Chapter 3

Late in the afternoon, when we'd parked the car and were walking through the park, Cecelia took me by the arm with both hands and leaned her head against my shoulder. Darlia had run ahead, and was looking over the swings. I suppose a small town park in Oklahoma looks the same regardless of which town it is; this one wasn't all that different from the others I'd seen from time to time. But for me it held a lot of memories.

As Darlia climbed into a seat and began swinging, Cecelia spoke. "Darvin, would you mind taking me to where you and Tina lived?"

I looked at her in surprise – as much as I could, that is, with her head against my shoulder. "Yeah, I can, but I'm not sure you want me to."

"It's not your habit to tell me what I'm thinking, or what I desire." Her voice was calm, but I know her; she was rebuking me.

"You're right, C. It's not something I habitually do, and I don't much like it when other people presume to read minds. I apologize. But at the same time, however badly I said it, what I was trying to say is, I think, at least somewhat valid. We've been married 11 years now, and happily married. One of the reasons for that is we've never let the past be an intruder."

"That's true. You know something of my past, and there's nothing there for either of us to be ashamed of. I know something of your past, and knowing that you were not a Christian for many of those years, and that you've repented the ill you did, I set it aside and love you as you are now. But I don't conceive of this request as inviting an intrusion. I see it, rather, as a desire to know my husband better. After all, here in Red Hawk we cannot possibly avoid your life with Tina. It was here that you spent considerable time with her, proposed to her, and left her." She squeezed my arm gently. "I do not say these things as a reproach, my husband, but as a recital of history. And it is history that I am interested in here."

I took a deep breath, and let it go somewhat shakily. "I had thought I was over it all..." Cecelia was clinging to my left arm; with my right hand I reached across and placed my palm against her cheek. "My love, you have a knack for reaching into my heart – and sometimes what you touch has consequences that I never could have expected.

"Yeah, I'll take you out there. But you'll have to bear with me – I'm not reacting to the idea as I would have expected."

"I never intended to hurt you, Darvin. If this will be painful, I'll withdraw the request."

"No, that's not necessary, C. You're right – here in Red Hawk I can't ignore that part of my life. I never could, not anywhere I've been, even though for years I never mentioned it to you. Now that Tina's showed up, and she's forgiven me, perhaps I need to start grappling with it all, instead of putting it aside as finished business."

Cecelia looked up at me. "Is that what you've done, Darvin – set the whole matter to the side, and classified it as finished business?"

"I think so. I'm not nearly as introspective as you are, you know, but I think that may be exactly what I've done. And it's not that doing so was evil ... but it wasn't facing, and resolving, the whole thing either."

"No, my husband – it wasn't. As I say, my intent was not to cause you pain. But if, inadvertently, I have spurred you to engage in a painful duty, I cannot entirely regret my request. It is not that I desire to drive you over coals, but that if greater joy for you lies on the other side of the coals, and I know you'll be grateful afterwards for the consequences of having walked on the embers, then I cannot in good conscience hold you back."

"You have a poetic way of stating hard necessities, Cecelia. It's part of what I love about you."

By now we'd caught up with Darlia. She was swinging high and fast. For whatever reason we've never gotten a swing set for our back yard – perhaps because Darlia's so involved with weights, perhaps because she's turned her dolls into an imaginary family, perhaps because it just never occurred to us that she might like one. Certainly she's never said anything about it, though as I thought about it I realized that her friend Gacela Delgado has a swing set and Darlia's certainly played on it.

Seeing us standing there, Darlia began dragging her feet, spraying sand and slowing herself down. When she came to a stop she hopped out of the seat and said, "I wanted to jump, but I thought maybe I shouldn't scare you." And she smiled, her tanned face setting off her teeth. Her heavy hair, which normally is halfway down her back, had been flying in the wind and was sprawled across her shoulders and chest.

"Darlia, you are indeed a tomboy in training," Cecelia said. "I am not at all certain, however, that the training isn't already complete."

Darlia looked at me. "Daddy, is Mommy trying to confuse me?"

"Naw – she's just treating you like an adult again."

"Oh. Then Mommy, remember that I'm still not grown up yet, please."

Cecelia smiled now, and her teeth showed even more clearly in her dark face. "Very well, honey. I said, in essence, that I think you're already a tomboy."

"Oh. Thank you, Mommy!"

The house where Tina and I had lived...

I hadn't been there since January of 1990, when I'd moved out without warning, without leaving a note, without saying goodbye. I'd thought at the time that I was ending something that was wrong. And I was, but I was committing a great wrong when I did it. And last year, when Tina had appeared in my office out of the blue, I'd finally been able to set it right – as right, anyway, as it's possible to set a 15-year-old injury.

I knew the way there by heart. Red Hawk was never a large town, and hadn't grown any since I'd lived there. We walked from the park to the house. It was near the road, in the east end of town – not the best neighborhood in Red Hawk, though that was relative; nothing in Red Hawk even remotely approached the problems of Albuquerque's bad areas. It was just trashy, rundown, not necessarily all that clean. It was the easiest area to get a house when I'd moved to Red Hawk in 1986, and since I'd grown up in Lanfair Valley I wasn't used to fancy houses anyway. Such accommodations had been new to Tina, but she'd adapted.