Chapter 22
He had come up with no solid answers the whole night, so the next morning when Luke showed up at the community kitchen, he was hardly in the mood for more problems.
“That refrigerator is 25 years old, Pastor,” Ms. P was lamenting when he came in. “It was bound to let us down sooner or later.”
“What’s up?” Luke asked, putting his hand on his head and hoping it wasn’t as dire as it sounded.
“The fridge done up and died on us. All that meat you bought yesterday is spoiled.” Ms. P threw up her hands and shook her head. “Now what are we going to feed all these folks? I know there ain’t money in the budget for this, not to mention a whole new refrigerator. And three hours ‘til it’s supposed to be out on that line too.”
Luke walked up to where the pastor’s legs were sticking out from between the big freezer and the fridge. “I would’ve put the meat in the freezer if I’d have known this…”
“Now, this ain’t your fault, Luke. It ain’t. We’ve known that fridge was on its last legs since last September. Remember, Pastor? It did this same thing back then.”
“I remember.” He didn’t sound pleased, and Luke wasn’t sure it was about the refrigerator or the whole general stack of problems confronting them.
“I can run down and get some more meat if we need it,” Luke said. “I got my check from Randy yesterday. I got enough to cover it.”
“Laws a mercy, boy. You don’t have to go and do that. That meat is expensive.”
She didn’t have to tell him. He’d seen the tab. However, as he surveyed the problem, that was the first issue that presented itself and the one most dire one needing to be fixed.
“Do we need new lettuce too?” he asked.
“Pastor, would you tell this boy that he don’t have to go and feed the whole neighborhood?”
The pastor scooted back out of the little crawl space looking utterly defeated.
Luke took one look at him and shook his head before looking at her. “Do we need lettuce too?”
Ms. P sighed and put her hands on her hips as she pursed her lips and said nothing.
“Okay. Then I’ll get lettuce too.”
“I guess you’re going to help with the meal,” Emily said to Jaycee as they sat at breakfast, the four of them, each immersed in their own world.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t go help Luke with the groceries yesterday.”
Jaycee’s gaze did that sideways glance thing that she always did when she wished Sage would disappear but she hadn’t. “No.”
Her stepmother nodded. “Will you be home afterward?”
“Probably.”
There was no mention of Sage going, and she certainly wasn’t about to ask.
The hamburger meat hit the belt followed by the lettuce and a few tomatoes. At this rate, Luke wasn’t even sure they would get it all cut up, but he couldn’t think about that now. All he could focus on was getting the items back to the kitchen and cooked as fast as possible.
When the clerk told him the total, he let out a breath and counted out the cash. So much for getting something nice for Sage.
His text came in a little after ten, and Sage grabbed up her phone.
Hope your day’s going better than mine. Hope you’re coming ‘cause I could sure use a hug.
Oh. Her heart hurt as she sent her reply. Sorry. Not coming. You’ll have to have fun doing dishes without me.
Luke’s gaze snagged on the big red pickup sitting cattycorner to all the parking lines in the lot, and he grabbed his nerves up by the collar. “Not today, Harris. I don’t have time.”
He spun into the lot, making sure to go all the way around the red pickup and the driver of which. Just as he crossed past it, however, he saw the lone car sitting in the area where most everyone else parked, and his heart did a little dance in his chest. Jaycee was here and that meant Sage was too. Finally, something would go right.
At the parking spot closest to the back door, he parked and crawled out from behind the wheel, his attention suddenly homing to the figure leaning on the driver’s door of the red pickup. Sage?
Anger and hate bled through him, and then he realized his mistake. It wasn’t Sage. It was Jaycee.
“Hey, Baker!” Rory yelled with a backward bob of his head, and Luke shook his head as if he had to have some nerve showing up like this.
