Redemption Series: Redemption Part 2

15.

Kari couldn't have felt worse if someone had walked up and kicked her in the stomach. The falling began again, and she had to steady herself against the desk. "He's . . . part of the conference. Freedom of the Press."

"Hold on." There was the sound of rustling papers. "We have four conferences here this weekend, but nothing about the press. Midwestern Chefs, maybe?"

Kari shook her head, her eyes filling fast with tears. "No. I must have the wrong hotel."

The blood drained from Kari's face, and she hung up the phone. Her heart and mind jockeyed for the lead in a race that seemed destined to kill her. She struggled to catch her breath as she buried her face in her hands and searched for a reasonable explanation. He'd accidentally given her the information from the last conference. Or the next one. He'd gotten the wrong hotel from his secretary. There had to be an answer. Something, anything.

Kari opened her eyes and realized there was only one other way to find out.

"Fine." She drew a quick breath and grabbed her car keys. She'd lived in the Bloomington area all of her life and had spent years visiting friends in the off-campus apartments.

Ten minutes later she turned down South Maple and headed toward the Silverlake Apartments. She searched the opposite side of the street for Tim's black Lexus but saw nothing. Her racing heart calmed ever so slightly. The caller had been playing a sick joke. There was an explanation for everything. Tim was in Gary, not here at the- She gasped. Up ahead on the right side of the street, just under the streetlight, her eyes picked out a familiar dark shape. No, Lord. No. She inched her foot onto the gas pedal, and as the black car came into view she saw it was a Lexus. Just like Tim's.

Lots of people drive a car like that. Lots of people. The license plate . . .

she couldn't be sure without reading the plate.

Two years earlier, she'd had a particularly good run of modeling jobs and surprised Tim for his birthday with the car of his 16 dreams-right down to the personalized plates. Now she pulled up behind the Lexus and had a clear view of the back in her headlights. The letters were the ones she'd picked out herself: WRITE2U.

Her cheeks grew hot, and she was unable to draw a deep breath. Tears spilled down her face, and she clenched her fists. So it was true after all.

Everything about the past hour seemed like something from a nightmare, and Kari prayed she might wake up. Never once since meeting Tim would she have thought him capable of doing this, of lying and cheating and . . .

A hundred options raced through Kari's mind. She could park and go from one apartment to another until she found him. Or she could go home and call an attorney. The tears were coming faster now, and panic welled up within her.

Black spots danced before her eyes, and she wondered if she was hyperventilating.

Was there still some possible explanation? Could he be helping a friend or meeting with another professor? Maybe he'd driven to Gary with someone else, someone who lived here in the ...

The excuses faded, and in their place an idea formed. She parked and got out of her car. Then she walked up to Tim's car and threw her body against it with all her pent-up anger and fear.

Immediately, her husband's car alarm sliced through the quiet night, echoing earsplitting cries off the fronts of the apartments. Kari returned to her car, climbed inside, and waited.

Don't be here, Tim. Please . . . let there be a reason. . . .

She fixed her eyes on the apartment entrance as the alarm wailed an entire minute, then another. The door to the complex suddenly flew open, and there he was. Her husband, the man she'd trusted with her heart and soul.

He was dressed in sweats and a white T-shirt, and his hair looked disheveled. A lump formed in Kari's throat. How could he? How could he have lied to her?

She watched him jog toward the street, aim his key chain at 17 the Lexus, and press a b.u.t.ton. Silence filled the air, and Tim surveyed the area. Before he could turn around, she opened her car door and stood up.

Her sudden movement caught Tim's attention, and from fifty feet away their eyes locked. His mouth hung open for what felt like an hour, and Kari watched the color fade from his expression. "Kari..." He took two steps toward her and stopped.

She wanted to slap his face or kick him or beg him to come home with her and tell her it was all a mistake. But the evidence was too much to bear. She considered falling against her car and weeping, but she didn't have the strength for any of it. Instead, she sank back into the driver's seat and started the engine, her eyes blurred with tears.

