“Not that I’ve heard of. Not around here. Elsewhere … I don’t know.”
“They’ve been told everything they ever believed is a lie,” Anna lamented. “The believer’s whole world is centered on Jesus. Built upon him. When he’s suddenly stripped away …”
“Some people are just quietly walking away from the faith, like zombies or something. I don’t know if it’s shock or just that they don’t care. Some are pretending nothing ever happened. I don’t know if it’s denial or certainty … maybe both. Some are angry, feeling they’ve been made fools of all their lives, and others are crowing that they’d been too smart all along ever to have believed in God, or in Jesus in particular.”
“The world’s hated him since day one,” Anna said. “It’s like people are delighting in this, as if they finally see a chance to rid themselves of him once and for all.”
“I can’t believe how quickly so many self-proclaimed believers are turning their backs,” Bonnie agreed.”
“I don’t know … I think for most it’s just a matter of convenience. Going with whatever they think looks best in the eyes of the Joneses.”
“But not for everyone. For a few I’ve talked to, it’s as if they’d been waiting for an excuse to give up the faith all along. Or just never really believed.”
Anna closed her eyes. She could feel her own back turning on God, her own faith slipping away.
So, is that it? Has my faith been rooted only in material things and physical proof all along? Do I have so little trust in God himself that when I don’t understand what’s happening, I can’t trust that he’s still guiding the outworking of some great plan?
She was shaken, wondering now whether she had ever known true faith, whether she had ever really believed at all.
Why do I feel this way? Why am I unsure of you, Lord?
She felt her confidence eroding, her faith evaporating, both being replaced moment by moment with a resentment toward God for letting her find the scrolls in the first place.
Merciful Father, if you’re really in control of all things, please, in Jesus’ name, tell me why you did this! Help me understand.
A cry of desperation, of agony. She fought to suppress her disappointment, her doubt, her rage, but it kept bubbling up, breaking past her heart and her intellect to claim her mind and drive a wedge permanently between the woman she had been and the one she felt herself becoming.
A woman she didn’t know. And that woman terrified her.
Dyson sat on the couch in his apartment, his shoes off, his stocking feet up on the cluttered coffee table. Before him, mounted on the wall, a widescreen television displayed the rapidly changing images and graphics of a news channel.
But his mind wasn’t on the events flashing before him.
What will she say? How do I say it?
He replayed in his mind yet again the words he had chosen. They were brief, but their ramifications would send aftershocks through every facet of his life.
I’ve always wanted this, but what will she say?
Again, he pondered the phone in his hand. It had grown warm from his grip, cradled there for more than an hour, waiting as he wrestled internally with the situation thrust upon him.
How do I even ask her?
He was yanked from his reverie by a flashing red banner and a loud musical tone as the television declared a news alert.
Now what?
“We’ve just received word of a massive explosion in central Italy, southeast of the Naples area. While all reports are as yet unconfirmed and what information we have is sketchy, eyewitnesses as far away as ten miles have reported sighting a mushroom cloud rising from the site of the blast …”
He sat upright, his attention now laser-focused.
“We now have video from an Italian traffic chopper that, we are told, was five miles north of the blast site at the time of the explosion …”
Images appeared, shaky but settling down. Anxious voices in Italian could be heard over the din of the rotors as the camera swung around, acquiring a new subject. The countryside came into view, a quilt of vineyards and fields, villages and roadways. Vesuvius stood majestically, filling the left side of the screen.
And in the distance, so bright as to gouge purplish streaks into the image and light an area stretching all the way to the beach, rose what unmistakably was a mushroom cloud.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting reports of a nuclear detonation in central Italy, along the A3 Autostrada south of Naples, near the town of Ercolano. It appears to have taken place during the latter part of rush hour.”
Dyson watched, unbelieving.
I was right there, he realized. Right there on that stretch of highway …
“We’ll stay with this story as the facts become clearer, but this much seems evident. There has been a terrorist strike near the western coast of Italy. As to why, at this point we can only guess.”
Ercolano, he pondered. It was a small but densely populated town. A beautiful place.
At least, he worried, it had been.
Anna dropped her purse on the sofa, still torn from her moorings, still feeling like an orphaned child.
Please—I need to be sure of you, to hear your voice …please!
“Looks like rain,” Bonnie commented, heading toward the kitchen. “Have you heard anything?”
“No,” Anna said. “I haven’t turned on a radio or TV all day.”
“Ben’s taking a nap. I don’t want to wake him, poor dear. He’s been on late shift at the plant. It would be nice if it rained … It’s so pleasant for sleeping.”
