I didn’t see it coming. God only knows what I’d have done if I had.

As it was, when Kirk woke me up early that Saturday morning – I’d now begun to sleep through the night – kissing me, I was delighted. Somehow, the clamoring in me had begun to subside and peaceful interludes blossomed and burgeoned.

“You’re already dressed,” I croaked sleepily, stretching and rubbing my eyes.

“Yep.” He watched me, with that adoring look in his eyes, for long moments. Then he smiled. “Throw on some jeans and a shirt. Let’s go for a morning drive on the beach.”

In minutes, we were out the door, leaving Toby in the den spooning Captain Crunch into his mouth and watching Scooby Doo – he still loved his ol’ doggie-buddy – while the girls slept.

The sun climbed a silver horizon as our VW made tracks across the damp shoreline, then halted to a rest. Salt air filled my nostrils as sea gulls scattered and soared lazily overhead. I smiled and lay my head back on the rest. “What a beautiful day. I’m glad you thought of this, honey.” I turned my head to look at my husband, who gazed across the water, his face suddenly solemn.

“I’ve got to talk to you, Neecy.” His eyes lighted on me, so full of emotion I was stunned.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, antenna rising from every pore.

He melded into the crook of his seat. Relaxed, yet tense. The mask was gone. Kirk faced me, my Kirk – with vulnerable green eyes pleading with me in some way.

“What is it, honey?” I asked gently.

“Neecy...this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” His features morphed into the most desperate composite I’d ever seen.

No! I stiffened, yet turned completely to face him, knowing instinctively I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say.

But Kirk had already dived in. Now, he struggled to complete his mission.

His face suddenly dissolved into tears. Oh, God. This was major.

“Neecy...I’ve got to make it to Heaven. I promised Krissie – ” He wept as he had when Krissie died. Loud, unrestrained sobs.

I knew. Suddenly, I knew. “Oh – no, no, Kirk.”

He lifted his head in shame. Nodded. “It’s true.”

My mouth went dry as cotton matting. “How much?”

“All of it. All you suspected is true.”

I faced the ocean, blood draining, draining, pouring, gushing out my toes, my nose, my fingertips until I was nothing but cold numbness. “You had sex with Roxie?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Why?” I whirled to face him. “Why, in God’s name?”

Kirk tried to brace himself. “It wasn’t what you think. It – she seduced me...while you were away. After Moose disappeared. That night when she claimed to be having a nervous breakdown. She knew what she was doing, Neecy.”

I gave a bitter huff of a laugh, staring unseeing at the silvery rolling surf, thinking how my insides could be so numb yet hurt so. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Neecy – ” His hand moved toward my arm. “I – ”

I jerked my arm away from his touch. Something in me snapped in that instant, breaking me free of my restrained self. He flinched and withdrew, watching me with such humbleness I choked up. I closed my eyes and an image flashed – of Kirk and Roxie tangled in the act of sex. In that instant, the pain of losing the one thing left – our exclusivity – was so sharp I thought I’d die from it. The wail that rose from my bowels crescendoed such that it put my labor sounds to shame.

I heard Kirk’s sobs mingle with mine. “Don’t – ” he moaned, squeezing his hands together to stop from reaching for me, “please don’t, Neecy. It was nothing to me – ”

“Nothing?” I shrieked, tears dripping off my cheeks, chin, nose. “Nothing?” I peered at him as I would at a lunatic. “It was everything...” I threw back my head and howled, “Everything! And you gave it aw-a-ay. It was mine!” I clutched my chest, then beat it. “It was mi-i-ine.” When my breath ran out, I glared at him through tears. My voice, hoarsened, now rasped. “You gave away all that was left.” I slumped from the effort of saying it. “There’s nothing left.” I stared dully at the distant horizon, not seeing anything except my husband and this other woman. Copulating.

“She asked me to forgive her, Kirk.” I looked at him. “Did you know that?” I threw up my hands. “And I did. I gave her peace. She gave me this.”

“Dear Jesus,” Kirk said quietly, gazing upward. “What have I done? I shouldn’t have told you. You can’t take – ”

“Ha!” I sliced him a look of contempt, ignoring the way he flinched. “Too late. You did. And as for my not being able to take it, don’t worry about poor lil’ Neecy. Poor lil’ Stupid Neecy, to quote the late Roxie.”

I wanted to fight. For the first time in my life, I wanted, could taste, hand-to-hand combat.

