Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
A s the wheels of the plane touched down on the tarmac in San Diego the next morning, Ryan fought against the most intense wave of grief since his father had passed. Shielding his eyes from his wife in the seat beside him, he focused on the runway outside the little airplane window as his mind pelted him with reminders of the past and plans for the future scattered and blown away forever with the sudden death of his father. He had always thought he had more time with his dad. Biting his lip as his heart betrayed him with threats of breaking, he felt the hot tears spill out onto his cheeks.
The touch of Emily’s hand on his shoulder brought the pain even deeper into his soul. Then those three words he hated to hear. “Ryan, what’s wrong?”
He’d speak if he could, but the grief had him in a chokehold, like it often did in these moments. Within a few seconds, he pushed out a rude but truthful statement. It was barely intelligible. “Stupid question, Em . . .”
After grabbing their luggage and getting their car from the parking garage at the airport, they made the journey to their home in La Jolla, California. Ryan had been able to recompose himself for most of the ride home, but once they turned off La Jolla Parkway and onto Hidden Valley Road, a memory of his father flashed through his mind like a surprise lightning strike in his heart.
Three years ago, after Ryan had called off the annual family summer trip to Cedarwood Creek because he was too busy with his website business, Frank called from the San Diego airport needing a ride. It was the day before Ryan’s birthday. He picked his father up from the curb of the airport and was mostly silent in the car, preoccupied with his work. Then as Ryan and his father turned onto Hidden Valley Road, and as the tree branch shadows played across the windshield, every muscle was tight and tense with frustration as he finally let his words flow from his heart.
“I don’t get why you came here, Dad.”
A long moment of silence passed. Then his father said, “Because I missed you, Son. Plus, your mother is in Buffalo visiting her crazy sister, Carol. Do you not want me here?”
Ryan gripped the steering wheel tighter. “No, I don’t mind that you are here. I’m just a little tied up with work.”
His dad playfully hit his shoulder and smiled as he tilted his head. “You’re always so worried about work, Son. Didn’t I teach you to enjoy life? This is your lot that God has given you. Remember what it says in Ecclesiastes . . .”
The memory of that day faded into the background of Ryan’s mind, and suddenly, he was back in the moment, in the car with his family. Ryan wiped his cheeks of the fresh pain as the Bible passage reverberated in his heart, spoken in his father’s voice, “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.” Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
Pulling into his driveway at home, the kids piled out and ran up the walkway to go inside. Emily stayed back with Ryan in the car. She placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You okay?”
With his eyes locked on the closed garage door in front of the vehicle, he shook his head and dipped his chin. He sighed, letting his defenses down for a moment. “I’m not okay, Em.”
Pausing, he wiped his cheeks as tears spilled onto them.
“I’m not okay at all. You know . . . I just don’t feel like a man who just lost his father.”
“What do you mean?” Emily adjusted in her seat, her expression growing more concerned by the moment.
Wiping his eyes again, he fought the feeling of his throat closing to speak a fraction more. “I don’t feel like a man who lost his father, but rather, a little boy who lost his hero.”
As Emily hugged him, it only drove the pain deeper. After a moment, he continued. “I feel like I lost my guiding light in this dark world. I mean, I know I have God, and I still believe . . . But my dad was always this guiding wisdom that spoke into my life every day, and now he’s just gone . . . He’s gone, and I just have to figure life out on my own.”
Relaxing into his seat, he stared up at the ceiling of the car as he shook his head.
“You still have me, Ryan.” Emily’s words were well-meaning but did little to ease the burden Ryan felt on his shoulders.
“I know, and I love you.” Taking a deep breath, he looked again out the windshield. “Now I just have to go back to our normal life somehow.”
Emily shook her head and grabbed his hand. Looking into his eyes and with tears in her own, she said, “No. We are going back to our life. Together, Ryan.”
