A Kingsbury Collection

by Karen Kingsbury

  Jordan leaned in close, wondering just how much about this case was being discussed behind his back. “Teej, buddy, I didn’t tell you where I was staying.”

  T. J. nodded, his eyes still locked on something outside the window, a faraway look on his face. “Hawkins told me.”

  Jordan felt like he was trapped in some strange dream. He hadn’t told Hawkins where he was staying, either. Of course there were only three motels in Bethany, so Jordan wouldn’t have been hard to find. But the idea of a partner at HOUR—one of the top legal talents in all the country—trailing him like some two-bit private investigator sent a chill down his spine. He grabbed T. J.’s arm, tightening his grip until his friend made eye contact with him. “You drove down here because I was out last night?” Jordan released a single chuckle as he let go of T. J. “Call me crazy, but I’m not seeing the connection.”

  “If you tell Hawkins I told you, we’ll both be fired.”

  T. J.’s flat voice told Jordan his suspicions were right. Hawkins—and maybe the other partners—didn’t trust him with the Bethany case. The truth made his blood boil, and he could feel his face growing hot.

  He spoke in a barely contained whisper, sliding the words through lips tight with fury. “I’m waiting.”

  T. J. sighed and leaned against the windowsill. He was still having trouble making eye contact. “They want this case bad, Jordan. There’s a lot of … bonus money at stake.”

  Jordan remembered the ten thousand dollars he’d been promised. “You know about it?”

  “Yeah.” T. J. huffed. “I know about it.”

  Jordan felt like a man in a foreign country trying to understand a language he’d never heard before. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “From the top, Jordan.” T. J. narrowed his eyes, and Jordan could see his friends reluctance to talk.

  “Hawkins?”

  “A lot higher than that.”

  “Meaning what? And how much is there? Why this case?” Jordan fired the questions as quickly as they came to mind. He glanced down the hallway and saw Faith and the others leaving, making their way toward the stairs. Can’t you even turn around and look at me, Faith?

  But she was caught up in a conversation with the mayor and never glanced his direction. When she was gone, Jordan turned his attention back to T. J. “I need answers, Teej. Tell me what you know.”

  His friend shrugged again and shook his head. “It’s political.”

  “Political? You mean someone from the state?”

  T. J. nodded. “Someone very high up the ladder.”

  Again there was no way Jordan could make sense of the situation. High up the ladder? What stake could anyone at the state level possibly have in the Jesus statue case? “Okay, give me the name.”

  “I don’t know. Honest, Jordan.” T. J. squirmed and shifted positions. “You gotta believe me.”

  Jordan exhaled slowly and gazed out the window before turning back to his friend. “So you’re saying the money came from an elected official?”

  “I don’t know how much HOUR’s getting, but you have to win the case.” He hesitated, and Jordan had the distinct feeling he was being lied to. “A permanent wall needs to go up around the Jesus statue or the whole things off.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?” His anger burned still hotter. If someone with significant political influence and financial backing felt it was important to win the Bethany case, Jordan should have been in meetings with Hawkins daily. It made no sense that T. J. was involved in those meetings instead. After all, the Jesus statue was Jordan’s idea.

  “Hawkins asked me to call you last night, but you were out. He got worried and told me to come. Wanted to make sure … you know, someone hadn’t gotten to you.”

  Jordan’s astonishment came out as another laugh. “You guys watch too many movies, Teej. This is a small-town case. I don’t care how much national attention it gets, no one’s hiring a hit on me.” He crossed his arms. “What’s the real reason? Hawkins didn’t think I could pull out a victory?”

  “No, Jordan. I swear. That wasn’t it … ” T. J. sounded like a bad actor, and Jordan was suddenly out of patience with him.

  “Look, friend, why don’t you get in your car and drive back to New York. Tell my boss that I’ve got things perfectly under control, thank you. And that I’m single and can stay out all night if I want to. Tell him if he thinks I need a backup he should say so to my face. If not, he should keep his nose out of my cases. The only reason I’m here at all is because he ordered it.”

