Acts of Contrition Read online

  ALSO BY JENNIFER HANDFORD

  Daughters for a Time

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Jennifer Handford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477809518

  ISBN-10: 1477809511

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013910125

  Cover design by Anna Curtis

  For my loving husband, Kevin

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE Ordinary Time

  CHAPTER TWO Transgressions

  CHAPTER THREE Moral Inventory

  CHAPTER FOUR Powerless

  CHAPTER FIVE Unmanageable

  CHAPTER SIX Defects of Character

  CHAPTER SEVEN Admitting Wrongs

  CHAPTER EIGHT Shortcomings

  CHAPTER NINE Deserving of Love

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TEN Failing to Do Good

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Imperfect

  CHAPTER TWELVE Choosing to Do Wrong

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Confession

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Detesting Sins

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Heartily Sorry

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Pains of Hell

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Nature of Wrongdoing

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Cornerstone of Faith

  CHAPTER NINETEEN All My Heart

  CHAPTER TWENTY Loss of Heaven

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Sin No More

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Above All Things

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE To Do Penance

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Restore Sanity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Relapse

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Admitting

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Awakening

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Deserving of Love

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Principles

  CHAPTER THIRTY Offend Thee

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Persons Harmed

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Humble

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Make Amends

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Working the Steps

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The Big Book

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Lent

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Grace

  READERS’ GUIDE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ordinary Time

  I AWAKE BEFORE THE ALARM sounds. It’s early—five thirty early—the dreamy time of predawn when the golden light softens what’s real, blunts the sharp edges of daily life. It’s in these quiet moments when my perspective is the most forgiving, Zen-like. There are many paths that lead to happiness, this enlightened outlook reminds me, knocking out of the way my judgmental point of view that admonishes me for making wrong turns. For a few breaths—inhale, exhale, inhale—I’m free from my blundering.

  Then the alarm blares.

  I roll onto my side and reach over my husband, Tom, to hit snooze. Still enjoying the gauzy calm, I kiss the top of his arm, give his scruffy head a rub, and put my face in front of his. “Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”

  “Argh,” he groans. “Too early.”

  “I know,” I agree.

  “Where are the critters?” Tom asks, referring to our twin four-year-old boys who burrow their way into our bed each morning.

  “Still asleep. Hilarious, right?” It’s hilarious because the boys are crack-of-dawn early risers. But today happens to be the first day of preschool for Domenic and Danny, and neither of them is as excited about it as I am. I adore the boys, and while I routinely stare in wonder at the pint-sized cuties, identical with their skin as fair as alabaster and hair as glossy as black licorice, I’m still beyond eager for school to start, checking off each day on the calendar for the past month with a thick, indelible Sharpie. If the morning goes according to plan, in exactly four hours, I’ll be sans children for the first time in nine years, sipping the frothy goodness of a venti vanilla latte and savoring the sweet, warm dough of an apple fritter. I’ll be cloistered in my car, listening to the raunchy DJ on DC101 talk about something unacceptable, like underpants or threesomes or sex toys. The escapism will be pure bliss.

  But first I need to mobilize the sleeping beast husband and four children.

  “Come on, babe!” I nudge Tom. “You have a plane to catch and I’ve got children—all of the children—to get to school.”

  “Big day,” he says, offering a small smile and rolling onto his back, hooking my head into a gentle half nelson.

  I settle into the crook of his shoulder and latch my arm over his chest. “Seriously, honey, you need to get up. I’ve got to get the girls to the bus stop and the boys to preschool, and I really don’t have time to help you get out the door this morning. You’re on your own.”

  “Just give me a minute.”

  Tom reaches for the remote and turns on the news. Traffic and weather, and then, in the next instant, even though I’m still pressed up against him, we’re no longer snuggling. It’s more like a judge has just issued a heavy thud of his gavel, delivering a guilty verdict, sentencing me to life.

