Until the End of Time (14 page)

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Authors: Danielle Steel

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Sagas, #Romance, #Contemporary

BOOK: Until the End of Time
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She was touched when Debbie showed up again on Friday morning, this time with only the baby. It was a warm day, she was wearing a T-shirt and a down vest, and Jenny noticed that she had
a fresh bruise on her arm. This time she didn’t explain it and Jenny pretended not to notice. She was pleased that Debbie felt comfortable enough to drop by again. She seemed intrigued by Jenny, and a little infatuated with her. She looked as though she felt safe sitting in her kitchen, talking about nothing in particular as she nursed her baby. He was four months old. Debbie said she didn’t want to get pregnant again. She had all she could handle with four kids. And she didn’t say a word about her husband, except that they had gone to high school together, and got married when she got pregnant right after graduation. She was twenty-four years old, and her oldest son was six. She also had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and the baby.

“You don’t want kids?” she asked Jenny with interest, but she looked as though she was afraid to offend her.

“Yes, I do,” Jenny said quietly. “I had a hard time getting pregnant, and I had an ectopic pregnancy two months ago. It was kind of a big deal. We thought we’d wait a few months till we try again.” She didn’t say that it was one of the reasons they had decided to come to Wyoming. For a better, quieter life, so she might have a baby more easily.

“That’s too bad. I’m sorry,” Debbie said sympathetically, holding her sleeping baby, who had fallen asleep at her breast. She looked like a child herself, and the bruise on her arm looked nasty. Jenny thought she could discern a handprint in the shape of the bruise but she wasn’t sure, and she was afraid to ask her and frighten her from coming to visit again. She wanted to establish a bond with her and see if she could help her. The bruise on her face was fading, and Jenny could tell she had put makeup on it to conceal it. But the
bruise on her arm was fresh and clear. Jenny was surprised she had worn short sleeves. Maybe no one paid attention to her bruises or cared.

They talked for a while again, and then Debbie got up to leave. Jenny reminded her of the potluck lunch after church on Sunday and Debbie looked embarrassed.

“My husband doesn’t like me to go to church. He thinks it’s stupid. I only go when he’s out with his friends. But Tony sleeps late on Sundays.”

“Does he help you with the kids?” Debbie didn’t answer at first and then shook her head.

“No, Tony works late. He’s a bartender at the bar in town.” Jenny thought to herself that it was a great job for a drunk, or an alcoholic. “He doesn’t come home till about two-thirty in the morning, so he sleeps late. He hates it when the kids wake him up, so I take them out in the morning. He expects me to be home in the afternoon, to make him dinner before he goes to work. Sometimes it gets pretty crazy with the kids.” Given the ages of her children, that was easy to believe, especially if he didn’t help her. “My mom gives me a hand sometimes, but my sister here in town has three kids, and she’s two years younger than I am, so between the two of us, we keep her busy. I have a sister in Cheyenne too.” Debbie smiled shyly, and put the baby in a car seat and carried him out to the car, with Jenny walking beside her. Debbie said she was driving her husband’s car while he was asleep. But when he was awake, she had no means of transportation for the kids. And she laughed when she saw Jenny’s new truck.

“Where did you get that?”

“At the mall two days ago,” Jenny beamed. “I love it. I know it’s kind of crazy, but it’s fun. If you need a lift sometime, call me, although there’s probably only room for one car seat.” So she could only give her a ride with one child, but maybe even that would help her, if she had someone to babysit the others, maybe her mother. “Try to come Sunday,” Jenny encouraged her. “Bring your husband, or your mom and the kids. And your sister. Everyone is supposed to bring one dish, but I’m sure there will be enough to go around. It will be fun.” At least she hoped so. Debbie looked like she needed some fun in her life. She appeared tired and disheveled, she was wearing chipped nail polish, and her hair was greasy. She had no time for herself, and her eyes told Jenny that something was wrong, even if Debbie didn’t say it. She didn’t tell her about the abuse group she was contemplating. She didn’t want to let her know that she had guessed. And she could be wrong.

Debbie waved as she drove off, and Jenny looked pensive as she walked back inside, and a few minutes later Bill came home for lunch.

