A Sad Soul Can Kill You Part 25

Her body stiffened. "For what? You never want to come in any other time."

"I want to talk to you in private."

"Serenity's at school," she said as she continued to flip through the magazine.

Lorenzo sat down on the bed next to her and watched his wife flinch as he gently took the magazine out of her hands. "I have something to tell you," he said.

Tia's heartbeat sped up even faster. What is it now? Another woman? Another man? She looked at him. He was holding his head down, and she could tell something was wrong. "What is it?" she asked.

"I've been concentrating on a lot of negative things for a long time," Lorenzo said. "I had this automatic release s.h.i.+eld in place. It was kind of like my own protective mechanism, but after awhile, I just kept it up all the time and it caused me to become cold and cynical."

"No kidding," Tia said sarcastically. "Is this what you learned in counseling?"

Lorenzo raised his head. "Please," he said softly, "don't make this any harder for me than it already is."

Tia's neck stiffened. There was something different in his tone. There was a tenderness in his voice that she hadn't heard in a long time. It made her feel uncomfortable, but she also sensed that it was genuine.

"G.o.d has a purpose for me," Lorenzo said. "I've been traveling on the wrong road for a long time. Now, I'm trying to get back on the right path, and I realize part of my journey is going to have be a solitary one." He looked at her with tears in his eyes. "But I realized something else too. It doesn't have to be a lonely and hostile one."

Tia's chest rose and fell quickly. "What are you talking about?"

"Tia," he took a deep breath and continued, "when I was eleven years old . . ."

Chapter Forty-eight.

Hours later, Lorenzo was amazed at how cathartic it felt to relinquish his secret to his wife. It wasn't just the telling of it; he had already done that twice-once to his parents, once in counseling. It was finally being able to share it with her and discover that she was not going to judge him or blame him for what had happened.

He'd made the decision to trust her, and it had not been a mistake. After he had finished telling her his story, Tia cried with him and rocked him in her arms. She was his blessing, and had been all along, but he had been unable to see that. He held onto her tightly. It was an awful thing to throw away a blessing.

"Today," Lorenzo said, "my counselor told me things would get better with time. And they already have." He wiped the tears from Tia's face. "Now, it's about to get even better."

"What do you mean?" Tia asked.

"On Sunday, when the pastor offers the call for salvation I'm going to rededicate myself to Jesus," Lorenzo said. "And I want to be baptized again." He smiled. "All things new."

"That's beautiful," Tia said as her eyes became misty all over again.

"You know," Lorenzo said, "counseling helped me to look at the shredded pieces of our marriage, and my life in general . . . which caused the shredded pieces of our marriage." He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

"Instead of dealing with my issues, I took pills. Instead of trying to heal, I numbed up, and I pushed you and Serenity away in the process. But now," he pointed to his forehead with his index finger, "now I realize that I just can't afford to keep letting my mind stay weighted down with all these dark and gloomy memories from my past."

Tia sat with her hands in her lap and listened.

"It's like the counselor said," he continued, "if I'm going to live in the past, then I may as well still be there or be dead because that's not living." He paused. "The funny thing is, after I fell and ended up in the hospital, I was wis.h.i.+ng G.o.d had just let me die.

"Now, I want to live," he said. "And if I'm going to live, then I need to live freely!"

Tia marveled at the change in his demeanor. He'd left the house one way and had returned a completely different person. She wanted to hug him, but doubt crept in. Had he really changed that much? She remembered his reaction the last time she tried to hug him in the hospital and decided against it.

Her grandmother's words came back to her: "get rid of those secrets." Tia had seen and been a recipient of the damage caused by secrets. Now, after hearing Lorenzo let go of a secret he'd carried around with him for practically all of his life, Tia knew she would have to confess her wrongdoing if she were ever to have a chance at living freely . . . with or without Lorenzo.

Her heart was beating way too fast. "I'm proud of you, Lorenzo," she said. And before she knew it, she was crying heavily.

"What's wrong?" he asked gently. "Why are you crying so hard?"

She started to hyperventilate. "I . . . did . . . a . . . terrible . . . thing."

"Tia, calm down," he said, placing his hand on her back. "What did you do?"

"Something . . . really . . . wrong."

"What?"

"I . . . met . . . another . . . man."

"You met another man?"

She nodded her head.

"Did you sleep with him?"

She lowered her head.

"Did you sleep with him?" he repeated firmly.

"Yes," she said without looking up.

Lorenzo remained silent. "When?"

"Back in January," she said softly.

"Do you want to be with him?"

She raised her head quickly. Her eyes widened. "No," she said. "It only happened once, and I realized it was a mistake." She stopped crying. "I realized that no matter how bad our marriage was that still didn't give me the right to be unfaithful to you." The tears returned. "I just wanted you to love me, but you kept pus.h.i.+ng me away."

