“Will I see you tomorrow before you go?”
Mouth downturned, he shook his head. “Probably not. I need to leave early.” Closing his eyes, he bent his neck as if he prayed. “This is it. My fork-in-the-road moment. I have to choose.”
For a crazy moment, she allowed the hopes she’d hidden in her heart to run wild.
Please, Lord, please, let him choose me.
Then his eyes met hers, and he dragged in a heavy breath, almost a sigh. Even before he spoke, his squared shoulders and tight jaw told her the choice he’d made. A valid, logical choice.
Just not the choice she wanted.
“I have to go back. The stories I write and the newspaper are my whole identity. It’s who I am. I told you about my father, so you know why.” As if begging her to understand, he held his hands out in front of him. “Justice is everything to me. And my work leaves no time for relationships.”
A slight dip of her chin offered the most agreement she could manage. “I understand. I’m sad about it, but I understand.”
That was the truth. Even though the truth broke her heart.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t kiss her. Just touched her shoulder lightly, then walked down the road toward the store, and out of her life.
She stayed sitting as the sky darkened and the stars blazed.
Please, Lord, give Daniel happiness. Help him to know You more. Help him to find the truth and justice he’s seeking. Show him the flip side of justice, too — Your grace, mercy and forgiveness.
If only he could stop letting the hurt of his father’s betrayal run his life and close him off from so much more.
But such a wish was as pointless as saying if only she hadn’t messed the meal up so badly. Just like God making sure Daniel was with them when they went up the mountain, what happened today happened for a reason. Some day in the future, she’d look back on this and know exactly why He hadn’t chosen Daniel for her.
God brought good from her accidental deception on the blog no one but Steph was ever supposed to see. And He would bring good from the tangle her feelings for Daniel were in, too.
As she spent time with Daniel over the past four weeks, hope had taken hold of her. It flared even more when he came forward to break bread at the table with them this morning.
Hope the article he finally wrote would temper the truth with compassion and understanding. And hope for a whole lot more, too. But clearly, anything more between them wasn’t part of His’s plan. She had to accept that.
When she let herself start to hope, she hadn’t known how much truth and justice meant to Daniel. Now, she did.
If it meant more than love, more than God, more than anything else in his life, what chance did she have?
Right from the start, it had always been goodbye.
Chapter 11
Leaving Samantha Rose sitting by the lake last night topped the list of the hardest things Daniel had ever done. But staying and losing everything he’d lived his life for would be even harder.
He had to go back to New York.
Alone in his room above the store, he’d tried to pray as he packed his bags. Talk to God, get confirmation he’d made the right choice. The only choice.
Either God wasn’t listening, or he couldn’t hear God’s reply over the noise in his brain.
Like a baby making its first wobbly steps, he’d need time and practice to tune into this new idea of God, a God who cared, a God who responded. And he had no idea how that process might affect his life.
His one certainty was the need to return to his old life. To the safe and the known and the secure. Anything else meant losing himself. Like a man with amnesia, no sense of who he was.
If he chose to give up his identity, he had no idea what to put in its place.
Leaving the cheats and crooks he normally investigated to keep on conning and cheating and deceiving without fear of exposure felt as safe as stepping out of a plane at ten thousand feet without a parachute.
He’d escape Sunset Point quietly and without any fuss. He’d drive to Spokane. He’d take his flights back to New York. He’d pick up his unfinished investigations and follow up leads for new ones. And he’d let Meg publish his article on Tuesday, praying the effects didn’t hurt Samantha Rose too much.
His only change from his month away — willingness to explore getting to know her God, a God he sensed was far more real and nuanced and unexpected than the one his father preached.
His getaway didn’t exactly work as planned.
Mainly because he’d assumed the twins would stay in Maddie and Brad’s private quarters at the store. Instead, they already occupied the dining room when he carried his bags downstairs and went in search of coffee.
Emily’s bright eyes focused on the bags, and her lower lip jutted. “Why do you have those? Are you going somewhere?”
He tried to break it to her gently. “I’m sorry, girls. I leave today. I’m going home to New York.”
“Is that a long way away?”
“It is.” He nodded. “All the way across the country.”
“That’s too far. Why can’t you stay here?” Her little face puckered as her words trailed off in a low wail.
Rose joined her in wailing. “I don’t want you to go.”
Both girls clung to his hands and sobbed.
He glanced around helplessly, hoping Maddie would hear the girls and come back from the kitchen. Playing with the twins was one thing, but dealing with this? Dad hit him when he cried. Hardly the best role model.
God, are you there? I need help!
Then he remembered what Samantha did the day he met her when the girls’ toys fell from the closet. The loving way she comforted and soothed them. Squatting down to eye level with the girls, he opened his arms and hugged them.
“I’m sorry I have to go. I’ll miss you both. But New York is where I live. Just like you and your mom live somewhere else and you’ll go back there at the end of the summer. Living here is only a vacation.”
“But you’re a grown-up,” Emily protested between sniffs. “You can do what you want. You don’t have to go where your mom tells you.”