Now alone in the den, Anna sat down, her thoughts distant. She fixed her eyes upon a framed photo atop the mantle, one of Bonnie and her on her sister’s wedding day. She had been a high-school senior, and Bonnie a college junior. She walked over and picked up the photo, and a flood of memories came to her. The yellow bridesmaid’s dress she wore, the bouffant hairdo, the dyed high heels that were a little too tight. The way her sister kept giggling right before the ceremony. The way their parents looked upon them both, so proud, so thankful. A soft smile blossomed on her lips. It seemed as if everything had been so simple then. So easy. So untroubled.
“Before I knew Sam,” she whispered to herself. “Before we were married. Before I even knew what a shovel was …”
The ring of her cell phone sounded, its song filling the den.
“There’s a room where the light won’t find you, holding hands while the walls come tumbling down.… When they do I’ll be right behind you …”
She crossed to her purse, found the phone, flipped it open, and heard Dyson’s voice. She smiled.
“Hi.”
“Are you watching TV?” he asked.
“No.”
“You might want to.”
She spotted the remote on the coffee table and turned on the screen.
“Which channel?”
“I don’t think it matters.”
At once she found coverage of the Italian disaster.
“—just east of the town of Ercolano. Reports on the ground tell of massive destruction at the site, with a significant loss of life and casualties numbering in the thousands …”
“When did this happen?” she asked, stunned. “How?”
“Less than half an hour ago. They don’t know how or why. They say it must have been terrorism.”
“But, why there? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know, Anna.”
“How horrible,” she said, seeing the panic, the chaotic rush of rescue personnel and fleeing citizens.
Bonnie walked in and saw the report. “Oh no …”
“Listen,” Dyson said. “I know this isn’t the best time, but I need to talk to you.”
A
nna turned from the television. “I’m listening.”
“No, I mean in person. I can be there in three hours.”
“You want to drive three hours just to talk?”
“Hey,” he reminded her, “you drove six for me.”
“Fair enough,” Anna nodded. “You know where I am.”
“See you in a few.”
“I’ll be here.”
She closed the phone, dropped it back into her purse, and sat down.
“Jack?” Bonnie asked.
“How did you know?”
“You have a tone you only use with him.”
“I do not.”
“You do so.” With a smile she handed Anna a cup of tea and took a seat on the sofa next to her. “So, he’s coming here?”
“He says he wants to talk to me. Something serious, I think.”
“Oh, really?” Bonnie said, a smile playing on her lips.
“Stop it,” Anna said. “It’s nothing like that.”
“If you say so …”
“You’re not going to be happy until I’m married again, are you?”
“And neither are you.”
Anna had no reply.
They settled back and watched the screen, the reports now coming in rapid-fire fashion. The scene was horrific. Fires burned everywhere, sending black smoke billowing into blue sky. Burn victims wandered in search of medical help, which was agonizingly slow in coming. Law officials and government authorities worked to evacuate as many as possible from the blast zone, but resources were few, with the smaller roads so clogged they were impassable. Any rapid evacuation of the area was impossible.
“I barely recognize this world anymore,” Bonnie said. “What happened to the one we grew up in?”
“I wish I knew.”
How could you let this happen? Anna prayed, one frustration building upon another. Aren’t you in control at all? Are you even there?
And suddenly, in a span of moments, something was ripped from within her, cast in tatters to the winds. For the first time in a very long time, she felt utterly alone, and what she had feared most settled upon her like a cold shroud. The dreaded woman once a stranger to her, whom she didn’t know at all, had slipped in, wearing Anna’s flesh like an abandoned shell, a vacant thing. A gasp escaped her. As she moved from the room into the hallway, her face turned from her sister, tears flowed.
She no longer believed.
Ten
Anna sat in the guest room, the light of a single bedside lamp bathing her as she looked through an old cardboard box. Inside were things of Sam’s, things she had meant to sort through years ago, things she instead had shoved aside because pain still lingered among them, a rekindled thought away. She had brought them with her to Bonnie’s, hoping perhaps that her sister could help her find the strength to finally get the task done.
But now, empty and alone, she decided that the pain living among the things inside the box was preferable to the spiritual hollowness she felt. She now sought solace in them, in the past, in him.
She reached into the box. Her eyes blurred with tears and struggled to focus on the scraps of paper—receipts from restaurants and car-rental agencies, now faded with age. A few she recalled, images rising of pleasant evenings out or working lunches eaten hurriedly.
A Reuben sandwich—how you loved those.
There were photos taken at various digs, most of them secondary in-situ shots of artifacts taken in case the first didn’t provide enough information. A few, a very few, were candid pics of the team members, all smiles, their brows shaded by wide-brimmed hats.
She waded through university documents, travel papers, notes, and sketches. Sam’s handwriting splashed everything, and it comforted her, its flows and scratches so familiar, so unique, so—Sam.
In every word I hear your voice.
Then, nestled at the bottom of the box, a small leather-bound book caught her eye.
His journal …
She picked it up and found her fingers flipping to the last written page, only a third of the way into the book. An entry was there, written the morning of—
Written that last morning.
