Contingency: Covenant of Trust Book One

  “I’ll get us a cart.” Phil abandoned him and walked into the clubhouse.

  Gavin held out his hand. “This is going to be a long afternoon if you won’t face me. I’m your brother, you know.”

  Chuck shook hands with his brother-in-law. “I, uh, I wasn’t sure you’d see it that way.”

  “I’ll be real straight with you.” He took a step closer and leveled a finger. “What you did was disgusting.”

  Chuck flinched. This isn’t a meeting. It’s a set-up, a chance for Gavin and Phil to team up against me.

  “You callously hurt people I care deeply for and you trashed vows that I heard you make before God to your wife.” After that last jab, he dropped his hand, and his tone softened. “The only way any good can ever come from this, though, is for me to love you as my brother, and do everything in my power to help you.”

  Chuck dropped his eyes. He’s going to be a tough sell, but sounds like he wants to get us back together. “I’ve never felt so helpless . . . I . . . I’m afraid I’ve ruined my life.” He kicked at piece of gravel on the sidewalk.

  “Let me give you some hope, then. Bobbi wants to talk to you tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Phil convinced her?” ThankGodthankGodthankGod.

  “No, she told Rita last night to see to it that I passed the message along to you.”

  Yes! A chance to talk to his wife. He and Bobbi could work this out if they just had some time and space.

  “Gentlemen, we are all set.” Phil rejoined them and swung his bag up to his shoulder. “Just let me go after Chuck, so I can see how these holes are supposed to be played.” He grinned and wrote their names on the scorecard.

  On the first green, watching Phil line up his putt, Gavin said, “Chuck, Phil mentioned to you about going before the church, didn’t he?”

  “I need to get things settled with Bobbi, first. It’s between us.”

  “It is, and we can’t make you do anything, but you can’t serve in any capacity until you deal with it publicly. This wasn’t just Phil’s idea. All the deacons and Cooper agree.”

  “I can’t face these people and admit this. I’ll look like the biggest hypocrite in the world.”

  “You’re a hypocrite if you don’t.” Phil dropped his putter back in his bag. “All of us are broken, fallen, with nothing except what God gives us in Christ. This is not for the church to shame and humiliate you. It’s a chance for us as your family to come alongside and stand with you while you go through the restoration process.”

  “In the twenty-some years I’ve been in church, I don’t recall anybody making a public confession. You can’t tell me I’m the first guy who did anything wrong.”

  “I give everybody the same counsel,” Phil said.

  “You think that might say something about your advice?”

  “Do it Sunday night then,” Phil offered. “There will be fewer people there, and a more relaxed atmosphere.”

  “Have you told anyone yet?” Gavin asked.

  “I told my boss this morning. He gave me five weeks off to work things out with Bobbi, which is more time than Phil gave me.”

  “I didn’t say you had to have it all worked out in three weeks. I said Bobbi needs to see committed progress very soon.”

  “She will.” Chuck jerked his bag off the ground and climbed into the golf cart.

  “You want to get some of this out of your system?” Gavin asked when he joined Chuck in the cart. “I think the secrecy is wearing on you.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. We had a new attorney join in February. She’s very attractive. She came onto me and I fell for it. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s never that simple. How were things between you and Bobbi?”

  “Okay.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah, everything.” Chuck rolled his eyes. “Can we drive to the next hole please?”

  “I should probably wait for Phil.”

  Chuck crossed his arms and frowned. “This thing with Tracy, it’s got nothing to do with my marriage. That wasn’t why it happened. I never considered leaving Bobbi. It was purely physical.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gavin argued. “I can believe you never wanted to split with Bobbi, but I think this woman met some emotional need, or you wouldn’t have gone back to her.”

  “And your psychology degree is from where?” Chuck’s voice dripped with sharp sarcasm.

  “The ugly truth is that you wanted this to happen and you allowed a situation to develop that made it possible.”

  Chuck’s eyes narrowed in anger, but he didn’t answer Gavin.

  “You have to be honest with yourself first,” Gavin said, “or Bobbi will never believe you.”

  “Have you told her all your theories, Dr. Freud?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then don’t. I hoped that you, of all people, would extend some grace.”

  “If your definition of grace is condoning what you did, or letting it slide, then no, I can’t.”

  Chuck played the final holes in silence and mumbled through his goodbyes. Gavin was way out of line, totally off base. He didn’t have any ‘emotional needs.’ Why was it so hard to understand that he simply gave in to a seductive coworker? He and Bobbi were fine. They were just ‘settled,’ that’s all. They had their own lives now. Isn’t that what happens to everybody after fifteen or twenty years?

  At any rate, tomorrow afternoon, he would get his chance to sit down and talk with Bobbi, and all this going before the church and emotional needs talk would be irrelevant. He stuffed his golf bag in the trunk of his car just as his cell phone rang. Plucking it off his belt, he saw his mother’s phone number.

  “Not now. I don’t have the energy to go through this with her.” He answered with all the cheerfulness he could muster, hoping to get her off the phone quickly. “Mom, how are things?”

  “Chuck, I talked to Bobbi this morning.” He’d heard that kind of grief in her voice only once before, the morning she called after his dad’s death.

