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Heather thought about them and knew she couldn’t honestly say that they lived anything but decent and productive lives. Their communities were better for having them. Their hearts were warm and their acts were kind. Everything they did came from their love for God.
“No, I don’t. But they’re hypocrites in the worst way.”
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“In what way?” he challenged.
“All the attempts they made to bring me in and make me a faithful follower only pushed me away further,” she complained.
“How?” he asked. “Explain it to me.”
Heather eased up a little. Her pastor was listening and even better, he was saving judgment. At least he was on the outside.
“Do you remember when I started going to a Pentecostal church?” she asked.
He cringed.
“Yeah, I know,” she added. “I’ve discovered it’s not your favorite neighboring religion. Anyway, I only started going because I had a crush on a kid there but then, I started getting into it. I started believing the Bible and started reading out of interest, not because of the threat of eternal damnation. I stopped smoking cigarettes and quit hanging out with the bad kids. I even brought my Bible to school so that I could share my peace and my faith with other kids.” She rolled her eyes at herself.
Pastor Eric nodded and Heather was relieved that he was following. His non-verbal affi rmation said that he understood her dilemma; that it shouldn’t have mattered which church she’d chosen as much as what she did with her beliefs.
Although many years had passed, Heather could still remember the happiness she had felt after “receiving the gift’ from God at a sleep-away youth trip. One evening, by the light of their campfi re, she allowed them to place 270
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their hands on her while the prayed. Words that lacked meaning fl ew from her mouth as she spewed something fi erce in a language unknown to her. The group leader had told her they were the literal words of God and that she was very special to have received the gift of speaking in tongues.
Heather woke up in her tent the next morning with a happiness she had never known. There hadn’t been a moment since where she felt the same boundless euphoria that she’d been blessed with that morning.
She was excited to tell her mother how far she had chosen to walk down her path of spirituality so she did just that. Rather than sharing her happiness, Laurie became concerned and called in the Baptists. They responded with horror and told her she had spoken the words of the devil rather than those of the Lord. They believed that Heather had become vulnerable to evil and needed to be saved.
Her mother had fl own her up north to meet with uncles and they had rushed her to their church once she got off the plane They treated her as though she were their patient and that she’d been shot with an evil arrow. They took her to church to be healed.
Their minister became the leader of the cavalry on its mission to save Heather from darkness and sin.
They were mortifi ed that the Pentecostals had been irresponsible enough to have tainted one of their own.
The minister preached to her, offered personal testimony, prayed with her, prayed for her, and sent her away with a new Bible. He wanted her to accept that her evil acts 271
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were unintentional and that she could recover from the back-slide by immersing herself in the Bible. He wanted her reassurances that she would not return to the wicked place where beliefs differed so much from their own.
Heather shook her head at the memory. She still found it hard to believe that both sides had read the same Bible because their interpretations couldn’t have been more different.
On the fl ight home from her deprogramming session, Heather decided to never go back to another church again, no matter what the religion. Cigarettes and troubled teens came back into her life as she phased out the happiness from her youth trip. Heather still struggled with the belief that the Baptists were better than her, more deserving of heaven than her. Their lives shined brighter in the eyes of God and she knew that if they were right, she was in big trouble. Try as she might, Heather couldn’t make herself believe wholeheartedly in the Bible and to them, that was an unforgivable sin. They didn’t give her credit for her unshakable belief in God because she turned away from the teachings of the Bible.
Heather loved her mother’s siblings and their children very much but she had always felt like the outcast. Her Aunt Julie was the epitome of what Heather believed everyone should strive to be. Although her views were extreme, her aunt’s approach was easy going. She was comfortable to be around and she saw only the best in every person she came across.
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Aunt Julie was a kind woman whose good deeds far exceeded those of most people. She smiled and joked around and she acted goofy to make people laugh.
She loved seeing people happy and wanted the best for everyone she met. She was fi lled with love that she attributed to her faith and Heather decided it didn’t matter where the goodness came from. If she believed it came directly from God, so be it.
Heather stared at her minister for a moment, trying to discern how he was taking in her story.
“The Bible tells us that speaking in tongues is assigned to very special people,” he fi nally said.
“And you think that couldn’t be me?”
“No, I’m not saying that at all. There are rules, Heather. It’s not that easy. There’s supposed to be an interpreter there with his own gift of interpretation.
Doing something so important in such a lackadaisical manner is what, I’m sure, worried your family. They just want to guide you in the right direction.”
“That’s nice, really, but come on. Do you really think it’s better that I live like a pig but believe in the Bible or to live a good life and believe what I really feel?”
“Why can’t you have both the faith and the decent life?” he asked.