As she read, a puzzled scowl claimed her. The words revealed only now something he never had told her, something that made no sense.
I don’t understand, Sam. We never found any such—
She read on and learned that her husband’s last discovery hadn’t been made while digging into the soil or exploring a cavern. It hadn’t been an object of antiquity, but rather, something of a far more immediate nature. And he had uncovered it alone.
Sam had learned who had stolen the Aztec calendar of Oaxaca, so long ago. He had found solid evidence.
What was the evidence? Where is it? I went through all but this one box and never saw anything that—
The doorbell rang. She heard Bonnie moving down the hallway toward the foyer. Wiping her eyes, she placed the journal gingerly back into the box and closed the lid.
“Come in out of the rain,” Bonnie said, holding the front door wide open. “My, but it’s pouring out there.”
She closed the door behind Dyson as he stepped into the house. His gray overcoat glistened, dripping on the floor.
“Let me take that,” Bonnie said, stripping the garment from him. “I’ll go hang it up to dry.”
As she disappeared down the hallway, Dyson walked in and found the living room empty.
“Hi,” sounded a voice from behind him. He turned to see Anna standing in the opening to the hall.
“Hi,” he said, visibly nervous.
She walked into the room and took a seat on the sofa. He sat down beside her.
“Was the drive okay?”
“Good,” he said. “Good drive. Kind of wet, kind of long. But it gave me time to think.”
“About what?”
“About the reason I wanted to talk to you. What I need to ask you.”
Trapped by his eyes, she studied him. His discomfort level was visibly growing.
Surely this can’t be what Bonnie thinks it is.
“Well,” she said, “Here I am.”
“Okay.” Another pause, a longer one. “You know how when we first got to know each other, we’d sit in the university lounge and talk about all the things we wanted to do with our lives? About where we wanted to be in ten years? What we wanted to be doing? Who we wanted to be with?”
“Yes …”
Oh no! It is what she thinks it is!
“Well,” he struggled, “I don’t really know how to ask this, so I’m just going to come right out with it.”
She held her breath.
No … I can’t …I’m not ready …
“Anna,” he began, “would you … mind if I took your job?”
“What?”
“Dean Mercer called me into his office earlier this afternoon and told me what happened yesterday, with you and the board of regents. I’m so sorry for what they did to you. It must have been terrible …”
She stared aside, thrown by the sudden change of direction.
“What?” he asked, concerned by her reaction. “What is it?”
She was silent.
“I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have asked …”
“No,” she said. “Go ahead. You were saying …”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes,” she insisted. “Please.”
“Okay,” he said, without certainty. “Dean Mercer called me in and told me they needed to fill your position at Oldefield. He knew I had been looking to move up, either there or somewhere else, and—”
“Somewhere else? You never told me that. You were thinking of leaving?”
“No,” he said quickly. “But I
may have made a few noises to that effect along the way, the way I answered questions sometimes. I guess he thought I was.”
“You … ‘guess.’”
“So, anyway, the board offered me your old position, and I wanted to get your input and okay before I made a decision. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, Anna. I know how much that job meant to you. But they need my answer first thing in the morning, and I—”
“Jack,” she said, taking his hand, “I think it’s darling that you felt you needed to ask me first. You should take it.” She smiled. “You could have asked me over the phone.”
“No, I couldn’t have.” He smiled back, looking relieved. “And it’s really okay with you?”
“Yes. You know all my students, and I know they like you. And I’d much rather have you teaching them than some stranger brought in from outside, no matter now qualified he may be. Besides, I know a few of the girls have a little crush on you, so you’d get their vote.”
“They do?”
“Nothing serious,” Anna assured him. “Don’t worry. They just like having you around.”
He seemed to see an opening. After a few moments, he took it.
“What about you?” he asked softly. “You like having me around?”
She wasn’t ready, even as she found his eyes again. Her reply, but a breath, came slowly.
“Maybe.”
“But, nothing … serious?”
She remained silent, her eyes searching his. She felt him squeeze her right hand just a little more tightly. She reached up with her left and lightly traced the front of his muscular shoulder. Through his shirt, she felt the scar there.
The spiritual emptiness within her ached, swelling in her throat, constricting her heart. So alone, so hollow, she reached out, clutching for him like a drowning woman, needing that emptiness filled by something, anything.
Help me …
He leaned in, and as the space between them narrowed, his bracing scent enveloped her, his aura of tender authority sweeping her away. She closed her eyes as his lips pressed into hers with a warmth both giving and firm, gentle and strong. Her throat tightened and a shiver ran through her, stilling a deep breath her body ached to take. Something like ice afire rushed within her, a weakness swirling throughout her being, dancing into her arms, her legs, her fingertips. She leaned softly into him, heightening the pressure between them, and lifted one hand to caress his freshly shaved cheek.
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