Jaycee turned halfway and looked over at Luke before turning back to Rory. Rory took one more look at him and then as if he’d practiced it a thousand times, he put his hand out of the window and onto her. In the next second Luke stood, paralyzed in place as Rory kissed her until Luke wasn’t sure how she could even keep breathing.
When the kiss ended, Rory pounded on the side of his truck door and let out a whoop. Then he saluted Luke. “Later.”
And with that he hit the gas and left Jaycee standing right there. She put her hands up on her arms before turning on one foot, looking happier than Luke had ever seen her. When she got to him, she simply smiled and went right on in, never asking if she could help or doing more than laughing at the horrified look he was sure was plastered all over his face.
Rage poured into him as he felt the buzz of his phone. Yanking it out, he swiped it on as he opened the trunk for the groceries. One look at the message, and he uttered the most ironic word of the day. “Perfect.”
Sage hoped he wouldn’t be mad. It stunk that he was having a bad day. He didn’t deserve a bad day. “Dear Jesus, please help Luke’s day get better.”
“Do you want to tell me what that was?” Luke swung the bags onto the counter heedless of the other two people in the kitchen listening.
Jaycee was at the sink, washing her hands, and she shrugged. “What do you care?”
“What do I…?” Luke could well have throttled her. “Rory Harris? Rory. Harris? Are you kidding me?”
“What?” She bobbed her head as she wiped her hands on the dishtowel. “We’ve been going out a few times.”
Livid didn’t touch it. “Seriously. You have got to be joking.” He put his hands to his head, knowing he was making a scene but not really caring. “Did you not see what he did to your sister?”
But Jaycee rolled her eyes. “My sister is a tramp.”
“Why you…”
Thankfully Pastor Steve had heard and known this was about to come to blows. “Luke, would you help me get the line in place?” He took one look at both of them. “Now? Please?”
Luke glared at her, shook his head and headed out to the line.
“Jaycee, you help Ms. P,” the pastor said.
Outside the kitchen Luke was already struggling with the long metal and wood line. It was on wheels but in his current state of mind, that wasn’t helping much. The pastor came out and positioned himself on the other side so that together, they slid the thing out and into place.
“Mind telling me what that was about?” he asked Luke, coming over as Luke made the final adjustments to the placement of the thing.
“Jaycee’s being a jerk. That’s what.” The heat in him hadn’t dissipated a molecule. “She is bound and determined to run Sage right into the ground, and I’ll be honest, it’s working.” He hadn’t thought anything through, and the anger was making his normal filters short-circuit. “And now she’s going out with Rory? What is she thinking?”
“Jealousy will do that to someone,” the pastor said albeit quietly.
“Jealousy?”
“Of Sage.” The pastor sounded so calm about all of it. “She’s been angry ever since Sage got here.”
That much was true, but it was more than that now. “Sage didn’t even come today.”
“I noticed that.”
“Yeah. I mean I’ve been over to see her, but she isn’t going anywhere where she can be seen—not to normal stuff.”
“Like church?” And there was more to that than the question.
Luke exhaled. “I know what you think… about last week. But that wasn’t Sage, not the real Sage. She just… she has this…” He couldn’t even put it into words. “She’s so hurt, and I don’t blame her, and Jaycee isn’t helping, and neither are her folks.”
“Sounds serious.”
He nodded. “And I can’t make heads or tails of any of it. I mean, I want to help her, them—even Jaycee, but I just… I don’t know how.” The emotions started to catch up to him. “I mean I go to church every weekend, and I try to listen and stuff, but it’s not doing me any good out here, in the real world, with this, with them. I just feel so incredibly helpless.”
Pastor Steve nodded. His gaze checked back into the kitchen and he let out a breath. “Tell you what, after we get done today, why don’t you come by my office? Maybe we can sort some of this out together?”
For the first time in a week, Luke’s spirit relaxed. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Luke and Jaycee acted like the other wasn’t even there. He helped, filled the line, refilled it, cooked the sauce, did the dishes, and she did whatever he wasn’t doing at the moment. They apparently had agreed without consulting the other that staying out of each other’s way was better than having a screaming match for the whole world to hear.
