Linda Goodnight - A Time To Heal

“Not to me. I don’t believe in divorce. I hate it, hate even saying the words.”

So Susan had been right. “So I guess that means the split wasn’t your idea.”

“No.” The word was flat and hopeless. “Not my idea, but probably my fault. Cops don’t always make the best husbands.”

“I’m sure you did the best you could.” The words were platitudes even to her ears.

“I did. That’s the agony of the thing. We had a Christian home, a Christian marriage. Or so I thought. All the time, Rita was going through the motions, playing church but seeing someone else on the side. I was a fool without a clue. Not a single clue until I came home from shift one morning to find her lover drinking coffee in my kitchen. They wanted to tell me together.”

Emotion darkened his light-green eyes to the color of grass. His ex-wife had wounded him terribly. No surprise there. Seth was the sticking kind. The surprise was that he’d become a Christian.

Instinctively, as she often did with patients, Kat reached out and placed her hand over his. Seth’s skin was warm and masculine tough against her fingertips. “What an awful thing to do to you. I’m sorry, Seth. Truly.”

“Me, too, Doc.” He gave her a lopsided grin and carefully slid his hand from beneath hers and rubbed at his smooth-shaven jaw. The action was intentional, Kat was sure, his way of letting her know that he did not welcome her touch. “But a broken marriage is something even a good doctor can’t fix.”

“I know.” She folded her fingers into a fist.

This was the frustration of being a doctor. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fix everything. And there were always people who couldn’t accept that fact, including her.

Her visitor gave the porch railing a shake. The old wood wobbled like a bobble-headed doll.

“I can, however, fix this for you.” He nodded toward the rickety old fishing dock projecting out into the lapping water. “And that, too.”

“Feeling guilty about stealing my house?”

“Maybe a little, though dock inspection and repair is part of my job. Safety on the lake, first and foremost. Fix it or tear it down.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” Nothing much did these days. “I really don’t care one way or the other.”

“The next renter might. I’ll fix it.” He slid the sunglasses back into place. “You sound a little down. Everything okay?”

Like she was going to tell him all her troubles. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t look as if he believed her but he had the grace not to say so. “Well, I guess I better get moving. There’s always work to do on the lake.”

“Not to mention the fact that you’re the only thing resembling law enforcement in Wilson’s Cove.”

“That, too. But I don’t mind. Policing both the town and the lake was part of the deal when they hired me. I’m more cop than I am lake ranger, anyway.”

“The county sheriff has always taken care of Wilson Cove.”

“That was before the lake grew so popular. Sheriff Trout has an entire county to cover with four men.”

Not to mention he was stationed thirty miles away in Henderson. “Any luck with finding out who’s responsible for the recent break-ins?”

“Not yet. Nothing’s been reported for a couple of weeks so maybe the perps were short-term visitors. But just in case, keep things secured and be alert.”

She’d worked in an inner city for years. A physician knew about secure and alert.

She tilted her head in a teasing smile. He sounded so incredibly macho. “Will do, Officer.”

“I mean it, Kathryn. You’re a woman alone. If you should need me…”

“I know where you live.” She couldn’t resist saying, “In my house.”

Some of his seriousness left and he shook his head in amusement. “Still the same sassy mouth.” He slapped the top of the railing, said, “And I’ll be back to work on the dock as soon as I can.”

She’d try not to be here. She didn’t say that, either. But being near Seth resurrected too many memories. She was depressed enough as it was.

“Thanks.”

“So, I guess I’ll see you at church on Sunday?”

“Church?” Her conscience pinched. She hadn’t been to church in years. Hadn’t even thought about going.

“Does that surprise you? That I go to church now?”

She tilted her head to one side. A robin swooped to the ground beside the porch and nabbed a worm.

“A little.”

“All those times you talked about your faith finally soaked in,” Seth said. “I took a while to get the message, but the first time I looked down the wrong end of a nine millimeter and came out alive, I promised God then and there to follow Him. I wouldn’t have survived the last couple of years without Him.”

One of the few things they’d fought about as teens was Seth’s lack of a relationship with God. Somewhere along the way, while she’d been losing her faith, Seth had discovered his.

The irony wasn’t lost on Kathryn, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The gentle breeze stirred, sending a lock of hair into her eyes. Her hands were so dirty, she left it.

“So what do you say?” Seth pushed the curl aside and leaned in, green eyes aflame, lips tilted. “See you Sunday morning? Ten-thirty? If you’re nice, I’ll let you sit by me.”

The brush of his hand against her cheek warmed Kathryn more than the seventy-degree day. And that was neither good nor acceptable. She backed away, breaking contact as he’d done earlier.

“I appreciate the invitation, Seth. Really. But I won’t be coming to church.”

A slight frown puckered his dark, slashing eyebrows. “Why not? Don’t want to sit by me? Or are you already heading back to OKC?”

“I don’t know an easy way to say this.” A knot formed beneath her breast bone, like a hand squeezing her heart, but he might as well hear the truth directly from her so he wouldn’t be asking. “I don’t go to church anymore, Seth.”

He stilled, alert and watchful. “Care to explain that a little better?”

Explain? How did she explain what she didn’t understand herself?

Even through the sunglasses, his gaze bored into her, earnest and concerned. She didn’t want his concern. She didn’t want anything from him.

Turning her head, she stared out over the silvery lake. In the far corner of a nearby cove, a single boat bobbed above the gentle current. The soft murmur of voices, sprinkled with laughter, carried across the water. The scene was a happy one. Serene. Peaceful.

Kathryn couldn’t feel that peace, hadn’t felt peace in a long time.

“Somewhere along the line I lost my faith,” she said to the wind, though she could feel the intensity of Seth’s gaze burning a hole in her conscience. “I wish I still believed that God was the answer to everything. I wish I believed He cared. But the truth is, Seth,” she said, swinging her gaze to finally meet his, “I don’t believe in anything at all.”

Lost her faith. Kat’s bald statement rolled round and round inside Seth’s head as he drove along the lake’s edge checking for problems and then into town.

Kat no longer believed in God? He couldn’t take it in. All through high school her Christian stand had impressed him. So much so that he’d carried the seed of her witness to Houston and ultimately to a relationship with the Lord.

What could have happened to steal Kat’s faith?

A sick foreboding started low in his belly and climbed, full grown, into his mind.

He pulled the truck into the slanted parking spot in front of O’Grady’s Hardware Store and killed the motor. Hands gripping the steering wheel, he squeezed his eyes closed and huffed a painful sigh.