“Was your childhood pretty awful?” Christy asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ve wanted to ask you lots of times before, but it didn’t seem as if you liked to talk about that part of your life. I want to hear more,” Christy said. “Especially about your childhood.”
“You knew my parents were both on drugs when they met,” Todd said.
Christy wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke. She waited for Todd to explain. He led her off the trail to the shade of two old trees. Todd sat with his back against a broad tree trunk and Christy to his side, facing him.
“They really were on drugs. I never told you this, but my mom was pregnant with me when they got married.”
“She was?” Christy wished she didn’t sound so surprised.
“She was only seventeen.”
Christy realized for the first time why Todd had cared so much about Alissa, a teenage friend of theirs who had become pregnant a number of years ago. Alissa had decided to have the baby and give it up for adoption. At the time, Christy thought it strange Todd was so involved and enthusiastic about Alissa’s decision. Now it made sense. Todd had been an unplanned baby of a teenage mother.
A shiver ran up Christy’s spine. What if Todd’s mother had decided he was an inconvenience to her life? What if she had believed twenty-three years ago that what she carried in her body was only a mass of tissue? What if . . .
Christy stopped. She found herself breathing deeply and almost in tears. But she didn’t want to tell Todd what she had been thinking. That morning, her thoughts of Matthew had taught her it didn’t do any good to take a trip to the land of if only and spend a lot of time there.
The reality is that Todd’s mom didn’t choose to end her son’s life. She gave birth to him. One day I’ll thank her for that. And if I never thanked you, Father God, for giving Todd life, I thank you now.
“My parents got married because I think both my mom and dad wanted to do the right thing,” Todd said. “I know they both tried to straighten out their lives after I was born. My mom told me once that the day she found out she was pregnant with me, she vowed never to do drugs again, and she didn’t. It took my dad a little longer to sober up. When I was little . . . I don’t know, maybe three . . . my parents had a fight over something, and my dad was stoned, and he hurt my mom.”
“Todd, that’s awful.” Christy reached for Todd’s hand and gave it a squeeze. The tears she had been trying to hold back were about to trickle down her cheeks.
He looked at her cautiously. “Are you sure you want me to tell you all this?”
“Yes, of course.” Christy gave him an encouraging look and blinked back her tears. “I just didn’t know how bad it had been for you. I was thinking of that night when we were talking out on the jetty at Newport Beach, and you and Shawn got in that big fight because he was so stoned. Now I can see why that upset you so much.”
Todd looked down at their hands and said, “I still miss Shawn, if you can believe that.” He stroked Christy’s Forever ID bracelet with his thumb.
“That’s because you really care about your friends. Forever.”
Overhead a jet streaked into the west, leaving a mark like a white chalk line across the deep blue sky.
“Are you sure you want to keep talking about all this?” Todd asked.
“Yes.”
“What else would you like to know?” Todd asked.
“What happened when your dad hurt your mom?” Christy asked in a soft voice.
“That was the day she left him. I don’t know if he hit her or what. She never told me. I never asked my dad. He never hit me. He’s never been violent or anything. I don’t know. Maybe they just had a fight. Words can hurt for a lifetime, too, you know. For whatever reason, my mom left. She took me with her, and we lived on the road for a while, sort of hiding from my dad.”
“I wonder if that’s where you get your interest in traveling so much,” Christy said. She was trying hard to be positive.
“I don’t know. Maybe. After that, I’m not sure how everything fell into place. My dad sobered up. My parents got back together for a while, but it didn’t work out. They tried to patch up things, but there were so many cracks it all came crashing in. When they finally divorced, they were just taking the legal steps to put on paper what was already true in their lives. Their marriage never had much of a chance. It was all a bunch of broken pieces from the start.”
“Is that when you and your dad moved to Maui?” Christy asked. “Weren’t you in third grade then?”
Todd nodded. “That was an important time in my life. My dad was trying to figure out who he was, and I was doing the same. We were more like brothers with eighteen years between us than father and son.”
“Your dad was only eighteen when you were born?” Christy asked. “I never knew that.”
“There’s a lot you never knew because it didn’t seem important,” Todd said. “But I think it might help you to know so you can make good decisions.”
Christy felt herself prickle slightly when Todd brought up her decision-making skills. But he was saying it in such a gentle way that she asked him, “Do you mean decisions about our future together?”
“Yes. And decisions about me. I realized I was beginning to assume a lot about us and about our future when I just figured you would want to teach Sunday school. What you said about getting more information and having a chance to think and pray about teaching also applies to us. You should have more information about me and my family so you can think things through carefully.”
Christy felt her heart softening even more toward this man who sat before her. And he was a man. Todd was no longer a teenager, hanging around the beach, waiting for the perfect wave, taking each day as it came. She had been there through that season of Todd’s life. The man who sat a few inches away was thinking about the future. He was making it clear that he wanted her to consider the whole package before agreeing to sign on for the next phase in their relationship.
