You don’t understand, Dad. She hesitated, not sure how to answer him.
“Please, Abby.” He looked so pained, so earnest in his request, that she knew she had no choice but to tell him what he wanted to hear.
“Okay. I’ll try harder. Really, I will. Now you get some rest before they kick me out of here for good.” She held tight to her father’s hands, and in a matter of minutes he was asleep again, leaving her to wrestle with the knot of emotions that made up her insides.
Losing John would be like losing a part of who she was, a piece not only of her history, but of her father’s as well. Abby’s heart hurt as she watched her father sleep. She’d told him the truth; it wasn’t her fault. She and John had let time come between them, and now he was seeing someone else. It was simply too late to undo the damage, too far into the process of breaking up to patch things together.
Her thoughts drifted back again to their first kiss, the way John made her feel like she was the most important girl in the world, the way he’d promised to write and call, and the way he surprisingly kept his word in the coming year. She would never forget the look on her friends’ faces when he showed up at the prom with her. The dance took place in the spring, just weeks before her high-school graduation. There he was, a junior at U of M, a nationally known quarterback, dancing by her side in front of all her classmates.
She wore a light blue chiffon dress and he outdid every other girl’s date with his black tuxedo and pale blue vest. “They’re all staring at you,” she whispered during one of their slow dances. Abby loved the way he held her close but not too tight, secure enough to show the world she was his girl, but respectful of her purity at the same time.
“They’re not looking at me; they’re looking at you. I’ve never seen anyone more gorgeous than you are tonight.”
He was singly devoted to her throughout the year, and the following fall she enrolled at Michigan. If there was a period in her life she would never forget, a time that would never dim in its brilliance, it was the 1978–79 school year. John led the Wolverines to a championship season, and though he lost out on the Heisman, with two games to go, it still looked like he’d be drafted. She was at every game, every practice, soaking in everything about him.
Then, in his final game that season, John dropped back to pass and couldn’t find an open receiver. A linebacker spotted his vulnerability and leveled a blow against his knees that buckled his legs and caused his head to ricochet off the artificial turf. He was knocked unconscious and lay there on the field for ten minutes while team doctors worked on him from every angle.
Abby still remembered how desperately she’d prayed for him from her place in the stands. “Please, God . . . please . . .” She’d been too terrified to voice the unimaginable, to consider that he could be paralyzed or that he might even die out there on the field. Suddenly everything about the game she loved became ugly and cheap. What’s the point? she recalled thinking. Give up your legs, your life . . . for a football game? Please, God, let him get up . . .
Finally John moved his feet, and Abby began breathing again. Thank You . . . oh, thank You, God. She couldn’t bring herself to imagine how different things would have been if . . .
A medical cart took John to the locker room where Abby met him after the game. The news was better than it could have been, but it wasn’t good. John had suffered a serious concussion when his head hit the cementlike turf. And worse, he had torn a ligament in his knee— an injury that would require surgery and most likely end his football career.
The doctor had been brutally honest with John. “You might find a way to get that leg in playing condition again, son, but your head can’t take another blow like that one. It would be a risk for you to play.”
The knee surgery took place later that month, and by March John was running sprints and getting ready for NFL scouting combines. “I can do it, Abby. My head doesn’t hurt. Really.”
She knew there was nothing she could say, nothing that would take away his love for the game, a love that had been in his family and hers for as long as they could remember. But in the end, she hadn’t needed to say anything. He never regained the speed and mobility he’d once had, and the NFL scouts wrote him off as too slow. By April it was clear that he no longer had a career in professional football.
For a week, John was devastated. He stayed in his dorm, saw little of Abby, and said even less. But at the end of that time, he took her out for pizza and walked with her to the same spot where he’d first kissed her more than a year earlier. “I’ve been thinking up a plan, Abby.” He touched his fingers to her cheek and studied her eyes in a way that even now made her insides melt at the memory. “If I can’t play the game, I have to coach it.” He drew a steadying breath. “I’m going to take another year and earn my teaching credentials. Then I can go anywhere, teach, coach. Follow my dream.”
As the moon made its way up in the sky, he held out a glistening diamond ring. “Marry me, Abby. This summer. That way we can live together next year and never be apart again.”
Abby glanced at the ring now, still on her finger but dulled from the years. She had been stunned back then, shocked that he had asked her so soon. But she had never been more sure of anything in her life.
She closed her eyes now and remembered again what it felt like to lose herself in John Reynolds’s arms and know without a doubt that it was the place she was born to be, the life she was created to live.
“Yes! I’ll marry you.”
She almost said it aloud again, as she’d said it back then. John had lifted her off the ground and swung her around, setting her gently on the old wooden bench. Then he sat beside her and took her face in his hands, holding her gaze in a way that no one had been able to do before or since. “I promise, Abby, I’ll never let you down. We might have hard times, sad times. But I’ll be by your side forever. There could never be anyone but you for me, Abby Chapman.”
