Edie

It was silent before Tom returned home.

It was silent after he arrived and sat without speaking at the table.

Dinner was silent.

Silent save for Sarah, who couldn’t bear silence at the table for longer than two minutes and her prattle entailed all the events that filled a little girl’s day. Who was her best-bestest friend now. What boy is a monster, but has a fun laugh. How well she could write her name compared to Rebecca, who always mixed up her c’s and e’s. The fact that six tadpoles had hatched from their eggs and what names they were considering for them.

But dinner was still silent.

A silence that was sharp and black between the girl’s words. A silence that absorbed the tick of her grandmother’s clock, the clink of knife against plate, the lament of Jack’s chair when he shifted his weight to reach the potatoes. A silence existing between the beat of her heart.

Silence cloaked her thoughts. And here she waited in this quiet shell, but for what, she could not say … so she held her silence like a shield against the wind and said nothing.

Lois would tell her she was in situational crisis and was dissociating from the stress in order to cope. Lois would quietly assure her that what she felt was normal, but that she needed to work through it or it would take on life beyond itself and dog the rest of her life.

Post traumatic stress erupted from violence. Lois had seen it a thousand times in her twenty-six years of nursing. Lois had counseled many clients through the stress of injuries and deaths and afterwards. The numbness and silence, the fog inside her head … these were all normal signs of traumatic stress.

There was nothing normal about this.

You don’t discover your quiet husband is really a murderer. You don’t look in his eyes and see a glimpse of something deadly, a man able to kill. A soul capable of viciousness that you only read about in some distant city, a place you would never go and never choose to be a part of. You don’t meet that violence at the foot of your staircase, where it traps your escape, forces you to turn … turn and look at it. Deal with it.

Her own reaction to his aggression, with violence of her own, shocked her. She pushed it away, frightened both at it and herself.

Now, violence was back in her house. Sitting at her table. Passing the carrots to her son.

Deep breath. In. Out.

The silence was so heavy it could be breathed in.

Tom

I sleep on the couch. It’s not made for sleeping. The kids have jumped it to death.

It’s too short, but I sleep there without being asked.

I don’t have to be told … the silence told me.

I don’t sleep. I stare out at the darkness and there are no stars. My shoulder throbs with my pulse. My prescription for pain is upstairs, but I don’t go and get it. I don’t walk up those stairs and I don’t call up to Edie after them. I say nothing from this lumpy couch in the darkness downstairs. I do not disturb the silence that has enfolded this room, this house. I lay in silence like a tomb, alive and dead at once.

I wonder if I will ever go up those stairs again. I wonder if my son will ever look me square in the face and call me ‘Dad’ again. I wonder if Sarah will ever launch herself into my arms without her mother tensing and Jack watching me with his bright still eyes.

I don’t ask myself if this was all worth it.

It was worth it. Even if I never climb the stairs again.

I do not sleep. The silence holds me and the pain devours me. Dawn comes as a relief and I eat dry toast with shaking hands.

“Daddy, you spilled your coffee?” said Sarah. She wipes it up with a napkin without being told and looks at me. “You look terrible, daddy,” she says.

“I’ll be all right, honey. I’m just tired and my shoulder hurts.”

“Mom put your medicine on the counter last night,” Jack says from the corner of the living room. He is dressed for school with his worn backpack on a shoulder … all of it without being nagged. He does not call me Dad and I am unsurprised. It’s too soon for him to have made up his mind completely, despite the single gesture he’d made at supper last night.

My medication was there all along. I sip coffee, this time steadying it with both hands. I wouldn’t have taken any drugs last night even if I had known and the thought makes me wonder who I am. I curled willingly around the pain as if it proved I was still living.

Penitent and punishment have the same number of syllables.

Silence is a grinning wolf, waiting.

Edie

“Will more come?” she asked him.

Tom looked over the engine block, surprised to see her. Her expression was severe and he dropped his gaze. He had a tear in his shirt and his hands were greasy. She was tailored and ready to go to work.

“No, I don’t think so.” He knew exactly what she was asking.

“You don’t think so?” she pressed. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“I took care of it.” He looked her in the eyes; saw the protectiveness and wariness there. “I’m sure no more will come.

She did not ask what he had done to end it, just like she had never asked where he’d gone in a truck that has a tendency to leave you stranded if you ever shut it off. He had been gone for nearly four days, but she never said a word about that. She startled him with something else. “Do we need to move? Do we need to go into hiding to be safe?”

“No,” he returned abruptly. Too abruptly, because Edie tensed all over. “No,” more softly, his usual voice. “We won’t move, we won’t run. Your practice is here and I won’t pull the kids out of where they’ve always lived. Nobody else will come after me.”

“And if you’re wrong?” she said, every bit the analytical lawyer who plotted every contingency.

“They’ll only be after me. I’ll … just go.” He didn’t look up from the engine.

She studied him carefully; the disheveled hair, the grimy hands, the profile of his face that was at once familiar and alien. He was fiddling with the sparkplugs in the engine. Again. As if tinkering with it repeatedly would fix the way it coughed in and out of life.

“They would kill you.” Not a question. Required no answer. He was silent, studying his box of tools. “You didn’t go with them before, so why would you go the next time?”

His voice was soft, wearied and disconnected. “I didn’t go with Fogarty because I knew once he killed me; he’d be back for you and the kids. He would have murdered all of you and done it … badly.” He looked at her then. “And he would have saved you for last, to watch all of it.”

“Why?” she said, stunned. “Why us, when he was after you? Jesus, we aren’t anything to him. Why would he want to come back and hurt your family after he got you?”

He whispered back, nearly inaudibly, “You don’t want me to answer that.”

Deep breath. In. Out.

She left him staring silently at the truck and went to work.

Tom

His shoulder healed from an angry wound to a red pucker. When the weather turned even colder, the brisk autumn leading into winter, it throbbed. He flushed the remainder of his pain medications down the toilet. His back hurt every day from the couch, but he did not complain.

His son seldom spoke, but watched him often. When he walked to work, Jack stood at a window watching until he was lost around the corner. When he read the paper, Jack shot glances from the kitchen where he helped with dinner. The first time he went out to split wood after the shooting, his son stared down at him from an upstairs window. Eventually he came down to join him and they stacked and split wood in silence.

Tom ached inside and out. His son was mature enough to come and join him in the work without being asked, but the distance between them was a chasm, stifling all conversation.

Silence that sweat.

Edie

In first grade, she was the only child with no parent there on Parent Night. She stood and said her poem, showed the classroom of parents the drawing she had made and they all clapped politely.

But no one beamed from that audience just for her and no one took her photo. When the other children proudly showed off their desks and books, she sat and drew another picture while she waited for the dismissal bell to walk home. Her teacher came and sat with her, which only magnified the sense of abandonment.

She knew her mother couldn’t be there. She knew that her mother worked two jobs and did sewing at night just to keep them in clothes and shoes. She just didn’t realize how much it would hurt. Her mother told her to be strong and she tried, but she cried a few tears on the way home that day.

Divorce was not common to her generation. It was as hushed and ill spoken of as a pregnancy out of wedlock. Only you couldn’t send the offending girl away until the event was over and then she returned as if nothing had happened. The gossip was lively and Edie’s mother met it with her head up as best she could.

The Morrisons moved to a different country town, but it didn’t take long for the oddness of Edie’s family to be known. The little girls down the street did not want to play with them. They were ‘undesirables’ because they didn’t have a daddy.

However, Edie’s mother was a lovely woman with a vivacious personality. There were many suitors who vied for her and some of them were not the best of characters. There were many nights when Edie and her little sister were put to bed with loud conversation and music in the house. Sometimes there were bottles lined up on the counter and people dancing around in hallways.

Edie knew she had to be brave and strong and learn to be alone. But all she wanted was her mother to come and read them bedtime stories the way she used to. The wind raking through the trees became monsters trying to get in her window. The shadows played tricks on her eyes and her mind. Her little sister would creep into bed with her night after night; sure that Edie was big enough to keep the monsters at bay.

When morning came, Edie would find food for them both, because it was rare after one of those noisy parties that her mother ever appeared before noon. Edie learned how to make toast and pour milk and cereal without making noise. She learned games that kept both little girls from making a sound to wake the house. She was strong. And brave.

Once, her little sister cut herself badly on a bottle that had been dropped. Edie wrapped her bleeding arm up in a cloth and walked down to the shop on the corner. They were cared for kindly enough, but the sheriff was very angry with their mother. After they were taken home, both girls were punished for walking down to the store in nothing but their pajamas.

Edie practiced on her dolls until she could put on a good bandage. She practiced many things so she could handle anything that came up without needing a parent around.

At age ten, her mother remarried and Edie was delighted to have a new daddy. Finally, they were a complete family and no longer the ostracized undesirable children.

But her new daddy was a harsh taskmaster and found fault with nearly everything in her young life. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be brave and strong, she had to be perfect as well. She worked harder at school and received high marks, but those never seemed to be noticed. The poor marks were harshly criticized, however.

Her new daddy always seemed to have money to buy whatever things he was interested in, but there was hardly any money for necessities for the two girls. Edie remembered the horrid feeling of walking to school in shoes with holes in them. And not just worn spots—but holes that went all the way through. Her mother would cut pieces of cardboard to fit over the holes, but in the rainy weather of autumn, by the time she got to school, the cardboard had become a soggy mess.

