Kate couldn’t tell what the rest of the audience was doing, but there was no sound from them, not even a cough or the timid clearing of a throat.
After a moment, Ethan spoke again. “Thanks for that,” he said softly.
When Kate looked up, she was surprised to see that many faces in the audience were streaked with tears. And only then felt the tears on her own cheeks.
“That’s the hardest thing I’m going to ask of you today,” Ethan said. “So you can relax now.”
Nervous laughter, like the chirping of birds settling down for the evening, rose in response.
“I want to thank Secretary Osbourne—or I guess I should say ex-Secretary Osbourne—for that . . . unexpected introduction. Now I finally understand the meaning of the phrase ‘a tough act to follow.’”
More laughter, easier now, relaxed, the kind of laughter reserved for hanging out with friends.
“I hadn’t really intended to talk about any of this here. Not today. I wanted to talk about my mom, Lisa. And I’m still going to do that. But suddenly there’s all this other stuff in the way, surprising and slightly scandalous stuff. Well, okay. It’s out there now. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud to be Mr. Osbourne’s great-grandson, and I’m proud to be the son of his granddaughter, Kate Skylar, an incredible woman I just met for the first—no, the second—time a couple of days ago. That’s her behind me. Say hi to everybody, Kate.”
Kate waved her hand somewhat sheepishly.
“Hi, Kate!” came another voice from the audience.
“I’m going to tell you what it was like for Kate all those years ago. I’m going to tell you the story just as she told it to me. She was seventeen years old, the only child of a wealthy and prestigious family of staunch Catholics from South Carolina. A lot of expectations were riding on her let me tell you. Not just the expectations of her parents, but the expectations of her grandfather, Mr. Osbourne, a man of some ambition, who goes by ‘Papa Jim’ at home. Now, Papa Jim was already a rich and powerful man, but the one thing he’d never been able to acquire was the one thing he wanted most: a son. A male heir to carry on the family name and business. So first and foremost, Kate was expected to give Papa Jim what he wanted. Not a son, not a grandson, but a great-grandson. A male heir. All this was pretty much taken for granted the way such things are, rarely if ever talked about but understood by everybody concerned. Papa Jim held the purse strings down there, and the loosening and tightening of those strings was a language unto itself.
“Then one day, out of the blue, Kate discovered she was pregnant. And she knew she hadn’t slept with anybody. Ever. Well, you can imagine how that went over! To say that her story was greeted with skepticism would be putting it mildly. Her folks begged her to tell them the name of the father. When that didn’t work, they threatened her. But through it all, Kate stuck with her story. She knew the truth . . . but she also had to wonder if she was going crazy. Because girls just did not get pregnant without certain events taking place, and none of those events, or any events remotely similar to them, had taken place or come close to taking place.
“Well, one girl did. Once, a long time ago. A girl by the name of Mary, no older than Kate herself. When Kate thought of that, she wondered if maybe she too had been chosen by God to bear Him a child. She didn’t understand how that could be, because Mary, after all, was born without sin, the Immaculate Conception, and Kate had plenty of sins on her conscience. But this time around, God wasn’t looking for another Mary. He wanted a regular girl, a girl who sometimes had bad thoughts and did bad things. A girl who wasn’t born a saint but, like every human being, had the potential to become one. A girl who would not give birth to the Son of God, but to the Son of man.
“After a lot of trials and tribulations I won’t get into now, Kate gave birth to her child, in a remote Italian nunnery where she’d been sent by Papa Jim. That child was me. She held me in her arms and named me Ethan. And then, just like Papa Jim told you, I was whisked away from that place and given into the safekeeping of Lisa and Gordon Brown, here in Olathe. I never saw my birth mother again until two days ago, which was also when I met Papa Jim for the first time and learned about our relationship and his role in my life. Of course I forgave him. If he separated Kate and me, he also reunited us. And besides, if not for him, I never would have known Gordon and Lisa, the people I’ll always think of as my earthly parents.”
