But Amy stopped. There on the edge of the water, she listened to the siren call of death as it sang from the channel's rush over hidden rocks. She listened, but she wouldn't respond, not yet. The thought of that one, loving kiss--David's kiss--was enough to make her pause, even if she couldn't quite embrace it through her pain.
She wanted to bury herself in the dank, fishy aroma of the brown river, away from the heady scent of honeysuckle that clung to everything, and reminded her of what had happened. Had it really been two months ago? The hurt was still so fresh.
She remembered. It had been such a beautiful day. The summer sun melted into her, relaxing away her cares as she took a walk along the country road, enjoying the day. As she passed by David's house, his cousin Joe was just getting out of his truck.
When Joe saw her, he waved, then fell into step beside her, talking about nothing in particular. He was a few years older and out on his own. David didn't like him, so they didn't spend much time together. But she'd actually been flattered by the attention, and he was easy to be around. They stopped at a point in the road where a slim path threaded its way through the deep plush of vines off to the side. A clump of trees hid the path from any passing cars.
Then he had grabbed her hand, tugging playfully. "I want to show you something."
"What?" She crinkled her forehead, wondering what was hidden in there.
He grinned. "Just come with me. You'll like it." And they had walked into the undergrowth, crushing the tiny, yellow flowers of the vine underfoot.
She didn't want to think about what came next or ever again go near the honeysuckle she used to love. She couldn’t smell it without once again feeling his hand pulling her into their depths, his black-velvet voice coaxing her, making her trust him, then vines pressing into her back and a whispered “No” that barely existed. Over everything lay the sweetness of fragrant nectar in that spot past the trees. There, no one could see them as he killed the innocent places she had kept in spite of everything hard in her life, knowing she could not recreate them once surrendered.
Afterwards, Joe had despised her, knowing how she had held to him, so afraid of rejection when her tears of grief and pummeling fists failed to move him. In the end, his silence had broken her. It was better to be held by him than to be completely alone.
“This is just what life is like,” she’d thought and had numbly given in to the choice she saw presented. It must somehow be her fault anyway. Certainly Joe had felt no guilt.
Love's first kiss was dead, replaced by the lusts of a man who ignored her pain. David could never want her now. She had this to bear alone--all of it, including the baby no one could see yet.
Alone or not, she was determined to love this little one if she could only claw her way out of the darkness seeping into her shattered soul.
The tears had stopped long ago. She had blocked them behind a wall that protected her, but left her dead inside. Amy imagined sinking below the ripples, and staring past the fish in an unfeeling sleep.
She idly clawed at her wrist, scraping through the skin. She wondered what it would be like to go deeper into the pulsing red.
Instead, she dropped her arms to her sides. The heat-drenched water lapped at her ankles as she stared across the river at a sunset God had made, knowing that it wasn’t for her.
She remembered all the things she had done in the past: bad things no one knew about, hates she had cherished, illicit passions she had played out in her mind behind a veil of purity. There was the child she had hit in frustration because he wouldn’t stop crying, the self-righteous resentments toward a sister who had stolen from her and lied, giving Amy the excuse to put herself on a pedestal as injured and above criticism. More.
All the judgments she had made, growing colder as she convinced herself that she was righteous, paying lip-service to the all-are-sinners doctrine. She'd always said that she needed God, but never surrendered to Him because her will was strong. That made her able to play at “being good” better than most. She had never really believed that her righteousness was “as filthy rags”--not when everyone around her seemed worse.
Now the illusion was shattered. It was only a matter of time before everyone knew about the baby and began to question everything else they thought they knew about her. It was so easy to believe the bad things about people. She knew that with the ugliness laid bare, nobody could want her.
Her parents hadn't. They kept her at home to save face, but icy silence had greeted her ever since she'd taken up with Joe. Her family believed the worst. They believed she was just easy and never asked her why.
She remembered coming home that day. She'd missed dinner. Her parents and a couple of the neighbors sat in the living room, reveling in the richness of Mom's pineapple upside-down cake. Its buttery scent filled the house, but she felt as if some invisible wall excluded her from the warmth on the other side of the room.
