Times and Seasons (30 page)

Mark
slowly turned and saw Jerry moving to the front. His mouth came open, and his eyes looked so vulnerable Cathy thought they might shatter.

“Uh…” Jerry cleared his throat. “I feel kind of out of place in here.” He coughed nervously and looked down at his son. “Mark…just look at you.”

Mark slid his hands into his pants pockets and looked down at his new shoes.

“I’m not very proud…” He stopped and cleared his throat again. Mark brought his eyes back up, and Cathy moved next to Mark and touched his shoulder. “I’m not very proud of the way I’ve treated you over the last year,” he said. “Even though I’m your dad, I was mad, and I didn’t want you to think I would reward you for what you’d done. But I was wrong, Son.”

Cathy covered her mouth against the muffled sob.

“I’ve missed a lot,” Jerry went on. “I haven’t been there for you. But tonight I’ve been standing outside the door listening to
what the people said about you. To tell you the truth, I came here to confront your mother and Steve, who I thought was trying to fill my shoes. And standing out there, I heard all those great things that everybody’s been saying, and I realized that I’ve missed an awful lot. Not just for the last year, but for your whole childhood.”

Mark’s mouth twitched at the corners, and Cathy could see the Herculean effort he was giving to not falling apart. But
Jerry
was falling apart.

“Mark, I hope you can forgive your old man,” he said, “because when I look at you right now, I’m prouder of you than I’ve ever been in my life. I love you, Mark.”

Before he had a chance to say another word, Mark bolted forward and embraced his father. Cathy saw Jerry dip his head down and kiss Mark’s neck, just like the father had done to the Prodigal Son.

She watched father and son descend back into the crowd, watched the others patting his back and shaking his hand, watched Annie and Rick as they embraced their dad, celebrating the fact that he had come to do this thing for their brother.

Stunned, Cathy pulled back out of the crowd and stepped outside to calm herself. She leaned back against the garage wall, exactly where Jerry had been moments earlier. The door opened, and Steve slipped out.

He looked at her with worried eyes. “I hope you’re not mad,” he said.

“Mad? About what?”

“That I let him in, let him go talk in my place. Let him speak publicly like that to Mark.”

“How could I be mad?” she asked, wiping her tears. “It was exactly what Mark needed. It’s what he longed for all this time. Here I was thinking you were going to step up and make him feel so proud and bless him in a way that he needed so badly. But you did more than that. You gave him back his dad.”

He held her as she wept with joy for what her son had gained, when so many times before, she had wept over what he had lost.

And then the doors opened again, and David Dodd stepped out. They broke the embrace, and Steve whispered, “Why don’t you go on back in? I need to talk to David.”

Cathy went back inside to find her son.

David reached out to shake Steve’s hand. “That was very moving,” he said in a cracked voice. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

“It was your idea,” Steve said. “I appreciate it.”

“You know,” David said, struggling to control his voice, “what happened in there…all the symbolism, the coat you had made for Mark, the ring on his finger, that little insignia, and then watching Mark and his father embrace the way they did. It was a real good picture to me, Steve.”

“A picture of what?” Steve asked.

“A picture of God.” He rubbed his jaw hard, trying to cover the trembling of his mouth. “I just need to think about all this for a while.”

“I’ll pray for you, man,” Steve said.

David nodded. “You know, that didn’t mean a whole lot to me a while back, but I think I’m starting to see that maybe there’s some good to praying. It always seems to work.”

“Every time. Not always the way we want. But I have no regrets.”

David swallowed hard. “If Brenda comes looking for me, tell her I went home, okay? I have some thinking to do.”

“Sure, I will.”

And as David walked down the driveway and crossed the street, Steve prayed that David would see his own Father scanning the horizon, waiting for him to come home.

When
the party was over and all the guests had gone home—and Cathy’s kids had gone out for a bite with their father—Sylvia, Brenda, and Tory stayed behind to help Cathy clean up.

The kitchen was almost clean when Sylvia had to sit down. It was jetlag, Cathy thought, on the tail end of a couple of years of the hardest work of her life. Sylvia would rest, and they would take care of her, and by the time they put her back on the plane, she would be fine.

“You haven’t been taking advantage of one of God’s greatest gifts,” she said, bringing Sylvia a mug of coffee and sitting down beside her.

Sylvia sipped, looking puzzled. “And which gift is that?”

“Rest,” Cathy said, kicking off her shoes and pulling her feet up to the couch.