Within a couple of weeks of returning to their home in La Jolla, California, life’s routines had mostly returned to normal. The kids were back in school and Emily in her role as a teacher at the preschool adjacent to the church they attended. Everything was back to the appearance of normal in their life except for Ryan. Something in Emily’s husband had indeed changed. His interactions with the children and her were short, he always seemed on edge, and he just seemed miserable. Given the circumstances, she tried to be the understanding wife she knew he needed, but then his work schedule started to change as well. He had started working extremely long hours, working late into the night and early morning. At first, Emily suspected it was all to help keep his father’s family business up and running. For the first week, Emily had excused the excessive work schedule because of Ryan and Jason trying to get everything digitalized. Yet, that had concluded almost a week ago. Emily’s grace and understanding were wearing thinner by the day, and she was losing hope of Ryan ever coming back to her.
One evening, while lesson planning beyond the eleven o’clock hour for school, Emily heard noises come from the back yard. Closing her laptop, she set it aside and walked over to the window. She watched as her daughter, Elizabeth, darted through the yard and jumped the fence. Then she saw her climb into Jennifer Answorth’s convertible Mustang.
As it zoomed off, Emily sighed deeply.
Just then, Ryan walked into the bedroom.
Unlatching his watch, he dropped it on his nightstand and went into the ensuite bathroom and began brushing his teeth.
“Do you know where your daughter is?” Emily inquired as she walked over to the doorway of the bathroom.
He spat and kept brushing his teeth. “Asleep in her bed two doors down. Why?”
“No. She just jumped into Jennifer’s car and took off.”
“What?” Throwing his toothbrush into the sink, he was about to dart past her when she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“Ryan.”
“What?”
“We need to talk.”
Raising his eyebrows, he shook his head. “Can it wait? I need to call our daughter and tell her to hightail it home.”
“Sure.”
She waited as he called their daughter. Biting her cheek, she listened as Ryan yelled into the phone and demanded that she return home immediately. His face was red, full of anger. A characteristic that was foreign to him. Emily cringed as he furiously ended the call and threw the phone across the room.
He raked a hand through his hair as he turned toward her.
“Why aren’t you more upset about this, Emily?”
“I am upset, Ryan. But I’m not going to allow this event to unravel me.”
“Don’t start with me, Emily! Our daughter is sneaking out!”
Taking a step closer to him, she touched his arm gently. “Why are you yelling, Ryan?”
“Are you obtuse to the reality that is unfolding?”
“No, but you’ve changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see it? You never used to scream and yell, no matter what was going on. You’re not as patient with the children, Ryan. You constantly have a short fuse. I . . . I don’t know what to do anymore.”
As the words left her lips, she saw yet another change in her husband. His chest puffed out and he crossed his arms. “I’m just trying to get through the days right now! And I feel like I just need a little bit of help. You could’ve called Elizabeth when you saw her!”
Sitting on the bed, she dipped her chin and started to cry into her hands.
“What now? Come on. You know the stress I’m under right now. Why are you crying?”
“Ryan! Look at yourself!” She pointed to the mirrors on the sliding doors of the closet. He looked over and saw his reflection. Red-faced and leaning over her. He relaxed a measure and sat on the bed beside her.
Touching his forehead, his voice softened. “I’m sorry, Emily. I don’t know what came over me.”
“What’s going on? Is something wrong with the grill? You were done with the digitalization of the business like a week ago. Right?”
He shoved a hand through the air. “Yeah. It’s just been a mess. There’s a lot of unknowns Jason and I are trying to sort out right now.”
“ Unknowns? ” Emily adjusted her seat on the bed to face him.
“Yeah. For instance, we found these drafts that were being sent out every month for years from the business bank account. But we had no information attached to it other than bank account numbers and routing numbers. We figured out most of them. Like one was for an orphanage my parents have been supporting in Africa, and another was for a church in Buffalo and another for a little church in Vermont.”
“Your dad was a good man, Ryan. I know it’s got to be a lot of pressure to take care of his baby, A.K.A. his grill.”
