Lovers and Strangers (21 page)

"Why are you still here?" he said again. "Now, with me, after everything that's happened?"

"Because I love you."

Jack felt his insides knot. Hope, fear, excitement, dread. He hadn't thought she would say it so soon. He hadn't thought he'd have to find an answer this quickly. He stared at her, stricken. "I don't know what to say."

"It's all right," she said. "I don't expect you to say anything." She'd hoped, of course, but she hadn't expected. She'd learned, long ago, never to expect people to feel what she wanted them to. "Remember what I said about decisions? About how I'm responsible for my own? That goes for feelings, too. My feelings are my responsibility and I'll deal with them. I don't expect you to validate them or return them. I'd like you to, of course," she admitted, incurably honest, "but I don't expect it."

Jack shook his head in amazement. "I don't understand you at all, Angel. With what you know of me, you should be running as fast and far as you can by now. Not sitting there, calmly telling me you—" he couldn't even say it without feeling a tightening in his gut "—that you love me. I'm not the man for you, Angel. Not by any stretch of the imagination."

"Age is a matter of mind," she said, quoting a bumper sticker she'd seen somewhere. "If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." She smiled at him. "And I don't mind."

"It's not just the years."

"Then what? The fact that you had some kind of... of stress-induced breakdown?" She shook her head. "That doesn't frighten me."

"It should, dammit."

"Why?"

"God, you're stubborn, aren't you?"

Faith lifted her coffee cup to her lips, giving herself a chance to think about that for a moment, seriously, as if he'd really meant it as a question. "Yes, I guess I am," she decided, and put the cup down. "So you might as well answer my question now instead of later."

Jack couldn't help but grin at her. She was polite and sweet, intractable and implacable, all at the same time. And she wasn't going to let go of it until she got an answer that satisfied her. Jack sighed and reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. His hand stilled as he caught Faith's frown.

"Sorry," he muttered, dropping his hand back to the table.

"No, go ahead," Faith said automatically, unused to having her wishes considered. "It's your apartment. You can smoke if you want to."

"But you'd rather I didn't."

"Well..." She bit her lip. "They're really not good for you."

"I know," he agreed. "And I've been trying to quit." He took the half-f pack out of his pocket and crumpled it in his fist. "There," he said, tossing it down on the table. "I've quit."

"You didn't have to do that," Faith said, inexpressibly touched by the gesture.

"Yes," he said seriously. "I did." It was the least he could do for her.

They smiled across the table at each other for another moment. "That's not going to get you out of answering my question, you know," Faith said gently.

Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "It isn't just the... breakdown," he said, stumbling over the words. "Or the years. It's how the years were spent. It's the kind of man those years have made me. They've been empty years, Angel. Hard years. Devoid of warmth or compassion, or evenings like this." He gestured with his hand, indicating the properly set table, the home-cooked food, her. "And what they've made me is the kind of man who'd take advantage of a woman like—"

"You didn't take advantage of me," Faith interrupted, a warning in her eyes. "What happened between us was my de—"

"Your decision. I know. All right," he agreed, mendaciously. "I didn't take advantage of you. That doesn't negate the kind of man I am."

"And what kind of man is that?"

"I'm a hard man, Angel. Empty." He stared at her across the table, trying to make her understand. "In all those years, I've never loved anyone. Never wanted anyone to love me."

"You loved your brother."

"And I drove him to suicide," he said, his voice bitter. "Is that what you want?"

Faith bit her lip to keep from crying at the bleakness in his eyes. Crying wouldn't help anything. It would only make him think he was right about her. But she was a grown woman, not a naive, innocent child. Somehow she had to make him see that.

She pushed her plate out of the way and reached for her coffee cup, bringing it to rest on the table in front of her. She wrapped both hands around it to keep them from trembling.

"When I was fifteen," she began, "our church got a new minister. My father is an elder and very involved in all the church activities, so, naturally, Reverend Morrison came to dinner at our house almost every week. After dinner, my father would always invite him to lead our nightly Bible study and prayer session. He came other times, too, because Mama's health was poor and she couldn't always make it to church for the regular services. Usually, he'd stay for a glass of milk and some of my lemon sugar cookies or a slice of banana bread, whatever I'd baked that week. He'd sit in the kitchen for a few minutes, talking to me while I worked, about school and church and what was happening in town. It was just idle conversation, really, but the men in my family aren't much interested in a woman's opinion," she explained, "and Reverend Morrison made me feel special and important, like I mattered."

"That paints a very sweet picture," Jack said, "but I don't see what it has to do with what we're discussing." His eyebrow rose, sardonic and mocking. "Unless you're trying to make my point for me, in which case, you're doing just fine."

The look Faith gave him was pained and patient, making him feel like a heel. "Just listen," she said. "Please."

He nodded, chastised, and gestured for her to continue.

"After a while, Reverend Morrison asked my father if I could be spared once a week to clean for him. I was very flattered, and excited. It was considered an honor at our church, like being asked to arrange the flowers on the altar, or to sing in the choir, or coordinate the menu for a potluck. Plus," she added, wanting Jack to know her motives hadn't been completely altruistic. He already thought she was too sweet and innocent for her own good. "It got me out of the house for an extra afternoon every week. I was allowed to go to school and to run whatever errands I had to for my mother, but that was about it. My father thinks women and girls should be kept close to home."

"Your father is a bully," Jack muttered. "I'm sorry," he said when she flashed him that pained look again. "Go on with your story. You jumped at the chance to clean the reverend's house so you could get out of your own."

