There had been no violence. Maybe Dorothy Brown, wearing angel wings, had been just out of sight directing her own funeral, or maybe God himself had rained blessings on the Church of the Samaritan.
Or maybe, even more miraculously, a man named Thomas Stonehill had displayed enough courage, enough commitment and charisma, to convince the teenage fiends from hell to act like human beings for one afternoon.
Garnet peered out the window for the fifteenth time, hoping to see Thomas’s car pull into the parking space just below. She had gone to the graveside to assure herself that the truce in the war between the Coroners and the MidKnights was going to last. Then, when the service had ended and the only remaining mourners were a few community leaders and family members, she had gotten a ride home with Tex and Finn.
Now she waited impatiently for Thomas to return. She didn’t know how to tell him she was sorry. She had showed an abysmal lack of faith. Granted, all her reasoning had been sound. She had lived here forever. She knew these boys and what they were capable of, both good and bad. They did not respond well to coercion or public tests, and even the respect they felt for Dorothy Brown would not outweigh devotion to their chosen gangs.
She had been sure she understood so much more than Thomas, but in the end, he had been the one who understood. He had understood about miracles. Dorothy, even on her deathbed, had understood about miracles, too.
While Garnet waited for Thomas to return, she put the finishing touches on the table. She had worked swiftly to turn the apartment into a place to celebrate. The table was covered with her favorite blue tablecloth, and she had unearthed her most festive pottery to set it. There were candles in the center and an arrangement of dried flowers. She had even defrosted a steak she’d intended to divide for three nights of stir fry and set it to marinate in cooking wine and herbs in preparation for broiling. There were potatoes roasting and a salad in progress.
And no Thomas.
She changed her clothes. Black had hardly seemed appropriate for an event as uplifting as Dorothy’s last stand. She put on cropped pants and an oversize dark red T-shirt and let her hair hang loose around her face. Her necklace was a double strand of papier-mâché watermelon slices and her earrings matching hoops of watermelon seeds.
And still there was no Thomas.
She had just finished making dessert, her mother’s favorite Key lime pie, when Thomas walked through the door.
“If you were a drinking man, I’d say you needed a drink,” she said.
Thomas felt completely drained; there was nothing left of him. He had watched Dorothy’s coffin being lowered into the ground, a simple pine coffin that held the remains of one of the finest women he had ever known, and he had felt such despair that he had wanted to throw himself in after her.
He hadn’t wanted to come home. In the past few days the tension in his apartment had been nearly as thick as the tension in the church today. Garnet was impossible to ignore. He was sure she had no idea how aware he was of every move she made, every sensuous, provocative move. She couldn’t know how his eyes followed her, how his traitorous body reacted to her presence, how desperately he wanted to talk with her, touch her, replenish himself with her warmth and wisdom.
But he owed her more than that. He owed her a life free of his inadequacies. He could not bind her to him in any way; she had to be able to leave when the time was right. In the meantime, he had to keep his distance.
But how could he keep his distance at this moment, with Garnet gazing at him and her earthy Garden of Eden smile flooding the room with light? How could he keep his distance when she was not about to keep hers?
“Since you’re not a drinking man,” she said, “how about hot cider? It’s all made.”
He wanted to turn and run. After the funeral he had found a hundred excuses to avoid coming home. He should. have found a thousand.
“Thomas?” She walked toward him, frowning. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine."
She stopped just an arm’s length away. “You’re burned-out,” she said. “I know the signs, preacher man. You’ve given your last for today. Sit down.” She pointed at the closest armchair. “Sit and let me take care of you, starting with some cider.”
“You don’t need to wait on me.”
She tossed her head, and her smile widened. “Sure I do. This is my party. We’re having a wake for Dorothy. Just you and me, and probably Dorothy, looking on from above.”
He wanted to protest again, but she had already gone into the kitchen. He sank into the chair. He did not have the strength to leave. God help him, he had never had the strength to do what was right.
His eyes were closed when she returned. His hair fell across his forehead, and he had managed to loosen his tie.
But he looked like a warrior who had returned from a battle so terrible he would never be the same man again. She set his cider on the table beside him. When he didn’t move to take it, she squatted to look at him, resting her hand on his arm.