Yeah, me . . . and Charlene. Abby let the cynical words simmer in her mind for a moment. Don’t do this to yourself, Abby. She heeded her own warning and banished the thoughts. No matter where time had taken them, she and John had been beautiful together back then. Their parents had been surprised and thrilled by their announcement, and that July she and John married in a church just off campus before a crowd of several hundred. The local Ann Arbor paper carried a picture of the two of them on the front page of the Society section with the caption “Dream Come True—Childhood Friends Make It Official.”
Never in her wildest imagination had Abby ever thought for a moment that things would not work out with John Reynolds. They were together constantly that first year, whispering softly to each other in a crowd and strolling the campus hand in hand. When other people looked at them, it was with that jealous longing, that certainty that even if they lived a hundred years they would never experience the magic that existed between John and Abby Reynolds.
Six weeks after their honeymoon they were excited to learn that Abby was expecting, and while she freelanced articles for the university paper, John located a teaching and coaching position for the coming fall. Nicole Michelle was born April 16, 1980, and that summer John took a job teaching at Southridge High School outside Marion, Illinois. Both their families were happy for them, and his father set them up with enough money to buy a small house near the high school.
What happened to our storybook finish, Lord?
An image appeared in Abby’s mind and burned itself into her conscience: John holding a three-month-old Nicole on the sidelines during football practice not long after they moved to Illinois. Abby remembered capturing the scene and storing it in her memory for another time, aware even back then that their days would fly all too quickly and that before either of them knew it their little girl would be grown.
John had been a wonderful father, every step of the way. When Nicole was five and rode her bike into the oncoming path of a Buick while Abby was at the market, John was the one who calmly, quickly scooped her into
his arms and got her to the hospital. Nicole had escaped with a broken leg and five stitches above her forehead, but John refused to let go of her hand until Abby and Kade met them there an hour later.
Even during their darkest days of parenting, the desperate moments of unimaginable grief, he’d been a pillar of strength, a beacon of love and concern for all of them.
She thought her tears had dried up long ago, but they welled once more as her father’s recent words played over in her head. “That boy’s part of the family, Abby. Don’t let him go . . . don’t let him go . . . don’t let him go.”
Abby wished with all her heart there were some way she could fulfill her father’s request. But no matter how many happy memories she had, no matter if John had long ago been the man of her dreams, and even though he’d been the most amazing father through every stage of their parenting, there was nothing she could do to keep him now.
Abby kissed her father’s cheek and stood to leave. How could she hold on to John when he was already gone?
She walked through the front door twenty minutes later and saw Kade sprawled on the family sofa, NFL highlights playing on the television screen.
“Hey, honey, how was your day?” Abby did her best to sound upbeat. With a lifetime of memories rushing through the channels of her mind, she was bound to look preoccupied, even deeply depressed, unless she made a concerted effort to appear otherwise.
Kade sat up and stared curiously at her. “Come here for a minute, will you, Mom?”
Abby caught a note of concern in Kade’s voice and she felt her heart skip a beat. Had John done something at school? Made a scene with Charlene maybe? She hated this life of pretending, not knowing when someone might discover their secret. Please, God, help me say the right thing . . . “Okay, I’m all yours.” She plopped down beside him, her tone light and playful while her heart beat up in her throat.
“Mom, how did you and Dad get such a cool thing between you?”
Something inside her relaxed. “A cool thing?”
Kade smiled and for a moment looked like the young boy he’d once been, quizzical and absorbed with love for her. “Yeah, you know. The way you aren’t all jealous and everything. Maybe that’s why you guys have such a good marriage.”
There was a lump in Abby’s throat, and she swallowed, struggling as she uttered a forced laugh. “Where did all this come from?”
Kade leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest. “Well, like Ms. Denton. The other day I came into Dad’s room and she and Dad were holding hands.” Kade’s eyes flashed with concern. “Not like anything was happening between them, you know? Dad was just praying for her, which at first I thought was kind of weird.”
Abby’s insides suddenly hurt and she slumped over a bit. Act normal, Abby. Don’t think about it; don’t cry. Keep listening. “Yeah, I could see that.”
“Anyway, now that I’ve had time to think about it, maybe that’s why you and Dad have such a great thing between you. There’s no jealousy. I mean, the trust between you guys is something else.” He shook his head. “I asked Dad what you’d think of him praying with Ms. Denton, and he said you already knew Ms. Denton was having trouble and it was no big deal that sometimes he prayed with her.”
Kade’s face lit up into a grin again. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized how cool it was.”
Abby uttered a pinched laugh, but Kade didn’t seem to notice. “I want my wife to be just like you. That way, she won’t freak out every time I talk to another woman.”
Her voice was missing again, and Abby struggled to find it. “Well, that’s good, son. I’m glad it made a good impression on you.”
She stood and stretched, desperate to find a place where she could sort through her feelings, someplace away from the curious eyes of her children. Sean entered the room and walked up to her, throwing his arms around her neck. “Hey, Mom, how’s Grandpa?”
“Good. He sends his love.”