After the last dish was washed and Luke’s heart hurt from missing Sage so much he could hardly take another breath, he locked up and headed across the parking lot to the parsonage. The parking lot was empty once again, and he was glad to see the little blue car gone as well. He didn’t want to fight with her, but how in the world could he save her from herself?
With that question and half a million others swirling around in his head, he went up the three steps and rang the doorbell. Standing there, he felt incredibly exposed to all the world for no reason he could articulate, and he put his hand up to the back of his head hoping someone would hurry.
“Oh, Luke,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “Steve said you’d be by. Come on in.”
“Uh, thanks.” Luke ducked inside suddenly feeling like he was hopelessly underdressed and out-of-place. He put his fingers to his hair and raked there three times trying to get himself presentable, which was both hopeless and pointless. He smelled like spaghetti and had stains from his bout with the dishes all over him. Presentable wasn’t happening any time soon.
“I know, Ericka, believe me, I know.”
Sage was on her way to the den when the voice, her father’s, at the bend in the hallway stopped her. She should keep going, shouldn’t listen, but her feet weren’t moving and neither was her heart.
“I know we talked about her being here all summer, and I really wanted it to work, but…”
Every pause felt like flipping her over the rocky side of a cliff. Even breathing hurt.
“Yeah. I’ve already looked at the flights, and I think we could swing the one on Wednesday.”
Tears sprang to her eyes as Sage ducked her head and fought to make them stop stinging so badly.
“I just don’t want her to be alone when she gets back. You don’t have anybody? A neighbor? A friend?”
How thoughtful, how caring. Bitterness bit into her, and she exhaled hard.
“Yeah. Yeah. I know. We’ve tried to make it work. It’s just with Jaycee and everything. Thing’s have really gotten complicated.”
Complicated. There was a good word.
“Okay. Well, see if they can do it, and let me know so I can get this flight booked. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bye.”
She had to move, had to get out of here. How she did it, she could never have said, but in the next breath she was back in her room, the door closed, with her pressed up against it lest he show up to actually tell her every plan he’d made for her life without so much as talking to her.
Luke was surprised when Pastor Steve sat not at his desk but in the small sitting area by the window. The pastor sat in the wing-backed chair and Luke on the threadbare couch, wondering why in the world he had thought this a good idea. What was he supposed to say? Everything he wanted to, he couldn’t. Everything he could would make no difference. He folded his fingers together and looked down at them, thinking he should never have agreed to this.
“Before we start,” Pastor Steve said, “I wanted to tell you how grateful we are to you. Your work with the kitchen and the community meals…”
However, Luke waved that off. “It’s not a big deal. I like to help.”
“I know, and I appreciate that.” Sitting for a moment, the pastor twined his own fingers. “And if I don’t miss my guess, that’s also why you’re here because you like to help. Am I right?”
Luke couldn’t argue so he didn’t. “Yeah, pretty much I guess. I just… I don’t know what to do with this one, you know? I mean there’s Sage, and she’s great, and… well, you know. And then there’s Jaycee. And if it was just that, okay, whatever, teenage drama, get over it. But it’s not. There’s this stuff with Sage’s folks, and Jaycee’s all throwing herself at guys who are not healthy for her to be with, and…” He let out a hard breath. “I just feel so…”
“Helpless?”
He shrugged slightly.
However, Pastor Steve nodded. “There are a lot of things in this world, things that happen, things we can’t control that bother us deeply. It’s easy to get caught up in those things and not know what to do or how to do it.”
That brought Luke’s gaze up. “Really? I mean, you get like that too?”
Pastor Steve smiled softly. “Yes. Especially when I see people I really care about hurting so badly.” He sat forward. “So why don’t you tell me what’s going on, and we’ll see if we can’t figure it out together?”
