Redemption (3 page)

The caller hesitated. “Let’s just say I’m doing both of us a favor. He’s off campus, at the Silverlake Apartments. He was there last night, and my guess is he’ll be there tonight. He’s staying at Angela Manning’s apartment. She’s a journalism student at the university.” He hesitated. “Now do you believe me?”

Kari shook her head, slowly at first and then fiercely. “No, no, I don’t.” Tears flooded her eyes, and the falling sensation intensified. “You . . . you have him mixed up with someone else.”

“Look, lady—” The caller was getting impatient. “The man I’m talking about is Professor Tim Jacobs. He’s your husband, right?”

Kari’s eyes grew wide, and her stomach locked up. She dropped the receiver as if it were suddenly on fire. Then, without stopping to pick it up, she raced back into the bathroom. She dropped to her knees and barely got her face over the toilet bowl in time.

Again and again her stomach convulsed until there was nothing left. Not in her stomach or her heart. Weak and shaking from head to toe, Kari struggled to her feet and wiped her mouth on a piece of toilet paper.
It couldn’t be true, could it? There’d been no signs
. . . .

That thought struck an off note, and Kari remembered details from the past few months. Fall was often a busy conference time for Tim, but this year had been the worst ever. So many weekends away that Kari had to struggle to remember exactly how often he’d been gone. Four weekends? Five?

Another wave of nausea crashed in around her, but she stayed on her feet. She had no time to hover over toilets, fearing the worst, wondering if it was possible that life as she’d known it had just come to a crashing halt.

Kari looked at her reflection in the mirror and shook her head. “It’s all a mistake,” she whispered. “It has to be.” Her hair had come free from the big clip and now hung in thick clumps around her face. She pulled them back with one hand and leaned closer, studying her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She saw no visible lines, even with her face scrubbed clean of the thick pancake foundation she had worn for her shoot that day. Kari modeled part-time for department-store catalogs, and today’s shoot had been for evening wear. The heavy makeup was a must for sessions like that. But without it, she looked even younger than her twenty-eight years.

She examined her cheekbones and chin and grabbed at her loose-fitting T-shirt, tightening it behind her so she could see her figure. Well, maybe she had put on just a little weight in the past months, but not enough to cost her any jobs. Surely not enough to . . .

She closed her eyes, and Tim’s face came to mind.
You’re gorgeous, baby, gorgeous. I can’t get enough of you.
He’d said it as long as she’d known him, since her senior year at Indiana University—the year she and Ryan Taylor had finally agreed to go their separate ways.

The image in her mind changed.

Ryan . . .

Kari gave a slight shake of her head. Just that morning she’d gotten word that he was back in town, had taken a job coaching at Clear Creek High School.

No, Kari, don’t go there,
she ordered her heart. Memories of her old boyfriend were better left to yesterday. Especially now when her marriage, her entire life, hung on the validity of a single phone call.

Kari opened her eyes and gazed once more into the mirror, as if it could tell her what she needed to know. Was there really someone else, someone he was seeing on the side? Her stomach clenched in response. It wasn’t possible. Tim Jacobs? Leader of his high school’s Young Life club? President of his university’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes? Onetime campus Bible-study leader?

He would never cheat on her . . . would he? She remembered the caller’s voice and knew there was only one way to find out. She closed her eyes again and prayed for strength.

Are you there, Lord?

Don’t be afraid. I will supply all your needs.

The words were part of a radio message she’d heard driving home from her photo shoot hours earlier. At the time the words didn’t seem particularly profound, at least not for her. Kari wasn’t fearful or needy, after all. She loved the way her life was turning out—great family, great church, great job, great husband. . . .

But that was before the phone call.

Her chest pounded, and she tried to swallow the anxiety building within her.
Don’t be afraid. . . .

The thought hung itself on a hook in Kari’s heart and swung there for a moment.
All I want is for the caller to be wrong, Lord. I love Tim, really. Help me understand what’s going on
.

Don’t be afraid. . . .