She learned to put on a strong brave front to hide the terrible feelings she had inside. She learned to do without nice things. She knew she had to be strong and brave and not care about what anyone else had to say. She couldn’t depend on anyone except herself.

She was strong and brave when her mother cried and her daddy was yelling terrible things. Edie knew she must not go downstairs and ask what was wrong. She learned to say nothing when her mother wore her makeup heavier than usual. She put all her energy into being strong, being perfect.

She was earning straight A’s by the time she was in sixth grade and they never faltered the rest of the way through school. She graduated at the top of her class. Her mother attended, but her daddy did not. Everyone thought it odd that her mother wore dark glasses in the old gymnasium, but Edie smiled and was glad her mother was there.

She became a lawyer, still being brave and strong. Her need to be perfect drove her to long hours of study and her marks reflected it. She drilled caseload after caseload mentally until they all stayed in her head. When colleagues challenged her, she needed to prove how capable she was with the Law and she was seldom wrong.

She had few friends amongst her peers, but she did not mind. She was used to being alone and being strong. Nothing could touch her, nothing could harm her.

Tom

The diner was crowded. It was crowded all day, every day. He’d lost track of the days. They blended one into the other like the grease scraped off the griddle. He fell behind on the coffee order and had to go down the street and buy it full cost from the market.

They gave it to him wholesale price because it was Tom Stall.

The money was good and he split it with his waitress, Charlotte, and cook, Mick. A portion he set aside to tear out and replace the floor where the bloodstains lingered. Oddly, many patrons wanted it to stay as a reminder of what had happen in their quiet little town diner.

Tom wanted it out. He was very patient with his reasons. He explained it twice. They ceased arguing when he raised his voice about the necessity of it.

He sat on the back steps of the diner for twenty minutes to calm down, telling himself that the blood on the floor didn’t matter. By the time a month went by with all the grime that was tracked in, it wouldn’t be noticeable anyway.

It didn’t matter. Really. He convinced himself it didn’t matter. He sat a long time convincing himself and getting his hands to stop shaking.

Get a grip. Get a grip on yourself.

But when he went inside, three locals had the stools unbolted and the handyman for Harvey’s had a crowbar under the fifth tile already.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly.

“It matters to you, so it matters to us,” said someone watching.

“I don’t have the flooring ordered yet.”

“We’ll watch our feet, Tom. Just go on with business.”

Regular customers not only watched their footing, but they looked out for new customers who didn’t know the flooring was torn up.

The pace of business never changed. They put in a second coffee maker, one that held forty cups. Two crates of dinnerware arrived and they had to put every piece into circulation to keep up. When the linoleum replacement tiles arrived, Tom didn’t notice that they had been put down until he swept up that night. He didn’t notice they had a new menu board, either. Charlotte got a different haircut and Tom looked at her for five minutes before asking if something had changed.

Everyone noticed him, though. The faraway look to his eyes that didn’t used to be there. The silences beyond his normal taciturn nature. The way he always seemed to be looking down, doing ‘things’ instead of visiting and dealing with customers.

“Our man Stall has never killed a man,” said one patron. “Nasty business, that. His hands are bloody even though they’re clean.”

Tom said nothing to the overheard comment, but he had to take another customer’s order twice because he couldn’t concentrate. A dropped plate brought him up short, startled. His heart didn’t slow down for twenty minutes.

He started sitting alone on the steps in the alley for breaks instead of sliding into a corner booth and having coffee. Once, Mick saw him smoking a cigarette—Tom hadn’t smoked for years. When Mick fixed his favorite burger, Tom only ate half now. He fed the rest to the two stray cats behind the diner. The lines in his face deepened. His eyes were bright amidst lingering circles. His tan faded away. The barber, in after a slice of chocolate cake, asked him why he was letting his hair get away from him and Tom came that afternoon for a haircut. It only accented how pale he was, how thin he was getting.

“You need a vacation away from work,” said Charlotte. “You and Edie give me your kids for the weekend and go somewhere.”

“No,” said Tom. “We’re fine.” His tone left no room to argue and she didn’t.

Edie

She was an excellent lawyer, but it wasn’t for the money. She took clients that could pay, but many who could not pay: clients no one else would take because they were undesirables. Whenever she heard that label amongst her colleagues, she was immediately interested. It became commonplace for the lawyers more concerned with money to shuffle the unattractive cases to her.

Edie didn’t mind. She had enough money to get by and a little house that she’d purchased. She cared little for fine clothes and wore her hair plainly. There was no room in her life for suitors or dancing, the trivial things of life. Her job was her passion. She was strong enough to defend those who weren’t strong enough. And she was brave enough to face any lawyer brought in from the city two hundred seventy miles away. And her skill was nearly perfect, because she could not bear any gaps in her defense or offense.

All sneering stopped when Edie turned off her charming smile and turned on her lawyer voice in the courtroom. Not once in the first five years did any lawyer for the opposition pull a little known case out of the past to prove a point, but what he’d find Edie already there. And on cases she knew would lose, she argued points so convincingly and with such strength that her clients usually received lighter sentences. She never let the courtroom dramatics derail her concentration on the facts, nor would she let the jury forget them.

Her stress came later. She only melted down when she was alone, where no one could see how much energy it took out of her to be so calm, so collected. And she cried because she was tired of being brave. And strong. And perfect. Cried because her fear of losing was so great that it drove her relentlessly to not lose. She had to be perfect and win. Win at all costs, even herself.

No one could guess how much a little girl she remained inside, still afraid of the wind raking the trees across her windows in the night. Monsters still coming to get her.

Tom

I saw her sitting alone over the coffee the first time. All I remember was how sad her eyes looked. How did someone so young have such sad eyes?

I knew why my eyes often looked sad, but I tucked that thought away. I didn’t need anyone asking me questions. I found my placid bland face and put it back on. I walked past her on the sidewalk and she never even turned her head.

I spotted her again making copies at Harvey’s and she tapped one foot impatiently waiting for the tired machine to get done. Her eyes that day were hard and focused on something else. When she looked right at me, she never saw me. I didn’t mind … her eyes were sharp as a hawk after a kill. Something dark and carnal in me leapt at the sight and I recoiled from it.

Not him again. Bang, bang, you’re dead I said in my head and he vanished.

I bought the diner from old man Ratzlaff and it took every cent I’d managed to take away clean with me. When I signed the papers and wrote the check, I breathed in the air as if I had been freed. The money was gone and so was the trail. I went to work in the morning and shut off my mind for the first time in my life. It stayed idle for three years while I made coffee, served toast, made change and mopped the floors.

She showed up for coffee one morning, just after I unlocked the front door. The cook wasn’t due for another forty-five minutes and I apologetically told her so.

“You have coffee?” she asked.

“Coffee? Yes ma’am, it’ll be up in about four more minutes,” I returned. Her eyes were beautiful, but distant, just like that day at Harvey’s only without the hawk. “Cream and sugar?”

“Lots,” she said.

I brought her coffee and she wasn’t lying about the cream and sugar. I brought more.

“You must like a little coffee with your cream and sugar,” I said.

“What? Oh, the sugar.” She smiled dazzlingly. “I get asked why I’m not sweeter when I have all this sugar in my coffee … I just say that it’s to counteract them.”

“Who are them?”

And that’s how I discovered she was a lawyer. So young and so grim and so beautiful at the same time. I distrusted lawyers almost as a reflex, but then reminded myself of whom I was: Tom Stall. There was no reason to distrust lawyers anymore.

I still hid behind the safety of the counter, though. The morning crowd arrived and the farmers came in for their usual session of complaining about beef prices and grain surpluses. When I looked off to the corner booth again, she was gone.

The next time I saw the young woman with the predatory eyes, she was staring down into a nearly empty coffee cup in the corner. I put down the box of staples I had brought in and came and stood by her table until she looked up. Her eyes were empty and the coffeepot in my hand trembled.

“What’s happened?” I asked as I poured, disconcerted that she was drinking her brew black this afternoon.

“I lost a case today.”

“Well…” I was at a loss briefly. “You win some and you lose some, I guess. Even in lawyering.”

“Not me,” she said darkly. “I expected to lose this one, but I thought I’d get more for my client. The prosecution pulled something I didn’t catch in my research and the judge threw the book at him. I didn’t get any concessions at all. I lost-lost today.” She took a sip of the coffee and grimaced at the bitterness. “I don’t lose-lose very often. I usually lose-win, dammit!”

A woman who doesn’t lose even when she loses? She couldn’t tell me any details, but what she was willing to talk about, I listened to. It was part of the ‘friendly’ part of the ‘friendly service’ on the window of the diner.

“Anytime you lose-lose a case,” I said as she got ready to go home, “the coffee is on the house.”

She grinned at that. “You sure I won’t put this place in the poor house?”

“I suspect that you won’t,” I said as I went back to tending the till. I didn’t see her again for a week and then she became a regular customer, in sipping coffee early in the morning with papers scattered across the corner table. I learned to keep lots of cream and sugar at that corner. I also learned to be silent when she was working, for her eyes had that sharp look that hurt when it hit you.

