Seasons Under Heaven Read online

  “Yeah, this is different. This time they’re really gone.”

  “I need a hobby,” she said. “A project. Maybe that would get my mind off of it.”

  “Well,” he said, drawing the word out a little too long, and hooking her attention. “Maybe I have the answer. I’ll tell you while we eat.”

  A few minutes later he pulled into a Burger King, and they both went in and ordered food that was a cardiac surgeon’s nightmare. When they’d found a table in the corner, Sylvia brought the subject up again. “Okay, Harry. Shoot. What’s your project?”

  He gazed out the window. “I’m torn. I don’t know whether I should tell you while you’re depressed because it might make you more depressed, or whether it’ll be just the thing you need to shake you out of it.”

  “Well, you’ll never know until you try.” She took a bite of her hamburger.

  “You know how we’ve always said that someday when the kids are grown, we’d go to the mission field?”

  “Sure. Do you want to take some extra medical mission trips to Nicaragua this year?”

  “No, not mission trips. Longer term.”

  She set her hamburger down and dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, keeping her eyes fixed on him. “You can’t be serious.”

  He looked like a schoolboy trying to convince his mother to buy him a sports car. “Haven’t we always said that, Sylvia? Even these last few years, every time we went on those little trips, we’ve talked about how great it would be if we were unencumbered and could just go and take the miracles of modern medicine to those people who can’t afford it?”

  She couldn’t deny that they’d talked about it many times. She had agreed that it would be wonderful to be an ambassador of grace, to make sacrifices, to give of herself to people who needed what she could bring them. But what was that, exactly? Harry could take them medicine—she was mostly just there for support.

  “It’s a great ministry, Sylvia. I’ve felt called to do it most of my life, but I also felt responsible to give the kids a normal life. But now the kids are gone, and it’s time for me to stop making excuses.”

  She looked in his eyes and saw the joy building there like a cresting tide. The emotions in her own heart felt like those same waves crashing against a bleak and rocky shore.

  “Sylvia, just think about how much good we could do there.”

  “You could do so much good there,” she said, that tightness returning to her voice. “But what could I do?”

  “What could you do? You’re the Doña. The one they all respected.”

  “I’d be useless there, Harry. Even in our own home, I wouldn’t have a purpose. Every home there has a maidservant to clean. What would I do all day?”

  “You could start a ministry with the mothers and children, Sylvia. Teach parenting skills, Bible studies, evangelism. You’d be such an example to them. A mother figure for them to look up to.”

  Tears erupted in her eyes again, and she shook her head. “I’m not prepared to be a mother to anybody but my own kids, Harry, and they’re gone.”

  “They’re not gone. You talk like they’re dead. They’re still alive, honey, they’re just proving that we succeeded. They’re happy and healthy and building lives of their own.”

  She shook her head and looked down at the burger. She couldn’t eat another bite. Her stomach wouldn’t accept it. “I’m not ready, Harry,” she said through tight lips. “Not yet. Maybe next year, or the year after that. The kids still might need me, and I can’t be out of the country.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “Honey, the kids will always need you. But God may want us somewhere else.”

  She couldn’t believe this was so important to him. Had he been biding his time, chomping at the bit throughout the whole wedding process, counting the days until Sarah was gone, so he could fly off to Managua?

  “Are…are you finished? Eating, I mean?”

  He looked down at the half-eaten burger. “Yeah, I guess. Honey, this is upsetting you. I’m sorry. I should have waited until a better time, but I thought it might cheer you up. You said you wanted a project.”

  “Can we go home?” She was making a valiant effort to fight the tears, but she was losing.

  “Sure.”

  She slid out of the booth and threw their wrappers away, then headed through the door. The drive home was quiet.

  When they pulled back into the driveway, she got out and dashed inside.

  Harry was behind her in an instant. “Honey, listen,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, “I can see how upset this has made you. The timing is all wrong. Just forget I ever said anything.”

  But that wouldn’t be right either, she knew. Harry rarely asked for anything for himself. For years, he’d been catering to his family’s wants and needs. This once, he had some of his own. But they were just too hard for her to accept.

  She looked around her. Over the years, she’d decorated their home exactly as she’d wanted it. It was a showplace—and it bore the sentimental, beloved scars of a family that had grown up here. The growth chart on the pantry wall, the mural they’d painted in Sarah’s room, the little stained glass windows the kids had made one summer.

  “What would we do with the house?” she asked on a whisper.

  He seemed reluctant to answer. “I don’t know. Whatever you want. I was thinking we could sell it.”

  “Sell it?” The words flipped out of her mouth with such disgust that he might have suggested setting it on fire. “Harry!”

  His expression fell further. She was the archer shooting her arrow straight into his dreams. She hated playing that role. She tried to breathe in some courage and took his hands, strong surgeon’s hands that saved lives with such skill…but there were many such hands here in the states, and so few overseas. Maybe these hands were meant to be used in Nicaragua.

  She dropped them again. “You’ve got to understand, Harry, that this is a little sudden. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a long time. But I haven’t.”