“Thomas, that funeral was the most wonderful thing that’s happened in the Corners in years. Those boys stood together without a fight or even an angry word. I know you must be exhausted, but I hope you realize how important that was. There’s still hope here. Maybe all hell will break loose tomorrow, but today there was hope. And that was something.”
He opened his eyes. For once her face was devoid of all defenses. Her expression was earnest, her lovely mobile mouth rounded in entreaty.
“It wasn’t enough,” he said.
“No? Well, you didn’t save the world, that’s true. But this little corner of it looked brighter for a while.”
He wanted to deny even that much, but he couldn’t. He reached for the cider and swallowed some as she watched. It was hot and spicy, and it spread warmth in its wake, chasing away some of the chill that had felt almost natural.
“Your problem, Reverend Stonehill, is that nobody ever taught you how to celebrate. How can you possibly slog through life without celebrating the good things that come along? Even the church has more pizzazz than that. For every Good Friday, there’s an Easter.”
He searched her eyes.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said softly. “No, that’s not quite true. I never doubted you. I just doubted that even you could pull off something this impossible. But you did, and I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want an apology.”
“Too bad.” She smiled. “Seems to me there’s a lot of things you say you don’t want, but I think you’re lying to yourself.”
“Garnet-”
“For instance, I think you want to rest right now and let some of your sadness drain away. Then I think you want a good dinner with good company.” She began to untie his shoes.
“Garnet-”
“I think you really want to be quiet and relax. You want me to wait on you a little, maybe turn on some soft music and dim the lights before I go and broil the steak. You want to sit here and remind yourself that something good happened today until you feel it inside you a little more.” She slipped off his shoes.
“No one ever taught you the meaning of the word no.”
“And you won’t be the one who does, so relax.”
He didn’t want to feel better. Feeling better was dangerous. It made him believe that life could be good, that he had something to offer in return for what he got. But she was gone before he could protest again. Gone just far enough that he could still hear the husky music of her voice murmuring love songs with the radio.
His body responded to the sound of her voice as it had responded to her presence. His desires were still imprisoned deep inside him; only his ability to relieve them had disappeared. The torments of hell existed inside him, and there was no escape. The connection between desire and fulfillment had somehow been lost, and he was doomed to suffer until death.
He shut his eyes again and willed himself to relax. He could get through this evening as he had gotten through others. Garnet would back away if he remained uncommunicative. He didn’t want to hurt her, but there was more hurt just around the corner if he let himself respond. He had nothing to give her, just as, in a different way, he’d had nothing to give Patricia. But the biggest difference between the man he was and the man he once had been was that now he knew the truth about himself.
He was a fraud and a liar.
In the kitchen Garnet sang along with the radio. Under the broiler the steak spat and crackled. She put the finishing touches on the salad and tossed it as she kept her eye on the oven. But beneath all the bustle and good spirits was a certain anxiety that, despite all her plans and intentions, Thomas was not going to respond.
He had come to her fresh from Dorothy’s hospital bed, and he had shared himself in a way he never had before. She had rewarded him by doubting his abilities. She hadn’t trusted him. She had let fear for his safety stand between them. Now it was too late to go back to those moments of sharing.
She turned off the broiler and finished setting the table. Then, when everything was done, she went into the living room to tell Thomas.
He was half reclining on the sofa, asleep. In repose his face looked younger, less the Roman soldier, more the man. But sleep, which should have been rejuvenating, seemed to suck something essential from him. As she watched, his head turned restlessly, as if he was following movement with his closed eyes.
She knelt beside him, studying his face. He looked younger, but even more troubled. She wondered what he was living or reliving, what fear or memory had him in its grip-
“Thomas?” She touched his arm. “Thomas?”
He jerked upright. His hand grasped her wrist, and she gasped from shock.
“Patricia?”
She shook her head. “You were dreaming. Thomas, you’re hurting me!”
He seemed disoriented. “No... I can’t—”
She wrenched her arm from his grip. “I’m not Patricia. I’m Garnet. You were dreaming.”
His eyes focused slowly. He saw Garnet, nothing like Patricia, alive and vibrant and... hurt. He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I saw...”
