Page 9 of Between the Shady Groves
Now he didn’t know what to do.
“Sit down. You can hold them. Are your hands clean?” Monique said while she kind of ushered him into a chair. He found himself going and sitting without even really thinking about it, and before he knew it, he had a twin in each arm.
They were so tiny, they looked so fragile, and they were ugly as sin.
Who in the world thought babies were cute?
Although, as he studied the one face, he could kinda see Monique in there. And to his surprise, he picked out a few features that looked like his brother-in-law too.
Wow. That seemed almost like a miracle.
It would be another miracle if the kids actually grew up looking halfway decent after starting out life looking the way they did. Their faces were all scrunched up, and they looked a little bit like monkeys. He could understand why people believed in evolution. Although, being in the security business, he knew that things were often not the way they seemed. And looks could be very, very deceiving.
But not Lauren. Lauren was as solid as a rock. How could she have left him?
“Quick, let me get my phone out and take a picture. I don’t know ifwe’ll ever get you to hold them again. We kept asking for a picture of you with Lonnie when he was a baby, and we never got another one.”
“You have plenty of pictures of Lauren, and that was good enough for me.” He loved looking at the pictures of his wife. His sister always sent them to him, every time Lauren went down to visit, and she always looked amazing to him. So alive, so happy, beaming with joy. It was always a nice break from taking care of her mom. He didn’t mind the added expense of hiring someone to care for her mother while she was away for a day or two.
He’d always done right by her.
Except, sometimes she’d come back with the deep sadness that he wanted to be able to assuage but could never quite touch.
It wasn’t his fault that they couldn’t have a child. She’d lost three that he knew of. Maybe more. She just didn’t seem to be able to carry them. But they kept trying. He enjoyed that part of course. He figured trying was the fun part. Actually raising the kid… He wasn’t so sure about that. But he’d do it for Lauren, because he’d do anything for Lauren. And she knew it. Except…she’d left. And why?
“Hold still there,” Philip said, sitting down in a comfortable recliner facing his brother-in-law and looking lovingly at his wife, who hovered a little bit by Cannon’s elbow. He wouldn’t mind if she took the kids back. The longer he held them, the more he was afraid he was going to do something to hurt them or drop them.
“She left the apartment, and I assumed that she came here.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was going?” Philip asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“She left a note?” Monique said, and she had the same suspicious look on her face that his brother-in-law had. Like he had done something wrong.
“She left a note, but it didn’t say where she was going. And no. If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t have shown up here.”
“Do you think something happened to her? Do you think she had a car accident?”
“The police would have contacted me, wouldn’t they? I’m her husband after all.”
Just because she apparently was a little bit miffedat him didn’t mean the police weren’t going to call him if something happened to her. He was still her husband.
“I would assume so. Unless she asked them not to.”
“Why would she do that? She’s married to me.” He felt irritated at this line of questioning. And he also felt antsy, like he’d messed up, and now he needed to run to Raspberry Ridge. But then, what if she wasn’t there? What was he going to do then? Because those were the two places he knew to look for her. If he didn’t find her there, he didn’t know what he was going to do.
“Why did she leave you?” Monique asked, and only a sister could get away with a question like that. She didn’t seem the slightest bit upset about asking him either. She asked like it was her right. “What did the note say?” she said when he took a second to answer.
“Not much. Just that she was leaving. She didn’t seem mad. She just seemed…” She actually seemed lonely, now that he thought about it. He supposed he should have realized that she probably would be, with her mother being gone and all. Maybe he should have taken a couple of days off work and done something with her.
“She seemed?” Monique prompted when he trailed off.
“Sad. Probably sad would be the best word.” He didn’t want to say lonely. Because that made it look like he was doing something wrong. And how was he supposed to know that she needed him to be with her if she didn’t say? After all, she had a mouth. She could talk.
But he knew that being married meant sometimes knowing things without being told. Or figuring things out. After all, the Bible did say that a man was to dwell with his wife according to knowledge. He knew it was his responsibility to have knowledge of his wife, and…as he thought about it, he might have shirked his duties a little bit, but for good cause, since he was trying to build his business.
For some reason, it reminded him of Saul when he had taken the cattle and herds that he wasn’t supposed to, and when Samuel jumped him about it, he said that he was going to use it as a sacrifice. He tried to make it sound like he was doing a good thing, even when he knew he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
That wasn’t exactly the point of the passage, but it seemed to applyright now to him. He had been doing what he thought was a good thing, but he knew that he had shirked his duty.
