Devil Mail (23 page)

“Angela, get back in, come on, let’s talk,” he pleaded. But Angela had made up her mind that she’d rather walk home than ride with him. Several people who were still standing around talking outside the church looked on and wondered what the commotion was about, and a couple of the church council members were on their way to investigate when J
udith swooped in.

“Need a ride?”
she asked through the lowered window. Angela continued her angry march for several more paces while Judith drove slowly alongside her. “Get in, Angie, I’ll take you home,” she said with the amicable voice of reason that Angela was used to.

Judith encouraged Angela’s outpouring of emotion, regret, disgust and discouragement, after which she simply stated, “This guy has proved that
he is no good for you, Angie.”

“But he’s
always been there for me, even when my family wasn’t.”

“Now let’s not get silly about this
, Angie. He’s the cause of the distance between you and your mom, he’s the cause of the fallout between you and your sister, you and I aren’t even as tight as we used to be because of him, so to say that he’s there for you in the trouble that he himself caused, is a far cry from him being your hero. He’s there because he’s the source of your problems!”

“Julia’s the reason she and I fell out!” Angela objected.

“You’re unbelievable! You’re still willing to take this guy’s word over your sister’s? Listen girl, ultimately the decision is yours, but I told you from the outset that he was a Bozo and even with the best will in the world, you are not going to transform him into a real Boaz. You know I love you and I’m gonna tell you the truth whether you like it or not - my advice is to drop him like a hot potato!”

CHAPTER SIX
TEEN

A
soul tie is a strong, powerful intangible to be reckoned with; the entrapment and influence of which, up until now, Angela had been oblivious to. She was granted the space she needed on that Sunday afternoon to be alone and to think, after Judith dropped her off. She did that one thing she had been meaning to do for some time, but hadn’t gotten around to - she deleted her profile from the Christian Blend website. “There’s obviously a vast variation in people’s interpretation of what ‘Christian’ means,” she said to herself, ruing the state of incompleteness and longing that had been her driver on the day she subscribed. She also thought of a few things she could have done with the money she spent on the subscription, but counted it as part of the cost of the ‘life’s lessons’ class that she had just graduated from.

             
Reclining wistfully on her sofa, she had no tears to cry; she was tired of crying over what people had said or done to her or what they had omitted to say or do. She was ready to exit the vicious cycle that she found herself in, like a hamster on a wheel, expending so much energy, but going nowhere. She wished for a ‘do over’; a chance to start a new life in a new place where no one knew her. Just then, as if by something far more irregular than mere coincidence, the telephone rang. Her pulsating chest and blinking eyes were her only movements as she listened to the message her answer machine picked up:

“Hi, Angela, it’s Aiden. I hope you’re doing okay. I know you don’t want to talk to me and you have every right to feel the way you do, but you’ve been on my mind a lot and…I….err… I know I messed up, but I do care about you, I just never got a chance to show you how much. I was hoping that with the passage of time, you might…I dunno…”

              How could Aiden possibly know to reach out to her with such words when she really wasn’t doing okay; when her soul silently entreated him to show her how much he cared for her? Impulse propelled her to the telephone, but hesitation arrested her hand above the receiver.

“Anyway, I miss you. Bye.”

             
“Wait, Aiden, I’m here!” She picked up and spoke hurriedly into the receiver, but he had already hung up. Returning to the sofa, she berated herself for her impetuousness. It was a good thing that he hung up before hearing her, otherwise, she would have tossed herself right back into the cycle that she was dissuading herself out of. She fought off the lesser impulses that urged her to call him back. She had every intention of being successful on the road to self-discovery that life had hurled her onto. To this end, she did not answer the door that evening, knowing that her house guests would be Kieran, his inducing charm and his lying mouth. She didn’t answer the telephone either, despite his persistence.