“What?” She cradled her throbbing wrist with her other hand. “What on earth did you see?”
“The man who killed her.”
She forgot her own pain. “Oh, Thomas.” She leaned toward him. “I’m sorry. But I’m glad I woke you.”
He shut his eyes.
“You said she died in a fight for her purse,” Garnet said. She touched his cheek in sympathy. “Did they find the man?” She didn’t know what else to ask. She didn’t know how Patricia had died, or even why, exactly. Except for that one fact, she knew nothing at all about his past.
“No.” He turned away, as if to escape her touch.
She refused to allow it. She followed him, her stroking hand offering the comfort he didn’t seem to want. “You said you saw the man who killed her. Then the police know who it was?”
“They don’t know anything. I don’t know anything!” He pushed her hand away. He could not tolerate her touch. His throat was blocked with emotion; his head was threatening to explode. And her touch, the soft warmth of her hands, was threatening to send him over the edge.
“Then it was just a figure in the shadows?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He sat up straight and opened his eyes.
“Well, I do,” she said softly. “Because it’s eating you alive. And I’m not going to let that happen. You don’t deserve it.”
“You don’t know what I deserve.” He rose on unsteady legs and found his way to the window. The room, which had seemed pleasantly warm when he’d first come in, now seemed unbearably hot. He opened the window and stared out at the gray streets below.
“You don’t deserve to suffer,” she said. “I’ve tried leaving you alone. I thought you’d tell me about your past in your own good time. But you won’t. I know that now. You’ll keep it locked inside you to fester. I’m tired of being shut out.”
“Are you?” He turned. “Believe me, it’s for the best. You don’t want to be where I am, Garnet. It’s not a fit place for any human being, especially not one like you.”
“Like me?”
“That’s right. You’re so full of life, and I’m so full of regrets.”
She folded her arms. She was standing beside him, but not close enough to touch. She knew what a mistake that would be. “Tell me about them.”
“Leave it alone.”
“No. I don’t think so. I think it’s time we faced each other the way we really are. You see shadows in your dreams? I see them every waking day. I see them every time I look at you. I want to see the real Thomas Stonehill. I deserve that much.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do know. Exactly.”
He turned away again and slammed the window shut. Then he leaned against it, his cheek against the cool glass, and shut his eyes.
He had no right to keep his past from her. Not anymore. Their marriage had never been real, yet in more ways than he could have guessed, it bordered on reality. If he’d learned anything from his years with Patricia, it was the mistake of not sharing. Patricia had died because he had kept the most essential parts of himself from her.
“You look at me, and what do you see?” he asked.
She felt for words, discarded them. “A voice crying in the wilderness,” she said at last.
“You’ve been to Deering Hills to see Candy and Francis. Have you passed the Deering Hills Community Church?”
“It's not possible to go through Deering and not pass the church. The town’s practically built around it.”
“I was pastor there for six years.”
She whistled softly. The mega church was a phenomenon. It sat on a hill like an ancient temple. The parking lot took up a square block. A fleet of buses and vans was parked along the roadside to gather in the faithful on Sunday mornings.
“We had six thousand people on our local mailing list,” he said, “and another six thousand nationwide who subscribed to my sermon series. The attendance on Sundays doubled the first year after I was called. We went to three services the second year, two in the morning, one in the evening. The third year I began my own radio show to reach the people we couldn’t fit in the pews. My fourth we added two wings and knocked out a wall to double the capacity of the sanctuary. During my final year we were looking into a television ministry.”
“And then something happened,” she said.
He faced her. “I always wanted to go into the ministry. My family is influential. One brother is a vice president in the family bank. The other is an attorney in an old, old Philadelphia firm. I was the youngest, the one who didn’t fit in. Eventually my parents saw that I wasn’t going to change my mind. I wanted a pulpit, and I wanted to be heard. So I went to seminary, but my father told me that if I was going to pursue this nonsense, I’d better be the best damn minister in the business.”
“And were you?”
