Stardust Miracle (4 page)

The house loomed up ahead. She was almost there. Good. Her energy was flagging. Her breaths came harsher. As if she were the big, bad wolf about to blow down a house.

Only her big, bad husband had already done that.

The church’s back door opened and footsteps thumped in her direction. The sound carried in the silence of the evening. Not even the hum of an occasional car engine came from the highway three blocks away. As if this were a dead zone. 

“Get that camera, Jim,” Diana called. “If the pictures get out, I’ll die.”

The running steps and Diana’s words spurred Becky on. She stepped on a branch and stumbled, feeling a deep pain in her foot. But she caught herself and kept running. Feeling the pain but not letting it stop her.

She reached her back door. One breath later, she was inside, locking the door behind her. She grabbed her purse, thankful she’d left it on the table. Her purse clutched to her side, she ran through the house. The keys were already in her purse. She could lock Jim out but he’d find a way in. And the first thing he’d do was wrestle his phone from her.

She needed the photos. The proof that she hadn’t imagined or made up what she’d seen. Proof against his golden tongue.

She sped into the garage and jumped into the driver’s seat of her car. With a click of her finger, she locked the car doors. Then she pressed a button to open the garage door, wincing at the loud squeal. A louder version of her squeal in the church.

Maybe the garage door needed someone to lubricate it, too. Maybe it needed that person to be faithful and not go around lubricating other garage doors.

The engine started and she laughed as she rammed it into reverse and then stomped on the gas. In the rear window, she saw Jim, waving wildly.

She pressed on the gas harder and watched him leap out of the way. She eased her foot, not wanting to swerve onto the lawn. Why should the lawn she’d spent sixteen years nurturing suffer because her husband was a cheat and a hypocrite?

She was looking over her shoulder when the knock came on her side window. She gasped and whipped her head around. The car swerved. In her peripheral, Jim’s mouth was tight, grim.

“Stop the car, Becky,” he shouted as she switched her gaze to the rear view mirror. The window blunted his voice but he was still as compelling as when he spoke to the congregation every Sunday. Still as confident.

“Don’t be foolish. Don’t ruin our lives over this. We can work it out. We can talk to therapists. Secular or non-secular. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to fix our marriage and make it better than ever.”

She eased her foot from the gas pedal and the car slowed. A tiny doubt burrowed in her mind that maybe he was right. Maybe this would be a good thing. Not just for her marriage, but for her. For the dissatisfaction that had been mushrooming inside she. Maybe this would be the thing that would—

“Honey, listen to me,” he continued. “We can’t throw away fifteen years of marriage without trying.”

The car was nearing the end of the driveway. She still backed up but her foot hardly pressed down on the pedal now. And even though she listened to him, she couldn’t look at him. If she looked at his face—

“Just stop the car and give me my phone.”

Her teeth set. Her arms tensed.
Damn him. Damn him to bloody hell.
That’s what the plea was all about. He wanted her evidence.

She stomped her sore, bare foot on the gas pedal. She heard Jim shout as the car squealed into the street, and she could see he’d fallen on the grass. Good. He’d already fallen in her mind.

She shifted into drive. The car jerked forward then sped down the road. When she reached the corner, she realized she didn’t know where to go. Wherever it was, Jim would be after her soon, demanding that she return his cell phone.

And next time she doubted he’d be so nice.

Chapter Five

She needed to go someplace safe. Her dad’s was the obvious choice. Carl adored Jim. Always had. Jack, Jim’s dad, had been Carl’s best friend, a big charismatic man. A hunter, an athlete, a singer, a drinker and a womanizer.

Carl had taken Jack’s early death in a plane crash hard. Becky sometimes thought harder than her mother’s.

But she was his daughter. He would take her side. He would protect her.

Not that she needed physical protection. Jim had never hit her, but it dawned on her now that through their years together, he’d made her feel...insignificant. Not good enough. Constantly saying, in a sorrowful voice, ‘I don’t mind that you can’t produce enough eggs so we can have a baby.’

As if she
could
– if only she prayed hard enough.