  “I see.”

  “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “What can I say, Mom? You want me to say I didn’t do it. Or maybe it’s not my fault? The fact is, yes, I cheated on my wife and, yes, it’s all my fault!” He realized he was shouting. His voice dropped to a near whisper.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What happened? Why would you . . .?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s garbage! Why didn’t you just ask Bobbi for a divorce instead of hurting her this way?”

  “Because I don’t want a divorce!” Chuck yelled, then tears formed. He glanced toward the clubhouse, hoping nobody was watching the lunatic in the parking lot, ranting one minute, crying the next. Going for the only privacy available, he opened his car door, and collapsed in the driver’s seat. “Mom, I love Bobbi, but I can’t explain what happened. I’m scared to death she’s going to leave me. I’m afraid she’s going to leave and take the boys with her.” His voice trailed off, and he dissolved into sobs.

  “Listen to me.” Her voice invited, rather than commanded. “Bobbi is afraid that you’re through with the marriage. If she knows there’s something to save, she’d be willing to give you another chance.”

  “You think so?” Chuck lifted a little.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “I knew it. There’s always a ‘but’.”

  “Yes, but,” Ann repeated, “you’re going to have to drop that Molinsky ‘I know everything—I can do it all myself’ attitude. That might work in the courtroom, but not in this situation.”

  “I know.”

  “There you go again with the ‘I know.’ Son, you don’t have this kind of humility in you. God is going to have to give it to you.”

  Chuck thought of his resistance to going before the church and his simmering anger at Gavin for speaking the truth to him. His mother nailed him. With Phil last night, he prayed out of humiliation, not humility. The discovery embarrassed h
im far more than the sin shamed him.

  “Phil wants me to go before the church and confess this.”

  “Then you should do it. Give up the fight, Chuck, or you’re going to lose your family.”

  “Have you got a few minutes now?”

  Chuck looked up from his desk and saw Bobbi standing in the doorway of the study. He didn’t, but she said she needed to talk days ago and he’d put her off. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  She frowned, and slipped a hand across her belly. The baby was kicking again. “Can we . . . I don’t want the desk in between us.”

  He laid his pen down and walked around the desk. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah . . . It’s just . . . The baby will be here in a few months.”

  “You’re gonna be a great mother.” He took her hand and smiled.

  “That’s just it.” She pulled her hand back. Her eyes darted past him, then to the floor. “Chuck . . . I’m . . . I want to stay home with the baby. I’m not going to look for a teaching job for the fall.”

  “What?” Her words stung like a slap in the face. “After everything you’ve worked for? Why would you throw that away?” This was crazy.

  “I’m not throwing it away.”

  “Yes, you are! What brought this on? Did you have a bad day at school or something?”

  “You don’t give me any credit at all. Just because I’m not a lawyer . . .”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m upset because you made this decision just like that!”

  He snapped his fingers. “Without even talking to me about it.”

  “I beg your pardon! I’ve tried to talk to you about this for three months! You’re never here, and when you are here, you’re holed up in this study! I feel like your roommate, not your wife.”

  “I have some ambition. I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  “And I do, too!”

  “Not like you should!” He lowered his voice and took a long deep breath. “You’re brilliant, for crying out loud. I don’t know anybody that finished their undergraduate degree in three years, and you’re wasting that reading Clifford the Big Dog all day long. You belong in medical school, or in a research lab or something. At the very least, you should be looking at being a principal.”

  “It’s not about me. This our child. He’s a gift God’s entrusting to us.”

  “I realize that.”

  “But you don’t think he’s worth my time?”

  “Anybody can change diapers and wipe noses. Anybody can sing the ABC song. You should be doing more. My mom’s around. She’s already asked me what we’re doing with the baby.”

  “And what’d you tell her?”

  “I told her we haven’t made a final decision. And we haven’t.”

  “I have.”

  “This is an epic mistake. I’m not going to go along with this.”

  “Then divorce me.”

  He waved a hand at her. “That’s your hormones talking.”

  “You’re insufferable.” She turned and walked out of the study.

  He groaned. Why was she making this so difficult? He didn’t have time for this today, but he knew better than to let her walk away. “There’s no way you’re gonna convince me you really want me to divorce you,” he called after her. “You’re being dramatic to make a point.”

  She whipped around and they stood inches apart in the narrow hallway. “And you’re being a patronizing jerk. Again.”

  “You’re only hearing the ‘no’.”

  “The no? You’re not going to ‘let’ me stay home? You’re going to drag me to work?”

  “Just stop for five seconds. You’re not listening to the reason behind it. I want the best, the very best for you . . .”

  “No, Chuck, you want to do things your way.” She jabbed at him, almost touching his chest. “If it’d been your idea for me to stay home, it would’ve been the greatest solution to childcare this century.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Did your mother stay home?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Then why are you bucking this? Your mother is extremely gifted. Why was she not a failure for staying home?”

  “I did not say you’d be a failure.” He took a deep breath and dropped his head. You can’t negotiate when emotions take over. He had to be calm. He had to be the rational one. “Bobbi, Mom’s situation is different. She lost two babies before I was born, and another one after me. It messed with her, I think.”