He was a cross between Dr. Angel and Judge Oliva and Heather felt naked. The whole world could see her extremes and it was getting embarrassing. It felt as though she were tiptoeing through the gray world with nothing on her but a spotlight.
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“Thanks, Pastor, I appreciate your help,” Heather said.
She looked at her watch and realized she was late picking up Jade. She had asked Erin baby-sit and she wanted to hear her sister’s voice.
“Where are you off to so fast, Heather?” he asked.
“I have to go hide Jade from a madman,” she answered as she threw on her coat.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered as she rushed out the church doors.
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Chapter 22
The Kids Aren’t
Alright
Heather knew she needed answers that could only come from her parents. Her mother would resist more than her father because of her need to uphold an image so she headed to her dad’s house. He had tried to tell Heather something for years but she ignored him, chalking up his rants to the confused garbles of a drunk. She ignored his books and listened to his stories more for entertainment value than because she believed his claims. He hadn’t been a perfect father but his goal had always been to protect his daughters so she knew he would help her. Her dad would disclose everything if it meant helping his daughters.
Heather dropped Jade off at Erin’s with rambling explanations and promises to be back soon. She recited the words she planned to use but found herself deleting one idea after another from a fear he would call 911. Heather kept an eye open for anything out of the ordinary and started getting dizzy from the paranoia overload. Her steady stare into the rearview mirror wavered only long 275
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enough to prevent herself from smashing into the trucks who shared the road with her. She pulled up in front of her fath
er’s house and saw his car parked was parked in its spot just as she knew it would be.
Heather pulled into his parking lot and threw the gear into park before completely stopping. She looked through the windshield and out the back window like a rabid animal and then jumped out quickly. In her run to his door, she forgot to gage her speed again and rammed into it the oak door quite hard. She steadied herself before another injury claimed her healthy eye.
As she banged on the door, Heather kept her cheek against the door frame. He couldn’t open it fast enough for her and she started to feel the fear that now reigned in her nervous system. She rested her weight against the door and when it opened, fell inside. Heather lay on the tile and looked up at her nervous and confused father without a word.
She noticed his eyes fi lling with more concern each moment. He picked her up by her elbow and guided her gently to the couch. Sensing the danger that had followed his daughter, David quickly closed the door and led her to the couch. He sat her down and put a protective arm around her shoulders. Within seconds, Heather was sobbing uncontrollably. She noticed a half empty beer in front of his spot during their embrace but didn’t say anything about it. It wasn’t her place; it never had been.
She nuzzled her face into the muscle of his left arm and tried to force herself to stop crying but the tears just 276
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kept coming. He held her quietly and didn’t ask any questions. She knew he was letting her choose her own words and trying to fi gure out her own way of telling him what she wanted to tell him.
Heather felt as if she could cry for an eternity but she knew she didn’t have the time for that luxury. There would be time for her grief later if she found a way to fi x everything. When she fi nally pulled away from her father, she looked at the wet sleeve she left behind and stared at him with rising desperation and dwindling hope.
“You need answers,” he said fi rmly.
“Yes.” Heather sniffl ed.
“Start with what happened to us when we were little, Dad. Who hurt us? Please tell the truth. You don’t understand what’s happening,” she rushed.
Heather glanced over at his bookshelf and felt the guilt trying to tug at her. Thick manuals on out of body experiences, reincarnation and the Mayans took up several hundred square feet. He had been trying to give her answers all along and she had blocked him out.
She saw his expression falter and could sense his composure starting to crumble. When he spoke, his voice cracked.
“I’ve always told you that you would grow to realize your importance one day,” he started.
“Yes,” she confi rmed.
He had done more than that. Her father had complimented her so much and had fi lled her with 277
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such a sense of self-importance that she believed he was solely responsible for her narcissism. He had gone beyond normal bolstering when he convinced her that her signifi cance was greater than the world she lived in.
Heather had always wondered in the back of her mind if he were trying to tell her she was witch or an alien or better yet, an angel. In the absence of real information, she couldn’t stop her imagination from supplying its own data because in the end, he never really said much of anything.
He only alluded to possibilities.
“I don’t know who hurt you, Heather. If I knew, I would have already killed someone,” he said.
“I know, Dad,” she encouraged.
“We didn’t know until we moved away that our neighborhood was riddled with pedophiles. They didn’t teach us stuff like they do now but as you girls searched for answers throughout the years I started looking for anything that might help you.”
“And? Did you fi nd anything?” she asked softly.
“I had always suspected our neighbor, Curtis Knight.
Not of hurting you girls necessarily but of not being the person he showed himself to be. I even mentioned it a couple of times but your mom and the other neighborhood parents loved him. He worked on their cars for free and he babysat for fun. It just didn’t feel right to me,” he added.