  “You’re right.” He found his smile again, and she saw that his twinkle was still there. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few days. I miss the kids just like you do, but I keep seeing it as a new beginning, not an end. I keep thinking that God has a purpose for us, that all the training and skill He’s given me here could be used to take the gospel across the world, and take medicine to people who can’t get it otherwise. Sylvia, I’ve never felt as needed as I felt when we were in Masaya last year. Remember all the people we led to Christ? Remember Carlos, the playboy with a string of mistresses? We were able to lead his wife to Christ for a very important reason: she trusted us after I did the appendectomy on their son. And then Carlos came to church with her, and his life changed—”

  “There are lost people here, Harry. Some right in this culde-sac. Why do we have to go across the world?”

  “Because someone has to.”

  With both hands, she wiped the tears forming under her eyes and tried to think logically. “Let me think about it, okay, Harry? Do we have to make a decision right away?”

  “Of course not. Take all the time you need.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to destroy your dreams.”

  “God wouldn’t give this kind of calling to just one of us. If He’s calling me, He’ll call you, too.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes filling with tears again. “Is it your practice?” she asked. “Are you just bored with it?”

  Again, he stared down at his shoes, thinking. “I could use a change,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “But that’s not all this is about.” He opened his arms and pulled her again into a hug, held her there for a long moment as her tears soaked into his shirt. “It’s not the end, honey. You’ll see.”

  “I know,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “I really do know that. I just don’t feel like I have a lot to contribute, either here or there. It seems kind of po
intless to me.”

  “Then I’ll pray that God will reveal to you how important you are.”

  She laid her head against his chest. He was her best friend, her lover, her confidante, her provider and supporter. He’d always been so strong, so masterful. He’d also often been right.

  But right or wrong, she was thankful he wasn’t asking for a decision now.

  After a few moments, he let her go and ate a dessert of petit fours left over from the reception. She sat with him, eating chocolate groom’s cake. She supposed a few extra pounds on her hips wouldn’t make much difference. Wasn’t food always supposed to make you feel better?

  But she didn’t feel particularly well as she walked him back out to his Explorer. She leaned in and kissed him when he was in the car. She heard a “hello” shouted from the driveway next door, and she waved at Cathy Flaherty, her neighbor on the other side.

  “Why don’t you go visit with Cathy?” Harry asked. “She always cheers you up.”

  “I’ve got those pictures to take down, and all that misery to wallow in,” she said with a smirk. “I wouldn’t be very good company.”

  He kissed her and pulled out of the driveway. Sylvia tried to smile until he was out of the cul-de-sac, but it quickly faded. Her gaze drifted up to the hills in the distance. The mist that normally floated like angelic breath above them had been chased away by the bright sun. Everything looked so clear.

  She only wished she could see her own future that clearly.

  CHAPTER

  Four

  Cathy Flaherty intercepted her German shepherd as he bounded from the Bryans’ house. He was damp, she discovered as she bent down to pet him, and he smelled like a stray mutt. She wondered where he’d been. She slammed the door of her pickup truck and looked back at the Bryans again. She saw Harry kiss Sylvia before pulling out of the driveway. What a day it must be for them, she thought, to finally have all the kids married off and find that your marriage was still strong.

  She went into the house, fighting jealousy. She wasn’t naive enough to think marriage was always bliss. Heaven knew hers hadn’t been. But some part of her—the largest part—wanted one more shot. It wasn’t easy being a single mother of three kids from eleven to seventeen. She’d spent a lot of the past couple of years looking for a husband for herself in an attempt to start over. She had never expected to be forty and single, nor had she ever intended to raise her kids alone. That had been decided for her.

  She went into the house, breathing in the silence as if it were a balm that could heal a troubled soul. Though her veterinary practice kept her busy, she tried to come home for lunch every day while the kids were at school, just to regroup and do the housekeeping chores she hadn’t had time to do that morning. Soon the kids would be out of school for the summer, though, and the whole dynamic of her days would change.

  She opened a can of soup and poured it into a bowl, stuck it in the microwave, punched out three minutes. While it was cooking, she went into the laundry room and began pulling blue jeans—the most common and indispensable item in the entire family’s wardrobe—out of the mountain of laundry to wash. Even Cathy preferred jeans over anything else. She shoved pair after pair into the washing machine, emptying pockets of change and gum wrappers and breath mints. She tossed the garbage and kept the change. That was the deal, she’d told them. If they were careless enough to leave money in their pockets when she washed, she got to keep it. She saved it in a dill pickle jar and took them all out to eat when enough had been saved.

  She stuffed six pairs into the machine, decided the load could take one more, and grabbed up a pair of Rick’s long, lanky jeans. Two quarters fell out, and by rote, she reached into the pockets and grabbed hold of the rest of the contents. Her fingers came upon a small square. She pulled it out…

  And her heart crashed.

  It was a condom, in the pocket of her seventeen-year-old son.