Ryan laughed lightly and smiled. “Yeah. It’s a lot of pressure. There’s just so much going on with this business, and . . .”
Moving closer to him on the bed, Emily rubbed his shoulder. “And what?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he shook his head as his chin dipped. “I feel lost. I feel so disconnected from God and there’s this dark tinge over everything in life right now. I feel like I can’t get close to Him . . . I’m not as strong as you.”
“I’m not that strong either Ryan. I break down at least two or three times a day since we got back.”
His gaze met hers. “Really?”
“Yeah. I do it in private. Sometimes it’s just hearing a song in the car or when I’m folding laundry. It hurts so bad and seeing you hurting makes it hurt more.”
He sighed and nodded, wiping tears. “It’s all terribly difficult to deal with and that’s without even mentioning my brother and my mom. I want to be there for them so bad.”
“You want to move there, don’t you?”
He shook his head in a few quick successions. “No. Yes. I mean, I don’t know. You love your job, we love our church family, and our life is here in La Jolla.”
Hearing the front door slam, Emily grabbed Ryan’s hand as he leapt from the bed at the sound.
“Please, Ryan. Let me be your helpmate?”
He took a deep breath and agreed. Walking together, they met Elizabeth as she turned to go into her bedroom.
She slammed the door in their faces, and Ryan bit his knuckle.
With a low voice, Emily came in close to Ryan. “She’s a teenager who got caught sneaking out. She’s mad. We don’t need to stoop to her level and show our emotions.”
Ryan, tight-lipped, folded his arms and turned to her. “Okay. How do you propose we do that?”
“ Pray. ”
Ryan’s face softened, and he lowered his gaze downward as he dropped his arms. Leading the two of them in a quiet prayer, he took her hands into his own.
“God . . . here I am again, begging You for help. I know I’ve been knocking on Your door a lot more lately . . . I . . . I need You now just like I needed You this morning, yesterday more times than I can count . . . and last week, and the week before that. Over and over again . . .” Pausing, Ryan wiped his eyes as he sighed heavily. “Please, Lord, help me . . . Strengthen me, Lord. I keep failing over and over again.” Giving his wife’s hands a squeeze, he continued. “Strengthen us . Help us , God.”
Concluding the prayer, Emily stopped him before they went into the bedroom.
“I miss him too, Ryan. Know that I’m not trying to be difficult or make things harder for you. I’m just trying to be your helpmate.”
“I know, Em. And thank you.”
They went into the bedroom.
Emily said, “Elizabeth.”
Laying on her bed, scrolling on her cellphone, Elizabeth blatantly ignored her mother.
Calm and collected, Ryan walked over to the bed, reached over and snatched the phone from her hands.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth furrowed her eyebrows. “Give me my phone back!”
“Not happening.” Ryan back-pocketed the phone. “You need to listen to your mother and me when we’re talking to you. And we’re not big fans of slamming doors. I’m pretty sure we’ve mentioned that before.”
“What?” Elizabeth shook her head. “You can talk now that I sneaked out of the house?”
“What?” Ryan’s voice edged up in tone.
“You haven’t said more than two words to me since we’ve been home from Washington. You’re always working. We never go get coffees anymore, never go to the beach. Nothing. Ever. It’s like you died when Grandpa died!”
“Elizabeth Rae Fitzgerald! You will not speak to your father that way!”
Ryan lifted a hand calmly to Emily. “It’s okay. There’s a lot of truth to what she’s saying.”
Kneeling down to the side of his daughter’s bed, Ryan looked into her eyes and shook his head as his voice was laced in pain. “I know I haven’t been a very good dad lately to you or the boys. But this sneaking out? This kind of thing? This isn’t you, kid. It reminds me of last year with that Randy guy.”
Randy was a boy she had met that was nineteen. She had been forbidden to see him after Ryan and Emily had found out about the relationship.
Elizabeth kept quiet and her chin dipped to her chest.
