Found and Lost (22 page)

Violet swiped her keys from the counter, stepped into her tennis shoes, and stood in the doorway. She'd never lived in any other house. Her best memories were at Khloe's, not here, but this was the base she returned to, involuntarily as a tetherball.

She glanced back. Dad hadn't followed her. Mom hadn't followed her. She ought to be grateful. Or maybe they were falling back on the only mode they knew. Maybe the easiest thing for them to do with her was to look straight through her.

She shut the door behind her, climbed into her car, and stowed the duffel in the back seat. Maybe they would come to the door and watch her drive away. She backed down the driveway under the soft moonlight. If the door so much as cracked open, the light from inside would show.

It stayed dark.

Violet drove away as if she had a destination. As if someone, somewhere, would see her little blue car coming down the road and rush out to meet her.

37

Clay didn't dream, or if he did, his mind blocked the mess of his subconscious the moment he surfaced in a hotel bed under a down comforter. The AC rattled under the window. Sunlight slanted through the blinds. He squirmed, stretched, and reached toward his wife. That side of the mattress was cold.

He sat up. Two seconds' glance confirmed she wasn't in the room. She'd tugged her half of the sheets wrinkle-free. He padded barefoot to the bathroom.

“I've been thinking,” he said, “we're going to need to trade the Jeep or …”

She wasn't here, either. His stomach tightened. He turned in the doorway, and his eyes roved the room as if he could conjure her. They snagged on the ivory sheet of hotel stationery propped against the TV screen. Five steps crossed the room. His fingers swiped the paper—papers. Several sheets. The cheap black ballpoint had dried up on her a few times on the first page. She'd had to scribble a loop in the margins to get it writing again.

Dear Clay,

No. His eyes snapped shut.

She'd taken the Jeep to get some breakfast. She was coming right back.
Read it, imbecile. That's all it says.

Three sheets of stationery for a breakfast run. Right.

He was going to throw up before he read another word.

Coward. Read it.

His hands quivered. He opened his eyes.

Dear Clay,

You're going to be shocked, I know. You don't think I have it in me. I've known for a while now that I do, that this kernel of action is lying in my chest waiting for something to water it. Something finally did, the night our baby jumped out of the Jeep and we didn't stop her. And since that night I've been trying not to do this and trying to believe in us because I want to, I really want to. You're my husband. I pledged myself to you. I loved you. I do, still.

We should have said things to each other. Part of me wants to rip this up and wait for you to open your eyes, so I can say all this to your face instead. But I don't think I can. It hurts to give you pieces of me and watch you drop them on the floor and walk over them because you don't know what to do with them. So you do nothing. I know it isn't your fault. I know if you could, you would be the husband who stays with his wife through everything, not just with her in the room, but really with her. Not because it's what I need but because it's what you want.

I have tried for days not to compare past and present. Not to remember every night I stayed up waiting for you to find it in yourself to come home and face life again. Come home and make us a team again. I guess it really isn't fair, but when I think about that night, leaving Khloe behind, it's like in that second you made me like you. You have no idea how many times I've vowed never to let her feel abandoned.

Clay doubled over on the bed. The next sheet was wrinkled at one edge with drop marks. Tears. A little sound pushed up from the pit of him and bled into the air. He forced his eyes to the page.

I don't want to leave you right now. I can see in your eyes that you're lost, you're hurting, just like I am. But you let hurt drive you, Clay. You're going to keep leaving, whether by your choice or the Constabulary's. Last night, when I asked you about prayer, it was because I need to know what I'm facing. I need to know, if we get caught, whether I'll ever see you again or whether you'll cling to your version of Jesus for years. Right now, I think I would lose you.

It's not an ultimatum. Please, please don't see it that way. I just have to give myself a little time away from us. You said you don't know where we're going from here. I don't either. I just know that the last week has torn us up and I don't think we can deal with this if we're stuck together in a little room.

I took a taxi and half the photo money. I have my phone. Don't call me today. I'm not going to turn myself in. That's a promise. Not for at least a week. I don't know if I will eventually or not. What I'm asking is that both of us figure out what we want and how much we want it.

Clay flipped to the final page. The tear marks on this one warped the center, right on top of the words.

