Page 35 of Running Home to You
Thunderstorms in the Midwest delayed their flight home. Most of the team lounged across chairs at the gate, slept on their duffel bags,studied, or scrolled. Abby found Kate at a table in the nearby food court. She’d apologized at least a dozen times for her drunken behavior, been forgiven just as many, but the urge to say it struck again.
“I’m—”
“Don’t,” Kate stopped her, never glancing up from her reading.
Abby smirked. “Okay.” She leaned back in her chair. “What are you studying?”
Kate winced and revealed her Bible. “Book of Job.”
“Oh.” Abby didn’t know if she should change the subject, but didn’t want to dismiss her either, especially with the way Kate shrank into herself, like it was something she usually hid. “What’s it about?”
“A man trying to understand why God has allowed him to suffer so greatly.”
Abby’s ears perked, courtesy transforming to curiosity. “Does he get his answer?”
“Not entirely. Just that God is beyond our understanding.”
“And you find comfort in that?”
Kate pursed her mouth. “I don’t know if it’s meant to comfort us. Maybe it’s just supposed to remind us of how small we are. That we’re not entitled to understanding.”
“Stupid me. I thought the Bible had all the answers,” Abby scoffed, but then frowned at Kate’s blush. “Sorry. I wasn’t really raised religious.”
“Do you believe in God?”
If it was anyone else, Abby might have rolled her eyes, dismissed them as a Jesus freak or religious fanatic attempting to evangelize her. But she didn’t detect moralizing in Kate’s question. “I want to.”
“What do you mean?”
Abby sighed. “Because if there’s a God, then maybe there’s a heaven. And if there’s a heaven, maybe that means my mom is there.”
“She is,” Kate said with such certainty that it almost convinced her.
Abby’s throat tightened. “You can’t be sure though. Can you?”
“No, not entirely.” She tilted her head. “That’s why they call it faith.”
Abby’s knee bounced beneath the table as if the months of lonely grieving lay in wait for this moment. She’d tried to rid herself of it with booze and risk, taking control of her own hurt. But that’s all it was. More hurt with nowhere to go. Except now, maybe it did have somewhere. Right here with Kate. She’d been there from the start, showing up every day when no one else did. And while Abby didn’t know if she believed in God, she knew after that weekend, she believed in Kate.
“Did you know it was a car crash?” Abby’s voice resounded low and unfamiliar, but perhaps that was only because she’d never spoken of it before.
“I didn’t.”
“They called me that night. The police. She’d been drunk, was drunk when she got behind the wheel.” Abby cleared her throat, the story stinging on its way out like a thorn extracted from skin. Kate placed a hand on top of hers, stopping the trembling that Abby hadn’t noticed. “It wasn’t just then. She struggled with it for years. I could never get her to stop.”
“How could you? You were a kid.”
The first round of tears started in her throat. She trained her gaze on the Bible, though she didn’t know if its promise of an afterlife meant her mom was stuck in some other realm or if it was just a crock of shit, and she returned to the nothing that Abby now carried with her.
“I don’t tell people how she died, because I’m sure some might think she got hers. That she deserved it. It’s like I carry her shame with me instead. Like a curse.”
Kate squeezed Abby’s hand tighter. “No one deserves that. Not you. Not her either.”
Abby shifted her eyes up, not bothering to hide the tears in them. The same inkling as earlier that day assured that Kate knew them, understood them, could take them.
“She was—” Abby considered stopping as the memories fell upon her. The fights, the empty bottles, the picking her up from the bar, the putting her to bed, the staying out to cope, the relief that came from leaving for college, and the accompanying dread. “I—” She sighed and shook her head.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to,” Kate whispered.
