Chuck returned the nod, then faced Bobbi without raising his eyes to hers. “I’m sorry. I lost it. He . . . None of that . . .”
“I should go congratulate Pete,” she said, ignoring his sputtering. He was defending her, defending their marriage. How could she fault him for that?
“Walker didn’t know where he was, much less what he was saying—”
“Chuck, shut up. Let it go.”
“Only if you will.”
“It’s gone,” she said, then smiled at him. “But what was that wrist thing?”
“My dad learned that in the army. I didn’t want you to think that I’m like Walker at all.”
“I don’t.”
Just before nine thirty, Walter Davis called everybody to the lobby. He recounted the year’s accomplishments, congratulated Pete, thanked the staff for their hard work, and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. The party was over and Bobbi let herself breathe again. She survived.
Before she could escape, Walter Davis motioned at her from his office. “Do you know what Walter wants?” she asked Chuck.
“No idea.” He took her hand and crossed the lobby.
“I’d like to speak with you for a few moments,” Walter said, leading them into his office. “Do you have time?”
“I guess,” Bobbi said.
“Please, have a seat,” he said as he shut the door behind them, then took his seat behind the desk. “Bobbi, the last thing I want to do is to pry into your personal life, so don’t feel obligated to say anything, but I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
“Like what?”
“Like Chuck. Like you. It’s as if nothing happened between you, and to top it off, Chuck doesn’t yell at the staff any more. He’s more focused, gets more done in fewer hours, and is more helpful to the younger attorneys. It’s the opposite of what I expected. Did you give him some kind of ultimatum or something?”
“I didn’t do anything. It was God.”
“But you seem to get along better than most married couples I know. That’s what I don’t understand.” He scowled and stroked his chin. “I’ve been around church people all my life and they were no different from me. They faced the same challenges, made the same decisions—sometimes, poor ones—and had the same flaws.” Walter shook his head. “But the two of you, this is either completely genuine or you’re both insane.”
“A few months ago, I would have picked insane,” Bobbi said. “But with some struggle and lost sleep, we’ve made it to this point.”
Walter pushed his chair back and sighed. “Helen . . . She talks about God the way you do, like He’s real. I thought she was the exception.”
“I promise He’s real. Jesus Christ is real, and the changes are real.” Bobbi felt a gentle nudge in her spirit. God, You’re not serious. She’d explained the basics about salvation, about Jesus’s death, to her Sunday school class and to her sons, but never to another adult. The nudge became stronger until she heard herself say, “Do you want to change, Walter?”
“I’m past seventy years old. I can’t change.”
“Jesus changes you. All you have to do is ask Him to, and believe that He will.”
“Nothing is that easy, my dear.” Walter held his hands up and shook his head again. “There’s always a catch.”
“There was a catch for Jesus. He had to die for it.” She saw Chuck smile and nod. “Walter, I don’t want to patronize you if Helen has explained this before.”
“I’ve heard it, the whole spiel.” Walter’s sour skepticism hadn’t changed.
“Then the decision rests with you,” Bobbi said.
“It’s like a class action lawsuit,” Chuck said, leaning up to the desk. “All the negotiating has been done, the details all hammered out. The payment fund has been established for the members of the class. In order to receive the benefits of the settlement, you just have to identify yourself as part of the class. Once you’re part of the class, you’re entitled to the grace and forgiveness of God, which grants you life with Him once this life is over. God made all the arrangements Himself. You just have to decide to participate.”
After what seemed like a very long silence, Walter relaxed, his scowl disappeared and he said, “All right.”
“What?” Chuck asked, and Bobbi almost laughed. The great negotiator was stunned he’d persuaded someone.
“I want what you and Bobbi and Helen have. Tell me what to do.”
“You just have to pray.” Chuck looked to Bobbi. “That’s it, right?” She nodded, and bowed her head. “There aren’t any special words you have to say. You tell God what you know, and what you want Him to do about it.”
