In Place of Never

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  I sat.

  Dad stood behind his chair, clamping bloodless fingertips over the backrest. “I prayed for years that you’d snap out of your grief and come back to me. Now I’m not sure you’re any better off. What’s gotten into you? At least you were safe in your room.”

  I choked. “Better off? You think I was better off wrapped in my blankets, locked in my head, punishing myself with every thought and action? You have no idea. None.” I rolled my arms over to show the scars on both arms. “This stopped my pain. Not you. You were busy praying for God to intervene.”

  Dad slammed his palm on the table.

  I shot to my feet. “You hid behind your faith. Yes. God intervened. He answered your prayers, three years later. He brought me back to life, but He gave you three years to get in the game. Three. I didn’t need to suffer alone all that time.”

  “Dammit, Faith!” He slapped a hand over his mouth. “Mercy.” He blinked wide eyes. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “To yell, swear, or call me Faith?”

  He gasped. “None of it. I know you’re not Faith.” He scrubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper.” He groaned into both palms. “There’s so much at stake and it’s slipping away. I know you don’t understand now, but one day you will.”

  I shook my head. He was such a parenting cliché. Did he even try to write his own material? Did he just deliver everything every parent ever said in sound bites as needed?

  Someone had to be the sensible one. “I’m sorry for breaking your rules. That was disrespectful.”

  “You’re sorry for breaking which rule? For going to a bar?”

  “No. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was there with friends, supporting someone I care about. It wasn’t late, and I wasn’t drinking.”

  Dad paced the kitchen floor. “We’re called to avoid the perceptions of sin, and you know that.”

  “Dad.”

  “No. Put yourself in my position for a change. Imagine my terror when I came home and both my daughters were missing. Do you have any idea what that feels like? The answer is no. You don’t. You can’t.

  “I went to White Water Coffee first, planning to complain, but share your table and ask how your day went. Didn’t matter. You weren’t there either. I considered you’d gone to see your mom and Faith, but it was dark. I prayed you hadn’t disobeyed and gone near the river or the campgrounds. I prayed for peace because panic spread through me, and I imagined you and Pru in the river.” He stopped speaking and stared at the ceiling.

  “Walking past the bar, I thought I recognized the lyrics to a song. The words were so familiar, I stepped inside, not yet remembering you’d told me the Lovells were here for the song writing competition. I saw Pru first, standing on a table. I barely recognized you spinning in that boy’s arms. Your hairstyle is still new to me. All of it. The clothes. Makeup. The setting was all wrong, but that was Pru. So, I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me. You were kissing that boy from the sideshow, the one who brought your wallet back, in a room full of people. His hands were all over you. What were you thinking?” His voice ratcheted up.

  “I was thinking I love him.”

  Dad’s eyes closed and reopened in slow motion. He turned his face from me and walked away. I guess he thought there was nothing left to say.

  He’d won one battle. His bitter words had robbed me of my celebration with Cross. We’d planned to meet on the roof at midnight, but I couldn’t celebrate in the aftermath of Dad’s anger. I needed time to process all the accusations.

  Had I gotten so confused this month that I couldn’t see how much I was screwing up? Was loving Cross worth losing my dad?

  Our family rode to church in silence the next morning, where Pru and I warmed the front pew, as expected. We looked appropriately demur and content to be out of bed, dressed, and playing hostesses at nine on Sunday morning. We were perfect. Cue the doves and light the halos. Okay, my attitude wasn’t perfect.

  Dad approached the pulpit and opened his Bible. We bowed our heads in collective prayer. The church doors opened and shut as last-minute arrivals shuffled into their seats. I started when someone sat beside me.

  Dad ended the prayer. “Amen.”

  I donned my well-practiced smile, ready to welcome the visitors. Only visitors would sit in the front pew. Regulars sat near the rear, either for a quick post-service escape or to lead the reception-hall doughnut line.

  Whispers drifted over the congregation.

