Redemption Series: Redemption Part 28

She remembered the time early in the summer when Tim had come home from work with a dozen roses and tickets to a show. She had thanked him for the flowers but begged off on the night out. "I have a photo shoot at eight tomorrow morning; I thought I'd get to bed early." The way Tim's expression had fallen was something that never hit her until this morning. He had wanted to surprise her with something nice, but she'd been too busy to notice.

There had been other moments too. Times when he would hand her one of his columns, anxious for her approval, and she would lay it aside to read later.

Most of the time she never got around to reading his work. Looking back now, she was sure her lack of interest must have hurt him.

And then there were the conferences and university functions he wanted her to attend with him. Once it was merely a picnic with a few couples he knew from the university. She had imagined them mocking her for her lack of intellect and shaken her head.

"You go, honey." The memory of her response made her wince. "I've got a hundred things to do around here."

She'd made time to go to the lake with Ryan, but she couldn't remember the last time she'd gone anywhere with Tim-not just for fun and companions.h.i.+p. When did I start treating him more like a fixture than a friend? There were no answers, and she imagined her witty, charming husband growing silently disenchanted and lonely while she busied herself with a hundred more important tasks.

No wonder he'd been vulnerable to Angela Manning. The woman had probably jumped at the chance to do things with him, even something as simple as meeting him for lunch.

No doubt she was the companion Kari had once been.

Kari tried to remember what was so important that she'd so often declined his invitations, and she knew it was because she didn't feel like she measured up.

Tim's columns were often 247 about issues she didn't follow, and he sometimes made points she disagreed with but didn't really know how to argue. And Tim's colleagues and their spouses-well, she'd had enough of them after that awful dinner conversation about books. They were always talking about foreign affairs and compelling literature and "films"-never movies-when they weren't gossiping about university politics. Being with them always seemed like a compet.i.tion to see who was the cleverest in the group and who could drop the most names.

She had neither the desire nor the courage to venture much into university society. So she had begged off from all but the most crucial functions. Now she could picture Tim at those same affairs, talking with other couples, being clever, dropping names. But always alone.

No, Tim was clearly not the only one contributing to the problems in their marriage. Kari still felt sick at the thought of his affair. It would take months, years of healing before their marriage might be again what it once was.

But this morning-in the wake of her guilt and responsibility-she was ready to try, anxious to get home and start picking up the pieces.

She turned sideways in front of the mirror and checked her figure, noting that her abdomen showed just a hint of roundness. Their baby was growing within her, their child ... part her, part Tim.

Suddenly she realized she was not only anxious to get home, she was also looking forward to it.

Those were still her feelings when she pulled into their driveway an hour later.

The blinds were shut tight, the way she had left them, and the house looked utterly quiet. But the garage door opened to reveal Tim's Lexus. Had he come home?

"Tim?" she called out hopefully as she let herself in through the utility room.

No answer.

Then she walked into the kitchen and saw the empty liquor bottle on the counter.

What was this? Her breath caught in her throat. But after a moment she forced herself to continue 248 through the house. Through the dining room, where unopened letters lay in a stack on the table and her wedding portrait had been removed from the wall.

Through the living room, up the stairs, and down the hall toward their bedroom.

Get me through this, G.o.d. Please.

She took the few remaining steps down the hallway and quietly opened the bedroom door. Tim lay sprawled across the bed, dressed in sweats and a T-s.h.i.+rt, his ragged snoring filling the air. The whole room smelled of alcohol and vomit and body odor. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, a sudden storm of revulsion rained down on her.

It took everything G.o.d had given her to not turn around and drive back to her parents' house. Help me, Lord.

She tiptoed into the room, sure he would wake up from the sound of her heartbeat alone. Who had he been drinking with? Had Angela been here?

Kari gritted her teeth and settled her eyes on Tim.

Was this the man she'd married? The one who had once made her think it was actually possible to forget Ryan Taylor? The one who had sworn that no matter what, he wouldn't touch an alcoholic beverage?

The man who had promised to be faithful until death parted them?

She crossed the room in a trance and settled into a chair near their bed. Her stomach churned, and she was choked by a growing nausea. Three times she nearly made a dash for the bathroom, but she managed to swallow back the bile. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, and she knew her pregnancy was partially responsible for the sick feeling.

But clearly it was more than that. Tim rolled over in his stupor, and another putrid wave of alcohol and underarm sweat a.s.saulted her senses. Dirty laundry littered the floor, along with scattered books and papers.

Kari stood to leave and then caught herself as a Scripture pa.s.sage 249 from their wedding flitted through her mind: Love endures all things.

