The phrases settled into Sarah’s mind and, like water, they gently seeped between the cracks of the brittle facade she had sculpted over her memories. Behind that facade lay pain and sorrow that she hadn’t wanted to drag into this new phase of her life.
And yet…comfort…peace…strength to the weary…your sins are paid for. The words resonated and she traced her finger over the passage as if to absorb it through her skin.
She would have to read it again when she was at home. Try to find where to put them in the life she was living now. She had tried to keep God at a distance and had managed to do that away from home.
But now that she was in Millars Crossing, God seemed determined to find her. If not at church, then here, in this hospital room. Only thing was, she didn’t know if she was ready to face Him yet.
Sarah looked up at her father, who appeared to be smiling at her. He reached out with his good hand and Sarah caught it, sharing this moment with her earthly father.
“Sarah…I…forgive…”
Sarah’s heart quickened. Had the passage she just read worked a miracle in him? Had God touched him in some way?
“Yes, Dad. What are you saying?”
He squeezed her hand, his grip surprisingly strong. His eyes were intent on hers and she sensed that he wanted to say something important.
“I forgive you.” His words, punctuated by sighs, came out more clearly than before.
He was saying he forgave her? For what?
“Are you saying you forgive me for staying away?” She squeezed back, wondering where this was going. Was this why he had summoned her home?
He shook his head, looking agitated.
“I…forgive…for Marilee…” He leaned forward; sweat beading on his forehead with the effort of his speech. “I forgive you for Marilee…for Marilee dying…I forgive you…”
He looked deep into her eyes.
“You’re saying you forgive me for what happened to Marilee?”
He squeezed her hand and nodded, his relief evident as he fell back in his chair.
Ice slipped through Sarah’s veins as the import of his words settled.
“What did I do that needs to be forgiven?” she asked.
He just breathed again, struggling to say something more.
Sarah let go of his hand and sat back, wrapping her arms around her waist, struggling to reconcile what he was saying with what had happened to her sister. “How was I supposed to stop her? What could I have done?”
“I forgive…” he repeated, looking genuinely puzzled.
“Was this what you wanted to tell me?” she said, as realization dawned. “Did you send me that note because you wanted me to come back here to Millars Crossing so that you could grant me forgiveness for something I couldn’t help?”
“I forgive…for Marilee,” he repeated, looking agitated.
As Sarah looked into her father’s eyes, she felt as if, once again, her world had fallen down around her. As if the life she thought she was rebuilding by coming here at the behest of her father was a sham, built on sand now washed away by the words her father had struggled to say. Words of forgiveness for a death she already harbored so much guilt over. Even though she intellectually knew she wasn’t to blame, her self-recriminations and second thoughts whispered otherwise to her. For days, weeks after Marilee died, Sarah had gone over that evening again and again, wishing she could turn back time. The phone ringing at two o’clock in the morning. Marilee asking Sarah to come and get her.
But Sarah was going to be the good little daughter and not break curfew. So she told Marilee she wasn’t going to pick her up.
If she had disobeyed her father, if she had listened to those other voices telling her to help her sister…
If she had simply stood up to her father and chosen her sister over pleasing him…
Sarah gathered her tattered emotions around her, wishing she knew what to say. Yes, to some degree it was her fault, but to have her father voice her own self-reproach and to add fuel to its fire by forgiving her?
She couldn’t breathe. She got to her feet and pulled her coat off the back of the chair she had been sitting on. “I did what you wanted me to that night, Dad. I stayed home because you told me to. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Marilee…”
Her heart grew cold. “Yes. Marilee. Do you know where she was going that night?”
Don’t do this, a tiny voice called out, drowned out by the swirl of anger filling Sarah’s mind.
But she couldn’t stop now. She was like a train hurtling toward its destination, carried on by the momentum of anger and hurt and disappointment.
“Do you know where your precious Marilee was? She was at a party. She was going to meet Logan Carleton there. Only Logan didn’t come. He wasn’t there.”
Logan wasn’t there.
Her focus shifted momentarily, but she carried on, her emotions beyond reasoning. “I couldn’t have stopped her from going and if I had gone to pick her up when she called I would have been disobeying you. I lost a sister that night. Someone I loved. And now you’re going to tell me that you forgive me? As if I haven’t felt guilty enough? As if I haven’t lived through any pain, any sorrow, any tragedy myself?” She stabbed her arms into the sleeves of her coat, her heart thudding like a jackhammer in her chest. She held the fronts of her coat in her fists, her knuckles white as a new sorrow coursed through her body.
Her father stared at her.
He didn’t get it. He really had thought that he was extending her a gift, and, maybe in his mind, he had.
But for Sarah, she felt as if the burden she already carried had only gotten heavier. He didn’t care about her. Even after all this time, it was still all about Marilee. It was as if she were a footnote to his life that he should attend to.
Snatching her purse off the floor, Sarah strode out of the room.
Sarah shifted back and forth in the foyer of the church, glancing over the congregation, trying to find a place as close to the back as possible. She was late and it didn’t look like there were any seats in the back, or anywhere else for that matter.
She could have stayed home, and almost did, but something indefinable called her out of bed this morning. She needed to center herself again and hoped that maybe the faith of her childhood could give her something her father couldn’t.
She wasn’t sure what she would find here, but staying home wasn’t going to fill the booming hollowness that her father’s words had created inside her very being.
I forgive…
The organist moved into the chorus and Sarah realized that if she wanted to sit down, she had to hustle. Her black knee-high boots weren’t made for speed, but she managed to slip into an empty space before the song was finished.
She glanced sidelong as she sat, and her already low spirits shifted lower. She was looking directly at Donna Carleton’s profile.
She looked ahead, thankful, however, for small miracles. At least Logan wasn’t here.
Then a shadow blocked the sun coming in through the high windows and Sarah looked up with a feeling of inevitability.
Logan stood, one hand resting on the pew in front of them, waiting to catch her attention so he could slip in past her.
Of course.
Sarah folded her arms, as if to contain her very presence beside Logan. It didn’t take much to resurrect the feeling of his hand on her face, the roughness of his calloused fingertips.