Return to Me (8 page)

“I wish you here, Elena. I’m worried about her. She didn’t look good. More than thin and tired. She looks . . . lost, beaten. She’s Roxy, but not. Know what I mean?”

No, I don’t know what you mean. I’m afraid to know what you

mean.

Elena pressed the palm of her free hand against her stomach. “My flight’s scheduled to return tomorrow at 5:43. I’ll go straight to Dad’s from the airport. Will you meet me there?”

“I’ll be there.”

A light rap on the meeting room door reminded Elena it was time to focus on business matters. She covered the mouthpiece. “Just a moment.” Then she lowered her voice. “I’ve got to go, Wyatt.” She drew a breath. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Call me tonight when you’re free.” “Okay. I will. Bye.”

Phone still in hand, she walked to the door and opened it to reveal the store manager.

It was going to be a dreadful day.

=

Roxy ran her fingers across the spines of the books on the shelf. Her father’s library was expansive. He loved to read, and his tastes were eclectic — fiction, biography, history, how-to, self-help.

This particular bookcase held religious titles, dozens and doz- ens of them. Books on studying the Bible, counseling, leadership,

discipleship, Christian growth, evangelism. Biographies of people of faith. Biographies of people of the Bible. The history of the Chris- tian church. On the top shelf, there were six different translations of the Bible, two hardbacks, two paperbacks, two leather-bound.

She pulled one of the paperbacks off the shelf and riffled through the whispery-thin pages. There were notes in the margins, some in ink, some in pencil. Sentences and words were underlined or highlighted throughout.

From the distant past — she would have been five, perhaps six at the time — came the memory of her parents, seated together on the sofa, her father reading aloud from a well-worn Bible. Her mother’s eyes were closed as she listened, her right hand resting on his knee.

They’d been so happy. Content. United. In love. She wished she could step into that memory and become a permanent part of it. She wished she had more memories like it. Years and years and years of such memories. They were too few, these distant glimpses of her mother.

Roxy slipped the Bible back into its spot.

How different would her life be if Carol Burke had lived? Would Roxy have made the same choices, the kind that drove a wedge between her and her dad? Would her teen years have been less turbulent? Would she have wasted her money and her self- respect in Nashville?

She released a deep sigh.

“Was I always bullheaded?” she asked the empty room.

Yes,
came the answer from her conscience
. Always.

Roxy opened the glass door onto the redwood deck. Though it was still early in the day with a lingering nip in the breeze, the sun- shine held a promise of warmth. She turned her face to greet it.

From a young age, she had struggled against authority. If some- one said she must go right, her immediate response was to go left. If they said yes, she dug in her heels and refused. If they said no to something, she did it anyway.

“You constantly stumble over stools that aren’t there,” Grandma Ruth used to say to her.

Why am I like that?

Maybe, if she’d listened when her father cautioned her about rushing off to Nashville, she wouldn’t find herself where she was today.

“Roxanne?”

She drew a quick breath as she turned around. “I’m out on the deck, Dad.”

A minute later, he stepped through the library door to join her. His eyes appraised her, then he narrowed the distance between them and embraced her. “You look like you feel better.”

“I do.” She took a step back from him. “Fortuna stuffed me full of waffles.”

Her father nodded. “We’ll be eating your favorites for some time to come.”

“Dad, I — ” Her voice broke, and she paused to collect herself. “Thanks for the way you welcomed me back. You had every right to tell me to get out and never darken your door again.”

“Oh, Roxy.” He shook his head, his expression sad. “Don’t you know me better than that?”

Yes, she supposed she did. “The things I said to you before I left. The things I did in Nashville. You can’t — ”

“You’re my precious daughter, Roxy. My baby girl. Nothing you did or will ever do could make me turn you away.”

Her throat hurt. Her eyes stung. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
You don’t know how low I’ve sunk.

Her father, a godly man if ever one existed, had a strong moral compass. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Did he ever wake up in the morning, filled with regret for what he’d done the night before? No. At least, not for the same reasons his youngest daughter did.

