you get your dedication to your family. Your daddy was always talkin’ up you boys, when you were little—‘Guess what that Danny did today?’ he’d say, or ‘Hope you don’t mind me braggin’ on my oldest.’ And the way L.B. dotes on your mother…I think he’d move heaven and earth for her, if she asked him to.”
“Yeah, that’s L.B.” Darryl shifted, trying to get comfortable. No such luck. “From the time I was little, I remember him saying a man’s most important duty is to make sure he never gives his wife a reason to regret marrying him.”
“A code more men would do well to live by, I’m sure.”
“Yes, sir.”
Except, over the past dozen years, Darryl had come to realize good intentions weren’t always enough to put theory into practice. Because way too often these days he’d catch this look in Faith’s eyes as if she couldn’t quite figure out how she’d gotten there. She never nagged, never complained, but still, it was enough to make a man wonder if his best was even remotely good enough.
Faith came into the den just then to announce that dessert was ready and did Darryl want her to bring his to him so he didn’t have to get up? Before he could answer, though, their eldest son pushed around his mother and streaked across the room, fully intent on launching his solid six-year-old self right at Darryl’s chest.
“Jake, no!” she yelled, as her father grabbed the kid around the waist before he made contact.
“I just wanted to hug Daddy!”
“I know, sugar. But Daddy’s kinda banged up right now. The last thing he needs is you using him for a trampoline….”
“Come here, Jakester,” Darryl said, carefully lifting his arm. “I need a hug, too.” He lowered his head as best he could to peer up underneath the boy’s shaggy bangs. “Only, you need to be real gentle. I’m basically one big bruise.”
Somber-faced, the boy walked into Darryl’s one-armed embrace, gingerly wrapping his arms around his neck. Even so, it still hurt, a little. Okay, it hurt a lot—Darryl ached in places he never knew he had.
But what really hurt was the odd, unreadable look on Faith’s face.
Faith slapped Cool Whip on top of the piece of Mrs. Smith’s pumpkin pie so hard it splattered clear across her mother’s countertop. Thank goodness whichever kids weren’t in the den with Darryl and her father were outside playing tag. Yeah, she’d wanted her day, and she’d gotten it, but now that it was mostly over she was plumb worn out from leaning against the door to her thoughts in a lame attempt to keep the big, bad truth from shoving its way inside.
Her mother glanced over from where she was trying to lift a piece of apple pie out of the plate without leaving half its insides behind. “Well, well…look who just got back from the Land of Hunky-dory,” Didi Meyerhauser said mildly, ripping a paper towel off the rack and handing it to Faith. “I wondered how long it was gonna take for this all to hit.”
Faith snorted, wiping up her mess with more energy than was required. A frisky Dolly Parton oldie came on the radio, one Faith herself used to sing, once upon a time; she turned up the volume, thinking maybe the lively tune would bolster her sagging spirits. The silverware drawer jangled when she yanked it open to grab a handful of dessert forks, letting them clatter onto the counter. She grabbed one and attacked the piece of pie she’d just cut.
“Oh, believe me,” she said, guillotining the bottom third of the pie and shoving it into her mouth, “it hit the second I got the call from Pete tellin’ me the paramedics had just pulled Darryl out from what was left of the garage.”
Just the memory of hearing the sheriff’s, “Faith, honey, there’s been an accident….” was enough to send her heart right back up into her throat. Chewing, she finished wiping up her mess, then wadded up the dirty towel and tossed it into the garbage can under the sink, banging shut the cabinet door. It was definitely a day for taking out one’s frustrations on inanimate objects. “I don’t think I breathed normally until after we got back from the hospital.”
Her mother tilted her head to regard her through the top part of her glasses. “So is this called you bein’ in denial?”
“No, it’s called me trying to keep it together for the kids’ sake.”
“Like I said.”
Faith shoveled in another forkful of pie, wishing she could soak up at least some of the patience in those soft blue eyes, that she could lose herself in them the way she used to. “If anybody’s having a dicey relationship with reality right now, it’s that man I married. I swear, if he says ‘everything’s gonna be okay’ one more time, I’m gonna lose it for sure.”
Returning her focus to the apple pie, her mother chuckled, her silver-blond waves barely moving when she shook her head. “That’s just who Darryl is, honey. Has been for as long as I can remember. And once those painkillers wear off, I imagine he’s going to feel like a bug on its back. Which means he’s gonna do a lot of kicking until he figures out how to right himself again.” She opened the freezer door to get the vanilla ice cream. “Count your blessings, honey. He could’ve…”
“Died,” Faith finished softly, pinging her fork on her plate. “Believe me, I’ve hardly thought of anything else for the past twenty-four hours.”
The ice cream abandoned, her mother wrapped one arm around Faith’s shoulders, enveloping her in a Wind Song scent. “I’m not scolding you, baby. But it’s real easy sometimes to let the bad stuff blind us to the good, you know? Now what do you suppose happened to all those napkins I put out this morning?”
Her mother hustled off to the pantry, leaving Faith to continue stuffing her face as she glared out the window, thinking about those words she’d happily lived by her entire life. Except more and more she found herself wondering if that seeing-the-good-in-everything business wasn’t sometimes just an excuse to avoid facing the parts that weren’t so good. Like somehow, if you ignored them, they’d either fix themselves or self-destruct.
On the surface, she and Darryl had beaten the odds. They were still together after twelve years; he was devoted to the kids and the marriage; nobody was a harder worker than he was. But…
But.
There it was, that stinking three-letter word that had taken to making her feel lately like her skin was too tight. Then again, her skin feeling too tight might have something to do with the fact that for the past twenty-four hours she’d been eating everything that wasn’t nailed down.
She ditched the fork: much more efficient to eat right out of her hand.
Granted, maybe her motives for wanting to marry Darryl weren’t as solid as they should have been. She’d been barely out of high school, for pity’s sake. But blind trust in her own determination to make things work had fueled her initial enthusiasm, kept things chugging along nicely for at least the first few years. Now, though, it was getting harder and harder to deny they’d been drifting apart almost from the beginning, slowly but inexorably, like the plates in the earth. Not so’s anyone could tell, she didn’t imagine—they rarely argued, they still had sex probably about as regularly as any couple with five young children, they treated each other with as much consideration as they always had. Yet, she wondered…If she hadn’t’ve gotten pregnant, would they even still be together?
Her father stuck his head in the doorway the same