  T. J. looked like he had pebbles in his shoes. “And … uh … what about the woman?”

  Jordan lowered his eyebrows and felt the knot in his stomach grow. “Faith? The woman who bought the park property? The newscaster?”

  His friend nodded. “Is she … you know, are the two of you seeing each other?”

  A feeling of betrayal worked its way through Jordan’s veins. “Is that what this is all about? Hawkins thinks I’m siding with the enemy?”

  T. J. grimaced. “No, not at all. I was just asking. You told me you two used to be friends.”

  Jordan pictured himself kissing Faith in the park the night before. “Yeah, when we were thirteen. Obviously the word back at the office is that I’m caving in, lost in love, and suddenly inept at pulling off a simple separation case.” He leveled his gaze at T. J. “Tell me something, Teej … how did Hawkins know about the girl? Because he asked me the same thing last week.”

  A knowing look took over his friend’s features. “You don’t think I … Jordan, I wouldn’t have told him something like that. He must have guessed. Everyone knows you used to live here … Faith’s a local girl … it wouldn’t have been a stretch to think you might have known her.”

  Again Jordan had the strong sense T. J. was lying. He gestured toward the stairs. “Go home, Teej. And don’t forget something … ”

  T. J. was already starting to retreat, taking small backward steps toward the stairs as though being around Jordan was more stress than he could handle. “What? Just say the word, buddy. Anything I can do for you … ”

  Jordan paused, assaulted by doubts, and studied T. J. one last time. “Don’t forget you’re supposed to be my friend.”

  Considering the way she’d come into the world, little Jordan Lee Benson turned out to be a sweet, content newborn, sleeping through the night almost from the beginning and giving Heidi’s body time to recuperate from the traumatic delivery. She and Charles moved to Bethany on schedule, and Charles hired a housekeeper to help unpack the boxes and keep up the dishes and laundry. That Wednesday morning was the woman’s first day off, and Heidi had decided to take it slow.

  She’d already fed Jordan Lee, and the baby was down for her morning nap, giving Heidi a couple hours to herself. She sipped a cup of decaf and looked for something to read in yesterdays pile of mail. Junk mail … coupon flyers … advertisements … She scanned each item and tossed the stack in the trash. Then her eyes fell on the local paper. Photographers had been by Charles’s office and taken pictures of him for a clinic ad announcing his arrival on staff. Wasn’t that supposed to run on Wednesdays?

  She slid the paper closer and tried to make sense of the photo on the front page. It looked like a construction site—some sort of partially finished building made of what looked like plywood. She found the headline and read it out loud: “Hearing on Jesus Statue Postponed.”

  She knit her eyebrows together and found the first paragraph. “A hearing to decide whether or not walls around the Jesus statue in Bethany’s Jericho Park will become permanent was postponed yesterday. The hearing was rescheduled for Tuesday at which time court officials expect to have nearly a hundred members of the media and more than a thousand local residents in attendance for the final decision on what has become a case of national interest … ”

  Heidi sat up straighter in her chair. The Jesus statue had walls around it? Why hadn’t she noticed? Who had put them up, and how had the case drawn national a
ttention when she was only reading about it now? The answer was obvious. She hadn’t so much as watched a news program or looked at a paper since having Jordan Lee.

  Sadness like a dark storm cloud came over Heidi’s morning. Was that what life had come to? A statue that had stood practically forever in a city park had to be removed because it depicted Jesus Christ? She thought about her brother, about how much time he’d spent at the park, staring at the statue. He would have been devastated to see it surrounded by plywood. She rested her head on her fingertips as she continued reading the article.

  The information was both awful and fascinating. Joshua Nunn, a local attorney who headed up an organization called the Religious Freedom Institute was involved, as well as a former newscaster, Faith Evans. She had come forward and purchased the park land in an effort to keep the statue standing. The article said Faith had lost her job as a result of purchasing the land.

