In Slidell, Stan lay awake in the darkness of his hospital room, watching his mother sleep on the vinyl couch beside him. He closed his eyes and tried to pray. But he kept seeing the picture of Lee Barnett holding Celia, hearing her cry out that she was carrying his baby, hearing Sid and R.J. telling him how certain they were that Celia had tried to kill him.
“Lord, I don’t know what to think,” he cried out in his heart. “Tell me what to think. Tell me what to believe.”
She was sitting in a jail cell, and the thought haunted him. Even if she was a murderer, cold-blooded, evil, he still couldn’t stand the thought of her in jail. He wondered if Nick had gotten in to see her, if he had taken her the Bible. He wished he could have spoken to her when she called, heard her out. Maybe something she said could have brought some explanation, some understanding. There were so many “should have’s”, so many “if only’s.” He couldn’t sort them all out.
He closed his eyes and let the tears seep down his temples and into his hair. He didn’t know what was going to become of him after all the damage from the arsenic was assessed. He didn’t know if he would ever be the same. His marriage certainly would not. The injustice of it all, the tremendous betrayal, the despair that seemed so smothering overcame him, and again his heart cried out to God. “Tell me what to do, Lord. Tell me what to do.”
The words he had learned as a child in Bible drill came back to him. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
Was that the answer? Was the Word of God speaking to him, reminding him what he was to do? Hadn’t he known it all along? All he had to do was trust in the Lord with all his heart and lean not on his own understanding. Maybe that was the mistake he was making. But how did one keep oneself from trusting his own understanding when things seemed so clear? He didn’t want her to be guilty, but he couldn’t imagine that she wasn’t. Not now. Not after what he had seen. Not after what he had been told. Still, he couldn’t stop loving her. How did one end a love that had been such a vital part of his life for so long?
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. The words played like a recording in his mind, over and over and over. Yet he was not able to let go of his own understanding. Not yet.