  I opened my eyes. Cross closed his hand over mine. Beside him, Anton and Rose looked as uncomfortable as possible in their severe vintage attire. Anton looked like an old-fashioned mortician again. Rose had pulled tidy raven curls over her neck tattoos. Her black pinafore dress and pumps were perfect for a funeral. The small pillbox hat and veil reinforced the look.

  Pru’s hand curled over my forearm. She vibrated with enthusiasm.

  Dad’s blank stare worried me. Would he make a scene? Or stroke out after all? In church? The irony. His gaze slid over the trio on my right and stopped at Cross’s hand on mine.

  Cross kept his chin level and his eyes on Dad. Cross’s gunmetal-gray dress shirt emphasized the depth of his eyes and the shine of his lip piercing.

  “Well.” Dad coughed into his fist. “I had a sermon prepared on the importance of virtue and obedience to God’s will. It seems He had other plans.” He looked into my eyes.

  The crowd chuckled. Awkward tension zinged through the air. My chest rose and fell in subdued gasps. Cross squeezed my hand. He turned our palms against one another to entwine our fingers.

  Dad changed pages in his Bible. “I think today’s sermon might be meant for me. Given the month’s events in this community and in my household, I think it best to talk about two powerful acts of love. Two of the most difficult things for us as emotional, imperfect humans to do, are often the most freeing. First, is a discipline I’m working on, personally. Withholding judgment. Secondly…forgiveness.”

  I wrapped my arm around Pru’s shoulders and pulled her against my side, and then I leaned into Cross’s solid frame and smiled. Hope had first found me, three weeks ago, alone at my sister’s grave. Today, it found me surrounded by people I loved and who loved me back. Proof that hope was everywhere.

  * * * *

  Dad went back to church for evening service. I ordered pizza. Pru sorted Faith’s clothes into three piles. Stuff she wanted. Stuff she thought I needed and stuff she’d always hated. The last box was a donation box. I organized Faith’s art into keep and donate piles. The process was delicious and messy, thanks to the pizza and chips set in the center of our workspace.

  I licked my fingers and wiped them on a napkin. “Can you believe Dad introduced himself to Cross and the Lovells after the service?”

  She folded a pair of jeans with paint stains on the legs. “After the message he gave on forgiveness and not judging? I was ready for anything.”

  “I’m proud of him.”

  “Yeah. That was all for you. Dad was satisfied hating all Lovells equally. You wrecked everything.” She tossed a pair of socks at me.

  I dodged the hit and carried another full box of art into the hallway. The overall dismantling of Faith’s room-shrine went faster than expected. After only an hour, we were down to the last few piles.

  My thoughts wandered. “Can you believe Cross won again last night?”

  “Oh!” Pru waved her arms and chewed frantically before swallowing. “He used Faith’s poem.” Her eyes were soft and dreamy. “How freaking amazing was that?”

  I smiled. “He’s unbelievable. I wish they didn’t have to leave so fast after church for practices. I hope he comes over tonight.”

  “He will.” She carried her box into the hall and balanced it on the stack. “Okay. What’s left?”

  “Books.” Faith had a six-foot bookcase stuffed full of art books and literature. “The school will probably take any of these we don’t wa
nt.”

  Pru ran her fingertips along the dusty shelves. “I think we should do this for Mom too. Dad left all her things exactly the same way as Faith’s.”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “She’d like that.”

  Pru wiped tears off her cheeks. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive Mom?”

  I pressed my lips together. “It was selfish of me to blame her. Dad nailed it today, right? Forgiveness.”

  “So, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I don’t blame her anymore, but I’m still a little pissed. She’s free of things I still cry about sometimes. You know?” I shook my head. It didn’t matter. “I forgive her. One day last fall, I realized I hadn’t obsessed over her death in a while. I guess while I was praying all that time for rest and peace, I’d started healing.”

  Her eyes glossed with tears. “Yeah. Okay. Good.” She nodded and sniffed. “So, how do we do this? Box everything or look for hidden notes and pictures first?”

  “What?” I laughed. “I’m sorry. Are we in a James Bond movie?”

  Pru frowned. “Where do you hide your stuff? In a sock drawer?”

