And I don’t know what to say.
I’ve been praying for the right words. But the boxed up answers, the usual verses, the assurance that the people desperately crave that life is going to be okay isn’t there this time.
I don’t know what to say.
Sometimes we make the words so complicated. We rely on the fancy phrases. The things we’re supposed to say. The things people are accustomed to hearing.
But sometimes people need to hear the truth.
I wish I would have said something different when Stefia sat across from me in my office. I wish I wouldn’t have blathered on about how talented she was or how much everyone loved her. Why did I say all the same things everyone else had told her forever? She could have heard that from anyone.
But she came to me.
I should have said she mattered because she was a child of God.
I should have said she mattered because God loved her.
I should have said the things she did or didn’t do made no difference.
No.
What I should have simply said was that she mattered. Not because she’d helped build a theater in a tiny town. Not because she was beautiful. Not because people would admire her for keeping the baby and doing the right thing. I should have told her she mattered, just because she did. Because everyone matters. Any person above her on the ladder of fame and every person she might have stepped on during her climb to the top. Every person who died on that stage with her down to the person who mopped up the blood and patched up the bullet holes. They all matter.
Just because they do.
The truth. That’s what Stefia wanted to hear from me. Not the nicely packaged thing that looks like truth, but the real truth. The sour one that stings and screams and bleeds.
Perhaps that’s what the people sitting in the sanctuary need to hear. Not that life is great and that God is good. What they need to hear is that, more often than not, life stings and burns and knocks out your front teeth. Life begs you to keep going while It ties your laces together and throws sand in your eyes. And yes, God is there, God is always there.
But that doesn’t mean the sand in your eyes doesn’t sting. It doesn’t mean you won’t trip over your laces.
Things need to be acknowledged. People’s pain. People’s mistakes. We need to stop washing over it all with a milky film that blurs our vision and messes up our path.
So why don’t we?
Why don’t we tell the truth?
I’ll tell you why.
Because the real truth is there were not just six souls that were taken in the tragedy at the theater, there were seven. And somehow when Stefia gave me the power of knowing that, she took away my desire to say anything about it. Now I am bound by a truth that only I know.
Dear Lord, I must respectfully disagree with you. Because in this particular instance, knowing the truth has not set me free.
-Gage-
I once read a book that focused on how life’s smallest decisions can have the longest lasting effects. It’s ironic; huge earth shattering events starting with one seemingly insignificant choice.
Decisions matter. Every single one of them. Don’t let anyone tell you they don’t.
On a gut level, I think we know this—that the big things are made up of little things and that every choice affects something else. And yet we can’t make that our focus. We can’t let it paralyze us into not being able to make a decision at all.
Mindy and I had been dating for five months. We had a Thursday night off together—a rare occurrence for the horrific work schedules we kept—and we planned a special night out. I asked where she wanted to go and she surprised me by answering opening night of What You Can’t See at the Crystal Plains Theater.
“A show?” I asked. “At Crystal Plains?”
“You don’t like theater?”
It’s not that I didn’t like theater. I liked theater just fine. I just wasn’t a fan of Granite Ledge. I decided not to tell her that—because decisions matter—and bought tickets for the upcoming show.
At 5:30 that Thursday night, I knocked on her door. She giggled like a schoolgirl at the sight of me standing on her front step holding a rose.
“You know, you don’t have to knock on my door. You can just come in.”
I smirked and handed her the flower.
“But,” she said, taking the bloom and pulling it to her nose, “you can bring me one of these anytime.”
She coiled her arms around my waist, hitting the butt of my gun. Her lips turned down in a disappointment that she was getting lazy about hiding.
“Do you have to bring that with?”
It wasn’t that I had to. It was that I never went anywhere without it. Habit, I guess.
“We’re not heading to the big city, Gage. It’s Granite Ledge. Population, like, ten people.”
She kept her arms around me but the snuggle loosened as she searched my face for some clue I’d take the gun off. But decisions matter and I didn’t want to lie.
“Mindy, I’m allowed to carry. So I do.”
I carried because decisions matter.
**
I’d scored pretty fabulous last minute tickets because of someone else’s cancellation so we found ourselves watching the show from the second row of seats. We settled into the crimson colored upholstered chairs that looked as though they’d been stolen from an old movie theater. Mindy set her purse between her feet and paged through the program the ushers had handed out.
“Aw, I love this!” she said, pointing to one of the pages. “It’s such a nice touch when they put the actors’ headshots in the program. It’s kind of neat to see what they look like in real life.”