  On the screen is a photo of my ex-boyfriend. The crawler below it reads: VIRGINIA ATTORNEY GENERAL LANDON JAMES DECLARES INTENTION TO RUN FOR SENATE SEAT IN VIRGINIA.

  Landon James, the darkest of the many wrong paths I’ve taken.

  The golden hue of the room brightens to white. The soft edges render into right angles. My life: husband, kids, house, and an unforgiving past.

  Even though I haven’t seen Landon in person in nearly a decade, he still occasionally tromps through my life, leaving designer footprints. I met Landon a lifetime ago, though I remember our first meeting as clearly as I can recall the scent of my children’s skin. I was only nineteen when we first met, twenty-three when we were reintroduced, twenty-nine when I finally got sober from his brand of loving me and then pushing me away. The fact that he took things from me and never gave them back—a decade of my life, a piece of my heart, and the end of the thread that could unravel my entire life—is never buried far enough in my thoughts.

  Tom slides his arm from around me and is already on the way to the shower before I can call to him. “Tom?”

  “Nothing like seeing Boy Wonder first thing in the morning,” Tom grumbles before he turns on the water.

  “On an empty stomach, too,” I call over the shower’s noise, using the technique I’ve now perfected: siding with my husband no matter what. Years ago there was one argument—the nadir of Tom’s and my mud wrestling over Landon—where this lesson was drilled home. Tom commented—innocently enough—on Landon’s swagger (“Guy’s got an ego the size of Texas”) and ostentatious polish (the perfectly styled hair, the tailored suits, the gleaming cuff links). Stupidly, I jumped to Landon’s defense. He really wasn’t like that, I said; underneath the ego he was actually a decent guy, a pretty normal guy, who came from humble beginnings, who had been through a lot of hurt. Tom huffed away in disgust, said he couldn’t believe I’d defend him after he’d strung me along for so long, couldn’t believe I excused Landon’s every trespass.

  That taught me a valuable lesson: Never defend the man who wasn’t my husband.

  When Tom steps out of the shower, I slide past him with a bland smile (knowing better than to chance a t
ouch) and hop in for a five-minute scrub down: a quick wash of the hair, a lathering of soap, and a few swipes of the razor over the lower half of my legs. As I work some conditioner into my shoulder-length brown bob, I exhale in a long, slow stream, quietly so that Tom—at his sink, just feet away—doesn’t hear. Play it cool, Mary. Act as though seeing Landon meant nothing to you. Early on with Tom, I made big mistakes: I told him how deep it went with Landon, how strangely addicted to each other we were.

  Even now, seeing Landon heats my chest and speeds my breath. I push it down and bottle it because the feeling is irrational, and Irrational Me makes Logical Me sick, because Logical Me has everything she’s ever wanted.

  With a towel wrapped around me, I glance over at Tom to assess his mood, but his expression is washed clean of clues. I lean over and kiss his cheek. “I love you,” I say, and even to my ears I sound guilty, like I’m trying too hard, like it’s obvious what we’re both thinking.

  I duck into the bedroom to retrieve clothes to wear. Tom has casual Friday at his engineering firm. I have casual Friday every day. The suits and pumps I once wore to a swanky Connecticut Avenue law firm have long been donated to St. Vincent de Paul and replaced by jeans and chinos, T-shirts and sweaters, a classic wardrobe from the Old Navy moms department.

  By six o’clock I’m downstairs, out on the deck, feeding our golden retriever, Daisy. Drawing in the cool morning air restores me to myself, settles me down, brings me back to normalcy: husband, kids, house. Inside, I start packing the lunch boxes and preparing breakfast.

  Sally stumbles down the stairs a few minutes later. At age nine she’s my oldest, and an amber-haired beauty. Tall and bold, with broad shoulders and mile-long legs, she resembles the Greek goddesses she’s been obsessed with since studying them last year. If Sally were truly a Greek goddess, she’d be one of the tough ones, like Artemis, a hunter strapped with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. You want a piece of me? I can imagine her saying, staring down a three-headed monster twice her size.