They just looked at her.
Until then, she hadn't considered her appearance, only tumbled out of Joe's truck and wandered into the house in a daze. In that moment, she noticed the crispness of leaves stuck in her tangled hair, the dirt on her summer dress, the strange dampness.
She watched as their faces grew cold and their eyes accused the daughter who had always been perfect until now.
"Go clean up." She felt a repudiation in her father's voice that went beyond the words themselves. When she saw the blame in their faces, she accepted it and lived to deserve it. How could she tell them something she couldn't even admit to herself?
As she left the room, the hum of voices resumed. Passing by the kitchen table, she saw an empty plate sitting there alone. The traces of food remaining in a streak across its surface testified to what had been there before being scraped away in anger. In the voices rising from the living room, she could hear her own name joined with that of Joe. A fog of tears pooled in her eyes, but didn't fall, as she wondered what they were saying. Too tired to find out, she leaned on the railing as she climbed the stairs to her room.
After that, the nightmares came like clockwork. And she couldn't stand to be touched any more; it brought on a fear she couldn't control. So she could deal with the idea of living without love, from family or from a man. She would have to.
People had always said God could love her completely, that He’d sacrificed His Son to save people like her. But she could not believe in what she had not seen and touched, or been touched by. No one--not even parents, and certainly not any decent man--could truly and from the depths of their souls, love someone who had made such a mess of things. Once everyone knew what had happened, knew who she really was, they would all reject her. Already the rumors had spread around town, and there were knowing glances as she passed.
David had not wanted to believe any of it. They’d been best friends ever since that day in church when he’d yanked out her silky blue hair ribbon, and she’d chased him down the dusty road to tackle him and get it back. He had smiled with approval for her spunk and carried her books to school ever after.
In time he had begun to love her. There under the long, sweeping branches of the willow tree beside this very same river, he had kissed her, drinking deeply of her lips in a way that had surprised her and made her cheeks grow warm. He had smiled then, brushing his fingertips across her rosy cheeks, and pulled her to him gently. With every breath, she’d inhaled the warm, musky scent rising through the rough cotton fabric of his shirt as she leaned into him.
When she could stop long enough to forget the life she lived with her family, with its alcoholism, emotional abuse, and shame covered by the walls of their snow-white, respectable house, she had started to believe she could love him back. He had a smile that shined like the light of joy in a dark place. And he could read her like no one else. Being with him felt completely natural, like he was a part of her. She'd missed him so much.
He was nothing like his cousin Joe, whose wild streak and daring had fascinated her for time out of mind. And Joe's recklessness and dangerous charm were so different from her own painstaking carefulness. Then when he had reached inside and shredded her innocence, she'd recognized the charm as a costume he wore to disguise the selfishness and decadence embedded in his lifestyle. And she’d known that David was forever beyond her because of it.
David hadn’t believed the gossip about her until he had no choice. The day he caught sight of her standing next to Joe, his arm draped around her plain as day, it seemed like something had died inside him. She ached thinking of the mismatched pairing of smirking lips and wounded eyes that day as David walked away, leaving her to the hand of a man who claimed her body, but did not love her. Then finally even Joe had rejected her, unwilling to play father to a child he had forced upon her in his own selfish cruelty.
A couple of days after he’d cut her loose, she had found out he was seeing a woman from the next town over and telling anyone who would listen that Amy had thrown herself at him. Some people believed him, even so-called friends; it was easier to deal with than the carefully hidden truth.
Grasshoppers chirped in chorus in the fields nearby as she sat on the moist edge of the riverbank, watching the sunset that was not for her. The coolness of the deep earth seeped into her. She felt like she’d taken root and would grow there with her toes dipped into the warm, brown currents. She would cease to be human, much as she felt she already had. She would be wood instead of stone-cold flesh, a modern-day dryad frozen in time beside a dinky Missouri river channel: no heart, no soul, no pain--no future.
