Faith slapped Cool Whip on top of the piece of Mrs. Smith’s pumpkin pie so hard it splattered clear across her mother’s countertop. Thank goodness whichever kids weren’t in the den with Darryl and her father were outside playing tag. Yeah, she’d wanted her day, and she’d gotten it, but now that it was mostly over she was plumb worn out from leaning against the door to her thoughts in a lame attempt to keep the big, bad truth from shoving its way inside.
Her mother glanced over from where she was trying to lift a piece of apple pie out of the plate without leaving half its insides behind. “Well, well…look who just got back from the Land of Hunky-dory,” Didi Meyerhauser said mildly, ripping a paper towel off the rack and handing it to Faith. “I wondered how long it was gonna take for this all to hit.”
Faith snorted, wiping up her mess with more energy than was required. A frisky Dolly Parton oldie came on the radio, one Faith herself used to sing, once upon a time; she turned up the volume, thinking maybe the lively tune would bolster her sagging spirits. The silverware drawer jangled when she yanked it open to grab a handful of dessert forks, letting them clatter onto the counter. She grabbed one and attacked the piece of pie she’d just cut.
“Oh, believe me,” she said, guillotining the bottom third of the pie and shoving it into her mouth, “it hit the second I got the call from Pete tellin’ me the paramedics had just pulled Darryl out from what was left of the garage.”
Just the memory of hearing the sheriff’s, “Faith, honey, there’s been an accident….” was enough to send her heart right back up into her throat. Chewing, she finished wiping up her mess, then wadded up the dirty towel and tossed it into the garbage can under the sink, banging shut the cabinet door. It was definitely a day for taking out one’s frustrations on inanimate objects. “I don’t think I breathed normally until after we got back from the hospital.”
Her mother tilted her head to regard her through the top part of her glasses. “So is this called you bein’ in denial?”
“No, it’s called me trying to keep it together for the kids’ sake.”
“Like I said.”
Faith shoveled in another forkful of pie, wishing she could soak up at least some of the patience in those soft blue eyes, that she could lose herself in them the way she used to. “If anybody’s having a dicey relationship with reality right now, it’s that man I married. I swear, if he says ‘everything’s gonna be okay’ one more time, I’m gonna lose it for sure.”
Returning her focus to the apple pie, her mother chuckled, her silver-blond waves barely moving when she shook her head. “That’s just who Darryl is, honey. Has been for as long as I can remember. And once those painkillers wear off, I imagine he’s going to feel like a bug on its back. Which means he’s gonna do a lot of kicking until he figures out how to right himself again.” She opened the freezer door to get the vanilla ice cream. “Count your blessings, honey. He could’ve…”
“Died,” Faith finished softly, pinging her fork on her plate. “Believe me, I’ve hardly thought of anything else for the past twenty-four hours.”
The ice cream abandoned, her mother wrapped one arm around Faith’s shoulders, enveloping her in a Wind Song scent. “I’m not scolding you, baby. But it’s real easy sometimes to let the bad stuff blind us to the good, you know? Now what do you suppose happened to all those napkins I put out this morning?”
Her mother hustled off to the pantry, leaving Faith to continue stuffing her face as she glared out the window, thinking about those words she’d happily lived by her entire life. Except more and more she found herself wondering if that seeing-the-good-in-everything business wasn’t sometimes just an excuse to avoid facing the parts that weren’t so good. Like somehow, if you ignored them, they’d either fix themselves or self-destruct.
On the surface, she and Darryl had beaten the odds. They were still together after twelve years; he was devoted to the kids and the marriage; nobody was a harder worker than he was. But…
But.
There it was, that stinking three-letter word that had taken to making her feel lately like her skin was too tight. Then again, her skin feeling too tight might have something to do with the fact that for the past twenty-four hours she’d been eating everything that wasn’t nailed down.
She ditched the fork: much more efficient to eat right out of her hand.
Granted, maybe her motives for wanting to marry Darryl weren’t as solid as they should have been. She’d been barely out of high school, for pity’s sake. But blind trust in her own determination to make things work had fueled her initial enthusiasm, kept things chugging along nicely for at least the first few years. Now, though, it was getting harder and harder to deny they’d been drifting apart almost from the beginning, slowly but inexorably, like the plates in the earth. Not so’s anyone could tell, she didn’t imagine—they rarely argued, they still had sex probably about as regularly as any couple with five young children, they treated each other with as much consideration as they always had. Yet, she wondered…If she hadn’t’ve gotten pregnant, would they even still be together?
Her father stuck his head in the doorway the same moment her mother returned from the pantry with a bag of paper napkins. “Just wondering what the dessert holdup is,” he said pleasantly.
“Wouldn’t think you’d have room for pie,” Didi said, “what with all that turkey and mashed potatoes you put away.”
Grinning, her father sidled up to Didi and slipped his arms around her waist, making her giggle like a girl. “But there’s always room for apple pie…”
Faith turned away, nearly overcome with annoyance that her life had turned into some sad-sack country song. She fixed Darryl a plate of pie—a slice each of apple and pumpkin, like always; the man was as predictable as the moon—then cut herself another piece of pumpkin, just to be sociable. But when she started out of the kitchen, she saw he’d hobbled back to the dining table instead of staying in the den. He glanced up at her, his smile stopping short of those melted-chocolate eyes that could still rattle her to her toes, nodding and saying “Thank you” when she set his plate in front of him. She grabbed Sierra as the boisterous three-year-old flew past, plopping her back into her booster seat at right angles to her daddy; Faith’s heart ached at Darryl’s barely suppressed wince when the child let out a shriek of protest.
“Sierra, no,” she said firmly, which was met with a tiny glower. Then, to Darryl: “If you want, I can give the squirts their pie in the kitchen—”
“I’m hardly so bad off I need to be quarantined from my own kids.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said in a level voice, strapping Sierra in. Not that it would do much good, since her youngest daughter had figured out how to spring herself a year ago. “I was only trying to make things easier for you, that’s all.” He stiffened, not looking at her. “You know I hate being coddled,” he said, his voice even deeper than usual.
Faith shoved her hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, thinking it was a good thing she had a hair appointment coming up, only to remember she probably shouldn’t spend the money on a haircut, considering. “Yes, I do. But you’ve been working your butt off since the day we got married, with nothin’ even remotely resembling a real break in twelve years. So, since nothing I say seems to get through, maybe that tornado was God’s way of tellin’ you to ease up for a minute.”
A bite of apple pie halfway to his mouth, Darryl gaped at her from underneath his long, dark lashes. “My business is a pile of rubble—a business that supports you and the kids, in case you’ve forgotten—and I can’t even pick up any freelance work long as I’ve got this dumb cast on my arm, and you’re tellin’ me you think that’s God’s work?”
They’d never exactly seen eye to eye on spiritual matters, and her bringing up the subject now probably hadn’t been the smartest move she could have made. However, his reaction jolted something inside her