Roses in Autumn (24 page)

Feeling as if she were talking to her mirror, she turned to Janelle. “Don’t let this happen to you.” Her gaze took in the mother too. “Don’t do what my mother and I did. Don’t lose each other.”

She took a step toward Janelle. “Talk to your mother. Talk and talk and talk.”

Janelle’s gaze was directed toward Laura’s shoes. “I tried. She won’t listen. She doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t care.”

“That’s not true!” The cry from the back of the room was answered by the judge’s gavel.

“Order, or I’ll have the bailiff clear the room.”

But Laura continued to the girl, “Then make her listen. Make her believe you. Keep talking. Don’t run away from your problems—you can’t.” She paused to look inside herself. “I learned that—the hard way. Your problems follow you and get bigger and bigger. You have to face them and defeat them before they overwhelm you.”

Laura hadn’t planned to get so personal, but now she could see that her story was an important part of the picture. “I know what I’m talking about, Janelle. I was molested when I was younger than you. My mother wouldn’t believe me. So I just stuffed the pain down and tried to act as if nothing had ever happened. It doesn’t work. You have to deal with it.

“If I hadn’t, and if I should ever have a daughter, I would have treated her just like my mother treated me. And then my daughter would treat her daughter that way. Don’t you see? It has to stop. You have to say, ‘The past ends here, right now.’ Get rid of the past so you can live for the future.”

Laura was trembling so hard she barely made it back to her seat. She had very little idea what she had said. Her heart was pounding in her ears until she couldn’t hear her own words on the last. The judge said something about this not being Janelle’s hearing but that when hers came up he would look into ordering a guardian for her and counseling for her and her mother.

Laura closed her eyes. She had done it. She had actually pulled the whole thing out in public. And perhaps she had helped Janelle. The judge’s words sounded hopeful. But what of her and Tom? She had hoped it would help them as well as Janelle and her mother. But if anything Tom seemed more withdrawn. He still sat beside her. Yet the emotional distance was miles. How many more failures could they survive?

Then the focus shifted to Darren. His lawyer reviewed the boy’s record, placing heavy emphasis on Darren’s high scores on academic ability tests and on his solid background. Then the judge questioned Darren: his participation in the mugging, his willingness to develop his intellectual potential, his goals for the future.

Laura couldn’t help being proud of Darren. Wellgroomed in sports jacket and sweater vest he looked far more like Kyle than she had realized—or he would, when his facial bones strengthened. The boy spoke well to the judge, not looking at the floor and muttering, but head up, eyes straight forward, giving open answers in a clear voice—far different from the day he had lied his way into her company. And his attitude was commendable. He seemed truly penitent for what he had done, determined to start over and travel a better road this time.

Kyle presented his request that his brother be bound over to his custody. He briefly outlined his plan for moving to Toronto with the boy and placing him in a top private school where he could receive an accelerated academic challenge and develop his interest in computer science.

The courtroom was silent as the judge reviewed the notes in front of him. Laura held her breath. This boy’s future hung in the balance, as did the future of her friends. Kyle’s plan sounded good for Darren. But was it good for Glenda and Kyle? If Kyle sacrificed his own happiness for his brother’s, would it be good for Darren in the long run? And what of all the patients Kyle would be leaving?

Then all other questions fled from her mind as Tom stood up. “If it please the court, I would like to present an alternate proposal for consideration—”

Laura couldn’t believe her ears. Tom offered to accept custody of Darren.
Tom.
What did this mean? She had to admit the idea didn’t sound quite so wild as Tom outlined the excellent Advanced Placement Program offered at Boise High, the computer science courses available through the local university, the opportunity of a part-time job in Tom’s office …

Darren? Living in their home? What would that factor do to their shaky marriage? What would that mean to her? Extra laundry and cooking, meeting the demands of another schedule, another human being …

But over and above all, the astounding thought of Tom in the role of a father. She could see herself as a mother. But a
father.
She would be living with a father. The idea stunned her.