Wednesday. Wednesday. The word kept going through her like a radio you can’t get to shut off. She was leaving Wednesday. In one breath the tears pooled in her eyes again. Knowing nothing else to do, she grabbed up her phone and sent him a text. Yes, he was probably still washing dishes or cleaning up. No, she didn’t want to bother him or burden him, but she needed help, and she needed it now.
The phone in his pocket buzzed and then buzzed again. Embarrassed, Luke stopped trying to explain and reached into his pocket. “I’m sorry. It’s probably my mom telling me to pick up bread.” He pulled it out with every intention of shutting the thing off, but when his gaze read the words, his heart froze.
I’m leaving Wednesday.
Air slid from his lungs as Luke stared at it, knowing what it meant but wondering everything else about it. Had they just told her? Were the tickets purchased? Was this a done deal? It sure sounded like one. He shook his head, turned the phone, and texted back quickly.
“Something wrong?” the pastor asked, indicating the phone.
When Luke looked up at him, the truth was he just couldn’t hold this any longer. “She’s leaving.”
Understanding went through the older man’s eyes. “Sage you mean?”
Hurt crumpled over all the pain he’d been crushing inside of him, and he barely managed to beat it back. “They’re sending her home on Wednesday.”
“And this is a new development? It wasn’t expected?”
“No. She was supposed to go in August before school starts. Her parents aren’t even going to be home when she gets there.” Frustration punched out of him. “This is such an unbelievable mess, and it’s killing her.” He let out a breath as he finished the text and put the phone back into his pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s better if she goes back. Maybe I’m just being selfish for wanting her to stay.” He looked to the pastor for some confirmation of that. “Am I? Am I just being selfish?”
“Well, I don’t know. You said she is having a hard time here.”
“She is. They treat her like…” At the last second he swallowed the word. “Not very good. She’s in her room all day long unless she’s doing chores or going with them somewhere so everyone thinks they’re this big happy family. It’s all such an act. I mean, even her. She’s like this fantasy girl until you get to know her, and then you realize that she’s real, that she has real feelings and that she bleeds real blood.”
The pastor never said anything, just sat there nodding.
“And then there’s this whole act thing she’s got going on when she’s not at home. And everyone, that’s what they expect her to be, but we were finally starting to get through that, under that, to something that was real, or I thought was real, and now, they’re sending her home because none of them want to deal with what having her here really means.”
“What does it mean?”
“That they’ve got problems. That they’re not perfect. That Sage was conceived and born out of wedlock even though Mr. Lawrence was already married to Mrs. Lawrence.”
Understanding began to dawn in the pastor’s eyes.
One part of Luke realized that he had just completely ruined their reputation. He wanted to feel bad about that, but honestly, he could hardly care about them. “And Sage is the result of that. I mean how do you get past that? How do you forgive and forget something like that and move on? She can’t move on. They can’t move on. So maybe it is better for her to just go back and forget North Carolina ever existed.”
“Do you really think that’s better?”
“What’s the other option? Cage match here to the death? Last person standing keep the secret forever? What?” He shook his head. “I mean, you should see them with her. They talk about her behind her back, ream her out for every little mistake. She can’t do anything right. Nothing.”
“Does she want to go back home?”
That stopped him, and he studied his fingernails without seeing them. “No. Well, probably part of her does, but…”
“But?”
Luke glanced up at him. “Well, honestly, we just started like going out and stuff—her and me, and I felt like we were making a real connection, you know?”
“And the others don’t like this connection?”
“Oh, my gosh, no. They hate it. They hate me, but they hate her even more. They keep telling her she is going to ruin my reputation.”
“Just like she ruined her father’s.”
That one was hard to hear though he knew that’s what they thought. “But that wasn’t her fault.”
“I’m not saying it was. I’m saying that her being here is a direct reflection of the fact that the family has issues, problems, that it isn’t perfect.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Let me ask you a question.”
