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There was no way out. No way forward. There was only devastating failure.Or . . .
Shame had pierced her heart as she’d driven toward the hospital that night so long ago. Because she wondered if thiswasthe out she had timidly asked Dave’s God for.
What a horrible thing to think.
See,she’d thought to Mrs. Clayton, who had gone to stay with the boys and was not in the car with her while she sped her way to the emergency room.I’m a terrible person. God doesn’t want someone like me.
And then she attempted to banish her shame by burying any thoughts about Kevin doing anything other than surviving his wreck. She determined to stay right there with him. At his side, loving him no matter what.
But please, she’d petitioned that God she wasn’t sure would listen to such an ugly heart as hers.Please change things. Make him stop drinking . . .
At the time Helen didn’t have a name for those thoughts she’d sent to what she’d considered the ether. She certainly wouldn’t have called them prayers. Nor did she really have any hope that the cry of her heart would be not only heard but moved upon.
But there were people who prayed for her and for Kevin. Dave and his family had been doing so for several years, and that fateful night, Helen had discovered much later, they were literally on their knees in her trailer house, keeping watch over her sons, interceding for Kevin and Helen with all their hearts.
There are moments in life that are pivotal.
Helen hadn’t realized that night, while she’d held her unconscious husband’s hand and wept about a future that looked bleak, that night was their shifting point. Something momentous had begun.
But all these years later, she saw it. Plain as anything. Like Jesus with the men who brought their lame friend to him, God had heard the pleas of her faith-filled friends and had moved.
Kevin survived his drunken car wreck. With a broken leg and a split skull, he was sent home to recover—a process that involved himnotdrinking for the first time since he was thirteen years old. His boss at the mill offered for him to work in the office while he couldn’t work out on the floor—an undeserved kindness that met more of the Murphys’ needs than anyone realized.
There, Kevin had learned how to run a business.
On the condition that he join AA, he’d also been invited into the owner’s carpentry shop, because he could still swing a hammer. He could still learn how to read a blueprint. How to take a stick of wood and create something new and useful from it. There Kevin discovered a passion for building. Little did he know, but that would be the conception of a new career.
During that time, Helen continued to work a few evenings and Saturday mornings at the diner, because hospital bills were expensive, and they had more coming. Kevin stayed home with their two boys while she did so. He became trulyDaddyto his boys.
Helen pulled into the hospital parking lot just as a particular poignant memory filled her mind.
She came home from the diner late, as often happened on a Friday night, and found Kevin already in bed—also not uncommon.
She’d taken a quick shower to rinse the smell of grease and coffee from the diner off her body, then put on a nightgown, brushed her teeth, and slipped in between the sheets next to him. As soon as she was settled against the mattress, Kevin had turned onto his side and hauled her in close. Several months had passed since his accident—his cast was gone, head fully healed, and her belly was swollen with their third child, due within weeks. Even so, Helen tucked herself against him as snug as she could and shut her eyes. But as she drifted into sleep, she felt him shudder.
“Kevin?” She tipped her chin up, searching for his face in the dark. “You okay?”
His hold around her tightened. “I took the boys to the cabin this evening.”
“Oh?” Helen couldn’t imagine why he had done that. He hated it there. Wanted to burn the place down, but as it was in the middle of the forest, that was ill advised. Instead, the shack that had housed his childhood remained abandoned. A haunting monument to all that was wrong in his life.
“The county says I have to do something with it.”
“Oh.” It was the late eighties, and commuting from a tiny, almost ghost mountain town was nearly a decade away from being trendy. That meant that there wasn’t much use for a shack in the hills—no sell value at all.
But doing something with it would involve money. And for Kevin, a steep sum of emotion. The Murphys could afford neither.
“But that’s not—” His whisper cut off in raw emotion. “Matt just held my hand and talked about the squirrels and the trees. He smiled and tossed sticks. Like . . . like life is good. And when we were leaving, I was buckling Jacob in his seat, and he grabbed my face with both of his chubby little hands. He smiled and said—” This time a full sob shook Kevin’s body. “He said, ‘I wuv you, ’addy.’”
Helen slipped her hand up his chest and curved it around his neck, holding his head against hers.
“They just love me, Helen,” he whispered through tears.
“Yes.” She kissed his wet cheek. “They do.”
“And you—” He cupped her jaw, smoothed his thumb along her cheekbone. “You’re still here. With me.”
Helen nodded.
