The Atonement Child (10 page)

“Why don’t you come home for Easter? We can send you plane tickets.”

“I don’t know if I can, Mom. I doubt the library will give me the time off.”

“Library? I thought you were working at Stanton Manor House.”

Heat flooded Dynah’s cheeks as she realized her blunder. “I quit.”

“Quit? That’s not like you.”

“It was a long bus ride, Mom, and the hours weren’t that good, and—”

“Bus? Is your car acting up again?”

Closing her eyes, Dynah wished she hadn’t said anything about the bus. “A little, but it’s fixed now.” The car had a new fuel pump and battery, but it was going to need new tires soon. That would use up most of what she’d saved.

How much did an abortion cost? The doctor had said nothing about it, but she was sure he wasn’t going to do the procedure gratis. Would her insurance cover it?

She couldn’t use her insurance. If she did, the statements would be sent to her parents. That’s how they knew she had been x-rayed in October when the campus doctor suspected she had walking pneumonia. She could just see her mother’s face when she opened the mail and found a statement from the insurance company saying her daughter had had an abortion.

“Well, I can’t imagine a Christian college keeping their library open on Easter,” her mother was saying.

“They don’t. Not for that weekend. But I still can’t come home, Mom. Ethan’s expecting me to go to Missouri with him.” She calculated how far along she would be by then if she didn’t go through with the abortion. Not quite four months, probably not far enough along to show, but her mother would know in an instant. She noticed everything.

What if Ethan’s parents were the same way? What would Ethan say if asked? “Yes, Father, she’s pregnant, but I assure you it wasn’t of my doing. She got herself raped when she walked by Henderson Park one night.”

Would they believe it? Or would they, like others, make assumptions about how far her relationship with Ethan had gone?

Like her mother and father had assumed . . .

His reputation would be compromised.

“You went back on December 27 so you could be with his family for the New Year, Dynah. I think Ethan can spare your company for Easter. We’d like to see you.”

“I’ll talk to him about it, Mom.”

“We miss you, honey.”

“I miss you, too,” Dynah said, her throat closing up.

Silence.

“You’re sure you’re okay, honey?”

“I’m sure. I’ve gotta go, Mom. I’m . . . I’m late for class.”

“We love you, Dynah.”

“I love you, too. Bye.”

Dynah stood in the middle of her dorm room, the phone clutched in her hand, feeling as though her last connection with safety and understanding had been broken.

Chapter 3

Joe leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs beneath the table. He’d been studying for two hours, preparing a paper due in his linguistics class. He could have done the work better in his apartment. Ethan was off on another of his good works. He could have turned up his music and worked there. Instead, he had opted for the library.

Because of Dynah.

He saw her come in, her shoulder bag laden with books. She was pale and wan but smiled when someone said hi to her on the way out. She opened the gate and went behind the counter. Depositing her things in a cabinet against the back wall, she set to work immediately, sorting books and arranging them in Dewey decimal order on a push cart. Her supervisor spoke with her for a moment. Dynah blushed, nodded, and set back to work.

Joe watched and waited, willing her to look up and see him. When she did, he saw the unease in her expression. Immediately he understood: she’d felt someone staring at her and was frightened. He hadn’t thought of that possibility. When she spotted him, relief flickered, along with a smile to meet his own. But only briefly. Another look came into her blue eyes, and she lowered her gaze from his.

Leaning forward slowly, he looked dismally down at the book in front of him.

“I know what you care about, Joe. Saving the unborn.”

She didn’t know the half of it.

Raking one hand through his hair, he picked up his pen and made a couple of notes. He read a few more lines.

“Do you mind?” someone snarled from across the table, and he realized he was tapping his pen.

“Sorry,” he muttered, tossing it onto a stack of notes. Dynah wheeled her cart through the gate and headed down the aisle, disappearing behind several high metal shelves of books.

Scraping his chair back, Joe encountered another annoyed look from the guy across from him. He raised his hands. “Sorry,” he muttered again and set the chair back carefully before following Dynah.

There were so many uptight people. Even on this campus, where he expected stress to be in small, measured, healthy amounts. If anything, he found it more intense. Everyone wanted to be the best. Best student. Best servant. Best Christian. They got caught up in it, pressing and pushing until they forgot whom it was they were trying to please.

Like Ethan.

Dynah was leaning down over the cart, her long blonde French braid swinging gently. She glanced his way and then focused her attention on the books again. Selecting one, she turned and reached up, pushing a book aside and sliding the one she held into its proper place.

She stood there for a long moment, her hand still resting on the shelf. “I haven’t done it yet,” she said in a flat tone. She glanced at him, eyes flashing briefly.

