Her dad, she saw now, had never been acting alone. The Holy Spirit had been controlling his life all along.
The package from her mom arrived the following day, and Ronnie knew her mom had done what she'd asked. She brought the large envelope to the kitchen table and tore it straight across the top, then dumped the contents on the table.
Nineteen letters, all of them sent by her dad, all of them ignored and unopened. She noted the various return addresses he'd scrawled across the top: Bloomington, Tulsa, Little Rock...
She couldn't believe she hadn't read them. Had she really been that angry? That bitter? That... mean? Looking back, she knew the answer, but it still didn't make sense to her.
Thumbing through the letters, she looked for the first one he'd written. Like most of the others, it was printed neatly in black ink, and the postmark had faded slightly. Beyond the kitchen window, her dad was standing on the beach with his back to the house: Like Pastor Harris, he'd begun to wear long sleeves despite the summer heat.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the letter, and there, in the sunlight of the kitchen, she began to read.
Dear Ronnie,
I don't even know how to start a letter like this, other than to say that I'm sorry.
That's why I asked you to meet with me at the cafe, and what I wanted to tell you later that night when I called. I can understand why you didn't come and why you didn't take my call. You're angry with me, you're disappointed in me, and in your heart, you believe I've run away. In your mind, I've abandoned you and abandoned the family.
I can't deny that things are going to be different, but I want you to know that if I were in your shoes, I would probably feel much the way you do. You have every right to be angry with me. You have every right to be disappointed in me. I suppose I've earned the feelings you have, and it's not my intent to try to make excuses or cast any blame or try to convince you that you might understand it in time.
In all honesty, you might not, and that would hurt me more than you could ever imagine. You and Jonah have always meant so much to me, and I want you to understand that neither you nor Jonah were to blame for anything. Sometimes, for reasons that aren't always clear, marriages just don't work out. But remember this: I will always love you, and I will always love Jonah. I will always love your mother, and she will always have my respect. She is the giver of the two greatest gifts I've ever received, and she's been a wonderful mother. In many ways, despite the sadness I feel that your mother and I will no longer be together, I still believe it was a blessing to have been married to her for as long as I was.
I know this isn't much and it's certainly not enough to make you understand, but I want you to know that I still believe in the gift of love. I want you to believe in it, too. You deserve that in your life, for nothing is more fulfilling than love itself.
I hope that in your heart, you'll find some way to forgive me for leaving. It doesn't have to be now, or even soon. But I want you to know this: When you're finally ready, I'll be waiting with open arms on what will be the happiest day of my life.
I love you,
Dad
"I feel like I should be doing more for him," Ronnie said.
She was sitting on the back porch across from Pastor Harris. Her dad was inside sleeping, and Pastor Harris had come by with a pan of vegetable lasagna that his wife had made. It was mid-September and still hot during the day, though there'd been an evening a couple of days earlier that hinted at the crispness of autumn. It lasted only a single night; in the morning the sun was hot, and Ronnie had found herself strolling the beach and wondering whether the night before had been an illusion.
"You're doing all you can," he said. "I don't know that there's anything more you could be doing."
"I'm not talking about taking care of him. Right now, he doesn't even need me that much. He still insists on cooking, and we go for walks on the beach. We even flew kites yesterday. Aside from the pain medication, which makes him really tired, he's pretty much the same as before he went to the hospital. It's just..."
Pastor Harris's gaze was full of understanding. "You want to do something special. Something that means a lot to him."
She nodded, glad that he was here. In the past few weeks, Pastor Harris had become not only her friend, but the only person she could really talk to.
"I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That's how it often is. God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell."
She smiled, thinking she'd grown fond of their conversations. "You sound like you talk from experience."
"I love your dad, too. And like you, I wanted to do something special for him."
"And God answered?"
"God always answers."
"Was it a whisper or a church bell?"
For the first time in a long while, she saw a touch of mirth in his eyes. "A church bell, of course. God knows I'm hard of hearing these days."
"What are you going to do?"
He sat up straighter in his chair. "I'm going to install the window in the church," he said. "A benefactor showed up out of the blue last week, and not only offered to cover the rest of the repairs in full, but already had all the work crews lined up. They start work again tomorrow morning."
Over the next couple of days, Ronnie listened for church bells, but all she heard were seagulls. When listening for whispers, she heard nothing at all. It didn't necessarily surprise her--the answer hadn't come to Pastor Harris right away, either--but she hoped the answer would come before it was too late.
Instead, she simply continued on as she had before. She helped her dad when he needed help, let him be when he didn't, and tried to make the most of the remaining time they had together. That weekend, because her dad was feeling stronger, they made an outing to Orton Plantation Gardens, near Southport. It wasn't far from Wilmington and Ronnie had never been before, but as they pulled onto the graveled road that led to the original mansion, built in 1735, she already knew it was going to be a memorable day. It was the kind of place that seemed lost in time. The flowers were no longer in bloom, but as they walked among the giant oaks with their low-slung branches draped in Spanish moss, Ronnie thought that she'd never been anywhere more beautiful.
