Chapter 20

© Copyright 2007 by Elizabeth Delayne



Gabriel watched Nicole pace. Around her, there was a party going on, as big as any other Labor day bash in the county. Besides the three FBI agents mingling in the group, appearing like they were part of the group—they had been around enough to get to know everyone—there was Jason, Trisha and her father, the Lewises and their friends who had children Dusty’s age, and Julie who happened to be talking with Layton.

Gabriel considered them for a moment. They seemed happy. She seemed open and happy. Gabriel had lost the ability to have that with her. She knew too much ... and not enough. They’d been good friends, but they hadn’t been good together.

He looked again toward Nicole. She was nervous. Her entire demeanor was beginning to draw Dusty’s attention. Gabriel frowned.

She was making him nervous at this point.

He walked over and started to talk to her, even while she just walked passed him. He tried to shed the cop persona.

It was alert, on the lookout for Joe Rossi, but it made Nicole nervous.

And with reason. In the last few months he’d felt himself slipping back into the old tension. The old insecurity, seriousness ... hopelessness.

He wanted to just be—not even a cop, but himself. Not the man he’d become in New York, but the man he had found again when he’d moved here.

He reached out and took her arm and tried his best smile. “Come on,” he said, pulling her toward the porch. “You’re making me nervous.”

She turned her heated eyes on him and tried to pull from his grasp. “You think I’m actually trying to get my father to come here?”

“What?” he released her as she pulled again, aware that they were too close to too many people. “No. Nervous as in you’re nervous, it’s rubbing off. What would you have to do with your father stalking your family?”

“I brought him here. He followed me. You think it all has to do with all that happened before. And maybe it does. The lion’s roar. It’ just so loud.”

“What?” He frowned. “Nicole, you didn’t bring your father here. You brought your family back together.”

“You’ve never wanted to believe me.”

He sighed. “That’s not true,” he reached out a hand, and held it out for her to take. “Come here. Let’s just talk for once.”

“You’ll be honest with me?”

When you looked into her eyes, a dark and beautiful brown from her Italian heritage, it was so easy to look past the worry and the fear and just see the little girl that he had often imagined from Jason’s stories. The little girl in braids who loved to read.

And loved.

If she’d been afraid then, Gabriel imagined, she’d been strong. She’d had a mother and a brother whom she loved.

Then she lost it all. The brave little Italian girl.

“Yes.”

“All right,” as she slid her hand in his, something connected for Gabriel. Not the touch, but the moment. It was time. Something inside of him unlocked. It was time to open up.

They settled in the rockers on the porch and Gabriel leaned back, watched her, and gave them both time. They were a little tense, strangers, he thought, to intimacy. He felt ... awkward. He could be fun. Even with Julie, he had been able to have fun.

But he’d lost the ability for intimacy. In conversation, in life.

Even now, the past was too close to the surface for comfort. She was still scanning the woods, her fingertips closed over the arm of the rocking chair, ready to push herself up and run to protect. By being near her, he just wanted more. It was time to acknowledge that.

“You’re worried about something. More than what we’ve discussed. Can you tell me?”

“There’s so many good people here. And he’s waiting. I brought him here by coming.”

“Nicole, he brought himself here.”

“Dusty isn’t any safer now.”

“Isn’t he?” Gabriel shifted to watch the boys who had finally taken the football out of the package, where it had been since Jason had prepared the room in his house for Dusty. The boys were tossing it back and forth, with their dad mediating in between.

“Look at them, Nicole. Look at your family.”

There were signs. There were gestures.

And there was laughter.

It rang out across the lawn and made Gabriel wonder about Joe Rossi, the father. Could he not appreciate the happiness of his children? Jason had his arm slung around Trisha, for the first time comfortable in the relationship. They were at the grill, talking with Trisha’s father.

He’d closed down the diner for the afternoon, a feat no one deemed possible.

“If he were to get to them ...”

“You’re not responsible for your father being here. He is who he is, and apparently has been for a long time.”

“But there’s the lion ... the loving and the just. And He must be both.”

Gabriel frowned as he watched her hand tighten until her knuckles turned white. He took her hand. “What? Your father?”

“No. God.”

“God?” Gabriel studied Nicole as he tried to sooth her hand between both of his own. “Where is God punishing you in this, Nicole? You’re father coming here has nothing to do with your past mistakes.”