“I’d kill her if she wasn’t already dead.” I barely recognized my thick, even voice nor the rage behind it.

“Oh, God,” Kirk moaned, rolling his head back, then dropping it forward to rest on his chest, his fingers pinching his bridge. I glared coldly at him, not feeling a shred of pity for him. He’d killed me. As surely as I sat there breathing, he’d destroyed me. All those months of her rubbing my nose in the fact that Kirk treated her preferentially.

“The two of you probably laughed at me behind my back?” It didn’t matter. I closed my eyes. Nothing mattered anymore.

“No! I never dishonored you, Janeece, outside the – ” Kirk shifted to face me, reached out and seized my resisting hand. “You’ve got to know...I’ve never loved anybody but you. You must believe that. And I didn’t want what happened to happen. It was a trap I fell into – that many, many men fall into all the time.”

I turned my wooden head and peered at him through leaden eyes. “You’re not just any man, Kirk. You’re a man of God.” I watched it wound him, glad that it did. He needed to feel some of what I felt.

I felt like a squeezed out lemon. All substance gone, leaving only an empty, dried rind. Kirk slid over and pulled me into his arms. I stiffened and pushed against him, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Janeece,” his voice was rough velvet, “I made a terrible mistake, but I’m not crazy enough to let go of you. Please – please try to find it in your heart to forgive me.”

His big hand took my chin and guided it around until our gazes locked. Oh, it hurt so dreadfully to look into the face I loved above all others. Even humble and repentant, he was splendid. Manly and all quiet dignity and I began to cry and he held me, soothing and crooning to me.

“I love you, Neecy,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my hair, my cheeks, eyelids and finally, capturing my lips. My tears continued to flow. Crazy thing was, he was the only one who could fix my pain. He, who’d caused it. “Do you love me?” he asked in an uncertain, little boy voice.

I laughed, a harsh, hysterical sound. “Of course I love you. Love doesn’t just stop. Why do you think this hurts so much? Huh? I wish I didn’t love you,” I hiccupped a sob, then finished on an exhausted whisper. “It wouldn’t be as bad if I didn’t love you.”

“Honey,” Kirk’s arms tightened and he leaned to look down into my face, eyes dark with pain. “If there’s anything you want to know, ask. I don’t want any more secrets. It was hell...” He shook his head and gazed off. Then he looked at me again, determined. “Once Roxie seduced me, she resorted to emotional blackmail to keep me dangling. You need to know that. The times you saw us together, I was appeasing her – praying she wouldn’t destroy us. I never wanted you hurt. Now, I want everything clear between us.”

I turned my head to stare out the window, woozy with exhaustion and confusion. My terror was gone. Desolation replaced it. Facts swirled through my mind. The worst had happened. I faced yet another struggle: to survive. I thought of the recent abortion. Tears puddled up again, then spilled over.

“That’s why you felt different about the baby – ”

Kirk resisted me pulling away. “No – I told you why I didn’t want you to go through – ”

“But Kirk,” I peered at him through tears, my mouth in rictus between words, “always before, everything about our making babies was so spiritual...so sacred.” I bawled then like a three-year-old who’d lost her doll, with Kirk’s arms holding and bolstering and his voice murmuring I knew not what, only that it lulled me into quietness once more. “I knew. In my gut, I knew something had changed.”

“Janeece, listen to me.” Kirk turned to see me better. “You’ve got to believe me when I say that the thing – between me and Roxie – had no bearing on that situation. I told you then, and I’ll say it again,” his eyes darkened and speared mine, “I couldn’t bear to lose you.” His emotion-rough voice, this time, pierced my haze. Suddenly, during that heartbeat, he was my Kirk again and when he hauled me against him, I closed my eyes and breathed strength from him.

“Honey?” he rumbled softly in my ear, “You’re not going to leave me,” he raised his head and gazed into my eyes, “are you?”

I looked at him, heavy-lidded and addle-brained, hardly knowing where I was. And I let out a sound between screech and howl, a crazy bray of a laugh that ended on a sob. “Kirk! I’ve never, for one moment, considered not being with you.” I gulped and swallowed another siege of hysteria. “That makes me crazy, doesn’t it? I shouldn’t love you – don’t even know if I do love you. I don’t know what I feel anymore.”

“Neecy,” he cupped my wet face in his hands, then lowered his head, reverently, to kiss me. “I’ll make you love me again. I promise you, you won’t be sorry.”

