Edward stood at the window that afforded him a view of the side and front yards. He gripped his cane in both hands. He had been sure that Abby would have returned by now. He should not have let her go. But what could he have done? Forcibly restrain her? Of course not. The days of treating Abby like a little girl were long gone. He’d let her go for the main reason that he didn’t think there was any way she was going to go through with it. Abby was smart with a good amount of common sense, so he hadn’t been worried about her threat to leave. He knew she would be back. Perhaps she was playing it out as far as it would go to see if she could force his hand. Nonetheless, he was confident she would be back.
He limped around the desk and banged his bad hip on the corner. He swore under his breath. Not too long ago the very thought of swearing would have been as foreign to Edward as speaking Mandarin, but lately, he had found himself swearing more and more. Though it was never loud enough for others to hear, it still bothered him that the words came easier each time. Pastors weren’t supposed to swear. Shall salt water and fresh water flow from the same tongue? Then again, he had a lot more to worry about than the occasional curse word escaping from his lips.
Favoring his hip, Edward lowered himself into his chair. He rubbed the hip, as if doing so would magically restore it to its once workable state, or at least make the pain go away temporarily. It did neither. The hip had been flaring up recently and this would certainly keep the pain going for at least another day, if not longer. Edward knew the Bible told him that he was supposed to count the trials of life as pure joy and that they were given to produce character and virtue and so forth and so on. Right now, he was having a difficult time counting anything as pure joy.
He sighed and leaned back in the chair, a vacant gaze fixed on the things in front of him: the gift-wrapped box, his Bible, and the blue notebook. He swiveled the chair to look out the frost-trimmed window behind him. Gray clouds marched across the sky over the backyard. Barren trees poked up through two feet of snow like skeletal fingers reaching up from their white graves toward heaven. Snow reached the window sill, as if the house was cold and had pulled the snow-blanket up to its chin to keep warm.
Leaning forward and pressing his forehead against the frigid window pane, hearing nothing but the clock above him as it ticked off the seconds of his life, Edward found himself unsettled by how quiet it was inside the house. Quietness had once been his friend. Growing up as an only child there had been many days spent alone in his room doing homework, or studying for Sunday school lessons, or practicing his guitar while his mom cooked and baked and did laundry and his dad was out doing revival services and tent meetings and public prayer vigils protesting abortion. Being alone and surrounded by quiet had simply been a way of growing up for Edward. So he had embraced it. It was during those many quiet times that he had been able to clear his head, meditate on God’s holy word, and hear from the Lord. He had been shown a lot about himself in those times, and for that he was grateful.
He’d even been able to take that upbringing into his marriage. He and Lynne decided early in their marriage to make sure each of them set aside a time each day to be alone, a time to humble themselves before their God and to listen for his still, small voice hidden in the quietness. Edward’s time had always been in the morning as he was an early-riser, and Lynne, a night owl, had usually taken her turn after Edward had gone to bed. They had even managed to stick with their appointed quiet times during Lynne’s pregnancy and after she had given birth.
And then, six months after the birth of their two beautiful little girls, that nightmarish afternoon shattered all the quietness in his life like an atomic explosion in a china shop. Since then, he’d never been able to fully adjust his life to regain those quiet times. He did set aside time for prayer and waiting on the Lord, but it wasn’t the same. He’d never been able to put his finger on exactly why, and he wasn’t quite sure that those times ever would be—or could be—the same again.
As he sat in the quiet of his den while waiting for Abby to come home—beginning to wonder if she would come home—Edward found himself missing his wife. That unexpected longing transformed the quietness into an intimidating, palpable presence pressing in on him. Lynne, I miss you, he thought. I can’t do this. I’ve messed up my life, I’m messing up Abby’s life, and I can’t do this anymore without you. I need you. Why did you have to leave us? Why? He had loved her so much. He still did. He still missed her, fifteen years later. What was he supposed to do now without her here? What was he supposed to do about Abby?
Abby. Edward straightened in his chair, mustering up whatever resolve remained within him. He had not anticipated her earlier actions. Perhaps he should have, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Since when had teenagers started giving ultimatums to their parents. Was he supposed to drop everything, forget all his responsibilities to his congregation and church board, and take her to Albany? With all that was going on in his life right now, how could she even think that?
Because I told her I’d take her. That’s why.
Reaching for the edge of the desk behind him, Edward pulled and swiveled himself back to the desk. Abby should have opened the gift. She was angry with him, he knew that and, to a certain degree he understood that. She should have opened it, if for no other reason than to show a hint of gratefulness. He had spent the better part of last Saturday driving from store to store looking for the perfect gift for her sixteenth birthday, not wanting to settle for another game they would never play or another dress she would wear only once. He had put a lot of thought and time and effort into this gift. He’d bought her a complete writing set consisting of a handsome (yet not too manly) leather-bound journal, an elegant Cross pen and pencil set, and memo pads (with girlish designs) so she could jot down random thoughts during the day and later copy them into her journal.
Abby would’ve liked his gift. She had been writing in journals every night before going to bed since the day he’d given her one of those children’s diaries, the ones with the cheap locks and hasps on the front covers that any child could break. That had been six years ago on her tenth birthday, and since then she’d filled up more than a dozen diaries of various shapes, sizes, and colors.
All she’d had to do was open the gift. That was all.
Edward caught himself rubbing his hip. The pain was still there, not as sharp as it had been a few minutes ago, but still there. As was the memory of the day the bullet shattered more than his hip.
Edward grabbed his cane, stood, and limped to the doorway. He hesitated. Looked back at his desk. He still needed to prepare for the coming week and for his final sermon at Faith Community Church. He needed to call congregants to set up appointments and meetings. He needed to—
You need to go after your daughter, his conscience told him. Go get her, bring her back home, hold her, tell her you love her, tell her everything will be all right.
But what if everything wasn’t going to be all right? Even if Edward gave in to Abby’s demands—which really meant fulfilling his promise to her—and dropped everything, drove her to the cemetery in Albany, and trudged with her through two feet of snow to her mother’s grave, Abby would indeed get what she wanted and she would see for the first time in her life the place where her mother had been laid to rest.
But things would be far from being all right. Because once Abby saw her mother’s grave marker, she would also see the smaller one to the right of it. She would see the name on that marker. As ludicrous, as outrageous and impractical as it sounded, Edward could never allow his daughter to see that particular grave marker.
Edward hobbled to the kitchen as fast as his cane and bullet-shattered hip would allow him. He grabbed his wool overcoat off the hook, made sure the car keys were in the pocket, and headed out the front door. He tried not to imagine the horrible ramifications that would follow if Abby was ever allowed to find that marker. Because if she did, Edward would be forced to reveal not only who else died that day, but also the frightening truth about Abby’s mother…his dear, precious Lynne… and how she had really died.