Chapter Forty
Chapter
Forty
Mark let his mother talk. She was repeating
herself, repeating the same things she’d been saying for months,
ever since Lucas had been released. It was a travesty. A mockery of
justice. An insult to her son’s memory. Mark barely heard the
words. All he could think about was the shocked look on Lucas’s
face. How could he have ever thought the man’s eyes were cold and
unexpressive? The eyes had been the most damning part of it all, as
wide and staring as they were when Lucas was caught up in
passion.
And Mark had walked right past him. He wasn’t
sure what else he could have done. It wouldn’t have been fair to
his mother to spring something like that on her without warning.
She was going to the hospital to visit her ailing husband, not to
hear about her son’s inappropriate romance.
Damn it. Mark stood abruptly. “I need to go,”
he said. “You’re staying for the afternoon, right? Kelly Abrams is
taking you home?”
“That’s the plan,” his mother agreed with a
frown. “But why are you leaving so soon? Is it because of that
man?” She sighed deeply. “I know how upsetting it is, Mark, but
what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. He looked
down at his father. “Dad, it was good to see you, but I need to
head out a bit early. Mom’s going to keep you company. She can tell
you about the bridge tournament.” There was no response, as Mark
had come to expect. The doctors said there was still brain activity
and they’d all seen temporary moments of consciousness, but as a
rule, Mark’s father seemed to be absent from his body.
“Mark,” his mother said warningly. “You need
to use your head. Don’t do anything stupid.”
He almost laughed but managed to get himself
back under control. “I’ll try,” he assured her.
He left the hospital and drove aimlessly for
a while. He knew he should be trying to track Lucas down, but he
was too agitated. He wasn’t entirely surprised when he found
himself pulling into the familiar parking lot at the church, but he
didn’t let himself in through the back door that led to the office
area. Instead he walked around to the front and found a spot near
the front of the nave, eased into one of the wooden pews and tried
to find the peace that had always come to him in the building.
This was the church where he’d been raised.
He carried it with him everywhere he went: the warmth of the wood
pews, the taste of the communion wafers. The musty, familiar smell
of the prayer books, the way the light shone through the stained
glass. And of course the sounds, the murmur of voices joined in
prayer and the choir’s voices filling the space and ringing down
from the arched ceiling. The church was where Mark went to feel
closest to God. And now, it worked its magic on him again—more
slowly than usual, but steadily. The confusion drained out of him
as he was filled with love and comfort and he found himself praying
without even intending to do it. He was facing challenges, but he
had his faith. He would allow himself to be guided, and when he
couldn’t discern the will of the Lord he would be confident in his
own judgment, knowing that it was trained and informed by the Holy
Spirit. Everything was clear to him as long as he stayed still and
kept his focus where it should be.
But he couldn’t stay there forever, and as
soon as he pushed the heavy doors open and stepped out into the
late afternoon heat, his will took him in a new direction. He
needed to find Lucas. He needed to apologize, and explain, and try
to figure out some way to make the situation less totally messed
up. That was his new priority.
He looked at his watch. Almost five. An
awkward time—Lucas would still be at the farm, assuming he’d gone
back out after the hospital, but he’d be about to leave. By the
time Mark drove out there, Lucas would probably be gone. So he
pulled his phone out and dialed the familiar number of the halfway
house. “Hi, it’s Mark Webber. I was hoping to leave a message for
Lucas Cain?”
“You can leave a message if you want,” the
unfamiliar voice at the other end replied, “Or I can just get him
for you. He’s in the backyard talking to his squirrel.” The voice
sounded as if squirrel conversations were a fairly regular part of
Lucas’s day.
Mark wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but
surely whatever Lucas was doing wasn’t so important it couldn’t be
interrupted. “If you don’t mind grabbing him, that’d be great.”
“Hang on.” There were muffled noises and Mark
realized the phone was being carried outside. “It’s for you,” the
voice said, more distant than before, and then another rustling
shuffle.
Mark could hear Lucas breathing for a moment
before his cautious, “Hello?”
“Hi, Lucas, it’s me. I need to talk to you,
if you have time. I could come there, but there’s not much privacy.
Can you come to the apartment?”
“People would see you if you came here,”
Lucas agreed. His voice was more tense than it usually was, with
undertones that Mark didn’t want to think about too closely.
“That’d be bad. I can come to the apartment.”