  She thought about that. Faith … Faith … Faith. Hadn’t Heidi and her family known a Faith back when they lived in Bethany? It began coming back to her, and she suddenly remembered. Faith Moses, that was it. She was the girl who lived next door, Jordan’s friend. Heidi’s eyes darted back to the place in the article where it listed the woman’s last name and her heart sank. Faith Evans. It had to be someone different. Too many years had passed and besides, there were lots of women named Faith.

  Heidi found her place in the article. The entire situation started because of a lawsuit filed by an attorney from the HOUR organization. Heidi rolled her eyes and huffed softly. The HOUR organization was always meddling in other people’s business and calling it human rights. What right was it of theirs to come to Bethany and sue the city over something that had never involved them in the first place? She continued reading. The attorney’s name was … was …

  Heidi’s breath caught in her throat. She felt as though she were free-falling from thirty thousand feet. It took ten seconds to remind herself to breathe, to assure herself that it was only some strange, twisted coincidence. Obviously it wasn’t him. Her brother had been killed sixteen years earlier in the camp accident. But that didn’t change the way her body reacted to what she was seeing in print before her.

  The attorney who wanted the statue walled up was a man who worked for HOUR. A man named Jordan Riley.

  Jordan Riley.

  Heidi let her eyes settle on his name as the memories came back again, images of her brother sheltering her in his strong arms at their mother’s funeral, of him holding her that awful afternoon on Oak Street when the state social workers took her away. Of the terrible moment when her foster father told her about the accident. She looked at the attorney’s name again.

  Jordan Riley.

  Heidi blinked and looked away. It was an odd coincidence, but that was all. Her Jordan was dead. And if he had been alive, he would have been fighting alongside Faith Evans, whoever she was. He loved the Jesus statue as much as anyone in Bethany.

  Besides, there was no way on earth Jordan would have represented a law firm like HOUR. Not after the way he’d loved the Lord, the way he’d trusted in Him that last year they were together. Jordan’s faith had been rock-solid, no doubt. It was something Heidi remembered most about her brother.

  She finished reading the article, folded the newspaper, and bowed her head.

  Lord, the people of Bethany need Your help. Please be with the judge as he has an important decision to make. Let him see with Your eyes, reason with Your heart at the hearing next week. And be with this Jordan Riley whoever he is. Help him to know that You’re real and that You love him. Most of all work in his heart so that—

  Jordan Lee’s hungry cry interrupted the prayer, and Heidi finished quickly as she headed toward the baby’s room. Ten minutes later she was feeding her tiny daughter, cooing at her and reveling in the joy of their shared private moments. When the feeding was finished she changed the baby’s diaper, did laundry, and fixed herself a chicken sandwich. By one o’clock, as Heidi finally fell into bed for a much-needed nap, the walled-in Jesus statue, the woman named Faith, and the confused young attorney named Jordan Riley, were the farthest things from her mind.

  23

  Rain beat a steady rhythm on the town of Bethany that Wednesday. With almost a week before the rescheduled hearing, Faith decided to take in an afternoon movie with Rosa. That left the morning with nothing to do but imagine how the next few weeks might play out. With any luck, the time would pass quickly. The peaceful protest wasn’t scheduled until Friday night, when a dozen churches from the Philadelphia area had promised to join the people of Bethany in an effort to pray together about the judge’s decision.

  Things had been so crazy that Faith had found little time to read her Bible—something she’d enjoyed doing since childhood. Reading Scripture might be a chore for some people, a duty that went along with the calling to follow Christ. But for Faith it had always been more than that. The Bible was alive and active, and no matter what issue she faced, God’s Word had something to say about it. She couldn’t remember how many times as a little girl she’d run through the house looking for her father to show him some Scripture he’d probably seen a hundred times.

  “Can you believe it, Daddy? Like Jesus wrote it there just for me!”

