Only Uni (42 page)

“Hmph.” Lex crossed her arms.

“When are you going to tell him?” Venus shifted her weight to one hip. Trish almost expected her to start tapping her toe.

“I have to set a date?”

“If you don’t, you’ll never do it.”

Trish sighed, but Venus was right. “Sunday after church.”

“I’ll drive you,” Lex said. “That way you won’t have to drive home afterward.”

Trish felt like they were planning military strategy. “Fine.

Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “There’s something else. I kind of need housing . . .”

She was going to throw up all over his nice Italian leather shoes before she even got a word out.

“Hey, Trish — whoa. You don’t look so good. You’re pale.” Spenser guided her to a seat in the sanctuary.

“No . . .” She didn’t want to tell him here, with stragglers still making their way out, with people chatting in the foyer through the sanctuary doors. At least the worship team had finished clearing their equipment away, except for the few cords in Spenser’s hand.

“Sit down.” He pushed her into a seat.

She pressed her palms to her temples. “I need to tell you something — ”

“Hey guys. Going out to lunch?” One of the singles came up to them, then caught sight of Trish’s face. “Are you sick?” He took a large step backward. “You’re not contagious, are you?”

She growled at him.

“Uh . . . yeah. See ya later.” He headed up the aisle toward the doors. His voice carried back to them as he spoke to someone else. “Man, she’s crabby.”

This was just great.

“Spenser, I need to tell you something.”

He sat in a seat in the row ahead of her, twisted around so his arm draped over the back of the chair, but he didn’t look at her. “Diana told me you wanted to transfer to Pleasanton.”

“I did, but she won’t let me.” Maybe that was a good thing, making her stay and face this. It would be shameful and deceptive to run away. But it would protect her reputation — whatever good she’d accomplished for it, in this church and with her family.

“I don’t want you to move because of me.”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” Fabulous. Now she’d hurt his feelings before she’d even talked to him. “It’s something else. And I might not move.”

She cleared her throat. She didn’t want to tell him. She had to tell him. The silence in the sanctuary roared in her ears. She couldn’t do this.

She could. She had to.

“Spenser, I’m two months pregnant.”

At first she thought she’d said it too softly for him to hear. He sat there, blinking, not looking at her. His face didn’t change.

Then his jaw flexed.

His skin turned white. Whiter than white. Translucent enough to almost see the skeletal bones underneath. His eyes had sunk back into his head and his mouth disappeared into a thin line.

He said a single word. “Kazuo.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He stood and walked away.

THIRTY-FOUR

S
he didn’t know how long she sat there, staring at the empty stage, still lit by the front lights. She must not have been there that long, because Olivia found her.

“Are you okay?”

Dry-eyed, she shrugged. She didn’t have any more tears. She’d been emptied. She was like a burned-out building, a charred shell.

Olivia’s touch on her hand made her jump. “Trish, you’re like ice.”

Funny, she felt like she was on fire.

Olivia sat down, ironically in the seat Spenser had vacated. “Did you guys have a fight?”

She took a deep breath. “No, he just . . . did what I expected him to.” She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. She’d been skewered straight through the sternum, leaving jagged edges that burned and throbbed. Yet the rest of her body felt nothing. Nothing.

“Did you want to talk about it?”

“I’m pregnant from my ex-boyfriend.” She didn’t care anymore. She felt both numb and reckless at the same time. “Spenser just walked away.”

“I’m sure he has a reason.” No mention of Trish’s utter lack of moral fortitude.

“It doesn’t matter if he does. It’s over. Not that we had anything. Only a couple dates. It shouldn’t feel this bad.” She rubbed her chest. She had almost expected to feel a gaping hole.

“Let me pray for you — ”

“I don’t want to pray. I can’t pray.”

Olivia turned away to look at the empty stage. She swiveled back. “Tell me about it.”

She shook her head and shrugged again. What was there to say?

“Trish, I’m not going to give you platitudes. I want to help.”

“With what? There’s too much and too little.”

“Honey, He’s God. It’s not too much for Him.”

“He did this to me.” Dad’s affair, Mom’s collapse, now this. “He’s punishing me for all my bad choices when I should have known better.”

Olivia’s eyes darkened. “He doesn’t punish people anymore. But bad choices have consequences.”

“But I was trying so hard to
be someone He’d forgive
.” The words hit her square in the chest like a blow.

“He did forgive. He forgave as soon as you said you were sorry. You’re still His child. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to take responsibility for the things you’ve done.”

Responsibility. “I was trying to be a responsible person.” But it didn’t erase what she’d already done when she should have known better. Her three rules weren’t the Dry Erase alcohol solution that could wipe it all away.

“Let me say this again: He’s God. He has His reasons. Who are any of us to question them?”

