The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,32

drink off the sill and makes her way back.

I return to the living room window in time to see her speaking to Roy. She takes the cocktail shaker and goes inside. He stays, gazing in the direction of the shed. Then he turns and looks right at me, raising his hand in a cautious wave.

I wave back and Roy goes inside.

I put clean sheets on the bed before crawling in. Despite the fresh scent, I can’t get comfortable, can’t go to sleep. So I switch the lamp on and pad downstairs to the bookshelf for something to read. When I turn on the lights, I see a gap in the uppermost row of spines. Rick has taken an armful of books into the shed with him.

My husband is not much of a reader. Most of his books are purchased on the recommendation of men at the church, so they split pretty evenly between American history—the lives of famous presidents, the Civil War, World War II—and business leadership—build your team, make your money, move the other guy’s cheese before he moves yours. His taste in fiction: Tom Clancy–style thrillers, thick sci-fi paperbacks, though I notice he tends to start novels without ever finishing them. When he brings a new book home, he sits on the couch for an hour or two, browsing over the pages. Speed-reading, he calls it. Jed dubs it “skimming.” The whole point of the exercise is to be able to get through a conversation about the book with whoever recommended it.

But the missing books don’t fall into this category. They’re the smaller group Rick has accumulated over the years, the ones he thinks he should read based on what he’s heard people saying. G. K. Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy—“All Catholics!” Deedee would crow. The collected works of Francis Schaeffer is gone too, and he’s taken the matched set of Spiritual Classics passed down to him from his grandparents. The last time I flipped through one, the pages were still stuck together by the fancy gilt edging.

Also missing: an enormous King James Bible full of woodcut illustrations, a gift from a couple at church who must have imagined we had a carved wood lectern in our living room just waiting for such a behemoth to land.

What is going on out there?

Is he following after the Irish monks who supposedly saved civilization, hand-copying books by firelight as some kind of spiritual discipline? Is he actually reading them?

I laugh out loud, and not out of spite. No, I’m certain of that. Holding the laughter up to my ear, listening again, what I hear sounds almost joyful. If he is reading them, then good.

I could always go and see for myself.

Then again, I did that once before and didn’t like what I found. If there’s any joy in this situation, I’d better grasp it like a fragile ember. Better that than to barge into the shed and find him drooling onto the raised initials in that fancy King James Bible.

The next morning I’m up before the alarm. I throw on some sweats and go downstairs, wondering if Rick will join us for breakfast or not. He won’t. He can’t. He may be out in the yard, but already it feels like he is a thousand miles away.

I put coffee on, drop some bread into the toaster, and glance through the kitchen window into the gray-lit morning. Against the door of the shed, their petals wet with dew, a heap of freshly picked wildflowers lays scattered on the threshold.

What in the world . . . ?

As I watch, the door opens. Rick doesn’t appear, but I can sense him looming just out of sight. The door half closes. Low to the ground, his hand reaches out. He gathers the flowers by their stems, taking them inside. The door shuts. At the window, his silhouette appears. The same hand that gathered the flowers presses itself against the glass. And then it’s gone.

I didn’t leave them there. I want to run out and tell him. It must have been Deedee returning in the night, laying tribute at her desert father’s door.

My, oh my. What will Rick make of that?

I would stick around and watch for more of a reaction, but I have my study group this morning.

Confession: There’s not much study in the study group these days.

Originally, when the group was much smaller (small enough to meet around Kathie Shaw’s dining table), we kept up a pretty lively and stimulating conversation, usually guided