Love's Deception (17 page)

Cat ripped open the envelope and pulled out two pieces of paper. Through the blur of tears, she recognized Ty’s writing on one. The other had been printed from a computer. The fine print was unreadable through the tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and started with the letter.

Dear Catherine,

If you haven’t already, please listen to the song on the thumb drive. It epitomizes my feelings, my regrets, my longings. Every day I wish I had back the time we spent together. I’d do things differently if I could. I’ve never been happier than I was with you and Danny. But like a coward I kept the truth from you. I was scared it would break the spell, so I stalled as long as I could. But I waited too long.

One of the last things you said to me was “I don’t even know you.” Truthfully, I don’t even know myself anymore. I finished the Book of Mormon. It changed me. But the reason it could was you. I’ll be baptized one week from Saturday. If I could wish for one thing, it would be for you to be there. If you haven’t already noticed, I bought you a plane ticket. Come spend the weekend with me. Come to my baptism. Let me show you who I am. And after that if you never want to see me again, I promise I’ll leave you alone.

Please, Catherine, will you call to tell me you’ll give me a chance?

Ty

Cat shuffled the papers and gazed at the travel itinerary: Departing Portland, Oregon, and arriving in Irvine, California, on Thursday, one week from today. Again, she read his letter.
He’s getting baptized?
After the truth came out, she’d assumed his interest in the Church was all an act. But considering where their relationship stood now, that couldn’t be the case.

She listened to the song three more times, losing herself in the mesmerizing melody and captivating lyrics. The sound of the front door opening brought her back to the present. “Mom, guess what? We’re going on a field trip. We’re going to the pumpkin patch next week,” Danny said, digging through his backpack. He pulled out a permission slip and shoved it into her hands. “You gotta sign this paper today or I can’t go.”

Cat picked up a pen and absentmindedly signed the slip. “What do you have for homework?”

“Just reading.”

As Danny read his book, the letter from Ty nearly burned a hole in the palm of Cat’s hand. She couldn’t stop eyeing it. Again, she glanced at the dates on the itinerary. The return flight wasn’t until Tuesday morning. She halfheartedly listened to Danny’s reading, all the while contemplating what to do. Why did Ty have to buy a plane ticket for her? Now if she said no, she’d feel guilty about wasting his money. If she went, what would her mother and Danny do for the five days she was gone? More importantly, did Cat dare revive her feelings for him, or let him think they might get back together?

Danny interrupted her musing when he practically yelled, “Mom, I said ‘what’s this word?’”

“Sorry. It’s ‘balloon.’”

Twenty

Ty tucked his surfboard under his arm and walked onto the beach. The gusting wind swirled sand around his ankles. A storm brewed off the coast. If Jason’s predictions were accurate, there would be killer waves today. Donning his wetsuit reminded Ty of Cat, of the time they’d spent in the treehouse. She’d assumed he surfed in Oregon, where the cool temperatures meant using a wetsuit year-round. Not in California. Here it was the exception, not the rule.

Via FedEx’s online tracking service, Ty had tracked the package all the way to Cat’s doorstep and knew it arrived on Thursday. Waiting for her call, he’d carried his iPhone around all day and had even fallen asleep with it in his hand. By Friday afternoon, his patience had evaporated. She must have read the letter, unless she never opened it. Maybe the envelope had gone directly into her trash can. He was on a tirade at work that day and now owed a few apologies.

He kicked his flip-flops onto the sand and walked into the water. Jason, in his orange-and-black wetsuit, saw him and raised his hand. Studying the swells in the blue-green water, Jason paddled into position for the next wave. Ty lifted his board over the surf crashing at his waist and hopped on.

Jason rode the wave toward shore and caught up with Ty. “Hey, dude, you made it. Where you been? I haven’t seen you on the water in weeks.”

“Busy . . . I’ve been busy,” Ty answered.

Jason laughed. “You professionals are always busy. That’s why I got myself a job with regular hours—eight to five, no exceptions.”

Jason never failed to rub in the fact that he had more free time than Ty. But Ty came back with his standard reply. “At minimum wage. If you’d finish college and get a real job, maybe you’d quit polluting the environment with that piece-of-crap 1980s Volkswagen you drive around.”

Jason slapped his hand across the surface and Ty turned his head, avoiding the spray of saltwater aimed at his face. “Ah . . . shut up. I’ll never sell the Bomb. That van’s a classic.”