“But he must be both just and good.”

“God?”

“That’s what Rev. Lewis said ... Both love and goodness are only what they are because they are separate from evil.”

“Separate,” Gabriel agreed. “But not equal. The difference is, Nicole, this is not in a response to your mistakes. This isn’t a consequence. It just is.

All this fear. It’s too dark. God gives us words of hope, of love and comfort, even in our past. ‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.’ He’s here Nicole. He’s in this. He doesn’t just have this whole thing in His hands, he has it in his fingertips. Working through this. Working with you.”

Nicole looked at him. “You’ve been blaming me for bringing all of this here.”

“Not blaming you. Never blaming you,” he kept her hand, though it was hard. It was hard to feel softness, to feel a connection, when he was facing his own past. “Do you know that from the moment I saw your picture, I’ve wanted you part of this? Part of this new life, part of my friendship with Jason. You’ve always been part of him. You’ve always been special to him.”

She thought back to the first time she’d met him, as she’d gone to the house to check it out. Gabriel the cop, who’d—at the time—seemed not quite so city.

“I was a man, Nicole. I was a friend. Yours, his. At first, it was just that. Then something opened up inside of me. Part of it was going to New York, I guess, part of it was Julie coming down, and part of it was facing a type of case, a type of man, we haven’t had around here since I took on the job,” he looked out at the woods, studied the shadows. “I haven’t handled it ... or you well. You’ve sense that. I’m sorry.”

“Will you tell me?”

She’s asked him before. Asked him for his trust before, in a way he hadn’t been able to give. Not to Julie. Not even really to Jason.

But there was too much on the line to hide from this again. Her trust. Her faith.

God’s fingertips were all too close. And he could feel them prying open the door to his heart. Painfully.

Trust me with the memories.

But it wasn’t just Nicole who was asking for his trust.

“My dad was a hero. Killed in the line of duty when I was fifteen. It was hard, but my mom, she was so strong. She was ... amazing.

For while, it was just my mom and me. She worked hard, so hard, to keep us in our apartment, to ... have enough money in the summers to travel. She loved to travel. No where big, you know. She would have loved too, but she didn’t talk about the impossible. Little dreams. Just some place where we could get in our car and drive. Just drive, until we reached wherever we were going.”

It took him back, to remember; to the laughter, the hope.

“We were tourists of our own backyard. She was my date for prom. We didn’t go, of course. It was just a little joke. We went to see some cheep, off Broadway show instead,” he chuckled. “It was horrible. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and made wishes. She wished for me that I would be able to do whatever I wanted to. It was a big deal. I wanted to be a cop, like my dad. And until that point, she’d forbade it. We’d had so many ... tense moments. She didn’t want to loose me. She knew I would be like him. Giving it all. She didn’t want to loose me.”

He let out a breath, cleared his mind. “My wish for her was that she would find someone she could fall incredibly in love with, someone who was worthy of her.”

Absently, he picked up Nicole’s hand again, toyed with her fingers. “There were just times, sometimes, when she didn’t think I was looking, where she would be so sad. And times where, I think, she would go into a depression for days, maybe a few weeks. She always came out of it with me in mind. ‘Let’s do something,’ she’d say, and I’d know she was okay again.”

“So I wanted so much for her to find someone so she wouldn’t be sad anymore.”

“And she did.” It was something in him, something in his sadness.

“I went to college with a lot of credits under my belt, so I could just finish. I promised her I would go to college. So I did. Then I went to the police academy. And she ... got married.”

He dropped his head, and just for a minute pressed their conjoined hands to his forehead, taking a breath.

Nicole understood. She’d had to do it herself; in therapy, with her probation officer.

He was entering the door he’d closed off. The door he didn’t open for anyone.

“She didn’t tell me,” he said at last. “I went home one Friday night to surprise her, take her out, and he was there. I just walked into the apartment like always and there he was.”

“He didn’t like me. Even before I said a word, I could sense it. When she told me she was married, she got angry, defensive. Even before I asked questions. Everything changed. I hadn’t known she was dating. She hadn’t told me there was anyone serious. I was busy, taking on long shifts, like my father. I look a lot like my father. I was busy with Julie ...”