“God, this is Walter Davis. I know that You’re real because these kids couldn’t go through this without You doing something. I don’t understand it, but I know I don’t have anything like that. Chuck says I can have it if I ask. Well, if You’ll have me, I want You to change me like You changed them.” He raised his head and looked at Chuck. “Did that do it?”
“Did it?” Chuck asked.
“Yes,” Walter said with a grin spreading across his face. “I believe it did.” He wiped a tear away and picked up his phone. “I should call Helen.”
As Bobbi listened to Walter, she marveled that God could take something as ugly as adultery, use it as a means to bring a man to Himself, and allow her to be part of the process.
When Walter hung up the phone, he wiped another tear away. “Helen said to tell you this is an answer to fifty-two years’ worth of prayers.”
After promising to meet Walter for breakfast Monday morning, Chuck took Bobbi’s hand and walked with her toward the lobby’s coat rack. “You were incredible tonight. You stood by me. You were gracious and charming, and then with Walter—”
“I was a nervous wreck.”
“It didn’t show. You said all the right things.” He pulled her coat from its hanger. “A tremendous evening, I’d say.”
“There’s one more thing before we go.” She turned and motioned across the lobby to the conference room. “I faced everyone, but not . . .”
He dropped her coat on a chair as they walked by. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
“I think so,” she said, stepping into the conference room doorway. God, right here . . . In this room . . . The scene of the crime against me, against my marriage. She felt warmth in her cheeks and her pulse thundered in her ears. ‘The defendant shoved the plaintiff against the table. . .’ That table . . . Her heart raced, her chest tightened, and she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.
“You okay?” Chuck asked.
Words wouldn’t form into an answer and her feet refused to take her away from the conference room. She recognized that feeling in her jaws, though. “Trash can,” she whispered, scanning the corners of the room. She found one behind the door, dropped to her knees, and vomited.
Chuck was there, steadying her, strings of words spilling out of his mouth. He pulled her to her feet and shielded her view of the table. The table. “Come on. I’ll get you some water or something.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could . . .” She let him lead her to a sofa in the lobby. She pressed and rubbed her icy hands together. No progress . . . All these months, all the counseling, and it still makes me throw up.
Chuck knelt in front of her with a Styrofoam cup. “You’re getting a little color back.”
She sipped the water, then held the cup in both hands. “I’m, uh . . . I thought I was a little farther along.”
“No one has you on a schedule.”
“But I set a goal for myself, and failed.”
“And you’re going to forget every good thing that happened tonight because of that.”
“Don’t lecture me—”
“All I’m saying is give yourself the same grace you’ve given me.”
“This isn’t about grace. Do you have any idea what just happened? Any idea?” She slammed her cup on the glass-topped table beside the sofa
, splashing water out.
“Going in the conference room upset you. I understand—”
“How dare you suggest you understand what I feel.” She stood and snatched her coat off the arm of the nearby chair. “How arrogant! How presumptuous!”
“What choice do I have when you won’t tell me what’s going on inside you?”
“I’m the one paying for your sin, Chuck! I’m the one who doesn’t sleep at night. I’m the one seeing a psychiatrist. I’m the one who vomits every time it confronts me. You aren’t suffering at all!”
“That’s not true!”
“All I hear is you’re a great guy, working so hard, making all these changes, just the perfect husband.” She jabbed her chest with her finger. “But I wasn’t worth that. You had to cheat before you became the husband I should have had all along.”
“You’re right. I failed you for eighteen years. I admit that. I’ve admitted it to everybody I know. What else do you want me to do?”
“I wanted to get through this evening . . . I was going to have you come home if I could pull this off, but I’m not ready, and frankly, I wonder if I ever will be.”
CHAPTER 22 SOJOURN
Chuck caught Bobbi’s eye at a red light, but she turned her head toward the window. Such a fantastic evening, a taste of what life together could be like, destroyed in an instant. He turned on to Ashley Drive, dreading the next stupid thing he was bound to say. Bobbi gave him a break.