“For instance,” Todd continued, “I don’t really know how to do stuff like birthdays and Christmas. If you and I end up together,” Todd hesitated, as if trying to decide if he should go on. “I’m not trying to assume anything here, I’m just saying you should know that all the holiday kind of stuff would be up to you, or whoever I end up with. I mean, I’d help and everything, but since I didn’t grow up with any traditions, I’d be learning it all for the first time.”
“There’s not much to learn.” Christy felt compassion welling up inside. “You’ve been around my family for birthdays and holidays. Those times are whatever you want them to be. Whatever you make them.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Todd let go of her hand and swatted away a bug from his face. “I want so much. I want birthdays to be an event. They never were for me. And if, you know, when I end up having kids someday, I’d want them to think they were the coolest kids on the planet every year on their birthdays.”
“I think that’s important, too.”
Todd plucked a blade of grass, twirled it between his fingers, then let it fall to the ground. His voice softened. “One year when I was living with my mom, she forgot my birthday. It was the year I turned five. I remember because I was in kindergarten, and we were living in an apartment in Phoenix, I think. Or maybe that was when we were in Flagstaff. Anyway, I remember this guy from her work asked her out to dinner on my birthday.”
“And she went out with him?”
Todd nodded. “My mom is a wonderful person, really. It’s just that she was excited about the attention, you know. She forgot it was my birthday. She left me a peanut butter sandwich and told me to put myself to bed by eight-thirty.”
“What did you do?”
Todd shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “I ate my sandwich and went to bed with my BB gun under the covers in case a burglar broke in while my mom was gone. I don’t remember if I went to bed by eight-thirty or not.”
“Todd, I can
’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” Tears blurred Christy’s vision.
Todd shifted his position uncomfortably. “It’s not like I was some abused, neglected child locked in a closet and forced to eat dirt.” He laughed nervously at his attempt at a joke.
“In a way you were,” Christy said.
“I don’t want to look at it that way,” Todd said. “I knew both my parents loved me. They wanted me, you know? They could have easily gotten rid of me either before I was born or after, but they didn’t. They provided everything I needed. I think they just didn’t know how to love on a very deep level. They didn’t know how to love each other. Or maybe they did love each other, but only as much as they could at eighteen years old. I mean, when I think about it, my mom was only twenty-three when I had my fifth birthday. I’m going to be twenty-three in a couple months, Christy. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a son in kindergarten right now.”
Christy felt funny. The warm feelings that had made her so compassionate toward Todd a few minutes ago were beginning to disappear. In their place, she sensed the same sort of tired, sad feelings that had drained her so much at the orphanage during the past year. She felt sad for Todd; yet she knew she couldn’t do anything to change his childhood. It seemed as if she was being introduced to a different person from the blue-eyed surfer boy she had fallen in love with. This new man-version of Todd was more complex than she had expected him to be.
“I’m freaking you out, aren’t I?” Todd asked.
“No. Well, maybe. A little. But I think it’s good. I want to know this stuff about you, Todd. I want you to feel that you can talk openly with me about anything. I guess I’m a little surprised that we’ve known each other so long and been so close—or at least, I’ve thought of us as being close—yet I didn’t know any of this.”
Todd moved closer to Christy and put his arm around her, drawing her to his side. “We are close, Kilikina. I’m closer to you than any other person I know. And maybe that’s why I never told you a lot of this. I didn’t want to say anything that would cause you to pull away from me. You’re such a merciful person. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me by telling me these things,” Christy said. “I’m glad you’re telling me. I want to know all this.”
“But you want to fix me, and you can’t go back and fix my childhood, can you?”
Christy pulled her head away from Todd’s shoulder and looked up at him. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
Todd brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. “I know your heart, Kilikina. That’s how I knew what you were thinking. I know your heart.”
“I believe you do.” Then pressing her head against his chest, Christy said, “And I want to know your heart, Todd.”
She came very close to adding the words, “Because I love you.” But she still couldn’t say it. Not yet.
6 That night Christy lay awake in bed. The room was dark except for the soft yellow glow from the desk light she had left on again for Katie. Squinting her eyes to read the numbers on her alarm clock, Christy wondered when she should start to worry. It was three minutes after midnight. She had slipped into bed at ten, hoping for a good sleep before going to Riverview with Todd at eight the next morning.
Instead of good sleep, for the past two hours all Christy had experienced was an endless replay of Todd’s words. He had opened himself up to her, and in every way she had expressed to him it was okay, she cared, and she was glad he had told her about his childhood. But since they had parted after dinner, Christy had been bombarded with worries and fears.
She was worried about Katie, too. Christy hadn’t seen her since lunch and didn’t know if Katie had drowned herself in chocolate mocha frozen yogurt or had bounced back and was out romping with some of her friends.
Christy turned on her side and tried to convince herself to go to sleep and to forget everything and everybody else. It would all work out, somehow. Then a wild thought popped into her foggy brain. What if Todd hurts me the way his dad hurt his mom?
Christy angrily tossed to the other side. Where did that thought come from? Todd would never hurt me.