Edie

Tom Stall was just the man who ran the diner to Edie Morrison. He was soft spoken and quiet, with never anything to say about himself. The patrons liked his calm and his coffee. She liked the way he cleaned late at night, hardly making a sound while she prepared briefs for the next day. Sometimes she looked up at midnight and he was sitting at the counter, waiting to lock up. He had been so silent that she’d forgotten that she wasn’t at home.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, Tom,” she said exasperatedly. “I’m so damn wrapped up in this case that I forgot the time. I’ve kept you late again.”

“It’s not a problem, Edie. There’s no place I have to be but here again tomorrow.”

He was quiet, that Tom Stall. Efficient and hard working and completely unremarkable. His hands showed hard use, she thought. And he was older by at least fifteen years. Maybe more. There was something in his eyes in an unguarded moment now and then that made her think he had come through tough times … but when she asked, he always deflected the conversation away from himself almost shyly.

He was steady. He was dependable. He let people carry their bill a few days if they needed to. He always had a calm word for someone’s irritation and a cheerful one for the discouraged. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave and Edie grew accustomed to seeing him there. He was the only other constant in her world. When he did inventory downstairs and wasn’t at the counter, she was disappointed. And when she laughed at some of his cornball jokes, she envied his ease with being plain and imperfect. He wasn’t driven to be strong or particularly brave about anything. He had nothing to prove and nothing to win … and because he wasn’t driven, he was stronger than she could ever be, walking her pressured road of perfection.

And then one day she looked in his eyes where he stood behind the counter, three plates and a bowl of gravy balanced along his arm, and realized the truth. She was falling in love with this quiet unremarkable man. The knowledge of it shook her, stunned her. Once again she was the little girl with the wind through the trees outside, trying to get in her room after her. Only this time, she was tired of being strong and being brave. She longed to throw the windows wide.

There was no hiding the leap of emotions in her eyes. She had to reach and take the gravy bowl quickly, because the normally calm Tom Stall faltered and nearly dropped it. She smiled at his disconcerted expression and handed the bowl to his other hand, then went back to her briefs. Tom Stall was a generation away from her and a quiet shy man. Romance, if it came, wasn’t something she could control, nor did she want to.

Tom

I remember the day.

A few of my regulars had insinuated that Edie liked me for more that just my coffee. I always brushed them off. Half of those farmers had breathed too much dust in their lives. It was a shock to see it in her eyes. I nearly dropped Phil Davis’ order.

Joey Cusak never had problems with women. Not problems that couldn’t be handled with the flat of his hand once or twice … but Tom Stall was nervous and unsure. It was a week before I watched her leave the diner and my heart went out the door with her.

“Tom, you slow son of a gun, go after her!” said Doc Pierson.

“What? No, I … no …” But I couldn’t stop looking out the window.

“Put the damn pencil pad down and go after her, Tom!” said Charlotte. “She’s been waiting for you to make a move for the last five days—now shoo! Go!”

I put the pad down.

I don’t remember opening the door. Or closing it for that matter. I only remember the bob of her hair at the collar of her coat. The look in her eyes when she turned at my call. Her hands, so small and cool within mine, and the fact that she reached for mine as soon as I was near enough to touch.

Tom Stall became real when she said his name that day on the sidewalk.

Edie

“The fundamental belief of the criminal rehabilitation system is that all people have the potential to make restitution for their crimes, turn from their propensity to commit illegal acts, and become functional members of society. It is the imperative of this agency to assist clients in this goal.”

She read it twice. Once for her head. Once for her heart.

“It’s simple,” she said aloud.

“If it’s so simple, why does it fail so often,” said Jackson, Court Clerk, from behind her.

Edie shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other before answering. “They have to have something to change for. A reason to turn from their old life. Just like that: simple. Please make it be simple.

“Go slow,” Lois told her over salad. “You’ve been through a trauma and so has Tom. Give yourselves time. People deal with stress the way they’ve dealt with it in the past and you both get to cope the way that suits you best.” She speared a tomato. “So, how did you cope with stress in the past, Edie?”

“I didn’t have much stress,” she answered.

Lois snorted. “Even passing the bar? Getting married to an older man? Having Jack breech and nearly strangled on his umbilical cord?” She looked askance over her glasses at Edie. “Having that little blonde Sarah surprise you all those years after Doc said you’d never have another baby?”

“I knew I was a good lawyer and I studied hard. Tom …,” she faltered on his name, then made herself go on. “I knew I loved Tom. The baby we prayed over every day. We knew he was in trouble, but there wasn’t anything more we could do. Tom just kept telling me that we had to trust that it’d all work out. That God knew what was best. We did the same over Sarah.”

“That’s it then,” said Lois.

“What’s it?” Edie looked impatiently at her friend of twenty-three years.

“You said it yourself; you trusted Tom and you trusted that God knows best.”

“Oh, well, that just makes everything that has happened just perfectly in God’s will, doesn’t it? It’s okay that my daughter was in danger, that my son was kidnapped by murderers, that Tom had to---,” she choked off her sentence like an aborted birth and wrapped her fingers in her skirt. She had to be strong and brave; strong and brave in a way she’d never had to be.

Fearless. She could not blink in this.

Lois waved her fork in midair. “It’s never a neat box tied with a bow, you know. Who the hell ever said God was going to strew flowers in people’s path? Life is messy business.” She leaned across the table slightly to make her point. “As long as I’ve know you, Edie, you’ve been a strong woman, a church going woman. Not one of those religious rabble that everyone hides from, but still, a strong person with some faith mixed in. You just told me that you prayed over that baby every day. You picked out that silver cross that Tom wears around his neck after little Jack made it alive and he’s worn it ever since. That’s how you cope when you can’t do it alone—you lean on Tom and you lean on your spirituality.”

I’ve always had to be strong and brave, Edie thought. And when that fails, I’ve always had Tom to lean on. He was my shelter when my strength wore out, sure that everything would turn out okay and if it didn’t, we could handle it. I’ve lost my center. He’s Tom, but a Tom I don’t recognize anymore.

“So,” she said bitterly. “I’m just supposed to ‘pray it all better’ like those wacks on television? Hear everyone tell me it must be okay that it happened to my family, because I’m strong enough to handle it, right?”

“Don’t get so prickly, Edie. You act like those men killed Tom.”

Edie put down her fork. “That’s what the cops tell the women who’ve been raped. ‘Why are you so upset---he could have killed you, you know. You should be happy you’re alive.’”

Lois smiled dryly from across the table. “It’s not the nice thing to say and they get in a heap of trouble for saying it, but in your heart, you know there’s some truth to what they’re saying. The flip side is always; it could have been worse.” She speared a cucumber chip and glanced back to Edie. “What happened to you and your Tom, that’s pretty awful doings in our little town. But it still could have been worse. You’re busy yelling ‘why’ instead of ‘thanks for getting us through alive’ at the sky.”

Deep breath. In. Out.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this lecture from you,” she finally said.

Lois leaned and put her hand atop the younger woman’s. Edie saw the texture of her skin, the veins so prominent and the age spots that marked this old nurse. Her eyes were sharp in a wrinkled face.

“Edie, how many years have we known each other? And through all our arguments about politics and religion and everything else divisive in the world, we’re still friends. I’ve seen you under pressure. You can handle damn near anything anyone feels like throwing your way, no matter how emotional it gets. You might balk a little, complain a little, but you always come back. You’ll come through this as well, once you quit thrashing about with it.” Lois withdrew her hand and went back to her salad. “You don’t count yourself much a God fearing kind of woman—you swear too damn much, if I remember your words correctly. But despite that, you still turn to something outside yourself when it gets really tough.”

Deep breath. In. Out.

I used to be able to do this. I used to be strong enough, brave enough. I used to have it so figured out that no matter what unexpected thing happened, I always had a contingency plan. What the hell has happened to me that I’m no longer able to do this?

“I never expected to have to manage something like this,” she whispered.

“Oh, I know that, Edie. Sometimes life just plays crack the whip with you and all you can do is hold on to your hair.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes.

“So, since you think I’m yelling the wrong thing up at God these days, what do you think God is saying back to me?” Edie asked.

Lois didn’t look up. “Probably the same thing he’s saying to all of us now and then: Don’t make me come down there!”

Tom

The first day back at church, Tom Stall hesitated while holding the Communion plate, studying the tiny glasses of watered down grape juice and the broken bits of bread. The liquid trembled with his hand and people up and down the pew waited, studying him. Jack watched, unblinking. The ripple of tension caught, spread to other pews.

Tom passed the plate on without taking anything for the first time in remembrance. Edie said nothing. The next Sunday, the pastor wanted to call them to the front and put hands on them to pray, but both Edie and Tom protested.

“It’s not your fault,” said Reverend Peterson. “You defended your family. God doesn’t hold you responsible for defending your lives or the lives of your children.”

“We know,” said Mrs. Stall. “We just need privacy and time. It’s been a shocking few weeks.”

“Tell us if you need anything. Anything at all,” he said.

He meant that sincerely, but the congregation was in Genesis, discussing sacrifice and atonement; what sacrifices God accepted and what sacrifices were rejected. Fruits and grains were not acceptable, but blood would do. In fact, the scriptures were practically dripping with shed blood.