I wasn’t going to look through it. I could have cared less what any of them looked like offstage, but out of some desperate desire to seem interested in things that mattered to my date, I decided to page through.
The smallest decisions set the largest events in action.
I saw her there, a face staring back from a black and white photo meant to appear spontaneous but obviously posed and well paid for. Her lips were parted perfectly, her hair falling in wisps around her face…and those eyes. I’d remember those bottomless but impenetrable eyes anywhere.
I shook my head, wanting to believe it could have been a twin. It could have been a doppelganger. It could have been my head playing tricks on me. But then I saw her name—Stefia Lenae Krist—and I knew.
And I remembered.
Because decisions always matter.
**
Two years earlier, I was six months in on my first job as a cop. I knew my position with the Granite Ledge department wasn’t permanent. I had been waiting for a job to open up with Becker County where I was originally from. But I needed the experience and the money so Granite Ledge was as good a place to start as any.
It must have been October of that year; the sharp air caused locals to predict an unusually cold winter headed our way. I remember the crunch of leaves as I walked from my squad up to her house. The door rasped when she quickly pushed it open to meet me, her eyes huge and anxious.
“Oh my god, did something happen to dad?” she asked.
“No, no. Everything is fine,” I said, noting the fear on her face. “I’m here to ask you a few questions. Can I come in?”
She pushed the door open the rest of the way so I could step inside and immediately invited me to sit at the dining room table.
“God,” she said, as she sat down across from me, “when I first saw you pull up I was sure dad had been in an accident. Then when you said questions…wait, is this something about my mom?”
“Your parents aren’t here, then, I take it?”
The report that had been filed said Stefia was fifteen. She didn’t look fifteen. I knew that blessing was probably a double edged sword to live with.
“Dad is at work,” she said, moving several scattered papers into a pile at the end of the table. “He leaves at 5:30 am and gets home about 7:30
pm. We don’t see him a lot.”
“And your mom?”
“Moved out a year or so ago.”
She repeatedly squared up the papers, matching the corners and gently bumping the pile against the table like a deck of cards she was ready to deal out.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m here to ask you some questions about a…” I flipped open the notepad I had in my shirt pocket. “Niles Connelly? He’s your…”
“Neighbor,” she finished.
“And…anything else?”
“He’s the owner of the theater I work at.”
I tapped a pen at my notebook. “I’m here to ask you about your relationship.”
“My relationship…with Niles?”
**
The house lights dimmed and a hush settled over the audience like a blanket. Mindy reached over and took my hand. I wished I had popcorn. Or a beer. I kind of wished I was anywhere else.
And yet, there was something magical about an audience awaiting a show. You could feel the energy, like a thread of anticipation weaved throughout the people wanting to be entertained.
Show me something.
Show me something worth it.
Music began from the orchestra pit just ahead of us and it occurred to me that I knew little regarding the show we were about to see. I hadn’t asked anything about it when Mindy announced she wanted to go, nor had I read anything online when reserving tickets. Mindy had only said it was an intense show that I’d enjoy.
“You know, because you’re intense,” she had said.
“Am I?”
I didn’t really think I was intense. I thought of myself more black and white. Logical. Matter-of-fact.
“You’re one way or the other,” Mindy explained. “There’s nothing wishy-washy about you. And that’s intense.”
I had smirked at her then, just like I smirked at her as she sat next to me, giddy like a little kid waiting for the curtain to open.
Things looked different from the second row. The actors moved across the stage so closely I could have reached out to touch them. I could see the microphones wound into their wigs and the powder used to set their stage makeup. I could even see the mist coming from their mouths as they delivered lines. Things looked so different up close and I soon found myself lost in a bubble of spit I saw hanging on the lead actor’s lips.
And then Stefia appeared.
She snaked across the stage in a simple red dress, the shortness of the hem accentuated by red stilettos she must have taken lessons on how to walk in. She pivoted on the balls of her feet like she’d switched directions on a catwalk, then she stopped to stare at the actor she shared center stage with. Did she know the eyes of every man in the audience were traveling the length of her legs, willing the edge of her dress to jack up higher?
Mindy playfully smacked my thigh and I realized my mouth was hanging open so far it looked like my jaw had come unhinged. I squeezed her thigh and gave a quick smile.
“She’s too young for you,” Mindy jokingly admonished in a whisper.
The way she looked had nothing to do with my mouth hitting the floor. I was surprised simply for the fact it was her.
She had to be a senior by now—seventeen? eighteen?—but even without seeing her headshot in the program I would have known it was her. It was those eyes. The ones that had stared at me from across the dining room table that October. The ones that had questioned and gotten angry.
