Leaving Yesterday (19 page)

He linked his hands and cracked his knuckles. The same boyish grin I’d always loved crept across his face. “I wondered when you two would bust me for that one.”

“Well, you’re busted. Now, what are you doing?”

“I didn’t want to tell you about it yet, but there’s this girl. We were together for a while, and I found out that she’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” That knocked the wind right from my lungs. “Is it …” I stopped myself at the use of the word
it
and corrected, “Are you the father?”

He shrugged. “According to her I am.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“I know a few things for sure, like that we were together for a couple of months last fall. She’s now six months pregnant, so the timing is right.”

“And the money is for?” A picture flashed across my mind of a white coat in a dark room, latex gloves, and a disembodied voice, “This will all be over in just a minute.” I tried to shake free from the nausea of the images that followed.

“To help her out, of course.”

“Help her out with what?”

“Taking care of herself. You know, medical checkups, food, some medicine they’ve got her taking. I guess she’s had a few problems.”

“So, she’s not … I mean, she plans to keep the baby?”

“She’s planning to put it up for adoption.” He rubbed at a particularly dirty spot on his hand. “She went to this place called Life Network a couple of weeks ago. They said they can help her, put her up with a clean place to live, help her find a nice family to adopt the baby—if that’s what she decides to do.”

A grandchild. This certainly was not the way I’d dreamed of someday hearing such news. In fact, at this point, the thought had never even occurred to me. An unmarried son, a woman I’d never met, who probably was using drugs just like my son was at the time of conception. How was I supposed to feel? I’m not sure, but something about the thought of putting him up for adoption, of never seeing him, it just hurt.

Then all sorts of ugly possibilities began to fill my mind. This woman had likely had several sexual partners in the last six months. Had she found Kurt an easy target for money since he was the only clean one of the bunch? Considering the large amounts of money he’d already given her, doubt shook flags on every pole in my brain. “What if the baby’s not yours?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not like I’m paying child support or anything. But the fact is, we were together and now she’s in trouble. I don’t want to leave her to face that alone. The least I can do is help her out.”

I put my arms around him. He’d grown up so much. His willingness to take responsibility for this woman’s child that he didn’t even know was his, it made me want to cry. This was a person who deserved the chance at a new life. I pulled back so I could look him in the eye, although his face blurred beneath my tears. “You know those dreams, the ones about the bat?”

“What about them?”

I squeezed him until I thought he must surely be suffocating. “You’ve started a new life now. You need to quit thinking about your past life and leave yesterday and its nightmares behind. Become the man you were intended to be.”

“That’s what I want to do. More than anything.”

“Then do it.”

At that moment, with the promise of a grandchild—even if I would never know her—and the potential for the man my son had become, I realized I had made my decision. There would be no turning back

Jodi was waiting for me when I left the orchard. She stood in the middle of the driveway and didn’t budge until I came to a stop. She walked around to the driver’s side and motioned for me to roll down the window. “You are not leaving here until I take you to coffee. You may have driven all this way to talk to your son, but your sister demands her share of time before you go.”

She didn’t ask a single question, and she didn’t do her usual, “Come inside and I’ll fix us something to eat.” No, she must have known that I needed to get away from the house. I swear, my sister would have been burned at the stake a couple of centuries ago for reading minds, or whatever it was they called it back in those days.

I put the car in park and got out. “Sounds good.” And it did. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn’t tell her the things I so badly needed to say.

Could I?

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She put her arms around me and hugged. It was the hug of love and support no matter what. I recognized it well. “So, I was just sketching out some designs for the interior of the shop. Do you want to come take a looksee, or are you ready to go?”

“I’d love to see them.” I wasn’t sure what I was or wasn’t going to tell her, and it was best to start with just some friendly conversation as a warm-up.

“I did have a row of shelves right here.” She pointed at the drawing of what was now an oversized bay window. “But I just couldn’t stand the thought of hiding the beautiful hillside views from that side of the building. It would completely wreck the innate rhythm I want to create. I decided to make the window extra wide, so it’s actually a little bench seat, for anyone who might want to rest awhile, enjoy the views, and take another sample.”

“I think it’s perfect.”

“Well, probably not perfect, but it’s as close as I can get to it.”

If ever there was a human, aside from a God-incarnate human, who could put the word
perfect
beside her name, it was my sister. It amazed me that she didn’t see it like that. I thought of my own mistakes, always plenty, but lately who could even begin to count them? What would she think of me if she knew the whole truth? Somehow, I didn’t want to know. “You ready to go? I’ll take us to that new place in Paso Robles that has everyone talking. I’ve heard the chef is down from San Francisco.”

We climbed into my car and started down the rural street that led away from Jodi’s house. Oak trees towered above the road, with moss hanging from the branches like garland from a Christmas tree. Vineyards filled a good portion of the hillsides, most of them neat and tidy rows of vines, each trunk supported by a pole, each branch held in place by two rows of wire that ran the length of the row. We drove past one large vineyard that looked different from the rest. It looked more like shrubs than vines, and there were no wires, no support poles. “What’s the difference between this vineyard and the others? A different kind of grape?” I asked the question mostly to make small talk.