The next day, Sunday, my body moved about from sheer habit. Having slept very little, if at all, I charged on adrenaline one minute, crashed the next. My emotions gave no warning when they’d do a column-left, column-right or an abrupt to-the-rear march. I simply rode them, a Lamb Chop moppet jerked around betwixt Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Strangely, the anger protected me from myself. Defiance kept tears at bay during church, kept my back straight and my eyes unwavering. Made me present myself strong and all put together. Often, during his message, Kirk’s gaze sought and held mine. I had nothing left from which to draw, so I returned his soft little smiles with stony stares or averted my gaze altogether.

When I’d snapped – was it only yesterday? – the lights inside me disconnected, leaving cold, dank emptiness. Anger had ambushed me so brusquely, was so alien to me, I had no defenses against it. No prior knowledge armed me, so fury propelled and steered me, spewed words from my mouth, turned me silent as death and made me cynical.

Cynical. For the first time ever, I saw Kirk through the eyes of a stranger. Because, to my way of thinking, he was. The Kirk I thought I knew, the one who’d vowed, “I’ll always love and protect you, Neecy,” didn’t exist.

“Why did you lie, Kirk? That day, at church, you said there wasn’t anything between you and Roxie.” I’d reminded him through the hellish night before, as we lay side by side in bed, talking softly so the children wouldn’t hear.

Kirk’s tortured face, all angles and dusky shadowed planes, creased deeper. “Because, Neecy, I didn’t want to hurt you.” He reached over and slid his fingers over my arm. I stiffened and moved away. “Can’t you understand that?”

“Please, honey,” his voice vibrated with emotion, “don’t pull away.”

I tried to relax, to be sensible. Sensible? Ha! “Well, it didn’t work. I hurt.”

“I’d give my life to go back and not have you know.” He rolled to his back and gazed at the ceiling. “I suppose I’d wrestled with it for so long, analyzed it so thoroughly, seeing how Roxie set me up – I guess I thought you’d see that right away, as I did after the fact. Not that it excuses me. I take full blame for my actions. I prayed and asked God to forgive me. He has. I know that. Then – ” He grew quiet for long moments. “Then, I felt He wanted me to confess to you, ask your forgiveness. Set things right. I’ve felt so wretched for so long...it got to the place I couldn’t pray. Couldn’t preach without feeling like a hypocrite.”

I turned my head to gaze at him through the darkness. He was Kirk again. In that heartbeat, he was my Kirk.

“I’ve got something else to tell you, Neecy.”

I tensed but remained silent.

“Callie knows.”

Ice water filled my belly. “Why – how?” The frigid liquid slithered through my veins.

He sucked in a long ragged sigh and exhaled, then linked his hands beneath his head. “You see – more’s been going on than you know. Cal and I have tried to protect you. Sarah Beauregard saw my car at Roxie’s apartment while you were gone, during Chuck’s crisis – more than once. Seems she began to ride by there and came up with the conclusion that – ” He broke off. Then gave a disgusted snort. “Well, you know Sarah.”

I stared at him. Regardless of what Kirk had done, I still cared about the ministry. On this, we remained together. “Did she say anything?”

“Tillie came to Cal, upset that Sarah had told her mother about her suspicions. That’s all it took to get a wildfire going.”

So Tillie’s heard, too. I felt walls closing in, suffocating, exposing me. I sat up, plumped my pillow behind me and leaned into it. “So? Has it spread?”

Kirk joined me by adjusting his pillow, too, and propping upright. “Fortunately, I think Cal was able to douse the rumors by vouching for me...saying she knew about the sessions, had gone with me on some of them.”

“Lying.” I said flatly.

Another long sigh. “Well – yeah. I suppose that’s exactly what it was.”

The aftershock rocked me. “So Cal knows. For how long?” I didn’t know the air had been squeezed from me until I began to gasp at oxygen.

His head swiveled and I felt his green gaze pierce the darkness. “Not long. Honest, honey. I needed somebody to confide in, to steer me. I felt I was losing my mind. I didn’t trust anyone else.”

“Not even another pastor?”

He gave a dry laugh. “Especially not another pastor.” The old secretive, cynical Kirk only mildly surprised me. “Anyway, Callie told me I needed to tell you.”

“How did she take it? Your – ” I fought the ball of restiveness that wedged in my belly.

“She forgives me. Didn’t bat an eye. Said we just need to put it behind us and go on with the ministry.”

“How do you feel, Neecy?” he asked, a quiet, concerned appeal in his voice.