His lips twisted. “Even grown-ups can’t always do what they want.”
If he could, would he have chosen to stay with Samantha Rose? Or at least, have asked her to stay in touch?
He couldn’t honestly answer. He dealt in truth, not if onlys.
She hadn’t suggested maintaining contact either. She’d let him leave without any argument last night. Could be, she felt as relieved about him leaving as he did. That odd hollowness in his belly only meant he needed breakfast. After all, last night’s dinner proved inedible.
Right. Sure, that was all it was. For someone who dealt in truth, he sure told himself a lot of lies.
Acknowledging the fact didn’t alter his plans.
Patting the twins on the back, he moved to stand. They clung tearfully, only letting him go when Maddie returned with Jacob, and even then with obvious reluctance.
“I’m leaving now,” he told Maddie. “Is there anything else I need to do first, like signing out?”
She examined him as if trying to discern what he really felt about leaving. Especially, about leaving Samantha Rose behind. Raising his eyebrows, he blandly returned her gaze.
How could he tell how he felt about leaving when he didn’t know himself? He only knew he had to go. For the past fourteen years, ever since Dad’s betrayal blasted apart his former certainties, his identity had been inextricably linked with his investigations and the newspaper.
Lose that, and he had nothing.
Besides, Samantha Rose hadn’t read the article he’d sent Meg yet. Honest, but not kind. Once she did read it, she’d be glad he’d left. And so would everyone else in Sunset Point who cared for her.
Regret twisted Maddie’s wry smile. “No, nothing else. Normally I like to check to make sure guests haven’t accidentally packed the sheets and towels or anything else from the room. But since
it’s you, I guess we can trust you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Her eyeroll and tiny headshake showed she hadn’t missed the dry note in his voice.
“I hope it’s not misplaced.” The sharp glance she threw him and the slightly acid edge to her words said she wasn’t referring to any risk of him stealing from his room. Then she shrugged and smiled. “I’ll pray for you, Daniel. You know you’re welcome back here anytime.”
He knew what she meant, but deliberately chose to misunderstand. “It’s been an interesting month, but I don’t plan to come back.” He turned to the twins, hovering nearby. “Girls, I do need to go. How about I write you a letter when I get home? Would that be okay? I can send it to your aunt.”
If that wasn’t a barefaced ploy to stay in contact with Samantha Rose, he didn’t know what was.
Both girls nodded, and his heart gave a sudden and unexpected leap. Either he’d just developed an arrhythmia and needed to find a cardiologist, or his heart tried to tell him he really did want to maintain some connection with her.
After giving the twins another quick hug and shaking hands with Maddie and Brad, he picked up his bags and left.
Driving away, he spotted her in the rearview mirror, walking along the lakeside road, headed for the store. The sight of her, the pull to go back to her, almost impelled him to slam on the brakes and turn around.
He couldn’t. He had a flight to catch and stories to write.
Instead, he accelerated at the town limits and drove smoothly up the hill toward the highway, without looking back.
He had to go.
The flights he’d rebooked the day he arrived in Sunset Point, to get him into Newark earlier than the ones Meg’s assistant booked, had two short layovers. The first hops, from Spokane to Salt Lake City then Salt Lake City to Detroit, went fine. He used the onboard Wi-Fi to pick up where he’d left off with work. Follow up on leads, probably now gone cold. Touch base with his information sources. Let Meg know he was on his way back.
Her return email, blunt and to the point, was typically Meg. No “welcome back”. No “look forward to seeing you”. Only newspaper business.
We’re laying out the Tuesday edition. You still okay with me running your piece on that blogger?
He kept his reply equally terse.
Of course. I don’t submit stories I’m not happy for you to run. You have a problem with it?
Meg didn’t answer, so he guessed she didn’t have any issue with his article. It was 100-percent factual, meticulously written, and it told the truth. There shouldn’t be anything there for her to find problematic.
It wasn’t till after he’d boarded the final flight in Detroit that he realized he had a problem with it.
Sure, it was factual. Sure, it was accurate. But it was no more the whole truth than the things his father preached about God.
So, like that old joke about the blind men describing an elephant based on the portion they’d touched, the whole truth was far more. Dad taught what he knew about God, with the Bible verses to prove it. Only being in Sunset Point among people who saw God differently made Daniel see that insisting such a small portion of God was all of God had been Dad’s biggest lie.
And he’d done the same to Samantha Rose. Pretended one fragment of the truth — the unarguable fact she really could not cook and had implied she’d made the food on her blog — told the whole story.
A baby howled as the plane lifted off. Normally, he’d be impatient with the noise, and with the parents who couldn’t pacify their child. This time, the shrieks pierced more than his eardrums. The reminder of those what ifs and the lonely journey ahead on the fork in the road he’d chosen came close to piercing his heart.
A Bible verse he’d heard years before hovered in his memory, just out of reach. Something about faith not being needed for what we could see, but for what we couldn’t see?
He needed to have more faith in Samantha Rose. Trust that she hadn’t lied to him.