“Great, thanks.” Mark took a breath. “I’m
sorry about—” he started, but then he realized that Lucas had
already disconnected. Well, that was okay. It’d be better to
apologize in person anyway.
By the time he made it to the apartment,
Lucas was already there, sitting on the concrete steps and staring
out at the street. He stood as Mark approached and even from a
distance it was easy to see the tension in his body. Mark sighed.
He’d really messed this up.
He tried to sound cheerful as he said, “Hi,
Lucas. Thanks for coming over on such short notice.” He realized
once the words were out that they’d sounded strangely formal,
almost professional, as if Lucas were one of the people Mark
counseled at the church. Or worse, as if he were an employee—a
tradesman come to repair something in the apartment.
But there was no change in Lucas’s
expression, so maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he wasn’t quite as
paranoid as Mark was. “Come on in,” Mark said.
They climbed the stairs in silence and as
soon as they were inside the door, Lucas headed for the wide
windows in the living room, staring out of them as if he wished he
could fly through the glass and just keep going. Damn. It was the
same strategy he’d used in the courtroom, Mark realized now. Lucas
was taking himself away from a situation he couldn’t deal with,
mentally if not physically. Mark had expected the man to be angry,
but not to this level.
“I’m sorry,” Mark said sincerely. It seemed
like the best place to start. “I just froze. I’m still not sure
what I should have done differently. I mean, I’ll have to tell her
about this at some point, but it’s all happened pretty fast and I
haven’t done it yet. And I couldn’t do it there, in a hospital
parking lot…” He stopped talking as his brain kicked into gear,
finally thinking about something other than himself. “Why were you
there, Lucas? Is everything okay?”
Lucas didn’t turn to look at him. “Visiting a
friend,” he said simply.
“Oh. I hope the friend’s going to be
okay.”
Lucas just shrugged, an expression that
didn’t convey a lack of knowledge so much as it closed the topic
for further questions. The state of Lucas’s friend was none of
Mark’s business, apparently.
Mark had no idea what the next step was. “So,
yeah, I’m really sorry. I never wanted to…” To what? To hurt Lucas?
Was that how Lucas was feeling? It didn’t make sense that he’d feel
insulted…someone else might have, but not Lucas.
Lucas finally turned around. “I get it,” he
said. “It’s fine.”
“You don’t look like it’s fine.”
Lucas forced a smile onto his face but it
looked ugly and false and he thankfully abandoned the effort. “I’m
just waiting for part two.”
“Part two?” More of an apology? Mark would
certainly be happy to do more, if he could only think of what it
should be.
Lucas waited a moment, then turned back
toward the window. “You finally realize what a stupid idea this
is,” he prompted. “You can’t take the risk right now, not with your
family all messed up and your job on the line.” His voice was
casual but his fingers were gripping the windowsill so tightly Mark
wondered if they’d leave imprints.
It was tempting to go for another grand
gesture. Mark could spin Lucas around and kiss him the way he had
in the alley, making it clear just how far off base Lucas was. But
Mark was pretty sure that if he grabbed Lucas now, in his current
state, the man would respond with punches, not kisses. So he moved
quietly and carefully to his own spot at the window, somewhere in
Lucas’s peripheral vision but not close enough to seem like a
threat.
“That’s not how I feel,” he said. “Not at
all. Today was…it was bad, and I need to find a way to keep it from
happening again. But that way is not anything to do with
you, or how I feel about you. My family’s important to me, Lucas,
and so is my job, but so are you. And you’re the one who
isn’t trying to make me change. You’re the one who accepts
me as I am, the one I don’t have to hide things from. I know that,
Lucas, and I value it. I have no plans to let go of you, not unless
you make me.”
Lucas kept his gaze on whatever distant spot
he was seeing, but Mark could see the words working their way
through the man’s protective shell. Finally, Lucas said, “It’d be
easier now. We know it’s going to happen, so maybe it should just
happen now.”
“Us breaking up? Or whatever the right word
is. Us stopping? No, I don’t know it’s going to happen. I mean, I’m
not saying we’re going to be together forever, but I’m not saying
we won’t, either. I care about you, Lucas. Just because it’s
happening fast doesn’t mean it isn’t real, and just because there
are reasons we shouldn’t be together doesn’t mean there aren’t
reasons we should be.”
“Like what?” Lucas demanded, finally turning
to face Mark. “What the hell is there that says we should be