A Whisper of Danger (11 page)

F
IVE

Forgiveness.

Like a neon sign on a building in Piccadilly Circus, the word flashed fragments of a hundred Scriptures through Jess’s brain—verses Hannah had quoted when her four
toto
s had been fussing, squabbling, arguing with each other as children do.

Forgive.

“Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven . . .”

“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive . . .”

“When you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against. . . .”

“Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing. . . .’”

“Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

Jess could almost see dark-eyed Hannah gathering the Thornton children around herself like little chicks. Two would sit on her lap, another would crouch at her feet, the fourth would drape thin arms around her neck.

Hannah’s rich voice would whisper, “Once upon a time, the apostle Peter asked Jesus, ‘Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?’”

In response, all the children would chant the words they had heard so often from her lips: “‘No!’ Jesus replied, ‘seventy times seven!’”

Seventy times seven? Jess couldn’t imagine forgiving Rick even once. What he had done to her was nothing like dipping a pigtail in red paint, hiding a favorite doll, or pinching an arm in the backseat of the car. What he had done was devastating, life-altering, unchangeable. He had betrayed her. How could she forgive that?

“You expect me to ignore everything you did to me?” she asked. “You expect me to forget what I’ve been through at your hands?”

“I didn’t ask you to forget.” His voice was deep. “I asked you to forgive.”

“Do you think I can just wipe everything out? Do you think I can say it doesn’t matter anymore—that it’s okay what you did to me?”

“No. It’s not okay what I did. What I did to you was wrong, Jessie. I’m not asking you to deny that. I’m asking you to forgive me.”

She swallowed against the gritty lump that was forming in her throat. Why did he have to sound so sincere? Why couldn’t he be cocky or matter-of-fact about it all? Of course, Rick had always been a master at playing her emotions. He knew just how to get to her.

“Maybe when I figure out the proper definition, I’ll forgive you,” she snapped. “In the meantime—”

“Pardon,” he cut in. “That’s what it’s about. You don’t forget the sin, and you don’t deny that it was wrong. Forgiveness means you stop feeling resentment toward the person who hurt you. You stop being bitter. You stop letting the past affect how you live in the present. When you forgive
me
, it will change
you
.”

“I’m happy just the way I am, thank you.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I am.” She wondered why the words rang so false. “Listen, Rick, I can see my son coming up to the house now. I’ve heard your speech, and I want you to leave.”

“I haven’t told you the second part. I told you what I’ve done. I haven’t told you what I’ve been through to get where I am today.”

Jess chewed on her lip. Splint had spotted her and was waving as he carried the heavy pail toward the steps. She didn’t want to hear any more from Rick. She had Splint to think about . . . Uchungu House . . . a treasure hunter . . . an incarcerated chauffeur . . . and a murder. . . .

“Mom, you should see all the colors we got!” Splint was taking the steps two at a time. The pail banged against his skinny calf. “We found blue ones and purple ones and brown ones. Some of them have stripes that look like rays of sunshine, and other ones are solid. Mama Hannah said we had to put back the tiniest ones so they could grow bigger.”

Warmth calmed Jess’s thudding heart. She stood and turned to Rick. “We’ve got a soup to make and a whole house to explore.” Forcing down the lump in her throat, she willed her mouth into a smile. “It’s good you’re doing well for yourself, Rick, and I do understand why you wanted to talk. Now, if you don’t mind—”

“I do mind. I’m not done.” He raked a hand through his thick brown hair. A shock fell onto his forehead. “You may not want to be healed, Jessie, but I do. I’ve been working on this process for years. I’ve slogged my way through most of it—the stuff with my parents, all the moves we made when I was a kid, boarding school, my fears and frustrations, all that. I’ve made my peace with Christ. I’ve tackled everything head-on . . . everything except you.”

“They have little gooey white feet that come sliding out from between the two shells,” Splinter called up to his mother. “Mama Hannah says that’s how they dig down into the sand.”

“That’s great, honey,” Jess said. “Look, Rick—”

“I’ve been searching for you a long time, Jessie.”

“Come on, Rick. Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s the truth. I tried to talk to your dad. His secretary said he was too busy to see me. Your sister Tillie is living somewhere in West Africa. Mali, I think. Fiona’s hiding out with her elephant research project and won’t take visitors. About two months ago I finally found Grant near Mount Kilimanjaro. He told me you were living in London.”

“Grant told you that?”

“Ask him. We had a good visit, but he wouldn’t give me your address. So I put in for a vacation at the end of September. I was going to fly to London. My coworker’s sister has a flat there. I planned to stay with her family while I looked for you.”

“Rick, please—”

“You know I’d have found you eventually, Jessie.” He gently took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “With God’s grace, I’ve rebuilt my life from the ground up. But there’s still one big hole, and I can’t figure any way to patch it. That hole is our marriage.”

“We had no marriage.”

“Eleven years ago, you married me. Unless there’s something I don’t know, you’re still my wife.”

Unable to speak, Jess grabbed the iron rail. A chill washed through her veins. She could hear her son’s feet padding on the steps behind her, but she couldn’t make herself turn around.

She
was
Rick’s wife.

In all the years, she had done nothing about it. There had been no point. She’d had a son to raise. Work to do. A life to live. She hadn’t been interested in dating anyone, and she had had no desire to fall into the marriage trap again.