“I went to seminary at Harvard. I did postgraduate work at Yale. I interned in one of the largest churches in New York, and while I was there, I married the bishop’s daughter. Patricia’s mother died when Patricia was a teenager, and she took over her mother’s duties without a blink of an eye. She was perfectly suited to become the wife of an upcoming star in the denomination. She knew exactly what to say, what to do, in any situation. She could listen and lead-unobtrusively, of course—and she could entertain. She looked wonderful in the front pew every Sunday, refined, feminine, prayerful. The only thing she couldn’t do was get my attention.”
He turned to the window. “She wanted children. I was in agreement, just as long as she assumed full responsibility. Children are an asset to a minister’s image, but congregations don’t, as a rule, understand that they also need some of a father’s time. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Patricia couldn’t get pregnant. We were never sure exactly why. She had several problems that were corrected, and I had none. We followed all the rules. But she never conceived.”
“That must have been difficult for you both.”
“I didn’t have time to be concerned. In a way, I guess, I was relieved. I was climbing the ladder so quickly I didn’t want anything to slow me down. And Patricia was such an asset, I didn’t really want her to be sidelined by children. But she wasn’t relieved. She was devastated. I realize now that she saw motherhood as a role that had nothing to do with her image as a minister’s wife. She knew by then that she would never really have my attention. I was focused totally on my career. She expected children to give her the love I didn’t have time for. When she couldn’t have them, her life no longer had meaning.”
“But there were other things she could have done.”
“She knew that.” He watched Garnet’s image in the glass. She was standing just behind him now. He turned so the real woman was visible.
“She tried to talk to me,” he said. “She really tried. I made promises and didn’t keep them. There was always a meeting I had to attend, a hospital to visit, a sermon to prepare. There was never time to get away with her to plan our lives. My life was fine the way it was. I refused to understand that hers was not.”
He was still facing her, but he shut his eyes again. “Then one evening she came to the church to see me. She never made it to my study, but I found out later that she had come to tell me she was leaving me. She had confided that much to a friend. Afterward, the friend made sure to let me know. The police put together what must have happened after Patricia got out of her car. She started toward the front door. When she got there, she was accosted by someone. There was a struggle. That much we know. She wasn’t the kind to struggle, but I think by then she was distraught. She was tired of standing by and letting others rob her of everything that mattered. So when the man went after her purse, she fought him. The police think he shoved her. Hard. What we know for sure is that she fell backward and hit her head on the corner of the entryway. She probably died instantly.’’
“Thomas.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“I stayed at church until almost midnight. I wanted my sermon the next morning to be perfect. There was to be a meeting of the board of deacons after the service. The television ministry was to be discussed. I wanted everyone going into that meeting to know that I was worth whatever funds we had to raise, that my ministry would be a credit to the church. When I came out the front door, I stumbled. At first I didn’t know what had caught my foot. Then I saw her....”
“I’m so, so sorry, Thomas.” She put her hand on his arm.
He jerked away. “Why? It’s fine to be sorry for Patricia. She died without having a chance to live. I made sure of that. But don’t be sorry for me. I brought it all on myself with my greed and vanity. I stole her life and used it for my own purposes!”
“She had choices, too.”
“And when she decided to exercise them, she died.”
“But how could that be your fault? You didn’t know she was coming to see you that night. Maybe if she’d stood up to you sooner, she’d be alive today.”
“It was not her fault. I rode over her. I molded her into the image I thought I needed in my ministry, just like her father did before me. She never stood a chance. I never once thought about her needs. Don’t you see what that says about the man I was? I wasn’t thinking about her, I wasn’t thinking about the people I was ministering to, I was thinking about myself. And Patricia died because of my sins!”
“You have this all out of kilter.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Some part of him wanted to believe her. A larger part knew he was guilty and would remain so until the day he died. “I’ve had years to put it in perspective. I resigned my pastorate the day of Patricia’s funeral, and then I left the state. I spent two years wandering. As far as my family and friends knew, I was dead. I took any job that came my way, slept in doorways if nothing did. I drank my way through a hundred gallons of rotgut liquor, but I sobered up after six months. I wasn’t even a successful drunk. Alcohol just made my nightmares worse.”
“What happened then? What brought you here?”
“I found out that you can’t run away from who you are.”
“And who you are is a man of God, with God’s message to proclaim.”
He met her eyes this time. “No.”