“What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth up to me from the ground?” read the pastor.

Perhaps not all blood was an acceptable sacrifice.

Tom excused himself from the service and did not return. He was a slender silhouette against the nursery window, holding Sarah Ferguson’s irritable four month old until she fell asleep listening to his quiet voice. Edie stood in the doorway until the awkward silence of the room called his attention and they drove home. Neither spoke of what had happened in church.

Silence both holy and bloody.

Edie

Dating Tom Stall was a lesson in strength all its own. Her colleagues were surprised that she was dating at all and even more surprised at the nondescript man she was with. Sharp minded Edie Morrison was seeing the most uninteresting man in town, and a much older man to boot?

“What a waste,” some said.

“She’ll leave him in a year, when she’s too bored to continue waking up with him.”

“He’s quite a mouse. I bet she’s with him just to have someone else to control. You know how Morrison is about power issues…”

But what Edie saw was the man who walked alongside while she did her job. Who poured coffee when she needed it, listened when she needed it, and supported every move she made without questioning if she was capable of doing it. When she was buried in paperwork, he organized and copied and proofread willingly. When she needed a ruthless closing argument, Tom Stall was her test juror and he was hard to flummox. He knew the minds of the common townspeople and the tough sell farmers in the community. He knew every word of idle talk about the town and what people thought of it.

His utter lack of ego made him larger than life and outside the ability to control. He was completely content within himself. He didn’t compete with her, did not challenge her, and, because of his placid demeanor, she could finally relinquish the drive for perfection and control.

The fearless and driven façade of the lawyer crumbled before the strength of his gentleness. There was no need to prove her capability, or strength, or bravery to Tom Stall. She could creep into his arms and simply be herself.

Courtship was soft and slow, with many long walks. He told her about his childhood, his foster family and his traveling days. Altogether, Tom Stall had led an uneventful life. His kisses were chaste and he never touched her inappropriately. After nearly a year, beneath a harvest moon illuminating acres of corn, she saw the fire of passion ignite in his gaze. Within the week of that moment, from the very same lookout over the valley, he asked her to marry him … on bended knee, like it was supposed to be done. She was humored by his dedication to how it should be done, and cried because his earnestness was truth. He whooped when she answered him and it echoed over the still fields.

“You took a long time to ask me, Tom Stall,” she eventually managed.

“I didn’t want to rush you. It’s better to be slow and sure,” he said. “But my blood has caught fire, so it’s time I asked you before I get myself in trouble.”

They married simply and all the regulars from the diner came. It was easy to pick out the lawyers in their extravagant attire amidst the townspeople and farmers. Edie wore pure white and was unsurprised that Tom’s eyes were damp. No one save herself and the minister could hear his voice say the vows—as if he made them to her alone.

There was no expensive honeymoon; neither Tom nor she desired finery and an exotic location. They drove to her house in her car. He carried her through the doorway with a maximum of humor and a minimum of effort. His arms were strong and his kisses were turning fierce in the living room. She was afraid the antique gown would tear. Tom waited downstairs while she managed all the hooks of the dress and put on a satin nightgown for him upstairs.

He paced, she could tell. He hit a squeaking board every time he passed the couch.

“Oh God,” he said when she called to him. “You’re a vision.” He slumped to sit on the bottom step to stare up at her where she stood at the top of the staircase.

“Not God, Tom,” she whispered back down. “Just me.” She held a hand out and he took it.

“I am the luckiest man alive,” he said when she told him she was a virgin. Then he sadly told her he was not and his eyes were heartbroken.

“Nobody is perfect,” she whispered, tracing the line of his shoulder. “I don’t care as long as I have you the rest of my life.” And it was true; she didn’t care. Most of all, she was glad she didn’t have to be perfect for this man. The buttons of his shirt flew beneath her fingers.

His skin was warm and he was lean and wiry and ticklish and soft and hard. His hands were gentle-strong and couldn’t cease roaming over her, under the straps of the gown, down the line of her back. His kisses gradually filled with muffled groans. She couldn’t catch her breath and her heart pounded more desperately than any night of childhood hiding from the monsters outside her window.

“Pleasepleaseplease,” he whispered, leaning, pressing her thighs open to him.

“Yesyesyes,” she answered.

And though there was pain, she was willing. He was tender and gentle where he could be. At the end, he held back the tumult of his passion as best he could and she felt the strain in his voice to do it.

He kissed her damp eyes and whispered, “It will be better next time.”

“Is it next time yet?” she said back.

“Maybe I should go to work tomorrow to get some sleep …” His quirky grin made her laugh.

Tom

I understand their shock. Their feelings of fear and betrayal. It’s a stun to me how quickly everything came back; that violence, that brutality and single-mindedness in killing. I am as troubled as they are, yet I don’t see any other way to have tried to escape it. I had to act the first time, but that unleashed everything I had worked all those years to destroy. Brought evil right back to my door.

I will never forget Jack in the hands of Fogerty. I will never forget my own fear and Edie’s terror—the mindless strength of a mother to protect her child that I had to stand down. And all the while wondering if I still could do this, if I still had what it took to kill ... mindlessly, ruthlessly, knowing exactly what would happen to my family if I failed.

And I will never forget that terrible moment when I knew I had failed ... the horror of it pinned me to the ground brutally, more brutally than anything Fogarty could do to me. For the first time in my life, I wished I had never met Edie and never fathered those two children of mine. My babies were going to die and it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

And it was my fault.

Mine.

I can’t think like this. My hands are shaking and I jam them in my pockets.

I tried my best … I tried to destroy all of that old life. If they knew the full of it, Sam would be giving me dinner in jail. If they knew the full of it, Edie would meet me at the door with that loaded shotgun and I’d never even get to say goodbye … and she’d be in the right. I have been evil. Evil isn’t a strong enough word for some of the things I did back then, to people not even involved, to innocents.

There’s always been blood on my hands. It’s just that nobody could see it except me. And I never looked.

I know where I’ve been. There’s no forgiveness for me.

There’s just this little family with two great kids that I had a hand in making and keeping unspoiled by violence.

Now look where it’s brought me, and brought them. Jack’s angry words after I came back from the hospital drove deep. I’m not sure what I am to him, not sure what he’ll let me be for him.

I can’t keep thinking like this. It hurts to breath and my soul is so hot; there must be blisters on my heart.

I have to wait. To be patient and give them time to decide what they want from me. I can’t push them to decide something and I can’t force them to talk to me. I can’t argue my position. Even something as innocent as swearing when I hit the doorframe with my shoulder three days ago made everyone stop short and study me.

I came back home to them, hoping. Now it seems that hope is dim and I am here only because I have no where else to go.

Edie

Was he lying to me, or protecting me? Do I love someone who does not really exist, except as his creation? Am I part of his construct to escape punishment for his deeds? Does it matter that I started that way to him, but became more to him? Is it the means, or the end?

Is he lying about ‘us’ as well?

Who is he now? Will he stay Tom … or will we see Joey again if he gets angry, or feels threatened? How do you feel safe when it’s not even safe in your husband’s arms? Have we won, but really lost?

How do you trust when you’ve lost the trust?

She parked the car and looked at the front of the house. The grass had been mowed short where the bodies had been. Last weeks rain had soaked away the stains. The marks on her back had faded to light blue and the scabs from the abrasions itched as they sloughed off.

Everything was washing clean and healing. Soon there would be no marks at all demarking what had happened. Nothing left but the ones on the inside that no one saw.

If he had been my real Tom, he would have died in the diner that first day. Joey is the man that protected him, and Charlotte and Mick. But it was Joey who brought everyone else after my family. Joey who put my son in the hands of murderers … and Joey who got him back, just as he said he would.

Joey, cursed redeemer.

Deep breath. In. Out.

Tom

I walk home early tonight. Mick felt a migraine coming on and we shut up the diner. Not much of a diner without a fry cook. The leaves have all turned and are starting to fall. They’re beautiful. And dead. I stand and stare at the house in silence.

Jack is turning all my pacifist words through the years over and over inside. His eyes disrespect even when he says nothing. Then there are times, like chopping wood, when it’s just thoughtless mindless working. He bumped into me once and I nearly reached out to hold him, just to hold him, but then he remembered and his eyes were wary, untrusting.

I didn’t touch him.

Sarah is free with her hugs. I read her stories and have never been so hungry to read to her and sit with her as I have been in the last two weeks. She prattles and kisses me, puts her barrettes all over my hair, and talks, talks, and talks. I have to close my eyes so she can’t see my fear of losing this.

And Edie.

Edie.

I can’t speak her name aloud anymore. I can only say it in my head. In my heart. She’s the reason I am waiting in this emotional wasteland. My son can turn his back and walk away from me; I know he’ll be a good man when he’s grown and it’s okay if he tosses me aside. He’s not here to live for me.

But Edie’s my life. She’s the whole reason all of this hardship of change was worth it. What will become of me if she ultimately can’t get past this terrible secret of mine? What if she can’t reconcile who I’ve been with who I’ve become?

I have to believe she can. She will. I just have to wait.

I’m still standing out here and the wind pricks icy fingers right through my coat. It’s a long way to the front door and when it slams behind me, it echoes in the empty house.

Cold silence.

