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“YOU LEFT CHURCH EARLY.”
It was nearly one o’clock when Greg got home, thankfully this time without company trailing behind him.
Katrina looked up from her pot of soup and scoured his expression for traces of disappointment or anger.
“Sorry about that. I wasn’t feeling well.”
He slipped off his boots and draped his coat over the back of one of the dining room chairs. “That’s fine. I would have left right away too if I could have gotten away with it.” He smiled. A tired smile, not at all like the charming, joyful grins he’d lavished on her when they were dating, but at least he wasn’t upset that she’d come home right away.
“Some service closing, huh?”
Again, she searched his expression, trying to figure out what he wanted her to say. Was he just making conversation? Or did he somehow suspect that Grandma Lucy had been speaking directly to Katrina?
“It was interesting,” she offered, still unable to guess the response he expected.
He stepped into the kitchen and kissed her cheek. “What are you making? It smells good.”
“Just some chicken soup.” It was canned, but she tried her best to get creative by adding some frozen vegetables and a few spices. There was some seashell pasta in the cupboard she thought about adding, but she wasn’t sure if she should cook it first and then throw it in or if she could just dump it in the soup raw and wait for it to get soft.
He slipped his arm around Katrina’s waist. She smiled but kept her eyes on the pan. With her luck, if she looked away for even half a minute, it would boil over or start to scald.
“You looked pretty today. I like that purple sweater.” He ran his hands up and down her side and hip.
“Thanks.”
“What’d you think of church? Did you like the sermon?”
How was she supposed to answer? Was she supposed to admit she’d been daydreaming the whole time? And she still had no idea what she thought about Grandma Lucy or that bizarre closing prayer. She offered a noncommittal response, hoping he wouldn’t press her further.
Once the soup was served, she sat across from her husband at the table. He looked more at peace than he had in months. After a quick, somewhat standard prayer for the meal, he raised his eyes to hers. “Everything ok?”
“Yeah.” The flush crept up to her face. It was such a juvenile reaction, one she hated about herself.
“Why do you keep staring at me like that?” He grinned, and this time it was easy to guess what sort of reply he was hoping for.
She didn’t want him to misread her intentions. “I don’t know. You look happy.”
It sounded so lame, and she realized that if he wanted to, he could turn her statement around and get mad at her for insinuating he was sad or grumpy all the time. Instead, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “Yeah. It’s been a good day.”
That was a change. Most Sundays Greg came home emotionally exhausted after getting berated by one or more of his congregants who thought it was their God-given duty to point out all their pastor’s faults. In love, of course. It was always in love.
They ate for a few minutes in silence. Katrina wasn’t sure what to do next. Was there something she was supposed to ask to get her husband to explain any particular change in his demeanor, or was this just some sort of fluke? People have bad days for no real reason. Can’t they be happy for the same?
“What’d you think of what Grandma Lucy said?” Greg finally asked.
“Which part?” She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but the old woman had recited so many different Bible passages and doled out so many random musings it was hard to guess what specifically Greg was talking about. Again she searched his face, hunting for clues that could tell her how he wanted her to respond.
He set down his spoon. “For me, the part that really stood out was about the mother, the one refusing to be comforted.” He lowered his voice as if his words were physically dangerous and not to be trusted. “Because of what happened to her child.”
Katrina nodded. So her husband was astute enough to make the connection between what Grandma Lucy said and the miscarriage. Was this the part where he’d apologize for the way the women had surrounded her this morning, for the way her secret had slipped its way out into public knowledge across Orchard Grove?
Greg reached out and laid his hand on Katrina’s knee. “I don’t know what it was about that passage. It’s pretty depressing, to be honest, but something about it spoke to me. About the baby we lost. You remember when God took David and Bathsheba’s baby? And David said, I will go to him, but he will not return to me. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before today, but I really had this sense God was speaking to me about our child. And how even though we lost him, we’ll be reunited again in heaven.”
Katrina blinked at her husband. Up until now, she hadn’t realized Greg thought about the miscarriage anymore.
He offered a boyish shrug. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him looking so open. So vulnerable. He gave her leg a squeeze. “I guess God used her words to help me find some closure after all we went through.”
Closure. How long had Katrina been chasing for something that intangible? Except she thought she’d been alone in her quest to find it. She’d resented her husband, assuming that he’d stopped mourning when in reality, he’d been grieving too. Only differently.
When had she turned into such a cold spouse? Why had she left him alone with his sorrow? Why had she allowed these barriers to come up between them, pulling them apart at a time when they needed each other the most?
Honesty. That’s what they needed. Honesty and vulnerability. When had she stopped sharing her feelings with her husband? When had she closed herself off to the strength and love he could provide?
Maybe if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have ended up so vulnerable, to the point where her subconscious began replacing Greg with someone else, someone who seemed to promise a sense of intimacy she’d been longing for from her husband.
Honesty. It all came down to that, didn’t it?
Realizing that there was a chance she was about to make the biggest mistake in her married life, she sucked in her breath, remembered Grandma Lucy’s words from Psalm 51 that had spoken so clearly about repentance and forgiveness, and said in the most confident voice she could muster, “I’m really glad you said that, because there’s something I have to tell you too.”