She didn’t even have uncles or male cousins, let alone a father. The only man she had ever been close to other than Tom was Mr. Sanders. She shivered.

People prated on and on about God being our father, but that was never a concept to which she could bear to give any consideration.

And now Tom as a father? Of course, if they’d ever had children of their own she would have had to face this, but she vaguely assumed that would be different.

Suddenly she realized the courtroom was silent. Everyone was looking at her. “I said, what do you think of this proposal, Mrs. James?” The judge looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows.

“I—”

“Can I speak?” Darren’s question saved her. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.” He gave Tom a wide, amazed grin. “Thank you. Er—, that is, that’s a great offer. And I promise you I’ll work very hard to justify your faith in me.” He turned back to the judge. “But couldn’t I stay here and just study harder? That is—I was listening to everything Mrs. James said about not running away. Going to Boise would be running away, wouldn’t it?”

He turned to Kyle. “And so would going to Toronto. I mean, it’s absolutely fantastic that you would move all that way just to give me a fresh start, but—” He looked at the floor. “Couldn’t we stay here—and be a family—with Glenda, too, that is?”

Somehow the judge managed to wind up the hearing with sufficient order to preserve the proprieties of the judicial system. Among other procedures he outlined the probationary period Darren would serve under strict supervision. But Kyle’s talking about going down the hall to the marriage license bureau and Glenda’s chatter about a garden wedding seemed to be primary among the topics of conversation that whirled around Laura as she struggled to sort out her feelings.

Tom had done a beautiful, generous thing. The Tom she had accused of being nothing more than a cold, calculating business machine cared enough for this boy to volunteer to take on a father’s responsibilities for him. She was the one who had pulled back. She still didn’t know what she would have said if Darren hadn’t intervened. But her head was aching far too insistently to allow coming to any insights now.

“You look done in, Laura. You need some rest.” Tom led her from the buzzing room and drove back to the hotel.

Each step made a jarring throb as they walked across the pomegranate red hall carpet to their room. Tom held the door for her. She walked in.

“Surprise!”

A woman with strawberry blond hair and long, sexy legs walked across the room toward them. What was
she
doing in their hotel room? “Sorry about invading your hideaway, but the maid was most helpful when I gave her a tearful story about a family emergency. She understood that I couldn’t possibly wait out in the hall under such devastating circumstances.”

“Marla!” Tom strode across the room to the intruder. But Laura couldn’t move.

“Surprised to see me?” Her smiled seemed confident of welcome. “Phil and I spent hours going over all those figures you gave me last night. Then I went straight to the airport. There isn’t a minute to lose on this deal. But I’m absolutely starved. And we don’t want to bore Laura with our talk. Why don’t we go over this at dinner?”

Laura didn’t realize Tom had turned back to her until she felt his hand on her arm drawing her into the room. “Laura, I have to deal with this. I’ll try not to be too late.”

The next thing Laura knew she was alone in the room. Alone in the cold and the dark. It didn’t even occur to her to seek a chair until her legs got so tired she simply sank down on the carpet. She felt no pain or anger. She only vaguely understood that Marla had come. And Tom had gone with her.

Part of the time Laura thought she was home in Boise in her favorite chair, writing in her journal … she had walked into Tom’s office and found Marla in his arms. Then she was in a hotel room, huddled on something soft, but she couldn’t write because it was too dark … and Tom wasn’t there to turn on the lights for her.

Tom wasn’t here. He was with Marla. And there were no lights.

Chapter
21

A wave of nausea brought Laura out of her paralysis. It was still dark, not the earlier darkness of emotional blindness, but the normal darkness of night—a night in which no lights shone. A second wave of sickness forced her to grope her way to the bathroom.

When the violence had spent itself, she made her way to the shelter of the bed. Even with keeping the quilted bedspread on for warmth, however, she was unable to dispel the chill that held her. Had she picked up some virus? Or was this a complication from having been hit on the head? The hospital had been so thorough, an MRI after the X ray, surely they hadn’t missed anything. But she had been feeling strange lately. Was it possible for brain damage to show up this much later?

