Stepping Into Sunlight (32 page)

And as simply as that, the group welcomed him into our club—Dr. Marci’s Support Group for the Odd and Anxious.

“Your sister started us all on a project,” Camille said.

He glanced at me. “Really? She didn’t tell me.”

“T-t-tell him,” Daniel whispered without looking up.

I sighed. “It’s not a big deal.” I gave him a rundown of my plan to coax myself out of the house and into interactions with people as I battled PTSD.

“We call it Penny’s Project,” Henry said. He sneezed and pulled a paper napkin from his pocket. A few packets of ketchup and mustard fell onto the table from its folds. He must have stopped at McDonald’s before our meeting and soothed his anxiety with a few hoarded items. “This week I stopped to help a guy with a flat tire, paid for the meal of the car behind me at the Taco Bell drive-through, and raked leaves for my neighbor. But the real test came on Friday.” He stuffed the napkin back in his pocket, ignoring the condiments. His back seemed straighter this week, and his chin more firm. “I was waiting for an elevator on my way to a job interview, but a guy’s briefcase had spilled his papers everywhere. I stopped to help him and found out he was on the way to interview for the same job. My interview was at ten, and his was fifteen minutes later.”

All of us were leaning forward, waiting for the punch line.

“I helped him organize his files and pull himself together, and got to the office a few minutes late. But when I met the head of the department, the guy gave me a huge smile. He’d been down by the elevators and saw the whole thing. Said he was tired of workaholics so driven they don’t even notice the real people around them.”

His grin was so big I could see each of his teeth. “They hired me. I started yesterday.”

I let out a whoop that was drowned out by the other cheers.

Color rose in his cheeks. “Thanks, everyone. I hope I’m ready for this. I won’t be doing cutthroat brokering anymore. Just financial planning. But I think I’ll like it.”

“Of course you’re ready.” Camille touched her cheekbone, a reflexive gesture she’d used before, as if monitoring the healing of her bruise. The marks were gone now, but her fingers still found the place.

“Your ring!” Ashley pointed to Camille’s empty finger, and the older woman quickly stuffed her hand into her lap.

“I haven’t given up hope. He might get help one day.” She ducked her chin. “But it was time to let go of believing I could fix him.”

I wanted to cheer. Over the past weeks, she’d wavered between revealing horror stories of her abuse and blaming herself.

“I found an apartment, too. It’s near my church, and I’ve started playing piano for the Sunday school.”

She played piano? Our group focused so much on our wounds; I sometimes forgot that each person around this table also had talents, skills, and dreams. Week by week, we performed debridement like nurses in a burn unit . . . scraping away the dead skin and searching for signs of anything pink and healthy. But sometimes it was hard to see beyond the damage.

Dr. Marci smiled at the stories of her eaglets trying their wings. “Ashley, how was your week?”

She shrugged. “Same old, same old. But I picked up a brochure from the community college.” She lifted her gaze and watched us, suddenly vulnerable and hungry for encouragement. “I’m sort of thinking I might try to take a few classes.”

“Great idea,” Dr. Marci said, with our backup chorus of murmured agreement. “What do you want to study?”

“Well, I sort of like kids. I keep doing Penny’s Project stuff for the kids I meet at work. So I thought . . . maybe I’d wanna teach some day.”

A few months ago I would have choked at the image of Ashley as a teacher. But she’d revealed more than her direct, fearless approach to life. She’d also shown us her tenderness as she talked about reaching out to hurting children. Any child would be blessed to have her for a teacher—although I hoped she’d cover up the tattoo on her shoulder before entering a kindergarten classroom.

“Daniel, how was your week?” Dr. Marci leaned back and pulled her notebook into her lap. Keeping her focus away from the older man seemed to negate any feeling of pressure the question might cause him.

Even so, he played with a button on his jacket and mumbled under his breath for a minute, rocking slightly in the chair next to mine. Matching myself to his slow movement, I leaned closer. “How is Sammy?”

He stopped swaying and pulled his awareness outward, giving me a smile as soft as his voice. “Good. I even took him to the park yesterday. Three whole blocks.” He dropped his gaze again. “There aren’t as many people as on weekends. Sammy doesn’t like too many people.”

I nodded. “I feel the same way sometimes.”

