The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and
which to burn.
DAVID RUSSELL
what's this?” Merit smiled as she walked down the ramp to the floating store. “Somebody's birthday?”
Will and Merit both knew the answer, but Will admired how she pushed away the tears when it was time to be cheery for the girls. Never mind the news they carried with them from the doctor's office, like from a funeral.
Abby and Olivia had hung a homemade balloon bouquet on the store's swinging front door. They'd also hand lettered a couple of cute construction paper signs and hung them by the door.
Congratulations, MoM!
They could work on their spelling, but the gesture was nice. Even so, it hurt to smile, and Will wasn't sure he could keep his chin up as both girls rocketed out the screen door. Good thing Michael was out running errands.
“What'd the doctor say?” Abby reached them first and wrapped her arms around her mom.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Olivia asked as she hopped up and down on the dock.
Stephanie leaned in the doorway with a faint smile, looking more like a parent than a babysitter. She still held a broom and dustpan. It was impressive what she had done in the past few days to bring the store back to life.
“I'm sorry,” she told them. “They're so excited about their mommy having a baby, they've been telling everybody who'll listen: the guy who was down here fixing the gas pumps, my parents, everybody. I hope it's not inappropriate.”
“Of course, they're excited.” Merit smiled and hugged her girls. Will wanted to scream, cry, break something. Just not here in front of the kids.
“Excuse me, please.” He hurried through the store, slipped into the storeroom, and shut the door behind him with a sigh. Stephanie had already organized the newly stocked shelves, probably alphabetically. He'd never met anyone so organized. How old was she anyway? Nineteen? Twenty?
In the dark, he couldn't tell what had been done or which way was up. He fumbled for the light switch but only found something that made a lot of racket when it hit the floor and spilled all over his feet. Fishing lures or licorice whips, he wasn't sure.
“And you know what?” he asked the darkness as he slammed his fist against the wall. “Ask me if I care!”
He fell to his knees, groping in the darkness for whatever had spilled and fighting the emotion once more. He imagined himself alone for the first time, trying to raise the kids without his wife, then scolded himself for thinking any of this was about him and not about Merit.
He found himself kneeling in a squiggling mess of plastic worms, probably SquiggLures or some other lame invention that was supposed to attract bigger fish.
Ask me if I care. He grabbed a handful of lures and flung them against the far wall. He thought he had run out of tears back in the car with Merit, but somehow his frustration found more.
“A boy?” he challenged the darkness. “Or a girl?”
His fingers closed around a stray can, and he sent it flying as well. It must have hit a shelf, as fishing lures rained down in the dark. He wildly swept them away, swept away the sobs, gasped for breath.
What kind of God…
He would have done more damage, but the door squeaked open and the tall figure of Pastor Bud Unruh stood framed in the light from the store. Fortunately, Bud found the light switch a bit more handily than Will had.
“You all right?” What else would someone ask if they discovered a man with tears streaming down his face kneeling in a pile of plastic worms? “Steph said you were back here, but…did you lose something?”
Will cleared his throat and sniffled. Maybe the tears didn't show.
“Couldn't find the light switch.”
Bud looked at him sideways. “You sure you're all right?”
Will dropped the worms and got to his feet, brushing himself off as he did. He would have pushed his way out, but the large man still blocked the way, and he didn't look like he planned to move.
“My boat's at the gas dock,” Bud told him.
Will turned his face to wipe away the last tears as discreetly as he could. Probably too late.
“I'll get you some gas,” he said. “Pumps are working now, I hear.”
“Thanks, I have plenty. That's not what I mean. I'm going out for an hour or so to clear my head before I jump back into next week's sermon. I thought maybe you'd want to come along.”
“Uh, no thanks. I've got a to-do list as long as your arm.”
Bud didn't move. “Just an hour then? I could use the company. Sometimes it helps me get my thoughts in order when I have someone to bounce them off of. I'd really appreciate it.”
Will thought for a moment before giving in to the man's persistence. What did it matter now anyway? Another hour? Another week? Today the entire rotation of his world had been turned on it's head.
He sighed. “All right. Sure.”
