Unspoken (32 page)

B
ryce slipped off his suit jacket as he entered his bedroom, moved to the closet to hang it up. He heard Charlotte join him and turned, smiled, as he tugged off his tie. “A nice evening. I’m glad we went.”

Charlotte slipped off the emerald earrings she had tried as a favor to him. “I enjoy spending time with Ann and Paul.”

He offered her the box for the earrings, and she carefully put them inside, thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Beautiful, but no.”

“Okay.” He set the box aside to return to their shop. He’d try something different. So far she’d chosen to keep only one piece of jewelry out of all he’d asked her to try. But he was enjoying the process. The precious gems to work with were diverse, the designers good, and his wife was a challenge. She would have a dozen pieces of jewelry she loved before he was done. The store would have no problem getting a very high price for the pieces he commissioned that she decided not to keep.

She undid the cuff links for him without him asking. When they were going out for an evening, she’d been selecting whimsical cuff links rather than the more proper ones for him to wear. These happened to be a tiny pair of running shoes.

She’d enjoyed the evening, but she’d been quiet, enough that Ann had given him a couple of concerned looks. Bryce didn’t have to ask Charlotte what was still lingering on her mind. His wife had spent the weekend reading what Gage had written. The sadness was real. Even as she tried tonight to focus on the conversation with Ann and Paul, Charlotte had struggled to stay engaged.

Bryce took a risk and held out a pillow. Some nights she would decline with a smile, but sometimes she would curl up and talk awhile. Charlotte curled up in her chair.

He tossed more pillows against the headboard.

“I think I need to talk to you about the book.”

He glanced over at her, then gave his attention to the clasp of his watch. Her words were tentative enough he knew she was already thinking of changing her mind. “You know I’ll be glad to listen if you do.” He put the watch on the dresser, his billfold, made a point of taking his time. She’d wrapped her arms around her knees. He didn’t need a clearer visual reminder of how difficult this terrain was for her. She was trying to hide.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes, tossed them one at a time into the closet. She gave a faint smile but didn’t comment. He settled against the pillows and forced himself to relax. “Gage is doing a good job?”

“Too good.”

Bryce could see the sadness, hear it. He quietly waited.

“The book is going to reveal that a cop had some of the ransom money.”

He felt the punch of the news catch him like a jab under the ribs. A cop with ransom money . . .

Charlotte’s gaze held his. “Tabitha doesn’t know.”

And in those quiet words he heard her dilemma. Charlotte had been protecting Tabitha from the truth. And because she hadn’t known, Tabitha had opened a door Charlotte had deliberately
left closed for the last nineteen years. “You’ve known that news for a while.”

“It’s one of the reasons John took me to Texas as soon as I could travel.” She rested her chin on her knee. “He’s dead, the cop involved. He’s the guy who came through the door first, shot and killed the two men holding me. He died in a car accident on the way to a television interview the next day. Gage is going to say the cop had financial problems and took some of the ransom money after I was rescued as a crime of opportunity. It was theft, a spur-of-the-moment decision, and only a theft.”

Bryce only needed to see her face to know that wasn’t all of it. “Is Gage wrong?”

Seconds ticked by, her eyes focused on her hands as she carefully smoothed out the folds in the fabric of her dress. She abruptly got to her feet. “Good night, Bryce.”

He simply nodded and let her go.

Not all of it. Not even close.

He’d wondered if she would ever talk about what had happened, now wondered if she ever could. A cop had some of the ransom money. He closed his eyes and prayed for his wife. She was carrying a grief, a trauma so deep that God was the only one who could help her figure out what she could safely share.

Bryce searched his desk for his planner. He remembered having it that morning after his dad called, but couldn’t remember where he’d left it. He heard Charlotte in the living room. “Charlotte, do you see that brown leather-covered planner I carry around?”

“It’s in here.”

He left the office for the living room. She was sitting in her favorite chair, sketching variations of a flower arrangement.
Charlotte held out the planner. “You use this a lot. What do you keep in it?”

“Notes of things to do, my schedule.”

“I see you write in the back sometimes. Your to-do list?”

He hesitated because he never talked about it.

“That’s okay, sorry I asked. I didn’t look.”

He heard his words echoing in his mind. He never talked about it . . . they mirrored hers. He sat on the arm of the couch. “I write my prayers in the back of the planner. The middle has my prayer lists. I find it easier to figure out on paper what I want to pray, then I read it to God, maybe consider it a letter to Him.

“The bottom shelf in my office holds the planners I’ve carried through the years. It lets me look back at my prayers. I put a checkmark beside those He answered, and write
no
beside those He didn’t. Or leave blank the ones He might answer sometime in the future. It’s useful to me to see my history with God.”

“What are you praying about me?”

He opened the planner to her page and held out the book.

She hesitated, changing her mind about seeing it.

“It’s okay.” He put it in her hands. He’d written a Scripture at the top of the page under her name, followed by a list of specifics he wanted to pray for her.

She didn’t make it past the Scripture. He held out the box of tissues from the side table, but she shook her head, scrambled up and left the room. He heard the bathroom door shut. He closed his eyes at the pain inside that was creating those sobs.