“Can we call a truce?” she asked, without looking him in the eye.
“Sure.” He pulled the car in the driveway and turned the engine off, but didn’t move to get out.
“We proved tonight that we can . . . handle a social situation.” She fidgeted with the clasp on her purse while she spoke. “Can we put all the other stuff aside until after Christmas?”
“What stuff do you want to put aside, exactly?” He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“I don’t want to discuss our marriage.” Now she raised her head and faced him. “I don’t want to try to work anything out, or solve anything, until the holidays are over. Can we maintain the status quo until then?”
He twisted around to face her. By the porch light, he could see a tear. He’d give anything not to make her cry again. “I’d rather maintain the eight o’clock-ish status quo, before I screwed up again.” She ignored the opening.
“I want the boys to have a good Christmas, and I don’t want your mother to worry.”
“Is she staying here?”
“She wouldn’t give me an answer.” Bobbi unbuckled her seat belt, then opened the car door. The dome light came on, but it seemed that she wanted that. “I mean for you to stay here, too.”
“Stay here?”
“Christmas Eve. You need to be here with the boys. Spend the night Christmas Eve. Just don’t . . . you know, assume that it means anything more than that.”
“Of course not. Thank you for the invitation.”
She eased out of the car, then leaned over for one more word. “I’ll . . . uh . . . try to take your advice.”
“What’s that?”
“About not forgetting the good things that happened this evening. Good night, Chuck.”
She shut the car door and he watched her until she disappeared into the house. “Now, that’s some progress.”
Friday, December 23
Chuck set his mother’s suitcase down and fumbled with the key to his apartment. “It’ll put you in mind of that place I had in Evanston,” he said, pushing the door open.
Ann stepped through the door and surveyed the living room, then she glanced in the small kitchen and down the hallway toward the bedrooms. “This is a nice place.”
“This is a rotten place.” He set her suitcase against the wall and slipped his leather jacket off. “My wife and sons are somewhere else. I hate this place.”
Ann motioned for him to sit with her on the sofa. “I didn’t come Thanksgiving, and I almost didn’t come for Christmas, because I knew if I saw you and Bobbi apart, I wouldn’t be able to deny what you’d done any longer.” She sighed and looked around Chuck’s living room. “To walk into an apartment and not your house . . . it pained my soul in a way you’ll never understand.”
“I’m sorry,” Chuck said, but she raised a hand and cut him off.
“You and Bobbi and the boys are all I have. I was terrified that you ripped them away from me, and I’m not sure I could live through that. For weeks, I turned over in my mind what your dad and I could’ve said, could’ve done differently . . .”
Ann took a deep breath to regain her poise. “Your dad was the most stubborn, difficult man I have ever known.” Chuck had to smile. “But he had tremendous integrity and honor. Tremendous. And you were the light in his life.” Chuck looked away. If she intended to guilt him, she’d found the perfect button. “I thank God he didn’t have to see this. It would have destroyed him.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He stood and paced toward the kitchen, then he whipped back around to face his mother. “Every day when I go into that building, his building, I know I dishonored his memory, his name, his reputation, everything he ever taught me. If I could undo it all—”
“How could you even do it in the first place?” Ann picked up a throw pillow, and slammed it against the back of the sofa. The calm poise in her voice gave way to pained anger. “I was nineteen years old before I ever heard anybody say ‘sex’ out loud, and an affair was sordid and shameful.”
“You think I’m not ashamed?” Chuck asked, matching his mother’s tone. “The closer we get to working things out, the shame gets worse.” He stared at the ceiling until he had his temper under control. “Bobbi loved me more than I ever grasped before all this, and now . . .” His voice trailed off, as he searched for words. “She’s risking everything to love me still.”
Ann straightened the throw pillow and nodded. “She’s a remarkable woman. I don’t know if I could’ve forgiven your dad if he’d . . .” Chuck rejoined her on the sofa, and she took his hands in her own. “This is going to be a difficult Christmas for me. I came because I’ve never missed Christmas with my grandsons.”
