Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [123]
At first it had been awkward. Thomas loved Ravinia deeply and always had—even through her rebellious years. But he had never been physically affectionate with her. He was making up for that with Summer, but he had long feared he could not change the way things had begun with his own daughter.
Ravinia was still not “walking with the Lord,” but he had long since quit attributing that to rebellion against her parents. She was, after all, in her late thirties now. He had long believed—and preached—that adults were free, independent moral agents. She had chosen her path, and while she was still at the top of his prayer list, Ravinia Carey-Blanc was certainly free to conduct her life any way she saw fit.
The problem was that it was clear she was not happy. That saddened Thomas to his soul. Ravinia’s daughter, his granddaughter, had become the light of his life. She deserved parents who loved each other, lived together, and loved her. One out of three just didn’t cut it.
Thomas and Ravinia’s twice-weekly chats always seemed to begin and end the same. They would embrace, which after a while he came to cherish. Just looking at her made him smile. She was attractive in her own understated way, well-dressed, and perfectly groomed. And smart? He and Grace had been good students, but Rav was off-the-charts bright.
They would discuss her clients and how hopeless most of their cases were. They laughed at the naiveté of men who could not face the truth about themselves and seemed incapable of telling the truth about anything. Rav had become a fierce opponent of capital punishment and a proponent of convicts’ rights—to a degree—and Thomas was pleasantly surprised to find that they could engage in vigorous debate without offending each other. She was full of statistics and arguments and usually quoted them verbatim without notes.
On the home front, Ravinia continued to insist that she and Dirk cared for each other, and while the counseling had become inconsistent, they still talked about someday trying again to make it work. Meanwhile, he lived in a tiny apartment and swore he had never cheated on her, despite, by now, more than a year of separation.
Ravinia claimed the same fidelity, though it had been her unfaithfulness that had led to their problems. Ravinia still insisted that Dirk take some of the blame for that—reasonable at some level, Thomas conceded, but probably also the reason they had not been able to repair the breach.
Thomas never hesitated to tell Ravinia that he saw hope for her marriage only if she returned to a spiritual base and became an example to Dirk to do the same. And she seemed to accept that her father’s view would never change and appreciated that he seemed less judgmental all the time.
“In fact,” she said one day, “I suppose I would be disappointed if you weren’t so consistent.”
“Predictable, you mean.”
“Well, you’re nothing if not that. But your weakness is also your strength.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Then the discussion always moved to Summer and what a precocious child she had become. Like her mother, she was full of curiosity, peppering every adult in her life with endless questions followed by more questions based on every answer. The mere thought of her brightened Thomas, and Ravinia never seemed to tire of hearing him repeat, “That one, she’s going to be something.”
Their frequent conversations had so freed Thomas emotionally that he had even taken to letting his guard down and admitting to Ravinia that now, at fifty-nine, he had many regrets. He allowed that his current work—fourteen years being the longest he had ever invested in a single ministry—was the hardest he had ever done. And that the lack of much to show for it wore heavily on him.
Today he was on that theme again, and his daughter seemed to study him. “What were you dreams, Dad, your hopes when you got into the ministry? Did you expect to have some global impact, ‘win the world’?”
“Not really. I think I’ve always been fully aware of who I am and who I’m not. And if I