Rising to his feet, Ryan looked at Emily and then back at Elizabeth. “I’m sorry, and I’m going to do better about spending time with you. Can you forgive me?”
A soft voice lifted from Elizabeth. “I can . . .”
“And I need you to not sneak out. To not lie. I can’t protect you if you’re not in this house, Princess.”
Wiping her eyes of tears, Elizabeth nodded. “Okay, Dad. I won’t sneak out anymore.”
The next morning, just after ten o’clock, Ryan stood from his desk in his study to take a break from designing a shopping cart on a website for a client. Walking over to the built-in bookshelf, he stopped in front of a picture of him and his father from when he graduated college. His father looked so much younger, with brown hair and a youthful glow. Realizing he was now his father’s age from the photograph, thirty-eight, Ryan smoothed a hand over his face. He suddenly felt well aware of his limited time on the earth. One of his father’s favorite sayings echoed through his mind. Life is just a blink . . .
His phone rang.
Slipping his phone out from his back pocket, he answered as he saw it was his brother.
“Tigers.”
“What?” Ryan turned from the bookshelf.
“That $400 draft outgoing every couple of months to the account ending in 3345. It was for a Save-The-Cat Tiger refuge just outside of Spokane.”
Ryan raked a hand through his hair as he walked back behind his desk and sat down. “Okay. So, what’s left?”
“Just the one I can’t find any information on. I know a guy I’m going to call tonight when I get off work. He is kind of a hacker and can find out for me.”
Shaking his head, Ryan said, “Brother . . . don’t?—”
“No. He’s not a bad dude. Nothing illegal . . . that I know of. Ha! Just super smart about getting information about people. That’s why I said kind of a hacker.”
“Okay. Do what you need to do.”
A silence lingered on the phone for a moment, then his brother let out a sigh. “I sure do miss Dad.”
Ryan pressed his lips together to form a thin line as he nodded. “Same. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached for my phone to call him and ask his advice on this . . . Which isn’t even remotely possible.”
“We’ll figure it out together, Bro. By the way, you should keep Mom in your prayers when you think of her. She had a bruise on her head the other day when I saw her, and I’m not sure what from. I worry about her living alone.”
“What happened to her head? And I will pray for her.”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“That explains the conversation I had the other day with her.”
“What?”
Shaking his head, Ryan sighed. “She told me I was free to move myself and my family up to live with her. Told me she wouldn’t mind having her oldest living back at home.”
“I think she’s lonely.”
“I can’t imagine what she’s going through with all this . . .”
“Right.”
A silence lingered as the conversation came towards a conclusion. “Well, let me know what that guy says about the account.”
“Will do.”
Ryan progressed through the rest of his morning as usual, working on website stuff until lunch, then took a break to eat. Sitting down in his dining room with a sandwich, the front door of the house opened unexpectedly.
“Emily?” he called out.
Appearing in the living room, visible from the dining room, she tossed her purse onto the couch and headed down the hall as she answered him. “I’m going to the bathroom and then heading over to meet with Tina.”
Searching his mind for the name, he couldn’t place the name with a person he knew named Tina in their circles. He took a bite of his sandwich. As she came back out into the living room, he rushed over to meet her face to face.
“Who’s Tina, and why aren’t you at work?”
Lifting her eyebrows, she shook her head. “You don’t remember? Randy’s mom. She texted me about needing to talk and asked if I took a lunch break.”
Hearing the almost twenty-year-old’s name that his daughter had been involved with in the past come from her lips caused Ryan’s heart to edge toward a mixture of fear and anger. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know.” She looked him in the eyes, a yearning in them. “If she’s been?—”
Ryan raised a hand. “There’s no way. We told her last year to stop seeing him.”
“She’s fifteen, Ryan.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose as he thought about the revelation, he shook his head. “I can’t right now.”
“You’re a parent. It doesn’t matter whether you can’t right now.”
“I know, I just . . . It’s not a good time.”