“These grapes are dry farmed. They’re not on an irrigation system like the other kind.”

I knew that summers here were very hot and dry. I couldn’t imagine anything besides tumbleweeds growing without irrigation. “Does that work?”

“Quite well, apparently. The yield per vine is much smaller due to the lack of water and less pruning, but supposedly when you take into account the extra cost for the water and labor, the cost per ton of grapes is about the same. So you can spend more time and money and produce more, or spend less time and money and produce less.”

“Interesting.”

“It always reminds me about the first verses of John 15, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’ You know, it’s not enough for Him to put minimal effort into us. He gives us all that He has so that we can be all that we’re supposed to be. Sometimes the pruning is painful, but it’s ultimately because that’s what needs to happen.”

I thought of myself as a grapevine and didn’t like the image. I could almost picture the hand of God coming after me, and I suspected he might be holding a machete instead of shears at this point. I wondered what I needed to do to get moved to God’s dry farming list.

Twenty- Four

“So, how was your time with Kurt last Friday? Anything you want us to pray for?” Pastor Ken asked, leaning in the doorway of my small office Monday morning. Behind him, I knew that both Jana and Beth had stopped what they were doing so they’d be sure to hear my reply.

“He’s just fine.” I think I smiled as I wrangled the words from inside, but I’m not sure.

“It’s not very often in today’s world that you get to see a real-life prodigal make such a complete turnaround. Although, I have to admit, I’ve always thought Kurt had the hand of God on him in a special way. Even back when I first came here, it was so apparent he was gifted with leadership. The other kids all looked up to him, listened to him.”

I cringed when I thought of it. Nick was the one with God’s hand on him. Kurt’s leadership had very little to do with being led by the Spirit. I managed a grin, on the outside anyway, and said, “Yeah, leadership if you mean putting shaving cream on the junior high director’s car, letting a live king snake loose in the girls’ tent at Lake San Antonio, and other equally divine measures.”

He laughed. “Hey, I didn’t say that God made him a perfect adult at the age of fourteen. But leadership is leadership. Besides, he never did anything mean; it was all harmless childhood pranks.”

“Try explaining that one to Rufus Milner. Remember the allergic reaction he had to the stink bomb the boys set off in the Sunday school wing?”

“Well, it wasn’t deliberate. Even Rufus knows that. Of course, he was mad enough that he chose to overlook that part for a while, but he eventually got over it. I think even he would laugh about it now. And I know he would be so happy to hear how Kurt is getting a fresh start, just like the prodigal.”

I wondered what Ken would think if he knew about the bat. And the fact that I’d burned it. And the fact that I still wasn’t saying anything, even though another boy was locked in jail right now. As happy as he was about Kurt’s change, would he think it was a reasonable thing to do? No, that was a lie, I didn’t wonder. I knew it was on the far side of the line he would not be willing to step over.

The rest of the day I spent working and hiding in my office. It amazed me how much you could accomplish when you skipped talking with people. I was just thinking I might get through the day without further complications when an Outlook reminder popped up on my calendar. My phone call with Reisha Cinders was in fifteen minutes.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I said the words aloud, although there was no one in my office to hear them.

If I had remembered this at all, I would have come up with some excuse and cancelled it several days ago. Now it was too late. I had no choice but to go through with it, even though the last thing I felt like was being called a role model for anything. Still, it was something I had been called to do.

Called to do.

This thought slapped me back into the reality of what I’d done. Usually before a conference, or any kind of appearance, I spent a great deal of time in prayer about it, asking for the right words when I spoke, the right answers for people’s questions, for God to be glorified. Today, not only had I forgotten all about this engagement, but it had never even occurred to me to pray about it.

“God, please use this show for your glory.” It was the only thing I could come up with, although I doubted very much He was listening to me at this point. There was no time to sit and ponder this; it was time to make the call.

A few minutes later, I was on a national radio talk show, talking about grief. At one point Reisha Cinders said, “I understand that the man who killed your son had been arrested several times before for violent crimes, yet he was once again out on parole and free to hurt again. Do you feel that our legal system has gotten too soft on criminals?”

This was the reason she had me on the show, I knew that; but how was I supposed to answer this question? The entire country would expect me to feel that our justice system had indeed been too soft on Nick’s killer, but the entire country had no idea what I’d burned in my fireplace. “Well, I … I mean, of course I wish that Lonnie Vandever and the others had never been released from prison the last time, had not been free to attack my son. But I don’t want to start a nationwide policy based on one particular case. I think each case should be judged on its own merit, and each defendant, as well.” By the time I finished giving the answer, a fine sweat had broken across my forehead. I didn’t want to talk about these kinds of issues anymore, so I took the offensive. “I find that God has been sufficient for my grief, and I believe that focusing on what might have been works against that healing.”