Chapter 19 #2
“I’m really glad you feel stronger, sweetheart,” she said. “And I love that those kids were kind to you. Everyone deserves that.”
Emma’s smile dimmed. “I can hear a but.”
“No but. I just want to make sure you’re thinking critically about—”
“Mom.” Emma’s voice was gentle but firm. “I know what you’re going to say. And I love you for caring. But this isn’t a phase and it isn’t because I’m vulnerable. This is because something makes sense to me that never made sense before, and I want to explore it. You can’t stop me.”
The statement landed like a gut punch.
Kate nodded slowly because there was nothing else to do. Her daughter was sitting in front of her, happier and more grounded than she’d been in months, and the reason was the one thing Kate couldn’t share or endorse or even fully understand.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Emma said, leaning over to kiss Kate’s cheek. “Thank you for not totally freaking out.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, and Kate sat on the bed listening to the water run and staring at the wall.
Then she stood up, put on her shoes, and went downstairs to find Eli, hoping she’d continue to not totally freak out. No promises, though.
Eli was on the boardwalk, standing at the railing where the wooden planks ended and the sea oats began. His back was to the house, his face turned toward the water, and his stillness told her he’d been out here for a while. Probably since he and Emma got home.
Praying, she assumed. The thought didn’t comfort her the way it once might have.
She walked toward him, her footsteps deliberate on the wooden planks, loud enough that he’d hear her coming. She didn’t want to ambush him. She wanted him to turn and face her, which he did.
“Kate.” His voice was quiet, and there was something in it she recognized—not guilt, but awareness. He’d known this was coming.
“You took her to church.”
He didn’t flinch. “I took her to a youth group pizza night. She had the option of a restaurant. She chose that instead.”
“She’s seventeen, Eli. She doesn’t get to make that choice without my knowledge.”
“She’s seventeen,” he repeated gently. “She’s old enough to choose where she eats dinner.”
“At church?”
“She said she’s been to a youth group meeting before,” he said.
“She was eleven and went to spaghetti dinner with a girl I trusted.” He winced at the last word, and she immediately saw the mistake, but she was too heated to apologize.
“This wasn’t dinner. This was a Bible study.
This was a room full of kids telling my daughter that God forgives her and praying for her and…
” When he said nothing, she stopped, pressing her fingers to her temples. “You should have asked me.”
“Would you have said yes?”
The question was so direct, so honest, that it knocked her off balance. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point. If I’d asked, you would have said no. And Emma would have missed an evening that clearly meant something to her.”
She bristled. “You don’t get to decide what’s meaningful for my daughter.”
“I didn’t decide. She did. I offered her a choice and she made it.” He paused. “Kate, I’m not trying to go behind your back. It wasn’t like I took her out for her first drink, for heaven’s sake. She met kids she liked, girls who didn’t judge her for—”
“Yes, I heard about the girls.”
He exhaled. “I’m very sorry if I overstepped or did something to upset you. Emma was safe and happy and…” He swallowed, searching her face, a troubled look in his eyes. “And I had a chance to really give things to God, too. In my own men’s group.”
She looked up at him, not at all sure she wanted to hear this. “And?”
“Look, Kate, I…” He threaded his fingers through his hair and pulled it back, a sure sign of stress. “I’m sorry this makes you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not…” But she was. “I just don’t think you had the right to take my child to a religious event without my permission.”
He smiled. “She’s not a child, Kate. She’s an open-hearted and hurting teenager who walked into that room and found a bunch of kids who accepted her.
She told them the worst thing that ever happened to her and they didn’t flinch.
They didn’t mock her. They didn’t petition to kick her off a team.
” His voice stayed level, but she could hear the emotion underneath.
“It helped her through a very difficult time.”
Kate couldn’t answer because he was right and she had no answer. But she was fuming at the man she loved.
“Eli,” she ground out his name in a whisper. “I can’t watch my daughter get swept into…a cult.”
He grunted at the word.
“I’m sorry if that’s brutal but I cannot let her build her life on a story I believe is a fairy tale. I can’t stand next to you while you lead her deeper into something that isn’t real to me.”