“About what?”

“The ministry.”

“You mean about staying on here? As though nothing has happened?”

He nodded slowly, then grew unearthly still, his eyes filled with hope. “Could you?”

I looked away, my heart pounding as though I’d sprinted cross country. “Kirk – ”

“I know it would be difficult, honey, but my life is in this work. My heart. It would mean so much to me if you could – ”

“I’ll have to pray about it, Kirk.” I lay down and turned away from him.

I’d not even dozed after that. With the adrenaline surge, I could go without sleep. For a time, anyway.

Today, as Kirk ended his message and the congregation stood, I found it no easier to reconcile to this turn of events than I had at the moment of Kirk’s confession. I turned and would have left the church without speaking to anybody had Callie not caught up and grasped hold of my arm in the vestibule. “Neecy? What are lunch plans?”

I turned to face her. “I don’t have any.” The words thudded like ice cubes between us.

Cal’s face emptied and she gave me a hesitant, sidelong look. “What’s happened?”

“I know, Cal.” An instant alarm dawned on her face. I slowly nodded. “I know.”

She touched my hand, gingerly – tentatively. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I shrugged briskly and pulled my hand away. “S’true, you know.”

She stepped back in wounded wariness, her gaze narrowed. “What’s true?”

“The wife is the last to know.” I spun and walked away.

Callie was with Kirk when he got home. “Toby and Heather took off with the Tessners for lunch at the Fish Camp.” He looked around. “Dawn already down for a nap?”

From the sofa, where I sprawled barefoot and indifferent, I took in their together-stance. “Yep.”

Kirk shot me an uneasy, measuring glance. I met it levelly, recognizing and hating the shadow of guilt I saw there. He gestured to Callie, “Take a load off, Cal.”

She took the chair opposite me as Kirk slid onto the sofa next to me, throwing his arm over its back so that his fingers almost touched my neck. I could feel warmth coming from their tips and it stole the oxygen right out of my lungs, leaving them heaving and struggling to refill. When alone, I lulled myself into thinking it wasn’t true, his power over me. In reality, my reaction to his nearness bewildered and distressed me. I shifted, curled my feet under me and laid my head back, saying nothing.

There was not the usual spontaneity today. I didn’t have the strength to care.

Kirk, after long silent moments, began to speak. “Honey, Cal and I have been discussing the ministry and the – situation. I think – ”

My head jerked upright. “Don’t you think this is between us – you and me?”

Callie sprang to her feet, palms thrust forward. “I’m outta here, guys. She’s right, Kirk.” She was already in the foyer when Kirk caught up. I heard them murmuring, voices rising and falling. I sat unmoved, unmoving. Disassociated. Not caring if I ever saw Callie again. Or Kirk, for that matter. In that moment, I could have moved into a barn in Shanty Town, with Toby, Heather and Dawn, and faced the tomorrows. Knowing that, I felt an amazing strength begin to flow into me.

The voices continued, “...it’s too soon, Kirk. She needs time to....”

“...worried about her. She’s not eating and...acts out of it.”

Anger stirred, then buzzed like hornets. “Hey!” I yelled. “I’ve got ears! I’m not going to melt like sugar in a rainstorm, ya’ll. And I’m not crazy. Not yet.”

The front door slammed and Kirk returned to the den, his eyes clouded with concern and a touch of fear. “Honey, you’ve got it all wrong about Cal. She’s worried about you, too. And – ”

“I know. I know,” I snapped. “I just want everybody to stop – acting like I’m a time bomb, set to blow into tiny bits.”

He dropped down beside me, curving to face me and lean in, so close I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. My body responded. That he had the power to sway me after such a betrayal proved something terrible was wrong with me. Was I so unlovable I grasped at crumbs?

“Neecy?” Kirk spoke softly, his finger running over my shoulder, neck, ear. Goosebumps scattered all over me. I didn’t look at him. Wasn’t ready to. Humiliation stirred thickly in me. And need. I hated it. Anger began to rise again.

“Neecy, have you thought – prayed about staying here in Solomon? Could you find it in your heart to stay here, where we could work together here in the church and – ”

It was the desperation in his voice that pushed me over the edge.

My head whipped around. “I can’t, Kirk,” I said firmly because suddenly, I knew it was true. “That’s one thing I am certain of.” I turned from the pain in his eyes. Had to. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But I can’t stay here.”

