Page 11 of Caleb's Salvation
I shook my head. “For weeks you’ve been barking at me to go home because it’s for my own good even though I told you there is nothing to go back to. Only I don’t believe you. Here, I have Jenny, Eve and Zeke, Eli and Shelby. Even you, despite the fact that you’re cranky with me all the time. So what is it? What’s your real reason for wanting me to leave?”
He scowled and I thought about how those scowls no longer intimidated me at all. Like it was his natural expression when it came to me. Almost comforting.
“Why don’t you have anything to go back to? Where is your family?”
“You don’t want to tell me the truth, but I’m supposed to spill all?” I said. “Fine. You want my sad story? My mom left us when I was nine. Pop was a church pastor who really only knew one thing, which was preaching. I grew up homeschooled with not much more than a bible and no friends. My life was serving Pop and the congregation for six hours on Sunday.”
I waited for some kind of reaction, but there wasn’t much. Like he didn’t want to be moved by anything I said.
He looked at his feet. “I’m sorry about your mother. She never came back?”
“No. I tried to understand. I mean, if he was as restrictive with her as he was with me, it would have been hard for her. My mom was a free spirit, I think. One he tried to capture.”
“You forgive her for her leaving you?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t sayforgive. I said understand. I could never forgive her after being a mom to Sam, knowing how I feel about him. Only death would separate us. So I’m thinking she didn’t love me as much as she needed to like a proper mother.”
His brow got heavy then. “Did he abuse you?”
“Physically? No, but Pop was a big believer in hell and an unmade bed was enough to put me on the path to it. Sometimes it was hard…to keep my head on straight. To understand what he preached wasn’t about love or kindness, but always about sin and wrongdoing. If I didn’t have the library, books, my only window to the outside world, I don’t know who I might have been.”
“And Sam?”
Right. The pathetic part of the story. “Pop didn’t let me work until I was twenty-one. I think he thought he had total control over me by then, but the whole time I was just waiting...waiting for a chance. I worked at the lone diner in town. Searching for someone who would help me get out. Away from my father, my town, my life.”
He raised his eyebrow. The right one.
“Yeah,” I said, knowing what he was implying with that impervious eyebrow. “I know now it was a bad idea. Thinking someone would save me like I was Cinderella or some kind of princess. Dave was a trucker who came into the diner. Had a regular route that took him through town. He’d stop every Tuesday, order the cherry pie. First time I ever flirted with a man. First time I ever had a man treat me like a woman. Guess you could say I was ripe for the picking.”
“Did he know? That you were a virgin?”
I sighed. It wasn’t rocket science Caleb assumed as much, realizing how sheltered I’d been. It was the truth. “He knew after he took it. I thought…I thought we would get married. He wasn’t offering that, but he still kept coming back. Until I found out I was pregnant. Then he stopped coming altogether. I was so scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen when Pop found out. Like I said, he’d never been physically violent before, but once he knew what I was doing in the back of that rig…”
“You didn’t consider a different option.”
I shook my head. “Never once. Guess I had enough churching to believe that life, no matter the circumstances, is precious. Besides, you don’t want to know what a woman has to do to get an abortion in the Panhandle of Texas. It’s not like it is in other places. No clinics nearby, no doctors willing to do it for fear of losing their licenses. The best you’re going to do is some Mexican lady across the border who’s got magic tea that might kill you instead. No, I decided I wanted to love someone. And I thought, as a mamma, I would finally know what it meant to be loved. The real kind. And I do. Sam is everything.”
Caleb kicked his boot into the ground. “What happened when you told your father?”
“It was strange. He was mad. He was disappointed, sure. He called me a slut and a sinner. I expected all that. But he told me I could still live with him. I thought maybe a baby would warm his heart a little. That he’d see something outside of his sermons…”
Sam was his grandson. A part of him through me. I still didn’t understand why Pop couldn’t accept that.
I swallowed. “Sammy was three months old when he told us he’d done his service by us and it was time for me to take my sinful child and leave his home.”
I heard Caleb swear under his breath. Because it had been a bad thing to do. I had no skills, no schooling other than Bible teaching. I could serve coffee and pie and eggs to hungry customers and that was about it. Pop knew that. Knew what he was sentencing me to. A man who could do that had no love in his heart I’d decided.
“Sam was so little I could leave him in the carrier underneath the counter at the diner while I worked. Found a room at a motel I could afford, but it wasn’t right. Having a baby in that place.” I pushed down the tears those memories brought. How hopeless I felt. How powerless to change my son’s circumstances. “Then one day the owner came in and saw me rocking Sam while I was pouring coffee, and fired me. As if having a baby on a shoulder was some kind of crime. Couldn’t get work, couldn’t afford a sitter if I could get work. I ended up…”
“Homeless,” Caleb finished.
There it was. That terrible word again. “In a women’s shelter, with my baby. Except the air conditioning hardly ever worked and the heat in Plainview in the summer is unlike any heat you’ve ever felt I’m sure. I would leave for most of the day and go to the library. It was always cool and quiet and no one bothered us for the most part unless Sam acted up. Which he hardly ever does, he’s such a good baby. I was on the computer trying to think of someone who might help me and there you were. Free tickets to Alaska. All expenses paid. You were my salvation.”
He rubbed his hand over his face then. “Vivienne, I’m not your solution.”
I nodded. “I know. But you’ve been so nice. I mean, grumpy and telling me to leave all the time, but you brought the food. Now you’re helping with the wood even though I can’t use it until next fall. Have to admit that’s not going to be super helpful this winter.”
I thought about those options again. They were there. Zeke, I’m sure would have extra wood because if anyone looked like he could make more wood available, it was Zeke.