“Okay.”
“Where is love in any of this?”
Luke raised his eyebrows. “Um, well…”
“Or is it all fear?”
That was easier. “Fear. Yeah. Mostly fear. I mean I think they took her in because maybe they thought she would fit right in or something, but when she didn’t… so…. yeah, lots of fear.” He was nodding now, thinking back through everything. “Especially Jayc. She hated the idea from minute one. I about had to talk her off the ledge when she found out.”
“Because…?”
“Because she’s jealous and because she just wishes Sage would not even be in the picture at all.”
“So she is making it hard for Sage to be in the picture.”
“Impossible. You can’t hardly have the two of them in the same room without someone completely losing it.”
“And Sage hates Jaycee as well?”
That stopped him. He hadn’t considered that question. “No, but nothing she does is ever good enough. And now Jaycee and her mom have teamed up so it’s two on one, and Sage doesn’t stand a chance. It’s drama, drama, drama all the time.”
“Do you know where all that drama comes from?” the pastor asked.
“Uh, no. Hadn’t really thought about it. Where?”
“When we humans do not feel loved, worth it, or connected, that’s when the drama starts. Drama is a sign that someone is hurting. We lash out or turn that disconnection we feel in on ourselves, thinking it must be our fault we aren’t connecting. Remember when we talked about shame?”
Luke nodded.
“Well, shame is this thing that gets in us and tells us we’re not good enough, that the world is judging us and that we have a right to judge ourselves. We take all this stuff we’re supposed to be, expectations that we know we can’t live up to, and we beat ourselves over the head with them. We kill our spirits over it, and then we start to turn that out into the world.
“We become angry and bitter. We blame everyone else while all the while truly tearing ourselves down. Would you not agree that everyone we’re discussing has some of these traits? Fear? Anger? Bitterness? Jealousy? Hatred?”
Yes, he could see that, and Luke nodded. “But how do you ever untangle all of that? How can you ever get past it?”
“Well, what you don’t do is throw gold paint on it and hope nobody notices. That will never work.”
“So what does?”
“Ultimately love if you can ever get to it. Don’t you see? They are all hurt, and they all need love—desperately. Out of curiosity, do you know what shame’s number one rule is?”
He hadn’t realized shame had rules. “Uh, no.”
“Don’t talk.”
Why he was expecting something much longer, he didn’t know, but that surprised him. “Don’t talk?”
“Don’t talk. Don’t talk about it. Keep the secret. Lock it in a closet and hope no one ever goes in there or finds out. Why? Because talking about it does something to you. It allows you to open your heart to another person which is…?”
“Connection.”
“Right. And connection is one of shame’s worst enemies. When we really connect, shame has nowhere to hide.”
Luke’s thoughts traced back to the beach and her yelling at him that this was who she was and how she was. “That’s why Sage is different with me?”
“Because?”
“We connected. We got to know each other. Not the plastic thing she was trying to be, but the real Sage. I mean, we’ve talked about stuff, stuff I know she didn’t want to talk about, but we did.”
Pastor Steve nodded. “There are three keys to unlocking shame’s hold—courage, compassion, and connection. Courage because doing this work is not easy, and people are going to freak out on you completely when you try.”
Luke could attest to that.
“Compassion which is when we really allow each other to be real and love even the parts that are not perfect or very pretty. And connection. Not this judgmental, I’ll love you if you meet my checklist criteria. But real, deep, abiding love that says, ‘I’m in your corner. I’m here for you. No matter what.’”
Thinking it all through, Luke nodded. “I get that that’s the answer for Sage. I can see that, or some of it. But Jaycee and her folks? They would run the other direction from connecting and working through this.”
“They already are.”
“Well, that’s true.” Luke sat back and heaved a breath. “Wednesday. So do you think they all think everything is going to go back to how it was before once she’s gone?”
“Probably. Will it?”
There was no other answer. “No.”