Strolling under the trees, her arm looped through her father's, they talked about the summer. For the first time, Ronnie told her dad about her relationship with Will; she told him about the first time they went fishing and the times they went mudding, she described his fancy dive from the cabana roof, and she told him all about the fiasco at the wedding. She didn't, however, tell him what happened on the day before he left for Vanderbilt or the things she'd said to him. She wasn't ready for that; the wound was still too raw. And as always when she talked, her dad listened quietly, rarely interjecting, even when she trailed off. She liked that about him. No, change that, she thought. She loved that about him, and she found herself wondering who she would have become had she never come down for the summer.
Afterward, they drove into Southport and had dinner at one of the small restaurants overlooking the harbor. She knew her dad was getting tired, but the food was good and they split a hot-fudge brownie at the end of the meal.
It was a good day, a day she knew she'd always remember. But as she sat alone in the living room after her dad had gone to bed, she once again found herself thinking that there was something more she could do for him.
The following week, the third week of September, she began to notice that her dad was getting worse. He now slept until midmorning and took another nap in the afternoon. Though he'd been taking naps regularly, the naps began to lengthen, and he went to bed earlier in the evenings. As she cleaned the kitchen for want of anything better to do, she realized after adding it all up that he was now sleeping more
than half the day.
It only got worse after that. With every passing day, he slept a little longer. He also wasn't eating enough. Instead, he moved his food around the plate and made a show of eating; when she scraped the remains into the garbage, she realized he'd only been nibbling. He was losing weight steadily now, and every time she blinked, she had the sense that her dad was getting smaller. Sometimes she was frightened by the thought that one day there would be nothing left of him at all.
September came to an end. In the mornings, the salty smell of the ocean was kept at bay by the winds from the mountains in the eastern part of the state. It was still hot, high season for hurricanes, but as yet the coast of North Carolina had been spared.
The day before, her dad had slept for fourteen hours. She knew he couldn't help it, that his body gave him no choice, but she ached at the thought that he was sleeping through most of the little time he had left. When her dad was awake, he was quieter now, content to read the Bible or walk slowly with her in silence.
More often than she expected, she found herself thinking about Will. She still wore the macrame bracelet he had given her, and as she ran her finger over its intricate weave, she wondered what classes he was taking, whom he walked beside on the greens as he moved from one building to the next. She was curious whom he sat next to when he ate in the cafeteria and whether he ever thought of her as he got ready to go out on a Friday or Saturday night. Perhaps, she thought in her lowest moments, he'd already met someone new.
"Do you want to talk about it?" her dad asked one day as they strolled along the beach. They were making their way toward the church. Since the construction had started up again, things were moving fast. The crew was massive: framers, electricians, men who specialized in trim carpentry or drywall. There were at least forty trucks on the work site, and people flowed in and out of the building constantly.
"About what?" she asked carefully.
"About Will," he said. "The way it ended between the two of you."
She gave him an appraising stare. "How could you possibly know about that?"
He shrugged. "Because you've mentioned him only in passing over the past few weeks, and you never talk to him on the phone. It's not hard to figure out that something happened."
"It's complicated," she said reluctantly.
They walked a few steps in silence before her dad spoke again. "If it matters to you, I thought he was an exceptional young man."
She looped her arm through his. "Yes, it does matter. And I thought so, too."
By then, they'd reached the church. She could see workers carrying in loads of lumber and cans of paint, and as usual her eyes sought out the empty space beneath the steeple. The window hadn't been installed yet--most of the construction had to be completed first to prevent the fragile glass pieces from cracking--but her dad still liked to visit. He was pleased by the renewed construction, but not primarily because of the window. He spoke constantly of how important the church was to Pastor Harris and how much the pastor missed preaching in the place that he'd long considered a second home.
Pastor Harris was always on site, and usually he would walk down to the beach to visit with them when they arrived. Looking around now, she spotted him standing in the gravel parking lot. He was talking to someone as he gestured animatedly at the building. Even from a distance, she could tell he was smiling.
She was about to wave in an attempt to get his attention when she suddenly recognized the man he was talking to. The sight startled her. The last time she'd seen him, she'd been distraught; the last time they'd been together, he hadn't bothered to say good-bye. Perhaps Tom Blakelee had simply been driving by and stopped to talk to the pastor about the rebuilding of the church. Maybe he was just interested.
For the rest of the week, she watched for Tom Blakelee when they visited the site, but she never saw him there again. Part of her was relieved, she admitted, that their worlds no longer intersected.
*
After their walks to the church and her dad's afternoon nap, they usually read together. She finished Anna Karenina, four months after she'd first started reading it. She checked out Doctor Zhivago from the public library. Something about the Russian writers appealed to her: the epic quality of their stories, perhaps; bleak tragedy and doomed love affairs painted on a grand canvas, so far removed from her own ordinary life.
