Song of the Brokenhearted (11 page)

Dane said. Ava could see his expression soften as he studied their son. “This is very disappointing. But you've let yourself down most of all. You may have ruined your college career with this move. But in the end . . . it's gonna be all right, buddy,”

Dane said, wrapping an arm over his shoulder.

Jason shook off his arm and walked ahead of them.

Her son didn't speak as Ava drove them away from the school. Dane had rushed off to work with more empty promises that he'd tackle their home problems soon.

When she dropped off the stew for the funeral of Private Grant, she could no longer gather up gratitude. Jason didn't want to leave the car. Ava thought it might be good for him to see the grieving family, but she didn't want to subject the family to her moody son.

Ava found Barbara, another member of the ministry team, organizing food in the kitchen. She gave Barbara the stew and then returned to Jason in the car. As Ava drove away, she thought of the gratitude of the families they helped.

Ava's involvement in women's ministries had led her to start a program to help people during times of crisis. She had three other women who worked with her consistently, and a list of volunteers for when a greater need arose. They didn't do earth-shattering work. They didn't build wells in Haiti, save victims of natural disasters, or rescue children in sex-trafficking stings, but she hoped what they did mattered to individuals in need. People called when they were going through anything that could be described as heartbreaking: divorce, abuse, abandonment, death, or loss of any kind.

Once when a car hit a little girl's dog, they sent the girl a stuffed animal dog and a gift card to Chuck E. Cheese. A contact of Dane's had the governor of Texas sign a card to the girl, and he included a story about how he lost his childhood dog in a similar way. He wrote that he hoped their dogs were in heaven together.

Ava enjoyed helping children the most. They dealt with pain on such different terms. It broke her heart to see their tears, to hear their questions, and yet they had such innocent belief. Ava knew that this precious hope would wane in the years to come. Ava hoped to leave them with comfort, with hope that might soothe. She understood childhood pain.

Ava let her friend Kayanne do more of the dealings with the adults. Kayanne wasn't moved by their anger, by flowers being tossed in her face with harsh words like, “Is that all God is going to do for me, have someone bring flowers? Why won't God give me my son back?”

The ministry reached beyond the church membership to most anyone touched by tragedy in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Ava was busier in this role than she wanted to be.

As she rode with Jason slumped in silence beside her, she realized that helping others had taken a lot of her time in the past few years. Her son was going through something serious, and she had been completely oblivious.

She could help other families, but she didn't know how to help her own.

When Ava called Sienna, her daughter was stunned by the revelation, no longer offering assurance that this wasn't serious.

The next night, Ava found Dane in the kitchen when she returned home from a late planning meeting where she'd removed herself from helping with the Christmas program.

“Have you talked to Jason?” she asked.

“He won't talk. I think it's his form of rebelling or something. But it's only going to prolong his restriction.”

“Restriction's all well and good, but how are we going to deal with the drug problem? We don't even know if he's addicted, if he needs rehab, or what. And does he need more physical therapy for his knee?”

Dane carried a bowl of ice cream with sprinkles on top and sat down at his computer on the dining room table. Sienna and Dane always put sprinkles on their ice cream, it was one of their “things” and brought on the missing of her daughter again.

“I know. I'll get him to talk. He might just need a couple days.”

“I'm worried about this family.”

Dane nodded, and she saw the weariness in his features. Ava realized that except for the other day in the car, he hadn't looked at her the way he used to in a long time. He walked around as if with blinders on his eyes. He didn't say she looked beautiful or seem to notice anything outside of his narrow vision.

“Would you tell me if you were seeing someone else?” she asked.

Dane's head shot up with a surprised expression that turned comical.

“Why do you find that so humorous?” she asked, annoyed at his response.

“Because if you could see inside my head and follow me around all day, you'd see that someone other than you is the last thing on my mind.”

He set down his bowl of ice cream and rose from his chair. He took her hands, pulled Ava toward the couch until she was sitting on his lap. She rarely did that anymore.

“Then what is happening?” she said, fighting the urge to wrap her arms around his neck.

He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. People asked him if he was a pilot or a former football player. Ava studied their family photograph to see if she was outdistancing him in age, but she couldn't judge.

“I haven't wanted to worry you.”

“Me worry? I could have prayed. Have you been praying?”

Dane set his spoon down. “I actually have. Not as much as you would. But yes.”

“Wow, it is bad,” she muttered as a joke, but there was truth there. Dane attended church with them, and he gave money religiously, but he was the first to admit that God wasn't front and center in his life.

“Yes, it is. But we'll figure it out. I know God isn't going to let my company fail. I've been praying too hard about it. He won't let this family fall apart either.”

Ava nodded. She didn't remind Dane of what she kept thinking lately. That God didn't always do what we thought was best for us. In fact, He rarely did.

This appeared more like the wild ride, the unknown, the untidy that kept creeping into her thoughts like dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Ava had run from the image, yet that had never stopped a storm. There was no time for preparation— the tempest gathered at their doorstep.