Rick was long out of her world. A divorce cost money she didn’t have. Divorce meant facing the pain of her past. Worst of all, divorce might mean she would have to locate Rick. Might have to tell him about Spencer. So she had let it go.

“Sometimes you find a clamshell where the animal’s already out,” Splint said, coming up behind her. “If the two sides of the shell are still stuck together, they look just like a butterfly’s wings.”

He threw one wet arm around her waist and gave her a noisy kiss on the cheek. Swinging the pail between Jess and Rick, he lifted it high to show them both his catch.

“How about this?” he said. “Does this look like lunch, or what?”

Jess stared down into the pail of tiny, colorful butterfly clams. “Wow,” she managed.

“See, what you do is, you look on the sand right after a wave flows over it. If you search carefully, you’ll see two tiny dots—little air-holes with bubbles coming out of them. Stick your finger straight down between the two holes, and guess what?”

“You’ll find a clam,” Rick finished. “Way to go, Splinter! I know a lot about sea life, but I didn’t know that.”

“Mama Hannah taught me. She’s awesome.”

“Hey, ever tasted octopus?”

“No way! Can you eat an octopus? Which part?”

“The legs. They’re a bargain, you know. Catch one octopus, and you get eight legs.”

Splinter laughed as he pushed past his mother and grabbed Rick’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s go put these clams in the kitchen, and then you can show me how to catch an octopus.”

“You’ve got to have special equipment for that.” Rick followed the boy up the last few steps. “Tell you what. One of these days, I’ll show you all the equipment I dive with. I use most of it for excavating, but I need protection, too. You never know what you might run into around a shipwreck.”

“Like what? Sharks?”

“Not too many of those inside a reef. I’ve had some trouble with moray eels, though. Sea urchins can be nasty, too, but about all you can do is avoid them. You want to watch out for scorpion fish. And have you ever heard of the Portuguese man-of-war?”

Jess felt her shoulders sag as she watched her son and his father walk toward the house. Rick had taken the heavy pail of clams in one hand. With the other, he clasped Splinter’s shoulder. Only a blind man could fail to see how much alike they were. They even walked the same way—a long, loose, loping stride. Shoulders straight and heads held high, they continued to converse. Surely Rick knew. Surely it wouldn’t be long before Splint knew, too.

Dear God!

“It is a beautiful day which the Lord has made,” Hannah said, finally reaching the level where Jess stood. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Jess decided she would rejoice and be glad in her first day at Uchungu House—no matter what. She had all but emptied her savings account to buy the airplane tickets to Zanzibar, and she wasn’t about to back out now. Maybe she could be called unforgiving, hard-hearted, and cold, but no one could call her a coward. True, she’d never had to juggle a shipwreck, a murderer, and an unwanted husband all at the same time. But none of those things had to defeat her.

“I’ll set up parameters for Hunky Wallace,” she told Hannah that afternoon after a lunch of hot clam chowder and fresh pineapple slices. In spite of Splinter’s pleas, Jess had not invited Rick McTaggart to dine with them. Now she and Hannah were working their way through the house, unlocking and exploring the rooms, rearranging furniture, straightening pictures, and setting up the few decorative items Jess had managed to fit into her suitcase.

“I’ll agree to let Hunky cross my property so he can explore the shipwreck, if he wants,” she said, “but in the process, he’ll abide by my rules. No more sleep- shattering morning arrivals. And no more breakfasts at Uchungu House. If he comes quietly, does his diving, and then leaves, I won’t protest. But I don’t want him talking to Splint or to anyone else.”

“Ehh,” Hannah responded. As a Kikuyu from the highlands of Kenya, she used the favorite expression regularly. Jess knew it could mean anything from “What a great idea” to “I can’t believe my own ears.”

Picking through a ring of keys Miriamu had given her, Jess tried each of them in the lock of a door on the second floor. “Don’t you agree I should keep Hunky Wallace away from the house, Mama Hannah?” she asked. “I mean, he’s a treasure hunter—basically the antithesis of everything I believe in. He’s a scavenger. I don’t think he’d be a good influence on Splint.”

“Any enterprise is built by wise planning,” Hannah said softly. “I believe you will build this home wisely,
toto
, whether the treasure hunter takes his breakfast here or not.”

“Well, I don’t like him eating up our food when I can’t even figure out how I’m going to pay Miriamu and Solomon.”

“‘If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them water to drink. You will heap burning coals on their heads, and the Lord will reward you.’”

Jess laughed. “I can’t imagine Hunky ever feeling ashamed of himself for any reason. Oh, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad to have around. Splint would enjoy looking over the things his crew brings up from the wreck. He’s interested in that kind of thing. Did you see him organizing his clamshells?”

“Your son has great wisdom.”

“And he feels morally responsible to share it with everybody he meets.” Jess inserted a long iron skeleton key into the lock and turned it. “Finally!”

She twisted the brass knob and leaned her shoulder into the heavy wooden door. At first it didn’t budge. Then the door slowly began to swing from its stone frame. Inside the long narrow room, sunlight poured through dusty windowpanes onto a collection of artifacts, some of them shrouded with canvas, others bare.

“Look at all this stuff, Mama Hannah,” Jess exclaimed. “It’s beautiful. Here’s a brass tray from India.”