Edie

What does my life look like without Tom? Which has more power over a man; the nature he was born and raised with or the life he creates by conscious choice? What becomes of the new man when he is confronted with the old life and picks up that tattered coat and puts it back on?

Is there a measurement of when an old life is truly dead? Five years? Ten? Are they ever truly dead, or do we deceive ourselves and everyone around us? When does someone reach the point of atonement for their past mistakes?

If he had left the big crime scene only three years ago, would this choice be more complicated? How about five years ago? Ten?

Jesus. I sound like Abraham running after the angels sent to destroy Sodom, demanding to know if only twenty are found righteous; will they still destroy the city? Why is it fucking up to me to decide?

Why doesn’t he argue his case? Has he given up, somehow? Are we at win-lose or lose-lose?

Lois sent her an email that said, “Change what you are thinking and you will gradually and eventually change what you are feeling. Lunch tomorrow?”

Edie is not surprised that Lois suspects she’s not telling her everything. She wasn’t the best nurse in the valley for no reason. And she wouldn’t pry, either. She was a patient old woman and could outwait the most stoic client.

Edie wasn’t used to being anyone's client.

Deep breath. In. Out.

Tom

Jack was slumped at the kitchen table, pouring over two books. His shirt collar was crooked where he’d been tugging on it, a tense habit he had when fretting with studies. I sat and picked up the paper, stared at it without seeing it. The headlines and news bothered my already troubled state of mind. I ceased reading them a week and a half ago.

“You know much about Geometry anymore?” Jack abruptly called from the other room.

I came to sit at the end of the table, sadly aware of how carefully I drew near my own son. “It’s been a long time. I’m not sure I’d be helping you or helping you fail.”

He shoved his book aside. “I can do it. I just don’t feel like doing it.”

“Lots of things are like that,” I said. I waited for wherever he would lead this, a stranger to my own flesh and blood.

He said nothing, just looked in my face with his quiet eyes gone thoughtful. Here it comes I thought.

“You and mom aren’t talking, are you?” he asked. His eyes challenged me for the truth.

“We talk a little, but not about anything important.”

He looked away at the living room, then back to me. “You’re still sleeping on the couch. You’ve been on the couch for three weeks now. That must play heck with your back.”

“A little,” I agreed. “But your mom isn’t ready to do much talking, so I’m not pushing her. She just … women just need more time to think about things.”

We listened to the tick of the clock and the creak of the old house in the wind.

“Are you and mom going to divorce?”

Truth now. “I don’t know, son. I don’t want a divorce.”

“You’re not what she thought she married. She’s scared of you; she’s scared for all of us.” His eyes were hard, the slightly agitated eyes of a teenager.

“I know she’s uncertain,” I admitted. “She has every right to her feelings about this. Are you afraid of me, too?” I watched him, watched the thoughts march through his eyes. It was disheartening to realize that I watched everyone’s eyes to see what they were possibly thinking … and where I’d learned that skill.

Eventually. “No. I don’t think you’d try to hurt me. You were willing to fight, even die to get me away from those guys.” His eyes went far away. “You were amazing … and terrible, all at the same time. I wanted you to win and I wanted you to kill them. When I came outside and grabbed the shotgun, all I thought about was killing the man who had his gun on you. But now … now, it’s … now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel.”

I scooted my chair close enough to touch him, watching for the rejection and heartened that it never came.

“They respect me at school though, and that’s nice. Partially because of the scene with that jerk, but also because of what happened here. It’s quiet-like, because the principal says we don’t celebrate killing people and I guess that’s right. But I see it in people’s eyes who never even noticed I was alive before. Now they see me.” He turned his head, shifted in his seat to face me squarely and I saw the distress; how pale and uncertain he looked. He was sweating in a chilly house. “I have to know something. Am I going to be like you? Is this how it starts, how you started being … being that other guy? Is this the beginning of it for me?”

“No,” I said, both sad and horrified, and pulled him to me. “No, it’s not the beginning of anything. I didn’t raise you in violence and you don’t have to go that path. You get to choose who you’ll be, Jack.” He was trembling in my arms, his head ducked against my neck. A thousand painful memories of my boyhood streamed to the fore and I clutched him tight, willing protection for him from all the devils that hounded me inside and out.

“I killed a man,” he choked out against my neck.

“He would have killed me if you hadn’t come outside and defended me.”

“That’s just it,” he said tightly. “You should have been killed. He was exacting revenge for something you did to him.”

I felt his resistance and let him go, let him face me. And I knew I had to offer him the truth. Deceive him now and I’d lose my boy forever. No more lies. “He was after revenge and he was justified in it. I deserved to die.”

“No. No, dad,” and Jack hung his head as if I’d wounded him. “No, not you…”

“Yes, son.” Gently now. “I’ve done bad things a long time ago, before I met your mother. He found me after all those years to make me pay. He was going to make me pay even though I’d changed and I had a family who needed me. The question isn’t if you should have let me die though … but if I’ve been a good enough man to be given mercy. And you chose, you chose right then between men who kidnapped you and a father who loves you. Did you choose well? The man that you’ve known all your life, was he worth defending? Was he worth killing someone to save?”

A sniffle and some thought, but his voice was steady when it came. “Yes. Even if you’ve killed people a long time ago, you stopped. They were still killing people. I heard them talking about it in the car, as if they had nothing to fear from anyone about what they did.” He looked at me then, really saw me. My heart fell over inside. “You stopped. You found a way to leave that other life and start a new one, a good one.”

“And you,” I put my hand on his shoulder, “you have every choice and chance in the world to be a good man. Your mother and I gave you a good start, so make wise choices. It’s like that story they tell you about the Indian boy asking his grandfather how to be good when he’s got a bad dog and a good dog fighting inside himself for control?”

Jack rolled his eyes sarcastically. “Only feed the good dog and he’ll win. That’s a hokey story and it probably never happened.”

“But it’s truthful,” I chuckled. I couldn’t take my hand off his shoulder and when he leaned with a sigh and tucked himself against my chest, I didn’t try to hold the tears that leaked from my eyes. For a moment, I just held him fiercely and he let me.

And then the moment passed and, like all true adolescents, he shrugged out of my arms and wiped his eyes. “This has been terrible, dad.”

“Yes. For everyone.”

“Are we going to make it? Are you and mom going to make it?”

I shrugged and sighed. “Sarah’s okay, because she doesn’t really understand. I think you and I will find our way. Your mom,” I paused a moment to pick my words. “Your mom is the smartest woman I’ve ever known. She might be emotional over something, but she doesn’t make decisions based on how she feels about it—she always thinks about everything; every angle, every rationale … she plays devil’s advocate from both sides. And even when her feelings are trying to tug her around, she doesn’t let them rule her judgment. When she’s most emotional, that’s when she’s most wary of trusting them.”

Jack grinned. “It makes her a great lawyer, but a drag as a mom. How many times have I been upset and disappointed and she’d be sad right along with me, but still not unground me?”

“Then you know,” I said slowly, “that once she’s decided the course she’s going to take, that there’s no swaying her from it. She’s made up her mind and no matter how she feels about the direction, that’s the way she’s going to go. And neither you nor I can change that.”

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes troubled. “But we’ll still see you, right? You won’t … you won’t just—“

“No,” I interrupted. “I won’t disappear out of your lives, not if you want me to be a part of it. I don’t think your mom would ask me to never see you kids again.”

Edie

“Is he still a good man? Is he what you need?”

“I don’t know, Lois,” Edie said softly.

“Then you start there, with that question. And if he’s not—run. If he is, then you need to decide what is it that keeps you from forgiving him. Even good men need forgiveness once in awhile. Good women need it too.”

Being brave and strong was highly overrated.

Tom

“You’re still talking to the counselor at school about what happened, aren’t you?” I asked Jack very softly. “He’s been spending time with you every day, right?”

“Yeah, but he’s weird and I don’t feel much like being his first at anything this big,” he admitted. He glanced at me. “I haven’t told him anything about you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I waved a hand dismissively. “That’s not what I’m worried about—I’m interested in how you’re coping with what happened with you. So … how are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess.” He stared out the window at the wilting garden, dying for the winter. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to be doing. I haven’t blown the guts out of man with a shotgun before.”

I let the crudeness of his comment stand. Morbidity was normal when someone is stressed. I remembered that part. “Tell me what’s different with you. Eating, sleeping, your patience, your ability to study?”

“I’m not sleeping very good,” he admitted.

“Nightmares?”

“No, I don’t have any bad dreams, but … I just don’t go to sleep very easily. I’m up late and then getting up for school is crappy.”

I let the slang slide, focused on his evasion. Come on, son, talk to me. “I used to have trouble getting to sleep, but I always had nightmares along with it,” I said. “I was running a lot. I always heard cars and gunfire. But mostly, I was running. Running like something terrible was after me and I’d never escape.”

Silence a moment. “Did it ever stop?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Because one day I decided I was done running and done being afraid. I was tired.” I looked into his serious eyes. “I had to change or die, because I couldn’t go on like that anymore.”

“You didn’t change for us? Oh, I guess we weren’t part of the picture yet.”

I smiled at him and shook my head. “People can change. If they can’t find a reason inside themselves, they’ll change for someone else … but it’s stronger if they decide themselves that they want to change. That they have to change.”

