Mom's the Word (19 page)

Oh…that kind of related. “Sort of. I get it now. Well, not really but I get what kind of not-so-related they might be. So was Karol's father Fallon's one love? If so, that's so tripped out.”

The reverend cleared his throat. “I don't know if she'd still call him that now. I hope not.”

Oh, boy. She'd been avoiding this discussion, the one about her father and Fallon. They were obviously a couple now and though she loved them both and they were far past the age of needing her consent or anyone else's, it was still, well, weird. Neal, of course, found it charming, but what else was new?

“Speaking of your mother. Have you called her yet?”

Huh? “Um, Dad. We weren't ‘speaking of my mother.' We were talking about Fallon and some other dude and my neighbor, their almost love child. Obviously you are avoiding the Fallon conversation, too, so I'll go with the Mom thread. No, I haven't talked to Mom. I need to. I want to. She has called several times. She even offered to come down.”

“But you told her not to?”

“Basically.”

“Which you didn't really mean and secretly hoped she'd come anyway because of her undying love for you, but she has no way of knowing that?”

She chuckled. “You know me pretty well, huh?”

Another smile. “Sort of.”

The two shared a brief hug before Dyanne's father slipped a copy of Karol's book into Dyanne's carry on bag.

“I have one already.”

“Read it,” he demanded.

“That good?”

“Better. Good enough to be published. It won't fit the new line, but I think someone at Wallace should see it. Even Fallon thinks so. God set you up good down this dirt road, sugar. You're surrounded by writers.”

Dyanne took a deep breath and lifted her curtain to look down on the house next door. The children were planting seedlings they'd gotten from Fallon. Karol waved up from where she sat looking on. Ryan turned and blew her a kiss. She held a hand to her cheek as if she'd caught it.

Her father was right. God had put her in just the right place at just the right time. It was what happened from here that worried her.

Behind her, Dyanne could hear her father dialing the phone. She closed her eyes, knowing who would soon answer. Her mother.

“Sorry, kiddo. Just giving things a push,” her father said, lifting the phone to his ear.

“Hello? Hey! Yes. I'm here with her now. She's getting around. In fact, we're heading out of town if you can believe it. No, I'll watch out for her. I'm going, too. Make her stay home? Good luck with that. I'll let you tell her yourself.” He handed the phone to Dyanne. “Be nice,” he whispered.

He didn't have to worry. After experiencing once what her mother had gone through many, many times, Dyanne wouldn't dare be anything but nice. It was the other times, other things she'd said in the past that worried her now.

“Mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It's me. I've been so worried. I've called about tickets two or three times. Your father says you're going out of town? So soon? I don't think you should. I don't know, though. Maybe it's best to keep busy. At least at first…” Her voice faded, leaving nothing to fill the silence.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Dyanne said, biting the edge of her nail, long overdue for a fill.

“Sorry? For what? For not calling? Oh, I understand. You're so busy and now, well, sometimes you just don't feel like talking. It's not as simple as people make it out to be.”

Dyanne nodded. “I know. And that's why I'm sorry. All those times, when I was younger, I thought you were weak. I wanted you to get up and get over it, to see that you still had me and that meant something. I thought that you all just wanted a boy and that I wasn't enough. Now, though, I see that things aren't as cut and dried as that. Marriage, trying to be a mother…It's hard.”

“Yes.” Her mother sniffed twice, but said nothing more.

“Pray for me while I'm gone, would you? I'll call along the road. Maybe we can get together in Chicago or Detroit. Oh, and in case we do meet up, I'll warn you that Dad is seeing someone.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The author I'm touring with. Neither of them has said anything to me, but it's obvious that they are very close. She's a great person. I think you'll like her.”

“I'm sure I will. Your father is a good man. I'm glad for him. And for you. I was so worried, but it sounds like you must have some friends there who really care about you.”

Dyanne looked toward her curtains again. “I do.”