  She dropped it as if it had burned her. Her son hardly even dated. When would he have time enough to get into a relationship that would require a condom? Feeling sick, she backed to the wall, slid down it, and sat on the floor, hugging her knees. It couldn’t be. Not her boy.

  Slowly, her mind worked past the shock and began to evaluate options. Maybe she should go to the school, snatch him out of class, confront him face-to-face, and demand an explanation. But would that be overreacting? Shouldn’t she be happy that her son was interested in safe sex?

  No! her heart screamed. She didn’t want Rick to be engaging in sex of any kind. Despite her liberal leanings, she hated the idea of her own children becoming sexually active.

  The microwave beeped, and she got to her feet. As the shock gave way, rage seeped in to fill the void. Where had he gotten it? With whom was he planning to use it? Did his father know about this? Was it his idea?

  Yes. Her thoughts seemed to crystallize as it all became clear. He’d been with his father this past weekend. It was just like Jerry to do something stupid like giving his son a condom. The man probably assumed that Rick had the same loose morals he had, and he wanted to protect him from any “mistakes.” The microwave beeped again, and as if it had been the one to corrupt her son, she threw it open, grabbed the glass bowl of soup, and pulled it out. It sloshed over the side and burned her hand, so she flung it into the sink, breaking the bowl. That was all right; she didn’t want to eat it anyway. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

  Instead, she jerked up the phone and punched out her ex-husband’s work number in Knoxville. “Jerry Flaherty,” he said innocently.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  “Cathy?” He seemed genuinely confused.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Who else can you get into a frothing rage without even being present?”

  “What, pray tell, have I done now?”

  “Did you or did you not give our son a condom?”

  “A what? No, I didn’t give him a condom!”

  “Then who did? Could it have been Sandra?”

  “No! My wife did not give Rick a condom. That’s ludicrous. How could you even think that?”

  “Oh, well, excuse me,” she said sardonically. “But your past moral slipups tend to keep me from being too surprised at anything you do. Did you talk to him about condoms?”

  “No. It never came up.”

  “Is there someone there that he’s seeing?”

  “No. Annie’s the one we can’t keep home. She’s got that friend, Joni, who has a car, and who knows what they do or what boys they meet when they leave here?”

  Newer, hotter rage flared up inside her like a Fourth of July display, and she forced herself to sit down on the stool at the breakfast bar. “Has it ever occurred to you to tell her she can’t go?”

  “For what reason? We haven’t caught her at anything yet.”

  “Do you know where she goes?”

  “Movies, Burger King, Blockbuster, that kind of thing. Come on, Cathy, calm down. It’s not like we let her stay out all night. She’s home by curfew.”

  “Then why did you just say she’s probably meeting boys?”

  “Because she’s a girl. That’s what they do.”

  “Have you checked up on her to make sure she’s where she says? Do you know anything about this girl Joni? Have you met her parents?”

  “No, Cathy. I have these kids every other weekend. I’m not intimately acquainted with the parents of their friends, and I don’t see why that would be necessary. I just brought that up to say that Rick is not the one I’d worry about, if I worried about any of them. Now what’s this about a condom?”

  She let out a deflated breath and stared at the counter for a moment. “I found it in his pocket. If he doesn’t have a girlfriend there, and he doesn’t have one here, why did he have a condom?”

  “Got me. Maybe he’s just saving it for a rainy day.”

  The flippancy of his remark seared her. “You act like this is no big deal, Jerry. This is your son!”

  “My son is s
eventeen, Cathy. Eventually, he is going to get involved with a girl, and frankly, if you want to know my opinion, I don’t think a condom is a bad idea. He probably ought to keep one with him.”

  She ground her teeth together. “Spoken like the Father of the Year. I don’t know why you still amaze me, Jerry.”

  “Cathy, relax. They’re growing up. You can’t stop them. Even Mark’s going through puberty. Twelve years old, and his voice is starting to change.”

  “I’m not trying to stunt their growth,” Cathy bit out. “I’m trying to raise them right.”

  “Maybe raising them right means getting them to adulthood without pregnancy or disease. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.”

  The words filtered through her like scorching water, and she dropped the phone from her ear and stared at it as if she could see her ex-husband through the little holes in the mouthpiece. Why was she even talking to him? He had the morals of a canine.

  No longer enraged, she dropped the phone back on its hook on her wall, cutting off the connection. It was like the stages of grief. She had moved quickly from shock, to anger, and now into depression. All she could do was wait for the kids to get home, so she could find out where Rick had gotten the condom. She had exactly two hours to come up with a plan of action. Should she yell, lecture, punish? Or was it possible that she would be struck with a burst of wisdom on how to turn this from a crisis into a wonderful learning experience that the kids would always hold dear?

  Fat chance.

  It occurred to her to call the clinic and tell her receptionist to close the office for the afternoon, but she knew she had two litters of puppies coming in to be dewormed. She could put them off, she supposed, but she couldn’t really afford to turn the work away. Knocking off at four every day and refusing to work Saturday afternoons left her few enough office hours as it was. No, she needed to get back.