Ty looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Get ready, this looks like a good one.” He propelled his board in front of the wave.

Hours later, the setting sun dipped behind a blanket of gray clouds. Rain pelted the beach in spurts. Ty and Jason turned their backs to the ocean and the wind and walked to their cars. “Mark will be out tomorrow. The waves should be just as good, if not better. You’ll be here, right?”

Ty shook his head, sending droplets of water into the air. “Nah . . . it’s Sunday. I’ve got church.”

Jason glared at him. “You’ve had church the last three weeks in a row. I’m getting tired of that excuse. When are you going to be done with that church stuff? You know Mark works on Saturday. Sunday’s always been our surf day.”

“I know, but this is something I’ve got to do. Maybe you and Mark should come with me.”

Jason shook his head. “No way. That religious stuff definitely isn’t for me.”

Ty shrugged his shoulders and veered toward the Mustang. “See you later.”

“See ya, dude.”

Ty stopped at his favorite Chinese restaurant for takeout, drove home, and showered. Pathetic. That’s what he was. On a Saturday night, he should be doing something, anything but sitting on his couch staring at his fish tank while he ate rice from a cardboard box. But he’d imposed this solitude on himself. Already two of the women in his new ward had offered to set him up with their daughters. Ty had politely refused. And Dave Larsen had forwarded him an email advertising a Single Adult dance in Mission Viejo. But Ty preferred wallowing in his muddy frustrations alone. Eventually he’d move on and start dating again, but not yet.

The bubbles in the fish tank floated to the surface and disappeared, filling the silence with a friendly gurgle. Ty’s mind wandered back to the night he’d prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true. How many weeks had it been since the Lord answered his prayer? If not for that answer, Ty never would have committed to baptism. He’d risen to his feet with a calm assurance that what he’d read was true. He knew it. He couldn’t explain how, but any other alternative felt wrong.

Jason wasn’t the only one giving him a hard time about the decision. Ty’s peers at the office had certainly noticed his drastic change in lifestyle. The partner on the Hopewell Frozen Foods engagement flashed him a dirty look when he refused the glass of wine offered by their CEO at a client dinner. A fellow manager walked away annoyed when Ty turned down his invitation to attend the Lakers preseason game the following Sunday with two college recruits.

Ty put the last bite of food in his mouth and set the empty container on the floor, then flopped onto his back and stretched his feet across the sofa armrest. Lacing his fingers together, he slid them behind his head. He closed his eyes and soon drifted to sleep.

Cat woke suddenly to the darkness of her bedroom. She bolted upright, reeling from the clarity of her dream. She played it back in her mind. She had stood on a high cliff overlooking the green expanse of a valley with the rolling surf of the ocean in the distance. A man—Ty—helped her step into a harness and put a parachute on her back, then fastened the safety straps around her chest and waist. He offered her his hand and looked at the cliff’s edge. Her eyes widened in surprise as she realized they were about to jump, but his confident smile encouraged her to follow. She set her hand in his. He ran toward the cliff, propelling her to the edge. “Don’t scream,” he said. One jump and she was flying, the air rushing past her face. The view was breathtaking, and for a time she savored its beauty.

Soon they crossed paths with a flock of seabirds. Cat tucked her head and cringed, fearing a barrage of bird droppings. Ty’s eyes twinkled with amusement at her reaction. When the birds passed, she looked down. The ground came up quickly. When would Ty tell her to release her parachute? Surely it was time. Anxious, Cat released her hold on him and reached for the cord, saying, “I’m going to pull my chute.”

He watched her intently. Cat pulled the ripcord, but nothing happened. She continued her free fall. Again, she jerked on the cord to no avail. The ground loomed closer and closer. Panic sent her heart racing. She tried the back-up cord and it also failed. She grasped for Ty, praying he wouldn’t pull his cord and leave her to plummet to her death. “Help me.”

Her eyes met his across the open air. Through an unspoken message, she knew he had no intention of leaving her, no intention of pulling his cord without first ensuring her safety. Both his arms were open to her, but fear had its talons firmly in her heart. How would she reach him in time?

At that pivotal moment in the dream, Cat woke, sweating in her sheets. Her heart still raced from the dream’s intensity. In the moment before she awoke, she knew one thing for certain: she’d never survive that jump on her own. She needed help.

