So why did he rekindle my sense of myself? Why did he make me feel like I was more than just what Jack saw? More than the refuse of a broken covenant.
I wanted to pray, but I was still too mad at God. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t escape my homesickness. My refuge was gone if I couldn’t go to him. I’d lost everything, no matter what I’d done. Teenage defiance ended in death. But trying as hard as I could as a wife had ended in betrayal. What did God want from me?
I got up to get another drink, but I hated myself for it. Eventually I fell into a shallow, headachy sleep that did nothing to calm my raging thoughts.
Chapter 7
Nate
“I googled burns,” my mother said when she called to check on me Monday. “It said they have to be debrided. It sounds terrible. Shouldn’t you be in a hospital?”
I smiled. “No, Mama. That’s for third-degree burns. I’m good.”
“It said you need antibiotics. Did they give you any? If not, I want you to go see my doctor—”
“They did. I just took one.”
“Well, all right, then.”
“So how’s Pop?”
“The first night he was home, he slept like a baby. But the last couple of nights, he’s hardly slept at all. Don’t tell him I said so.” She lowered her voice even more. “I’m sorry about what he said the other night, Nate. You two can’t go on believing the worst about each other.”
“I know. I’m sorry. He just really knows how to push my buttons.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re both home, and that he’s not in prison and you’re not in some fire. It looks really bad this morning. Did you see the news?”
“Yeah.” My buddies were still out there, right in the worst of it, and most of them hadn’t had a night’s sleep in days. They ate what was dropped from the plane in their cargo trunks or what they had stuffed into their jumpsuit pockets.
I would have given anything to be there with them. I’d asked to be a spotter or to work in dispatch or help with logistics, but I wasn’t cleared to go anywhere near the fire. Bureau of Land Management policy required that I not be involved in any way. It didn’t matter how much they needed me.
I went into Drew’s garage, where he kept his dusty weight bench. The dumbbells were lined up on the floor, and I grabbed the ones that were ten pounds less than I’d curled before my injuries.
With the first curl, my right arm and side pulled, and I set the weight down quickly. I had to be able to run uphill with a hundred pounds of gear, so sitting around while I recovered was not going to work for me. I set the dumbbells down and grabbed the barbell, tried to lift it over my head, gritting my teeth through the pain. I counted to ten, then dropped it back on the concrete floor.
“Are you supposed to be doing that?”
I turned and saw my brother standing at the door with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Yeah, it’s no problem.”
“You’ve still got a lot of swelling, and your skin needs to heal.”
“What are you? A doctor?”
“No, but I played football long enough to know that you have to take care of your body. Weightlifting isn’t considered part of burn rehab.”
I sat on the bench and wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve. “You’re up early for a guy who worked all night.”
“I slept enough.” He came into the garage and sat down on a lawn chair. His hair was disheveled like a little kid’s. “So how did it go with the old man last night?”
“About what I expected.”
“You didn’t see any change?”
“Well, he wasn’t drunk. But he’s still himself. To tell you the truth, Drew, I don’t really know how I feel. I guess I’m not all that anxious to start exhuming all those memories. Pop’s blaming me for not visiting him in prison, even though it was because he took us both off the visitors’ list.”
“He’ll learn to respect you. Remember, we were kids when he left. He doesn’t know us as adults.”
“I’m not used to being treated like a kid. Where I live, people respect me. They know they can count on me. But the minute I drive into Carlisle, it’s like nothing I’ve ever done matters. All of a sudden I’m Roy Beckett’s no-account son, and I feel like I have to hang my head again and prove to everybody—especially him—that I’m not who they think I am.”
“You need closure about that church fire.”
“If there was one iota of evidence that I started that fire, they would have arrested me. They could have gotten my address from Mama or you in two minutes. But they didn’t, because I didn’t do it. But the rumors don’t die.” I bent and grabbed the weights again. I didn’t want to admit it, but my brother was right. I shouldn’t be doing this.
“Then prove who did it,” he said.
I dropped the weights again.
“Pop called me the other night after you left and asked if we would take him around today,” Drew said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”
“What for?”
“He’s on this kick now. Says he wants to figure out who killed the preacher, since it wasn’t him.”
I blew out a long breath that was half pain and half frustration. “Why would he do that?”
“Maybe because it really wasn’t him.”
I shook my head at my brother. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
He sipped his coffee and chuckled. “No, but he seems to.”
“You think he’s convinced himself over the years that he’s innocent?”
“He’s not crazy. He’s cantankerous. But he’s always insisted he was innocent. Never pled guilty, even though it would’ve taken years off his sentence.”
I wiped my face again. “I’ll go with you. But if he starts in on me, I’ll let you drop me off and I’ll get an Uber home.”
“Seems to me you both have something to prove. Maybe you could prove it together.”
“First we have to convince each other we’re innocent.”
After I showered, we loaded into Drew’s truck. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “You’ve been in Carlisle all these years. What do you know about Brenna Strickland?”
“You mean Hertzog?”
“Yeah.”
“Just that her ex-husband’s a jerk and she hasn’t handled her divorce very well.” He glanced at me as he drove. “So what are you up to? You going to see her?”
“Already did.”
Drew’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”
“Saturday night. Saw that her light was on, so I walked over.”
“Well, you’ve got guts, I’ll say that.”
“It was good to see her. But I agree with you. She’s having a hard time.”
“Jack Hertzog. I couldn’t believe she married that guy.”
“I guess she loved him.”
“She loved his money.”
I frowned and looked out the window. Brenna wasn’t the type to choose a guy for money. If she had been, she never would have gone out with me. But maybe after she, her sister, and her mom struggled for money after her father’s death, the prospect of stability had seemed attractive.