  “Tired,” she moans. “Hungry.” Sally’s always hungry. She eats more than Tom and me, hands down. But she’s active, and at least for now her metabolism is besting her appetite.

  “Waffles? Eggs?” I say, coming around to give her a kiss. When she slips off the stool to hug me, the top of her head reaches my mouth. She’s growing tall and I’m short, a combination that will soon leave us lopsided.

  “Both,” she answers. “And hot cocoa, please.”

  This morning she is wearing green flannel pajama bottoms and a tight tank top revealing an inch or two of tanned belly. The straps from her training bra tangle with her tank top. People mistake her for older, easily twelve years old. Her body has grown and matured faster than her peers’, which nearly kills me, but I’ve done a good job of keeping my cool, like it’s no big deal to talk about cup sizes and getting her period. Yeah, whatever, that’s me. The cool mom who is accessible. Talk to me, my easy disposition says, I’m here. It’s not that I wasn’t aware that she would someday grow up. It’s just happened so fast. Smacked me in the face like a snowball I hadn’t seen coming.

  She bellies up to the counter, lowers her face to her hands, and sets down her Nancy Drew. Sally is a voracious reader and doesn’t go anywhere without a book, even downstairs to breakfast.

  Sally arrived earlier than we had planned, approximately eight months after we were married. And while my daily-Mass parents weren’t born yesterday and pretty much knew I had spent most nights at Tom’s prior to the wedding, we all did our part to pretend Sally was a honeymoon baby. I wasn’t the first Catholic bride in history to walk down the aisle wearing white, and pregnant.

  Following Sally’s birth, I fell into a deep depression. My sisters and my mother thought I was suffering from postpartum blues and I was only too glad to grab onto that as the reason. Tom felt guilty he was at work so much, putting in ten-hour days, traveling, but I was grateful he wasn’t around to see me heaving and sobbing out tears I couldn’t explain. Each day before he came home, it was all I could do to bathe, put on some makeup, and try to hold myself together for a few hours. Put a happy face on the hysterical new mommy.

  “Why are you so sad?” Tom would ask, because it was so obvious how much I loved Sally.

  “I’m not sad,” I would cry.

  “Then what?” Tom would ask patiently.

  “Being a mother, having a daughter, becoming a family…It’s huge,” I’d blurt, gasping for air. “Her life is in my hands. What if I do it wrong? What if I’ve already done it wrong?”

  After I slide Sally’s two fried eggs onto her two waffles and add a scoop of Ovaltine to her mug of milk, my eight-year-old, Emily—with her dimpled cheeks and giant chocolate eyes—floats her way down the stairs, our modern-day Mary Poppins. I meet her at the bottom, placing my hands under her arms and hoisting her up. It’s a promise I’ve made to both the girls: no matter how big they get, I’ll still be able to lift them.

  “What about when we’re thirty years old?” Sally asked one day. “Will you still be able to lift us then?”

  “Of course,” I assured her. “I’ll work out. I’ll still be able to lift you. We’ll just look very silly.”

  I nuzzle my nose into the crook of Emily’s neck. She exudes sweetness from her pores, like rose water, because she appreciates beautiful things: music, art, dance. Her latest thing is to declare everything either “gorgeous” or “dreadful.” The middle ground is too boring to notice.

  Emily wraps her legs around me, pulls back to see my face, and plants a juicy kiss on my lips. “Good morning, pretty Mommy,” she says in her best Cockney accent. Her theater group is rehearsing for Oliver!

  I return her kiss and issue a sigh of relief, grateful that I haven’t fallen into the dreadful category.

  “Morning, Em,” I say, kissing her freckled nose. “Breakfast?”

  “Do we have any fruit and yogurt?” My budding actress is already concerned with her calorie intake.