Like the elephant and God, the bigger truth he hadn’t presented in his piece was far more complex than the simplistic version he’d written. Far more interesting. He’d assumed telling the truth about her and writing a heartwarming human-interest story were mutually exclusive.
Wrong.
His article left out all the things that really mattered. Her faith. Her love for the girls. Her intent to make a happy home for them while their mom was away. Her sweet determination. The way she felt less-than because of her inability to cook.
That was the story he needed to tell about her, make sure her readers knew. That she couldn’t cook was the smallest part of the real story. Instead of describing the whole elephant, he’d described the tail.
He was more like his father than he knew. Just like Dad, he’d insisted a fragment of the truth was all there was to know. His lies were just as bad as Dad’s. Samantha Rose’s deception was nothing in comparison.
Could it be none of his articles told the whole truth?
The flight attendant hovered offering a drink. His polite smile and headshake took effort to summon. He didn’t need the distraction. Essential to stay with this line of thought and see where it took him.
Where God took him.
Had the desire to get revenge on his father — to see others get the punishment his father escaped — fueled his mission? Not those lofty ideals of truth and justice he’d prided himself on.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Another of those verses Dad had loved to quote.
He opened a Bible app on his screen, typed those words into the search box. This result appeared:
Dear friends, never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God, for he has said that he will repay those who deserve it. Don’t take the law into your own hands.
So had he been playing God these past fourteen years? Had every article he’d prided himself on being completely accurate been such a partial and biased viewpoint it was no better than a lie?
His quest for justice looked more like a deluded vendetta.
Deluded, because he’d failed to balance justice with mercy. Just as his father had. Dad’s God and Samantha Rose’s weren’t so different after all. Dad saw only His justice, while she focused on His love and grace.
The grace and forgiveness God extended to him, but he’d failed to extend to his father. Or to her, when he wrote that piece.
Losing his old identity didn’t mean losing himself, the way he’d thought. Not when that identity was a bitter, vengeful, unforgiving man. A man without love for anyone or anything. A man who’d turned truth and justice into an idol, twisting them into lies.
Losing that Daniel Novak set him free.
Open my heart to letting go of my vendetta and forgiving Dad, Lord. It won’t be easy. A process, not an instant thing. But I’m willing to let You help me.
Too late to repair the broken relationship with his father, but not too late for Samantha Rose. He hoped.
For the first time in fourteen years, he sent an email retracting an article.
Hold on the Samantha Rose piece. Needs changes. What’s the latest deadline you can give me?
Meg’s reply appeared almost immediately—2300.
Eleven tonight. Cutting it fine. His flight wouldn’t touch down in Newark until 2152.
Help me write the truth this time.
Opening a new document, he started typing immediately and kept going in the cab. Rather than going to his apartment, he gave the office address. Quicker.
Meg, of course, was still there.
Did he want that life for himself? Married to the job. The first to arrive at her desk in the morning, the last to go home at night.
How could he choose that, when he’d glimpsed the possibility of a brighter, richer life?
Without speaking to anyone, he sat at the nearest desk and kept typing. No one attempted to interrupt. Only another journalist or an editor could fully appreciate the urgency of newspaper deadlines.
At
ten before eleven, he hit send on the rewritten piece.
After a few minutes, Meg glanced up from her computer screen and lifted a hand to call him into her office.
“Nice piece. I’d even go so far as to say it’s the best thing you’ve written. Good call to pull the old version.” Affection softened her gruff tone as she waved at the screen. “So, does this mean you’ve made your choice of which fork in the road to take?”
Nodding, he smiled. “I have. And I know it’s the right one.”
Chapter 12
Sam hesitated, her finger poised over the laptop touchpad. Once she clicked Publish, the post she’d labored on for hours, ever since the girls went to bed, would be out there on her blog for her readers to see.
Did she really want that?
Once she set this post loose, she’d almost certainly have wrecked her career. Probably, she’d never get another web-design job from a homemaking blogger. Maybe she’d even need to go back to square one, start up again with a new business name.
That price she was willing to pay. What worried her more was how the post could also wreck the remainder of the summer for the girls. And Steph, too. Nancy would inevitably swoop in on a rescue mission as soon as she read the painful confession of guilt and plea for forgiveness.
Sam wasn’t sure the word forgiveness lurked anywhere in Nancy’s vocabulary.
Lifting her hands from the keyboard, she rubbed them over tired eyes and glanced at the tiny clock in the corner of her screen. After two. No wonder exhaustion made it hard to think straight.
Tell me what to do, please, Lord?
She read through the words she’d written. A self-deprecating description of her dinner for Daniel, including every horrible detail. If it happened to anyone else, reading this would make her chuckle in fellow-feeling.
Maybe some of her readers were like her, reading the homemaking blogs in a desperate attempt to learn the secrets. Her post might help them.
Next, the admission of her deception, and why. Okay, so she’d left out her fear of Nancy snatching the girls away. Mentioning it would be too unkind.
Come to the Lake Page 22