Forsaken (25 page)

He held out a hand. “Now, calm down, Meg. We are reasoning. All I’m saying is that I understand what Simon is suggesting. There is a certain theological symmetry to it.”

She squinted down at him. “This is not some classroom discussion at the seminary. My brother is talking about getting himself killed!”

“Most missionaries expose themselves to danger,” Simon said. “If they didn’t—if they hadn’t—Western civilization wouldn’t exist. What you’re saying, Meg, is that all of that is fine as long as someone else’s brother, husband, wife, or daughter, is taking the risk.”

“Now you’ve got it right. I don’t want my brother exposing himself to that level of risk, and I don’t care about all of your talk of missionaries and saints. By the way, you haven’t mentioned Kacey. You still have a twenty-year-old daughter, you know. Have you thought about her? You couldn’t exactly take her with you.”

Simon leaned forward. “Of course I have. That’s the rub in this whole idea. It’s the one thing that’s holding
me back, the one thing that makes me think of doing something else, or going just halfway.”

“What do you mean, halfway?”

“Like I said, I may start here in the U.S. There might be a little bit of risk in that. I’m sure there are some radicals out there, but they’re a tiny minority in this country. I don’t think it would be all that dangerous. And doing that would help me get my feet on the ground with this thing—figure out the best approach. In the meantime, though, I could contact Hakim in Chicago. At the least I’d like to discuss this Lebanon idea with him.”

Carston stood and put his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry, Meg. I don’t think I’ve been much help. As crazy as this sounds, I can’t tell you that Simon is wrong. If anything, I’m a bit ashamed that I haven’t got the sort of commitment necessary to do the same thing. When I look at the world and what’s happening around us every day, it’s clear to me that this is the most pressing missionary opportunity that exists.”

Meg’s mouth fell open and she shook her head. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”

Simon chuckled. “We can do a team thing if you’d like, Tom.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure my wife would wring my neck before any terrorists got to me.” He looked at Meg, who scowled. “I guess I should be going now.” He turned to leave but stopped and turned back. “One thing, though, Simon: If this really is about martyrdom, if you have some cockeyed notion that you need to become a martyr to redeem yourself—well, you know it
doesn’t work that way. Don’t lose sight of grace. It applies to famous televangelists just as much as anyone else. If you’ve asked for forgiveness, you’ve been forgiven. You don’t need to—you can’t—earn anything better than what God’s grace can give you.”

Simon nodded but merely said, “Give Cynthia my best.”

AFTER REVEREND CARSTON LEFT, I could see that Meg wanted to talk to her brother, so I excused myself and spent the next hour in Kacey’s room, listening to downloaded songs on my phone and wondering about the note in Simon’s Bible. When I went back out to the family room, Simon was in the kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich.

He pointed toward the peanut butter jar with his knife. “Want one?”

“Yeah, thanks.” I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water.

“Would you grab me a soda, please?” He spread the peanut butter on a slice of bread. “Open faced or closed?”

“Open is the only way.” I closed the refrigerator door.

“Agreed.”

I handed him the soda can, and he handed me the sandwich. I walked over to the breakfast table, balancing the sandwich on the palm of one hand.

“Where’s Meg?” I lifted the bread carefully with both hands and took a bite.

“She went home for a while. She’s got a family, too, you know.”

“You’re lucky. She really loves you and Kacey.” I worked my tongue through the peanut butter on the roof of my mouth.

“In some ways I think this whole thing has been harder on her than on Kacey and me. She worries so much.” He folded his sandwich in half and took a giant bite. Half of it disappeared.

“Why do you bother making it open faced if you’re going to fold it in half?” I took another bite.

“Haven’t you ever folded a slice of pizza?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.” He took a drink of soda.

I stuck my hand in my back pocket and touched the note from his Bible. “Did you get your Bible back when Reverend Carston left?”

“Yes, he left it on the couch. Have you had it all this time?” He shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth.

“Yes.”

He took another drink of soda, then put the can on the table. “I’m glad you didn’t let me leave it at the auditorium.”

“I figured you would want it.”

He looked at me for a few moments. “Do you have anything that belongs to me?”

I shifted my weight in my chair. “I think I might.”

He held out his hand. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the note.

“Is that something you really thought I would want you to read?”

I placed the note in his hand. “No, I assumed you wanted to keep it private.” There was a time when I would have concocted a lie at this point. Now I didn’t even consider it. “I read it anyway.”

“And you want me to tell you what it’s about.” He sat down with one hand resting on the table.

“Do I want you to tell me? Sure. It’s not self-explanatory. But do I
expect
you to tell me? Not really. If it affects your security or Kacey’s, you should tell me. Otherwise it’s none of my business.”

“It has nothing to do with keeping us safe.”

“How do you know that?”

“Now you’re just trying to convince me to explain the note.” He picked up his soda and drained the rest of it.

“That’s not true.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms.

He opened the note and focused on the page. “I should fire you.”

“I can’t disagree with you on that. I hope you won’t, though.”

He folded the note again, took a deep breath, and let it out. “A year or so before Marie got sick, I had an affair. I have a son. At least I think I do. That’s what this is about.”