“You’re right,” Tory agreed. “Rest is a gift.” “One of many,” Brenda said. She set her mug down on the coffee table. “Think where we were a year ago, when Cathy thought everything had come crashing down.”

“But it hadn’t,” Cathy said. “Look what came of it.”

“It’s been a full year,” Sylvia said. “A year with a lot of good moments. One of mine was when Annie got off the plane in Managua and saw the car I drive.” She threw her head back and laughed. “You should have seen her face, Cathy. It was priceless. She was trying not to laugh, but then she fell against the car and laughed until she cried. Wish I’d gotten a picture of that.” She sighed. “We loved having her there. It was a good time.”

“But I’m glad you brought her back,” Cathy said. “I missed her. But I have noticed that she’s appreciated driving my little car. Not one complaint.”

“That’s just because it has real windows instead of duct tape.”

“She said you were so tired from pedaling your car,” Cathy said, and they all laughed again.

“So what was your best moment in the last year, Brenda?” Sylvia asked.

She thought a moment. “Mine was getting Daniel
his
car,” Brenda said. “It’s probably not a whole lot better than yours, Sylvia, but it suited him fine.”

“Mine was the date with Barry,” Tory said, “when he arranged the sitter and took me dancing.”

“The wedding was nice,” Cathy said, feeling that sense of well-being that comes in the wake of joy. “The marriage is even nicer. Best moment? When Mark told me he’d found Christ.”

Sylvia nodded. “When Annie understood that Christ was better than food.”

“When David was so moved today by the picture of the Prodigal Son,” Brenda whispered.

Tory swallowed and drew in a cleansing breath. “When I understood that life’s family joys are more important than my pride.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cathy said, relating too well. “Or when Jerry understood that.” She dropped her feet and leaned up, as if amazed all over again. “The look on Mark’s face when his dad told him he loved him.” Her heart ached with that sensitive joy
that always comes with tears. “
That
was the best moment,” Cathy whispered.

“You’re right,” Brenda whispered. “It was.”

“Yeah,” Tory said as tears rimmed her eyes. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Neither will he,” Sylvia said. “What a precious gift.”

That
night, Mark enjoyed settling back into his messiness, as he had not been allowed to do at River Ranch. He took his shirt off and threw it over the basketball hoop on his door, then pulled on a pair of jeans, relishing the feel of them in place of his Cat-in-the-Hat pants.

He plopped down onto his bed and stretched out on the thick mattress.

And then he thanked God that he was out of jail, that he wasn’t the stupid, stubborn kid who went in, that his family had welcomed him back…

He had never expected to feel this sense of well-being again, but tonight all seemed right with his life.

Cathy woke up in the middle of the night and reached over to touch Steve’s chest. He slept soundly, with that rhythmic
breathing she had come to depend on. Carefully, she slipped out of bed and walked barefoot across the plush carpet in their new bedroom. She went into the living room and down the hall to Tracy’s room. The child slept with four stuffed animals and a nightlight on. Her hair lay like a blanket across her face, and Cathy pushed it back from her eyes.

Quietly, she slipped out of the room and went up the stairs. Rick’s door was open, and she stopped in the doorway and saw him buried under his covers. He was almost too big for his bed, she thought. She hadn’t noticed it before. But she supposed there was no point in getting him a bigger bed when he had such a small bed in his dorm. She stepped close to him and saw the perspiration on his face. He was too hot. She’d have to adjust the thermostat.

She went back out and stopped at Annie’s room. Her daughter had already fallen into her habit of cluttering her room with clothes and shoes and makeup, as if she’d waited a solid year to spread out again. Photographs of the children in León were already framed and placed around her room. Cathy stepped close to the bed, where Annie lay like the little girl she had once been, all innocent and sweet and full of life. She was still that girl, Cathy thought with gratitude. Annie was tangled in her covers, with something clutched in her hands. Cathy looked to see what it was.

It was the picture of a tiny little girl Annie had come to love. Cathy swallowed back the emotion tightening her throat.

Then she went on to Mark’s room and stepped inside. He was sound asleep on his bed, still wearing his jeans. He looked like the little skipping boy that Cathy had lost, with his bare chest and bare feet, and his arm carelessly flung over the side of the bed.

She went in and pulled his covers up over him. Love and unspeakable gratitude filled her heart so full that it almost hurt. She knew just whom to thank.

She looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see her Lord smiling down at her. “I owe you a big one,” she whispered.

They had all turned out right. In spite of her flawed mothering, in spite of their broken home, in spite of everything that had gone wrong in their lives…God had filled in the blanks.

He had raised her children right and had seen them all the way home.