Destiny Calls

by Lydia Michaels

  He lost track of time. What did time matter anyway? He had an eternity ahead of him with nothing to look forward to. His facial hair grew in, and he didn’t see why he should shave. He needed to bathe and was becoming ill from being trapped in this stuffy room, but he had nothing to get up for.

  He often wondered about Dane. He couldn’t bring himself to contemplate Cybil and what had become of her. Such a waste. He often thought of Destiny and wondered what she was doing.

  One morning he woke up and suddenly got out of bed. He bathed and dressed, but left his facial hair as it was. He was tired of looking like someone he would never measure up to. He wanted to look like Cain, not Adam.

  Cain walked past Annalise and Gracie who were sitting in the kitchen. All talking stopped when he walked through, but he kept moving. He readied a horse and carriage and quickly was on his way. As he drew closer to where he needed to be, the rain gave way to warmer spring air, laced with the scent of fresh blooms. He reached the town an hour later and pulled his buggy over in an empty lot. He tied off his horse and searched for what he was looking for.

  He finally saw it in the window of a small privately owned antique store called Mark Peanuts. He pushed through the door, and a small bell chimed as the door closed behind him.

  “M’help you?”

  “The television you have in the front window, does it work?”

  “Should,” the clerk said, making a disgusting sucking noise with his tongue through the space of his front teeth.

  “Do you have electricity I could use to test it out?”

  The man grumbled and pointed to a plug in the wall. He then placed a rickety old chair in front of the plug. “You can move it, but you break it, you buy it. Don’t see what one of you Godly types want a TV for anyway, but have at it.”

  Cain lifted the small television set and carried it to the wall. He plugged it in and moved the dials around. The glass screen snapped on, and the hairs of his arm rose from the static electricity.

  “Ain’t gonna get a clear channel without one of those cable boxes the cable companies rent. Don’t think they’re compatible with an old set like that. They do that so we gots to keep spending money on new things, but I guess you fellows don’t gotta worry ’bout stuff like that.” The man laughed as if he’d said something amusing. Cain ignored him.

  A channel came in, and Cain backed up. He fumbled with the wires.

  “You lookin’ for some’in p’ticular?”

  “Channel Six.”

  The man grunted. He had an odor about him that Cain didn’t particularly care for. “That should come in fine.”

  When Cain found the channel, he sat back and waited. “What time does the news come on?”

  “Lunchtime. You got’s about ten minutes.”

  Cain sighed and waited. “You on the run or some’in? Checking to see if you wanted?” The man chuckled at his wit again.

  “Take a nap.”

  His eyes closed, and he drooped slowly to the side of the counter, landing on the dusty floor with a thud. The bell above the door chimed and without taking his eyes off the television, Cain said, “Shop’s closed. Come back in an hour.”

  “I don’t think so, bredder.”

  Cain jerked around and saw Adam standing by the counter. His brother leaned over and took notice of the clerk snoring softly with his mouth open. Rather than explain, he asked, “What are you doing here, Adam?”

  “I came to ask you the same question.”

  “It’s none of your business. I’m not harming anyone. Go away.”

  Rather than leave, Adam leaned his hip against the counter and made himself comfortable. The news program started with a serious man sitting at a desk listing various topics of the hour, and then an upbeat song played as images flashed over the small gray screen with people smiling gaily doing an odd selection of random activities.

  When the music stopped, the man at the desk was there again. He reported on crime in the Middle East, an airplane crash, a line of convenience store robberies, and the upcoming traffic report. The longer he droned on, the more impatient Cain grew.

  There was a string of advertisements, and then the man was back. Finally he said her name. Cain held his breath and felt Adam scrutinizing him.

  “Thanks, Mike. I’m here at the new local skate park where kids are enjoying this beautiful spring weather.” Young English children zoomed up and down hills in the background. “This is Cameron,” she said, gesturing to a young boy by her side with curly hair. “He’s twelve and lives about twenty minutes from here. What do you think of the new skate park, Cameron?” She held her microphone out to the kid.

  The boy smiled. “I think it’s awesome.”

  “Did your parents bring you here today for the opening?”

  “Yeah. My mom. She’s over there. Hi, Mom!”

  Destiny took the microphone back and smiled. “As you can see, Mike, the new skate park is off to a great start. A donation was made for the park by town native and skate legend, Chris Farrel, who we interviewed last fall when the ground broke on this project.” Grinning down at the boy, she said, “Looks like Chris Farrel may not be the last skate champion this town produces! Back to you, Mike.”

  The screen switched back to the man at the desk, and Adam leaned forward and switched off the set. “Can we go now?”

  Cain stared at the blank screen a minute longer. “Did she look happy to you? I thought she looked kind of sad. Do you think she’s been eating right? Something didn’t seem right about her.”

  “Cain.” Adam sighed. “What do you want me to tell you? She looked like an English news reporter doing her job.”

  Cain shook his head. “But what if something’s wrong? What if she needs help or has run into some sort of trouble?”

  Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. “How long do you plan to go on like this? You let her go. There’s nothing else you can do. Do you plan on continuing to torture yourself over a woman you cannot have?”