He followed the big man through the store, trying not to look at Stephanie and the others, who were unpacking boxes and setting up a small candy shelf. They must have heard him wrecking the storeroom. Maybe they wouldn't notice the mess until later.
“We'll be back in an hour or two,” Bud announced with a wink at his daughter. “Sermon preparation, you know.”
“Don't forget your fishing pole,” she replied, but her concerned eyes were on Will, like he was a puppy in need of extra care.
Bud held the door open, and they walked to Amazing Grace. He watched Will looking at the house.
“I saw her heading up there,” he said. “She looked fine.”
Appearances can be deceiving, Will thought.
A minute later, they were powering away from the dock and out toward the middle of the bay. Bud waved and shouted at all the sailors he recognized, which was just about everyone.
“Looking for some wind, Jake?” he called to the first sailboat, motionless on the glassy water.
Jake waved back. “You pray some down for me, Pastor.”
Bud laughed and turned his attention back to driving.
Once they were past the no-wake zone, he glanced at Will. “Sometimes the point out here is not going anywhere in particular.” He stood and vacated his seat. “Here, you take the wheel for a while.”
“Uh…” Will hesitated, but Bud waved him across. And since the little boat tipped when the big man moved to the other side, Will did as he was told and got behind the wheel. Why had he agreed to come?
They settled into their respective seats, and Will edged up the throttle. Where to? He guessed Bud had already given him as much direction as he was going to get.
They headed south toward Buttonhook Bay, which seemed to suit Bud just fine. He asked how the cleanup at the resort was going, though he must have had a pretty good idea already.
Will told him it was going great and that Stephanie was quite the worker. The docks were floating again, the gas pump was working, and the store was almost ready to reopen.
Pastor Bud listened and nodded at all the good news. “Cognitive dissonance.” He pronounced the words like a college professor giving a psychology lecture.
“I'm sorry,” Will said. “Did you say what I thought you said?”
“Yup. Cognitive dissonance. The stress you get when you hold on to two ideas that clash. You know, when people actually start believing their own lies?”
“Yeah, I guess I knew what that meant.”
“Like the UFO doomsday cult. Remember those poor folks? Even after their leader was ousted—arrested, I think—and none of his end-time predictions came true, they still went out and recruited more suckers. In fact, more than ever.”
“I remember that. They were on the news.”
“Yeah,” continued the pastor, “they had to know the truth, but somehow they conned themselves. Despite everything, even when their world had collapsed around them, they kept up appearances. They believed the lie that all was well, even when life had blown up in their faces. You understand how that works?”
Will shook his head. “I sure don't.”
Or maybe he did.
“Hmm. Anyway, I thought I'd tackle it in my next sermon on Genesis. All's not right in the garden, but God is still in control. If we look outside ourselves, there really are answers. But if we don't, all we have left is cognitive dissonance, and we're just fooling ourselves big time. Why don't you come?”
“Oh, you mean this Sunday?” Will stalled. So that was why the pastor invited him out here. “I still have a lot of—”
“I know. You have a lot of work. We all do.”
Funny how Pastor Bud could lob that kind of jab into the conversation with a gentle smile. If he were a boxer…
“Sorry,” Bud said, backing off. “I didn't mean to drag you out here and corner you into coming to church. That's not what I had in mind.”
“You had something in mind?” Will asked.
They rounded a point at the south end of the lake, where it narrowed to form an anchorage. Half a dozen sailboats were tied up at the docks and a couple others were anchored in deeper water. Will cut the motor, and they drifted in the crystal clear bay.
“Well, sort of.” Bud stretched and dragged his hand in the cool water. “I know you and Merit have a lot on your plate. In fact, congratulations are in order, aren't they?”
“Oh, that.” Will forced a low-grade smile, knowing it wouldn't convince anyone, much less Pastor Bud. “Thanks.”
“You don't look too thrilled about it, which I can understand. Tell me if I'm wrong, but it's a bit of a shock, right?”
“A shock?” Will chuckled the way someone did at a cruel joke. “That's an understatement.”