Monday presented a challenge that she was not prepared for.               Tucked in the door jamb, an envelope awaited her upon her return home from work. She recognized the writing immediately. Her first instinct was to file it away in the trash, supposing it to be another one of Kieran’s “I’m sorry” poems, but her inquisitive nature got the better of her. The apathy with which she opened the envelope ebbed away as her eyes fell upon the praying hands on the front of the card, above the words, ‘My Prayer’. In the blank space on the inside, Kieran had written:

“If you forgive the people that have hurt you,

your Father in heaven
will forgive you too,

but i
f you don’t, neither will He forgive you

for
the many things that you’ve done wrong.

Matthew 6:14-15

My prayer is that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for hurting you.

I love you.

Kier”

Angela had been raised on Bible verses like the one Kieran quoted. She knew it well, which is why the internal battle
that followed proved to be so challenging. She didn’t want to forgive him. Her self-talk throughout the day had firmed up her foundation and built up her defensive walls. She could not allow him to just saunter back in and occupy that tender space in her heart that he had violated with his deceit. But she knew the power of forgiveness. Her own liberty was inextricably linked to her decision to forgive him. She could choose to forgive and move on or hold onto the resentment which would inevitably develop into the hatred that would ultimately imprison her.

The doorbell rang while she still held the card in her hand, wishing that she hadn’t opened it. For a brief moment, she thought, even hoped, that it was Julia prancing a
round in spandex and hurrying her to get ready for aerobics class. Instead, she opened the door to the puppy dog eyes and droopy bottom lip of Kieran Doyle; a sight that vanquished her resolve. He had to have been waiting for her to get home, she just hadn’t seen him.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Angela sighed and walked away leaving the door wide open for him to enter.

“Did you open my card?”

“Yes.”

“And…am I forgiven?”

“Well, when you write things like that, how can someone not forgive you?”

Hugging her and rubbing her back, he spok
e into her ruffled hair, pressed up against his chin. “I’m gonna make things better. I promise.” It was what he did next that stunned Angela. He pulled back from her and produced a purple sapphire ring from his pocket. The pear shaped stone was set in twenty-two diamonds on top of an eighteen karat white gold band. Although bright, the stones were not glistening.

“This is for you. It’s not an engagement ring, but I want you to know that one day, I am going to put a ring on your finger
, make you mine and spoil you rotten for the rest of your life.”

After an initial gasp
, Angela took several deep breaths to regulate her barely manageable heart palpitations, then steadied her knees, that were beginning to lose strength, before she spoke. “I can’t accept it, Kieran. I know you can’t afford it.”

“I didn’t buy it. It belonged to my mother. She gave it to me when she divorced my dad, and now I want you to have it.”

“Are you sure?” The ring was truly stunning. With the hefty price tag that Angela knew had to have been attached to it, it was more than she could ever dream of owning. It rivaled the rock that Robert had placed on Rachel’s finger when they became an engaged couple. She couldn’t wait to show it to Rachel.

“I’
m positive,” he said stooping to kiss her. His kiss was warm and satisfying, filling up the gaping void that she had earlier attempted to cover up with her self-talk.

As the couple sat hand in hand on the balcony, Kieran confessed to and apologized for not be
ing completely honest with her, then proceeded to inform her that he had been evicted from his one-bedroom apartment for non-payment of rent. He held up one of the keys on his keychain and explained that it was a key to a storage unit on Greenwich Street. The bulk of his property was in storage and he was sleeping on the couch of the friend who had driven them to get their vehicles after they had been towed.

“Why have you never shared your financial problems with me, Ki
er? I would have helped you out.” Angela spoke earnestly.

“I dunno, I guess it’s a macho thing. I wanted you to see me as a good provider for you.”

“But you put me in a humiliating situation when you borrowed money from the director. Nothing made her happier than to rub that in my face yesterday.”

“I know; I’m sorry. It was stupid of me, but I’m gonna make that right.”

“So…. while we’re on the subject, what’s your relationship to her? How did you get to the stage where you could comfortably borrow money from her?”

“We don’t have a relationship. She kept throwing herself at me, I saw a way that I could profit from it and I took advantage of it. At the time, I thought that if she didn’t respect herself
, she shouldn’t expect me to respect her either. I know that was rotten, and like I said, I’m gonna put things right, you’ll see.”

