Sacrifice
"Today I want to talk about sacrifice."
Sacrifice. The word grabbed Noel Aquino up off his pew and dragged him outside for a chat.
The thirty-eight year old police detective seemed to live a model life of noble sacrifice.
He'd sacrificed a chance at a lucrative career to become a cop.
He'd sacrificed career advancement, begging off dangerous assignments so he wouldn't leave his wife a widow.
He'd taken a bullet for a partner.
He'd made those sacrifices willingly and without reservation.
But sacrifice has a way of kicking you in the teeth.
His dad had never forgiven him for "throwing his life away."
He'd buried his wife almost fifteen years ago.
His old partner was serving time for dealing coke that had been "confiscated" from dealers -- after failing to frame Noel for it.
Reverend Mike gestured to the congregation with a broad sweep of the arm, but Noel's thoughts drowned out the preacher's words.
Sacrifice gets sold as a rational, calculated transaction, a self-metered surrender for a greater good. You can control the amount of your sacrifice. You give just a little bit of yourself, and both you and the world are better for it.
Lies.
Noel finally saw the truth of sacrifice: You poured sacrifice down a hole, then fell in and choked on it, desperate to pull yourself out. Better to leave the hole empty and break your neck when you hit bottom -- at least that way you didn't suffer.
Noel shook himself. Don't be so cynical. This isn't like you.
A lot of things about Noel Aquino weren't like him lately. A lot of things about the world around him weren't like they used to be, either.
It wasn't old choices that troubled Noel, though his present foul mood certainly cast ugly new shadows on them. Sure, he'd suffered, he'd felt hurt, he'd been angry, he'd even questioned his faith, but he'd never felt like this before. He'd never felt... trapped.
It was Noel's latest sacrifice that troubled him. Noel had opened his home to a lost soul. He had given her physical and emotional shelter from a cruel world. Given her a chance to recover from a traumatic loss that had left her all alone in the world.
He knew there were people who didn't know the strength of his character or the depth of his compassion, people who would mistake his caring gesture for something unsavory. He could live with that. And he thought he could handle having an attractive young woman living in his house -- despite his past "obsession" with her.
He'd thought it was the least he could do, in light of her tragic situation.
For if anyone knew the ugly side of sacrifice, it was Angela Barrett.
A naive girl of eighteen, she had tried to help others, using her unique gift to protect the weak against the wicked, standing as a reluctant champion against the evil of the world. In the end she had saved thousands from almost certain death, enduring hours of torture to finally overpower her captors and neutralize a bomb at a huge Labor Day celebration. And she'd saved countless more lives by keeping a far more destructive force out of the hands of madmen.
But the reward for her selflessness had been more than she could bear.
Her house and all her worldly possessions, destroyed in a rogue government agency cover-up.
Her mother, taken hostage to dissuade the girl's efforts, and gunned down trying to escape, left to die naked in the street.
With no relatives, no money, and nowhere to go, she was a lost soul. So Noel had done the Christian thing and offered to help.
Three weeks later, he was here in church, questioning his character, feeling trapped by his small sacrifice spiraled out of control.
Noel turned his bowed head and looked down the pew. His son Ricky sat next to him, sixteen years old and until very recently a quiet and mindful boy, somewhat sleight of frame but great of heart.
And next to Ricky, an empty space.
Last week, and the week before, Angela Barrett had been sitting there. Respectful and receptive, coming to church out of obligation to the Aquinos but, Noel believed, finding a source of strength in the experience.
Today, as with every week, the pews were full, the same friends and neighbors sitting in the same seats they always occupied. But in Noel's row, the Robinsons remained squeezed together on their half of the pew, leaving the space next to Ricky open, a silent encouragement of Angela's return. Or perhaps a disparaging announcement of Noel's failure.
Few would have blamed Angela for questioning faith in light of her tragedy, least of all Noel. His own faith had been tested with the loss of Ricky's mother years ago, and he'd had a much stronger religious foundation than Angela.
Angela had insisted she simply wasn't feeling well this morning. But even if Noel hadn't spent the better part of two decades as a police officer reading people's faces, he'd have known Angela wasn't having a crisis of faith. Her real motivation for skipping Sunday service was clear.
It was Noel.
Because this wasn't about sacrifice at all.
This was about temptation.
What was he thinking when he invited her to live with them?
How many reasons were there not to do it?
How many synonyms did Webster's list for 'stupid'?
For starters, Noel was tacitly approving of the moral corruption of his son. Noel wasn't about to pretend his son could be expected to hold out until marriage, any more than Noel had been virtuous in his youth. But Angela was two years older than Ricky, and the object of the boy's affection besides. Letting them live under the same roof was a message no father-son talks or apparent level-headedness could fully assuage.
Worse, he was feeding his own obsession with this skittish young woman who reminded him all too well of his departed Margaret. Even before Angela's tragedy, Noel had struggled, from the moment his son had taken a liking to the girl. A watchful father's eye had quickly become the longing stare of a man both horrified and enchanted by her provocative behavior. Captain Ramirez had taken him aside, warning him that his obsession was not only affecting his work but jeopardizing his career. The department simply couldn't condone a senior detective staking out his son's attractive girlfriend where she worked or driving by her home at all hours of the day and night. Now that her situation had changed and he was playing the role of the good samaritan, he escaped formal reprimand but not the suspicious looks of coworkers and superiors alike.
He'd honestly thought he'd dealt with those feelings, not just as he came to understand the magnitude of Angela's noble endeavor and some of its terrible cost, but as he saw the strength and depth of feelings that she and his son had for each other. Noel was not ordinarily a man to give in to temptation, and Angela's courage had inspired him to re-embrace his role as protector and provider, both professionally and personally.
But now he knew better. He'd taken it too far.
It was bad enough that he'd let an exhausted and disheveled Angela recuperate at the family's cabin with only Ricky for companionship. He'd left them alone up there for three days while he sorted out the post-Labor Day chaos back home. Perhaps it was shellshock or a starry-eyed naivete that had prompted that stupid decision. Perhaps it was a lingering judgement of Angela as not good enough for his son, figuring the sooner his son could "get her out of his system" the better.
Noel had compounded his stupidity upon their return.
With no living relatives, no close friendships, and no personal assets to speak of, Angela had nowhere else to go, at least until the matter of her mom's estate was settled. Angela had no clue about her financial situation -- Gladys Barrett had sheltered her only daughter too long. Angela didn't even have a checking account -- she simply cashed her fabric store clerk's paychecks. Noel hadn't known Gladys well, but he would have expected her to establish more financial independence in her daughter, especially since Gladys' husband had died unexpectedly when Angela was very young. Perhaps the woman had simply been living in denial.
In any case, Angela couldn't afford her own apartment, and there was no telling how long the state and the insurance company would take to sort out what to do with the charred earth that had once been the Barrett home.
So her coming home to live with the Aquinos had seemed a foregone conclusion.
Finances, recent trauma, profound loss, a still-blossoming relationship, naivete, immaturity, self-discovery -- these challenges seemed best met in a safe and supportive environment. Noel, Ricky, and Angela -- all three of them had thought themselves up to it when invitation was extended and accepted.
But even a saint would have been sorely tested by the events of the past three weeks . . .