Peace, warm and certain, eased over her, and she felt the muscles in her neck relax. It was a mix-up of some kind, or a mean trick. It had to be.

The phone in the next room was beeping a protest at being left off the hook. She returned to the bedroom to hang it up. Her arms and legs were still trembling, and her stomach ached. A bagful of possible scenarios spilled across her soul, and as she examined them, fear crept back to taunt her. Did Tim really have a conference this weekend? What about the other conferences—had he really attended them? If not, where was he . . . ?

Then she remembered. He’d scribbled the details about the conference on a piece of paper somewhere. In the kitchen, where she’d kissed him good-bye? Kari ran downstairs and searched the kitchen desk, moving stacks of papers and mail, desperately looking for Tim’s handwriting. She hadn’t paid attention because she hadn’t thought she’d need the information. He’d called her the night before, and she’d been certain he’d call her again sometime today.

“Come on,” she muttered. In her haste she knocked over a stack of magazines. Finally her eyes fell on a yellow sticky note with a hotel name and phone number written in Tim’s handwriting.

Kari picked up the receiver and dialed the number before she had time to reconsider.

“Marriott Hotel, Gary, Indiana.”

She gulped. “Yes. I, uh, I need to speak to Tim Jacobs. He’s staying there.”

“Hold, please.”

God, please let him be there. . . .

The man’s voice came back on the line. “I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”

Kari couldn’t have felt worse if someone had walked up and kicked her in the stomach. The falling began again, and she had to steady herself against the desk. “He’s . . . part of the conference. Freedom of the Press.”

“Hold on.” There was the sound of rustling papers. “We have four conferences here this weekend, but nothing about the press. Midwestern Chefs, maybe?”

Kari shook her head, her eyes filling fast with tears. “No. I must have the wrong hotel.”

The blood drained from Kari’s face, and she hung up the phone. Her heart and mind jockeyed for the lead in a race that seemed destined to kill her. She struggled to catch her breath as she buried her face in her hands and searched for a reasonable explanation. He’d accidentally given her the information from the last conference. Or the next one. He’d gotten the wrong hotel from his secretary. There had to be an answer. Something, anything.

Kari opened her eyes and realized there was only one other way to find out. “Fine.” She drew a quick breath and grabbed her car keys. She’d lived in the Bloomington area all of her life and had spent years visiting friends in the off-campus apartments.

Ten minutes later she turned down South Maple and headed toward the Silverlake Apartments. She searched the opposite side of the street for Tim’s black Lexus but saw nothing. Her racing heart calmed ever so slightly. The caller had been playing a sick joke. There was an explanation for everything. Tim was in Gary, not here at the—

She gasped. Up ahead on the right side of the street, just under the streetlight, her eyes picked out a familiar dark shape.
No, Lord. No
. She inched her foot onto the gas pedal, and as the black car came into view she saw it was a Lexus. Just like Tim’s.

Lots of people drive a car like that. Lots of people.
The license plate . . . she couldn’t be sure without reading the plate.

Two years earlier, she’d had a particularly good run of modeling jobs and surprised Tim for his birthday with the car of his dreams—right down to the personalized plates. Now she pulled up behind the Lexus and had a clear view of the back in her headlights. The letters were the ones she’d picked out herself: WRITE2U.

Her cheeks grew hot, and she was unable to draw a deep breath. Tears spilled down her face, and she clenched her fists. So it was true after all.

Everything about the past hour seemed like something from a nightmare, and Kari prayed she might wake up. Never once since meeting Tim would she have thought him capable of doing this, of lying and cheating and . . .

A hundred options raced through Kari’s mind. She could park and go from one apartment to another until she found him. Or she could go home and call an attorney. The tears were coming faster now, and panic welled up within her. Black spots danced before her eyes, and she wondered if she was hyperventilating.

Was there still some possible explanation? Could he be helping a friend or meeting with another professor? Maybe he’d driven to Gary with someone else, someone who lived here in the . . .