“And your computer repair business…was that all a lie too?” Angela was wishing for the first word out of his mouth to only contain two letters.

“Well…”

That was not what she wanted to hear. She
hoped for a resounding NO! “I have been getting referrals and calls from handing out my business cards, so I’ve been doing repairs at customers’ houses, and I did some repairs in my apartment before… I got evicted, but I haven’t been saving any money to open a bricks and mortar business, like I implied.”

“So what have you been spending it on
if you haven’t been paying your rent?”

“Stuff. Clothes, shoes, gifts for you.”

“Okay, well that stops now. I’ll help you with your financial management, and we’ll make a success of you, whether you like it or not.” She squeezed his hand.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said
, looking straight ahead over the balcony.

“You’re right; you don’t, but now that you’ve got me, we’re gonna make this thing work. I really
appreciate your honesty. I think it’s a good first step to our success.”

“You’re confident our relationship can survive this?”

“Yes,” Angela replied, “if you’re willing to promise there’ll be no more lies.”

After Kieran
issued the promise that she was so eager to hear, Angela sat in silent awe listening to Kieran’s poetic speech inspired by the picturesque landscape that had so often stolen her breath. “Consider how starkly the glory of nature mirrors life. When in bloom, having fulfilled its purpose and reached its utmost potential, the beauty of a flower is so simplistic, revealing nothing of the complexities it underwent to arrive at that destination. No one cares to see the seed when it is buried in the darkness of the earth; or the roots burrowing deep into the soil; or the strenuous push of the seedling to break through the earth only to withstand many adverse elements in order to finally conform to its design. That’s what our relationship will be like when in bloom, people will only see the glory of it, complexities concealed.”

Staggered by such eloquence, and in fear of uttering a completely incongruous, half-baked sentence, Angela chose
not to speak, except to say, “Mmm.”       

Kieran remained true to his word to make things right with Sasha. After the mid-week service, he called her to where he and Angela stood at the back of the church hall, handed her an envelope and told her that he should never have taken a loan from her, but he would have the rest of the money by the following week.

“Oh, jus
t wait until you have all of it.” She pressed it back into his hand, glancing at Angela.

“It’s okay, she knows all about it. We’re not
keeping secrets from each other; that’s why I’m doing this openly in front of her so that no one can have anything over her,” Kieran said accusingly. Angela felt like a queen to hear her man stand up for her like that. She withheld the condescending look that she was so tempted to throw down her nose at Sasha, choosing rather to keep a dignified silence.

“My business is up and running now, so I’ll get the rest of the money to you next
week,” he insisted, handing the envelope back to her.

“Ooh, what’s she done to you? Got you trained like a regular little puppy dog, hasn’t she
!” Sasha sneered. Turning to Angela, she warned, “It will come back to bite you if you don’t allow him to be a real man.” Scorned, but by no means defeated, she stepped off.

The couple said nothing until they were in Kieran’
s SUV. “I thought you promised there’d be no more lies. Why did you tell her that your business was up and running?”

“I didn’t lie to
you
, we agreed to no more lies between
us
. I just wanted her to know that I didn’t need her money.”

“So it’s okay to lie as long as you’re not lying to me?”

“No, I didn’t say that…”

“A lie is a lie, Kieran.”

“You’re right, just like the lie you told to your own mother about having tons of work to do, just so you could leave to be with me. But I guess that was okay, that didn’t qualify?”  His clear and accurate recollection of the facts was an effective muzzle over Angela’s mouth. What could she say? He was right. She had lied and little did he know, that wasn’t the only lie she had told over the course of their relationship.

             
“It’s okay, none of us are perfect.” He squeezed her knee, and then proposed that while they were putting things in order, perhaps she should make amends where her family was concerned.  “I remember that first Sunday afternoon that I had dinner at your mom’s house. There was such a nice, relaxing family atmosphere and I’ve watched you and your sister together and I know that before I came along, you were probably inseparable. It bothers me that I’m the cause of you being isolated from them.”