  “If you couldn’t have Anna, how long would it take you to forget about her?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why, because she’s your mate?” Cain’s brow creased. “Well, she’s my mate, too. Maybe I changed my mind. Maybe I want her back now. How do you feel about that?”

  Rather than allow himself to be baited, Adam only shook his head sadly. “What are you doing, Cain? This isn’t about Anna.”

  Cain let out a deep breath and hung his head. “That’s the problem, Adam. Since Anna, it will never be about anyone else. She was my one chance at destiny, and you have her. I have nothing. All I have is a bleak eternity to spend by myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Cain. I wish I knew how to make this better for you, but I don’t. All I can tell you is that while you may not have a mate out there, you do have a family here. We do not take pleasure in seeing you like this. Come back to the farm, clean yourself up, and start moving on.”

  “I don’t want to move on.”

  Adam sagged, defeated. He nodded and turned toward the door. Cain sat in the rickety chair staring at the silent television until the clerk stirred.

  He took the long way home in no rush to get back to his purposeless life.

  * * * *

  In the late spring his mother and father returned from their trip. Cain had never recalled seeing his father so full of life. His mother looked radiant. Her belly swelled with the promise of Cain’s soon-to-be little brother, and he hoped very hard his mother faced no complications with this one.

  That July Larissa and the bishop welcomed their new daughter into the world. Her name was Mariah Abilene King. She had a thatch of black hair just like both her parents and the diamond eyes of her mother.

  It seemed for the first time in over a year, the farm started returning to its regular order. Everyone was busy harvesting both the land and their families while the world outside the farm chugged on by.

  His baby brother was born on a hot August afternoon. His mother was silent throug
h the entire delivery, just promising that if God gave her a healthy babe she would never complain of how he got there. His name was Jadon, which meant “thankful.”

  Cain spent a great amount of time in the safe house visiting Cybil. She never seemed to recognize him as anything more than an enemy, but he came, every day, all the same. He would often read to her and tell her stories. She never spoke and showed no recollection of Dane in any way even though he visited her just as often.

  It made Cain sad to see her in such a state. He refused to consider her to be like the others. While the band of brothers was making some headway in the woods, destroying many of the ill-bred transitions, they had yet to capture Isaiah. They were, however, able to police the woods and work at keeping the English hikers and campers safe. According to the council, it wouldn’t be long before they had him.

  On Cybil’s twelfth birthday he brought her a small cake. He slid it through the bars of her cell, and she slapped it away. Dane had left the safe house distraught that day.

  Dane had the incredible gift to see people’s thoughts. He couldn’t hear them, but he could glean impressions from open minds, mostly from children. He said, other than Gracie, he rarely could see into adult minds. He had confessed to Cain that fall that what he saw in Cybil’s mind frightened him.

  Cain knew the boy regretted insisting that Cain save her, but there was nothing to be done for it now. Cain had sentenced her to an eternity of hell, and he would do his best to keep her safe from those who thought to destroy her and from the danger of herself.

  Time moved on, and the council made no decision regarding Cybil’s fate. Even the unfeeling bishop took pity on Dane and himself. There was such a sense of responsibility for Cybil between the two of them, it somehow united them, each one of them a broken man, trying to be whole.

  His thoughts of Destiny lessened, but never faded. He had learned how to push them away while others were around and saved them for his time alone at night. The harvest would be an outstanding one this year. It rained every night, the moment Cain shut away the rest of the world and allowed his memories of her to run free, crushing his heart.

  There was an epidemic of babies in his small circle. That winter holiday Annalise announced that she would again be bringing a child into this world. Gracie immediately announced it would be a boy, and Annalise had pouted because she wanted to be surprised.

  Mariah proved to be quite an incredible child. With Eleazar as her father and Larissa as her mother, he wasn’t surprised. When she was only just starting to sit up, she showed a talent for pulling items in the room closer to her if she wanted them. Frequently, a rattle would go skittering across the floor only to get grabbed up by her chubby, pink fingers. Larissa was exhausted from intervening when she tried to take away something that wasn’t safe for her. With a talent like that, the child would likely never crawl, but Cain lacked the energy to tease his sister about such things. What was the point?

  Dane’s eighteenth birthday was a sad event. They had tried to make it as special as possible. Jonas had invited him to take a room in their family home, much to Gracie’s disapproval, but the boy declined, saying he would continue on staying with Nana Faith and Ezekiel. Everyone had made Dane a special gift, but knew all he wanted was to be able to share this day with a member of his own family.

  At the end of the night, Gracie had marched up to Dane and, as if it were a chore, pressed a soft peck to his lips. The boy’s stunned face was comical, but what was even more amusing was when he swung Gracie back into his arms and kissed her thoroughly on the mouth. He released her, and she stormed out of the house in a foul temper.

  Every night Cain’s last thought that night, like every night, was of Destiny. He wondered about her often. Worried if she was doing well. Contemplated if she had taken a trip to Portugal lately and hoped if she had, the trip had been safe.