He told her, like he was giving a report to his captain back in New York, in clear, even tones, about how things changed. His mother had taken on another job. She worked more then she had when it was just the two of them. They no longer spoke for long periods. No longer went places together in New York. The few times he’d gone over to the old apartment for dinner, or take a Christmas present ...

“The one day ... they were investigating a meth problem in the neighborhood. A kid had died. An informant, and old friend from the neighborhood came to me, told me that he was the dealer. That they’d set up a lab in my old room. Right there, under my nose.”

“I went home in the middle of the day, when she was at work. Checked things out. It was my old apartment, I wasn’t on the case. Found everything I was told I’d find. And more. Handguns, receipts. Medical bills. Apparently, she’d had a few visits to the emergency room.”

“You turned him in,” Nicole said.

Gabriel nodded. “And to make a long, very painful story short. She said some things to me and hasn’t spoken to me sense. She supported him all the way through court and into prison. Then she died. Without ever speaking to me ... again. She had ... her own meth addiction. It took her to her grave. All her fears, all her hopes ... and she was gone.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

It wasn’t said to comfort. It was an acknowledgment, for him, for her. Neither one of them could live under their parent’s mistakes.

“No. I envied Jason for your mother. She seemed so ... perfect. And I had a great one. For a long time, I had the best. I memories. And yet, I would wish for yours instead. Even before she ...”

Nicole turned her hand, grasped his fingers. “That’s how I like to remember her. Perfect. But she married him. She kept us with him. I don’t know why.”

“Jason said she was always a little weak. She did the best she could. And she was a strong Catholic. Staying for her was deeply religious.”

“The roar of the lion.” She shook her head, when he started to question her, or argue or whatever words might have fallen from his lips.

“I can’t blame my mother. My father wasn’t home much, but I don’t remember him being so ... angry. Not until she died. Before that ... more than my father, I remember her praying. She would smile. God wasn’t a lion to her. I just don’t ...”

Suddenly she was tense again. She pulled her hand away and ran her hands together, anxiously searched the woods. He had a feeling the only thing that kept her from running was the crowd of people, the eyes of her brother. Her breath came out broken, incomplete.

Across the yard Jason turned, met Gabriel’s eyes. Gabriel held up a hand.

He turned back to Nicole and ran a gentle hand over her arm, up and down, soothing her. She looked at him, met his gaze. He could see the panic, feel it etched in his own heart.

But she calmed. Slowly. Her breaths becoming even as she leaned back in the rocking chair and rocked.

“My mama ... Even when my mama was sick, she would tell me to climb up in bed beside her and wrap her arms around me and teach me the prayers. Pray, I guess, over me. She would hold me. That’s all that mattered.”

“And you never got it from your father?”

She shook her head, lost in the memory. “He would set me aside. One of the first things I remember was a night he’d come home. He’d come home with Uncle Stan. Jason was there. They were at the table talking, playing cards. I don’t know. I climbed up into his lap. He just ... he set me aside. I just remember he picked me up and set me aside. Uncle Stan called me over and daddy said ‘No ...’ he said, ‘no.’”

Gabriel continued to sooth, still gentle with his touch, but the image ... he could see it all too clearly. The little girl with braids.

He felt frustration. The anger.

“I tried ... I tried to do everything he asked ... but I would never be his son. Dusty’s his son. He’s just been waiting for him to be old enough to be what I couldn’t. I thought I was making this right. I thought I was protecting Dusty. Why is it all turning around backwards if He’s God?”

“You’re questioning God. You’re searching ... He brought you back here. It was time for you to stop having to deal with your father on your own. He brought you here. ”

“I’m—“

“Searching for answers, or searching for God?” He took her hand again. “Somewhere in between, Nicole. His roar is held back. The world his covered in his grace for now.”

“I can’t find Him.”

“Then just call out to Him. Trust Him to find you.”

“God?” she asked and then turned her eyes to the sky.

He closed both hands over her own. “Not there,” he said. “And I said that wrong. He’s already found you. You’re already sensing the need. Just believe, Nicole.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then tell Him.”

“How?”

“Let me show you. Just look in your heart. I think you already see.”

She closed her eyes. And instead of a lion, she saw a hand. A hand pierced, as she had read about in the book of John.

She saw the hand, pierced as he’d shown Thomas.

And she saw the fingertips.

Held out.

To her.



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