It was unfathomable, as if it were happening to someone else. Kari could barely breathe as her hands robotically turned the wheel and found the way home. Along the way she thought about going to see her parents or one of her three sisters, who lived minutes away. But there would be time for that later. Now she needed to be alone, to absorb the blow and give herself time to grieve until finally she believed the facts for what they were.

Tim was having an affair. With a student.

She took short, shuffling steps through the garage and into the house, where she threw herself on the living-room sofa and cried. Not the way she had cried when she and Ryan broke up back in college, or even when she miscarried her first child not long after she and Tim were married.

This was a deep, guttural weeping that came from a place in her soul she hadn't known existed until now. A dark place empty of all words except a wrenching why.

Why had this happened? What had gone wrong? Tim was still attracted to her, she knew that much. So what was it? She racked her brain trying to imagine why she hadn't been enough for him.

Then it dawned on her. Tim's student must be smarter, more academic, better with words. That had to be it. Wasn't Tim always coming home talking about this student or that one?

18.

Sharing examples from students' papers as if the clever crafting of words were the greatest talent a person could have?

She remembered a time when she and Tim attended a party hosted by the university. It was one of her first university gatherings, and she was thrilled to be there with him. They were standing together in a circle of witty, accomplished people when the talk turned to books. The chairman of Tim's department held forth for a while on some Washington expose, and a woman Kari had met only briefly mentioned a collection of South American poems she admired.

Then the tall, stooped woman on Kari's left leaned over solicitously and inquired what Kari liked to read.

She had nodded confidently and told the truth. "Just about anything by John Grisham. But The Firm was my favorite."

The pause that followed felt like an hour. Tim's chairman raised his eyebrows.

The tall woman's mouth twisted into an uncomfortable smile that barely missed being a sneer. The poetry woman's face froze; then she let out a laugh as if just realizing that Kari had told a joke. A vague-looking older man was scratching his head and looking confused. "Grisham . . . don't think I'm familiar. . . . Was he that character at Iowa, wrote that a.n.a.lysis of corporate literature?"

By then Kari wasn't listening. She had seen the look on Tim's face, a mixture of irritation and determination not to let it show. He slipped an arm around Kari's shoulders and drew her close with a defiant look as if to tell the world, "Hey, at least she's beautiful."

The conversation had continued, but the moment stayed with Kari over the years.

Clearly Tim had been embarra.s.sed, wishing her to be witty and intelligent and well-read like the other wives. That had to be the reason he was seeing someone else. The student must be brilliant and able to converse on a level Kari had never reached.

So what if she was beautiful? In the end it hadn't been enough to keep Ryan Taylor.

And now it wasn't enough for Tim, either.

19.

Other memories came to mind, times when Tim had made her feel simple and inferior. Wasn't that why she spent so much time working and volunteering at church? Wasn't that why she had joined the book club and signed up as a museum docent? So he'd see her as more than a decoration? So he would be proud of her?

It was all so unfair. She loved Tim with her whole heart, intended to stay married to him forever. Wasn't that enough?

Hours pa.s.sed, and Tim didn't come home. Kari was not surprised. What could he say? What was left to say?

The tears finally subsided, and she sat up. Her throat was swollen, and she struggled to draw a deep breath. She blew her nose and gazed out the front window at the dark skies beyond. How was it that yesterday she'd thought her marriage to Tim was a shining beacon of what married love was supposed to look like? What had happened? Even if the student had something Kari couldn't offer, was it that easy for Tim to walk away from all they had shared, all they had promised?

Her fingers tightened into two fists. If that's how he felt, he could go ahead and leave.

"Jerk." She whispered the word through clenched teeth. "We had it all, and you threw it away."

No answers came, and Kari closed her eyes, angry and defeated.

Where were G.o.d's rea.s.suring whispers now? Where was G.o.d, for that matter?

She blinked and sighed deeply, knowing the answer even as she asked the questions. G.o.d hadn't disappeared just because Tim was having an affair. Even now, with her world upside down and every breath an effort, Kari knew the Lord would never leave her. And somehow he would help her and Tim sort through this mess, even if right now the idea sickened her.