A moment later she thought, What if he left me and took our kids the way his mom left his dad and took him?
Christy tumbled out of bed. That’s ridiculous! Why am I even thinking this?
She reached for the water bottle she had left sitting on her desk. Next to the water bottle was the bouquet of wilting white carnations Todd had given her a week ago when she had returned from Switzerland. On the shelf above her desk sat an old, beat-up Folgers coffee can. Inside were the dried brown remains of the first dozen white carnations Todd had given her on her fifteenth birthday.
Why did he wait so long to tell me what his life was really like? If we do end up getting married, will he always wait five years before telling me something? “Oh, by the way, honey, we’re bankrupt and we have to move out of the house by tomorrow.”
Christy plunged back into bed, more distraught than ever. Her wildly emotional thoughts turned to Uncle Bob. How would he respond when Marti told him, “By the way, honey, I’m leaving in the morning to go to Santa Fe with Cheyenne.”
I have to talk to someone about Marti. I can’t hold her secret. Not when I have all this other stuff to deal with. Why did I ever promise her I’d keep her secret? That was such a stupid thing to do.
Christy’s thoughts beat her up until she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep in which nightmares came one right after the other. Crazy, tormenting laughter circled her, taunting her for being so naive as to love Todd Spencer and so foolish as to promise her aunt anything.
At close to four in the morning, Christy woke with a start and sat up in bed. The laughter from her brutal nightmares instantly ceased. The soft desk light was turned off, and she could hear Katie’s rhythmic breathing in the bed across the room.
At least Katie is okay. And the rest of that stuff wasn’t real. It was a nightmare. She tried to slow down her pounding heart. It’s okay. Pray, Christy. Pray and sleep. You need to sleep.
Slowly lowering her head to the pillow, Christy prayed silently, moving her lips and whispering a word here and there. She prayed about everything. Her heart calmed. Her mind cleared. She slept a dreamless sleep for the next two and a half hours.
When Christy’s alarm went off at six-thirty, Katie rolled over and gave one of her grumpy groans. “What’s going on?”
“I’m going to church with Todd,” Christy said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Do you want to come to church with us?” Christy didn’t know if her invitation was such a good idea since Matt would be there, but she offered it anyway.
“No, I’m taking Sierra down to San Diego to Paul’s church. Will you wake me at eight o’clock?”
“I’ll be gone before then,” Christy said. “I’ll reset my alarm for eight.”
With a “humph-okay,” Katie went back to sleep, and Christy got ready for church.
She met Todd at seven-thirty in the cafeteria for a quick breakfast, as they had planned the night before. Matt was eating with Todd when she arrived. The guys were almost through, so Christy had to gulp down her breakfast. She thought she should do something obvious to show that she and Todd were together, but the opportunity didn’t present itself.
“How did you guys sleep last night?” Todd asked as the three of them drove down the hill in Gus the Bus.
“Awful,” Christy said.
“Me too,” Todd said. “I felt like I was being attacked. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and then I realized I needed to pray. We’re stepping out to the front lines for the Lord this morning, but the enemy doesn’t want us to do this.”
“It was the same for me,” Christy said. “Once I prayed, I finally could sleep.” She felt hushed inside at the thought of evil forces trying to keep her from serving God this morning with Todd.
“Sounds like
we better pray this morning, too,” Matt said.
Matt had just said the word “pray” when Gus the Bus sputtered, lurched, and came to a stop in the middle of the road.
“Do you have your emergency lights on?” Matt asked as he slid the side door open and hopped out to motion to the car behind them to go around.
“They aren’t working.” Todd opened his door and climbed out. “Everything shut down. Christy, slide over here to the driver’s seat and steer us to that parking lot, will you?”
“You mean over there in front of the dental offices?”
Todd didn’t hear her. He was already around the back of the van, yelling for Christy to put it in neutral and make sure the brake was off. Christy had only driven ol’ Gus a few times before and didn’t feel comfortable behind the wheel at a time like this.
She followed Todd’s instructions, and the car moved forward, thanks to the brawn of Todd and Matt. Biting her lower lip the entire journey of a block and a half into the parking lot, she steered as carefully as she could right into a space. It was marked Compact Only, but she was certain on a Sunday morning, with no one else in the lot, it wouldn’t matter that Gus wasn’t exactly compact.
“Put her in first,” Todd called out, coming around to the open window on the driver’s side. “And set the emergency brake.”
Christy followed his instructions. That’s when she realized her lip was throbbing from biting it. It was beginning to swell.
“What should we do now?” Christy asked. “Should we find a phone and call a repair service or something?”
“I don’t think we have time for that,” Matt said.
Todd had gone around to the side of Gus and opened the door. He was pulling out his guitar and his Bible.
“We better walk,” Todd said. “It’s at least a mile to the church from here.”
Christy grabbed her Bible and strung her purse over her shoulder. Her mind flipped through half a dozen impractical solutions like calling a cab or hitchhiking. She didn’t offer any of her suggestions as the three of them silently took off at a fast pace down the street.