Emily held something back and then came in close and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
As she exited the house to leave, Ryan was about to sit back down to eat when he felt the urge to act. He ran out the front door, catching Emily before she drove down the street. He got into the car and looked at her.
“We’re going to do this together.”
A genuine smile lifted her lips. “Okay.”
Sitting down across from Tina at a coffee shop fifteen minutes later, Ryan let out a sigh as he noticed the mother fighting back tears.
“Thanks for meeting with me.” Her words were shaky. “I hate that I couldn’t fix this on my own, but I can’t.”
“What? Are they seeing each other again?” Ryan fired off right away.
“No.” Tina started to cry, covering her mouth as she shook her head. “Well, they were.”
“What?” Emily shook her head as she touched her brow. “What do you mean, they were ?”
“They never broke up last year. They kept seeing each other. I caught him sneaking in late several times months ago. He admitted they were meeting up at night. Then they broke up like a month ago.”
Adjusting in his chair, Ryan shook his head. “Okay . . .”
Tina opened her hands out on the table, leaning in as she continued. “The problem is that Randy won’t let it go. He started stalking her after school and harassing her since you guys came back from Washington.”
Ryan stood up, his anger bubbling as he connected his gaze with his wife. “We need to call the cops, Emily! She’s only fifteen!”
Reaching a hand out, Tina touched Emily’s hand on the table. “Please don’t! That’s why I didn’t come to you sooner. I don’t want his life to be ruined.”
Emily appeared lost in thought. “This explains why she’s been so distant and crying so much since we got back . . .”
“What?” Ryan stopped, touching Emily’s shoulder.
“I noticed it, but I didn’t want to bother you. She’s been crying all the time in her room and hardly coming to the dinner table.”
Rubbing his neck, Ryan nodded slowly. “I guess I’ve missed some dinners lately . . .”
Tina leaned in. “So, you won’t call the cops?”
Emily turned, looking up at her husband. Ryan felt his wife’s eyes begging for grace for this young man. Then his gaze shifted to Tina, his heart moved with compassion for her in the moment. He knew it wasn’t him, but God. The only thing he wanted to do was kill the punk, and if not murder, call the police. It was the right thing to do in his mind. Yet there was something else he sensed within himself. A sensing for the need to act in grace. With how far God had felt to him lately, he couldn’t go against the one thing he felt was from God.
“Can you guarantee he’ll stay away? If he doesn’t, we won’t have an option.”
“I’ll let him know you guys are aware of the situation now and will call the cops if he doesn’t leave her alone. I think that will stop him.” She rose to her feet, wiping her cheeks of tears as she thanked them both repeatedly.
That night at home, Ryan and Emily went to confront Elizabeth. After explaining the conversation they had with Tina, they waited for a response from their daughter. After a few moments of crying and her mother comforting her with an arm around her shoulders, Elizabeth finally calmed down enough to speak.
“What if we move in with Grandma?”
Emily stood from the bed and took a step back. “What do you mean? Leave our home and life here? Just run away from our problems?”
“No. It doesn’t have to be viewed like running away from problems.” Elizabeth wiped her eyes. “A fresh start. A do-over for me.”
Ryan took a step closer to Emily and took her hand in his hand. Then he looked at Elizabeth and shook his head. “Our life is here. Your other grandparents are here too.”
Emily gave his hand a squeeze as she shook her head. “No. We can move. I have been wrestling with the fear of moving since we came home from Washington . . . but everything keeps pointing toward it.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan shook his head as he looked at her. “I thought it was out of the question.”
“I know, but that was because I was scared, Ryan. I had already thought of it, and I just wanted to fight against it and have been doing so ever since.” She let out a sigh. “When we were in Cedarwood Creek, I saw a help wanted ad in the newspaper for a second grade teacher at a Christian school. I also saw the way you and Jason were together. There’s a part of me that really does want to move there. I’m just scared of the unknown, you know? It’s a lot of change for our family and moving away from my parents will be hard, but I want to do it.”
Taking a step closer to his wife, he wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you.”