Eleven

T
HOUGH
A
VA'S MOTHER DIED DURING
A
VA'S KINDERGARTEN YEAR
, her daddy's sermon topics stemmed from her mother's betrayal for many years to come. Seemingly out of the blue, he'd preach messages around the unfaithful or villainous women of the Bible. At times he'd mention Leanne by name, lamenting about how his own wife had gone the way of Delilah and Jezebel. His eyes would fill with tears as he expressed how he prayed for her soul.

She'd divorced him, left them for a man who told her all about the world and promised to show it to her. She and her new boyfriend were killed in a car accident on a highway outside of Chicago. It was God's hand of judgment, the church members murmured, as if to console Daddy.

That Daddy was flawed and full of mistakes only served to make his congregation love him more. Over half the women swooned over him, married or not, from teenagers to the elderly. Ava never questioned if he slept with any of them, at least not then. She didn't think of such things as a child. No one accused him of it except a few disgruntled husbands.

Even after he was convicted, most people in his congregation stood by him, believing the devil had come in to destroy a wonderful man. His stiff sentence given during a time when Texas was being stricter about law enforcement was another sign of Satan's devious plan.

He was sentenced to life, though everyone said it would be appealed or he'd one day get paroled.

Ava breathed in the October air as she sat on the bench in what she called her private Garden of Gethsemane, located behind the modern three-story church building built for Sunday school and youth events. Ava and Dane had attended this church for fifteen years, first coming because of the great children's program and warm welcome of the congregation. Over time the closeness had been lost with the growth of the church from the hundreds into the thousands, but Ava knew that every church underwent stages of growth, decay, renewal, change, reassessment, even crisis.

Today she'd taken an hour between a leadership meeting and a private meeting with Tammy Blake, a woman she mentored in planning her first charity ball for kids with health issues. The little garden was an oasis between conversations, worries, planning, and schedules. Here she could reflect and breathe, eat her lunch with the sound of birds singing. She could pray without thinking about what she was actually saying. Her “poured out” prayers happened in solitude like this. Today, her thoughts overruled her prayers as she thought about Daddy and his sermons about Mama. Ava hadn't thought of that in years, and she wondered why so many childhood thoughts kept returning lately.

Kayanne's ringtone startled her. Ava picked up her phone and sighed. Carrying it to her Gethsemane had been a mistake. She'd already been tempted to text Jason and see how he was doing at home, though he was restricted from his phone. Sienna had sent a text that she needed to talk to Ava soon. And now Kayanne . . . all in a matter of ten minutes.

“Hey, can I call you back in—”

“No, listen, I found him.” Kayanne's voice was out of breath.

“You found him? Who? Oh, as in . . .
him
?”

“No,
him him
.”

Ava rolled her eyes and dropped her fork back into her salad. She closed the plastic top. “You found
him him
as opposed to just
him
?”

“Remember how
him
turned out?”

“Do I ever? If you would listen to your best friend when she tells you that
him
is not a twenty-eight-year-old guy who does professional Celtic dancing all around the world—”

“I know, but for a few weeks, we seemed so connected. This is different, I hope.”

“Okay, who is he? Where did you meet him?”

“He's my new match on As You Wish.”

“Hmm.”

“Did I tell you I joined As You Wish dot com?”

“No, I think you were on Dallas Singles, Marriage-in-Your-Future, and some other one.”

“Wait. I'm sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I was in my divorce group and we were talking about friendships and how easy it becomes as a single person to become pretty self-involved. And I realized that in our friendship, sometimes all I talk about is my single life. It's just so stressful being single after all these years.”

“I know it is, or I can imagine.”

“But you have things happening as well. Like what's going on with Jason.”

“He won't talk to us. He's taking his punishment without argument, he was suspended from school, and he has all sorts of additional things he has to do for the football coach, like cleaning all the equipment.”

“But he won't talk to you? Not Dane either?”

Ava dropped her salad container back into the bag. She cleaned everything up as a cold breeze inched beneath the edges of her clothes. She worried about leaving her son at home alone—what if he had a hidden stash of drugs in the house? Dane had searched his room and Jason had promised there weren't any drugs there, but what if he ran away? But Ava knew she needed to keep her routine, and Jason could either come with her or remain in the house alone.

“He's not talking to anyone, so there's not much to say there. Now let's get back to
him him
.”

“No, more about you. Dane? Sienna? You?”

Ava laughed as she walked back toward the main church, a tall, red-brick building with stained-glass windows. Ava appreciated Kayanne's attempts to be a better friend. Since Kayanne had become single, her search for a soul mate often became all consuming. Their friendship had shifted considerably, which meant Ava was most often listening or giving advice and Kayanne sometimes neglected Ava's struggles as less important.

“I'm leaving the church after I meet Tammy. We're going over her budget to look for a few areas to cut.”

She carried Kayanne inside the glass doors and toward the office kept available for ministry volunteers like her.