“Good. I won't hold you. Thanks so much for calling. Well, thank your father, I guess. And thank you, for what you said. I'm so sorry that you felt that way. I guess I was too caught up in my grief to really understand what you were feeling. You are more than enough, my sweet. I think maybe I hoped that if I had a boy, he and I could be as close as you and your father are—were.”

“Are.”

“Yes.”

“Well, goodbye.”

Dyanne said her goodbyes and hung up the phone, glad that her father had left the room. Though he'd seen her cry many times, there were some tears meant to be seen by God alone.

They spoke the words like

So much rain, soaking into

My dry soul like the

Best prayer.

Drops became sheets

Hail and hurt

What had quenched once

Now overflowed into

My neighbor's yard.

And yet, there is

No amen or selah

Fit to finish the

Grave and beautiful

Truth. To You,

There can be no

End, only another

Beginning.

 

—Karol

After deciding to let Ryan go on the book tour

“S
o how does it feel to be Mom again?” Rob asked as Karol ran into the kitchen to officially reorganize everything.

“Wonderful, Dad. Just wonderful,” Karol said, stopping long enough to kiss her husband on the cheek. “Or can't I call you that?”

“It depends. What do I get out of giving you the right? The little ones are still sleeping.” He winked.

Karol hit Rob with a plastic spatula. “No, seriously. Do you mind? I see how I let all of this title stuff mess with my head, but I do realize that it is important to address one another with respect. If I haven't always done that for you, I'm sorry.”

“This is getting too much like an afternoon TV show to me. I'll answer to most anything that you call me because I know you love me. It's usually what comes after the greeting that bothers me. So let's shelve that discussion for now. What I want to know is how you feel about all this stuff with your parents. You've hardly mentioned the whole thing—or them—since the party.

“Ryan and Fallon are gone now, so you don't have to worry about hurting either of their feelings. Just watch out for Judah. He's pretty protective about Fay-Ray.”

Don't I know it,
Karol thought. In the days since the Fallon Gray entourage had headed off on down the road, Judah had been harder to deal with than when Hope and Singh moved away. Mia still had Neal and didn't have any qualms about reminding Judah of it, which didn't help.

Faith and Eric—Karol had no idea what to call her parents now—had stayed overnight and come to church. They'd hoped to see Dyanne's father as the guest minister, but they'd ended up hearing Pastor Newton instead. The sermon, entitled The Legacy of God's Love, was all about the family and the power of passing faith down through the generations. When different families stood at the request of the pastor, Faith cringed. There were people with several generations of strong Christian people, some who'd been instrumental in historical revivals, mission work and charities.

Karol's parents had always taught and been taught that education was first above everything, so to see so many people who had given their lives—and inspired their children to give their lives—to ministry must have been a shock. Even harder for them to swallow were the testimonies of doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals who had found ways to express their faith within their fields of expertise. At the end of the service, they'd scurried to their cars, probably half-terrified that giving their lives to Christ would land them in Africa as missionaries.

She'd done all she could to allay her parents' fears, but Rob was no help at all.

“I'd love to tell you that God would never require of you the things you heard recounted this morning, but I can't promise you that. No one can. What I can promise is that if you truly follow after Christ, His desires will become your own and wherever you end up, whether it's in your office in Atlanta or somewhere across the Atlantic, you will have peace. Not necessarily peacefulness, but peace.”

That wasn't exactly what Karol's parents wanted to hear. Fallon's love and forgiveness had obviously been more fun to listen to. Karol tried to get Rob to soften things a bit, but he wouldn't.

“People always try to make it seem like becoming a Christian is going to fix everything. In the spirit, it does. You are hooked up for eternity. In the real world, however, you're in a war, only now you're on the other side. Nobody told me that, so now I tell everybody that. Even your parents,” Rob had said gravely.

He looked—and sounded—a lot gentler now, but Karol could understand her husband's desire to shoot straight with her parents about the Christian life. Though there were times when blessing abounded and everyone was in good health and finances were booming, there were also those times that people sometimes leave out of sermons. Hard times. And yet, even in the valleys, God had been there for Karol. Even when she hadn't been able to be there for herself.