  Faith’s fervor hadn’t diminished any during the years Jordan lived next door. In fact, until his mother got sick, Jordan seemed to share her enthusiasm. Faith could hear him still, commenting on various Bible stories while they sat side by side on her parents’ sofa. “When I read the Bible it’s like I have this calm feeling. Like God has everything in control.”

  Faith had already showered, and her damp hair hung loosely down her back. That was it really, wasn’t it? God had it all under control. She thought about the sermon that past Sunday. They’d been reading in the book of Luke, the twenty-second chapter, where Judas made plans to betray Jesus and Jesus made plans to have the Last Supper with His disciples.

  Faith settled into her father’s favorite rocker and opened her Bible to that section of Scripture again. On the surface, it looked like everything was falling apart for Jesus. Days earlier He’d come into town on the back of a donkey to the shouts of praise from hundreds of thousands of people. Crowds openly calling Him King and acknowledging Him for who He was. But now His entire ministry seemed to be unraveling. The devil—who had been looking for a chance to bring down the Savior since Jesus’ birth thirty-three years earlier—saw a weak link in Judas Iscariot. And so, as Scripture taught, Satan caused Judas to accept a bribe from the chief priests in exchange for betraying his Teacher.

  Faith loved the way Pastor Todd Pynch taught the story. He smiled often and even laughed on occasion, so that Faith and everyone in the small congregation felt as though they were there alongside Jesus, walking near the donkey, sitting across the table in the upper room.

  Immediately after Judas’s decision to betray Jesus, the Lord made plans with two of his trusted followers to prepare for the Passover meal. Faith smiled as she recalled Pastor Pynch’s comments: “Notice how Judas was left out of the loop as they prepared that meal. Nothing happened that weekend that wasn’t exactly as Jesus had planned it. His life wasn’t taken from Him. He gave it up willingly.”

  The story brought Faith as much comfort now as it had last Sunday. Especially given her current situation. She was a marked woman, with no likely prospects for a television news job unless she was willing to somehow back out of the Jesus statue case—which she wasn’t. There were no signs of potential adoptive parents for Rosa Lee, and Faith’s childhood friend had not only turned on God, but because of his bitterness, was willing even to stand against her in court. Meanwhile a statue of Jesus Christ, her loving Lord, could very likely wind up hidden behind a brick wall.

  Indeed, things seemed to be spinning in all the wrong directions.

  But the truth was something altogether different. Something Joshua had tried to explain to her, the very point the minister had reiterated at church last Sunday.

/>   God was in control.

  Wherever there were people who loved Him, who lived according to His truth, God would continue to work all things to the good. Even in this.

  Faith closed her Bible and stared outside at the garden her father had planted. Shrubs and rosebushes stood barren but for a few tenacious buds. You were in control back when Jordan’s mother died too, right, God?

  She flipped to the very last page in her Bible, the blank space after the concordance and maps and historical facts. The place for personal notes. Faith had gotten the Bible for her thirteenth birthday, and back then, back when the Lord didn’t seem to be hearing Jordan, she’d written her thoughts on that last page.

  It had been years since she’d read what was written there, but today, in the silence of her parents’ house, she was drawn back the way a moth is drawn to a porch light. She was suddenly desperate to remember her little-girl heart and the way she’d felt when life was falling apart for Jordan Riley.

  She’d written dates next to her earliest entries; her words scribbled in the smallest print possible. Nov. 3, 1985—Why is this happening, God? I told Jordan to read the verse that says, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it …” But his mom is still sick. Help me understand …

  And another entry six weeks later: Jordan’s mother died … his sister got taken away … Didn’t we pray hard enough, Lord? Didn’t You hear us?

  Faith let her eyes read over those entries again and again until tears clouded her vision. Suddenly she understood her own motive for waging battle on behalf of the Jesus statue. It was as clear as if someone had lit a match in the darkest cavern of her heart. The losses Jordan suffered that fall had changed her as much as they’d changed him. Indeed, they’d affected everything about their lives since then.