I am not worthy.
The words burned like an iron against flesh. Did he truly think that four little words could erase all the pain he had caused? It was not enough. It would never be enough. She scratched the pen along the paper, but the nib was dry. There was no ink in the well.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
She looked up to see Charlie propped in the doorway. “I thought you were working with your tutor.”
“We’re done. I wondered how long it would take you to come in here.”
“You knew about this?” She shook the diary. “You knew he wrote in Mother’s diary and didn’t blot it out?”
“Words can never really be erased. We will always know.”
He was right. She sank into the desk chair. Above the fireplace, the portrait of her gentle mother looked down upon them. How much she had endured at Father’s hands. How much they all had. “It doesn’t get rid of his guilt. He hurt her. He hurt us. Nothing can change that.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Charlie said slowly, “but if there aren’t any second chances, then we’re all doomed. We all make mistakes. We all hurt each other.”
She knew he was right, but she couldn’t admit it, for that meant revisiting her own guilt.
“Mother forgave him,” Charlie whispered.
Elizabeth rose and gave the diary to her brother. “It took time.”
“What if we don’t have time?” he asked as she whisked past him.
As a girl, Elizabeth would run to the south shore of the island whenever something upset her. There she had talked to God and listened for His whispers in her heart.
Today she made her way to that same shore. Like in her dream, the turquoise seas stretched out endlessly before her. The breeze tugged at her skirt. Waves lapped the shore. Unlike that dream, white sails and the black smoke of steamships punctuated the horizon. Gleaming white coral sand rimmed the shore.
Holy ground.
Just like the verse from Exodus. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
Such things happened thousands of years ago, but here? Today? On Key West? To a woman who had turned her back on God, blaming Him when the blame lay squarely on her shoulders? God might have whispered to her as a child, but no more.
Yet the verse would not leave her. The sand shone like the sun, pure and white.
In her dream she had walked barefoot. What would it hurt to do so now? She sat on the grass and removed her shoes. Only then did she step onto the sand. It burned against the soles of her feet. The physical pain felt better than what she had endured of late. Father’s betrayal. Anabelle’s secret. Rourke’s departure, his fingers slipping from her hand. She touched his ring where it rested against her throat. What good was a pledge that could never be fulfilled?
“Why?” she cried to the sky and the screeching gulls. “Why must I be separated forever from the man I love? Why would my own father do such horrible things? What can take away this pain?”
Heat. It purified. Laundry must boil. Drinking water must boil. This heat burning her feet would scorch away the guilt and the anger and the despair. She stood until the heat brought tears to her eyes, but no peace came.
Everyone insisted she must forgive in order to continue. Mother forgave Father. Rourke forgave her. So did Charlie. That was what he had been trying to tell her.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
She had repeated the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday yet never grasped the significance—and difficulty—of those words. To be forgiven, we must forgive.
To receive forgiveness, she must forgive. Not some things. Not just those who treated her well. Everyone. Even Father.
Her limbs trembled at the enormity of the task. She sank to her knees and looked up into the endless blue sky. “I am not able.”
I am not worthy, Father had written.
Neither was she. Charlie, Rourke, and even Anabelle had forgiven her when she did not deserve it. All had suffered for her actions.
“I am not worthy,” she choked out. It hurt, yet it also healed.
Those first words led to more and more. There, on sacred ground, she poured out her heart to her one true Father. Her hurts and resentments, her transgressions, her selfish desires. All of it.
He listened. He did not turn His face. He did not run from her the way she had run from Him. She prayed until there was nothing left inside but silence. Even then she continued to kneel. The wind whispered. Gulls called out. As the warmth soaked through her skirts and into her knees, she knew what she must do. The answer came not with the whisper of a breeze but with the roar of a gale.
She took a deep, rattling breath. “Papa, I forgive you.” The words tasted bitter as salt water.
She tried again. “I forgive you, Papa.”