Her dad continued to study his Bible, and sometimes he'd read a passage or verse aloud at her request. Some were short and others were long, but many of them seemed to focus on the meaning of faith. She wasn't sure why, but she sometimes got the sense that the act of reading them aloud had shed light on a nuance or meaning that he had previously missed.
Dinners were becoming simple affairs. In early October, she began to do most of the cooking, and he accepted this change as easily as he'd accepted everything else over the summer. Most of the time, he would sit in the kitchen and they would talk as she boiled pasta or rice and browned some chicken or steak in the pan. It was the first time she'd cooked meat in years, and she felt strange prodding her dad to eat it after putting the plate in front of him. He wasn't hungry much anymore, and the meals were bland because spices of any kind irritated his stomach. But she knew he needed food. Though he didn't have a scale in the house, she could see the pounds melting away.
One night after dinner, she finally told him what had happened with Will. She told him everything: about the fire and his attempts to cover for Scott, about all that had transpired with Marcus. Her dad listened intently as she spoke, and when at last he pushed aside his plate, she noticed he hadn't eaten more than a few bites.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Of course," she said. "You can ask me anything."
"When you told me that you were in love with Will, did you mean it?"
She remembered Megan asking her the same question. "Yes."
"Then I think you might have been too hard on him."
"But he was covering up a crime..."
"I know. But if you think about it, you're now in the same position that he was. You know the truth, just as he did. And you've said nothing to anyone either."
"But I didn't do it..."
"And you said that he didn't either."
"What are you trying to say? That I should tell Pastor Harris?"
He shook his head. "No," he said to her surprise. "I don't think you should."
"Why?"
"Ronnie," he said gently, "there might be more to the story than meets the eye."
"But--"
"I'm not saying I'm right. I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong about a lot of things. But if everything is just as you described it, then I want you to know this: Pastor Harris doesn't want to know the truth. Because if he does, he'll have to do something about it. And trust me, he would never want to hurt Scott or his family, especially if it was an accident. He's just not that kind of man. And one more thing. And of everything I've said, this is the most important."
"What's that?"
"You need to learn how to forgive."
She crossed her arms. "I've already forgiven Will. I've left him messages..."
Even before she finished, her dad was shaking his head. "I'm not talking about Will. You need to learn to forgive yourself first."
That night, at the bottom of the stack of letters her dad had written, Ronnie found another letter, one she hadn't yet opened. He must have added it to the stack recently, since it bore no stamp or postmark.
She didn't know whether he wanted her to read it now or whether it was meant to be read after he was gone. She supposed she could have asked him, but she didn't. In truth, she wasn't sure she wanted to read it; simply holding the envelope frightened her, because she knew that it was the last letter he would ever write to her.
His disease continued to progress. Though they followed their regular routines--eating, reading, and taking walks on the beach--her dad was taking more medicine for his pain. There were times when his eyes were glassy and out of focus, b
ut she still had the sense that the dosage wasn't strong enough. Now and then, she would see him wince as he sat reading on the couch. He would close his eyes and lean back, his face a mask of pain. When that happened, he would grip her hand; but as the days wore on, she noticed that his grip was growing weaker. His strength was fading, she thought; everything about him was fading. And soon he would be gone completely.
She could tell Pastor Harris noticed the changes in her dad as well. He'd been coming by almost every day in recent weeks, usually right before dinner. For the most part, he kept the conversation light; he updated them on the construction or regaled them with amusing stories from his past, bringing a fleeting smile to her father's face. But there were also moments when both of them seemed to run out of things to say to each other. Avoiding the elephant in the room was taxing for all of them, and in those moments, a fog of sadness seemed to settle in the living room.
When she sensed that they wanted to be alone, she would go stand out on the porch and try to imagine what they might be talking about. She could guess, of course: They talked about faith or family and maybe some regrets they each had, but she knew they also prayed together. She'd heard them once when she'd gone inside to get a glass of water, and she remembered thinking that Pastor Harris's prayer sounded more like a plea. He seemed to be begging for strength as though his own life depended on it, and as she listened to him, she closed her eyes to chime in with a silent prayer of her own.
Mid-October brought three days of unseasonably chilly weather, cold enough to require a sweatshirt in the mornings. After months of relentless heat, she enjoyed the briskness in the air, but those three days were hard on her dad. Though they still walked the beach, he moved even more slowly, and they paused only briefly outside the church before turning and heading back home. By the time they reached the door, her dad was shivering. Once inside, she drew him a warm bath, hoping it would help, feeling the first twinges of panic at the new signs of sickness that signaled the disease was advancing more rapidly.
On a Friday, a week before Halloween, her father rallied enough for them to try fishing on the small dock that Will had first taken her to. Officer Pete lent them some extra rods and a tackle box. Remarkably, her dad had never been fishing before, so Ronnie had to bait the hook. The first two fish that took the bait got away, but they were finally able to hook a small red drum and land it on the dock. It was the same kind of fish she'd caught with Will, and as the fish struggled while she freed the hook, she suddenly missed Will with an intensity that felt like physical pain.