Ours was the Minefield Challenge. About twenty square yards had been roped off with yellow “caution” tape; trees, shrubs and rocks were all within the boundary. The object was for a blindfolded person to make their way around the area, picking up three small orange cones that were placed in various spots. They’d have to follow the shouted directions of their family members who would try to steer them around the obstacles, which were the “mines” to be avoided.
“Just stay here,” said June to Todd and me, “and the first families will be along within about fifteen minutes. When they’ve completed their challenge, you give them one of these golden tickets and point them in that direction—see the orange flag tied to the tree? That’s the marker they look for. When they get there, they’ll see another one and it will lead them to another challenge. When all twenty tickets are gone, that will mean all the families have come through. At that point, take down the tape and pick up the cones and bring them back to the parking lot. Any questions?”
We had none, so she wished us well and trotted off with the rest of the volunteers trailing behind her. I found a handy fallen tree and sat down on it. Todd joined me.
“Nice day,” he commented.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good weather.”
“Do you help often at these events?”
“Sometimes. Usually I help more informally, but I’ve helped at the Family Fun Day for the past couple years. You?”
“This is my first time helping out. John was the one who recruited me—that’s Detective Ortega that you met at the station one time.”
“I remember.” I laughed shortly. “Actually, it would be hard to forget.”
“Hard to forget John?” Todd’s eyebrows rose.
“Hard to forget being suspected of murder.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I guess that would be pretty unforgettable.”
“Speaking of suspects,” I said, “I’m assuming that Matt wasn’t arrested.”
“No, not yet. We’re still gathering evidence.”
“I see.” There didn’t seem to be much more to say about that.
“I talked to your old professor again,” said Todd after a moment of silence. “Dr. Weatherill. I told him about the theft of the manuscript. He seemed quite disturbed over it.”
“I can imagine. He was the one who first authenticated it.”
“Right. Anyway, I asked him to keep his ears open for anyone trying to sell it. And I told him about you inheriting the bookstore. He said to send you his congratulations and tell you that if you’re planning to dispose of the books, he’d love to help you find buyers for them. He said he might even be interested in buying some for himself.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d remember me.” It was a cheering prospect. Evidently God was sending my old professor to help me with the sale of the books. Perhaps it was a sign about what I should do.
“I’d be shocked if he didn’t remember you,” said Todd. I looked at him in surprise. “You were probably a very good student,” he added.
“Oh! Well, I wasn’t too bad. I was hardly an amazing pupil, though. At that stage in my life I had no intention of being an English professor. I sort of fell into it later.”
“What did you want to do at that point?”
“I didn’t know; I wasn’t really career-oriented. Mostly I just wanted to be a wife and a mother, but I thought I might as well be prepared for something in case I didn’t get married. It was a good thing, as it turned out.”
“Yeah, life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it will.” He seemed awfully serious. I wondered if he was going to talk about his failed marriage. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
A noise from the path to our left intruded into our consciousness. Three laughing kids came racing up with their parents walking behind them, and for the next two hours we were busy helping one family after another to complete the challenge. I’d heard of team-building exercises but had never been part of a group that did them. Some families worked together well and others struggled more. Some of the kids lost their tempers and there was one scraped knee that needed a band-aid which Todd jogged back to the parking lot first aid station to get. I wondered if team building activities would work at the mission school; if there was a mix of missionary kids and local kids they might need some activities to unify them. Carrie would know.
When the last of the families had finished, we took the “caution” tape down and wadded it into a ball, and Todd stacked up the cones.
“Have you been all over these woods?” he asked me.
“Mostly,” I said. “But I usually stick to the trails.”
“Have you been down this direction?” he pointed off to the right. “There’s an incredible view.”
“No, I don’t think I have. I’ll have to see it sometime.”
His eyes twinkled. “No time like the present…”
“But aren’t we supposed to get back and help?”
“They have tons of help. Really.”
It was true. There were almost as many volunteers as there were families, and if we were needed they could always text us.
“Ok,” I said as Todd set the cones down and I put the wadded-up tape inside them. “But I feel like I’m playing hooky.”
Todd laughed and started off through the trees. “You’re a rule-follower, aren’t you?”
I glanced at him. “Never thought a policeman would fault me for that!”
“Oh, I’m not faulting you. I think we ought to follow the rules unless the rules are causing us to break God’s law. I just think sometimes rule-followers aren’t following the rules because it’s right but because they feel like it’s safe.”
“Well, that might be true of me,” I conceded. “I’m not a natural risk-taker and I do like to play it safe. Do you think that’s wrong?”
“I think it can be. Especially if you think following the rules will keep bad things from happening to you.”
“Sometimes it does,” I argued. “Think of all the verses in Proverbs that tell you that doing what is right will guard you from calamity.”