She locked her jaw, sat down again, and gripped the arms of the chair. Gone were her feelings of guilt and RESPONSIBILITY GONE right along with her desire to work things out. In the depth of her being was a rock-bottom certainty that G.o.d wanted her to love her husband. But if this was what their love would be like, Kari had no idea how she'd endure a lifetime of it.

For two hours-until sleep mercifully took over, Kari watched Tim the way she might watch a horror film. Only this time the monster was her husband, and the terror was as real as her last name.

Tim Jacobs was certain the vision of Kari in the chair beside the bed was part of some alcohol-induced daydream, some stage of intensive hangover he hadn't hit before. He lifted his head and squinted at her before dropping back to the pillow. One thing was sure: Even in the midst of a dream Kari was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Why are you here? He still wasn't thinking clearly from the alcohol he had downed earlier this morning, and he was hating himself with a pa.s.sion for not dumping the liquor down the drain. He studied Kari's sleeping form as slowly, insidiously, guilt slithered into bed beside him and made its way around his midsection like a boa constrictor. Did you come to torture me?

It wasn't until Kari opened her eyes that he fully realized he wasn't dreaming.

And suddenly he could see and smell and sense everything through Kari's perspective-his own drunken haze, the clothing and books littering the room, the whiskey bottle in the kitchen.

The realization sent him stumbling to the toilet, where for ten minutes straight his body tried to rid itself of every drink he'd consumed for the past month.

But no matter how many times 250 his stomach convulsed, it couldn't get rid of the fear inside him, the guilt and anguish at having Kari see him this way.

When he was finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shuffled toward the bed. He sat down and s.h.i.+fted so he could see Kari's face. There could be only one reason she was here now, and the thought made him blink back tears.

She was the only good thing that had ever happened to him, and now he'd lost her.

No, he hadn't lost her; he'd destroyed her. "You have divorce papers for me?" he asked.

Kari stared at him, and he cringed inwardly at the pain in her expression. "No."

No papers? Tim's mind raced, trying to imagine why she might come unannounced.

As he searched for a reason, he saw a few tears meander down her cheeks.

She wiped the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt across her face, and he sensed she was holding herself back. His breathing was shallow, and his heart raced near the surface of his chest. What could have happened to make her cry this way? Was it her parents? Was someone sick? He reached his hand toward her but stopped short of moving to her side. The last thing she would want now was his nearness.

"Why'd you come, Kari?"

"I'm your wife, and I'm pregnant." Kari stood and sat on the bed across from him, tears now flowing freely down her face. "I need to be home. I need you."

She moved closer. His breath caught in his throat as he felt her hand on his shoulder, and he was instantly alert. "I'm here because I still believe in what we have. What we could have. We've got problems, but I believe G.o.d can heal us."

Each word, each syllable painted hope and life and possibility into areas of his heart that had been dead and buried. She was willing to forgive him after all.

He deserved nothing but her wrath, but here she was, telling him they still had a chance. That she was willing to stay with him and have his child.

251 In his mind, one by one, he began to count off the reasons she should leave him. Angela, the lying, the drinking-all of it. Every bad decision he'd made s.h.i.+fted like a ton of dirt onto his back, and he knew he couldn't draw another breath until he got out from beneath it.

He met her eyes and silently begged her to believe the thing he was about to say. "I'm really sorry, Kari. So sorry." He moved his fingertips to the side of her face to convince himself she was really there, sitting beside him after all he'd done to her.

She opened her mouth, but no words would come. She simply nodded, her face red and tearstained. Then, as if she couldn't hold herself up any longer, she fell slowly against him. Tentatively and with fear in his heart, he brought his hand to the small of her back and held her while she sobbed.

Tim had no idea how much time pa.s.sed, but finally he heard her draw a shaky breath. "I want ... I want us to be together again. But I don't know." She sniffed. "We ... we need counseling."

If she expected an argument, he had none to give. Tim nodded quickly as some of the weight eased from his shoulders. "I'll call Pastor Mark."

She was still leaning against him, and he felt the tears return. "I'm sorry. I didn't plan to fall apart."

"Kari, don't." The idea of her apologizing now, in light of all he'd done, was too much for him to bear. He knew better than to breathe, knew that even the slightest movement of air in or out of his body would release a torrent of emotion he was not equipped to handle.

When his lungs were about to burst, he grabbed three quick breaths and gritted his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut as a torrent of sorrow released within him.

Then he wept as he'd never wept in his life.

Eventually his other hand came around Kari's back, and he held her close, the kind of embrace he'd seen once on a news program when a man had wrongly received word of his wife's death in a plane crash. When the two were reunited at the air 252 port, cameras had been on hand to capture the moment. The depth of feeling in the hug between those people was something Tim remembered to this day.

Now he knew what the man had felt.