  Huh. I didn’t have anything to hide. Except, maybe Cross, but he didn’t fit inside a book. He barely fit on the floor beside my bed when Dad ventured to the third floor. “I don’t know.”

  Pru opened a paperback and shook a few snapshots from between the pages. “See.”

  I turned the pictures in my fingertips. Selfies of Faith and her friends. Senior pictures of boys that weren’t Brady. Interesting.

  I gathered an armload of art books and stacked them on the floor for closer inspection. A pamphlet fluttered to the ground. “God’s Will and Teen Pregnancy.”

  “What?” Pru snatched it off the carpet.

  I blinked, mentally caught up with what Pru had in her hands and thumbed through the other books as fast as possible. What else did she have in there? Oh, no.

  “Pru.” I lifted a thin paperback between us. “Spiritual Healing After Miscarriage.”

  She flopped onto the carpet. “No wonder she told you to wait for sex. Do you think those were for her?”

  I skimmed the paperback. “I don’t know. She could’ve been worried about a friend.”

  We opened book after book, filling boxes with dusty tomes and tattered college brochures, looking for something that might answer our questions.

  Pru handed me a tiny slip of paper, removed from the pages of a Bible. A pencil sketch of an angel carrying an infant. “No. I think all these things are hers.”

  Air burned through my shrinking windpipe.

  Pru took the paper back. “The angel is so beautiful. The baby has no detail, just an outline.”

  I rolled back against the carpet. “She couldn’t have been far along. Maybe she never had the chance to think about the baby until it was gone. I can’t imagine what that was like.” My losses were all tangible ones. Memories ate me alive, knowing there’d never be more, but to lose something…someone she never knew… How did anyone process that kind of loss? “I had no idea. She was hurting so much and I had no idea. How is that possible?”

  “You think that’s why she broke up with Brady?”

  Ugh. I turned my head for a better look at Pru. “When I told Sara over the phone that Brady was pushing Faith for sex, she laughed. I bet Sara knew they were having sex. That means Faith lied to Anton about why she and Brady broke up.”

  Pru lay down beside me. “Understandable. I’m not sure I’d tell a guy I just met about something so personal.”

  I crossed my arms over my middle. “She didn’t even tell me.”

  Pru turned her head. Her sincere blue eyes were inches from mine. “You were fourteen. What could you do to help her or even understand?”

  “I didn’t feel fourteen. I felt like one of her confidants.”

  “And that was the magic of Faith. She made everyone feel special…even when she was hurting.”

  I rolled onto my tummy and pressed my forehead to the ground. “Maybe Brady was pushing her for sex afterward, like nothing happened, or maybe she never told him about the miscarriage. If I got pregnant and lost the baby, I’d think I was being punished.”

  Pru blew out a deep breath. “Me too. I bet the poems on her blog were about losing the baby, not Brady.”

  “So she really was trying to start over, not check out.”

  Pru sat up and flipped through more books. “Do you think the miscarriage was the death Nadya saw when she read Faith’s palm?”

  I pushed into a seated position. “You said you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  She shrugged. “You said Nadya saw death and loss in Faith’s life, plus no future. That’s a big coincidence. She’d just lost a life literally growing inside her and then she lost hers too.”

  A shiver crept over my skin. “Maybe I should wear the necklace Nadya gave me.”

  “Couldn’t hurt. No way!” Pru cracked up. “Look.” She held a pencil sketch of Anton in front of her face and tipped it left and right like a goofy mask. “Faith drew him. How cool is that? He had a hundred earrings.”

  A line of hoops stretched up Anton’s left ear in the drawing. Aside from that, he hadn’t changed at all, and Faith had nailed his likeness.

  I grabbed my phone. “I think we should take it to him. Dad’s on stake-out duty for another hour. We can get there and get back before he comes home.”

  Pru beamed. “Can I give it to him?”

  “Sure.” I snapped a picture of the drawing with my phone and texted it to Cross.

  “We have a present from Faith for Anton. On our way. Watch for us.”