“I sat on the porch one day, and said hello to the mail carrier.”

“Daniel, that’s wonderful.” Dr. Marci kept her voice pitched low. Too much enthusiasm had sometimes driven Daniel from the room and back behind his four walls—the only safe place in his universe.

“Did he say hello back?” Camille asked.

Daniel nodded, looking a bit weary from this long conversation. “She. She said hello.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Marci said gently. “Alex, why don’t you tell us more about your journey?”

“Yes, Alex, why don’t you?” I muttered.

He grinned in my direction, then let his gaze travel around the table. “I suffered—and I do mean suffered—from depression when I was in my teens and early twenties. You know that expression ‘I’ve lost my mind’? It’s an accurate description. So I went looking for it. I traveled, did odd jobs, made friends here and there. For a while it helped to be away from the hospitals and the doctors and the medications that turned my brain to mush. But when the pain came back, I needed something to make it stop.” He stared into his Styrofoam cup of water. “You know that part.”

“So what brought the change?” Dr. Marci asked the question I’d been trying to get him to answer.

He rubbed his chin. “I was in a detox center in Chicago. Not by choice. Police had picked me up after a . . . disagreement in a bar. So I slept off the worst of it, and that morning anyone who wanted to could go to a meeting. I figured it would be the typical A.A. meeting. A chaplain with some volunteers to help lead it, you know?

“It’s funny, ’cause I really only went for the coffee. But there was a family there—with a beat-up guitar and a couple kids. They sang this song, ‘You Are my All in All.’ One little girl with the sweetest voice sang about shame, and an empty cup, and Jesus.”

Alex swallowed, staring at the table as if it were a plasma screen playing out the scene. No one moved, and the silence pulled at us.

“Hard to explain without sounding stupid.” His voice rasped.

“Hey, man. Take a look at who you’re talkin’ to,” Ashley said. “You don’t have a corner on weird.”

Alex nodded but still grappled for words to describe his experience. “God spoke to me in that song,” he finally said. “In that room at the end of the hall in that smelly, noisy, detox center. In the voice of a little girl who probably didn’t understand one atom about the kind of shame and emptiness I felt.”

My eyes pricked in empathy.

“That’s the moment that I started the road back.” Still looking down, Alex began to sing. Gravel textured his baritone, and his voice was soft. But line by line he gave us the song a family had once given him. A family who probably never knew whether their volunteer visit to the detox center made any difference to anyone.

No one moved. No one interrupted. When he finished the song, the only sound in the room was the rustle of Kleenex catching tears and noses blowing.

“Amen,” Camille whispered.

Alex looked up and smiled, bringing us back to earth as he settled against his chair. “Like I said, that’s where it started. Long road, you know? God healed my soul, so at first I figured He’d fix everything. But I was still nearsighted, still had athlete’s foot, and still had something wrong with the wiring of my brain. So I got glasses, some dry socks, and meds to help me with the physical part of the depression.”

Dr. Marci scribbled a few notes in her steno pad. “But you didn’t contact family right away?”

Alex’s smile faded along with the warm color of energy in his cheeks, leaving a yellow tinge. He looked at me. “I wanted to. But I was scared. There was this weird connection in my mind between mental illness, psych wards, feelings of failure, and my family.”

“You were afraid that if you went back home, you’d lose ground,” she said.

“Yeah.” He looked at me again, eyes asking for understanding.

I shifted and looked away. “You could have left a phone message. Sent a note. Something.”

“Do you think Mom and Dad would have left it at that?”

He was right. One hint of his presence, and they would have pounced, pulling him back into patterns that he might not have been strong enough to resist. If he’d contacted me and not them, I’d have been snarled in secrets. Still angry at his choices, at least I understood his dilemma.

“What changed?” Henry asked.

“My work at the treatment center. I kept seeing how important it was for some people to face their past.” His smile came back, a little lopsided, and he looked at me again. “Facing fears is an important step in healing, isn’t it?”

My stomach knotted. Oh, he was a sly one. Subtle as a train wreck. “I think moving forward is more important than looking back.”

“Sure.” Dr. Marci stood for a moment so she could pour cups of water and pass them around the table. “If someone has a fear of snakes, but never needs to spend time with snakes, it might not be vital to confront that fear. But if someone is a chef and afraid of vegetables, it might be important to take steps to desensitize.”