“Oh, of course. And as policeman I can confirm that people who follow the laws—both God’s law and the law of the land—avoid a lot of the disasters that happen to people who don’t. But I’m sure you can think of a lot of godly people in the Bible that bad things happened to even though they didn’t break the rules.”
“That’s true,” I said and immediately stumbled over a rock and fell forward. I was profoundly thankful that Todd was a few steps ahead of me, because if he’d been right beside me he might have caught me. I probably would have enjoyed that, but then I would have been worried that he thought I had faked a fall for that purpose. As it was, I just looked clumsy.
“You ok?” He came back to where I was picking myself off the ground. “Sorry, I should have warned you to be careful there.”
“No problem,” I said. “I have eyes—I should have been looking for rocks. No harm done.” I brushed my hands together and smiled as pluckily as I could.
“We’re almost there. See that big rock? We’re going up there.”
“Oh!” It was a massive rock, fifteen feet high at least.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, really. See, if we go up this way it’s more of a gradual slope. I’ll go first and give you a hand.”
He climbed up to a ledge about five feet off the ground and reached his hand down to me. I grabbed it and let him help pull me up. I wished I was in better shape.
“Good,” he said when I was beside him. “Now don’t let go—there’s not much climbing involved here but I don’t want you to slip.” He kept hold of my hand as we made our way up the rock, him leading and me trying to keep up enough that I wasn’t dead weight pulling him down. When we got to the top, he let go of my hand.
“There,” said Todd. “Look at that. Worth it?”
It was. We could see across a valley to the forested mountain on the other side. Far below us
was a river—probably the same one that ran beside Wilkester. Birds wheeled above us in the cloudless sky.
“Breathtaking,” I agreed. “‘When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur…’”
“‘And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,’ added Todd. He smiled. “I thought you might quote something.”
“Sorry,” I said. “One of the hazards of teaching literature is that quotations are always flitting through your mind.”
“Hey, it’s a refreshing change from movie quotes or pop song lyrics, which is what people usually quote.”
“Well, that’s putting a nice spin on it.” I sat down on a flat spot of the rock “I almost don’t want to go back. But Kim and Ed will be out searching for me if I’m not back soon.”
“Here, I’ll text John to let him know where we are.” Todd pulled out his phone and typed a message.
“I suspect you’re a rule-follower, too,” I said as he put his phone back in his pocket and sat down next to me.
“Pretty much. I think it’s more often for the right reasons now, though.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. We sat there silently for a little while and then he took a deep breath and said, “I told you I was married before.”
I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” I squeaked.
“I followed all the rules. I did everything I knew to do to be a good husband. I thought we had a good marriage. I thought we would never have problems because I was doing the right things.”
I had no idea what to say. “How long were you married?” I ventured.
“Three years. I was an elder at the church—it’s a church in Seattle—and she and I went to visit some of our missionaries in India.”
I nodded. “Yes, you told me about going there.”
“When we came back, she told me she was leaving me.”
“But why?”
“She just said she couldn’t do the marriage thing anymore. She walked away from God, from the church, from all our friends…and from me, obviously. No real reason. She said I didn’t do anything wrong, but she just needed to be out of the marriage.”
“That’s horrible!” No other words came to mind.
Todd sat looking out across the valley. “It was totally devastating. Nothing in my Christian experience had prepared me for that.”
“What did you do?”
“There wasn’t much I could do. I begged her to stay, but she left anyway and filed for divorce. She went through church discipline—she didn’t care. I stepped down from being an elder. I ended up leaving the church…not because I had to, but because it was so painful to be there around all the people who had loved us and seen us married, the girls she had been in a discipleship relationship with—all of it.”
“I can imagine.” I said. “How long ago was that?”
“Seven years.”
“And all that time you’ve been hoping she would come back?”
“Oh, no. After a couple years she married someone else. Neither of them claim to be Christians.”
He was silent for a while, so I decided to prompt him.
“When I met you I asked what church you go to, and you said several different ones.”
“Yeah. I had a few bad experiences in the beginning when I was visiting churches. People were friendly at first and then they found out I was divorced and their attitude changed. In some ways I couldn’t blame them—I probably would have done the same thing, before. Especially if it was a man who was divorced, I would have assumed he’d done something wrong, probably very wrong, that caused the problem. But that didn’t really make it easier to deal with. I got into the habit of just going to the worship service at a few different churches and not getting involved in any fellowship groups or committing to any one church.”
“Oh.” I felt wretched. I had assumed all the same things as those people. I couldn’t blame him for not committing to a church right away. In fact, I was impressed that he hadn’t just stayed home.
“But I’ve come to realize, especially talking to your friend Ed, that I need to remedy that. He thinks your church might be a good fit for me.”
