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  Charlotte ushered them in and beckoned them to take off their coats, which she hung on a coatrack that was tan with brown spots and had the head of a benign and wise-looking giraffe.

  “Tyson, if it’s okay with your uncle, I can fix you up a little snack, some fruit or something, and I’ll set up a TV tray for you in my living room. I’ve got a DVD you might like, or I can find some books for you to look at.”

  “That sounds like quite the deal, doesn’t it, bud?” Paul said, keeping his attention on Tyson.

  “It sure does!”

  Paul helped Charlotte get Tyson settled, then they went to her kitchen and sat at the table.

  “We should talk first,” he said, “while Tyson is preoccupied.”

  “Yes, you said you wanted to talk to me about Mavis—and about Michael?”

  Paul nodded but found that now that he was here with her, it wasn’t easy to put into words the overwhelming feeling that he had to approach things differently if he was going to be the kind of person who could live with himself.

  “So, Tyson and Michael are really doing okay?” he asked, easing himself in on more familiar ground.

  “Yes, they honestly are.”

  Paul shook his head. “I have to admit something to you. I’m kind of ashamed of myself,” he blurted out.

  Charlotte didn’t answer with words, but her soft eyes urged him to continue, and he knew he could trust her not to judge him.

  “Tyson has lost the people he needs most. He’s only a little boy, but he’s getting on with his life, he’s not holding grudges and he’s finding ways to genuinely enjoy himself again. How does he do that?”

  “Maybe because he is a little boy,” Charlotte suggested. “I know it’s not easy to move on with life...” She stopped suddenly and asked, “Would you like tea or something?”

  Paul shook his head. “No, thank you.” He sensed that something had shifted in her, was sure he witnessed a fleeting but profound sadness, but was then just as sure that he must have imagined it.

  “You said you wanted to talk about Mavis, too?” She got bottled water out of the fridge and sat down again.

  As succinctly as he could, Paul told her how Mavis had brought her car to the garage, how he had recognized something was very wrong and how she ended up sobbing in his office.

  “Her ex-husband is abusive,” Paul concluded. “They’ve been trying to stay clear of him, but restraining orders don’t always work as well as they should.”

  “I know,” Charlotte said, grimly. “Or, at least, I suspected as much. Remember when I tried to talk to her at church? I saw that she had a bruise on her face.”

  Paul nodded. It was in Charlotte’s nature to want to help someone, and he felt bad about his initial reaction to that.

  “We talked a bit about Michael and Tyson,” he continued. “She’s sorry for the way Michael’s been behaving, but at the same time...”

  “She’s protective of him,” Charlotte agreed. “And she knows what’s behind it.”

  “And now I know what’s behind it, too.”

  “But it still isn’t an excuse, is it?” Her eyes searched his.

  He hesitated before answering, struggling to find words that would encompass how he felt about the whole situation.

  “No, it’s not an excuse. I know how bullying can hurt and the emotional scars it leaves. But I think that what they’ve gone through is the worst kind of bullying, especially since it came at the hands of someone who was supposed to love and protect them.”

  “Did she say Michael was abused, too?” Charlotte asked anxiously.

  “I don’t think so, but it’s had a severe impact on him, regardless.”

  They were silent for a moment, and suddenly into the silence came the incongruous burst of innocent laughter from the living room.

  “It’s because of you that Tyson is recovering so well,” Charlotte said. “Don’t ever forget that or sell yourself short.”

  “You’ve helped too,” Paul said. “More than you know. You’ve been so good to both of us. You’re a wonderful person, Charlotte.”

  As soon as he said the words, he knew that they meant more than just appreciation that she was Tyson’s teacher, or that she was willing to help him learn how to read. It went much deeper than that. The timing might be all wrong for him to act on anything, but he couldn’t stop himself from caring.

  Her silence and the sweep of eyelashes on her flushed cheeks as she lowered her eyes spoke more loudly than any words could have. He knew beyond a doubt that Charlotte also felt the impact of his words.

  He was seized with an almost overwhelming urge to kiss her. Not in the thoughtless, spontaneous way he had done at the school that day, but in a way that showed her that she mattered to him. He wanted to breathe in her clean soap smell and feel the silkiness of her hair sliding through his fingers. But Tyson was only a room away, and that wasn’t why he had come here.

  Charlotte cleared her throat, breaking the silence, which was beginning to feel unbearable, and took a sip of water. “So...what happens now? I mean, with Mavis,” she hastily amended.

  Paul snapped himself back to the matter at hand.

  “I want to help her,” he said.

  “I thought you didn’t like her,” Charlotte said, trying to understand.

  “I don’t,” Paul said bluntly. “But I’m not talking about being her best friend. I’m talking about doing the right thing and being the person that’s good enough for my sister to have trusted to raise Tyson. I want to be a person he can be proud of.”

  He wanted Charlotte to be proud of him, too.

  “I agree we should do something,” Charlotte said. “The problem is that I don’t know what we can do, other than let Mavis and Michael know that we’re here if they ever need someone. I have to say I’m surprised she told you as much as she did.”