Heather remembered Curtis. He had to have been in his mid-twenties and he lived alone. Heather’s parents moved them out of the neighborhood when she was only six years old so she had a specifi c time period to look at.
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Curtis lived in the house behind hers. Their backyards touched one another and his back door had been only twenty steps away from hers. She remembered passing her swing set and climbing a short incline to get to his house many times.
Curtis had been nice but she remembered he didn’t like when she cried. He would become upset and yell at her so Heather learned not to cry anymore.
He played Aerosmith records for Heather and he facilitated games of Kick the Can. She remembered he used to dress up like a vampire and chase the kids around, all in the name of a game they had made up. She had been too young to play the teenage version of hide and go seek but Curtis included her anyway. Heather remembered the fear and excitement she’d experienced when he caught her and pulled the long black cape over her but had no recollection at all of the man ever harming her or her sisters.
“Was there anyone else?” she asked, fi ghting tears just as she had while in Curtis’ presence.
“There wasn’t someone else, in particular but I wasn’t comfortable with you girls going to Mom’s church,” he said, sounding as though he was fi ghting his own internal demons.
“Why not?” Heather asked.
“I don’t know,” he said looking sheepish and embarrassed. “There was a presence I didn’t like.
“But you don’t know what it was about? Or who?”
Heather asked with impatience in her voice.
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“No, I never could pinpoint my source of discomfort.”
Heather was quiet for a minute as a thought unfolded.
“Why have you always thought I was so special, Dad?” she fi nally asked.
Part of her believed that his explanations of the inexplicable were just drunken rants but another part wanted to believe it were true. She wasn’t certain what she hoped to hear him say.
“Believe it or not, sweetie, it was just something that was said in passing but it struck me as an important truth,” he said.
“What?” Heather asked. “Who said what?”
“It was your mom’s pastor,” he continued. “Pastor, um . . .”
“Pastor Eric?” Heather asked puzzled.
“Yes, that was him! Is he still around?”
She knew there was little chance her father had attended any church in the twenty years since he and her mother had divorced.
“Yeah, I just saw him,” she answered slowly. “I don’t get it. What did he say that was so important?”
“It wasn’t so much what he said but more how he said it,” he started.
When he noticed Heather’s skeptical expression, he pulled back on his excitement.
“The pastor was in the hospital for your birth. Your mom asked him to come,” he said. “I ran into him as he 280
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was coming out of the nursery area I was going in. The man had a look on his face, Heather. I can’t describe it but it was intense. He was happy and very satisfi ed. I asked him what was going on and he said that all was fi nally well.”
David smiled slowly and his eyes took on a look of wonder.
“All was well?” Heather asked. It meant nothing. She didn’t understand how the words could have been taken in any signifi cant way. Their family pastor had simply been excited about her birth as he was with every child in his congregation.
“All was fi nally well,” he corrected, placing the stress on fi nally. “The way he said it, Heather, and then the way he blessed you later. It was surreal and it just felt so important. The man was happy in a way I didn’t understand. It was as
though he’d been waiting for you for a very long time.”
Her father shook his head and tried to escape his embarrassment.
“I know it sounds crazy, honey. but I’m telling you, that man knows something.”
“Nothing sounds crazy to me anymore, Dad. I don’t know what he meant by it. Maybe I’m the next Messiah or maybe he just ate some acid that day. Who knows anymore?”
Heather was exasperated. She fell back into the cushions and felt the disappointment nestle into her 281
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bones. She hadn’t learned anything that would help her and was exactly where she had started. She was tired and wished she could sleep away the rest of their conversation but ignored the lethargy because she still had a story of her own to tell. Her father loved her and he was one of the few people who would believe her and give credence to the possibility of something supernatural. Heather realized he would still be her best ally and decided to just let go.
She told him everything that had happened and watched as his expression changed from shock to horror to anger and then back to horror again. She felt guilty watching him go through the same range of emotions in ten minutes that she’d at least had a month to get used to.
When she fi nished, David hugged her and told her she wasn’t going anywhere alone.
“Come with me, Dad.”
Heather jumped up without waiting for a response.
She knew he would follow her to the ends of the earth.
They got into the car and Heather watched as her father engaged every lock. She knew he’d remain paranoid enough for the both of them so she let herself relax for a millisecond. Suddenly, they heard footsteps on the roof of the car as the radio came to life and blasted her favorite station out of its speakers.
The Talking Heads sang a tune that warned of a psycho killer though they hadn’t yet turned the key in the ignition. Heather didn’t waste a moment to wonder. She accepted the message and yelled at her father to put on 282
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his seatbelt immediately. At the click of her own, Heather stomped on the gas pedal as hard as she could.