Ethan paused to take a sip of water from a glass on the podium. The audience was rapt, almost entranced, hanging on his words. Kate felt incredibly exposed, as if she were standing naked in front of all these people, and yet she didn’t feel at all embarrassed. She wasn’t sure what she felt, what name to put to it.
“What happened to Kate was terrible,” Ethan continued. “Believing I was dead, she never tried to find me. She missed out on almost twenty years of motherhood. And I missed knowing the stubborn and courageous woman who brought me into the world, who protected me even before I was born, when her own parents pressured her to have an abortion. God knew how fiercely she would fight for me, despite her doubts and fears. That’s why He chose her above all other women. He had faith in her, even when she lost faith in Him and in herself.
“Anybody who’s ever glanced through the Bible knows that it can seem as much a curse as a blessing to be chosen by God to do something. Some of the greatest prophets spent a lot of time and energy trying to get out from under the obligations that God had laid on their shoulders, responsibilities they hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. Even Jesus prayed for the cup and its bitter contents to be taken away. But while God may set events in motion, He doesn’t stack the deck. We always have the freedom to deny Him, to reject what He asks of us. After life itself, it’s His greatest gift to us, this freedom to choose for ourselves whether to embrace God or spurn Him.
“All of us are here on this earth for such a short time! During that time, we make hundreds of thousands of critical decisions. Millions of temptations assail us. Crime, corruption, greed, power, lust. How do we choose correctly? Where should we look for answers, for guidance? The Bible? The Koran? The priests, the preachers, the imams? Do they have the answers we seek? No. By all means, read the Bible. Read the Koran. Listen to the priests and the imams. But in the end, follow your heart. Do what you know is right, not what is easy. Question the forbidden and the permitted. Embrace and practice your beliefs. Put them to the test. Don’t let others discourage you. Be your own moral compass. Don’t be afraid, the needle will always point to God. It was built that way.”
At this, Ethan smiled suddenly, as if he’d just caught a glimpse of his reflection from an unexpected angle and saw something amusing or absurd in the view. “All that goes for me, too,” he said. “Don’t take what I’m saying as some kind of absolute truth. I’m not here to lay down the law. I’m one of you. That’s what it means to be the Son of man. I don’t get a pass on these lessons just because my dad’s the principal of the school! I have to learn them the same as everybody else, learn them bit by bit through hard experience, making mistakes as I go, because that’s the only way to learn. I mean really learn. God doesn’t want us to memorize rules and regulations and repeat them back like robots. We’re more than that. He wants us to find our way to Him genuinely, to cut our own trail through the wilderness, not follow a path worn smooth by countless other feet. He wants us to bow our heads to him not as slaves but as free people, who freely acknowledge a higher power than themselves, who are humble in the face of all we do not and cannot know, and who have faith in God’s abiding love for us. In embracing God, we embrace our own best and truest selves. And in embracing our best and truest selves, we embrace God. You don’t need to be a Catholic or a Christian for that. You could be a Muslim or a Mormon, a Buddhist or a Jew. Or an agnostic. Or even an atheist. That doesn’t matter to God. Those are just labels we put on ourselves. God sees under the labels. He sees us as we really are. And you know what? He loves us anyway.
“Love is an amazing thing. It
’s the greatest miracle of all. Without love, there wouldn’t be any miracles. It’s the stuff that miracles are made of. Even the ordinary kind of miracles, the ones that we’re so used to seeing that we forget how miraculous they really are. If you think about it, those kinds of miracles are just as wondrous as raising someone from the dead. Actually, they’re even more wondrous, because they don’t just happen once. They happen all the time. We think that because they do happen all the time, there’s nothing miraculous about them. But we couldn’t be more wrong. I’m talking about miracles like sunrise. Like snowfall. A child’s laughter. Or a mother’s smile.