Joe winced.

Turning her back on him, Dynah took hold of the cart and wheeled it down the aisle. Pausing, she looked up and then wheeled it back a few feet, shelving two more books. She had to concentrate. She had to get it right.

Joe followed. “Shelve that issue, would you, please?” he said softly. “I’m concerned about you.”

She shoved another book into place, looked at it, pulled it out, pushed a book to one side, and shoved it in again. He saw her hand tremble slightly as she ran her finger over the letters and numbers, rereading them to make sure she had put the book in the right place.

Leaning against the metal shelf, he pushed his hands into his pockets. “Did you see Ethan this morning?”

“No. We talked on the phone. He said he’d be busy today. He’s got classes and work. And he has to prepare for the Bible study tonight.”

Joe knew she was making excuses for Ethan. She was isolating herself against the hurt. Anger stirred. Frenetic activity seemed to be Ethan’s forte. And safety valve. When he didn’t want to face something, he served, mightily, as for the Lord. But not really. It was easier to teach God’s Word than to live it.

Pushing his hands into his pockets, Joe admonished himself. He had no right to criticize, even in the privacy of his mind.
Sorry, Lord. He’s Yours, I know. And he’s doing the best he can. But I wish he’d open his eyes and take a good look at Dynah and see what’s happening to her.

Joe felt caught between two people he loved. He’d spent hours over the past few months listening to Ethan vent his anger and disappointment and disillusionment.

“I’d like to kill him!” Ethan had said again last night, crying at the power of his rage. “I’d like to hunt that animal down and kill him with my bare hands for what he did.”

Joe hadn’t felt it would be productive to say he shared the same feelings. When he’d seen Dynah’s face that dark January night, the wounded, demolished look in her eyes, emotions he had thought long washed away with his rebirth in Christ returned full force. Heat like the fires of hell surged through his blood. His heart pounded. He shook with the power of anger, a killing, bloodthirsty wrath. It was the kind of emotion he used to feel when he was a teenager running with a rough crowd in Los Angeles.

Civilization was a thin veneer.

God knew.

Maybe Christianity was the same way.

He’d wondered about that a lot over the past weeks as he struggled with his own feelings, facing some he hadn’t dared face before.

“I still love her,” Ethan said, tormented. “I mean, I look at her, and she’s so beautiful, but I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” He shook his head. “She looks the same. She’s still Dynah, but every time I touch her, I get this sick feeling, Joe. I know what happened isn’t her fault. I know it in my head. But it doesn’t help. I mean, what if she has AIDS?”

Dynah’s pregnancy added new dimensions to Ethan’s confusion, while focusing his anger. With the rapist gone and little chance of his being apprehended, there was only one person on whom to focus his wrath: the child Dynah carried.

“It’s not a child,” Ethan had erupted in rage last night. “Don’t tell me it is! This thing she carries is an abomination before God. It’s a sucking parasite! The sooner she gets rid of it, the better.”

Joe wondered if his roommate had shared those feelings with Dynah. Ethan had always been perceptive and sensitive to others’ feelings, careful in how he dealt with people. Was he being careful with Dynah?

It didn’t look like it.

Dynah glanced back at Joe. He looked so grim, that muscle working in his jaw again. Was he angry with her, too? Ethan was. He said she was vacillating. She said she couldn’t help it. When she told him this morning that she was going to seek counseling before making any kind of decision, he’d slammed the telephone down in her ear. Oh, he’d called back a few minutes later to apologize. She knew because she stood listening to the message he left. “Dynah, look, I’m sorry. Pick up. Please. I know you’re there, Dy. You’re being unreasonable. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. Can’t you try to understand how I feel? I can understand how you’d like to think things through, but we’ve been over and over this. You’re just making the whole thing worse for both of us.”

She’d turned it off before he finished.

Sometimes she wondered if she knew him at all.

“Never marry a man until you’ve seen how he handles getting a flat tire,” her aunt had joked once.

Some flat tire, Lord.

And now here was Joe, looking grim. She knew what side he’d be coming from. He was as adamant against abortion as Ethan was now for it. The only thing she didn’t know was where she fit into the equation.

She pushed the cart farther down the aisle, shelving books carefully, afraid she’d make a mistake. “Go away, Joe. I don’t want to talk to you.”

When he did, Dynah went on shelving books, gripped by guilt. She shouldn’t have been so rude to him. He had never said or done anything to warrant it. When she finished shelving all the books on the cart, she wheeled it back down the long aisle between the stacks of shelves. Joe was still sitting at the same table, books and papers spread out around him. He looked up when she paused at his table. “I’m sorry, Joe.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

She shrugged, throat tight.