And now as she sorted through all the conflicting feelings about her father's first marriage and her mother's role in it, God was still here. The problem was that something else was still around, too, the lingering feeling that Karol had always had, the feeling that her birth, her life had been a mistake. Now she knew a truth worse than her fears, that her life hadn't been a mistake, but the weapon her mother had used to wrest her father away from his wife.

Rob smoothed the hair back from his wife's face. “Are you all right?” he asked, though his eyes revealed that he already knew she wasn't.

To confirm it, Karol shook her head. Everything had exploded and run down the sides. There was nothing left to wait for, no pages left to turn in her story, but Karol still couldn't quite break through the last wall, the one behind her feelings about motherhood, marriage, even her parents. The last obstacle was how she perceived herself.

“Do you think she ever really loved me? Faith, I mean.”

Rob pulled Karol onto his lap. “Of course she did. She does. She just has a strange way of showing it sometimes.”

Her husband's answer didn't make her feel better, but she smiled at him for trying. “Dad used to be so apologetic. He would give me this look sometimes, like he was just so sorry. It was like grief and guilt all mixed together. It made me feel so sad, even though he was smiling. I guess we always shared that, he and I, a certain sadness.”

“Maybe you shared sadness with your father when you were younger, but I see a wonderful joy in you. There is an expectancy about you, even with your mother. Sure, she doesn't always connect with you in the ways you hope for, but you never give up on her. You never give up on me. Don't give up on yourself, either.”

Karol slid off Rob's lap and back onto the couch beside him. “What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath, as if gauging his words ahead of time. “This thing with your parents has a stranglehold on them. It has choked their marriage. Faith doesn't believe she deserves to be a mother, so she isn't one. Because of that, you have believed the same lie. Now that you know what happened, the enemy is trying to make you question your very existence. Your purpose.

“I don't care what Faith had in mind or what Eric wasn't thinking about the moment you were conceived, but I do know that neither of them had the power to give you life. Only God could do that. And He didn't do it so your mama could catch somebody else's husband. You are not the evil, darlin'. You are the good that came out of it. And I'm just foolish enough to believe that God wants to share that good with a lot of people.”

Karol reached back and grabbed two fistfuls of her hair. She scratched her scalp. Massaged her temples. In a few sentences, her husband had summed up her battle. Her family's battle. In all that she'd been dealing with, she'd forgotten that somehow all of this was a fight to fulfill the purpose God had given her before the foundation of the earth. She might not think much of her mothering skills, but Karol knew there was only one way to win a fight in the spirit.

She slid off the couch and onto her knees. Rob's arm brushed hers as he slid in beside her. Karol waited to see if he would start praying first, but he kept quiet. As the hurts of the past few weeks passed before her closed eyes, Karol began to pray.

“Father God, You said in the Word that the weapons of our warfare aren't carnal, but mighty, pulling down strongholds and vain imaginations. Release me from the thought patterns I've been trapped in concerning myself and my family. Help me to comprehend the truth that my husband has spoken over me today and walk in the fullness of who I am in Christ.”

“Yes, Lord,”
Rob whispered in agreement.

“I thank you God for making me a mother. Forgive me all the times I have forgotten the blessing of having children. Help me to make disciples of Mia, Judah and Ryan. May they go forth into the world and shine for Christ. Bless Ryan and keep him safe. Thank you for giving us the courage and faith to send him. May this trip and this summer set the foundation for his vocation and education.”

Rob put his arm around his wife, stilling her shaking shoulders. Karol's voice remained steady as she continued to pray, asking God to bless Fallon with spiritual children, increased influence and a deep abiding love that would overshadow the scar of her father's infidelity. She prayed for God to give her a closer relationship with Faith and that God would release her mother and father from the thoughts they'd had about themselves and their marriage as a result of their sin.

