell knew that the answer wasn't a valid one, but he also knew that Chris wouldn't press
him to give a more detailed one. Instead, Chris changed the question and proposed a new one.

“How long had it been since you'd seen her?”

“We'd just gotten married less than a year before my grandparents died, so I quickly became a different man than the man she married. Virtue hung in with me for almost three years, which was probably more than most women would have. But when the drinking started and then got out of control to the point where I was taking my frustrations out on her, she left. That terrified look that she had on her face at Bob's was the same look of horror that she had the first time I hit her. I thought I'd lost her then because she stormed out of the house, leaving me there to wallow in self-pity all by myself. But when I woke up the next morning, she was right there beside me in the bed. She came back.”

“And you hit her again?” Chris was clearly fascinated by this story that he'd never heard before.

Mitchell nodded, surprised at how easy it was for him to share the most shameful part of his life with his friend. He'd held it inside himself for so long that he'd not noticed that it was not only a secret, but a burden. Telling Chris about it felt liberating.

“It must have been pretty bad the second time around for her to leave permanently,” Chris said after Mitchell quietly drifted back in time.

“Two weeks later I hit her twice as hard as the first time,” Mitchell explained. He shook his head in regret as he recalled the day it happened. “She hadn't done anything wrong. Every day she was going to work and trying to pay the bills that I couldn't because of my expensive addiction. She had just graduated from Hope College that summer and was settling in a routine of teaching ballet for first through fifth grade students at a local elementary school. Virtue had barely walked in the door that day before I nailed her with all of my complaints and accusations.”