“I want…I need to know,” he said, his voice husky, his words gentle. “I won’t judge you, Myla.”
But she was afraid he would, just as so many others had. “I’m…not ready to tell you everything.”
The pain in her green eyes stopped Nick from pushing her any further. Instead, he said, “What can I do, to help you?”
She looked up at him, unable to ask for his help, unable to ask for his understanding.
But Nick knew instinctively that she needed both. So before she could bolt, he tugged her into his arms and rocked her gently, as if she were a child who needed reassuring. “No more questions,” he promised. “But if you want to cry, you go right ahead.”
Myla did cry. Shutting her eyes tightly closed, she let him hold her for a while, thankful that he didn’t press her any further about her marriage. Just to be held, unconditionally, that was comfort enough for now.
“All right,” he said after a while, letting go to pat her shoulder. “Feel better now?” At her silent nod, he added, “You can’t keep this inside. Lydia knows people, therapists and counselors, who can help you. And…I want to help, too.”
She lifted her head, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, resolve settling back over her like a protective winter cloak. With a shaky smile, she said, “You’re a fine one to be giving me advice. I am a lot better now, though, really.”
He looked doubtful. “How can you say that?”
“I told you, I found my faith again—alone, on a dark cold night. I was huddled in the car with the children, with nothing left…nothing. In the moonlight, I saw my worn Bible lying on the dashboard. I hadn’t read it in months. I did that night, though, with a flashlight. While my children slept in the cold, I found my faith again in that single beam of light, and I cried long and hard, and I prayed, really prayed, for the first time in a very long time.”
Nick swallowed back the lump forming in his throat. “What did you find there in that light, that helped you?”
She sniffed, then lifted her head. “He said He would not leave me comfortless, but I had forgotten that promise. In First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse thirteen, the Bible says, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of these is love’.”
Nick stood there, his heart trembling. Love. The one thing he’d been so afraid of since his father’s breakdown and death. “How did that verse sustain you?”
She smiled then. “I knew that no matter what, I had my children with me and I loved them above all else, except the Lord. They were my gift, and no matter what kind of life I’d had with their father, they were my responsibility. Love, Nick. Love is the greatest gift of all. It gives us our strength. It gives us a reason to go on living, even when we’d rather curl up and sleep. I realized that God gave us unconditional love when He sent His son to save us from our sins. I realized that God hadn’t abandoned me. He was reaching out to me on that dark night.”
Nick sighed, his own fears cresting in the midst of her eloquent story. “But…unconditional love is so hard to give and so very hard to expect. To love so completely, you have to give up so much control. How can you trust something that abstract, something that can make you seem so weak?”
“That’s the whole point,” she said, her expression changing from sorrowful to hopeful. “Love doesn’t make us weak, Nick. Love gives us the strength to go on. That night, alone and afraid, I remembered God’s unconditional love for me. I’d lost that, as well as my trust. I’d been emotionally stripped of that love and that trust, by a man who didn’t know how to give either.”
“Your husband.”
She nodded, then stepped back. “I’m all right now. I won’t be afraid of the dark, ever again. I made a promise to take care of my children. They don’t deserve to have to live like this—they didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Neither did you. You seem so brave. Is that for your children’s sake?”
“I have to be strong, for them.”
Nick felt his heart melting in half. He’d never seen such a fierce defense of love, or heard such a strong testimony. She had come to him with nothing, yet she had more to give than any woman he’d ever known. “Is there anything I can do?”
Unable to look at him, Myla couldn’t speak about her pain. Leaning close, she whispered, “Just hold me again.”
He did, for a long while, his arms wrapping her in what little protection he could offer. Finally, he brought a hand up to her chin so he could wipe her tears away. Gazing down at her, Nick wanted badly to kiss her.
But Myla stood back, her voice clear once again. “You’d better rest. And I’d better get away from you. I don’t have time to get the flu.”
He laughed at that. “Always the practical one.” Leaning back down on the bed, he added, “I am feeling a little wobbly. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine now,” she said as she lifted his tray away, her eyes downcast. “Do you need anything else?”
He looked up at her, thinking how right it seemed to have her here with him, thinking he needed her strength. “No, thanks. You’ve spoiled me quite enough, I believe.”
His words soothed Myla like a balm. “Nick?” she called from the door.
“Hmmm?”
“Thank you, for understanding.”
He wanted to tell her he didn’t understand, really. But the weight of sleep blocked out his reply. He didn’t understand how one minute he could be so sure, so secure in his firm, smug convictions, then the next, begin to doubt everything he stood for.
He wasn’t as fearful as he should be. He wasn’t so much afraid of reaching out for love now. Myla had done that for him. She’d opened up her heart and told him a story of faith that left him humbled and ashamed. For so long now, he’d been afraid of the power of love. He’d believed loving someone could make a person weak, just as his grieving, dying father had become. But he’d been so very wrong. Nick needed to hold Myla again, just to be held himself.
Instead, he reached for his pillow and buried his dreams and his doubts in a deep, troubled sleep.
Nick woke hours later to find his room dark, except for the flickering light from the fire someone had lit in the sitting area fireplace. The room was cozy, but a flash of thunder and lightning told of the wintry chill settling over the city. He shuddered to think Myla and her children could have been out there, alone, in that cold night. And he wondered how many people were cold and shivering and afraid this night.
Groaning, Nick rolled over, acutely aware of his own discomfort. This was a mean flu bug, that was for sure.
His throat felt like he’d swallowed a jalapeño pepper and his head throbbed with each beat of his pulse. Craving a long, hot shower, he rose to calculate the distance to the bathroom. A bold knock hit the bedroom door before he could attempt the trip, causing a ricocheting rumble in his head.
“Come