“Behind me, in this funeral home, lies the body of my mother, Lisa Brown. Maybe Lisa didn’t give birth to me like Kate did, but she was chosen by God just the same, chosen by Him to teach me about the selflessness of love, the joy and satisfaction of sacrifice, the happiness and fulfillment that can be found in even the smallest tasks and diversions of everyday life. She taught me about faith and forgiveness. About duty and responsibility. About bravery. She gave her life to protect me, gave it up without hesitation even though it had just been restored to her, and was for that reason more precious than ever. She gave it up knowing that there would be no coming back this time. Why did she throw herself in front of me, shielding my body with her own and taking the bullets intended for me? Did she think, ‘I’ve got to save the Son of man!’ No. It was her son that she saved, not the Son of man. Maybe you think that any mother would have done as much, and as selflessly. Maybe so. But she wasn’t my mother, was she? My mother is right here on stage.”
Again, Kate felt that sense of exposure. But again, she didn’t feel embarrassed. Nor did she feel jealous or envious of Lisa. No, she felt something quite different. And this time, at last, she did have a name for it.
She felt loved.
“Do you see what a miracle love really is?” Ethan asked as if reading her mind, addressing her specifically out of all the crowd . . . though she realized a second later that it must be the same for everyone listening, not just here but those watching on TV or on the Internet. Ethan was speaking to each one of them directly.
“When the gunman pointed his weapon and fired,” he said, “it didn’t matter to Lisa that I wasn’t her flesh and blood. It didn’t matter to her that I was the Son of man. She didn’t even think about those things. She acted. She acted out of love. That’s what a miracle is. Love in action.” Ethan spread his arms out wide to either side. “That’s what all this is. God’s love in action. And we’re part of it, all of us. How cool is that?”
Father O’Malley stared at the wall-screen TV in Cardinal Ehrlich’s office as though spellbound. At first, as Ethan spoke, the cardinal had interrupted with sarcastic asides, but soon he’d fallen silent, and the two men had watched wordlessly. For his part, O’Malley had been a bundle of nerves, knowing that the Congregation was going to strike but not knowing when or how it would happen . . . and knowing, moreover, that his life depended upon whatever was about to take place, or rather on how well Osbourne had prepared for it. Somehow, in the arrangement of the munchies and plainclothes security personnel scattered through and around the audience, there was a pattern that Grand Inquisitor would interpret as proof of O’Malley’s guilt or innocence. But if there was any such pattern, O’Malley couldn’t see it. Perhaps it was a bluff, and the pattern Grand Inquisitor was looking for was not there in the pavilion behind the Olathe Funeral Home but here in Cardinal Ehrlich’s office, in O’Malley’s body language. Was he betraying himself with every blink of his eyes? He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. There was nothing he could do but watch and wait.
And pray.
But then a strange thing happened. In the midst of his anxiety, he began to pay attention to Ethan’s words, and those words, as well as the voice that delivered them, slipped into his ears and over his worried brain like a soothing balm. They were like a new kind of food, a nourishment he’d been starving for his entire life without knowing it, and something in him responded, answering like a bell answers the hammer that strikes it. Oh my God, he thought. He could feel something vibrating inside him. He wanted to fall to his knees, but he was afraid that his body would shatter like a wine glass.
“Are you all right, Father O’Malley?”
It took him a moment to realize that Cardinal Ehrlich was addressing him. O’Malley blinked and saw that Ethan had finished speaking. On one side of him stood his mother, a rapturous smile on her face. His greatgrandfather stood on the other side, furiously chomping at an unlit cigar. The audience was on its feet, applauding and cheering.
“Father?”
With an effort, O’Malley tore his eyes from the screen. He cleared his throat, but even so, his voice was shaky. “That . . . that was quite a speech, Your Eminence.”
“Speech? It was a damn sermon.” Ehrlich gave a sour frown. “The boy is undoubtedly gifted. But what is the source of his gifts, eh?”