Clay, I love you. I think if I loved you less, I could watch you grab your keys and head out the door and I could just wait for you to come home and not feel a thing. Maybe if I loved you less, I'd be a better wife. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm still sitting here with you. You're sleeping just a few feet away, hair all mussed and your arm stretched toward me. I feel as if I'm going to be leaving half my body and all my heart in this room, but I have to do this for me and for you, too.

I want to come back to you. I think I can. Not today, but maybe soon.

Forever,

Nat

The pages slipped from his numb fingers. He rocked and held his stomach. His vision washed gray. Time passed.

When he could think again through the howling inside, he straightened up and pulled on the jeans he should wash soon. Where would she have gone? Another hotel? Somewhere she linked to Khloe? She was too smart to go home. A taxi was risky, though. Someone had seen her face in his rearview mirror.

Lord, don't let her get recognized, don't let her—

Wait. Wait a minute. What was he thinking? His voice spurted at the ceiling.

“What is wrong with You? I prayed. I believed You. I tried to be a witness for You, like You wanted, to my family, and You just stand back and watch while they … while I …”

He kicked the sheets of paper, and they flew up around his feet like startled birds, then drifted back down.

“I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not doing this. Anymore.” His knees hit the carpet. “You don't keep Your word.”

He turned on the TV and found a local channel. If Natalia had been arrested this morning, the media would be highlighting the event for at least a day. For the next eight minutes of news loop, he hid his hands in his lap to keep from shutting it off.

The blonde anchorwoman paused to shift her notes on the table in front of her. “And now for our last local story, the Michigan Philosophical Constabulary has been—”

Bile rose halfway to his throat.

“—recently made suspicious of an organized movement created to thwart them. Members of this movement are unidentified at this time, but they're suspected of aiding and abetting Christian fugitives, including some of the most dangerous criminals on the Constabulary's wanted list. We interviewed MPC Agent Larry Partyka earlier today regarding the steps the Constabulary is taking to apprehend these suspects.”

Clay swallowed, breathed, and sat back against the bed frame. This had nothing to do with Natalia. Unless they tacked her arrest onto the end as a reassurance to the public that the Constabulary was still on top of things.

The camera cut to a tall redheaded agent in a black suit, standing beside the same news anchor but obviously at a different time, in a different location. She angled her microphone toward him and flaunted her perfect teeth.

“Agent Partyka, can you explain for us exactly what civilians can do to aid the Constabulary in this …?”

Partyka grinned, or grimaced, or something. “The suspects taking part in this resistance movement are considered erratic and dangerous, and we're starting to believe they're more organized than originally thought. The most important thing—the only thing we're requesting from civilians—is information. Stay safe, avoid a confrontation. Leave that part to law enforcement.”

The camera cut back to the blonde anchor. Her words blurred, but that calm voice coated the room and let Clay think again. The news looped a minute later. No Natalia.

Syllables filtered back into his brain.
“Recently made suspicious of …”
Not likely. They'd known about the resistance for a while, he would bet on it. They'd wanted to nab the offenders quietly, then pop up on the news with a surprising success story. Clearly, that wasn't working, and they'd resorted to enlisting information from the public.

No wonder they couldn't find anyone. Clay knew Marcus personally and still hadn't known …

“Unidentified at this time.”

No, the resistance leader wasn't unidentified.

What would Clay's knowledge be worth? Not that he'd ever use it.

Marcus was worth a lot more to them than Khloe. She was only one harmless teenager, and she wasn't even a Christian, and they knew that by now.

He wasn't really considering this.

Would
they
consider it? Would they honor a deal?

Marcus was a friend.

A friend who'd lost Khloe and Violet and not cared enough to contact Clay, to fix this failure.

The Constabulary might say they agreed to his terms with no intention of letting him or Khloe go. But the hollowness of this room and the pain in his gut and the crumpled letter on the carpet beside him …

He had to try.

He shut off the TV. Pulled on his shirt. Stuffed his wallet in his pocket, grabbed his keys and his shoes. He'd be there for Nat. He'd learn how to hold the pieces, if she'd give them again. He'd get their daughter back.

He'd make everything right.