  “I think I was just at the right place and the right time. She’s reached a breaking point, and I happened to be there to catch the pieces.”

  “I don’t believe it was a coincidence,” Charlotte said. “I think God placed you there for a reason. I know that you’ve been struggling with your beliefs, but...”

  “I think so, too,” Paul interjected softly.

  Charlotte blinked, then her face opened up in a wide smile that tugged at his heart and made him wonder what it would be like to have someone he could share his faith and questions with.

  “So, what do you think we should do?” Charlotte asked.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Paul said. “I want to hear your ideas.” In the pause that followed, he realized that he hadn’t heard Tyson’s whoop of laugher in a few minutes.

  “I’m just going to check on Ty,” he said. “You know what they say about it being too quiet.”

  Charlotte laughed. “I do. I’m sure he’s fine, but go ahead.”

  Paul went into Charlotte’s living room. Tyson sat on the couch paging through what looked like a photo album.

  “Hey, bud.”

  “Hi, Uncle Paul.” The boy looked up with a placid expression.

  “Where’d you get that? You know you probably shouldn’t be looking at it without Ms. Connelly’s permission.”

  “It was on the bottom here.” Tyson pointed to the lower part of the coffee table.

  “Okay, but we should ask Ms. Connelly if she minds you looking at it.”

  Paul followed his nephew back into the kitchen, where Charlotte waited with a thoughtful expression.

  “Tyson came across a photo album you had sitting out,” Paul said. “I thought he should ask you before going through it.”

  An expression that he couldn’t decipher came over Charlotte’s face. “Oh, I forgot I left that out...”

  “Is this you, Ms. Connelly?” Tyson opened to a page and pointed. “It looks like you, but kinda dif
ferent, too. Who’s this girl with you? She kinda looks like you, too.”

  * * *

  Charlotte felt like she was frozen in time, with the knowledge that the way she answered the question could change everything. She had never told anyone outside the family what had happened to Anna and why it was her fault. Her parents had wanted to carry on as best as they could, so Anna’s name was rarely mentioned, even among themselves.

  Except, Charlotte had felt for years that the secret sat like a cold, solid stone between her throat and heart—always there, always keeping her from living the fully purposeful life that she longed to live.

  And now God had presented her with an opportunity to tell someone the truth, someone who she felt, for more than one reason, would understand. She had to choose: Was she going to take the chance, or was she going to stay afraid forever?

  “That girl...was my sister, Anna,” she heard her own voice say. She wanted to keep the words simple and direct for Tyson. “She died when she was ten years old.”

  She could feel rather than see Paul’s reaction as his body stiffened.

  Tyson put down the album and without a word crawled onto Charlotte’s lap and hugged her. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of gingersnap cookies and bubblegum toothpaste.

  “Tyson,” Paul said very quietly. “Can you give Ms. Connelly and me a few minutes again?”

  Tyson nodded and slid off his teacher’s lap.

  “I don’t mind if you look at the pictures, Tyson,” she said. “There are lots of happy memories there.”

  “You had a sister,” Paul said when they were alone again, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “I can’t believe I didn’t know that. And you said she died when she was ten?” His eyes probed hers intently. “We’ve both lost a sister and you never said a thing?”

  Charlotte understood that it wasn’t an accusation, but that he was trying to understand.

  “No one in town has said anything, either,” he added.

  Charlotte found her voice, or at least a semblance of it. “It’s out of respect for us, for my family and me. My parents don’t like to talk about Anna—or about what happened. Besides, there’s no such thing as common grief,” she added, thinking that surely, he of all people would realize that. “We may both have had sisters who died, but there was no appropriate time to bring up the subject, and even if I had, that doesn’t mean we feel the same way about it. At least...” Was she really going to say it out loud?

  Dear God, please give me the strength to stop hiding.

  “Your sister’s death was a terrible tragedy, but at least it wasn’t your fault.”

  Paul beckoned her to move her chair closer to his. He took both of her hands in his large, warm ones and in a voice more quiet and gentle than she could have imagined coming out of a man his size, he said, “Tell me what happened. Please.”

  And so she told him the story of a lake and a summer cabin that had once meant the heady freedom of summer to her and her family, but how all of that ended when she was fifteen and was supposed to be watching her younger sister out in the lake, but let the giddy adventure of flirting with a cute boy distract her just long enough for all of their lives to change forever.

  “As long as I live,” Charlotte said, in an empty, brittle voice, “I know I will never forget being walked back up to our cabin so I could tell my parents what happened...what I had done.”

  Paul let go of her hands, and for a moment she believed he was abandoning her as she surely deserved. But then he was pulling her into his arms and murmuring into her hair, “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident, a terrible accident.”

  After so many years, she was finally able to let go of the knot that had been coiled up in her like a poisonous snake for years. She sobbed in Paul’s arms, deep and painful but profoundly cleansing sobs. And all the while he made soothing noises and she became aware of his lips kissing her hair and her forehead. His strong arms sheltered her, providing a feeling of incredible safety.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s going to be all right. Shhh.”

  A rustle coming from the living room caught her attention and she reluctantly drew back.

  “Ty-Tyson,” she choked.

  Paul laughed then, a rueful chuckle, and took his own step back. There was deep compassion and a light of something else in his eyes that caused her heart to beat out a response.

  “Yeah, I should get him,” he said, but he didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “We didn’t get anything done,” Charlotte said, regretfully.

  “Yes,” Paul said. “We did.”

  Slowly, he bent his head toward her, searching her eyes, perhaps for permission—but she knew that he was asking for more than permission to kiss her; he was asking her if he could take the secret she’d shared and use it as a bridge to a deeper connection.

  And suddenly it felt like the years-old prayer that she’d hardly been able to find words for did have an answer: she could stay here—there were people here like Mavis and Michael and the newcomers at the community center who needed her. She had trusted Paul with her most shameful secret, and he had stayed. Not only had he stayed, he was showing her that he cared, deeply. Every part of her believed that God was telling her that she could have it all: she could have purpose in life, she could be there for her family and she could explore the possibility of a deepening relationship with Paul Belvedere.

  She went up on her tiptoes and initiated the kiss herself. She kissed him and felt the strength of his arms tightening around her, his lips gentle against hers. She kept kissing him, almost overwhelmed by a sense of relief and homecoming. She kissed him with all of her heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was really quite amazing, Paul thought, the way the letters C-A-T could conjure up the picture of a fluffy feline sleeping contentedly by the fireplace. That is, until the D-O-G came to chase him away.

  What was more remarkable, though, was that he finally felt like he was in a place he could call home, with the most wonderful best friend to help him make the transition into committed, small-town guy.

  He and Charlotte seemed to both understand without words that the kiss, as heart-skippingly wonderful as it was, signified their trust in one another: he had shared his greatest secret with her, and she had not betrayed him, and now she had shared hers with him and he planned to honor her trust with every fiber of him. But it still felt like a romance was both too simplistic and too complicated to encompass what they shared. So, in the meantime, he would treasure Charlotte, in all of her dimensions, and he would thank God—and mean it—for helping him believe that happiness was possible again.

  Things at the community center were going well, too. He had added confidence now, when they taught the fix-it class, because he was working hard behind the scenes to improve his reading. It gave him a particularly strong empathy for what the newcomers went through in learning the language of their new country, and the lessons had become a time of openness, laughter and sharing.

  It had been a while since Charlotte had mentioned going overseas. Sometimes the question of it would briefly itch under Paul’s skin and stir through the pit of his stomach. But surely she would mention it if that was still her intention, and these days she had a restfulness and contentment that matched his.

  They continued to share the goal of helping Mavis and Michael, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. After her confession to him in her frightened and broken moment, Mavis had become more elusive and skittish than ever. If either he or Charlotte ever ran into her directly, it was like a cloak made of iron dropped over her, making her hard and impenetrable.

  But at least Michael was at school and Charlotte could keep an eye on him there.

  One Sunday morning, Paul went to wake Tyson up for church and found his nephew already sitting up in bed with an eager face.

  “This is really getting to
be part of our sked-you-all, isn’t it, Uncle Paul?” he asked.

  Paul chuckled. “What are you doing, talking about schedules at your age? And yes, it sure is.”

  “I bet my mom and my dad are happy we’re going to church.”

  Paul swallowed, but the lump of grief was now seasoned by the passage of time and went down a bit easier.

  It was hard to believe that soon it would be November. Tyson and Max’s long-wished-for snow was in the forecast.

  “Yes, I believe they are,” he answered Tyson. He no longer felt bitter when his nephew said things like that.

  Tyson suddenly hurled himself into his uncle’s arms for a hug.

  “Me and Max and Michael are all gonna sit together and do our project,” he announced. “We don’t know what it’s gonna be yet, but we already decided we’ll do it together.” He didn’t appear to think there was anything extraordinary in that fact, but just accepted that things had changed and what had happened before didn’t matter anymore.

  Paul mused that there was a good lesson in that.

  “Come have breakfast,” he urged.

  “It’s eggs and bacon, right?” That had become their Sunday tradition.

  “Sure is, bud, and you’d better get there quick before I grab all the crispy pieces.”

  “No way!” Tyson jumped out of bed and hurried down the stairs.

  “Careful!” Paul called after him.

  After breakfast, while Tyson was getting dressed, Paul studied his own collection of shirts in his closet, trying to find one that Charlotte had said she liked the color of. He looked forward to hearing the next part of the sermon series on the Book of James. It wasn’t easy to think that people could find joy in their trials, but he was especially interested in what the pastor had to say on the matter, as it gave him things to ponder on his own journey toward trust.

  Then he shook his head, laughing at himself. He couldn’t accept the profound changes his life had undergone quite as readily as Tyson did, but he was thankful for them.