  Every once in a while he thought about her dating other men. He hoped whoever she was spending time with was treating her nicely and not taking advantage of her submissive nature. When he thought about her dating others, Cain usually ended up breaking a piece of furniture, so he tried not to let his mind travel down that road too often. However, Cain was no fool.

  Destiny was a beautiful woman. She was in the prime of her life and had no memory of him. It had been a year, and while Cain thought of her almost every minute of the day, she would never think of him again. There was a chance she was, at this point in time, married and on her way to becoming a mother. That thought made him both happy and sad. Happy that she would be getting something she had always wanted, but sad because it wasn’t with him.

  In the last year he had spent as much time as he could on becoming a better man. He went out of his way to be nice to his younger sister for the first time in his life. He offered to sit with the babies to give the women a break. He spent time trying to be more like Adam, rather than resenting him for being a better male. He got to know sides of his father he had never known. He talked long into the night with his mother and for the first time saw her as a friend. He came to terms with the fact that Anna would never be his, and when he finally stepped back and saw what she and Adam shared, he knew she had never been meant for him at all.

  It had taken him nearly a year of circling memories and regurgitating events only to come to the same conclusion he had started with. He was going to spend eternity alone.

  Chapter 27

  Destiny waited at the same Tuscan restaurant she always patronized on first dates. This would be the eleventh date in the past eleven months. She was strongly considering becoming a lesbian, because every good man out there was either married or gay. The rest were all sad excuses, boys playing at being men.

  She sighed as the bartender placed a tall glass of white wine on a cocktail napkin. He was cute. Her gaze went to his hand. Married. “Thanks,” she said, placing a twenty on the bar.

  They probably thought she was a call girl, coming here every few weeks, dressed up, to meet a different man. But call girls had sex, and Destiny didn’t. She sipped her wine.

  Eric seemed like a decent guy. He worked every day in an IT firm, had a civil divorce under his belt that didn’t involve an insane ex, and his son was six. According to his profile on the dating site he had contacted her through, he was interested in having more children. Everything was looking pretty decent, so tonight would likely be the night she discovered the major flaw that left him single.

  Not that if one was in your thirties and single they were necessarily flawed. She was single. There wasn’t really anything wrong with her, except for the fact that she wasn’t the size-six blonde every man was looking for, but there were men out there who preferred curves. Not everyone wanted to date a surfboard.

  She looked around for her date. He had brown hair and brown eyes. She saw one man, but he was sitting with a date, so that definitely wasn’t him. She hoped tonight would go better than the last time she was here.

  Reno had been awful. He was sexy and funny. Whenever they talked online, she found herself laughing out loud. When they met in person the same vibe was there. Sort of. Reno had a problem with staring at her chest a little too long. He also adjusted himself frequently and publicly, to the point she thought it might be some kind of nervous tic.

  When he had walked her to her car, she predicted he was going to kiss her, and she wasn’t really sure how she felt about that. Destiny figured sexual chemistry was as important as emotional and physical chemistry, so an investigative kiss was necessary.

  The investigation had defected. Reno was a chin licker. Kissing him was like having a run-in with a Saint Bernard by the end of that date.

  Then there was Sal. He was great. Gorgeous, built, spoke with a lovely Italian accent. He was a carpenter and built beautiful furniture. When he mentioned living with his parents, she didn’t judge him. If her parents weren’t in Portugal she’d probably still live with them. There was no point in paying a separate mortgage when a family was close and you were single.
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  It wasn’t until the second date that Destiny told Sal it wasn’t going to work out. He had postponed their dates twice. At first she thought it was just a coincidence that freak things kept coming up. She admired his loyalty to family and how seriously he took his obligations as son. She had always heard women should judge a man by the way he treated his mother. It would likely be the best gauge of how they would someday treat a wife.

  Well, Sal would be a very attentive husband. And if there was a woman out there looking for Mr. Attentive and Creepy, Sal was the man for her. Destiny shivered. She would never forget the evening he had mentioned helping his mom bathe. He slipped it right in between “went to the car wash” and “it was a nice afternoon.”

  Destiny had stared at him, speechless, waiting for him to say he was joking. He didn’t. He just went on and on. Mother really needs a new dress. Mother has this lovely new coat. Mother can’t wear high heels like she used to. Destiny wondered what Father had to say about all this and suspected Sal sometimes dressed in Mother’s fancy coat and high-heeled shoes. She had dropped cash on the table somewhere in the midst of the main course and left. She was sure he told Mother how unmannerly his date was to leave him in the middle of a meal.

  Destiny looked around for her date again. No sign of him. She always came to this restaurant because it was her favorite. If her date bombed, at least she got a good meal.

  “Destiny?”

  She turned and faced the handsome man who was her date. He looked nervous. “Eric?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I’m running a little behind. There was an accident at the exit I had to get off at. Were you waiting long?”

  Her mind automatically tallied points and weighed the sincerity of his words. Accidents happened. He had been coming from about three towns over and the exit closest to the restaurant was a dodgy one. She decided it was an honest excuse for being tardy. Point for honesty.

  He smelled nice. As he took the stool next to her, she breathed in his clean, bottled scent. His cologne was light, probably included the word “aqua” in the title, and he wasn’t swimming in it. Point for good smell.