She wondered if the Empress kept a house physician, but she didn’t have the energy to go to the phone. She just lay there in her black, icy cocoon, too weak even to shiver.

She felt she might have simply lain there until the end of time, but hours later another attack of queasiness drew her out of bed. A glance at herself in the mirror decided her on one thing: if she was going to die she had no intention of doing it alone in a hotel room—while her husband was out with another woman.

She dialed the front desk and asked them to call her a taxi.

“Royal Jubilee Hospital, emergency room, ma’am.” The driver’s voice penetrated her misery.

Some time later Laura was back in another taxi, feeling even more benumbed than before. She just couldn’t take in the full implications of the doctor’s report. At least she wasn’t dying. But if she got back to the hotel and Tom was still out with Marla she might prefer to be. Could she cope without Tom? Could she cope
with
Tom?

She approached their room slowly. Would Tom be waiting with open arms and a believable excuse for having been gone all night? Or would he be there to tell her it was over? That Marla had won? Or would she just find the same cold emptiness she had left? Which would it be, the lady or the tiger?

Being met by a snarling tiger would have been preferable to the void she walked into. Before, the room had been merely empty. Now it was deserted. A body from which the soul had departed. A destitute shell.

She stood in the middle of the floor, trying to figure out what had changed. Why was the room so much emptier, colder, than when she left? The papers were still scattered around her computer on the side table, the bedcovers still rumpled in the room beyond, the books still on the coffee table, Tom’s papers … That was it.

Tom’s things were gone.

She opened the closet. Tom’s clothes were gone.

Tom was gone.

Like a wounded animal she crept to the bed and curled herself into a ball. She longed to be able to cry. Or to scream. But the emotional toll of the past weeks had been too great. She had spent all she had of grief and joy, of pain and hope. Now there was nothing.

Nothing.

No, there was something. She was alive. There was life in the universe. She could reach for that life.

Without conscious thought Laura took the path up the hill that she and Tom had taken on that bright Sunday morning that now felt so long ago—her glowing hopes for that morning now seeming so naive. And later she had returned in an equally dewy-eyed effort to rescue Darren from himself. Now she needed sanctuary. She needed someone to rescue her from herself.

Today there were no altar guild ladies fussing with flowers, only the marvelously radiant light through the jeweled windows. No robed priest served Communion today, but Laura knelt at the altar anyway, looking upward, seeking focus. The stained-glass Christ opened His arms to her. He was her priest. And she opened her heart to Him. The quiet beauty of hushed holiness flooded her soul.

She had no idea how long she knelt there, silent, but not alone, reveling in the warmth, the joy, the peace … At last she moved to pick up a prayer book. It opened at the familiar words, “Our Father who art in heaven …”

Laura pulled back. Those words. Intruding in her rapture. That unspeakable word—Father. God as Father; Tom as father. Her gaze turned to the window in the side chapel. Pretty, the blend of colors and figures … suddenly she jerked upright. The figure in the white robe with his arms spread out to the tattered, suppliant. She knew that story. Some long-forgotten Sunday School teacher had told the story of the prodigal son—and the father who welcomed him with open arms. The father who didn’t just accept a penitent, but actually sought him with outgoing love. Was that the father she had always rejected?

Could she accept Him now—or really, let Him accept her? If she found harmony with God as Father, could she find like accord with Tom?

The prayer book fell from her lap with a thud. She picked it up and turned the pages, still trying to sort out all the new thoughts flooding her mind. Her eyes read the words before her mind took them in. “The union of husband and wife in heart, body and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

Was that what Kyle had meant when he said something about marriage being a sacrament? Laura didn’t know much about theology, but they were beautiful words. It was a beautiful, might-have-been idea.
The Book of Common Prayer
made a better fairy-tale book than Hans Christian Andersen. “Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us … for consecrating the union of man and woman in his name … pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and this woman … Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads …”