The Book of CarolSue by Lynne Hugo

Author:Lynne Hugo [Hugo, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2020-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Gary

How do terrible and wonderful coexist, Gary wondered about the afternoon he’d spent with Gracia. His daughter. No, not his daughter, he couldn’t let her be. And yet she was, so he’d spent an afternoon with her. Listened to her little sounds, watched her random movements, seen her crane her head to look for him. Not her father. Her father. But she didn’t know that, of course not. Or did she have some primal connection to him that she sensed? When Muffin, the Athertons’ bay mare, stuck her head over the fence, too big, too close, startling Gracia in her stroller, and she cried, was that visceral tie to him why she’d then relaxed close to his chest when he picked her up? She’d watched, intent, as her not-father but yes, father, stroked the horse’s forelock and talked to the two of them, the horse and his not-daughter but then, yes, daughter.

He felt the tie himself and he’d felt love stirring, and that was wonderful. Having had her alone with him, picking her up out of the stroller to show her the horses out in the Indian summer light, when the corn was just starting to be cut in some of the neighbors’ fields, oh yes, he remembered his dad on the combine doing that on their farm, and he’d told Gracia about it as he held her. And then, he’d told her, too, that she’d had a brother named Cody, who’d loved horses and maybe she would, too, one day. And he’d been able to bear the memory, perhaps because it was whispered, just between the two of them. She’d met his eyes and not looked away.

But the church had to come first. It was what God wanted. And that was part of the terrible in it, and the other was how he’d filled with guilt over Gracia in his office on the rug where she’d been conceived, while the pictures of Cody stared at him and her like spectral accusations. God had forgiven him for failing his son, but his father never had, and Cody’s mother and his own mother never could. And right then his aunt, who was like a second mother, asked him if something was bothering him.

“Oh no, I’m fine,” he’d said. He wondered if Jesus was keeping an actual count of his lies. Was he writing them down? Gary didn’t see how anyone could keep track of so many, but then he reminded himself that Jesus wasn’t actually human and could do anything. It was not a comforting thought.

In the days following, though, after his aunt had taken the baby over again—a strange way to put it, but it did feel like she took possession and Gary was confused that he did not feel grateful—he thought of confessing. Wouldn’t it be simpler? If God really wants the church to survive, then God will make it happen. Or is this all testing my commitment to the church, if I will really put the work of

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