A little, brown bird landed on a nearby branch, singing in the sun's last rays. She watched it for a while, willing her heart to change. Like the bird, she wanted to embrace the sun once again. But the night was coming. Amy wept into the rocky edge of the river, prostrate in the face of a pain she couldn't dispel or control. A part of her would fight past the darkness, reaching for a flame of life over and over. Each time, the depression and hopelessness would beat it back down into the abyss. In the end, she knew her will was nothing.
As she grew quiet once more, she watched her tears digging channels into the soft earth to join with the flowing waters of the river--joining something greater. In the stillness of that thought, Amy realized that God was waiting for her, ready to unload her burden piece by miserable piece. Finally, she stopped struggling to hold onto the familiar hurts. She felt an unexpected lifting of the weight within and was amazed that grace came so easily once she let it.
Her lips turned up in the first real smile she'd had in a long time. Joy filled her soul as she realized that her life was not over. Even this could serve a soul-deepening purpose if she could remember to give it to the Father day by day until the load was finally gone forever.
She would have this baby. And she would love the child, as only her heavenly Father could teach her to do.
She was still watching God's little creature fluff its feathers and fly into the setting sun when she heard the sound of gravel spinning off the tires of a car. It rounded the turn by the rickety dock a stone’s throw from the tucked-away spot where she now sat hugging her knees in silence. Maybe Joe had changed his mind, but she didn't think so.
The heavy steps of a man came closer and paused as he reached the head of the path coming down. Even then she didn’t turn. She was filled with a peace that passed understanding and was halfway scared it would fade into the breeze if she moved--if she breathed. The fearful part of her mind considered what she would do if Joe came to offer marriage and a family for the baby. He was a wild one, but at least he had a job, a house, and was liked around town. The baby needed a family and wouldn’t find any warmth in the home she had now. None of them even knew; they would soon enough.
But he wouldn’t love her. And she doubted he would love the baby.
“Won’t you even look at me?” A man’s voice spoke softly. She turned with a jerk, realizing her strange daydream had come alive.
What would she do? The question was no longer an abstract one. Joe stood there, looking rebellious and contrite at the same time, but still as charming as ever. The faraway sound of a car door barely registered in her mind as she gazed at the man in front of her.
"What do you want, Joe?" Her tone was guarded. She didn't ask him about the bruise high up on his cheekbone.
"You. Don't be mad at me," he wheedled. "I was just surprised. Move in with me and I'll take care of everything."
"Do you love me?" she whispered. He opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him with a gesture. "It doesn't matter." She stood and faced him, raising her eyes to meet his. "No. The answer is no. Learn the meaning."
Joe's face flushed red and he began to move toward her, fist raised. Then suddenly David stepped between them, and something in her heart sparked as if it had only been playing dead.
"I told you to stay away from her. I think you'd better leave," he said firmly, backing the bigger man down. It didn't take a genius to see that he meant business.
Joe stopped in his tracks, but managed a sly smile. "She's all yours, buddy. I broke her in just for you." Then he walked away with a speed that belied his cool façade. And David let him go.
He knelt beside her. “I finally cornered him and made him tell me what happened. He didn’t tell me straight out, but I think I know.” His work-roughened hands reached to hold hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t try to understand before--that I didn’t even ask . . . I just didn’t know how to handle the thought of you with someone else, especially not him. I’ve loved you for so long.”
Looking at his deep, brown eyes, she could see the confusion warring with the longings of his heart. Amy scarcely dared to hope, saying softly, “I love you, David, but how can I trust you to stand by me? I don't know. I see your side--I mean, I know you were hurting. But so was I and you never bothered to find that out."
"What was I supposed to think? You changed overnight and shut me out. Anyway, I'm here now and I'm trying. I'm reaching out to the most amazing woman I've ever known." His voice softened as he spoke.
Amy sighed. "I wanted to tell you, but the words wouldn't come out. I couldn’t believe you would love me after that. And after the baby.” She ducked her head uncertainly, wondering if he knew that part.
David sighed. “We'll get through this. You’re my heart. You always will be.” He cradled her hands in his, lifting the palms for another kiss, loving her beyond their situation and their pain. And in that moment of unquestioning compassion, the walls came down, and she knew that love was real in heaven and earth.