“Everyone’s talking about your potluck lunch on Sunday,” he said, pleased. They were off to a great start in the community, thanks to Jenny. And he had been working hard to meet everyone for weeks. Together they were an efficient team. But that was Jenny. Days after she’d gotten there, it seemed like she’d been there for months. He had seen the notices for the AA and Al-Anon groups at the church, and he approved. She was reaching out, or trying to, wherever it was needed.

She told him about Debbie over lunch, and he looked sympathetic but warned her again to be careful. “Let her come to you, Jen. If her husband thinks you’re on to him, he could hurt her.”

“I think he already has,” Jenny said firmly. She didn’t believe Debbie’s first story about falling off a horse.

“Then he could hurt her worse. You’re doing the right thing, letting her come here. Domestic abuse is a very dangerous thing.” She nodded, and believed what he was saying. He had counseled abused women during some of his internships while he was training, and he knew the risks to those women. Two of the women he had counseled had been killed. It had given him a healthy respect for how dangerous some of their men could be.

She spent Saturday cleaning the church hall and setting up long tables for people to put the food on. There were other tables where they could sit to eat. And she put out tall stacks of paper plates and cups, and disposable utensils. They had everything they needed, right down to the paper napkins. By Saturday evening, everything was ready for the next day.

And on Sunday, she was excited to hear his sermon. He had chosen the topic of gratitude, and how being grateful for small things, instead of lamenting big ones, could turn your life around. And he had cited several examples in his own life. And as they had been with his first three sermons before she got there, people were impressed by the simplicity and strength of his message. And they liked the fact that he was a very humble man, who had a strong affinity for people. He was intelligent, compassionate, and warm, with deep convictions about his beliefs. He was someone who lived his faith as well as preached it.

And as soon as the service was over, people went downstairs. They had left their food offerings there before the service. The church had been packed that day, with people looking forward to
the lunch. The church hall with the long tables had been turned into a feast. Gretchen came to find Jenny halfway through it. “Well, Mrs. Sweet,” Gretchen said to her with a look of open admiration, “your potluck lunch is a huge success. And all the women in town are in love with your husband. He’s a very handsome guy.”

“Yes, he is.” Jenny looked at him from across the room. “And he’s all mine.”

“They’re falling in love with you too,” Gretchen reassured her. “This was a great idea. I don’t know why we never did it before.”

“Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see the obvious. I think we should do this the first Sunday of every month.”

“I second the motion,” Gretchen said, keeping an eye on all five of her kids, who were running around with countless others. “I see people here today who haven’t come to church in years. They like Bill, and if you feed people on top of it, you’ll have a real winner. Maybe we should do bingo nights too,” Gretchen said thoughtfully.

“And an abused women’s group,” Jenny said quietly, and Gretchen nodded. Although they might not have been otherwise, and their paths would never have crossed, Jenny felt like she had a new friend. The two women got on well, although their lives had been very different to that point, and Gretchen was teaching Jenny a lot about their new home, how to fit in there, who people were, and how it all worked. There was so much Jenny wanted to do. And Gretchen loved it. She had already infused new life into Moose, which was just what it needed.

The lunch was almost over, when Debbie appeared with all four of her kids. She said Tony had gone out with his friends, and they had walked over. It was a long way for the kids, and Jenny heaped
food on plates for all five of them, and sat down to chat with her while they ate. She had served the kids hot dogs and a burger, and gave Debbie a good assortment of delicious foods on her plate. The fare was simple, but there appeared to be plenty of good cooks in Moose. Jenny had enjoyed the lunch herself. And Bill had made a point of greeting everyone who had come and stopping to talk to them. And he had met a number of new people he hadn’t seen in the past month. Several of the people he’d visited came as well, including Timmie, who’d given them the dog, and his sister and aunt.

“I feel like Jack Kennedy when he was married to Jackie,” Bill said, smiling at her. “I have no illusions. I think they all came here to meet you. I’m the guy who came to Moose, Wyoming, with Jenny Sweet. But whatever gets them through these doors works for me. After that, it’s up to God. You can be my shill any day.”