“This conversation is getting way ridiculously serious,” he said.

“Okay,” I chuckled. “So, less serious. You’re not suicidal, you’re not yelling at your sister more than usual, you’re okay with your mom, and there haven’t been any notes from your teacher … unless you’re eating them before they get home. You must be still coping fairly well or all those other things would be happening.”

He laughed at my long list. “I wake up telling myself that I’m going to be okay, but sometimes I look at all the petty things I deal with at school and just want to … scream at all of them. Nothing changes there, but it feels like I’m completely different.”

“That’s why the counselor is trying to get you to talk about what you feel and think, so he can help you work it all out and be able to put it away. So you can move on as a teenager the way you’re supposed to.”

He rolled his eyes. “So, you want me to start talking to him about stuff.”

“Yeah. And you’ll find he’ll be interested in any stuff you want to talk about, because along the way, the important stuff will come out and then you both can deal with it.”

“Who helped you?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked and then thought. “Nobody did. I had to do it alone.” I looked at him very seriously. “And that’s why I can’t help you, Jack. I don’t know how to help you. I can only support you and let someone who knows what they’re doing help you sort this all out.”

Jack said nothing, so I said nothing. The wind skittered fallen leaves across the porch. I needed to build up the fire, but was reluctant to move.

“Is Bobby leaving you alone at school?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t bother me anymore. He thinks we’re buddies now, but I don’t really trust him. People like that…” he shrugged and then took a new direction. “Why don’t you sleep in my room and let me sleep on the couch for a while. It’ll help your back.”

“No, Jack,” I said. “I’ll stay on the couch. Your mom doesn’t need it to look like I’ve moved you out or anything.”

“I’ll tell her it was my idea…”

“No, son.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I need to just stay put while she’s thinking this through. And you need to take care of you, not worry about your mom and I. Nothing you do or say is going to hurry this, or change it.” I pinched him a bit harder. “And don’t carry this alone—you talk to the counselor, and you talk with your mom and with me. We’re interested and we’ll listen. You’re too young to be trying to shoulder this on your own.”

“Okay, okay,” he muttered, abruptly sounding like the teen he was supposed to be.

“Promise me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I promise. I’ll talk to Mr. Ranford instead of telling him junk.” He stared at the book on the table. “I wish you still remembered Geometry, ’cause this stuff sucks.”

And just like that, the moment was over and he went back to his homework. I built up the fire and eventually wandered back to the forgotten paper that I wasn’t reading. When Edie came through the front door, we were on opposite sides of the room and nothing but the crackle of the woodstove filled the room.

But when Jack stood to help with groceries, his eyes were warm when they met mine.

Silence that smiled.

Edie

She was tired. Tired of holding it together. Tired of the strength it took to be brave and strong, to show that perfect face at church and in town. She was a little girl again, pretending there was nothing wrong in her house. The stress was settling down in her bones as if it had always lived there.

She drove out into the country and sat in her car, thinking. Remembering where she had come from and where she wanted to go. It was late when she pulled into the driveway and parked the car.

Tom wasn’t on the couch, but then his voice spoke from the darkness. He was sitting in a chair by the stove.

“You had your cell phone?” he asked quietly.

“I always do.” She studied his profile in semi-darkness. The shadows played tricks on her eyes and she ignored them as she had as a child.

“You didn’t come home, so I waited up.” His voice sounded tired and a little sad.

“I can take care of myself,” she said.

“I know, but I still waited up.”

She turned from the pain in his voice and climbed the staircase. But sleep was elusive and tears would not release her. The wind stirred through the trees and made the house groan. She came downstairs at two in the morning, dodging all the boards that creaked, and went in the kitchen.

Tom’s cross lay on the counter. The moonlight painted it brilliant and the shadows made the smooth crosspieces of the emblem appear broken.

Tom has never taken off that cross.

A broken cross. A broken family.

I’ve been broken since I was a little girl. Tom has been broken half of his life. If we don’t find a way, we will be broken the rest of our lives.

Lose-lose.

She went to the living room and sat in the side chair, studying the man on the couch. Shadows filled the hollows of his cheeks and eyes. One hand dangled over the side. He looked terrible. The monster outside the window in darkness. She faced him the same way she had faced all of them in childhood.

“Tom,” she said, then louder, “Tom.”

He stirred, scraped a hand across his face … the moonlight shifted and fell in his eyes like silver. “Edie?” That familiar sleep-drugged voice.

I can do this. I’m strong enough, brave enough. I can try to be whole if he’s willing to be whole with me. We can try for lose-win.

“Edie?” Confused.

She held out her hand. “Come with me.” He was groggy and tangled in the blanket, wearing an old t-shirt and boxers. Barefoot as usual. She took his hand and led him to the stairs.

“Edie…” more a whisper of uncertainty.

“Just hush and come with me.” He was quiet and sat on the side of the bed where she put him. “I don’t want sex,” she said directly. “I want you here, but no sex.”

“I know. I won’t.”

She crawled beneath the covers in her usual spot. He hesitated, then lay down beside her, turned with the tug of her hand and spooned carefully around her back. His breath tickled familiarly, but his heart was galloping.

“Sleep,” she said. “I don’t want to talk yet.”

“Okay, but soon. We have to talk soon.”

“Yes,” she agreed. Then added, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” he whispered, his voice silky-rough. Then, after a pause, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” she returned. “Tomorrow. Hold it until tomorrow.”

Sleep was a long time arriving to her, but not from tension. More from her senses drinking in his warmth, his scent, and the spice of cologne. She only opened her eyes once in the night, but said nothing to give herself away. She listened to him silently cry beside her a short while, then went back to sleep when he subsided.

Tom

I’m here in my own bed and I’m terrified. What if I blow this?

She sleeps and my mind won’t quit memorizing how she fits in the curve of my belly, how she smells, the little sounds she makes in sleep. I’d forgotten all of that, but it all is here overloading me in a rush. My insides are shaking apart.

The wind outside mutters and growls and I am lost in my apprehension. I can walk into a pack of wolves with Richie, but facing Edie is turning my bones to mush. There’s nothing I can say to make this any better. I’m bound by something stronger than blood here, something I can’t fight.

What do you call this kind of love that can make you a willing sacrifice for someone else? Like Isaac, bound on an alter without a struggle to escape. Stephen, who willingly knelt to be stoned to death. Christ, who knowingly took every step towards that distant cross.

I’m not any of those, though. I’m the murderer on my own cross, dying horribly, but asking, “Master, remember me when you enter into your kingdom?”

Only, I don’t think he’ll let me in. I guess all my playing church doesn’t really matter in the end. My hands have always been bloody. Even my brother’s blood screams from the ground.

Sleep. Please let me sleep. The wind is a thousand devils trying to get into the room.

Edie

She slipped out while he slept and shut off the alarm. Jack raised a muzzy head from his blankets when she tapped on his door. She leaned against the doorframe until he turned his head.

“Hey, baby,” she said. “Your daddy and I are going to stay home and talk today. You think you can get Sarah and yourself motivated to get to the bus on time?”

“Yeah, sure mom.” His eyes searched her face for clues. “Today’s the day, huh?”

“It is.” She watched him swing his feet out of bed and grimace at the cool floor. “Any teenage words of wisdom you’d like to give your old mom?”

“You’re not old for starters,” he said. “And it’s too early for words of wisdom.”

“Okay, no words of wisdom.” She kissed him on the cheek as he headed for the bathroom, aware as never before of how tall he was getting.

But at the doorway, Jack paused and looked back at her. “Take it slow. Listen more than you speak,” he said. “When you do speak, talk about what you feel.”

She smiled at him. “Wise words, Jack.”

“The school counselor. He’s pretty okay at this stuff.”

The kids were quiet, every bit as quiet as she used to be as a little girl. When she looked out the window, Jack was holding Sarah’s hand while the school bus rolled up. Sunlight fingered its way through trees and fences, crept across the floor.

Tom had lost weight. He had always been tall and slender, but the angles of his face were sharper. The hollows deeper. Stress had pared him down from his normal lithe appearance. Now he looked gaunt and shrunken, a shell of himself. When he sighed and turned, searching across the bed in that space between asleep and awake, even the back of his hand reflected the weight loss.

He opened his eyes when she scooted a chair to the edge of the bed, expression first blank and then vulnerable. He looked aside at the clock.

“Damn, I’m going to be late to open the diner,” he said, blinking as if the time would somehow change.

“I called Mick. He’s opening this morning and Charlotte is coming in early. They’ll have a few regulars’ help a bit and you know they will—they know you’ve been under stress and they’d like to help.” She was careful to keep her voice calm.

“You called me in sick?” He looked incredulous. “I haven’t missed work since that pneumonia in ’92.”

“We’re both sick and home in bed today.”

He ceased any protest, then swung his legs over the bed and took the cup of coffee that she offered. For a moment or two, they simply sat drinking coffee.

Where do I begin this?

“Were you ever planning to tell me?” she softly asked.

“No.” He glanced at her, then away. “It was a long time ago, another life ago. I wasn’t that man anymore.” When she didn’t answer, he looked at her sadly. “I was sure you’d leave me and I couldn’t … I couldn’t lose you.”

“Because you love me,” she added.

