A Sister's Forgiveness (36 page)

“That’s okay. He’s got chores.” She turned to head back toward her room. “Nice to meet you,” she murmured as she passed Rachel.

To her surprise, Rachel put down the orange she was peeling and stood. She glanced at Sadie’s mom, who was twisting a dish towel around her fingers, and nodded. “Sadie, do you have a few minutes? I’d like to talk to you about something.”

Sadie’s suspicion meter went all the way to panic. “Who are you really?” she whispered.

“I’m Rachel Kaufmann, a friend of Hester and John, and I’d like the chance to become your friend as well, Sadie. If you have some time now, I’d like to tell you about something that might help you to see some light at the end of this dark tunnel that I suspect you find yourself in these days.”

All of this she delivered in a voice that was soothing and somehow comforting. But over the time that she’d spent in detention, Sadie had learned one thing for sure—never take anything at face value. The fact was that nobody could change what had happened or how that had permanently damaged everything that Sadie had taken for granted over her short life.

“Just hear her out,” her mother was saying. She had put down the towel. Sadie heard the pleading in her voice.

“Sure,” she said flippantly. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

“Sadie!” her mother said, but Rachel seemed unperturbed.

“How about we talk in your room, or would you be more comfortable—”

“My room works,” Sadie said and started down the hall. It was true. Ever since she’d gotten home, she’d found that she was most comfortable in her room. Somehow she felt safe there. Outside her door were too many reminders of how much everything had changed. Inside she could still pretend that life was normal—whatever that was.

She stood by her dresser until Rachel sat down on the desk chair. “What I want to talk to you about, Sadie, is a program called VORP.”

Sadie curled up on her bed and clutched the stuffed manatee to her chest. “That’s a weird name,” she noted.

Rachel smiled. “It is, isn’t it? Especially for a program that’s so intense.” She rested her elbows on her knees and explained how the program worked. “It’s not just a matter of saying you’re sorry, Sadie,” she said after going through the process.

“Yeah, well that’s going to be a little hard anyway.”

“How’s that?”

Sadie stared at Rachel as if she had just arrived from another universe then very slowly she spelled it out for her. “In case you haven’t heard, my victim is dead.”

She announced this without so much as a hitch in her voice. Her tears were all spent. Crying was no longer an option. Tessa was dead, and it was her fault. Crying, as one of the uniforms had commented one night, was just an exercise in self-pity.

“You’d best spend your time figuring out how you’re going to go on, girl,” the female uniform had counseled. “You might be doing some time when this all shakes out, but that’ll be short-term. You got to be thinking about the long term. How are you going to live the rest of your life? How is this thing going to make you better—stronger?”

Sadie had not answered her, seeing her lecture for the I’m-not-asking-you-for-an-answer speech that it was. But after that she had spent a lot of time thinking about what the uniform had told her. Every night she had prayed for guidance. But so far—nothing.

She looked at Rachel Kaufmann now and wondered if just maybe God had sent her a message in the form of this kind stranger. “What do I have to do?” she asked.

“In simplest terms, you have to find a way to forgive yourself.”

Sadie laughed. If the woman was making a joke, she was making a really lousy one. “And just how do I go about doing that?”

“By first seeking the forgiveness of those you have hurt,” Rachel said softly—“every one of them. And from what little I know of this, Sadie, it’s a long list.”

Part Three

…bearing with one another and… forgiving each other
,
as the Lord has forgiven you
.
C
OLOSSIANS 3:13

Chapter 37

Jeannie

T
he mail had begun to pile up on the table in the front hall. Every day Geoff collected it on his way in after school and dropped it there. Neither of them had done more than glance through the envelopes. In the first couple of weeks after Tessa’s death, they had received dozens of cards and notes expressing the sympathy and shock of friends and extended family as the news traveled across the country.

At first they had opened those envelopes and read them silently. Jeannie would open the envelope, making some comment about how this person or that must have heard about Tessa. She would scan the verse printed on the card by the manufacturer and sometimes run her thumb over the embossed illustration. Then she would gird herself to read the handwritten message that always accompanied the commercial message.

“That’s nice,” she would murmur as she passed the card to Geoff and began the process all over again. At first Geoff read the cards as carefully as she did, but after the first three or four, he began taking the card from her, glancing at the illustration, and then without reading them, adding the card to the others they had already opened.

After the first dozen or so, they had stopped even opening the envelopes. The messages brought them little comfort, just reminded them repeatedly of what they had lost, especially the personal notes sharing memories of Tessa. Jeannie knew that she should write back, thanking these dear, kind people for their expressions of sympathy, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Bills that were mixed in with the cards were noted. “The electric bill came,” she would say to Geoff as they sat in front of the television eating their supper.

“I saw it,” he might reply.

But day after day, the stack of unopened mail continued to grow until one day after returning from her run, Jeannie was on her way through the front hall and brushed against the table, sending the whole pile scattering onto the tile floor.