"Don't cry," he said. "I'm partially to blame for this too. I know I abandoned you emotionally. I checked out. I wasn't there when you needed me, and I'm sorry. Some people might say I cheated on you too because I chose pills over you. That's all I wanted. Some people might even say the drugs became my lover. You just had one in the flesh and blood."

"Oh my G.o.d," she cried, covering her face with her hands.

"What? What is it now, Tia?"

She continued to cry. How could she tell him that the man she'd slept with was the same man who had kidnapped their daughter? "I'm so sorry, Lorenzo. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me."

He moved her hands from her face. "Look at me," he said.

She kept her head down.

"Look at me," he said again as he gently lifted her head up.

"I'll forgive you. If you . . ."

"No, wait," she said solemnly. "You don't know the rest of the story."

"Then tell me."

"The man was our neighbor."

Lorenzo's mind began to race. "Tony?" He shook his head. "Please tell me it wasn't Tony."

"It wasn't Tony. It was the man next door to Tony."

Lorenzo put one hand on his forehead and stretched out his other arm. "Stop! Hold up! You mean the same man who kidnapped Serenity?"

"I didn't know," Tia said. She couldn't stop crying.

"Homer?" Lorenzo jumped up from the bed.

"Lorenzo, wait," she said. "I didn't know."

He stood breathing heavily as he stared down at her. "I need some time to process this," he said and stormed out of the room.

Chapter Forty-nine.

Lorenzo grabbed his coat and went back out to the garage. He got in his car and called Mark, his counselor.

"h.e.l.lo, this is Mark speaking."

"Mark," Lorenzo said to the calm voice on the other end of the line, "this is Lorenzo."

"Hey, what's up, man? Is everything okay?"

"No, not really," Lorenzo said, still breathing heavily. "My wife just told me she had an affair with the same man who kidnapped our daughter." He gripped his cell phone and shook his head. "I don't know if I can handle this, man."

"Let's start at the beginning," Mark said calmly. "When did this happen?"

"She said back in January."

"And what were you doing during this time?"

Creases appeared in Lorenzo's forehead. He looked at the phone. "What kind of question is that, man? You know what I was doing."

"Tell me."

Lorenzo was silent.

"Come on, now," Mark encouraged. "Don't get quiet on me now. You've been making excellent progress. And you should know by now, communication is the key. So I'm going to ask you again-what were you doing during this time?"

A lump formed in Lorenzo's throat. He swallowed hard. "I was getting high," he said as a heavy sensation settled in the core of his soul.

"Which means what?"

Lorenzo hesitated, but he knew where Mark was heading. Lorenzo had come this far and had faced his demons. He could not go backward now. "I wasn't there when she needed me," he said quietly.

"Where were you?"

"I mean, I was there. But emotionally, I wasn't."

"And do you think your wife knew this man would end up kidnapping your daughter?"

"I doubt it," Lorenzo said, "but if she wouldn't have been messing with him none of this would have happened."

"How do you know? How do you know this man didn't already have his mind set on your daughter? He could have been using your wife to get to your daughter."

"I don't know, but it's still messed up."

"I agree," Mark said. "That's why G.o.d tells us we reap what we sow. There's a consequence for every negative action . . . for all of us. For me, it was years of trying to mend all the hearts I broke and the relations.h.i.+ps I damaged during my years of addiction." He spoke slowly into the mouthpiece. "You checked out of life, man. You numbed yourself with pills and neglected your family in the process. What did you think would happen?"

Lorenzo's heart felt too big for his chest. "So you're saying this is all my fault?"

"Of course not. There you go getting defensive again."

"Well, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying your wife has to own up to her wrongdoing as well. And the bottom line is that both of you will have to make up your mind to either come together as a united front or go ahead and give the enemy what he wants, which is to see your marriage completely dissolved."

Lorenzo painfully remembered how, when the pain of his past had become too much to bear, he had turned away from G.o.d instead of turning to Him. He'd also rejected Tia and Serenity as well. His counselor was right. What did he think would happen? The problem was . . . he hadn't thought at all. If ever he needed the Lord's strength-and he had-he would certainly need to call on it now if he and Tia were going to get through this.

Lorenzo stayed on the phone with Mark a little while longer. The conversation ended with a prayer, and then Lorenzo thanked Mark and hung up. He gripped the steering wheel and stared straight-ahead at the dingy garage wall. He looked at the other two walls on both sides of him; they were just as dingy. He remembered painting each of the walls white shortly after moving into the house. Now, he couldn't even remember how or when the walls had gotten so dirty.

Lorenzo got out of his car and went back into the house. He walked into the living room and sat down.

Tia heard him come in and slowly walked down the steps.

His back was turned to her as he sat on the couch.

"Lorenzo," she said.