Where rumors run rampant about the preacher and that woman who was murdered. I couldn’t face the pity in folks’ eyes. Worse still, the contempt, because if he was running around, something had to be wrong with his wife, doncha know? I’d said it myself – not about Tillie, however – but the old adage of two sides to everything now haunted me.

I’d already seen it, this morning in church. In Zelda and Alton Diggers’ not so subtle, measuring gazes. And others of their clan had cast knowing looks from me to Kirk and back.

“’Know what Sarah said to me this morning?” I asked in a weak whisper.

I felt Kirk stiffen. Then, a quiet, “what?”

“She said, ‘why you losing so much weight, Janeece?’ I told her I’d been so busy lately, I’d forget to eat.”

She knew. Deep down, Sarah – skeptic that she was – knew. She wouldn’t have taken Callie’s word on Kirk’s innocence, with such juicy evidence as she’d collected. It was only a matter of time before it blew up in Kirk’s denial-face. I didn’t want my children subjected to such shame and disillusionment. They didn’t need to lose respect for their father. He was a good father.

Above all, I wanted to protect the children.

And to do that, I had to keep my sanity.

Okay, so the Prince of darkness had found my Achilles heel. It had always been there, the hidden, unlovable part of me. But I’d always managed to juggle my self-worth while capitulating to Kirk’s wishes, to his dreams. I’d been his appendage, his cheerleader. I’d helped him row his boat all these years.

Now, it was time for me to paddle my own canoe to a safe shore.

I can survive this. I will survive this. It wasn’t Kirk telling me. It was me telling me.

What a marvelous discovery: I trusted me to make my own decisions. Something I’d not done before.

“Are you going to leave me, Neecy?”

I looked at him, my husband, his eyes bottomless pools of green pain, the most gorgeous specimen of manhood I’d ever known. And I knew I loved him with every fiber of my being and nothing would ever change that. Another thing I knew: I could no longer entrust my welfare to another mortal.

“I’m leaving Solomon, Kirk. If you want to come with me, that’s fine. If you don’t, I’m going, anyway. Because I can’t live here. What we had here is gone. I don’t want to leave Krissie behind, but someday in the future, her grave can be moved. Life here is spoiled for me. For us. It could never be the same. Too many bad memories.” Fatigue caught up with me. Somewhere between words, I’d grown limp and it took great effort to talk. “I’m weary of fighting. Life shouldn’t be all battles. There has to be peace somewhere.”

Kirk had moved closer as I spoke, I felt his breath stir my hair. “Neecy, I can’t lose you. That’s all I know.” He pulled me into his arms and held me so tight I could feel his rapid pulse. His was an embrace of desperation, of devotion and respect and, God help me, worship. “Whatever happens,” he murmured, “we’re together.”

It was something I’d have given my kingdom for years back.

Today, it came at too great a cost.

“Let me help,” Callie insisted, hovering hesitantly in Toby’s bedroom doorway, watching me purge his closet of toys he’d not played with for at least three years. I’d just finished emptying the drawers in my room, knowing soon, we’d be moving and this had to be done. Another thing was, it kept me busy working off this new humming energy, one fed by anything remotely wired to anger.

“I’ll be moving out tomorrow,” she said inanely, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to another.

When I didn’t reply, Cal grabbed an empty plastic garbage bag and began to stuff discarded items into it. A week had passed since Kirk’s stunning revelation. Callie had given me space to work through things, had not pressed me one way or another in my dealing with Kirk, though I felt her sympathy was more with him than me. It didn’t matter.

“Women have more to give than men,” was her pat blanket for most marital conflicts.

So, she’d simply gone about her business when I visited my husband’s office for one reason or another. My old compliance had done an abrupt about-face. The Janeece of old would never have appeared during working hours without a valid reason, simply out of respect for the Pastor’s office. Now, my esteem for its sovereignty was jaded.

“Neecy,” Callie paused to set down her bulging bag, tighten its drawstring and plop down onto Toby’s cluttered bed, “We need to talk.”

Ice water trickled into my belly and I cast her a sidelong glance as I sorted through old ball gloves and worn-out balls. “So, shoot.” No more revelations, please.

She leaned forward to rest elbows on denimed knees and cup her chin in her hands. “Why don’t you talk to me about it, Neecy?” she asked softly. “We used to talk about everything. Remember?”

“Yeah,” I turned the frayed basketball over and over in my hands before tossing it aside. “That was before I knew there wasn’t a Santa Claus.” I looked at her then. “You were the one who told me. Remember?”