“Happy to oblige,” she said, as Debbie went off to chat with some of the friends she hadn’t seen since high school. She was laughing and talking and having a good time, and so was everyone else.

Jenny and Bill stood in the doorway and thanked everyone for coming, as they left. Jenny was pleased to see that Debbie looked relaxed and happy. She said she’d had a really great time, and it was obvious that she meant it. Although she’d said they weren’t frequent churchgoers, she seemed totally at home.

It was after four o’clock, and they all spent an hour cleaning up. Bill and Jenny, Gretchen and Eddy and two of their kids, and three women and two high school boys made up the cleaning crew. They got the place back in order in no time.

That night Bill thanked Jenny again for everything she’d done.

“You are turning out to be the perfect pastor’s wife,” he told her, and she beamed.

The AA and Al-Anon groups were harder to get started than the potluck lunch had been. No one wanted to be identified as an alcoholic, or living with one, so it took time for people to show up for the groups. There was no one present at the meeting the first week, and Bill mentioned the two groups gently from the pulpit the following Sunday. And that time two women showed up for Al-Anon, and Gretchen came too, to share her experiences about her father. She did it to help Jenny get it going. Jenny was holding the groups in the rectory, which was small and cozy and had enough chairs if more people came.

And it took two more weeks for one woman to show up at AA, and no men. But it was a start, and Jenny conducted the meeting just for her. The woman who came said she had been drinking heavily since her husband died two years before, and her married children thought she should join AA, as she had embarrassed them several times recently, drinking to excess at family events. She had passed out cold at the dinner table at the last one, and she wanted to get some support before she did it again at Thanksgiving. Jenny told her that it was smart of her to come, and the woman looked pleased. She had identified herself only as Mary, according to the rules of AA. Last names were never used, since anonymity was the cornerstone of the program. The purpose of anonymity in the groups was that people could feel safe there. Jenny knew to remind them
each time, at the end of a meeting, that they were not to disclose whom they had seen there, nor what was said.

At the end of that week, Bill and Jenny shared a quiet Thanksgiving in their kitchen. They’d had several invitations but didn’t want to offend one person by accepting the dinner invitation of another, so they decided that it was wisest to stay alone, and they really enjoyed it. Jenny had cooked a small chicken for them with all the traditional trimmings. And they got up from the table afterward, feeling like they were going to explode after a delicious meal. They called her mother in Philadelphia, and she was planning to spend the evening with friends. She missed Jenny, but was pleased that everything was going so well. And she told her mother everything she had done in the past weeks. It was only when she told her about it that she realized herself how much she had accomplished. She and Bill were both very busy in Moose. He was counseling and visiting people, preparing his sermons, and trying to spend time with everyone on repeat visits. And he was surprised by how many of his congregants he had to visit on his borrowed horse. A lot of them lived well off the main roads and said they were snowed in for months at a time in winter. Bill had found an old horse-drawn sled in a small barn behind the church, and he was planning to try and use it that winter if Navajo was willing. Bill hoped he would be. The sled was so picturesque.

And after Thanksgiving, the time flew by until Christmas. Jenny organized a Christmas potluck lunch again, and a bake sale, to raise some money for the church. And after Thanksgiving, attendance at both her AA and Al-Anon groups had picked up. People who had behaved badly over Thanksgiving, due to alcohol, had turned up for
the AA group, and those who had been impacted by it went to Al-Anon. The congregation was talking about both meetings, and after a strong reminder each time, about preserving the anonymity of those who had attended, people were being remarkably good about not divulging who they saw. By Christmas both twelve-step groups were noticeably larger and well attended. She had moved the meetings to their living room, so they’d have room for more participants. They had outgrown the rectory in less than two months. Bill could hardly believe it. And Jenny’s goal for the new year was to start the women’s abuse group, but just before Christmas, she got an unexpected request from two teenage girls. They talked to her after Sunday school, before they left church, and they said they loved the way she did her makeup, and the way she dressed, and they wanted to know if she would do classes to teach them how to look more like her. And they said they had other friends who wanted to join them too. Jenny was their new hero. She was shocked and flattered, and since the theme was more frivolous in nature, she asked Bill what he thought she should do. And much to her surprise, he loved the idea.

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