38

Assuming the con-cops had her license plate number, her description, and everything else ever officially recorded about her—work records, medical records, school records—Violet's best bet would be to go live in a forest as a hunter and gatherer. Make her clothes from squirrel skins and live on …
Fern leaves.
The memory squeezed her throat. Running through the woods, Khloe's hot hand in hers. She shoved it away and put her car in park. Maybe she ought to leave it here, grab her duffel bag, and start walking. Somewhere.

For now, though, she rolled down the window and sat in the parking lot behind a mostly vacant strip mall. A non–chain ice-cream shop occupied one end, and next to it sat a used book store. Every other window in the strip sported a For Lease sign.

She'd driven almost an hour from home, north on M-53 and then west on a random mile road. Based on her memory, she shouldn't be too far from Chuck and Belinda's house. From Khloe.

Maybe she was stupid to park here and think she could relax. She was probably really stupid to unzip the duffel and dig through her clothes until her fingers grazed cool leather. But she needed to read more. She needed to be sure about the decision that had been nudging inside her all night, all morning.

She'd finished Matthew and Mark. She was halfway through Luke. The tiny differences in the stories fascinated her. He was the same Man in every one of them and did the same things, but the different men who'd known Him noticed different details about Him. They told some things in different order, which she didn't get. Maybe someday she'd have the opportunity to ask someone which story was chronological, and why all of them weren't.

And she'd discovered why Marcus let her go, recorded in Matthew and Luke. Jesus had said it multiple times.

“Love your enemies.”

“Do good to those who hate you.”

“Pray for those who persecute you.”

Though she hadn't hated the Christians, she was a persecutor. The word was a nettle in her heart, but she couldn't deny it. Had Marcus prayed for her?

She opened to the place she'd left off, the pink ribbon bookmark. Strange that it was pink, because the few instances of handwriting in the margins were definitely a man's. Black ink, small and neat letters. Beside Jesus's words on the cross,
“It is finished,”
the man had written,
Nothing left to pay.
And every time Jesus told someone,
“Your sins are forgiven,”
the words were underlined. She found even more underlining when she reached the book of John. Mentions of persecution or tribulation, being hated by the world, being free when set free by Jesus—all of these things, the man had underlined. She flipped through the Bible at random, searching for more underlining, and found a lot of it, mostly in Romans and Hebrews.

If this man was like all the other fugitive Christians, then Violet could begin to understand them. Their hidden hearts beat in every careful line of black pen, in the verses this man held closest to him, the ones about persecution and difficulty and trusting that Jesus would overcome whatever happened to a person here on earth. He believed with as much certainty as Janelle. He knew he had sinned, but he also knew the sins were paid for.

Were Violet's sins paid for?

She thought so. She hoped so.

She stretched out her legs across the car, and her heels bumped the passenger door. She rolled the windows down further, but the air hung like a veil today. Sweat darkened her top. At least she had extras now, though who knew when she'd be able to do laundry. She read pages and pages, the rest of Luke, the whole book of John. This was the end of the Jesus books. It was time to talk to Him.

Her eyes closed. Her hands shook a little. Because the Jesus she spoke to wasn't the easygoing, tolerant, inspirational teacher. To really speak to Jesus, she would have to address the Man who confronted, who loved, who healed and scolded.

“Nothing left to pay.”

Nothing left to do, except talk to Him. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

“Um. Jesus, I'm so sorry. That You died. I wish You hadn't been hurt like that, but—but thank You for paying. I—I had some things screwed up, and I did some things—” A sob ripped her chest. Her shoulders heaved to keep it in, but Jesus had cried too. So it was okay. “Jesus, I'm sorry. I thought I was doing good. But they're Your followers, and I—oh, God, Jesus, Janelle. I'm so sorry about Janelle.”

She held the Bible to her chest and rocked it. The tears came too hard to talk out loud, so she prayed inside.

Please let my sins be forgiven too. I love You, Jesus, now that I finally know You. I'll keep this Bible safe. And the guy who had it before me—if he was free, he would never black-market his Bible. So if he's handcuffed to a table somewhere, be with him, please.

Slowly, the tears dried. Violet breathed the stuffy car air, in and out, and lifted her head.
Nothing left to pay.
To be forgiven? No. But to make things right with the people she'd wronged, the best she possibly could … she had to do something.

“Jesus, if You would, please be with me.” She turned the key and pulled onto the empty road, back toward the highway. “I'm scared to death.”