While she pondered her dream, the dark of night eventually gave way to the gray light of dawn. What did the dream mean? Or was it just a random concoction of her overtired brain? She went through the motions of feeding the horses and made Danny pancakes while the dream shadowed her every thought.

Knowing her parachute would fail to open at the end of the dream made her fear of the bird droppings obviously foolish. The moral of that could be, don’t sweat the small stuff. Cat knew she was prone to expend precious emotional energy and time worrying about things that didn’t really matter.

The desperation she had felt in the moment before she woke allowed her to see herself with surprising clarity. She had a stubborn, prideful streak that often made her unwilling to ask for help, or even admit she needed it. She lacked the humility and meekness praised by the Savior in the Sermon on the Mount.
Do
I
need to change?
she asked herself. Another thought, based on scripture, came to mind as well.
Am I so busy looking at the mote in my brother’s eye that I can’t see the beam in my own?

Cat searched through the dryer for Danny’s soccer socks and his red uniform. His team had a game in St. Helens later that morning. With the travel time, it would be well after noon before they returned. Her mother, layered in coats and blankets, would shiver through the entire game. Cat told her she didn’t need to go, but her mother had her mind made up. She didn’t plan to miss any of Danny’s games this season.

Cat had still been undecided as to what she’d tell Ty, but her dream tipped the scales. The desperation she’d felt as she reached for his hand left her with an urge to see him. To forgive him. Could it be that the things he’d done that made her so angry were like the seabirds? In the whole scheme of things, maybe they weren’t very important.

To add to that, the scripture on forgiveness her mother had quoted plagued Cat to the point that she’d looked up the verse. Sure enough, Doctrine and Covenants 64:9–10 stated, “Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin. I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

Ty would be baptized in one week. He’d step out of the font spotless before the Lord, completely forgiven of all his sins as well as his past mistakes. Did Cat think she was so good that she didn’t need to forgive him? She shook her head at her own pride. When he’d begged for forgiveness, she’d turned her back on him.

The thought of not going, of telling him she refused to attend his baptism, almost made her physically ill. Cat looked across the truck at her mother. “Ty’s getting baptized next Saturday, and he invited me to come to the baptism and spend the weekend with him in California. He even bought me a plane ticket.”

Her mother seemed to hold her breath, but when Cat didn’t go on, she said, “How wonderful that he’s getting baptized. I didn’t realize you’d talked to him. What did you tell him? Do you want to go?”

“I didn’t talk to him. He sent it in the mail—FedEx, actually.”

“Are you going to call him?”

“I guess. I think I should go, but only if you and Danny will be all right without me. The ticket he bought has me leaving Portland this Thursday and returning on Tuesday. That’s a long time.”

Her mom smiled. “Of course we’ll be fine. I’ll invite Judy to spend the weekend so you won’t have to worry. Maybe we’ll rent
Pride and Prejudice
, the long version. It’s one of Judy’s favorites, and it’ll fill up the quiet time after Danny goes to bed.”

Ty’s ringtone played. He stretched his arms over his head and rubbed his eyes, then rolled his head in a circle, trying to work the kink out of his neck. A glance at the clock left him wondering who would be calling after ten. Probably Mark, trying to persuade him to hit the waves tomorrow instead of attending church. The room went silent and Ty stood, curious. He picked up the phone and slid his finger across the display. “Dang it.” He tapped Cat’s number to call her back. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Of all the calls to miss.”

He paced the length of his kitchen, running his fingers through his spiky hair while the phone rang. “Hello,” Cat’s voice answered.

“Hi, Cat.”

“Hi.” She sounded tentative, maybe a little shy.

When she didn’t offer more than that, he said, “You called?”

“Oh, yeah. I was just leaving you a message.”

Ty swallowed. “And what would that message be?” He closed his eyes.
She’s not coming
. He heard her take a deep breath on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry to call so late. It’s been a really busy day. Danny had a soccer game in St. Helens, and with the stalls and my mom . . . This was the first quiet moment I’ve had. You sound tired. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

Ty looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 10:18 pm. “Apology accepted. I fell asleep on the couch after dinner. Did you get the thumb drive . . . and the letter?”

“I did. Thank you. I like the song. And congratulations on your baptism. That’s really neat.”

Ty paced back and forth, his main question still unanswered. “You’re welcome, but you still haven’t told me what I want to hear. Will you come see me?”

“Oh . . . yes. I’ll be there. But will you promise me one thing?”