Page 19 of To Belong Together
John watchedas Kate rinsed a pan in hot water and set it in the rack. Steam rose off the metal, and the morning light streaming through the window above the sink turned the vapor golden.
She lifted an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
John took the towel to the pan. Because he’d been in town, his parents had hosted a breakfast for him, his siblings, and their families. Despite his disappointment over Tanner’s behavior the night before, John thought he’d acted normally. “Wrong?”
“You’re even quieter than usual.” Her hair shifted as she eyed him. She used to wear those locks in braids, and he missed that version of her.
He dried the pan and hung it from the rack over the island. On the surface, this was like old times, him and Kate the last two in the kitchen, cleaning up after a family meal. Except, she’d started hiding things from him.
Why?
He shouldn’t ask. After all, unlike with Nicole, he couldn’t break off his relationship with his sister. He’d rather continue in ignorance than confirm Mark’s theory that she’d been motivated to keep secrets by something as shallow as money.
“What do you want out of life, Kate?”
Her laugh shook her shoulders. Even as an adult, she remained the smallest of his sisters, short and slim. “What does anyone want? Love, stable income, nice house. A couple of kids someday.”
“And Tanner can give you those things.”
“Are you asking or telling?” She glanced at him, leery. “He texted from the party that he was having fun with you.”
Neither Tanner nor Robby had made it to breakfast. John hadn’t been surprised, given how much they’d had to drink.
He turned to get a fresh towel, since the first was soaked. Mom and Hank had pulled out all the stops on breakfast, which had resulted in a massive pile of dishes. “Did he tell you anything else about it?”
“Oh.” She scrubbed at a spatula. “No. And I don’t want to know.”
So, Kate had suspicions that made her uneasy.
What now? He couldn’t control Kate’s decision to accept a man like Tanner, and the more John said, the more he’d offend Kate with his disappointment.
They worked in silence until Kate laid a glass mixing bowl in the drying rack and propped a wet hand on her hip. “What doyouwant out of life?”
Apparently, he’d worried about offending her too late, because anger crackled in her voice. He should’ve taken more care.
She turned back to the sink, a faint wet mark on the hem of her knit top. “Because by now, you should’ve been able to find a woman who can give you what you want. Unless you’re being too narrow-minded.”
She’d resorted to passive-aggressive name-calling. Not good.
God, I’m losing her, and I don’t know what to say.
He should’ve recognized sooner the rift growing in their relationship. Was it too late to repair it?
“I want love, but only God can satisfy that desire.” The truth served as a necessary reminder for himself. “More than anything, I want to know I lived right before Him.”
“That’s easy to say when you’ve already got everything else.”
She was wrong. It wasn’t easy. He wouldn’t be able to release his desire for love and family to God if he weren’t sure that the Lord was his only hope for finding the relationship he wanted. “Don’t you have everything too?”
“No.”
How could she say that? He’d funded each of his sisters’ educations at nice colleges. With her degree, Kate had landed a stable job that provided a good apartment, nice things, a more-than-reliable car. Love and kids were another story, but she was so young—too young to consider compromising in her search for the right man, unless, of course, she didn’t consider Tanner a compromise because she no longer held to the standards they had been raised with.
He put the mixing bowl away and turned back to her. “You and God …?”
“We’re fine. I do my thing, He does His.” She pulled the plug on the water and propped a hip against the counter. “Religion is important to you, and that’s fine. I’m happy for you. But it never did much for me. I wish you could be happy that I’ve found someone. Whatever happened at that party, you can’t tell me you haven’t been to a dozen parties that were a dozen times worse.”
He still had to dry a few utensils, but he didn’t move to take them.