She gave a tiny huff of a laugh. “Yeah. I remember.” Her dark eyes grew misty, faraway. She shifted to lean back against the pillow-garrisoned headboard, deep in thought. I resumed my task, ignoring the silence, glad for it. Finally, she said, “When did we stop?”

I tumbled the ball bat into the ‘SAVE’ box. “Stop what?”

“Talking to each other.”

My hands idled and I thought for a long moment. “When you started dating.”

“Really?” She looked astonished. “That long ago?”

“Um hum.” I pitched a Hopewell Methodist ball cap into the box with the bat.

“You know why?” she asked, stretching out her legs on the bed and crossing her bare feet at the ankles. “Because I didn’t want you to know how bad a person I was.”

I snorted, a little too sharply. “I got the idea you didn’t worry about what I thought of you, Cal. Or what anybody else thought, for that matter.” I tore into the pile of sweats.

I heard her long sigh. “I didn’t think I gave a rip in those days. But later – after being hurt so dreadfully by a man I thought would always love me – I realized I was so angry, it ate me alive. I went along that way through two marriages...and then I met Jack Farentino.”

I slid to prop my tired back against the far wall, facing her. “Bad, huh?” It helped – as she knew it would – to focus on someone else’s problems, if only temporarily.

“He made the other two look like Mary’s little lambs.” She slowly shook her thick mane and lowered her gaze to mine. “It nearly destroyed me. If I hadn’t come here and—oh, well,” she shrugged, “the rest is history, as they say. Thing is – in God, I found the strength to forgive Jack for – ”

“Whoa.” I lifted a palm toward her as my chin fell onto my chest. “I’m not ready for all this just yet. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Callie. I just – I’m still numb in places. And the other places scream in pain and rage. I’ve got to – ”

“Listen, Neecy,” she scooted into upright, tailor position, elbows planted on thighs, eyes level with mine, “I’ve got just one more thing to say to you...Kirk is a good man.”

I closed my eyes against the jagged lance. “I – know....”

“Honey,” Cal struggled for words, and sighed with frustration. “All I’m saying is, I was there when Roxie put the make on him. Kirk didn’t have a clue. Oh, he was sorta flattered. He couldn’t help but be, it’s human nature. But his main concern was to help her through Moose’s vamoose. I know that. Problem was Roxie didn’t. She used tears like a machine gun and – ”

“Stop.” I took a long, deep breath and blew it out. “Please, Cal – no more.” I rolled my head back and flexed my neck from side to side, hoping to dispel the dizziness crashing over me as this discussion progressed. “As for forgiving Kirk – I think I can. It’s just – so fresh. Everything.”

Callie leaned forward, an earnest appeal stamped over her lovely features – a beauty that, for the first time ever, stirred me to uneasiness. Jealousy is a terrible, terrible thing, Neecy....

I looked at her then, forced myself to remember that she was my friend. Callie, for heaven’s sake! I felt the thing curled inside me slither to a dark corner.

“Neecy, Kirk didn’t know. He didn’t know what Roxie was capable of...not until it was too late. He was so innocent...I work with him and know him. I tell you, He was like a lamb led to the slaughter.”

I groaned and buried my face in my hands. It was too, too graphic. Callie could sit here and talk about my husband with an objectivity that ripped me to shreds.

I threw my head back and leveled her an angry look. “I’m sorry, Cal, but this is not something I can be as detached about as you can. Kirk and I never – well, we were the first, the only ones with each other. That’s like,” I grimaced and spread my hands in search of apt words to describe our exclusivity, “a gift. The greatest treasure you can give one another. To lose that....” My voice trailed off, and I stared unseeing out the window as the leaded sickness settled inside me again.

“I do understand, Neecy, but you – ”

“No.” My gaze whipped to her. “You don’t understand, Cal. I’m sorry, but you haven’t a clue as to what I’ve lost. I know you feel I’m not giving Kirk the consideration – ”

Callie was on her feet in a blink, in the doorway, squared off, “Seems you’ve already decided what I’m thinking. So, since you’ve got it all figured out, I won’t explain myself any further. I’ll be moving this weekend. If you need me, you know my phone number.” With that, she vanished in a puff of the old Callie-grandeur.