“Because I love you … and without you, there wasn’t much worth living for.”

She blinked, startled and wondering. “You were living just fine before you ever met me.”

He shifted on the bed, cupped his hands around his cup. “No, I just existed. There wasn’t any color to my world. It was … a hopeless kind of living.”

“I wasn’t really living before I met you, either,” she volunteered. “I was convinced that I existed only to rescue the ones who no one else would rescue. I had to be their advocate and I had to be absolutely perfect in order to do it.”

He shook his head and his small lopsided smile crept across his face. “You are damn near perfect, the sharpest pencil in the courtroom. I puttered around that old diner content to work there because I knew my wife was cutting the law with a silver dagger and she knew exactly how to divide it.” He looked directly at her an instant. “You’re the one who does the important stuff. You just let me walk along with you.”

“I’m not perfect, Tom. I’ve made mistakes that have put people in prison for years.”

He looked into his cup and spoke softly, “But they’re alive. My choices put people in the ground.”

There it was. His self-condemnation was a living thing between them in midair. For an instant she was breathless with it.

“And you meant every killing, whether for money or just fun.” She remembered the spitting conversation at the hospital, the tear glimmering at the corner of his eye … a tear she couldn’t trust, couldn’t accept at the time.

He cringed without moving, but answered truthfully, half strangled. “I did … and I don’t blame your condemnation and judgment. You just speak aloud what I’ve known for twenty years.”

“Tom,” she whispered. She scooted her chair nearer, close enough to touch him. For an instant, she wondered if he was manipulating her feelings. “Why do you think it’s up to me to judge?”

“Because you know the law, you know the penalties. You know how I’ve acted the last twenty years and now you know what I’ve been a part of in the past. Who else is qualified to judge me?”

“I am your wife, not your judge,” she reminded him.

“Until you decide, we’re at a standstill. You can’t help but judge—it’s been trained into you. You have to decide if I’m a new man or not.”

He doesn’t look me in the eyes. He doesn’t hold my gaze.

“You don’t look at me,” she whispered. “Why don’t you look in my eyes, Tom?”

He swung his head as if wounded. “I don’t see the love there anymore. It hurts.”

“I’m sorry.” And she was. And she remembered exactly when he ceased looking in her eyes; when he came back from his disappearance of four days. That night at the table was the last time he had really held her gaze. “I can’t do this…”

“Yes, you can.” His hand reached, wrapped around hers gently. “You’re strong enough and tough enough. You’re the line of the law; the sharp edge that cuts me. If I’m a new man, then your gut will tell you. If I’m not, I need to know.”

“I have no right to judge you!” she protested.

“I gave you the right to judge a long time ago,” he said gently, a sharp contrast against her protest. “You were the law-minded woman who fell in love with me because I was a good man. You proved to me that I was a new man—that I’d really changed. But now, what do you think I am now? Fogarty thought I was the same vicious man—and for him, I was. I had to be. But to you, for this family—who am I? Does this family forgive my past?”

She was still.

“I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me if I’ve really been born again, by someone who knows the whole story,” he whispered. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to heaven, but if I can just be new here in this life, then that’s good enough for me.”

Fogarty judged Tom. I judge Tom. Who judges me?

Someone bigger.
Something beyond her strength.
More perfect than any of her driven perfection.
Something that could summon the winds and tie the trees down tight.

From faraway came Lois’ voice: “Even good men need forgiveness once in awhile. Good women need it too.”

“I forgive you.” She leaned as she said it and took his face in her hands, put her forehead against his, was unsurprised that he practically collapsed against her. “You’ve been a good man for as long as I’ve known you. You’ve turned from wickedness and brought your children up with peace. All of that redeems you. You only fought and killed this last month because you had to.” She kissed him, but half missed his mouth because she was blinded by her tears. He sank off the side of the bed to the floor and buried his face against her stomach. “I can’t let you go anyway. I don’t know how.”

“Then just keep me.” His words were muffled against her shirt and strangled in his emotions. “Just keep me. I’ll be good.”

I’ll be good. I’ll be brave. I’ll be quiet. I’ll be strong, mommy. I am just as broken, but in different places, she thought. She held him for a long time, until both her tears and his ceased, until the trembling in her bones quit. The shadows crept along the wall and outlined a vase of dying flowers.

“Come on,” she eventually said. “Get up in bed before your knees stage a rebellion.” He obeyed with a groan, but wouldn’t let go of her hand and she made no effort to escape. She pulled the covers over both of them and looked in his eyes, made twice as reflective by tears. “We can’t look back anymore. We have to look forward.”

“Forward,” he agreed softly and settled his arms around her with a sigh.

“Do you want to make love?” she asked after a long moment.

“No,” he whispered. “I’m exhausted with all the tension. I don’t think I could perform even if you wanted me to.”

She giggled at that thought, heard the rumble of his chuckle through his chest. “There’s a first,” she said humorously. “I’ll have to write that down on the calendar—Tom was too tired for sex.”

“It’s not only that.” He shifted so he could look in her eyes. “I don’t think either of us is ready. We’ve had a lot of stress for three weeks and our last encounter was pretty … extreme.”

“My back agrees with you.”

“My knees are sympathetic … as well as my ass, since you shoved me down the stairs on it.” There was a trace of humor laced in his voice.

“My condolences to your ass,” she said through a smile.

“I was an ass for grabbing you like that.” He shivered, as if cold wind caught him.

“Tom,” she said, unwilling to bring up more distress.

His eyes were sad, but honest. “I should have let you go. You were fleeing from what I was and I forced you into a conflict.”

“I hit you—several times,” she returned. “And I hit you hard. We’ve been talking about your violent past all this time, but I was the one exhibiting the violence on that staircase.” Her voice turned sarcastic and hard. “I’m some credible authority to decide the verdict on your history of violence, aren’t I?”

“Shhh,” he whispered, and then sighed. “Yes, you fought back. And I got out of hand, determined to make you talk to me. I should know better than to try to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“You didn’t hit me back, though. How many women out there think it’s perfectly okay to smack their men, but if their men hit back, it’s a crime?”

“Tom Stall doesn’t ever believe there’s a reason to hit a woman. I couldn’t hit you. Even in the confrontation between my old life and new, I knew I could not hit you.” He stroked her hair back off her temple and ran fingers down her jaw and his expression was so tender that her heart broke beneath it. “That whole time on the stairs, my soul was pleading for us to be well, to come through this together somehow.”

She watched him close his eyes, watched the tears squeeze out beneath his lashes against his will. His pulse was galloping just as it had last evening. She leaned and kissed his chin. “Shhhh,” she whispered, much as he’d whispered earlier. “Sleep for a while. We’re both burned out with anxiety. Let’s just sleep.”

Tom

The phone woke me and I nearly knocked it off the cradle trying to answer it. Sunlight streamed into the room. I was … in my bedroom? Oh, yes, I remember … and Edie was snoring softly beside me.

“Hullo?” I said blearily into the receiver.

“Dad, it’s Jack.”

“Jack? What’s wrong?” I asked, kicking off covers. The room was chilly. I needed to refill the wood stove. I padded downstairs with the phone.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said quickly. “I was … I just was wondering how you and mom were doing?”

I blinked, baffled, but then understood his worry. “We’re okay, son. There’ll be lots of talking off and on, but we’re … doing okay.”

“Yeah?” His relief was obvious through the buzz of the phone line. “That’s good news, dad.”

“Good news, Jack. Now quit worrying and concentrate on school, will you?”

“Geometry totally sucks, dad,” he said petulantly. “I think my brain is going to roll over and die.”

“Not before final grades, you hear?”

I filled the woodstove. The bed of coals simmered heat upon my face. The cat stretched in her chair, annoyed that I had disturbed the peace of the house. I stroked her, envious of her carefree existence, then went just as quietly back upstairs.

I stood a moment and looked down upon Edie as she slept, this woman-child who had changed my whole life for the better. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and the veins showed through her pale skin. She had lost weight from stress the same way I had.

Richie would never have understood this kind of devotion for one woman, one lover. I judged he had missed the whole point of love.

Edie

He was warm and limp, nose buried at the nape of her neck.

She remembered moving the weight of his hand to her hip over and over again in sleep when they were first married. An arm flung around her ribs always made it seem as if she was suffocating. He complained she was retraining him, but his eyes were humored when he said it.

She was retraining him, but only in a few areas.

“Every engine needs a little tuning now and then,” she remembered saying.

“So, take this motor out for a spin, sweetheart,” he had replied. “See if your tuning is working.”

Tom’s motor was always fine. Better than fine. Sometimes so fine that she had to lie there for a while with her bones turned to mush. His pleasure was always fast and intense afterwards, his passion strung out for so long in an hour of foreplay that he unraveled the instant he was inside her. He swore he was going to have a heart attack after one of those sessions. She reminded him he would die happy and he always agreed.

Edie still moved his arm when it settled across her ribs, though.

Today, she didn’t mind his arm around her ribcage. His fingers were long, just as she remembered them. He slept without a single sound, just as she remembered. He murmured and stretched, fanned his toes when she turned in his arms, just as she remembered.

Everything is as she remembers, except … slightly refocused.