  By seven thirty, Tom has already done an hour’s worth of computer work and is now rushing down the stairs, his small suitcase in one hand, his briefcase in the other. Tom was a boxer in college and has the been-crushed-more-than-once, off-center nose to prove it. He’s stocky and strong and can still lift the girls effortlessly, flying them through the air like winged fairies. He has the brownest eyes and a beautiful wave to his amber hair. Most people assume Sally takes after Tom because of their matching hair. I think Sally resembles Tom because of their special bond, their mutual admiration of each other.

  “Do you have everything?” I say, standing before him like an MP. “A change of clothes, underwear, socks, belt, shoes? Did you bring your exercise clothes, your tennis shoes? Do you have your money, your credit card, your driver’s license, your cell phone?”

  “Mary,” Tom says, leaning in, kissing my mouth. “I have it all. I only make this trip to Chicago about twenty times a year.”

  “I know, I know,” I say, rubbing his arm. “You’re right.” Tom is an engineer for a software company whose major customers are the government and the defense industry. Every couple of weeks he makes a trip to Chicago to update the status of their latest projects at his company’s corporate headquarters.

  The girls wrap their arms and legs around Tom like protesters coiled around a redwood. “We’ll miss you,” Sally says, kissing Tom.

  Emily sings from Oliver!, snuggling into him.

  “We love you,” Sally says, and the depth of emotion in her voice nearly chokes me.

  “That’s nice, Sal,” Tom says. “And maybe someday your love will grow up and be as big as my love for you, but for now, your love is a puny little weakling.”

  Sally smiles. My most competitive child loves playing her special game with her father: whose love is bigger. “My love could kick your love’s butt.” She steps back and assumes a boxer’s stance, just as her father has shown her, left foot forward, dukes up.

  “Your love dreams of kicking my love’s butt,”
Tom says, throwing little punches in the air for Sal to block. Then he pulls her into a hug and she melts, because her love for her father is a landslide, the kind that sometimes buries her, leaving her breathless.

  When I issue a little squeal, Sally looks up, points at me, and smiles her know-it-all smile. “We made Mommy cry,” she says to Tom.

  “Our love is so big it always makes Mom cry,” Tom says.

  It’s true, seeing Tom love our children puts my heart in a vise. Sometimes it’s just too much—seeing my bounty. It makes me remember how fortunate I am; how much is at stake; the risk in having a cup so full. Sometimes I’ll see families—less happy, for lack of a better word: divorced, disobedient kids, financial troubles—and I’ll think: their hearts are actually on firmer ground, those people. They’ve already fallen from the top rung we’re clinging to. Looking up the ladder might not be as glamorous, but wouldn’t there be a safety in the steadiness of it, rather than fighting to keep balance at the top?

  After a few more minutes of proclamations and declarations of the best and biggest love, I walk Tom to the car. He’ll fly out of Reagan, the closest airport to our home in Woodville, Virginia, a sleepy suburb only twenty miles outside the beltway.

  “So what are you going to do with your three hours of freedom?” Tom asks.

  “Think. Breathe,” I say. “Go to the bathroom without a kid climbing onto my lap. Maybe take a walk. After that luxury, I’ll get down to the usual business of paying bills, cleaning house, and managing the kids’ schedules.”

  “All that sounds good,” he says, kissing me once more, then sliding into the driver’s seat. “Don’t get sucked into watching the news all morning…”

  He stops. Intentionally or not, sometimes Tom can’t help jabbing me in the side where Landon James is concerned. In this instance, he’s testing me to see if I’d be tempted to sit around all day watching the news, mooning over my ex. Remarks like these used to crush me, not because he was being unreasonable but because he had every right to be wary. My past, my reappearing ex-boyfriend, the phone calls—the reported ones and the ones he rightly suspected I didn’t report—were more than a man should have to bear. The guilt I carried from dragging my past into his future nearly killed me. I’d cry, we’d talk—but of course we couldn’t talk it all the way through. We’d just have to decide not to talk about it anymore, walk up to the wall and stare at it, then at last turn away.