I leaned back in my chair. “You’re kidding me.”

“It would take an unusual sense of humor to kid about that, wouldn’t it?”

“But, the letters in the shoebox.”

“They’re real. I did love Marie, and I still do. Do you want to hear the explanation?”

“That’s up to you. You certainly don’t owe me.”

He tapped his index finger on the side of the soda can and studied it, as if the words he needed could be found in the ingredient list. He didn’t look at me when he began to speak. “She had an affair first; I was paying her back. It’s as simple as that.”

I shook my head. “This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, coming from you.”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“How can you act as if you’re still in love with her?”

“It’s no act. I miss her more than I can describe. No offense, but you’re very young, Taylor. You’ve seen a lot in your life, but you’ve not seen marriage from the inside. It’s different than you might think. At least, it was different than I imagined. In some ways marriage is a much stronger thing than I thought, in other ways more fragile. Marie and I had our problems, but we got
over them. Then she got sick. When I told you how much I loved her, how much I still love her, I meant it.”

“You said you
think
you have a son. Don’t you know for sure?”

“No. There’s never been a blood test or anything. I do believe that it’s true, though. I believed it then, and I believe it now.”

“Where is he?”

“He lives in a suburb of Houston. He’s eighteen years old.”

“Does he live with his mother?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

Simon looked away. “He’s been adopted.”

I folded my arms.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“No, you don’t.”

“You’re thinking that you’re disappointed in me, that I should have taken him in, that I’m not the man you thought I was.”

I leaned forward. “I stand corrected. You do know what I was thinking.”

He stood up, walked to the picture window, and looked out into the backyard. “Fair enough. It was all very complicated, though. If I’d taken him in, I never could have saved my marriage. Then Marie got sick, and taking him became impossible. He was with his mother. I had no reason to think she was going anywhere. It wasn’t until much later that she abandoned him. I didn’t know she’d left him until after my ministry took off.
To have the affair come out would have ruined me and everything I’d worked for. Anyway, he was with a foster family by then, and they eventually adopted him.”

If he hadn’t had his back turned, my face would have showed him what I thought of that explanation. “Have you seen him?”

“Just pictures. I’ve been able to get news about him from time to time, mostly from the newspaper.” He turned, and his eyes brightened. “I understand he’s quite a baseball player.”

“Does he know about you? That you’re his father?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“How about the note? Who wrote it?”

“Two days before the FBI called me about the terrorist threats, I found the note folded under the windshield wiper of my car.”

“Did you tell the FBI about it?”

“I didn’t see any reason to. It had nothing to do with Kacey.”

I waved a hand in the air. “Well, that’s one
heck
of an assumption to make.”

“I
know
it had nothing to do with Kacey.”

“How?”

He crossed his arms. “Because the day after I found it, I talked to the person who left it.”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know. A man called me on my cell phone. He said that if I didn’t give him two hundred thousand dollars, he would give the story to the press.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

“I told him I had to think it over—that it would not be easy to come up with that kind of money quickly. He gave me a number to call in five days. He said someone would give me instructions on where to leave the money. I was going to tell you about it when I hired you, but then Kacey got kidnapped and everything else seemed insignificant. I never made the call.”

“Who knows about this?”

“Only Elise. I told her right after I talked to the man.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

“No.” He smiled. “I guess he had the unluckiest timing of any extortionist in history. I think the kidnapping must have scared him off. Elise thinks so too.”

“Who could have known about the boy?”

“Just his mother, and anyone she might have told.”

“Do you think she’s in on it?”

Simon came back to the table and sat down. “That was the first thing I thought, of course. But it doesn’t make any sense. After all this time, why would she just now decide to do this? Someone else must have found out. I just don’t know.”

“Was it a one-night stand?”

“More like six or eight nights. It never meant anything from my end. It was strictly revenge. It may have meant more to her, I don’t know. She was older than I— a difficult woman to read. Brilliant and difficult.”

“Who is she?”

He stood up again and crumpled his soda can in his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know where she is.
I’m not even certain she’s alive.” He walked to the wastebasket in the corner of the kitchen and tossed the can into it.

The garage-door opener rumbled. “That’s Kacey,” he said.

“Does she know?”

“No, and I don’t want her to know. Someday, maybe, I’ll tell her. I’ve trusted you with this. Please don’t tell anyone, and especially not her.”

“I wouldn’t stay in business very long if I went around blabbing all of my clients’ secrets.”

“Of course, it’s just business.”

I felt terrible for having put it that way, then I felt stupid for feeling terrible. After all,
he
was the one who abandoned his son. On the other hand, Marie had been the first to cheat. That must have crushed him. I wanted to comfort him, and I wanted to kill him. I wasn’t certain which to do.

One thing
is
certain now, though: If I’d known in that moment that he was still only telling me half of the story, I would have done something. Comforted or killed him. One or the other. But I didn’t know. And before I found out, something happened that turned my focus away from the Masons and back to me.

Kacey was improving every day—and I was about to lose a roommate.

IF A PERSON HAS been blind for most of her life and has the chance to see again, but just for a few weeks, should she take it? Or is the pain of blindness worse if the memory of sight is fresh?