Chuck leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “I was so deluded. I thought I could get away with it, that I was different somehow. No one would ever find out, and no one would get hurt. I can’t think of anybody I haven’t hurt.”
Saturday, December 24, Christmas Eve
“Mom! They’re here!” Joel called. Bobbi left a sink full of dishes, tossing the towel on the counter, and made it to the entry hall as Joel swung the front door open. He threw his arms around Ann’s neck, then, still beaming, he hugged his father. “What took you guys so long?”
“Grandma’s slow,” Chuck muttered.
“But my hearing is perfect,” Ann said, frowning at Chuck, then she looked down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Where’s Brad?”
“Showering,” Bobbi said. “It was almost noon before he got moving this morning.” She pushed the front door closed and pointed up the stairs. “Chuck, you can take your mom’s things up to our bedroom.”
It was such a simple phrase, “our bedroom,” and it rolled off her tongue, but it sounded strange, almost foreign. She looked away and took a step backward. She hadn’t meant anything by the remark at all. Please, Chuck, just let it go. He picked up the bags and headed upstairs without a glance in her direction.
Bobbi watched him disappear, then turned and gave Ann a long hug. “I am so glad you’re here,” she whispered.
“It was hard.” Ann inhaled deeply. “You’ve been baking. Cookies.”
“Chocolate chip, and oatmeal, and peanut butter,” Joel said with a grin. “And Brad missed it all, the lazy bum.”
Bobbi put a hand on his shoulder. “My taste tester and I got started this morning. I figure we’ve got two big meals in two days, and I don’t want to cook all day tomorrow.”
“You need help,” Ann smiled. “Lead the way.” The women settled in the kitchen
amid bowls, cookbooks, and measuring cups. For a long time, they made small talk, then at last, Ann spoke. “Bobbi, I can’t thank you enough for the grace you showed my son. I don’t know many people who could have forgiven him.”
Bobbi looked up from the chopped celery and laid the paring knife down. Had she misread her mother-in-law all these months? That didn’t sound like a mother siding with her son. “He hurt me so much, and hurt so many other people but . . .” She looked down and pushed the celery aside as she stalled. “I couldn’t add unforgiving bitterness to the other pain. I had to forgive him, for my own sanity as much as anything.”
“Things seem to be improving.”
“They are.”
“But?”
“I don’t know. He’s dying to come home, and the boys want him home.”
“You’re not ready.”
“It would be dishonest to let him come home as long as I’m unsure. Coming home would mean it was over, all over.”
“Honey, when you say you’re unsure, are you afraid he’s going to cheat again?”
“It’s not that. I can’t explain it.”
“Then how will you know when it’s time?”
“He doesn’t understand why he did it, so how can I be sure, how can he be sure it won’t happen again? I need to know what he was thinking, what he was looking for.”
“Are you certain you want to know all that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it will reopen the wounds you’ve tried so hard to heal. For Chuck to sit down and say, ‘Sweetheart, here’s why I wanted this other woman and not you’ . . . no good can come of that.”
Bobbi scooped the celery bits into a nearby mixing bowl. “So stop dwelling on the sin.”
“In a way, but it’s bigger than that. Listen to me very carefully, because I don’t want you to misunderstand me. Chuck hurt you, he sinned against you, but he ultimately answers to God.” Ann paused and added, “And not you.”
“I know that.” Bobbi rinsed her paring knife and tapped it against the sink. “But I think he owes me an explanation.”
“Understanding the sin is not going to prevent it from happening again. The Bible never says we need to know more about sin. If you and Chuck fixate on the steps leading to adultery, it will make you suspicious, it will beat him down, and it will tear apart this fledgling trust you’re rebuilding.” Ann walked to the sink to wash the dishes so they could start the next round of cooking. “I’m through meddling now.”