I sat there for a long time, trying to make sense of my relief that she would soon be gone. That I wouldn’t have to face anybody who knew, who analyzed and sifted and threw back at me what I needed to do or needed not to do. What I should or shouldn’t be. Fact was I had no more control over now than I’d had over then. Few would understand that. Least of all Callie, who hadn’t treasured monogamy a day in her life. Not to say she wasn’t a changed person, but even so, she had no exclusive relationship experiences from which to draw and compare with mine.

I crawled onto Toby’s bed, curled into a ball and shut my eyes against what had happened, still happened daily, to my world. It was a situation in which I found myself isolated, wanted to be isolated. I trusted no one, yet, to impart wisdom to me. Women, my former sisterhood, posed threats as base as breathing and gender. Men, were they truly so fragile? Oh, I didn’t slide completely off into the deep, but I wrestled – oh, crazy pun – oceans of new notions

I never consciously moved away from God. I’d simply crash-landed so far removed from Him that I knew not in which direction to begin searching for Him.

Kirk resigned that Sunday evening, leaving a shocked congregation slack-jawed as we rushed from the church before being swamped with questions. I felt only relief while Kirk – well, he looked as if he’d taken a bullet between the eyes and had yet to fall.

Heather’s reaction to moving was, to my surprise, mild. Her courtship with Steve had cooled, what with him away at school and Heather’s increasingly busy college social life. She’d begun going to dances and socials that jerked Kirk’s eyebrows up and down like a wired Howdy Doody. My, but he was a territorial Dad. Too, Heather’s indifference to leaving evolved from a tiff with Dixie Tessner, her pal, who’d betrayed Heather’s confidence, by divulging to Kirk Heather’s tryst with a man she discovered later to be married.

I understood Heather’s hurt but at the same time, was grateful for Dixie’s courage in stepping forward with her information. “I know she hates me right now,” Dixie’s golden-amber eyes simmered sadness, “but I couldn’t stand by and watch her destroy her life, Mrs. Crenshaw.”

I hugged and thanked her. “She’ll get over it someday, Dixie,” I assured her.

And Heather did, they later reconnected by writing and phoning religiously. But at that precise moment in time, it was a difficult mountain for our daughter to span, especially when her Dad went along with her for the next ‘date.’ An angry Kirk Crenshaw is not a pretty sight. He scared the spit from the poor guy, who promptly vanished, but not before Kirk got his license number and called a local policeman-friend to get the man’s address and phone number.

A quick telephone call to the man’s wife – who’d delivered a baby only days earlier – filled in the blanks on her absentee husband’s antics. “He’s a heel,” Kirk snarled after hanging up. “She deserved to know and make right decisions.” This came after his confession to me and I knew that his righteous indignation was, in part, anger at himself, as well.

Somehow, that little statement drew respect from me.

Today, as I packed, I realized it was a first step in the right direction.

“Mama,” Heather rushed into my room later that afternoon, after Callie left, “Come talk to me while I pack some more of my school things. I can’t believe I’m going away to college in two days! No more sitting at the church piano week in and week out.” She hugged me effusively and jabbered about things to take and not to take as I joined her, sitting on her bed as she moved about, all energy and youth and dreams for the future.

“Mama,” she suddenly paused and peered at me, shifting from one bare foot to the other, “I’m sorry about...you know, about the baby. I know how hard it was for you.” Her hands clasped and wrung, then slid down her hips to dry. “We’d talked about how horrible it is for a woman to have an abortion. And it is. But with your health problems and all – ” She dropped down on the bed, facing me, took my hands in hers as tears shimmered along her lower lids, “Thank you, Mama,” she said past quivering lips while I watched a tear slide down each satiny cheek, “for choosing us. I was so afraid you wouldn’t and – and I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Her arms were around me for a long, long, fervent moment, and then she was up and moving again.

In the wake of her hummingbird’s departure, something in me sang of reprieve. And forgiveness. And hope.

My heart mushed as I watched her morph from little girl to woman and back.

Thank you, Lord, that she doesn’t know.

Was it only last year I’d dreaded her going away like I would a pestilence? That I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from her? Local college had merely whetted her appetite for the real thing and I’d agonized at her I-can’t-wait-tobe-outta-here gusto.

Now, I was grateful to see her go. I couldn’t hide from her indefinitely the thing between her father and me. I was casualty enough, thank you very much.

I’d faced many things over which I had no control

This was different.

My silence could, and would, buy my children two things: peace and security.