“But isn’t that where your story is leading? Isn’t that why you came back? Because you knew you had something to offer? That your own experiences had taught you about the pain, and you wanted to start a church in a place where you were really needed?”
“That part’s true.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I’m not a man of God, Garnet. There hasn’t been any God inside me since Patricia died.”
She still didn’t understand. But she did understand that now his eyes were not empty of emotion. They brimmed with it. They burned with it.
“I’ll make it simple,” he said. “I stand up on Sundays and preach. And I say what’s in my heart. I talk about ways people can change their lives. I talk about the community coming together to make things better for everyone. I tell stories about men and women who have done that throughout the ages. But I don’t pretend those messages come from God. Because I gave up on God the day He gave up on Patricia. I can no longer speak with assurance about something I don’t really believe in.”
“You don’t believe in God?”
“That’s as close to the truth as anything, I guess.”
He was struggling to hide his feelings, but nothing could hide his torture. “I don’t believe you,” she said, and she didn't.
“Sometimes I don’t believe myself. I don’t believe I have the gall to speak of things I no longer understand. But when I stopped speaking of those things, I was in hell. When I came here and began to speak of them again, I put hell on hold. I can make a difference in the Corners. Maybe I can even keep someone else from suffering the way I suffered, the way Patricia must have suffered.”
“But how did you... ? How could you... ?”
“I woke up one morning and realized that even if I have nothing else left of all those years in the ministry, I could still do some good in the world. I’ve been trained to counsel, trained to preach and organize. I could use that training or I could sleep in doorways. And put that way, the choice seemed simple.”
She still didn’t believe him. She knew he was telling the truth as he saw it, but there was more behind his words. She could sense as much, even if she didn’t know what, exactly.
“So I resumed a life of sorts, here in the Corners. I send cards to my family from time to time, and they do the same. They’d prefer not to acknowledge my existence, but they’re too upstanding to give in to that impulse. Most of my friends and colleagues still don’t know where I am, and I’ve preferred to keep it that way.”
“You’ve been so alone.”
“Now you know what an impostor I am,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You wanted the truth, and you’ve got it. Our marriage isn’t the only thing I’ve faked. My entire life is as counterfeit as a three-dollar bill.”
She looked at him for a long time. She saw the same man she had known. A man of integrity. A man of courage. A man of compassion. The blue eyes that could snap with life when he preached were desolate now, as if by admitting the truth he had doomed himself. But they were the same eyes.
“We have a celebration dinner waiting for us,” she said at last.
He shook his head. “What do we have to celebrate?”
“The first day of our marriage.”
He shook his head again.
“I was married to a stranger,” she said. “Now I’m married to someone made of flesh and blood. And I like this man better.”
“Garnet...”
“Thomas.” She smoothed his hair off his forehead. He brushed her hand away, but she wasn’t intimidated. She touched his cheek. “Something wonderful happened at the church today, even if you can’t see it right now. You made a difference. Dorothy made a difference. Come with me. We’ll toast Dorothy with mineral water and eat our meal in her honor. And we’ll do it as two human beings with a thousand flaws between them who are still, despite everything, trying to do what’s right.”
He stared at her. He had told her his darkest secrets, secrets he had never admitted to anyone. And still she touched him. She strove to heal his pain.
He took her wrist, but he couldn’t push it away. “I could hurt you, the way I hurt Patricia,” he said. “Even in the short time we’ll be together.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Because you’ve admitted you’re human? That you made mistakes? That you have doubts? Those are just more reasons to care about you.”
“Don’t care about me!”
“I’m afraid you’re too late.” She withdrew her hand, but she felt as if she was still touching him. She wanted to ease his pain, to wipe away all his terrible memories and his guilt.
But she had done all she could tonight. She knew better than to say any more. And she knew better than to touch him again, even though she ached to give him solace.
“Now will you come and have dinner with me?” she asked.
He watched her start toward the kitchen. She had disappeared before he realized that he was going to follow. He waited for the all too familiar feeling of defeat. He had failed again, failed to warn her away, failed to make her understand his sins.
But the feeling didn’t come.
“Thomas?”
Even as he tried to steel himself against her, he was drawn toward the sound of her voice.