The student across the table, appearing somewhat resigned and disgruntled, gathered up his books and papers, shoved them into his backpack, and departed to a cubby near the windows. Dynah blushed and wheeled her cart into the work area.

Mrs. Talbot asked her to go out again and pick up texts that had been left on the study tables. Wheeling the cart out again, she carried out the chore, saving Joe’s table for last. Embarrassed, she spoke softly without meeting his gaze. “I’m going to talk to the pastor at Community,” she said in a hushed tone, putting two books on the cart.

“Sounds like a good idea. When’re you going to see him?”

“Sometime this week.” Whenever she could gather enough courage to do so. She wished she didn’t sound so ambivalent.

“Want some company?”

Surprised, she looked at him and almost said yes. Hesitating, she frowned slightly. She’d asked Ethan to go with her, but he refused. What problems would she create between Joe and Ethan if she said yes? “No, that’s all right. I think it’d be better if I went on my own.”

“You’re sure?” Joe said, sensing her concerns. Sure, Ethan would be mad, maybe even jealous, but he didn’t care about that right now. Dynah was more important. Sooner or later, Ethan would come to his senses and see that.

“I’m sure, but thanks.”

She was far from sure several days later when she walked through the doors of Community Church and asked to see the pastor. The secretary was polite and asked no questions. She said Pastor Whitehall was with someone at the moment but would be finished shortly. Could she wait? Dynah said she could and took the seat offered, her stomach knotted.

The door of the pastor’s office opened, and a distinguished-looking man in a dark-gray three-piece business suit came out holding a polished black briefcase. He nodded to the secretary and noticed Dynah. He smiled slightly and looked back briefly at the man standing in the office doorway. Dynah felt some current in that look, some silent message being passed.

“Miss . . . Miss? I’m so sorry. I didn’t get your name,” the secretary said.

“Jones,” Dynah said, blushing and lowering her eyes. “Mary Jones.”

“Miss Jones, this is Pastor Tom Whitehall. Pastor, this is Mary Jones. She asked if she could speak with you.”

“Didn’t I have another appointment? One at the hospital?”

The secretary looked momentarily confused and flustered. She glanced at her calendar and back at him. “No, sir. Not unless I forgot to write it down.”

Dynah looked up at him.

The pastor met her eyes and frowned slightly, looking disturbed and faintly annoyed. “I guess I have some time then. Come on in.”

Self-conscious, Dynah sat in a wing chair before a big oak desk and avoided looking into the man’s eyes. She looked at his desk instead. It was strewn with texts and papers. Behind it were shelves lining the entire office. One shelf held nothing but various versions of the Bible. Theology books and commentaries lined several shelves, and she noticed a plethora of counseling texts. Interspersed throughout the shelves were family photographs and memorabilia from mission trips to Southeast Asia, Africa, and Mexico.

“What can I do for you, Miss Jones?” Pastor Whitehall asked, sitting down in the swivel chair behind his desk. Mary Jones! She might as well have said her name was Jane Doe.

Dynah’s heart drummed, and she pressed her damp palms against her skirt. She sensed his reticence, but it had taken her five days to get the courage to come here, and she didn’t dare leave now. She knew if she did, she wouldn’t have the courage to come back. “I need some advice.”

Tom Whitehall leaned back slowly and assessed her. She was a beautiful girl and clearly a troubled one. He could see the dark shadows beneath her blue eyes, the wariness in her expression. He could guess what was the matter. It was probably the same problem most young women like her brought into his office, and the last thing he needed to face today, right after the attorney had left.

Jack Hughes’s look had been clear enough. Community Church was in deep trouble because of a lawsuit over a young girl who had received counsel and then gone out a week later and killed herself. The court seemed to be leaning toward the parents’ viewpoint. They claimed he’d given counsel when he was untrained to offer it, and his blundering attempts to help had caused the girl to go over the edge. He had no doctorate in psychology, and therefore he had no right to offer counsel to a troubled girl.

It made Tom sick with grief every time he thought about Mara. Stricken with guilt, he went back over everything he had said to her, trying to find something that might have put her over the edge. She had been a deeply troubled girl, estranged from her physically abusive parents, promiscuous, newly clean from drugs. He thought she was doing better. He thought she was seeing some glimmer of hope. Then the news had come that she’d committed suicide. And now the lawsuit. His stomach churned, burning.

He looked at Mary Jones and wondered if he was being set up by Mara’s parents or their slick attorney. Community was a big church. Jack said all concerned figured it had deep pockets. “What sort of advice were you looking for, Miss Jones?” he said cautiously.