* * *

The house didn’t reek like I’d expected it to. The glass of sweet iced tea Shelly Price offered me wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t broken or chipped. The whole place was plain, but nice. And clean. It had the look of a place that had once been very dirty, seen some tough sights maybe, but had since cleaned up its act and changed into a pretty decent little house.

  Like Shelly Price.

After Marti had run off to her car, Shelly had invited me in and asked me to sit down. At first I’d hesitated, but what good could I do Marti outside of that house? After I came in and settled onto her summery sofa, Shelly Price went about the regimen of fixing our teas without any words at all. She seemed to be thinking deeply. Her hands were shaking and I could tell even with her back to me that she was fighting back tears. However when she handed me my tea there was a smile on her face.

   “So. Why did you come?” She asked. I answered honestly.

   “I came because Marti’s stuck up for me her whole life, and I needed to stick up for her. Be by her side.” Something about those deep blue eyes that were so much like Marti’s made Shelly Price easy to talk to. “I’ve never been the brave one before today.” I confessed sheepishly. Realizing I that hadn’t really answered her question, I continued, “But Marti came because she wanted to know about you. Who you are. How you live. I guess….” I trailed off.

  Across the little coffee table, the young woman seemed to hide behind those golden strawberry curls.

 When she looked up there were glossy tears filling her eyes, but she was still smiling and she said with a shrug, “Well, I’ll tell you. My name’s Michelle Joyce Price. I’m twenty-four years old. I have three cats named Johann, Dante and Wren. Wren’s still a kitten, Johann likes to snuggle and Dante’s shy. I’m single.” She sucked in a cavernous gulp of air and went on. “I’m a Christian. I play the cello at my church every Sunday. I love to sing. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite movie, but not the new one with Keira Knightly, the old one because you couldn’t find a better Darcy than Colin Firth, and the new one is too short. I hate gravy. I love salads, and shoes are my only current addiction. I work at Papa Murphy’s, but I’m studying to be a professional interior designer.” She paused again to take another breath and pick at the makings of a hole in her jeans. I took a sip of tea. It was sweet, southern tea. Somehow it tasted bitter, in spite of all its sweetness. “But I guess you don’t really want to know those things, do you?” Shelly Price was saying now. “Well, I’ll tell you about that too. I was sixteen years old when the accident happened. I was drunk. It was my fault. I took a turn too fast I guess. And she died.”

The utter bleakness that crept suddenly into her voice startled me. The tone changed, lowered, as if fleeing back to a prior existence. She was remembering….

In that grave, dead tone I heard an age old call that suddenly awakened my young soul. I came alive to more than math and science and being nerd and graduating high school and someday my prince will come and Marti and me and if only David O’Hara would actually call me and tomorrow’s history homework and I’ll grow up and win a Nobel Prize. As I sat there in Shelly Price’s living room, I suddenly saw that there was more to my life than just living.

For the first time I sensed an ambition inside myself, an ambition to help the human race: to show them the true meaning of compassion and love and true freedom as so many have never known it.

In that moment I realized that exactly what this woman needed was exactly what I could help her receive. What I could help Marti give.

  No heavy constraint of guilt is lifted completely, not by time, nor by rationalizing, or even by simply forcing oneself to forget. It can only disappear with the freedom of forgiveness.

 

 

Dedicated to a wonderful friend. She's been gone six years now, but her memory still reminds me to love openly and forgive freely.