The Heart of Memory (21 page)

“So you’re a therapist here?”

“I am. I got my master’s in Atlanta, and my PhD, as well.”

“Amazing.” Savannah shook her head, astonished at the story. “Just amazing. I’m so happy everything turned out so well for you.” She chafed a bit at all the God talk, but the serenity and peace and joy she saw in Tabitha’s face made her long for the same outcome. She almost didn’t want to admit it, but Tabitha might have been right. Maybe Savannah really did need to be here.

T
HAT EVENING, AFTER THE POT
roast dinner that Savannah had to admit was the best she’d ever had, she and Tabitha sat out on the second-story porch cocooned in quilts and continued to catch up on the time they had lost. Tabitha was apparently very skilled at reading people—or at least reading Savannah—because she had yet to ask Savannah what had actually happened. Savannah was relieved to put it off for a little while. She wanted to forget about the reason she’d come out and just focus on regaining the friendship she’d missed so much. Her friends back in the Springs were good people, and she’d enjoyed the time she’d spent with them over the years; but something about her relationship with Tabitha was different, deeper. Tabitha was a Jesus friend, closer than a brother, see-into-your-soul insightful, lavish with both her love and her forgiveness, even in the face of Savannah’s foolishneess. She was the sister Savannah had never had, who could read her like a book and didn’t buy the facade she tried to erect to save her image or her pride. She knew that, when she did finally tell what had happened, Tabitha wouldn’t come back at her with the same empty advice she’d gotten from others — and it wasn’t just because she understood what it was like to have your faith ripped away. Tabitha wasn’t made uncomfortable by other people’s pain.

The sky was black by the time Savannah came to her recent history in the retelling of the last twenty years. “I thought for sure I was going to die. I never once told Shaun — I didn’t tell anyone. I maintained a brave face and insisted I would be healed, but only because I thought if I claimed it enough, and got myself to believe it, that that would be the proof of my faith that God was looking for. And then, just before the surgery, I had this … this epiphany about my relationship with God, and I felt like my eyes were finally opened. Those few days were just … bliss. Mountaintop, day in and day out. I could feel his presence; I had this clarity of faith and thought that I hadn’t had in a really, really long time. And then I woke up from the surgery and it was all gone. So much was going on in those first couple weeks, physically and emotionally and mentally, that it didn’t dawn on me until later. It’s a serious mind-trip to know that such an integral part of your body is totally gone, and someone else’s integral part is now in its place — not to mention that you have it because they’re dead.” She gave a little shudder, though the quilt was plenty warm for the mild November night. “I started noticing little things were different, but I chalked them up to still recovering from the surgery. I didn’t want to go out, but that was because I didn’t want to pick up any germs. I was more clumsy, but that was because I’d been really weak and sick before the surgery, and my muscles were still rebuilding. That sort of thing. But other things were happening that I couldn’t explain—like, I love strawberries now. More than chocolate.”

Tabitha’s eyebrows shot up. “Not really more than chocolate.”

“Really.”

“Girl, that’s weird.”

Savannah laughed. “Yes! It is! And I can’t account for that at all. Same with the … God thing.” Even saying the word made her throat hitch a bit, the same way swearing had felt when she’d tried to do it to look cool in junior high. “I went from being crazy in love with him, feeling his presence all around me, the Bible just lighting up when I’d read it, to how I am now.”

“Which is?”

She studied the view of the orchard, looking for the right words. “Feeling like the whole thing is pretty much a crock. Just … made up. The very concept sounds ridiculous to me. Plus anger sits under the surface all the time, and it flares at the slightest irritation. Especially if it has anything to do with religion. I’d walk into A&A and have a physical reaction—I wanted to just get out of there. The people, the purpose of the place—it all made me sick.”

Tabitha said nothing, and Savannah welcomed her unwillingness to jump in with a diagnosis. They sat in silence, their rocking chairs squeaking in unison as their movement fell into sync, until Tabitha offered a simple, “Wow.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“So now what?”

“I don’t know. I can’t do my work. I can’t even fake doing my work. I had a ten-city tour planned and I walked off the stage at the first stop because I couldn’t bring myself to even just read the talk I’d written. My marriage is falling apart, my daughter—well, Jessie and I have never had a great relationship in the first place; but this definitely isn’t helping.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Savannah looked at Tabitha and smiled. “Thank you. You know, I don’t think anyone has said that. Well—not Marisa or Shaun, and they’re the only ones who know what’s really going on. They just want to fix it so they can keep A&A from falling to pieces.”

“I’m sure they care more about you than the ministry.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m sorry about that, then, too.”

Savannah was ready to get the conversation off of her. “So you never married?”

“No.”

“Because of what happened?”

“Because God led me down a different path. But I didn’t want anything to do with men for the first couple years after everything, either. And it took me a long time to get over the abortion. I couldn’t handle the thought of another pregnancy. I was afraid experiencing those symptoms again would send me into a depression. But now …” She smiled. “I’m thoroughly content. I love what I do, and I’m good at it, and God has blessed me in so many ways it’s almost silly. I have no desire to upset the balance of my life with that kind of relationship. But if God wanted me married, I’ve no doubt he’d awaken a desire in me for that.”

Savannah sighed. “See, all that you just said? In my head, I’m just thinking to myself, ‘How pathetic to give God so much credit.’”

Tabitha gave her a look she couldn’t read.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Tabitha smiled. “It’s hard to turn off the psychologist in me, you know? But you didn’t come here to meet with a shrink, you came to meet with a friend who could relate to your pain. So I’m not going to start giving you my professional insights unless you ask.”

“But you’ll think them in your head, is that it?”