Trish stopped and felt the weight of those words, the weight of the truth of it all. She felt especially small in the empty sanctuary. “I feel so alone.” Her voice cracked.

“Even — and especially — when you don’t see Him, He sees you.”

“Yeah, but what does He see in me?”
Whore.

“He sees Christ’s blood.”

She shook her head, and her hands started to shake, too. “That doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.”

“Trish, blood is more precious than gold.”

Precious
. “I don’t feel precious.” She sobbed into her hands.

Olivia moved to sit beside her. She surrounded her with light cinnamon scent and arms wrapped tight around her shoulders. “You are more precious than you know.”

The tears rained down her face. “I don’t have anything.”

“You are even more precious to Him when there aren’t any walls between the two of you.”

The darkness behind her closed eyelids was too black, too deep. She wanted this mercy, like a light, like a ribbon of silver, like a hand on her head.

“You are His. You don’t have to follow certain rules or be a perfect Christian to be His. You have to trust and believe how much He loves you. That’s all that matters.”

She cried harder. Even her heart was crying. Her soul cried out like a physical hand reaching out to Him. And she thought . . . she thought she felt Him take it.

She sat there, and sobbed, and hung on.

Trish sat on her concrete front step, staring at the newly-cleared front lawn in the fading sunlight. The neighbor’s teenage son had done a great job pulling up the weeds on Friday. Twenty bucks for his labor had made him ecstatic. Trish considered that cheap compared to the quotes from commercial landscapers.

Of course, she’d enjoyed it for all of one weekend.

Luckily, most of her stuff was still stored in her parents’ garage. The rest had been packed into her SUV, ready to drive to Venus’s place tomorrow. Trish would get a spot on the loveseat. Woo-hoo.

She needed someplace else for long-term. How could she find anything she could afford with a baby?

There she went again, thinking like she should keep it. She shouldn’t. She couldn’t give it a nuclear family, a stellar life. She could barely take care of herself.

She looked out over the front lawn and remembered her rejoicing that she could finally see the sidewalk from her front door. Well, maybe she wasn’t that helpless.

Oh. She sat up straighter. What she should do was pray about it. (Imagine that!) The reconciliation and peace she felt in the sanctuary still covered her, embracing her like a soft chenille blanket.
Lord, I don’t think Kazuo would want this baby. Do you want me to keep it?

She didn’t expect a voice in her ear, but she suddenly saw a picture of the child in her arms, her mother’s smile beaming at her, maybe Grandpa’s dimples peeking out.

If you want me to, I will.

No writing on the wall or in the sky, but she also knew somehow — deeper than emotions, from somewhere down inside her — that He’d let her know definitively. Eventually.

She shifted when the crack in the step started digging into the seat of her pants. She breathed deep of the cooling twilight air and dropped her head into her bent knees. She should go inside soon.

Then she heard the car engine. Deep and growling, massive power held in check. Prowling down her street. Slowing near her house.

She looked up. A black Mazda RX – 7 in perfect condition pulled into her cracked driveway. The door swung open and Spenser stepped out.

As he approached, Trish rose to her feet, lifted her chest up, set her jaw. But then he stopped and removed his sunglasses.

His eyes had aged a hundred years. He was a man with no soul left in him, a wraith left all alone.

It shocked her, then angered her. Fury trembled in her chest, quivered in her hands. No. She wasn’t going to forgive him just because he came with that hangdog look. She wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Trish.”

She burst into tears.

She hadn’t thought she had any tears left in her. She felt his hand guide her back down onto the step. He sat next to her and shoved a white linen handkerchief into her hands.

Handkerchief? Who carried real handkerchiefs these days? She buried her face in it and let it muffle her sobs.

After a while, she quieted and blew her nose. Hard. Oh. A handkerchief was much better for blowing her nose than a tissue. She mopped her face and peeked at him.

Spenser returned her look with those horrible dead eyes, sitting with his knees pulled up. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she.

Her breathing calmed from gasping back to normal, but her whole face felt swollen. She probably had splotches all over it. She felt lumpy and upset, and why in the world was he here? He’d been pretty clear about his feelings.

A tiny little corner of her heart had hoped he was a better man.

She thrust the crumpled handkerchief at him. Spenser looked askance at it and muttered a strangled, “Keep it.”

A watery giggle burst from her.

A smile flitted across his face, then disappeared. He looked away, at the empty street. He wet his lips. “I’m sorry.”

She stared at the ground between her feet. She couldn’t get herself to toss off a flippant,
It’s okay
, because she didn’t feel okay. She wiped her nose to stall for time. He solved her dilemma by continuing.

“I’ve hated him for a long time.”

“Kazuo.”

“When Linda first left me, I thought maybe Matthew wasn’t mine.”

The world shattered around her in booms and sparks and falling shards. She started hyperventilating. He shoved her head between her knees but quickly assured her, “He is mine.”