Yes, things would eventually work out. Tim would come home and apologize, and they would get counseling like a handful of her friends had done when their marriages had been threatened. They would make it work, wouldn't they? Wasn't 20 that the foundation of what she believed? That with G.o.d all things were possible?

Still, the thought of being married to a man who could lie to her, cheat on her, betray her, felt as welcoming as a life sentence in the state penitentiary. G.o.d could bring restoration, but she knew she would never be the same again after today. Tears stung at her eyes once more, and an overwhelming sadness settled like a lead blanket over her heart.

Kari pulled her knees up beneath her chin and thought about the woman she'd been that morning. Happy, idealistic, confident about her relationship with Tim.

Trusting him implicitly and ready to launch a marriage group from their home.

There hadn't been a single warning sign. She'd been busy, sure, but who wasn't?

That had never come between them before.

And as the midnight hours bled into the early dawn, Kari grieved for the woman she'd once been. The woman she'd never be again.

A woman who had drawn her last breath at ten-thirty the night before.

Freshly popped corn and vanilla candles warmed the Baxter home, a sprawling Victorian in the nearby township of Clear Creek. The Dallas Cowboys had just won a close contest, and John Baxter used the remote to turn off the television. He shifted his gaze to Elizabeth, his wife of more than thirty years. She was still beautiful, but his attraction to her was more than that. She bore a certain charm and elegance that couldn't be taught.

The screen faded to black, but John was in no hurry to get up. After raising five children, silence seemed almost sacred. He ran his thumb over his wife's soft hand and savored her presence.

G.o.d, you're so good to me . . . thank you for letting her live. Thank you.

A holy rea.s.surance ma.s.saged the rough edges of John's soul, 21 and he felt the corners of his mouth lifting. He was fifty-seven years old, married to his best friend, and certain that when the clock ran out on his days in this life, he'd have an eternity together with his loved ones in a place that would put all of earth's goodness to shame.

Life couldn't get much better than that.

He was about to say as much when Elizabeth released a troubled sigh, stood, and slowly crossed the room, her gaze fixed on the framed photographs lined along the mantel above the fireplace. There they were, all five of them-Brooke, Kari, Ashley, Erin, and Luke. Oldest to youngest.

After a few minutes, Elizabeth dabbed at two silent tears. John's heart sank, and he went to her side.

"Which one?" He slipped his arm around her shoulders.

Elizabeth dabbed at another tear and made a sound that was part laugh, part bottled-up sob. "Kari."

John shifted his gaze and stared at the face of his second- oldest daughter.

"I'm worried about her and Tim." Elizabeth nestled her head on John's shoulder.

There were goose b.u.mps on her arm, and John ran his hand down the length of it.

"Did you talk to her?"

"This morning. Before her shoot."

"What'd she say?" He studied his wife, wishing he could ease her anxiety.

"Everything's fine." Another tear trickled down her face. "Maybe I'm the only one who sees it, but something isn't right." She wiped the tear away. "The distant look in his eyes lately, the way he's always too busy for family dinners." She paused. "He's out of town again."

John was quiet. He looked at the face in the photo once more. Suddenly the picture in his mind changed, and Kari was no longer a confident young woman in her twenties, married and living not far away in Bloomington. She was an anxious teenager wondering why Ryan Taylor hadn't called.

22.

Daddy, do you pray for me every night? John could hear her.' precious voice as clearly as he'd heard it that long-ago day. He closed his eyes and let himself drift back.

"Of course." John remembered taking his daughter's hands, trying to will peace into her troubled heart.

"Will you still pray for me when I'm grown-up and married?" Her eyes grew watery and her chin quivered. "I'll need your prayers forever, Daddy."

Was her heart troubled now? Were there problems between Kari and Tim that none of them knew about? Elizabeth had always been perceptive when it came to their children, sometimes knowing their needs even before they recognized them.

"Okay." He gently squeezed Elizabeth's shoulder. "Let's pray."

Elizabeth nodded as they joined hands, bowed their heads, and placed their second-oldest daughter in G.o.d's hands where she belonged.

Even if she had no troubles at all.

23.