Chapter 33

That night, after Cecelia had put Darlia to bed, she came back out and sat beside me on the sofa. I had my feet up on the marble top of the coffee table, and she very pointedly put hers up there too – something she rarely does, and never with such exaggerated leg movements. I dogeared the page I was on, and looked at her where she sat so close that we touched from shoulder to hip to ankle. "Somethin' on your mind, C?"

She nodded. "I feel so sorry for Tina."

"Trust you to be compassionate toward her, instead of jealous."

She flipped a hand. "I'll be jealous when there's cause. There is none now, and I frankly cannot conceive of you giving me cause – I know where your heart is, nailed immovably in place. But there is cause for compassion. She has suffered, Darvin, and she still suffers."

"Because of me," I said, adding what she had been too kind to mention.

She glanced at me. "I cannot chastise you for putting those words in my mouth. I did not utter them, nor think them – but they're true."

"There hasn't been a day, Cecelia ... well, at first there wasn't a day, and then there wasn't a week, and then a month ... anyway, I've never gone very long without remembering what I did, and regretting it."

"And then God brought her to Albuquerque, and caused her to need a detective – and there you were in the phone book..."

"That's a whole lotta coincidences, ain't it?"

"Trying to believe such a string of happenstances will either drive you to the conclusion that all is chaos and nothing makes sense, that no effect follows from a definite cause – or it will drive you to an apprehension of the existence of a sovereign God. And you know my position."

"Yeah." Cecelia had changed some of her views after we'd gotten married, as we'd discussed theology, but she'd already been definite on divine sovereignty. "So God brought her back to me ... if I can put it that way. It sounds almost like I'm ready to take up with her again, and that ain't the case."

"As I said, my husband, I have no cause to be jealous." Her tone told me that the idea of me resuming my once completely intimate relationship with Tina wasn't worth noticing. "I know that you love me, and whatever your love for Tina, it is not of such a nature that it would take you from my side. There are different kinds of love, as you've been very careful to teach more than one person."

"I do make a point of that, don't I?" I asked with a smile.

"Your theology has affected your understanding of what some would think has no doctrinal application." Cecelia was smiling too, making a gentle joke.

"You mean what I believe should affect me when I'm not in church?"

The jab of her finger in my ribs wasn't gentle, and as always it was there before I saw it coming. "Do not ask me questions when you know the answer better than I do, Darvin. You ought to know by now that I do not take such smart answers lightly."

"Then I'll have to start giving you dumb answers."

I expected another finger in the ribs, but Cecelia's not that predictable, not when we're having a friendly sparring match. She grabbed me by the nose and turned my head to face her. She leaned forward so that our noses were almost touched, and looked directly into my eyes. "You are not duncical, and any attempt to pretend you are shall fail completely, at least with me. I know you, my husband, and while you may have limitations in the breadth of your intelligence, in those areas where your mind congenitally works well, it works very well indeed." And she put her hand behind my neck and pulled me into a kiss.

When she released me I looked into her eyes, those black bright eyes that I love so much. "Okay, we've proved that you love me to death, not that I needed proof," I told her. "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

She grinned and released me. "Meanwhile, I still hurt for Tina."

"Yeah, I know. It seems like every time one bit of what I did gets fixed, there's a new bit that shows up."

"It is the old analogy of nails in a post, isn't it?"

"Yeah – you can pull the nails back out, but you can't undo the holes. You might fix 'em up so they don't show, but you haven't undone 'em – you've just filled 'em in and smoothed 'em over, and on the inside there's still nail holes."

"I know why you ran, Darvin. I do not approve, of course, but you were young, you were new to the faith, and you did what you truly thought was best. Your thinking was muddy and led to an erroneous conclusion, but you weren't trying to sin against her." She paused, holding my hand tightly. "I wonder what your marriage would have been like, had you remained with her."

I could hardly insist she drop that line of thinking, since she'd told me on her own about her near-marriage to Tyrone Jackman, who'd retired as one of our church's elders back in November. "I think it would have lasted. I don't know how peaceful it would have been, though. She's got a more even temperament than you do, C – less like mine – but with me a Christian and her not, to this day not, we might have had some squabbles." I paused, thinking. Finally I said, "I think we'd still have been married."