Page 42 of Through the Dark Night
He’d explained that he’d come downstairs looking for her, needing her help with the wiring, and Marina had said that she had seemed like she was upset and then left, gotten in her car and driven away. He’d driven around, looking at all the usual spots and on a whim, as a last resort, had tried the cemetery.
“I suppose if I had looked there first, I wouldn’t have found you.”
He was right. That’s where she ended up, not where she started. But she didn’t get into that explanation.
They’d just gone to his house, and he’d parked, going around the car and opening her door and helping her out. He’d put his arm around her as they walked up the steps to his front porch. It was slightly secluded with the rosebush climbing on the trellis. A couple of late-season blooms were still adding color to it, but the leaves were turning, and it was getting ready for winter. Like everything else.
Still, it gave them a little bit of privacy as she sat down, and he walked inside to grab a box of tissues and a couple glasses of tea.
He came back out and sat down on the swing beside her, handing her a tissue and setting the tea on the small table next to the swing.
They sat there like that, her pressed against his side, him quiet.
She was waiting for the questions.
They’d been sitting there, just slowly swinging, gently rocking for about ten minutes before Lance spoke.
“After you left, and I had to stay, to help with my family, I kept waiting for you to come back. I thought with the promise ring, you and I would be closer. And it’s true, we did talk a good bit at first, and then… I stopped hearing from you at all, and then you called and told me you’d taken the promise ring off. I looked around at Christmas, thought you’d be back, thought we’d talk. Same way in the spring, after the semester was over. I thought I’d see you. And then I heard that you’d gotten married. It felt like it happened really suddenly. I just… I hadn’t let go. The idea that you’d be back.”
He was quiet for a bit.
And then he said, “And then you were back. After James finished law school, you had a little one, Yolanda, and you were mom and wife, and I knew that my opportunity was over.” He was quiet for a bit, and then he said softly, “I was lonely. Really lonely, because all I had was Katie, and she’s great, but she’s never going to be a wife, never going to be the mother of my children of course, and I felt a little trapped too. Especially after Dad died.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“I’m fine now, but at the time, that was just a really hard time for me.”
“I didn’t see you around town much.”
“No. You were busy with your babies and your kids then, and I avoided you on purpose.” He hesitated. “Then there was the accident, both yours and Katie’s. I didn’t know for sure at first that Katie would never be normal again. But you left, and that was hard, and then the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be free after Katie turned eighteen. That I was stuck here forever. I don’t even know if I really thoughtabout it as being stuck. I just knew I was lonely and I couldn’t leave. I had responsibilities I had to take care of.”
He paused for a moment. “That’s when Carol moved to town. She came to be with her parents.”
Shannon felt her breathing grow shallow. She hadn’t heard about Carol. Who was Carol?
“She had leukemia when she was little, and she knew that because of the treatments and the type of leukemia that it was, she probably wouldn’t live past forty, if she made it that far. She and I met at church, and we talked and… She wasn’t you. I told her about you. She knew about you. And… She wanted to marry me anyway. We didn’t have a great love, exactly, we were just companionship for each other.” He paused. “She was someone to talk to. Someone to ease the loneliness, to look across the supper table at night, to take care of Katie with me. To talk about my hopes and dreams with.”
“Wow,” she said softly. She had never thought about Lance like that. He seemed so self-assured, so confident, so capable. He was lonely? He had wanted someone, longed for someone so much that he would marry someone he knew he didn’t love, just in order to have companionship?
“I knew that I would probably end up taking care of her, but what difference did it make? I was already taking care of Katie. I knew how to do that. Thankfully, when the cancer came back, it came back with a vengeance, and it didn’t last long. She was with us one last summer, and she died about this time of year.” He blew out a breath. And the swing creaked back and forth. Shannon didn’t say anything, waiting for him to finish. “I noticed her grave up there when I was with you. It’s not that far from Yolanda.”
She hadn’t even noticed. She supposed Carol would have had his last name on her grave, whatever it was.
“She was a beautiful woman. Inside and out. Kindhearted, sweet, and gentle. I guess with Carol, I learned that love isn’t necessarily about the butterflies and the lust and the passion and even the romance. It’s just being there for someone. Showing up when it’s hard. Making the conscious choice to be devoted to the person that you’ve said vows to, even if your heart wants to be somewhere else. That doesn’t matter. When you’re married to someone, they’re your world. You don’t allowyourself to look at anyone else. You just don’t.” He said that rather forcefully, although his voice was still low, and then he continued. “I loved her. Not with a passionate, worldly kind of love, but with a deep, biblical love that would have kept me devoted to her until I died, if she had lived that long.”
“I can see that in you,” she said softly. It was one of the main differences between James and Lance. Lance was solid and dependable. He might not be flashy, he might not be showy, he might not be able to win every argument he’d ever entered into, and he might not be quick-witted and determined, but he was steady. He was faithful. He was determined to live his life according to his morals and to not be swayed by anything else. And he was always there for her. Always, no matter what she did. He didn’t allow her actions to change his. And that was one of the things she most admired about him.
“But after Carol died, I had decided that I didn’t want to do that again. You’d left twice. The second time wasn’t as hard as the first because I hadn’t even allowed myself to look at you. You were married, you had a family. But I’d lost Katie, for all intents and purposes, my dad, my mom, and you twice, and then Carol. I guess I’d kind of given up on the idea that love could come to stay. I still don’t know for sure that even being with you is a good idea. But I do know that when you walked into my store, it was like I woke up from a long sleep, and I felt the same unseen thing pulling me toward you, like I’d always felt every time I was in your presence.” He paused for just a moment, and then his fingers traced her shoulder lightly as he shifted toward her ever so much. “Shannon, I don’t need to know everything right now, but I need to know, are you planning on running again? Because I don’t think I can go through losing you again.”
He was silent for a while, and Shannon ran over everything that he said. He was a better man than she’d even dreamed. But she didn’t want to make promises that she couldn’t keep.
“I can’t promise I’m not gonna run. I don’t want to though. I want to stay here and put down roots. But it wouldn’t be fair of me to make promises right now.”
He nodded slowly, and she hated that she couldn’t give him more. Give him the reassurance that he wanted. She wanted to be able to saythat she was staying forever, but she remembered her panic that morning when Julianne had called, and she had talked herself through it and had determined to face whatever she needed to, but would it be fair to drag Lance into that?
If they found her liable for Yolanda’s death, she could be dragged away through no fault of her own, through no desire of her own, and she would be leaving Lance, and then he would be stuck, trying to be faithful to someone who was in prison. That wasn’t fair to him either.
“Can we just go day by day for now? I know that’s not what you want, but… I think that’s all I can do right now.” It was hard to say those words, hard not to be able to tell him that she was fully committed no matter what, but there were things that were out of her control and things so terrifying to her that she couldn’t even say them out loud, not even to Lance.
