A Time to Dance/A Time to Embrace (10 page)

John had risen to his feet and noticed that he towered almost a foot above her. “Let’s keep it that way then, okay?” But even as he said the right thing, an intense desire began to take hold of him. He wanted to kiss her, could feel himself drawn to do so. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning, after all, and the kids wouldn’t come around for another half-hour.

Hypocrite!
The accusation rang in his mind, as though his desire were mocking him.
Hypocrite!

He’d nearly given in, but finally he’d stepped back and released a breath, striving to alleviate the sinful feelings assaulting him.

Before he could leave that morning, Charlene gently took hold of his arm, her green eyes piercing his, begging him to understand. “Things are so bad at home, John. Just understand one thing. You’re the best friend I have. I won’t do anything to lose that.”

That year and the next they kept their obvious attraction for each other at bay. Sometimes, when it seemed their feelings were getting too tense, he’d take a few days off and avoid her. But they always found each other again, whether in the weightroom or at lunch or after school out on the football field. She was, in many ways, his constant companion. And though he still felt deeply committed to Abby, Charlene was quickly replacing his wife as his best friend.

It wasn’t until the fall of 1999 that Charlene and Rod’s divorce became final. After that, things heated up considerably. The early morning times John spent in the weightroom with Charlene were charged with sexual tension. If she was within ten feet of him, John found himself almost unable to work out. The times their bare, sweaty arms brushed against each other in passing or their fingers met in the exchange of a dumbbell, John fought against scintillating feelings he was sure would anger a righteous God.

God.

The thought snapped John back to the present. Where did God fit into the mess that his life had become?

He pushed the papers around on his desk until they formed a neat stack. He still loved God, still believed the Scriptures and God’s promises. It was just that sometime back in the early 1990s, when life got more hectic and Abby was busy with the kids and her father, it seemed easier to skip Sunday service and Wednesday men’s meetings. The coaches who ran the kids’ football and soccer games were not respecters of the Sabbath. Why should he be?

No offense to the Lord or anything. After all, by that time John had been a believer for so long it seemed he’d heard every sermon imaginable. He knew thousands of stories and analogies and illustrations, all designed to keep him on the straight and narrow. In fact, when John turned 35 in the fall of 1991, he calculated the Sundays and Wednesdays he’d spent in church and figured them to be 3,640 days total and counting. 3,640 days! He considered his schedule and decided he needed less time at church with a bunch of people he barely knew and more with his family or alone getting renewed for another busy week. After all, there was no law saying he had to go to church. Not when he could read his Bible each day and carry on a perfectly devout relationship with the Father from the comfort of his Sunday morning easy chair. That afternoon, in the hours before his birthday dinner, he made God a promise, something he remembered to this day.

Okay, God, this is it. I’ve got Your message memorized; You know my
attendance record better than I do. Give me my Sundays and Wednesdays
back, and I promise I’ll be a godly man all the days of my life.

John considered his promise now, in the light of all that had happened in the years since then.
I still love You, Lord. I still believe . . .

Remember the height from which you have fallen . . . repent and turn
back to Me.

John sat back hard in his chair. Where had
that
come from? It had been years since the Lord had spoken to him by bringing verses to mind. Maybe it wasn’t God. Maybe it was just his guilty conscience.

It was true, his plan hadn’t worked exactly like he’d hoped. He’d started off with early devotions each day, but when Charlene made arrangements for them to meet in the mornings, something had to go. After a year of meeting with her, he no longer even knew where his Bible was.

And prayer, well, he still prayed at family dinners and meetings and—

He pictured Nicole’s startled face from a couple days ago asking how come they weren’t going to open the family meeting in prayer. John sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. So maybe they didn’t say family prayers as often as before. Still . . . he was definitely a praying man, even if he hadn’t prayed much for the past few weeks. Months. Years . . .

Repent and turn back to—

The thought rattled around in his mind as though his conscience had no place to file it.

What about the football games? Hadn’t he led a prayer before each contest as long as he’d coached at Marion High? Hadn’t he stood up to the powers of political correctness and decided that his team would pray even if no others did? Hadn’t he been a pillar of example for countless boys who had gone through his program?

The image of Charlene standing beside him near the locker room on the Marion High field late that one night, of her in his arms as he kissed her, came to mind.

So I’m not perfect. At least it was just once. It’s not like I haven’t had
my chances.

He remembered the time Charlene asked him to stop by on a Saturday morning the previous summer so they could share teaching plans for the fall. Abby had been out of town with Nicole for a soccer match, and Sean and Kade were doing chores at home. Charlene and Rod had no children, and by then Rod had moved up to Michigan and taken a high-tech job with an engineering firm. So John had known Charlene would be alone.

He had knocked on the door that morning and found that it opened with little effort. “John, is that you?” Charlene’s voice came from somewhere down the hall.
Her bedroom, no doubt
. John had swallowed hard and forced himself to take a seat in her living room.

“It’s me. I’ll wait for you out here.”

Her answer was quick and lighthearted. “Come on back. My stuff ’s spread out on my desk.”

Alert to the danger of the moment, John headed down the hallway toward the distant bedroom with mixed feelings. He and Charlene were already so close, such good friends, he knew he could trust her not to make a move. It was himself he was worried about.

He reached the doorway and poked his head inside. “Hey.”

At the sound of his voice she appeared from a closet area, her hair wrapped in a damp towel, her body bare but for a loosely tied bathrobe. She gestured toward a small desk covered with several sheets of papers. “Come sit down.”

Had the warnings he felt been audible, the room would have been bursting with the clamor of bells and whistles. But since they were silent, he ignored them and moved closer, avoiding contact with her as he took the chair. As though she were unaware of the effect she had on him, she placed an arm casually around his shoulders and bent over the back of him, pointing out the plans she wanted to discuss.