For Dyanne and Neal, who'd been such a large and unexpected part of God's work in her life this summer, Karol prayed a special blessing for fruit to come forth in every area of their lives and for God to bless them with a child according to His will.

After what seemed a stream of passionate words, Karol fell silent and collapsed in her husband's arms. Rob was usually the lead prayer warrior of the family, but as Karol fell into his arms, she was glad that he'd let her work through this one on her own. Still, it always felt good when he prayed for her.

Her husband didn't disappoint. He put his hand on Karol's head and closed his eyes.

“Lord, I ask that you bless Karol's writing. Give her a new anointing to write for people in this same stronghold of not feeling good enough. Give her pure words. Honest, true words. Stories of grace and power. May her hurts be healing to others. Put her writing into the hands of the right people who can help her develop her talents for whatever purpose You have chosen. In Jesus' name, amen.”

Karol didn't know what to say. More and more lately, Rob had been pushing about her writing. She'd told him again and again that she was done trying to be published, but as her husband prayed, something flickered in her soul. She couldn't do anything after he finished but guard the small flame that had just been lit. Her first start was one word.

“Amen.”

 

Every time the phone rang, Karol jumped. Their last call from Ryan had been three days before, though there had been a text and an e-mail from Fallon.

Karol clicked on the computer and read the e-mail again, still wondering what Fallon was talking about.

 

Hey, Mama!

Your boy fell asleep after a long day and he mentioned planning to call you, so I'd thought I drop a note to say that he's fine and keeping us all on our toes. Our publisher, Steve Chaise, surprised us by showing up at a signing today and he was very impressed with Ryan. Things have gone in a pleasant but unexpected direction in more ways than one, but we're all going with the flow. Lord willing, there will be good news to share very soon.

:::peace:::

Fay-Ray

 

When the phone finally did ring, it was Rob. Though she was happy to hear his voice, Karol couldn't help wanting to talk to Ryan. “I read that e-mail again. What do you think Fallon meant?”

Rob's fingers danced against a keyboard on the other end of the phone. “Who knows? This is Fallon we're talking about. I can't help wondering if she's talking about herself and the reverend. We've been doing some heavy praying the past few days. Maybe they're getting engaged or something.”

“Wait, Mia. No, I'm not saying that you can't paint. You just need to put on a T-shirt over that top. No…Judah. No running inside. And put that puzzle away if you're going to get on the computer…anyway, yes. That makes sense. I guess Dyanne is all right. She didn't really mention her at all.”

“Stop worrying. The boy is fine. You know how he thinks. No news is good news. He only tries to call because he knows you worry. They'll be back before you know it. Look on the bright side. Ryan met Steve Chaise, the publisher of a major corporation in the industry he wants to go into. Not bad for a rising sixth grader, I'd say.”

Karol smiled. Not bad at all. “You always help me see good in things.”

“Only because you see the good in me. Now go outside and run around with Judah before you go crazy pacing in front of that—is that a beep?”

“Yes! I'll call you later.” Karol clicked away from her husband and over to the next line, preparing for either talking to Ryan or getting an engagement announcement from Fallon. What she was not prepared for was the call she received.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Is this Karol Simon?”

Her heart beat faster. “This is she. Is this about my son, Ryan? Is he all right?” Karol grabbed her purse, trying to remember where the group was touring today. If it was Atlanta like she thought, she could be there in five hours, maybe four…

The man on the phone laughed. “Ryan's just fine. I saw him yesterday, in fact. Let me introduce myself. My name is Steve Chaise. I'm your neighbor Dyanne's boss. I've been so intrigued by your son that when I found his mother had written a book for him I knew I had to read it—”

“What?” Karol balled the front of her blouse into her hand as she tried to comprehend what this man was saying? “You read the book? My book?”

“Yes. In fact, I have it right here.
Indigo Dawn,
correct? There would be some editing required and change in the book's format, but our company would like to publish your book.”