And, ‘I know you want a child the natural way, but we can always adopt when there’s no more hope. The doctors say there’s hope yet.’ And he’d look at her with a slight shake of his head, because they both knew that hope was dribbling out of her vagina, day by day, month by month, birthday by birthday, egg by egg.

She reached First Street and put her right blinker on...and in her left peripheral a light blinked. Then two lights. Then three. Her foot on the brake, she turned her head and saw a winding line of sparkles. Like a rope of stardust.

Without thought, not even questioning what she was seeing, she steered left, the sudden change making the tires squeal. She started to follow the tiny lights, and once on course they...

Evaporated.

She kept on going. And going. About four blocks across, to the last road before a dead end. Once again, she could go left or right, and sure enough, there were sparkles on her left. Providing her own GPS system. Saying, ‘This way. Go this way.’

“I’m going,” she whispered. She turned the opposite direction of her father’s four thousand square foot house overlooking Lake Miracle, with four
en suite
bedrooms – three unused for over a decade – toward her sister’s two-story house at the end of the road.

The only thing Sarah and Marsh’s house overlooked was the field next to them, with three storage buildings where Marsh kept the old stuff he ‘picked’ in hopes of finding resale gold. Beyond that was farmland, including the weed Becky’s Uncle Sam grew.

She was probably the only person under sixty in Miracle who’d never smoked any. But right now she could use something to calm her nerves. The events of the night were starting to kick in, and she was shaking as she pulled into her sister’s driveway.

If a miracle were going to happen to someone in the Village of Miracle, it wasn’t going to be her. Not tonight.

There’d be no making a baby tonight. When she slipped on the silken negligee, she’d hidden the secret wish in the back of her mind. So secret she hadn’t dared whisper it to herself.

The lights were on in Sarah’s house. Becky shivered again, though she wore the trench coat and it wasn’t that cold. Her cold came from the inside. The inside of her bones. The inside of her chest, now hollowed out and empty. A cold, cold place. Too cold for her bruised heart. Even the inside of her soul was chilly, the edges frostbitten.

Instead of thinking about Sarah, Becky remembered Jim in his office. The shock widening his eyes when she burst in.

The numbness thinned and rage kindled inside her. She seesawed back and forth from burning grief to cold ferocious anger, not ready to let go of either yet. The vision of Diana with her face in Jim’s—

Sickness welled up in her throat. She braked, put the car in park, jumped out and made it to the end of the front porch. When the door opened and Sarah called her name, Becky was barfing into the spiky bushes.

*****

Becky’s back hurt from sleeping on the sofa bed – the one she suspected had belonged to Marsh before he quit his second year of college eight years ago. And her heart? It felt numb, as if it had been injected with novocaine.

Good. She didn’t want to feel. She heard voices and toilet flushes and water running. The guest room door opened and she closed her eyes, not uncurling from her fetal position.

Appropriate. She felt like a fetus today. Not ready to face the world.

Of all the doubts piling up in her mind, one thing she was sure of. Last night really had happened. Her husband was a cheat and a hypocrite.

No wonder she’d felt like a fake for so long. Walking through her days with a smile pasted on her face like a mannequin. Her whole life had been a fake. She just hadn’t known it.

The door closed. A moment later, an outside door opened and more voices rose. A dog barked. A cat meowed. Puppies squeaked. The phone rang.

Sarah’s family was noisier than hers had been. Fake families spoke in quiet voices. As if loud voices would rip through the façade.

A whimper made her open her eyes. She looked down at a small four-legged being covered with black fur. A puppy. It stared up at her with big brown trusting eyes. When she reached out to it, her hand landed on its head and its body wiggled.

Her heart beat hard and an ache came with it. The numbness was wearing off.

“Are you lost?” Becky whispered. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re too young to leave your mom.”

It whimpered and stepped forward with its front legs stretched sideways. It tumbled backward onto its tail. She laughed, surprising herself, and rolled off the sofa bed and onto the floor. She was still wearing the red negligee from last night.