“Roxy.” He gathered her back into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Knowing wouldn’t change a thing. I love you. Unconditionally.”

Was there such a thing as unconditional love? She didn’t know if she believed in it. Others had said they loved her, but she’d ended up alone all the same.

“Let’s go inside. You’re cold.”

But it wasn’t the morning air that made her shiver. It was the memories . . . and the shame.

With one arm around her shoulders, her father shepherded her through the library and into the solarium. This had been her mother’s favorite room. No matter what remodeling and redeco- rating occurred in the rest of the house, the solarium remained the same as when her mother was alive. Potted plants were every- where. The furniture was upholstered in floral chintz in shades of green and pink, the white coffee and end tables feminine, delicate. The tranquil sound of flowing water in a decorative stone fountain filled the air.

They sat in two chairs, facing each other. Her father took one of her hands between both of his, leaned forward at the waist, and looked into her eyes.

“Roxanne, you can tell me as much or as little as you like about the years you were away. You can do it now or later or never. It’s up to you.”

She lowered her gaze to their joined hands. What could she say to him? What
should
she say? She came home out of desperation.

Did he want to hear that? She came home because she hated what she’d become more than she dreaded his judgment.

“It might help you to talk about it, Roxy, but I won’t pressure you. That’s a promise. I’ll never pressure you about it.”

She drew a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, Dad.” For so many things. Countless things. Sorry for the hateful words she said to him before she left Boise. Sorry for never taking his calls, for ignoring his mes- sages. Sorry for rejecting the values he and her grandmother tried to instill in her as a child. Sorry for wanting things without work- ing for them. Sorry for sleeping with men she didn’t love and who didn’t love her. “I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you, honey.”

She shook her head. “I was foolish. I wasted the money Grandma left me.”

“It was your money to spend as you wished.”

“I wasted my chance in Nashville too. I didn’t want to pay my dues. I said I was going to be a star, but I didn’t even try because I wasn’t willing to start at the bottom like everybody else. I failed anybody who tried to help me or give me good advice.”

“God isn’t through with you yet. You’re young. You have a lifetime of chances still before you.”

“Oh, Dad. Look at me.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “I’m pathetic. I’m thirty-two, without a penny to my name, without a home or a car, without any job skills except waiting tables, and I was pretty lousy at that, to be honest.” She released a humorless laugh.

Her father lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her fingers. “Everything I have is yours, Roxy. You aren’t homeless or penniless. And if it’s a job you’re looking for, I’m not opposed to exercising a bit of nepotism.” He smiled. “What good is owning a business if I can’t hire my family?”

She was on the verge of a crying jag. She didn’t deserve his kindness or his forgiveness.

“Elena is due back from San Diego tomorrow. Maybe the next day, you and she can go on a shopping spree. You’re in need of a new wardrobe, and she’s in need of a trousseau.”

“That’s right.” Roxy blinked away her tears, glad for the distraction. “Fortuna said Elena is engaged. When’s she getting married?”

“June. You came back just in time.”

“I hope I get to meet her fiancé soon.”

A strange look crossed her father’s face. He cleared his throat, then said, “You already know him, Roxy.”

“I do? Who is it?” “Wyatt Baldini.”

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Eight

Seated at the kitchen table, Wyatt closed his Bible. It was useless to continue. He’d read for twenty minutes and not retained a word.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the image of Roxy when she arrived at her father’s house two nights before. There was a hollow hopelessness in her eyes that broke his heart. He could imagine what put that hopelessness there.

Because he’d played a part in it.

He and Roxy shared a troubled, turbulent past. They’d loved and fought with equal passion. They’d believed sex was a natural part of any relationship, one small step beyond a kiss, an intimate act that could still be casual and without consequences.

That same upside-down thinking was sold to people in movies, television shows, and advertisements. It was sold to them in maga- zine articles, newspaper columns, and televised news reports. Most of the world swallowed the lie. It pervaded every part of American society. The home. The workplace. The schools. It even pervaded the church.