Sean nodded and continued across the room to an oversize sofa chair. It wasn’t yet two o’clock in the afternoon and already the sun seemed to be setting, as if the whole world was in mourning for all that Abby was going through. Her anger at John was raging just beneath the image she was trying to maintain, and she needed to be alone before she exploded in a heap of fury and tears. Her sons were caught up in the television again, and she gazed out the front window, doing all she could to appear normal. “Is Nicole home?”
Kade stretched out his feet. “No, she’s out with Matt. She’ll be home after dinner.”
Abby nodded and held her breath. “Dad?”
“He’s at the club with Joe.”
Good. He’d be gone awhile. Joe was one of the assistant football coaches, and the two could spend hours working out and playing pickup basketball with the guys at the club. Abby kept herself from racing out of the room, instead making her way slowly up the stairs into the guest room. There, curled on the bed, she buried her face in a pillow and gave way to the rage that welled within her.
Waves of tears assaulted her, and she hit the mattress with her fist over and over again. He had promised not to make a scene! Swore he would stay away from Charlene for the next six months. Yet there he was, holding the woman’s hand in his classroom for the whole world to see. Who else besides Kade had walked in on them that afternoon? Abby could barely breathe, but she didn’t care. She dug her face deeper into the pillow and allowed another onset of sobs. Poor Kade. How would he feel when they told the kids the truth? He would know that his father had lied about praying with Charlene, lied about many things.
“Great example, John,” she whispered, easing back from the pillow and reaching for a tissue on the nightstand, “way to go.”
Time wound back, and she could see herself walking down the hallway of Marion High, humming a happy tune, bringing John dinner since he’d had to work late grading tests. Their relationship had been badly strained back then, too, and the dinner was Abby’s way of taking her counselor’s suggestion to look for ways to be kind to John. She remembered actually feeling sorry for him because he was putting in so many hours on the football field and then relegated to overtime in the classroom as well. It had been eight o’clock, long since dark, and the rest of the school was deserted. Abby finally reached the end of the corridor and opened the door to John’s classroom without knocking.
Her breath had caught in her throat at the sight of them. John and Charlene, standing near his desk, locked in a full-length embrace.
They pulled apart immediately, of course, and Abby—desperately unsure how to respond—refused to run away. Instead she kept her angry feelings inside and wandered into the classroom. “Hello, Charlene. Hope I’m not interrupting.” She remembered smiling intently at the woman and then at John.
“Uh, no . . . I was just saying good-bye.”
Charlene tripped over a few sentences, alternately trying to explain herself and voice reasons why she needed to leave.
Abby would never forget the anger and pain she’d felt when only she and John remained in his classroom. It was exactly how she felt now. Suspicions were one thing; facts were another. Her gut ached from crying so hard, but buckets of tears wouldn’t ease the rage that burned within her.
There was a sound in the hallway outside, and before Abby could prepare herself, the guest-room door opened and John walked in. She faced him like a child caught in an act of disobedience, and he stared at her strangely, his eyebrows knit together. “Abby, what’s wrong? The boys said you were making dinner.”
She wanted to punch him, shake him, make him wake up to the pain he was causing her. Instead she blew her nose and let her eyes bore into him, infusing him with some of the hate she felt. “Kade told me about your little . . . prayer meeting.” Her words were barely more than a hiss, and she noticed that her arms were actually shaking from the fury that welled inside her heart.
John’s face went blank. “Prayer meeting?”
Abby huffed. “Hard to keep all the lies
straight, isn’t it, John?”
He entered the room and shut the door behind him. “Abby, I have no idea what you’re talking about. What prayer meeting? And why are you crying?”
He honestly didn’t remember. How much must have been happening between Charlene and him if Kade’s discovery wasn’t even something he had logged in his memory. “Think back. The one with Charlene, remember? Kade walked into your classroom and found you and that . . . that woman holding hands.” Every word was a dagger, but instead of diffusing her emotions, they intensified as she spoke. “And you told him the two of you were praying. Sound familiar?”
A tired breath escaped from John’s lungs, and he lowered himself onto the foot of the bed. “I didn’t know what else to tell him.”
Abby clenched her fist and punched it with all her might into the headboard. Three of her knuckles started bleeding, but she didn’t care. She wiped the blood on her jeans and glared at her husband. John’s eyes were wide. “That’s right, I’ll punch the bed if I want to!”
There was a beat where John seemed frantically to search for something to say. “It wasn’t like that. I was—”
“Spare me.”
From downstairs came Kade’s voice. “Hey, everything okay up there? I thought I heard something break.”
John cleared his throat and yelled, “Everything’s fine. Your mother dropped something, that’s all.”
Abby shook her head and stared at him in disbelief. “Is that what we’re going to do for the next six months, John? Lie to the kids every time one of them sees you with Charlene?”
He was on his feet and began pacing, rubbing the back of his neck. “What do you want to do, Abby, tell them the truth? That I’m trying to stay out of a full-blown affair with Charlene, and that you’re so mad at me you’re punching holes in the furniture? Is that a better option?”
Abby shook her head and stared at him. He doesn’t comprehend what he’s done wrong . . . “Look at me.”