Because until Tim woke and found Kari sitting across from him, everything in his life had been doomed. He had no right to what she was offering, no reason to feel worthy. Yet here she was offering him a new chance at life and everything that went along with it.

When he was able to catch his breath, he whispered words that he meant with every fiber of his being.

"Kari, I promise ... I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

253.

A WEEK HAD Pa.s.sED SINCE Kari returned to her house, and still Ryan could think of nothing else. It was Monday night, and the coaching staff was meeting after school to discuss playoffs. The Clear Creek Golden Bears had their first chance at a state t.i.tle in ten years, and the coaches wanted to be unified in their approach.

"You with us, Taylor?" Head coach John Sicora shouted at him from the opposite end of the table. "Which game are you thinking about, anyway-ours or the one on TV tonight?"

The others in the room laughed, and Ryan forced a chuckle. "Sorry. Got a lot on my mind."

"Well, disengage it, will you?" It was Tommy Schroeder, another a.s.sistant.

"You're too quiet. Any playoff plan we make won't be worth the dirt we play on if you're not part of it."

Ryan sat up straighter in his seat and diverted his gaze for a moment, embarra.s.sed by the compliment. Yes, he had a talent for coaching, but he was nothing without the rest of the staff. He smiled at the group of men seated around him at the table. He had no idea what they'd been talking about, but he trusted their decisions completely.

254 "What about the corner blitz?" Sicora leaned back in his chair. "Do we use it against these quicker teams or not?"

The meeting lasted an hour longer than necessary, with talk of getting together afterward for pizza and Monday Night Football. Ryan quietly left during the conversation and slipped out of the building before anyone could razz him about being antisocial.

The night air hit him like a slap in the face, and he gazed up at the sky. The ceiling of snow clouds was so low he could almost touch it. Normally Ryan loved the first snow of the season. Any other time, the gathering of coaches would have been at his house, anch.o.r.ed near his big-screen TV, warmed by a roaring blaze in the fireplace.

But since he and Kari had parted, nothing felt right. Worse, the hurt that racked his heart showed no signs of lessening as time pa.s.sed. Just the opposite.

Now, as he made his way to the car, he remembered a conversation he'd had with his mother two weeks after his football injury, the one that had nearly paralyzed him.

He'd been lying on the hospital bed, staring out the window, trying to imagine why he hadn't heard from Kari, when his mother entered the room.

There was silence between them for a long time before his mother finally spoke.

"I think it might be broken, son."

Ryan remembered the confusion he'd felt at her statement. He turned slowly so he could see her. His neck was healing well by then, but it was still difficult to turn. "What?"

"Your heart." She leveled her gaze at him. "There's a big hole there where a girl named Kari used to be."

He had sighed and let his focus settle on the ceiling. "Where is she? Why hasn't she called?"

His mother waited before answering him. "I don't have the answers, but I know this: You'll recover from your back injury." Her voice grew soft. "But if you let Kari Baxter get away, you might never be the same again."

255 Ryan climbed into his truck as the memory faded. All these years later he was still right where he'd been that afternoon in the hospital bed. Not sure how he was going to survive without her. Especially after finding her again.

There was one difference this time. He hadn't let Kari get away; he'd consciously helped her go. She wanted to make her marriage work, and Ryan believed deep in his soul she was making the right decision. A G.o.d-centered decision.

He remembered some of what Kari told him about Tim Jacobs, the man she'd married. The man who didn't love her enough to be faithful. Ryan was simply amazed by her desire to stand by the man even after his affair. If she had been timid and dependent on Tim, the type of woman who never spoke up for herself, Ryan might have understood.

But Kari Baxter?

He chuckled out loud as he started the truck and pulled out of the school parking lot.

The high school stories about Kari were legendary. Although everyone wanted to be her friend or prom date, no one at school had to wonder about her thoughts on the typical teenage vices-drinking, drugs, s.e.x, and even breaking curfew. Not that she was perfect. She got in trouble for talking during cla.s.s or pa.s.sing notes. But the really bad temptations were never a problem for Kari.

The moment she'd walk into a party, beer cans would begin to disappear. She'd look around, eyes sparkling with a joy that couldn't be bought in a bottle or bag. "I hope you guys aren't drinking, because that is so not cool."

In her presence her peers wanted to be clean. If it was good enough for Kari Baxter, it was good enough for them.

In fact, the more Ryan thought about it, the more he admired what Kari had done in going back to Tim. It hadn't been because she was weak-willed or lacking a backbone. No, she could have gone back only by G.o.d's grace, by asking him to honor her decision to love and help her stay strong in it.

256 Ryan remembered something she had told him about her motivation, and now he replayed it in his mind. "I really believe that love is a decision. I decided to love Tim Jacobs for better or worse. "