The Scripture was from the Song of Solomon: “You are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely.”

He waited for her as the minutes passed, finally heard the bathroom door open, and her steps in the hall.

She hesitated in the doorway. “You see me that way?”

“Yes.”

“I’m broken,” she whispered.

She was breaking his heart. “You won’t always be,” he said simply.

She wiped her arm across her eyes, came back into the room and curled up on the couch. “Could I read the full page? And could you ignore the fact I’ll probably cry some more?”

Her tears made his chest hurt. He gave her the Kleenex box, then again opened the planner to her page and handed it to her.

Is Charlotte at peace with you? If not, you know her questions and what troubles her heart. Find words to comfort and encourage her, lead her to the truth and help her be able to accept it so that she might be at peace with you.

Is there any hurt in Charlotte which has not healed that you wish to heal? If so, please ease her pain, repair what’s damaged, erase the scars, restore what’s been lost, help her forgive, help her forget, make her feel new again—heal her completely.

You’ve gifted her to draw and to enjoy the work. Has she been able to experience that gift to the full extent you’ve envisioned for her? If not, please encourage, mentor, guide, direct, and inspire her today with her art.

Has everyone you would like to buy one of her sketches done so? If not, would you prompt, encourage, and remind them to buy one, and do so persistently, until they have done so?

She wiped her eyes, pulled another tissue. She hesitated, then looked over at him. “May I look through the rest of this?”

“Yes.”

She turned the pages. She stopped on the page he had written for himself. He knew the words on the page by heart, for he had prayed them many times.

Please grant me a humble and teachable heart.

Please make me into a man Charlotte can safely trust.

What have I said today that bugs you, that you would have me apologize for and never repeat?

I wish to do your will today, not less than your will, and not beyond it. Allow me to accept the limits and boundaries and lines you see as best for me, while living fully within them for my joy and your glory.

Am I the husband Charlotte needs me to be, and the husband you want me to be?

Is there anything happening in the world today which is not in your will? If so, would you please stop, frustrate, interrupt, cause it to fail, or prevent it from happening, so that your will might be done instead?

Charlotte slowly closed the planner, ran her hand across the leather, and then held it out. “It’s breathtaking, Bryce.”

“God made me a businessman,” he said as he accepted it, “gave me a desire to give, made me comfortable teaching. But I’ve never thought of those as the center, the way you can say ‘I’m an artist,’ or Ann can say ‘I’m a writer.’ Maybe God made me comfortable with prayer. I haven’t talked about it with anyone. Maybe this is normal after being a Christian for decades. I simply know I’m supposed to pray, and I find life is better when I do so.”

“I think it fits.” She wiped her eyes one more time. “You pray nice things about me.”

“God will answer them. I like praying for you, Charlotte.”

Bryce thought the tone of things between them changed, softened, after she read the planner. She seemed more willing to simply chat with him about her day and what she was thinking. She started leaving him thumbnail sketches stuck to his coffee mug of a morning or slipped into his planner.

He tugged this morning’s missive from its perch on the coffee maker and smiled at the image. He was in a suit and tie with baby ducks playing tag under his feet. He’d invested in a livestock program through World Vision the day before, bought ten thousand baby ducks. Not for the first time, he thought Charlotte was more comfortable indicating what she thought with a picture rather than words.

He took his coffee and headed back to the office. She had made a walk through the house sometime late last night because the books and papers she’d been working on were gone. He liked a neat house, preferred the order of it, but thought she probably was further along that spectrum than he was. Every few days her things disappeared and visual order returned. She was easier to sync up with than he had expected. Other than the fact she slept a fraction of what she should and their tastes didn’t overlap much in music, there weren’t many friction points. He added the thumbnail sketch to the growing collection he kept in his top desk drawer.

The early morning sunlight was just beginning to cross his desk surface. Rather than turn on the computer and look at the information flowing in overnight in response to his inquires, he simply sat and drank his coffee.

Buying her flowers for her Florist sketch had turned into something of a small delight between the two of them. She liked the surprise of what he would have delivered and what the card would say. He liked the opening it gave him to tease her a bit, and compliment her, and find things to say that would bring a smile. He had a feeling she’d been keeping the cards like he kept
her small sketches. He’d continue the flowers after her artwork was completed. She needed the words. He didn’t think she’d heard nearly enough of them over the years.

She was laughing with him more, mostly over the Saturday morning cartoons he insisted on recording so they could watch them together on Saturday afternoon. She wasn’t much for watching sitcoms, and shied away from anything that was a law-enforcement drama. She watched sports with him, or movies, occasionally the news.

She rarely slept without eventually getting up to throw the locks on her door. She was still skittish in ways that bothered him. He’d made the mistake of tossing a pillow her way from the couch, which made her cringe. Twice she’d checked throwing a fist at him when he made the mistake of startling her in the laundry room. He’d grabbed her arm to stop a fall on the steps and she had froze under his touch and then nearly panicked. She had triggers near the surface, and he kept brushing into them. She tried to downplay those moments when they happened, tried to ease the embarrassment she felt and wave off his apology, but they were taking an emotional toll. She was trying hard to adapt to him always being around, but she was certainly having a harder time of that than he was.