“Okay, but you have to admit it's still a gift from God.”
The kind of gift Will would much rather decline.
“Merit might agree with you,” he said.
“But you don't.”
“Listen. I know what it looks like. I know the girls are excited. It's just…they don't know the whole story.”
A cabin cruiser coasted by, throwing up a small wall of water behind it. As they bobbed in the wake, Bud waited for Will to finish. Before he knew what he was saying, Will had explained nearly everything that happened that morning, from the doctor's diagnosis to the conversation on the way home. Bud listened, wide-eyed but quiet, nodding every once in a while to show he understood. Finally, Will ran out of story, proud he hadn't broken down this time.
“I'm so sorry, Will,” Bud said. “I could tell something was wrong—and I had a feeling it was more than just your wife being pregnant.”
Will nodded, suddenly feeling foolish for unloading the whole story the way he had. “I feel like…I don't know—like my heart has been ripped apart. Like I used to know what was right, but now everything's washed away.”
“So you don't agree with Merit's choice.”
“This is my wife's life we're talking about. I thought we should at least try some kind of treatment. Do you blame me for thinking that way?”
“I don't blame you for anything, Will. I know it's easy for me to spout the spiritual answers. But for you and Merit, and the kids…”
“Hey, I'm not the evil pagan you think I am.”
“I know you're not, Will, and I didn't say that.”
Will explained how he was raised in a good Missouri Synod Lutheran church, how his folks took him to services, most of the time. How he was confirmed when he was thirteen. The shadow of a fish darted below them, and Will's words trailed off as he followed it with his eyes. On the shore, a kid swung from a rope out over the water and dropped with a whoop.
“Do you remember Rita Fedrizzi?” Bud asked him.
Will slowly pulled his attention back to the pastor. “No. Should I?”
“She was in the newspapers a few years back. Italian woman, Catholic family. They ran into the same dilemma as you two, or similar.”
“No kidding?” Will wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he couldn't not know, either.
“If I remember right,” Pastor Bud continued, “she was diagnosed with melanoma about the same time she found out she was pregnant with their third child. She was in her forties, I think. They wanted her to have an abortion, too.”
“And she wouldn't?”
“She wouldn't. She refused all cancer treatment until the baby was born, a little boy. I just remember there was quite a media storm about it at the time. All the pro-abortion people thought she was crazy or that the Pope had some kind of power over her.”
“I never paid much attention to that kind of thing before.” Will didn't want to know how the story ended. He guessed it wasn't happily ever after.
“The other thing I remember about the Fedrizzi story is how strong the husband stood by her, no matter how much heat she took for the way she protected her baby. Will, Merit's going to need that kind of support from you. No matter what you're feeling right now—and I can understand that— you two are going to have to stand together on this.”
“Listen, I appreciate your concern.” Will felt his fists clench and fought to keep his voice steady and civil. “But what happened to some Italian family has nothing to do with us. Nothing at all!”
Will turned to the old Evinrude outboard hanging on the back of the boat, checked the throttle, and gave the starter cord a yank, nearly pulling it out of the motor. The engine sputtered but didn't catch until the third try.
“I know you're upset, Will”— Bud raised his voice over the roar of the motor and rested his hand on Will's shoulder—” but I want you to know we'll be praying for you. We're going to pray for healing, and we're all going to be here for you. For both of you. Do you hear me?”
Will nodded but gritted his teeth and looked straight ahead. He jammed the throttle forward, and the little boat leaped ahead, careening around the point and back into the wider part of the lake. They passed the no-wake sign at full throttle, and Will turned to look at Bud.
“So what happened to Rita Fedrizzi?” he asked.
Bud didn't answer right away, just held on as they bounced over a wave and headed north, back toward the resort. Finally, at Will's glare, he took a deep breath.
“Every case is different, Will. Like you said, it's not fair to compare her to Merit. I shouldn't have brought it—”
“Quit playing games! What happened to her?”
Will already knew, but he had to hear what was now almost impossible to hear over the drone of the motor and the slap of waves.
Bud stared at the floorboards as he answered. “She died a few weeks after their son was born.”