Roman winced. “That must have hurt.”
“Not as much as it should have. I think I knew why he married me right from the beginning. I just didn’t want to face the truth. Patrick needed me to get where he wanted to go. He never loved me. I was pretty pathetic when I think about it.” She didn’t want to talk about her life anymore. She didn’t want to be cornered with any other questions that might arise. Especially about Samuel. “Your turn to talk.”
“As you pointed out a while ago, I had the Mastersons and Jasper. They loved me.”
“They still love you.”
“I have no idea why. I haven’t made it easy.”
He didn’t make anything easy. “God was taking care of you.” God had taken care of her, too, even when she hadn’t realized it.
“There it is again.” Roman gave her a half smile. “The God thing. Miranda talked about Jesus the same way you do. Like He’s a close friend.”
Grace could let it pass, but it mattered what Roman thought, more now than ever. “He is her closest friend. He’s mine, too. I just haven’t been a very good disciple.” She had certainly missed shining any light for Roman or Bobby Ray Dean or whoever he was. If he knew her whole story, what would he think about her then?
“When did you start believing? In Sunday school?” His smile was condescending. “Not going to say anything? And here I thought Christians were always eager to proselytize.”
“How many do you know?”
“I’ve met a few. In clubs.” He sounded cynical.
She turned toward the window.
“Talk to me, Grace.”
His moods changed quickly. “I came to faith when I was seven, after my aunt moved me to Fresno.”
“That’s about what I figured.”
His tone implied he knew everything, but he knew nothing at all. She gritted her teeth. She hated that mocking tone. They had been talking about things that mattered. Who had started this conversation, and why? “My aunt didn’t proselytize, as you put it, and I’d only been to Sunday school a few times. I was still hiding every night when—” Just be quiet. Let him think whatever he wants.
“When what?”
Tell him, beloved. Now, while there’s time.
Time? She didn’t understand. She and Roman had plenty of time, didn’t they? She worked for him. But something impelled her to heed the command. “I believed.” It was the truth. Part of it anyway. She wouldn’t say more unless he asked.
“Just like that, you believed. How? Why? To please your aunt?”
“It didn’t please my aunt!” She lifted her hands. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Beloved, obey Me. Trust Me.
Roman glanced at her. “I want to know.”
“You’ll laugh.”
Roman pressed. “I’m not laughing now, am I? Your aunt took you to church, but didn’t want you to become a Christian. What am I missing?”
Lord, please make him believe. “Wherever I was, I slept in a closet. At home, when I was in foster care, in my aunt’s house. It was the only place I felt safe.” He didn’t say anything. “I was afraid of my aunt, afraid of the nightmares that always came. I wanted my mother. Aunt Elizabeth was angry all the time, not like my father had been, but I felt it, even when she tried to hide it. I was afraid of her.” She closed her eyes tightly. “I was afraid of everything.”
She took a deep breath, gathering courage to tell him the rest. “One night, I saw light under the closet door. It was different. I can’t explain it, but I was curious, not afraid. I came out and saw a man standing beside my bed. He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before. He was bigger than my father, and light was all around him. All the fear I’d been feeling went away. I climbed onto my bed and sat there and talked to him. I told him everything that happened. He told me I didn’t have to be afraid anymore, and I believed him.” She let out a shuddering sigh. “I never slept in the closet again.”
“You’re saying an angel came to you.”
Grace didn’t have to wonder if he was dubious. It was written all over his face. Okay, Lord, I did what You told me. He’s all Yours.
“What did your aunt say when you told her?”
“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone about him until Christmas, when Miranda talked about angels in my Sunday school class. She showed pictures, and I said angels weren’t girls and didn’t have wings and mine was big and strong and glowed. The other children laughed at me, of course. Just like you’re laughing.”
“I’m not laughing.” He sounded angry, but then so was she.
“My aunt heard about it later. She was furious. She told me to stop telling lies to get attention. I never mentioned him again.”
“Until now.” His expression gentled. He drove for a few minutes, pensive. “Considering what you went through, it’s no surprise you had an imaginary friend.”
See, Lord? “He wasn’t imaginary, Roman. I don’t expect you to believe it, but I know he was real and everything he said was true.”
“What did he say?”
“He said God loved me. I believed him. I still believe. He told me I’d never be alone, and I believed that, too. I never stopped believing in God, even when I listened to people who didn’t.” Patrick for one. She’d never told him about the angel. Perhaps she should have remembered that before pouring out her most precious memory on Roman Velasco–Bobby Ray Dean. What was she hoping would happen? Had he ever shown the least interest in spiritual matters?
“Does he still come to you?”
Grace studied Roman’s profile before she answered. “No. Sometimes I wish he would.”
“Why do you think he left you?”
“I’ve wondered about that a lot. I think it’s because I didn’t need him anymore. When I accepted Jesus, the Holy Spirit came to live in me. That’s what the angel meant when he said I’d never be alone. I sense when God speaks to me. I don’t have to see an angel. Unfortunately, I haven’t always listened.” She’d dreamed about her angel several times over the last few years. After Patrick left. When she was expecting Samuel. In the dream, her friend simply came and sat beside her and didn’t say anything, his presence comfort enough. It was when daylight came that the worry returned, the fear she’d make another mistake, a bigger mistake.
Was she making one now, telling her secrets to this man, allowing him to see inside her? Was she hoping he’d reciprocate?
Roman looked so troubled, she felt sure she’d failed. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been in the Vatican and a few of the famous cathedrals in Europe. I’ve seen people who believe. I wasn’t looking for God. I was there for the art.”
They didn’t talk for a long while. She wondered what he was thinking, but didn’t ask.
“You needed to believe someone cared.”
He was trying to explain the inexplicable. “Someone does care, Roman.”
His hands moved restlessly on the steering wheel. “My mother went out one night and never came back. CPS put me in foster care. Let’s just say I didn’t stick with the program. I kept looking for her until someone finally got around to telling me she’d died.” He gave her a cynical smile. “She was a prostitute like the ones you defended in Bodie. She died of an overdose at twenty-three. I was seven when she disappeared. You can do the math.”
Pregnant at fifteen, a baby in her arms by sixteen.
Roman looked pale, almost ashen. He spit out a word he hadn’t said since the first day she worked for him. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”
She could hope it was for the same reasons she had shared her secrets.
He moved into the fast lane again. “Where was God in everything you and I have been through, Grace? Tell me that. Where was God when your father was beating your mother to death and then blowing his brains out? Where was God when my mother was selling her body to keep a roof over our heads? She used drugs to feel better. Maybe she wanted to forget how she made a living. Maybe she wanted to forget she had a kid. Where was God in all that?”