The smell of her shampoo and the occasional drop of water on his arm made him unable to understand even a little of what she was saying. After ten torturous seconds, he pushed his chair back. “I can’t do this.” He looked deep into her eyes and saw that no matter what she said next, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“The kitchen table then?” She smiled warmly, a smile that said she would not push him, would not force him to cross a line that made him uncomfortable.

He nodded. Without another word he walked through the house to her kitchen table, where she joined him fifteen minutes later. The rest of the morning he was overwhelmed with an aching desire that had nothing to do with Charlene Denton.

It had to do with his wife.

And why he was spending Saturday morning here, in this stranger’s house, instead of side by side with the one woman he still loved more than life itself.

Enough remembering. John stood up and scooped the papers from his desk into his hands. It was time to go home and find a way to get his work done there. At least then he wouldn’t be in Abby’s way. His presence only seemed to make her tense these days.

Maybe I should go home and pray.

Do it now, son, before another moment goes by.

There it was again, that voice. Was it the same one that had spoken so regularly to him back when he was logging in his 3,640 church days? John dismissed the thought. He’d wasted enough time for one day without sitting alone in his office trying to sort it out before God. What was the point? He and Abby had made the decision to end their marriage. A decision they were not going to back down from.

No, this time they were choosing to go it alone, without the help of Almighty God. He pushed his chair in and before he left, he caught sight of the Christmas photo one last time. Abby was such a beautiful woman. So full of life and love. At least she had been.
Abby,
girl, what happened to us? Did we just get busy and quit trying? Is that
the legacy we’ll leave our kids, our daughter as she starts a life of her own?

There was only the buzz of the overhead lights in response, and John let his gaze linger a moment longer on the image of his wife. Without thinking, he brought his finger to her face and traced it tenderly.
I miss you, Abby.
For the first time in years he was tempted to go home, sweep her into his arms, and tell her so, face to face.

Crazy
. He shook his head and the notion vanished.
We don’t even
like each other anymore. How can I be missing her? Answer me that,
God, how?

More silence.

Figures. First Abby, now God. Next thing I know the kids’ll turn their
backs on me.
He stood still, feet planted, and ached for the happy family in the photo.
What did I ever do to turn you against me, Abby?
He gazed up trying to see through the fiberboard ceiling.
Or You, for
that matter.
He flipped the light switch and headed into the cold, wintry night sure of only one very sad thing—whatever decisions he made about his future in the coming months they would not involve the two people who once upon a time had mattered more than any other.

Abby and God.

John had no idea how he and Abby had arrived at the decision to divorce, a decision that would virtually eliminate both Abby and God from his life. He only knew that they had. He thought about them— Abby, for whom he once would have laid down his life; God, who had willingly died to give him that very life in the first place. Abby, to whom he’d promised forever; God, who had promised forever to him.

I was young and foolish.

You were happy, My son . . . holy . . . set apart . . . Repent and turn
back to—

The bitter wind hit him square in the face, and he pushed on toward his car, ignoring the silent whispers in his heart.

No, regardless of guilt feelings, he would not change his mind about the divorce. Abby was angry and hard and distant; she’d been that way for years. Even if they wanted to they couldn’t find their way back to the people they had once been, the lives they’d once lived. It was too late; they were too far gone. And if that meant losing God in the process, then so be it.

He pulled the hood of his state championship jacket more tightly around his head and fidgeted with his keys. Besides, God probably had checked out on Coach Reynolds a long time ago. The thought took root as John climbed into his car and began driving, the entire time resisting an urge that was stronger than ever before: the urge to forget about everything waiting for him at home, to turn the wheel of his car and drive straight to Charlene Denton’s house instead.

Eight

T
HE WOMAN WAS DRIVING
A
BBY CRAZY, THREATENING
to ruin the whole outing.

Whose idea had it been to bring her, anyway? The afternoon was supposed to be a special time between Nicole and her, hours of gazing at wedding gowns, searching for the perfect dress.

Instead, she and Nicole barely had a spare moment to exchange glances, let alone attempt breaking into the conversation.
Be patient,
Abby. Don’t make a scene.
The woman—Jo Harter, a divorced, single mother and a nonbeliever—was Nicole’s future mother-in-law, after all. Maybe she was one of those women who talked a lot when she was around people she didn’t know well.

“So, anyway, like I was telling Margaret at the office the other day, a girl’s got to wear white.” She was punishing her gum as though it were guilty of a crime. “I mean it doesn’t matter so much whether she’s already got the goods, if you know what I mean, but still it has to be white.” A quick breath. “I mean, look at Nicole’s complexion. The girl would be lost in something ivory or off-color. It has to be white; I absolutely insist.” She smacked her lips, rubbing in an excessive coat of lipstick, and sorted hastily through a rack of gowns.

Nicole shot Abby a look. “Actually, I like white, but I’m looking for a—”

“I found it!” The woman’s bright red hair stood out in stark contrast to the white dresses hanging on the rack. Her freckled face flushed an uncomfortable pink as she jerked a dress free. It had a high neckline, but the hem stopped short just below the knee, where the dress cut away and curved into three lacy trains that dangled from the back.

It’s hideous; it looks half done.

Abby resisted the urge to say so but cast a knowing look at Nicole.
Oh, honey, I hope things’ll get easier for you two. There’s nothing more
wonderful than sharing a friendship with your mother-in-law.
Abby remembered Hattie Reynolds and wondered how the woman was doing. She was in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease and had been relegated to an assisted living home. It’d been months since they’d talked or even— “Well—” Nicole interrupted Abby’s thoughts and looked at the dress thoughtfully—“it’s not really what I had in mind, honestly.”

Jo’s face fell. “It’s the absolute newest style, Nicole. Haven’t you been reading the magazines?”