Staring at her, she saw his jaw tighten, the brief shutter of his eyelids. But when he opened them, his gaze was clear.
“Kate, I have to be honest with you about something.”
She heard the subtle break in his voice and knew whatever he was about to say was the final result of a spiritual wrestling match. And she was pretty sure she knew who won.
“I can’t deny what I believe. What I know.
What is real to me. I’ve tried—for you, for us—to keep it in the background, to not bring it into every conversation, to respect the line you’ve drawn.
But it’s been eating at me because I’m not being true to who I am.
” He took a breath. “I’m a Christian. Not casually, not culturally.
My faith is part of every breath I take.
It’s how I make decisions, how I love people, how I live my life. ”
“Jonah and Meredith aren’t…Bible people.”
“That’s because Melissa and I found God less than a year before she died. We didn’t raise them as Christians, and by the time I got deep into my faith, they were broken and grieving. I gave them a choice because God gives us free will. I gave Emma a choice tonight, too.”
Kate exhaled noisily, once again unable to argue.
“And when I see a seventeen-year-old girl who’s hurting and searching,” he continued, “I can’t not share what I know to be true. I just can’t.”
“Even if her mother asks you not to?” she demanded.
“Even then. Because I believe that what Emma is finding isn’t a cult. I believe it’s the truth that can and will change her life. And I’d be lying to both of you if I pretended otherwise.”
Kate stared at him, still only able to see the steadiest, kindest, most infuriatingly certain person she’d ever known. But that didn’t make what he was saying feel any better. In fact, it made things worse because he was not backing down.
“Emma has the freedom to choose what she believes, Kate, and so do you. I can’t control that and I wouldn’t want to.”
“But you can influence it. And you are.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “The same way you influence her with your scientific worldview every day. The same way Jeffrey influenced her with his anger. We all shape the people in our lives. The question is what we shape them toward.”
She felt the tears building and fought them with everything she had because crying would mean fueling this fire with genuine feelings. It would mean acknowledging that he might not be wrong.
“So where does that leave us?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” His voice was rough. “Where do you want it to leave us?”
“I want it to leave us together. But I don’t see how it can if you’re going to keep—”
“Sharing my faith with someone who’s asking for it?”
She closed her eyes, dizzy in the dark because the space between them was no more than three feet, and it felt like miles.
“Are you asking me to choose?” he asked quietly. “Between you and what I believe?”
The question hung in the salt air.
Answering would change everything. Whatever she said next would either save them or end them, and there might not be a middle ground.
“I’m asking you to put me first,” she whispered. “To put us first.”
He closed his eyes. And in the silence that followed, Kate watched his face and understood, with the cold clarity of a scientist reading results she didn’t want to accept, that he was not going to say what she needed him to say.
He wasn’t going to choose her. Not over this. He would love her, care for her, and probably marry her. She knew that. But he would not put her above the God he’d given his life to.
And the terrible part—the part that made her want to scream—was that she understood. She understood because it was the very quality she’d fallen in love with. His unwavering calmness. His immovable center. His refusal to bend on what he believed, even when bending would be easier.
She’d loved him for his conviction. And his conviction was going to break them.
“Kate,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I love you more than I can say.”
“I know.” She took a step back. “But it’s not enough, is it?”
He didn’t answer.
They stood listening to the surf, a distant gull, the peace of the beach wrapped around them.
She had to decide. Right here and now, she had to decide. Were her convictions as strong as his?
Finally, she nodded, certain.
“Emma and I will stay through the wedding,” she said. “Tessa deserves that. But after…” Her voice cracked, and she let it. “After, we’re going back to Ithaca.”
She turned and walked back up the boardwalk toward the house without looking back.
If she had, she would have seen Eli Lawson standing exactly where she left him, his hands gripping the railing, his head bowed, and his lips moving in a prayer that the woman he loved would never hear or understand.
She glanced up to the dark night sky and narrowed her eyes. “You win,” she whispered to no one. “He’s yours, not mine.”