  We made excellent time on the way to the campgrounds. Pru led the way across the field along the river toward the campsite, an out-of-our-way route designed to avoid the patrols Sheriff Dobbs had warned me about and anyone guarding the festival site. Night sounds were swallowed by the roar of our river, swollen from a month of excess.

  Pru looked over her shoulder toward the festival site. “Hard to believe the festival’s set up already and in a few days it’s over.” Shadows of motionless rides stretched into the sky like healing bruises.

  The River Festival would end and Cross would leave. “Yeah.”

  My mind circled the unbelievable possibility Faith had had a miscarriage. Yet another factor that changed everything. If she hadn’t lost her pregnancy, she wouldn’t have snuck out to party that night. She’d be here. She’d be twenty. She’d be a mother. A mother. The word bounced, surreal, impossible. Pru and I would be aunts. Dad and Mom… Mom might still be here and she’d be a grandma. To a three-year-old.

  Images of Faith’s baby pictures rushed through my thoughts. Would the preschooler have looked like her? Would I have babysat and taught my niece or nephew to swim one day, something Pru never had the chance to learn? If things were different, Pru would’ve spent hours at lessons like Faith and me. We’d teach Faith’s baby all sorts of things.

  A tall, narrow figure stepped in our path up ahead. A shadow stretched over his features.

  I sucked air, then laughed. “Good grief.”

  Pru groaned. “You scared the crap out of us, Cross.”

  Brady took several long strides in our direction. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

  Chapter 22

  Faith

  Brady moved in a slow, deliberate arc, herding us to the river side of the field. His demeanor was strange and predatory, though, for the first time in a while, his speech and eyes were clear. Sharp. “What are you two doing out here after dark? Haven’t you heard there’s a criminal on the loose?”

  Pru made a strangled sound and stepped closer to the riverbank.

  I grabbed her arm. “Careful.”

  Brady took another step. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “We’re on patrol.” My steady voice surprised me. Lies were easier in the face of potential danger. “Pru and I are helping Dad with his shift. We’re riding home with him soon, so
we should get going.”

  Brady stepped into my path, shaking his head. “You’re more like Faith than I knew. She was a liar too.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I sidestepped Brady, tugging Pru behind me, along the jagged river’s edge. One wrong step would drop us over the slick grassy ledge and land us in the rapids. Scents of mud and river water peppered the night air. Fireflies lifted off the ground behind him. They didn’t know we were in trouble. No one did.

  Brady raised a giant black flashlight, like the one Sheriff Dobbs had given my dad, and slapped it against his palm. “Your dad left with my dad twenty minutes ago. The festival site’s deserted. The campers are quiet. It’s just me, you, and the river.”

  Pru’s feet slipped over the grass. She latched onto my arm with a whimper.

  Brady moved closer. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here. Did you come for the sideshow again? Bring Pru to initiate her into your family’s sick tradition? Yeah. Faith liked them too.”

  Fear coursed through me. I couldn’t afford any wrong moves. I had Pru to think about.

  A monumental epiphany cleared my addled brain. Brady couldn’t swim. Faith had teased him mercilessly. Brady Dobbs could do anything—pushups with her on his back, hit a homerun out of the ballpark, ace the SATs—but he couldn’t manage a decent doggie paddle. “Were you with Faith at the river that night? Is that why you drink so much? You feel guilty because you couldn’t save her.”

  His face twisted in anger. Tears glossed his crazy eyes. He barked a short, humorless laugh. “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? You’ve been asking questions all over town. Interviewing our old friends and teachers. Sneaking the freak into your bedroom. Yeah. I saw all that. I see everything and no one notices because I’m invisible. I’m a bruise on the town’s ego, the kid who should’ve put this place on the map.”

  My mouth went dry. “You’re the one who’s been following me.”

  He sniffed and wiped his nose across the back of his thick, muscular arm. “I didn’t believe you’d do it. Didn’t think you’d keep pushing. I thought you’d let it go. She’s dead!” He screamed the final word. Spittle flew from his lips. “She’s not coming back, so let it go!” He marched forward, flashlight raised at his side, poised to swing. Like a baseball bat. I’d seen Brady hit a ball into tomorrow. I wouldn’t survive.