The excuses faded, and in their place an idea formed. She parked and got out of her car. Then she walked up to Tim’s car and threw her body against it with all her pent-up anger and fear.

Immediately, her husband’s car alarm sliced through the quiet night, echoing earsplitting cries off the fronts of the apartments. Kari returned to her car, climbed inside, and waited.

Don’t be here, Tim. Please . . . let there be a reason. . . .

She fixed her eyes on the apartment entrance as the alarm wailed an entire minute, then another. The door to the complex suddenly flew open, and there he was. Her husband, the man she’d trusted with her heart and soul.

He was dressed in sweats and a white T-shirt, and his hair looked disheveled. A lump formed in Kari’s throat. How could he? How could he have lied to her?

She watched him jog toward the street, aim his key chain at the Lexus, and press a button. Silence filled the air, and Tim surveyed the area. Before he could turn around, she opened her car door and stood up.

Her sudden movement caught Tim’s attention, and from fifty feet away their eyes locked. His mouth hung open for what felt like an hour, and Kari watched the color fade from his expression. “Kari . . .” He took two steps toward her and stopped.

She wanted to slap his face or kick him or beg him to come home with her and tell her it was all a mistake. But the evidence was too much to bear. She considered falling against her car and weeping, but she didn’t have the strength for any of it. Instead, she sank back into the driver’s seat and started the engine, her eyes blurred with tears.

It was unfathomable, as if it were happening to someone else. Kari could barely breathe as her hands robotically turned the wheel and found the way home. Along the way she thought about going to see her parents or one of her three sisters, who lived minutes away. But there would be time for that later. Now she needed to be alone, to absorb the blow and give herself time to grieve until finally she believed the facts for what they were.

Tim was having an affair. With a student.

She took short, shuffling steps through the garage and into the house, where she threw herself on the living-room sofa and cried. Not the way she had cried when she and Ryan broke up back in college, or even when she miscarried her first child not long after she and Tim were married.

This was a deep, guttural weeping that came from a place in her soul she hadn’t known existed until now. A dark place empty of all words except a wrenching
why.

Why had this happened? What had gone wrong? Tim was still attracted to her, she knew that much. So what was it? She racked her brain trying to imagine why she hadn’t been enough for him.

Then it dawned on her. Tim’s student must be smarter, more academic, better with words. That had to be it. Wasn’t Tim always coming home talking about this student or that one? Sharing examples from students’ papers as if the clever crafting of words were the greatest talent a person could have?

She remembered a time when she and Tim attended a party hosted by the university. It was one of her first university gatherings, and she was thrilled to be there with him. They were standing together in a circle of witty, accomplished people when the talk turned to books. The chairman of Tim’s department held forth for a while on some Washington exposé, and a woman Kari had met only briefly mentioned a collection of South American poems she admired. Then the tall, stooped woman on Kari’s left leaned over solicitously and inquired what Kari liked to read.

She had nodded confidently and told the truth. “Just about anything by John Grisham. But
The Firm
was my favorite.”

The pause that followed felt like an hour. Tim’s chairman raised his eyebrows. The tall woman’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable smile that barely missed being a sneer. The poetry woman’s face froze; then she let out a laugh as if just realizing that Kari had told a joke. A vague-looking older man was scratching his head and looking confused. “Grisham . . . don’t think I’m familiar. . . . Was he that character at Iowa, wrote that analysis of corporate literature?”

By then Kari wasn’t listening. She had seen the look on Tim’s face, a mixture of irritation and determination not to let it show. He slipped an arm around Kari’s shoulders and drew her close with a defiant look as if to tell the world, “Hey, at least she’s beautiful.”

The conversation had continued, but the moment stayed with Kari over the years. Clearly Tim had been embarrassed, wishing her to be witty and intelligent and well-read like the other wives. That had to be the reason he was seeing someone else. The student must be brilliant and able to converse on a level Kari had never reached.

So what if she was beautiful? In the end it hadn’t been enough to keep Ryan Taylor.

And now it wasn’t enough for Tim, either.