“What?” Susan snapped.
“Oh, nothing,” Jessica said. Susan’s sudden ill-temper made her smile.
“And why are you even here?”
“Just dropping this off for you, boss.”
Susan rolled her eyes at the “boss” label. Though she was, she always viewed herself as more of a battlefield coordinator.
“Enjoy your date.”
“It’s not a date,” Susan said. “I’m just showing him what we do.”
“Whatever you say,” Jessica said with a smirk.
“Good morning, Reverend,” Susan called out, approaching him.
“Hello there. Good to see you again.”
His eyes took in her appearance and he smiled. Susan was grateful she’d spent a little extra time on her makeup this morning. Not, she told herself for the umpteenth time, that that had anything to do with Gabriel Dawson.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire. The line the twins used when they played a game came to her and Susan’s mouth quirked up in an involuntary smile.
“Have fun,” Jessica called.
Gabriel lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
The day was just right for this sort of outing. The city had been blessed with a week or two of Indian summer and people were out and about, taking advantage of the warmer days. Before long, chilly temperatures and then out-and-out cold would descend on the city. For now, however, they could enjoy the reprieve.
“This is one of my favorite things to do,” Susan said.
“Walk?”
She nodded. “There’s nothing like fresh air. That’s one of the reasons I love Colorado so much. Of course, I’ve never been anywhere else but here, but I’m glad this is home. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“I’m starting to feel the same way,” he said. “I’ve been here for three years now, and wonder what took me so long to make my way to this part of God’s country.”
Susan directed their path. “We’ll head up Galilee, then turn down some of the side streets.” He fell into step beside her, walking on the street side of the walk. “Three years? I thought you’d just arrived in Colorado Springs a few months ago.”
“I am new to this city, but I’ve been in Colorado since I got out of the Marines.”
“What brought you here?”
He glanced at her and smiled. “The lure of fresh air. That and snow.”
“Well, we get a lot of that. So you should be thrilled.”
“Tell me about how you got started working at the shelter.”
Susan looked up at him, wondering if she should tell the whole story, wondering how or if he’d judge her if he knew. A moment later, she realized she couldn’t be anything except totally honest. Not only did she pride herself on being a woman of integrity, but also he needed to know that she knew what she was talking about.
She handed him one of the brochures. It featured a woman and child embracing as they shared a book together. “We’ll be passing these out today,” she said. “Not too long ago, I could have been that woman on the cover.”
For just a moment he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what you think,” she said. “My husband got caught up in drugs. Even before that, he had a temper. He could get really ugly when he was angry or thought he’d been slighted in the least bit. I was the outlet for his anger.”
Gabriel’s mouth tightened. “You’re still together?”
“No,” she said. It could have been a trick of the light, but Susan thought she saw his jaw loosen a bit when she said that. “He died a few years ago. He OD’d.”
“So that’s when you took up the crusade to save other women?”
“I’ve never thought of my work as a crusade, but I suppose it is,” she said. “And to answer your question, no. That came a long time later. After the healing. After living in the shelter. After rededicating myself to the Lord and getting my life together.”
Not comfortable being the focus of their conversation, she deftly turned the tables. “You were in the military.”
Gabriel nodded. “Marines.”
“Semper fi and all that.” She glanced up at him. “What does that mean anyway?”
“It’s short for semper fidelis, always faithful.”
Susan smiled. “Really? I like that. It works on a couple of levels, including a faith-based one. So how’d a big, strapping marine end up as a minister in Colorado Springs?”
“Being faithful to my calling,” Gabriel said. “I’ve always ministered to people whether I was ordained or not. But accepting the call to ministry in this way enabled me to put my own faith on the line for a higher cause.”
“And people shooting at you in a war isn’t a higher cause?”
The edges of his mouth curved up. “Yes, but…”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Just messing with you, Rev.” They paused in front of a house, all of its first-floor windows boarded over. “It’s been a real tragedy to see what’s happening to our city. It’s turning into something like the ‘killing fields’ you probably encountered overseas.”
“What happened?”
Susan didn’t know if he was asking about the house they stood before or the decline of the city she loved, but the answer in either case was, unfortunately, the same. “Drugs. Too many people indifferent until it’s way too late. Neighborhoods don’t decay overnight. But one day someone in the city looks up and says, ‘Hey, how did this happen?’ It seems like an overnight transformation only because no one notices the slow decline. We all just woke up one morning and our community had been taken over.”
“But it wasn’t overnight?”
She shook her head. “Hardly. My husband got caught up in what was probably the first wave of this epidemic. He killed himself by overdosing on cocaine.”
He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Reggie…” She paused before she said got what he deserved, the bitter words swirling in her head surprising her. After all this time she had thought she’d put the experience with him behind her. She had thought she’d let go of all the anger.
But how could she really? Everything she was today, from her position as director of the Galilee Women’s Shelter to the woman standing here on this street corner with Gabriel Dawson, was a direct result of what Reggie had put her through. If it hadn’t been for the way he’d forced her to grow up, Susan knew she could very well be one of the people she was trying to reach out to.
“Reggie was a man who let his compulsions get the best of him,” she ended up saying.
“You miss him?”
She glanced up at Gabriel. “Not the way you think.” And because that sounded so cold, she added, “Our marriage was over long before he died. He’d been on a path toward destruction for a while, a long while. His death, like so many others, was a direct result of readily available drugs on the street. But if it hadn’t been cocaine, he’d have found some other way to self-destruct. Reggie was just like that.”
She walked up the steps leading to the porch at the house and tucked three of the brochures in the mail slot on the front door.
“It doesn’t