"Yes. And because I had a giant crush on him, too," she admitted. "All the girls did. He was young and handsome and unmarried, which was why he needed someone to clean for him. And, like I said, he always made me feel special. Anyway—" her fingers tightened around her coffee cup "—I'd been working for him for about two months, I guess, when—" she took a quick breath, steeling herself to tell him what no one outside of her immediate family knew "—when we began our affair."

Jack choked on his coffee, nearly spewing it out over the table. "
Your what?"

"Affair," Faith said. "I had an affair with the minister of our church."

"Lord, Faith! You were only—what?—fifteen years old?"

She nodded, refusing to look away in shame, but she couldn't stop the hot color that suffused her cheeks. "I told you I wasn't a virgin. That I started young. Remember?"

"The man should have been shot!" he exploded. "I hope that sanctimonious father of yours beat him to a bloody pulp, at least."

Faith couldn't help but be gratified by his response. It was so different from what her father's had been. "It wasn't all his fault," she said. "I-"

"Not his fault? He was your minister, for God's sake. And you were just a fifteen-year-old kid, a little girl." He could imagine her at fifteen, more innocent and angelic than she was now. A fragile flower who should have been coddled and protected from all harm. "How could it not be his fault?"

"Because I knew it was wrong. The first time he kissed me, I knew it was wrong but I didn't do anything to stop it."

She hadn't known
how
to stop it. More than that, though, she hadn't really wanted to stop it. Reverend Morrison had been young and handsome and kind. He'd made her feel special. And she'd been young and curious—and starved for the affection and approval of a man. And it was just a kiss.

"I went back to his house the next week and the week after that and things kept getting more... intense," she said with a shrug. "Deep down inside, I knew it was wrong, of course. But..." this was the hardest thing for her to admit, her own complicity in her downfall "...but I liked it when he held me and kissed me. So I let him. And I kissed him back, too," she admitted, finally looking down as she waited for Jack to condemn her the way her father had done.

When he didn't, she went on. "Finally, though, I started to get a little scared of what we were doing." And terrified that her father would find out. "But the reverend said that as long as we didn't actually 'know' each other in the biblical sense, then it wasn't really a sin. I wanted to believe him but the next time I was supposed to go over, I made some excuse—I don't remember what—and told him I wouldn't be able to work for him anymore. He called my father."

"And told him what, exactly?"

"That since I couldn't come on my regular day anymore, they'd have to arrange another time."

"You mean your father knew what was going on?" Jack said, appalled.

"No. No, of course not. My father thought I was just being slothful, trying to get out of doing the extra work on top of my chores at home. He told Reverend Morrison that I'd be over the next day after school, the same as always."

"And what about your mother? Where was she when this was going on? Why didn't you tell her what was happening?"

Faith shook her head. "I couldn't. My mother's health was very delicate. I didn't want to upset her. And I thought I could handle it myself. I thought I could just tell the reverend that I'd clean house for him but that I didn't want to do anything else. I was sure he would understand once I explained how I felt."

"And what happened?"

"I went over the next day after school, like my father told me to. Reverend Morrison was still in his office when I got there, meeting with some of the women from the ladies's auxiliary, so I started to hurry through the cleaning, hoping I could be done before the meeting was over. But I wasn't. I was in the front hall, mopping the floor when the reverend and Mrs. Nelson and the others came out of his office. He started to walk them to the front door, then turned around and asked me to wait in his office, that there was something he needed to talk to me about before I went home. I didn't say no. I couldn't. Everyone was standing right there, smiling at me, waiting for me to do as I was told."

She spoke matter-of-factly, as if she was talking about someone else, but her hands were tightly wrapped around the cup in front of her, the knuckles white with the fierceness of her grip. Jack wanted to reach out and touch her but she looked too fragile, as if she would break. He curled his hands into fists on the table to keep from reaching for her.

"So I went in his office and waited," she said. "He came in and offered me a glass of lemonade from the pitcher he had on his desk, just as if nothing was wrong. When I said no, that I had to finish my work and go, he sat down next to me and said we had to talk about our situation. I agreed that we did, and I tried to tell him what I'd decided, that I didn't want to do it anymore. That I didn't think it was right. He agreed with me, and then he leaned over and kissed me and said that he was only human and that I was just too much of a temptation to resist."

And Jack knew, suddenly, the source of her anger when he'd said almost the same thing to her on the dance floor. "Jesus, Angel, I'm sorry."

She didn't seem to hear him. "And I kissed him back," she said, determined that Jack should know everything. "And I let him touch me. When he put his hands under my skirt and took off my panties, I let him do that, too. We had sex that afternoon, there on the sofa in his office. I remember that the upholstery on the sofa was made of dark brown corduroy with little round buttons that left marks on the back of my legs. I went back to his house the next week, and the week after that, knowing full well what was going to happen. And then, the fourth time, my father came by unexpectedly to pick me up, because it was on his way home from somewhere, and he caught us."

"Good God," Jack muttered, horrified. He could almost see what must have happened next.

"My father was furious. I remember being terrified, thinking he was going to kill me right there. But Reverend Morrison managed to pull him away from me and calm him down before he'd done more than slap me a few times. I'd cut my lip on my tooth and my ears were ringing but I was all right."

"You?" Jack said, enraged. If he could have gotten his hands on the man—either man—he'd have made him hear a whole chorus of bells. "Your father hit
you?
Not the reverend?"

"I was his daughter. And he'd caught me committing the sin of fornication."

"And the reverend?" Jack insisted. "What sin had he committed?"

"It was my fault," Faith said, averting her eyes. "I'd tempted him beyond his ability to resist."