Wyatt had been Roxy’s first lover. She was jailbait
⎯
sixteen

to his nineteen
⎯
but that didn’t stop him. He should have known better, should have had the willpower or good sense to say no.

If not for Wyatt, maybe Roxy wouldn’t have rebelled against everything her father tried to teach her. Maybe she wouldn’t have cut herself off from those who loved her. Maybe she wouldn’t have rejected God. Maybe . . .

With his elbows braced on the table, he covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, Lord.”

He knew in his head that he had God’s forgiveness, that Christ’s blood covered his sin, but his heart felt shame and regret all the same. He’d escaped the memories while Roxy was in Nash- ville. Out of sight, out of mind. But now that she’d returned, now that he’d looked into her eyes and seen her pain, how could he not also see his culpability?

Four days earlier, he told the youth group at church that God promised to cause all things to work together for the good of those who love Him. Did Wyatt believe those words today? Did he trust that God’s promise would hold true in this situation?

“How do You make good out of this, Lord?”

Wyatt believed the Bible was the final authority. God’s prom- ises were true. When the Bible said the things that are impossible for man are not impossible for God, he believed it.

But this? How could God turn this tangled web of emotions and mistakes into something good? Wyatt had wronged the Burke family, whether he meant to or not. He took Roxy’s innocence, then aided and abetted her in her rebellion against her father. At the time, he was young and ignorant, foolish and far from God. But that didn’t excuse him.

Wyatt pushed from the chair and crossed the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee.

He’d loved Roxy once, in a selfish, immature way. It seemed a lifetime ago. In a way, it
was
another lifetime, for he was a different man today. God had done a lot of work in Wyatt in the years since Roxy refused to marry him.

His head throbbed.

What did Elena feel about her sister’s return? He wished he could read her mind. Their conversations by phone the past two days hadn’t revealed much, but he sensed her troubled spirit.

That was his fault too. Long before now, he should have dis- cussed the past with Elena. He should have confessed everything. Then they could have hashed it out, brought their feelings into the open so God could heal the hurts. Hidden in the dark, a wound festered, and that’s what this silence between them had become — a festering wound.

He hoped he hadn’t realized it too late.

=

Roxy turned the sky-blue Lincoln off Cole Road into the mall parking lot. At ten thirty on a Thursday morning, she was able to park close to the Burke’s entrance. She slid the gearshift into park and turned the key, killing the engine.

Boise had grown while she was away, and yet it seemed unchanged and familiar. Her drive across town didn’t take more than half an hour.

“If you feel like getting out today,” her father had said at break- fast, “here are the keys to the Lincoln.” He slid the keys and several crisp hundred dollar bills across the table. “Do something fun for yourself. Get a massage. Have your hair done. Buy a new outfit. Buy several. I’d love to see you looking happy again, honey.”

She’d given him a smile, although there wasn’t much feeling behind it.

“If it’s a job you’re looking for, I’m not opposed to exercising a bit of

nepotism. What good is owning a business if I can’t hire my family?”

Unlike her sister, Roxy never wanted a career in the family firm. She’d wanted . . . more. Lots more. She’d wanted to sing, to be famous. She’d wanted to see her name on a CD and hear her voice spilling out of the car stereo as she drove around Nashville. She’d had a dream, and she’d chased it.

But she’d failed. Miserably.

“Why?” Roxy leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. “Why couldn’t it happen for me?”

Because you weren’t good enough. Because you didn’t want it bad

enough to make sacrifices. Because Elena was right. You’re spoiled and selfish. You reap what you sow.

Roxy hated the voice in her head. She hated herself even more. Drawing a shaky breath, she straightened and opened the car door. She stepped out, her gaze lifting to the signage high on the

three-story brick building: Burke Department Store.

Like Elena before her, Roxy’s first part-time job was as a file clerk in the downtown corporate offices. The summer after gradu- ation from high school, again like her sister, she worked as a sales- person in the children’s department of the original store. She didn’t like the work, but it was only until she could leave for Nashville.