O’Malley had no answer. He turned back to the screen and gave a small groan. The knowledge of what was impending had returned to strike him like a physical blow. How had he forgotten?
“Can I get you some water, Father?”
O’Malley shook his head. Damn Ehrlich and his punctilious cruelties. No matter what Grand Inquisitor determined, O’Malley’s conscience was clear. He wasn’t guilty of anything.
Something was happening at the pavilion. As Ethan turned to go back into the funeral home, a member of the audience shouted his name in a strident and peremptory tone that caught his attention and compelled his response. The cameras zoomed in as though scenting blood.
It was a girl. Or rather, a young woman. About Ethan’s age. Pretty, but her features were twisted with some kind of emotional agony that made O’Malley wince with pity.
“Oh my, what have we here?” purred Ehrlich.
And O’Malley knew that the trap had been sprung. Not a bomb after all. But what?
Papa Jim was fuming. He’d been sandbagged. Ethan had ignored the speech that he’d agreed to read, instead launching into a rambling but powerful sermon that had swayed Papa Jim’s heart but not his head. Even as he’d listened, moved by emotions that hadn’t stirred within his breast in years, Papa Jim realized with crystalline clarity that his great-grandson was going to prove a lot more difficult to control than he’d imagined. The effort of standing there on stage beside him as the words of the speech glimmered unread on the teleprompter and very different words, dangerous words, came dancing out of Ethan’s mouth to transfix the audience, had been almost more than he could bear. He’d wanted to go storming off, not just because he was angry but because he had been touched so unexpectedly. He was in pain and wanted to get away from the source of that pain. But he forced himself to remain, grinning—or was it grimacing—around his cigar, the end of which he’d ground to bits of leaf between his teeth by the time Ethan was finished and the audience was applauding enthusiastically.
Papa Jim joined right in, chomping on what was left of the cigar, glad that his torment had nearly reached its end. As soon as they were away from prying eyes and cameras, he would set Ethan straight about the nature of their partnership and the role Ethan was expected to play within it. Hopefully no permanent damage had been done with this extemporaneous sermon. He didn’t think so, but he wanted to check the initial polling results to make sure. At least Denny had done his job and kept the Congregation assassins at bay.
Finally, with a last wave, Ethan turned and began to make his way back into the funeral home, flanked by Papa Jim and Kate.
“I’m so proud of you, Ethan,” Kate said. “I know Lisa would—”
She was interrupted by a voice from behind them. “Ethan! Ethan, I have to talk to you!”
Even before he saw who was shouting, Papa Jim knew that it spelled trouble. He recognized the voice as a woman’s, and in his experience, women did not use that tone of voice in public unless they either meant to cause trouble, which was bad enough, or were too far gone to know or care what th
ey were causing, which was worse.
Beside him, Ethan stiffened, and a look of pain came to his face. But it was gone almost immediately. He turned.
“Hello, Mags,” he said.
Papa Jim looked on, aghast. It was the girl, Maggie Richardson. Maggie was a central figure in the files Papa Jim had hurriedly compiled on Ethan. She was one of his two oldest friends, the other being the boy, Peter, who was now attempting to make his way toward Maggie from the other side of the pavilion, where exiting audience members had stopped to watch the fun. Papa Jim knew from the files that Ethan and Maggie had been boyfriend and girlfriend for years, but only now did it occur to him that she hadn’t been present at the press conference, nor had Ethan mentioned her in the days since.
They must have had a fight, he realized. A falling out. And now it’s going to all come crashing out in the open, all the ugliness of young love gone bad. That’ll topple him from his pedestal! Damn, I should have seen it coming. I should have told Denny to watch out for her. But I was so focused on the Congregation, I didn’t think about anything so. . . mundane.
He looked on helplessly. There was nothing to be done. Across the room, Denny caught his eye and raised a questioning eyebrow. Papa Jim hesitated. This was going to look bad enough already. He didn’t want to make things worse.
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