  “Then you should be able to grasp where I’m coming from.” She’d quit yelling at him. His way worked. “I lost my mother when I was twelve, and I may as well have lost my dad then, too. I don’t want my son to grow up without me.”

  He drew her close, as close as her belly would allow, and kissed her. He wouldn’t push it today, but this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

  CHAPTER 5 CONFRONTATION

  Saturday, July 30

  Bobbi punched in numbers on her calculator, double-checking the checkbook entries. Since the clock in the study slid past noon, she battled to stay focused on paying bills and budgeting for August. She regretted not giving Chuck a definite time to show up. He could come any minute now, or not at all.

  She reached for her mug and finished her fourth cup of the strong Turkish coffee she brewed this morning. The caffeine hadn’t bothered her for years and the warmth always soothed and relaxed her.

  Pushing the empty mug out of the way, she pulled the payment book for Chuck’s BMW from her stack. She hated that car. Things hadn’t been the same between them since he bought it. Was Chuck cheating then? Did Tracy have a thing for BMWs? If she was the reason he bought the car, was he also buying her things? God, please tell me I haven’t spent eighteen years managing our finances so Chuck could keep a mistress.

  She made a couple of changes to the budget sheet and recalculated. The house would be paid off next summer, but if they divorced . . . If she started shifting more money there now, that might be enough to pay off the mortgage by the time everything was finalized.

  The doorbell rang. Bobbi caught sight of Chuck’s car in the driveway.

  He’s here. God help us all.

  Chuck stood on his own front porch wavering between walking in or ringing the doorbell. Starting the meeting well was critical. No, this was his wife—it was a conversation, not a meeting. Even so, if he lost his temper the way he did Thursday night, he stood a zero chance of reconciling with Bobbi. She wanted to talk, so let her run things, and that meant not assuming any rights. He wiped his palm on his slacks and rang the bell.

  Joel opened the front door and broke into a huge grin. He threw his arms around Chuck and squeezed. “I love you, Dad.”

  Chuck kissed the top of the boy’s head. “I love you, too. I needed to hear that.”

  “Mom’s in the kitchen, but Brad doesn’t want to talk to you,” Joel said as he passed his dad to go outside.

  “You’re not going to stick around?”

  “I don’t want to hear you yell.”

  “Who said we were going to yell? Mom didn’t say that, did she?”

  “No, Brad did.”

  “Well, Brad’s wrong.”

  “What else is new?” Joel grabbed his bike and pedaled away.

  Suddenly a stranger in his own house, Chuck stepped into the entry hall. Brad’s first grade picture hung in its place in a new frame. Bobbi’s pillow and blankets lay in the corner by the sofa. She couldn’t sleep. He wished lost sleep was all he had to atone for.

  Chuck followed the exotic coffee aroma and found Bobbi in the same spot at the kitchen table where he had last seen her on Thursday. He wanted to go to her, pour out his heart, beg for her forgiveness, but the coolness hanging over the room stopped him. As their eyes met, he saw resolve and determination. He debated whether to sit or stand. “Have a seat,” she said, her voice steady and firm.

  He dropped into the chair opposite her. “Thanks for letting me . . . uh . . . come by.”

/>   “Do you want to be with this woman?” She looked at him, not flinching or blinking, no warmth or compassion in her deep brown eyes, and he looked away.

  “No.” His wife’s bluntness flustered him as she seized control of the conversation.

  “Do you want out of this marriage?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t go looking for this. I . . . I was stupid, and put myself in a . . . well, in a situation where I would be tempted, and then I gave in.”

  “Who is she?”

  Bobbi heard the phone message. She knew exactly who Tracy was. Every lawyer knows you don’t ask a question unless you already know the answer. He could pass this test. “An attorney at the firm. She’s been there a few months.”

  “Well, she certainly didn’t waste any time. Very ambitious.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Chuck, your name is on the side of the building! Do you honestly think she came on to you because of your charm and good looks?”

  “She’s not like that.” Tracy wanted him as much as he wanted her . . . didn’t she?

  “Whatever.” Bobbi rolled her eyes in disgust. “How old is she?”

  “I don’t know, thirty or thirty-five.”

  “Is she married?”

  “No.”

  “How many times?”

  “What?” The questions were coming so fast, he couldn’t catch his breath. She should have been a prosecutor.

  “How many times . . . did you . . . sleep . . . with her?”

  “Three.” He dropped his eyes. Please, don’t make me tell you any more than that.

  “In my house?”

  “Never.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “About three weeks.”

  Bobbi paused a moment in her questioning, then murmured, “When the boys and I were in Detroit.”

  Chuck fought back tears. “I swear, that’s not why I stayed home. It’s just . . . that’s when it started.” He knew every word hurt her, but only the blinking of her eyes betrayed it.

  “Is she pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “She told me she used a patch.” Chuck shifted in his chair and went on offense. “Bobbi, I can never explain this or justify myself. I know I can’t begin to understand how much I’ve hurt you, but you and the boys are my life. I am sorry and I promise you before God that I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right.”