She picked up the puppy and held it while it licked her wrist and her elbow and its own nose. She had to pee, but bending to kiss its head, she didn’t care. She just wanted to pet the puppy and not think about anything else. The world would be better place if every home had a cute puppy in it. And a part of her knew that as long as she was petting this little furball, nothing else mattered. Nothing at all.

 “Hey.” Sarah entered the room, her footsteps in her fuzzy socks as soft as her voice. She wore a sweatshirt and stretchy pants, her stomach pouched out. “I see you found a friend.”

“He’s a love.”

Sarah bent down, her head tilted, studying the puppy. “That’s our only black. He can’t keep still. So far none of the others climbed out of the box. There’s always one.”

The dog wiggled to get away, and Becky uncurled her fingers and let it go. It skittered over to Sarah, who scooped it up, making a grunting sound. When she stood, she said, “I hope it doesn’t pee on me. Looks like we’ll need to put up a barrier in the puppy room. This one’s an explorer, but the others will follow soon. I don’t want all five wandering around the house.”

“Not yet,” Becky agreed.

Sarah pressed her lips together. “Not ever,” she said firmly. “They’re in pee-as-you-go mode.”

Becky scrambled to her feet. “If I don’t go to the bathroom now, it might be me leaving a puddle on your floor. Thanks for putting me up last night.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sarah said as Becky hurried past her. “Stay as long as you need to. Dad called. Jim already called him and told him his side. Dad’s on the way over. I’ll run and find some clothes for you.”

“Probably your maternity clothes.” Becky hoped Sarah’s maternity clothes would fit. Not that she cared about the extra pounds right now. In the midst of everything else, it was...

Oh, hell, she did care.

She wondered if the extra weight were a contributing factor to Jim’s actions, but she quickly shut that gibberish off.
Jim
was the factor. Not even Diana mattered. If he cheated with Diana, he’d cheat with someone else. Maybe he already had.

The memory of all the nights he’d spent in his church office while she sat alone in their house reading books about other women’s happy-ever-after stories slammed into her gut.

She shut off the scream inside her and hurried to the bathroom. Moments later, she heard the phone ring again. She was washing her hands when Sarah opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Jim wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him to talk to someone who cares.” She looked in the mirror. At least she hadn’t put makeup on last night. No smeared black mascara streaks today. Good. Her dad would be here any minute. She wouldn’t have time to clean up. Not even time for a shower. “Did you find any clothes for me?”

Sarah shook her head. “I’ll tell Jim—”

“I’ll tell him.” A sudden blaze of anger changed Becky’s mind about avoiding Jim. If he had any decency,
he
would avoid
her
. “You get the clothes, please.”

“You’re sure?”

Becky narrowed her eyes. “I’m not a wimp.”

“You’re used to...” Sarah’s lips twisted. “Being treated well.”

“He’ll treat me well.” Becky thought of the photos on his phone. “I think he’ll treat me
very
well.”

Before she reached Sarah’s phone in the kitchen, she collected her purse with Jim’s phone and sent the photos to her own phone and to her email – though Jim knew her password and she suspected he would delete them – and to Sarah’s phone and Sarah’s email. She almost sent them to Marsh, but decided it was enough to send them to Sarah.

Right now she didn’t trust Marsh. Though he’d never had much in common with Jim, they were both men. She’d have to see. Her days of blind trust were behind her.

When she picked up the phone, Becky half expected that Jim had hung up, but he was still on the phone. “Becky! You’re here.” 

His voice held as much surprise as if the president had answered. Did he, like Sarah, think she was a wimp? They both forgot she was the one who made Jim’s life run smoothly. He was a gifted preacher and teacher but she was the one who handled the shepherding part of the job. Handled the mailing of bereavement, birth, special occasion cards. She took meals to the sick and baked cookies for shut-in visits. She coordinated the youth ministry and the youth ice cream social. She taught Sunday school and attended a ladies' bible study at night.

On top of that, she had to keep the house clean, and the parsonage looking nice inside and out.

It had felt like a continuation of what she’d done for her father and for Sarah when she was a teen. Taking care of them.

It was past time she took care of herself.

“We have to talk,” he said.

“Do we? I don’t think so. Don’t call again. I don’t want you pestering my sister and her family.”