Many voices clamored in my head as Kirk and I said furtive goodbyes to church folk, only doing so when forced to. Once decided, Kirk seemed as driven as I to get out of Solomon sans fanfare. In his resignation, he’d stated ‘effective immediately,’ hoping, I’m sure, to disengage himself with minimum emotionality. At any other time – given my near-maudlin nature – I would have balked, would have declared Kirk’s maneuver unethical and crudely insensitive to the flock. This time, however, I was in total agreement.

The blind cannot lead the blind.

I had to get away. To begin to sort out the mess of my life.

Tillie Dawson dropped by to say goodbye. Kirk and I were loading the moving van. We had little to no assistance. Only Charlie Tessner put his shoulder to Kirk’s and helped. I knew the churchmen were hurt by Kirk’s sudden, non-negotiable resignation. And the fact that we left them high and dry, without preacher or pianist, since we’d hauled Heather, trunks and baggage, to Winthrop the day before, was a slap in their faces. Of course, shifting Dixie from organ to piano would work. An organist would eventually be found. Charlie Tessner could, in a pinch, lead the choir. There were ways, I’d learned early on, to accommodate ministry voids.

A new pastor – well, the conference would sort that out. To them, Kirk had pleaded health problems. Which was not untrue. We were, the two of us, basket cases.

Tillie’s appearance at my door hit me below the belt. I’d never before known what below the belt meant nor that it applied to emotional, as well as physical, jolts. It was a drop kick to my gut, one that exploded pain in every direction, leaving my lungs deflated, struggling to suck in air, and my legs like rubber. Because Tillie knew. I read it in her big, red-rimmed Bambi eyes and her quivery lips, in every gesture of her Tinkerbell body as she reached for me and squalled on my shoulder. Her arms held me as a mother holds her babe, to protect and shield.

I felt it, her pity. Her compassion. The new me did not want to reciprocate the passion, floundered against it because doing so acknowledged my loss, a thing I could not expose to others and survive. It was one of those base Id reactions I did not – still do not – understand. At that moment in time, it propelled me in directions uncharted. But with Tillie’s stick-figure arms squeezing me senseless, love overrode my self-revulsion and I returned her offering squeeze for squeeze, pat for pat. And when she released me, I smiled at her, a genuine smile of sisterhood. She was one of the few who remained in my order.

I knew Tillie would not mention my quandary, as I had not hers. She would allow it to remain my private hellhole because she’d been there. Hers had been tossed out there before the world while mine remained, at that precise moment, hidden away from all but a few eyes. The difference being that Kirk’s indiscretion, if broadcast, carried far more potential to atomize than Rick’s ever would. Of course, Tillie’s simplified vantage revealed only two women in like-peril. On that level, we were. When we bade one another fare-thee-well, with the customary promises to keep in touch, we both sensed this was truly goodbye.

Despite closet and drawer purgings, the Crenshaws left behind on our lawn, for the garbage men, tons of attic treasures, including all of Toby’s football gear and Dawnie’s baby paraphernalia. I suspected – what with all the trunks and bags transported to Winthrop with Heather – she had carried most of hers. As Kirk and Toby pulled out in the moving van, I followed in the car. My eyes did a wistful sweep of crib, carriage, play pen, high chair, cleats, balls of every shape, shoulder pads and football helmets. At least, I thought, Kaye Tessner had helped me pack up all of Krissie’s clothing, Barbie dolls and outfits, toiletries and school effects into a cedar chest she’d insisted on giving me.

“Take it, Neecy,” she’d insisted. “You need something to keep her things in.” Her rapid blinking kept tears back and I was grateful for her stoicism, more than I’d ever been before.

“Thanks, Kaye,” I hugged her hugely. “I won’t ever forget your kindness.”

She gazed at me with amber donut, no-nonsense eyes. “You’d better not,” she snapped comically. “I expect you to stay in touch. And that’s an order. Y’hear?”

I grinned at her. “Yes’m.”

Her face gentled. “And don’t worry about Krissie’s grave. I’ll see to it when you’re not able to get here.”

Tears pooled, despite my resolve, then spilled over. I couldn’t speak, spread my palms helplessly, then hauled her into my arms for a final hug.

Today, driving slowly from the parsonage, remembering the good and the bad, I allowed my gaze to meander through Crenshaw booty littered about the lawn, the sentimental me torn asunder at leaving so much of us behind. Yet, another part of me rejoiced to leave the hurtful behind. I swiped tears away and laughed suddenly.

I stomped the gas pedal and looked ahead, beyond the van, to new horizons.

And a new homefire.