“Okay, God,” she muttered as she had so often done in the days before Tessa’s death, “I’ll do it now.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor, the coolness of the tiles a relief after her run, and began sorting the mail into three piles—personal cards and notes, bills and other business, and throwaway mail.

The throwaway pile was the largest, the cards came in a distant second, and the bills a close third to the cards.
How long has Geoff let things slide?
she thought and felt the annoyance and irritation with him that had become far more common than the feelings of love and respect she’d always held for him before. It wasn’t entirely his fault. She was the one who usually sorted through the daily mail and placed bills and such on his desk. Then he would attend to them at night when he did his schoolwork or worked on a new play for the team.

She began opening the bills. The more recent ones were within due dates, but their failure to pay the preceding month added late fees. Their credit card bill was over a month old and by now would carry a hefty finance charge on top of the balance. What on earth had she bought?

She ran down the list of charges, and in almost every case the charge brought a memory of Tessa. Tessa with her at the grocery store as she searched her purse for enough cash to pay and then pulled out her credit card. Tessa with her at the gas station, washing the windows while she pumped the gas, whatever conversation they had started in the car continuing. Tessa and Sadie and her at the discount store buying the supplies the girls would need for the start of the new school year.

Tessa. Tessa. Tessa.

She crumpled the bill then smoothed it and laid it with the other open bills before picking up the next envelope. The return address marked it as being from the billing department of the hospital. Jeannie breathed a sigh of relief. At least this one should be no more than a receipt showing that Geoff’s school insurance had paid the charges. She decided that she would put that one on the bottom of the pile. It would be as much a relief for Geoff to see that at least one bill had been paid as it had been to her.

But as she scanned the page, shaking her head at the itemized list of charges, her heart beat a little faster and her brain shouted,
No!

The number in the balance-owed column was five figures. Impossible. She had to be reading this wrong. She studied the information. Here was the line that showed the total of the entire itemized list. Below that was the line showing what Geoff’s insurance company had paid. And below that was the ominous balance-owed line.

Stuck to the inside of the envelope was a yellow sticky note that suggested they contact the finance department to set up a payment schedule as soon as possible.

Jeannie fingered the stack of bills she’d already opened—with more to come—and mentally calculated the total. She included everything—the regular charge plus extra finance charges and late fees—and then she added the staggering sum to the bill from the hospital. For a moment she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. How were they ever going to come up with so much money?

Geoff was already bringing in extra money from coaching just so they could meet their monthly bills and continue to live the way they did. On top of that, ever since the funeral, he had been so close to the edge. His anger and bitterness were eating him alive. This new burden would destroy him—destroy
them
. Somehow she had to find a solution to this. It was up to her. She got to her feet still clutching the stack of unpaid bills in one hand and the hospital bill in the other.

She placed the other bills on Geoff’s desk, including the credit card bill that was sure to upset him all by itself. He would notice that the stack of mail was gone, and he would be furious if she tried to hide bills from him and the penalties continued to add up. But she took the hospital bill with her to the kitchen and picked up the phone. There was only one person she could trust to tell about this. Only one person who would know what to do.

Her fingers faltered over the keypad. She and that one person were once again not on speaking terms thanks to the way things had been left that day at the bay. Emma would know what to do, but Emma blamed Jeannie for the fact that Sadie had even thought about driving that morning. And because deep down Jeannie could not allow herself to admit that there was a grain of truth in her sister’s accusation, she refused to turn to her.

She had to handle this alone. Find her way through one crisis in her life for once without leaning on Emma. She replaced the portable phone in its cradle then got down on her knees, resting her elbows on the hard wooden seat of a kitchen chair, and closed her eyes. “God, I need help. Please, show me what to do. You know that Geoff won’t accept charity even if our church and the community are willing to…”

It was the way of their faith to see each other through hard times. If someone’s house burned, it would be rebuilt—no charge. If someone lost a job and had bills to cover, the money would be raised. And Jeannie knew that it would be no different for them. But if she went to their pastor with the bill, Geoff would be upset. He was so very proud and so very stubborn.

The phone rang, and she shut her eyes tightly, ignoring the shrill sound. At that moment, a memory of Tessa suddenly came back to her as vividly as if it had happened yesterday instead of years earlier. Tessa had been only five, and the three of them had been at supper, their hands joined as Geoff led them in prayer. The phone had rung, and Tessa had half turned to jump down and get it.

“Not now,” Geoff had said softly. “We’re busy right now talking to God, honey.”

Tessa had considered that for a second, and finally the phone had stopped ringing. Then she had looked at Jeannie and said, “But, Mommy, what if that was God wanting to talk to us?”

Jeannie pushed herself to her feet and clicked the phone to see who had just called. “Rachel,” she murmured. “Not exactly God.”

To her surprise, she heard Geoff’s car on the driveway. He was home early. Still holding the hospital bill, she went to the kitchen window. He was coming up the walk carrying his playbook and duffel bag. Then she remembered that he had a game tonight. Normally she went with him, sitting in the stands with Sadie and Tessa and Matt, but not lately.