But his cross isn’t around his neck. She fumbled for it on the nightstand where she’d put it and warmed the cool silver in her hand. He stirred again and turned his head away when she tucked it around his neck and fastened it. She smiled at his physical protest at awaking. His hair was turbulent and going gray around the edges. There was crud at the corner of his eyes from crying. When she pulled the covers away, he didn’t move. The heat of the woodstove had crept upstairs and roasted him out of his shirt and boxers while she slept.

Ribs to flank to hipbone, he had lost weight. She skimmed a hand along his side and traveled the length of his thigh. He opened pale blue eyes to midday and took a deep breath. She kept traveling with her hand, circled his navel, coasted up the center of his chest and turned the cross right side up in passing.

“Edie,” he whispered, but with protest or pleading, she couldn’t say.

She spoke nothing, just watched the indent of her fingers chase his skin. The bullet wound on his shoulder was a blatant reminder of where they had been, what he’d come from … a hint of dark, untold things. He shifted as if to conceal it when her fingers circled nearby and she caught his shoulder to halt him.

“This will not be allowed to stand between us,” she said gently, but in her head, the lawyer’s voice spoke clearly. Each of us carries our scars from the past into the future. His are more visible, but yours are no less real. In that instant, Edie Morrison knew she would be okay with this different focus of Tom Stall.

The snarling wind outside my windows cannot compete with the tame beast residing peacefully inside this house. It was a strange comfort, but comfort nonetheless. She smiled across the distance to his face and leaned to kiss him.

Melting, all soft and heat to that kiss. Revisiting the way he tasted in the morning, the way he shifted his mouth to match hers, the erotic manner that he breathes through kisses when he needs air, but refuses to break them. His hands are warm, but unsure … sidling tremblingly along her shoulder to her neck, ghosting up to her cheeks. He never quite grips her, as if that gesture of control is beyond him. She is patient, but lets her hands grasp his arms, his neck, and twirl fingergrips into his hair.

His pulse picked up. She felt it when she nipped his bottom lip, but still he is passive. His body is sluggish to respond to hers, but she does not wonder or complain. This man feels deeply, she remembered. And he’s come through fire. And he’s older … things take a little longer with an older man.

This was real.
This was truth.
This was the man she loved and no other.

And when he asked if she was sure, she was absolutely sure and met his gaze with her whole heart; saw the flicker of recognition and then understanding spark into life in his eyes.

He cried then, finally before her instead of in secret, and the fire she had built quieted. She petted his hair and waited, listened to the tumult of fractured words that spilled from his brokenness without hoarding a single one. Somehow, this confession wasn’t meant for her and she didn’t need one anymore. She let the quiet room have it, let the silver cross around his neck bear the witness for it … and then she started over again. With kisses.

Just kisses. Kisses that were soft, that kissed away tears. Kisses that lingered along his cheekbones, found the tendon in his neck. A kiss that soothed along his Adam’s apple. A kiss that traced the shape of a bullet wound until the shivering of his flesh ceased beneath her caress.

He lay fallen beneath her as if he had been tossed aside by cruel winds, but eventually the kisses cleared his vision. The tempo of his heart picked up and the pale chill of his skin swept into rosy heat. The love in his eyes shifted to contentment, wandered through devotion, burned into passion: the headiest fire of all.

She scooted out of her panties. He pulled her shirt off over her head and barely broke his kiss to do it. His hands shifted ceaselessly, never controlling, never releasing completely. He sank, nuzzled her neck and then chest, murmuring like a penitent.

No penitent kissed like Tom, nor did their worship on their knees beside the bed quite like Tom. He pulled her buttocks nearly over the edge, licked up her thigh, settled to her dark curls with a gust of breath—a diver before the plunge and she prayed unholy unseemly unrepentant prayers that he never surfaced.

O God, O God, O GodOGod and over the edge where all gods became one regardless of holiness or required sacrifices and she was flying, flying, borne by a strong wind that rattled windows and trees, but cradled her without harm.

Tom, on his feet, leaning over her at the side of the bed. She braced for his penetration and curled her hands in the covers to hold her place against his urgency. His eyes were sharp-intent and flooded with desire, but he hesitated and crawled back up on the bed. He lay back, breathless, and pulled her up to him.

“Hey?” she quested, her mind a step behind.

“I don’t want to be over the top of you,” he said. His kisses tasted like herself and his heart hammered beneath her hands.

“Is this that staircase again?” she said, straddling his lean hips but not descending. “Jesus, don’t tell me we’re going to have to revisit it to erase it!”

“Not right now, but, yes,” he returned, breathlessly. “But you get to be on top.”

“Top,” she laughed. “I like the top.” And she rolled her hips down on him and ground through his groans, kissed through the strangled sounds as he reached threshold, breathed in the high cry of his climax. He was limp and sweaty and boneless in the aftermath. She propped elbows on his chest to watch him recover, then said, “Staircase. Next.” Her lawyer voice was working perfectly.

“O God, I don’t think I can,” he groaned. “You out to get me or something?”

“Just checking your motor.”

It took some time to reawaken his passion, but in the end, she straddled across his lap where he sat midway up the stairs. He gripped her waist when she leaned back, searching for the right angles, and closed her eyes in the pure pleasure of it.

“Beautiful,” he said. His eyes were dilated in the half-light. It took him longer to finish and his voice held a note of pain when it was over.

“I’m too old for two in a row,” he said. He rested his head against her chest.

“You’re not too old; you’re just out of practice and your butt is too bony.” She nipped him on the chin, then kissed the corner of his smile. “No more staircases for us.”

Tom

Can a man be born again twice?

Edie

He came willingly to church, but faltered with the Communion plate as he did the last time. His eyes were uncertain, studying the sacraments. Edie didn’t pause, however, and she took two bits of bread and two cups as if she always took two. She put them carefully upon the pew rack and later, when all eyes were on the pastor and his sermon rolled sonorously over their heads, she turned and faced her husband.

“Are you a new man?” she asked him.

This he knew. “Yes.”

“You’ve always taken communion, yet you think the reason for it doesn’t include you, that you won’t be let into heaven. Why?”

“Because I know what I’ve done,” he didn’t look in her eyes. “I can’t be forgiven for some of that. Even being good the rest of my life won’t make up for it.”

“The box you have put God into is too small, Tom.” Her lawyer voice was soft, but direct. He cocked his head to listen because he always listened to her lawyer voice. It was a habit she counted on. “Tell me where in scripture God demands that we erase what we’ve done when it can’t be undone and until we do, there is no forgiveness—only judgment and condemnation? Can you give me the scripture that says there is no pardon for a certain sin, except the one that denies God? Do the scriptures say Jesus only came for the lightly evil and all you black hearts go to the hot spot?”

He sniggered at this and shook his head. “There isn’t any. But, Edie, I can’t forgive myself and now that you know—all this,” he waved his hands at the church encompassing them, “this is just a lie. I can’t keep up the lie anymore, not before you. You know the truth, and so does Jack.”

“If I’ve forgiven you, what does it mean for me that you won’t forgive yourself?” She leaned to look in his eyes. “You are still looking back, still watching Joey Cuzak … and as long as you hold yourself guilty, he will always be one step away from you.”

Tom went pale.

“You have to give him up completely, including his crimes. Because if you don’t, he will always be standing with us. You want forgiveness for your deceit and what it’s done to this family, but if you don’t get to the heart of your own forgiveness—you’ll never be free of him. Never. You will be carting that old man along with you instead of being new.” She reached, took the cross around his neck in her fingers. “The cross is empty for a reason—He’s not still hanging there trying to make atonement. It’s already been done. I’m not perfect enough to do this for you, Tom. He is the only thing big enough to forgive where you’ve been.”

He was silent, thinking. She watched the emotions play through his expressive eyes, wrestle with the lines of his face. “You should have been a preacher instead of a lawyer,” he said softly.

“I swear under pressure too much. I’m always having to repent for my mouth.”

It was the close of services, when the last hymn was sung and everyone’s eyes were up front on the piano player, but Reverend Peterson watched Tom and Edie Stall take Communion together in the very last pew. They hugged for a very long time and the old pastor smiled to see it.

“Welcome back home, Tom Stall,” he said to himself.

“O the wonderful cross!
O the wonderful cross,
Bids me come and die
And find that I may truly live…” they sang as the people filed slowly out.

The without whom department includes all the lj friends who filled my head with interesting conversations about this movie to the point that I had to write something! (You know who you are.)

Working through traumatic incidents is not easy. The complexities of the human psyche are well studied by medical and mental health professionals. There are no simple pat answers, but all sciences reflect the understanding that many human beings have a spiritual side that must be respected instead of ignored or dismissed. Personal opinion about a client’s spiritual practices has no place in providing support to a patient in trauma—in fact, it is often a patient’s spirituality that can help restore the balance needed to cope with illness and stress and get them back to full health.

There were elements within the context of this movie that prohibited completely ignoring the role of spirituality in the lives of Tom and Edie and the denizens of this little town. I hope I handled it well enough to not offend people of spirituality or non-spirituality. Religion is seldom a ‘one size fits all’ concept.

Lyrics for “When I survey the Wonderous Cross” by Chris Tomlin

Photo from ViggoWorks. Please don’t hotlink.

All typos and foibles are completely mind, including poorly executed concepts. Written from 10/7 to 10/18/2005

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