“Probably, yes.”

Savannah chuckled. “That’s fine with me.” She snaked a hand out from beneath the warm quilt to grab her coffee before it got too cold. “So what was it like, leaving the faith?”

“Easy at first. I felt so betrayed — by both God and Richard. That made it a lot easier to walk away. And I’d never quite fit in at the church I grew up in, and was always getting hassled by the admin at Christ College, so that all kind of coalesced in my head with the betrayal. I figured it was all just a sham and I was lucky to get out before I lost my whole life into it. You knew how I’d wanted to get out of Colorado; everything that happened gave me the gumption to actually go. My parents were sad I left, but not all that surprised, I don’t think. I didn’t tell them about leaving Christianity until a lot later. I didn’t really have to tell them; they weren’t around to see how I was living.”

Savannah raised her brows. “How were you living?”

Tabitha chuckled. “Not as recklessly as you might think. I’d already gotten hurt once; I didn’t want to put myself in the position of being hurt again. I got a lame minimum-wage job in Savannah — not what I’d wanted to do with my life, but it got me in a different time zone and I was happy enough for that. I rented a room from the Burlington family, just on the edge of the city, and they were the most welcoming and loving people I think I’ve ever met. They practically insisted I join them for dinner every night, and Anna always made me breakfast since Trent and I left for work about the same time. They had a daughter a couple years younger than me, and a son in high school. They were this classic Southern old-money family but with so much heart and sincerity and, as I quickly discovered, tremendous faith. They always invited me to church, and were never pushy about it, but I finally told Anna one night why I left Colorado and that I didn’t believe in God anymore, just so she wouldn’t get her hopes up about me joining them. She started crying — this woman that barely knew me was so broken over my story that she actually cried.” Tabitha chuckled. “You know me, I’m not much of a crier myself, but seeing how much she hurt for me really moved me. So I started crying, and that kind of opened the floodgates. I’d never really let myself grieve over everything that had happened—I buried my hurt, especially about the abortion, and made myself buck up and get on with things so I didn’t have to think about it.”

Savannah grinned. “Reminds me of how doctors always make the worst patients.”

Tabitha laughed. “Exactly! If someone else had done that I’d have been warning them about how that kind of stuffed-down pain can come back to bite you. But in myself, I didn’t see the problem. I just had to get my life back together.

“Anyway, Anna started praying over me — I mean, not just praying
for
me, but praying over my future and past and my purpose in life…. I’d never heard anyone pray like that before. It was almost scary, how the feeling in the room palpably changed. Like it was charged with spiritual energy. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was a serious prayer warrior.” Tabitha smiled. “I didn’t have a chance staying away from God, living with that family. And of course he knew that, hence the reason I was there. And even though I was a little freaked out by the praying, I didn’t want to move out. I didn’t exactly want what she had, but I couldn’t quite get myself to leave it, either. This all happened after I’d been there about a year and a half. It took almost four more years before I was willing to step foot back in church, but when I did God really grabbed me. I met a woman there, Alanna, who had a slightly similar story to mine, and had gone through a period away from the church as well. We started talking, and God gave us the idea of The Refuge. We started it together with the Burlington’s help. That was almost ten years ago now. Alanna ended up getting married and her husband got transferred, so she left about three years ago.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Wow.” Savannah snuggled deeper beneath the quilt. “That’s a really beautiful story, Tabs.”

“All to God’s glory, but thanks.”

Savannah’s cell began to ring in her pocket. She fished it out and saw Marisa’s number on the screen. “Sorry—I should probably take this.” She answered with trepidation. “Hey Marisa, what’s up?”

“Hi, Savannah. Listen, I’m flying out to New York again tomorrow and I’ve got a layover in Atlanta, around one. My plane for New York doesn’t leave until almost 3. Do you think we could meet? I have some stuff from A&A that you need to go through, and I wanted to talk to you about something, in person.”

Savannah frowned. “Well, sure, that’s fine. Let me find out where we can meet and I’ll give you a call back.” They hung up and she told Tabitha about the call. “It’s never good when someone wants to talk to you ‘in person,’ is it?”

“Hmmm … not usually. You never know, though.”

“No, I know Marisa. Good news she can’t keep under her hat.”

“I’ll be praying for your meeting.”

She gave Tabitha a sidelong look and almost asked her not to. But hearing it from her felt different than it had felt from Shaun and Marisa. More sincere, less threatening. Even if she didn’t think it would do any good, it felt good to know her best friend was back at her side.

A
T ONE O’CLOCK
S
AVANNAH ENTERED
the Atlanta Bread Company just across the street from the airport. She ordered sweet tea for herself and waited at a table, trying not to feel anxious. Ever since she’d bombed at the book tour gig, her relationship with Marisa had been awkward at best. She’d given up expecting anyone to understand, but Marisa pushed her patience to the limit. Lately Savannah had taken to flat-out lying to get out of seeing her, and had it not been for the “in person” comment she’d have done the same for today.

Savannah grew more nervous as one minute after another passed. She ordered another iced tea and chided herself for her nerves. After all, what was the worst Marisa could have to say?

The more she thought about it the more she wished she hadn’t asked herself that.

Marisa finally appeared at half past one. “I’m sorry I’m late; it took longer to get here than I thought it would.”

Savannah tapped into her new bitter side to deal with her anxiety. “Never mind. What’s one more half hour out of my vacation?” The sarcastic tone was uncomfortable in her mouth, and seeing Marisa become even more flustered made her feel worse. “So,” she said, hoping to move things along quickly so she could get back to The Refuge, “what was so important that we had to have this little meeting?”