Henry and Camille chuckled. Ashley rolled her eyes, and Daniel smiled.

I crossed my arms. “And I’m not a gas-station attendant. So it’s not a problem for me.”

“But you needed me to drive tonight because your car is out of gas.”

“Penny, tell us about your fear,” Dr. Marci said.

I loved the warm fuzzy part of this group. I wasn’t so wild about the relentless probing. I shot a glare at Alex. “Sure, I’m a little twitchy about gas stations. I’ve tried a few times, but it always gives me a panic attack.”

“Maybe it would help to have someone with you,” Alex said.

“You want to come with me to fill the car with gas? Sure. Whatever.” I pinched scallops into my cup’s Styrofoam rim with my fingernail.

“I could come with you back to where it happened. Sis, don’t you think this would lose some power if you faced it down?”

Excited murmurs around the table added momentum to his idea. I looked at my watch. “Wow, I need to get Bryan home. It’s a school night, you know.”

Dr. Marci smiled. “Penny, no one is forcing you to move faster than you’re ready for. Maybe you can take that step after Tom gets back from his deployment.”

Unfair. The one thing capable of tipping the scales in my inner debate. I wanted to push through this barrier
before
Tom returned. The scene of the murders continued to haunt my nights and cripple my days. Alex was right. Barriers to healing were serious things.

Sure, Tom would be willing to help me, but that wasn’t what I wanted for his homecoming. I wanted to be ready to support my husband when he got home. And time was running out.

I squared my jaw and faced Alex. “You’re on. I’ll take you on a field trip tomorrow.”

He nodded gravely.

Daniel slipped from his chair and ducked out of the room. Ashley gave a low whistle. “That’ll be some story. I can’t wait for next week.”

Camille rubbed her cheek. “You could come to the mission tomorrow night.” She smiled at me. “Are you coming again?”

I shrugged. One thing at a time. Though I did want another chance at nudging Barney and Lydia toward each other.

Camille turned toward Ashley. “Lydia is starting a morning Bible club for moms with preschoolers and needs some volunteers to play with the kids on Friday mornings.”

Ashley chewed her lower lip, making her lip ring flicker. A hint of color rose on her pallid cheeks. “Yeah, might be fun. My shift doesn’t start until the lunch rush.”

Dr. Marci stood as the meeting broke up and then met me at the door. “I think visiting the site will be a good step for you. We can process it at your appointment on Thursday, okay?”

Did she sound confident or worried? I couldn’t be sure. But the knot in my stomach left no doubt about which I felt.

chapter
29

T
HE NEXT MORNING
B
RYAN
ran in tight circles around the kitchen table as if he’d been taking lessons from his hamsters. He thought meeting his uncle last night had been “way cool,” and his morning chatter reached new levels of energy. I sighed with relief once it was time to hook a backpack on him and open the front door.

On the steps, Jim-Bob swiped a sleeve under his runny nose and handed me a jar with a gingham patch tied over the top with raffia. “Mom made some gooseberry jam.”

I knew as little about gooseberries as grits, but this gift of friendship fed my courage for the day’s looming challenge. “Tell her thank you, okay?”

Jim-Bob pointed to his yard. Laura-Beth waved from her front door, her bleached hair flying around her head and a quilted robe hanging open over a flannel nightshirt. I grinned and waved back. “Thank you!” I hollered in good southern fashion.

“Welcome!” One of her twins wedged past her legs and onto the steps, so she pulled him back inside and closed the door.

Jim-Bob nudged Bryan. “She started blessing me now, too.” He tried to sound annoyed, but his small chest filled and a dimple dented some of his freckles.

I knelt and gathered both boys close and squinted as I brought to memory a verse I’d read that morning. “Dear Father in heaven, ‘everything you do is right and all your ways are just.’ Thank you for helping these fine boys walk in ways that are right. Protect their steps, and give them courage for the work of the day. Amen.”

They scampered off. “And give me courage for the work of the day,” I breathed.

Jangled nerves fueled another cleaning frenzy as I waited for Alex to arrive. I gave Gimli the last of her antibiotics. Her eyes were clear and bright, and from the way she fluttered her scratchy little feet against my palm, she was clearly feeling feisty again.