“There are wonderful people there,” I said. “I love it. But I can’t guarantee that no one will say something hurtful.”
“I know, but it’s a risk I have to take.”
“True.” I was thinking about the risk in going to PNG and abandoning any faint prospect of ever teaching college again. Maybe that was a risk I had to take.
“We’d probably better get back,” said Todd, standing up and offering me a hand to do the same.
“Yeah,” I said. “We don’t want to miss those marshmallows.” That came out more flippantly than I had meant it to. The poor guy had just spilled his guts to me and here I was acting like we’d been talking about baseball or something. “Sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For probably saying the wrong thing just then.”
He grinned and I relaxed. “You didn’t say the wrong thing. I really don’t want to miss the marshmallows. We just need to go pick up those cones where we left them and then we can eat.”
We didn’t talk much on the way back to where the food was being barbequed, but I felt like we had shared something important. He just needed some fellowship, poor man, and I was glad I had been there to listen without condemning. I was also glad I hadn’t had the opportunity to say anything about his divorce to him before—with my previous assumptions it would no doubt have been something hurtful.
Mia and Ben spotted me before I got to the tables of food and rushed up to show me their prize—they had gotten one of the homemade cookie mixes in a jar.
“And you know what we’re having after the hot dogs?” said Mia. “S’mores!”
“Hey, Todd!” called a voice, and we both turned to see John Ortega waving Todd over toward his family.
“See you later,” Todd said to me before moving off toward his friend.
I could see that Kim was bursting with questions for me, but she was forced to hold off while she was surrounded by her kids clamoring for help with roasting their marshmallows. I helped where I could and then tried to make up for my lack of help earlier by cleaning up as much as I could. The Family Fun Day was winding down, and the sugar-intoxicated kids were starting to get crabby. Their parents began packing up.
“Call me,” Kim told me as she herded her kids toward their minivan. “I mean it!”
“I will,” I said. I watched them drive away and then turned to find Todd right behind me.
“I meant to ask you,” he said, “Do you remember telling me that you were reading that book by Thomas Watson?”
“All Things for Good? Yeah.”
“I was wondering if I could borrow it from you—if you’re finished with it, I mean. I’d like to read it again.”
“Sure, no problem. You can stop by my place and get it on your way home, if you want. You probably drive almost right past my apartment. You can follow me there.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’d like that.”
We drove down the mountain a half-hour later. As his silver car followed mine down the curving road I faced one of my annoying dilemmas: should I invite him in and risk looking forward or just run in and get the book for him and risk looking inhospitable?
In the end I didn’t have to decide. I pulled into my parking space and Todd parked nearby on the street. I walked over to his car, but as soon as he had rolled down his window to talk to me, his phone rang.
“I’ll just run in and get the book for you,” I said, and he nodded as he answered his phone.
I went up the stairs to my apartment, unlocked the door, and opened it.
Total chaos met my eyes. Things were turned over, drawers were pulled out, and books were thrown on the floor. I stood in the middle of the living room and gaped at the mess. There was a sound behind me. It was the last thing I heard before something hit my head and everything went black.
Chapter 13
<
br /> “Katrina.”
Someone was calling my name.
“Katrina, can you hear me?”
My head hurt like it never had before, and I couldn’t open my eyes. I tried to talk but it came out as a moan.
“It’s ok.” The voice sounded relieved. “Everything will be ok. Just lie there. The ambulance is on the way.”
That woke me up a little more. “No,” I whispered. “My insurance won’t pay…”
The voice chuckled. “Forget about it. I’ll pay for it if I need to.”
I wondered who it was. Their voice was familiar, but it didn’t seem to be my dad. I couldn’t think of anyone else. It was easier to rest and keep my eyes closed. I drifted off once more.
When I woke up again I opened my eyes long enough to see that I was in a hospital room and that Kim was sitting in a chair beside my bed, but the light was too bright and I shut them again.
“Kim?” I said softly.
“You’re awake again! Oh, good. I’m supposed to tell the nurse.” I heard her click something.
“It’s so bright in here,” I said. “It’s hard to keep my eyes open. And my head hurts.”
“Here, I have something that will help.” I heard Kim fumble in her bag. “It’s sunglasses,” she explained. “I’ll help you.” I felt the glasses slide onto my face and opened my eyes again.
“That’s better,” I said. “What happened?”
“You got knocked out. Do you remember that?”
I shook my head and regretted it.
“I remember driving down the mountain but that’s it. Did I crash?”
“No. You got home and went into your apartment to get a book for Todd, but you didn’t come out again. Todd waited a few minutes before coming to see if you’d forgotten. He found the door ajar and your apartment trashed and you knocked out on the floor.”
“Oh, a burglary? I was warned about that, I think. In a paper.”
“What?”
Brought to Book Page 15