**
“Did Elliot put you up to this?” she had asked on that afternoon two years ago. Her question stabbed sharply at the thick air.
“I can’t tell you who filed the report.”
“You don’t even have to tell me who it was. I know who it was. Who else would make up such a stupid story?”
I set my jaw and fixed my eyes in an unemotional stare.
“It’s amazing what a guy will do when he’s a little jealous, right?” she said. “I can’t believe he went to you guys with this made up crap…”
She slammed the papers down on the table, undoing the perfect pile she’d spent the length of our conversation creating. She was so angry at whoever Elliot was that I almost wanted to defend him and let her know it wasn’t even a guy who had filed the report. It was a classmate who had moved to town the year before and claimed she’d seen a much older man kissing Stefia in an old green Cutlass after school. She’d played detective and supposedly tracked the vehicle to Stefia’s neighbor, Niles Connely.
Stefia continued on her tirade against Elliot and was close to convincing me everything between her and Niles was perfectly innocent. An actress of the finest measure, she might have distracted many well-meaning questioners with her witty responses and a flip of her hair. Most people would have easily believed there was nothing going on. And I might have believed her too, if it weren’t for her eyes.
I’ve seen and heard a lot of strange things in my job—unbelievable things. You spend enough time on the darker side of life and pretty soon you naturally seek out the explanations that most people don’t realize exist. I was carefully aware of the squint in her eyes as she spoke, the abstract anger she hurled around the room. It all told me something else was going on and that she had firmly decided not to say a word about it.
Decisions matter, and I can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.
Did I believe her? No. But it really didn’t matter either way. Police work often doesn’t pan out like in the movies. We don’t sneak around and search for clues. We can’t just pretend we have a reason for wanting to know or being somewhere we shouldn’t be. More often than not, if the cards don’t line up, there is simply nothing we can do. If Stefia wouldn’t say anything, I had to move on.
And no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn’t say a thing.
But then the victim almost never does.
**
Stefia continued her parade around the stage, now in a more conservative costume, angry at something another actor had said to her character. I’d missed the exchange while my mind wandered, and I worked to get back into the plotline of the play.
“You don’t have a clue,” Stefia bawled across the stage. “You don’t know anything about what’s going on…”
“How can I know if you won’t tell me?” her fellow actor spit back. He pounced at her, taking both wrists and shaking her.
God, how often I’d felt that way when talking to the victim. I wanted to shake them. Slap them. Grab them by the face and push their lips open.
Why can’t you just tell me?
Open up and say something.
The world is so full of noise and yet void of the things that need to be said. And as Stefia regurgitated lines that someone else had written down, I couldn’t help but wonder if the stage was where she finally got out the things she needed to say without the commitment of having admitted them.
They were just lines, right? She was only reading lines.
Some might have said I was over-analyzing the situation. Others might have thought it was just part of being a cop and looking deeper than I needed to. I called it being careful. Paying attention. Not being fooled twice.
Not that she’d fooled me the first time. Like I said, I’d guessed as I sat across from her at the dining room table that afternoon that she wasn’t telling the full story. But six months later at Beidermann’s completely confirmed it.
At least it did for me.
I’d been hired at Becker County as their newest deputy and Chief Randall decided a shake at Beidermann’s was an appropriate send off. So after I signed off as an officer with Granite Ledge for the last time, I met Randall in the parking lot of Beidermann’s.
“I hate to see you go, kid,” he said as we waited in line at the outdoor counter. It was unusually warm for April and I was looking forward to the cool ice cream sliding down my throat.
“Thanks, Chief.”
“But I know Becker is where you really wanted to work,” he continued. “I’m glad they hired you. They’re getting a fine
addition to their department.”
He slapped me on the shoulder and turned to place our order.
“Two banana split shakes,” he told the girl behind counter, and handed her cash to pay.
Chief Randall then made small talk with the girl who whipped up our shakes, something about a surgery the girl’s mother had scheduled for the following week. I politely nodded along to their conversation, but found myself distracted by the old green Cutlass that had pulled into the parking lot.
The driver’s side door opened and a tall and distinguished looking gent who I guessed to be in his late 40s stepped out. He dressed as though he didn’t belong in small town Minnesota; his perfectly tailored skinny slacked suit gave him the appearance of someone merely passing through, possibly lost.
Ah. Niles Connelly, the eccentric and wealthy part owner of the Crystal Plains Theater. He walked around to the other side of the car and leaned down to his passenger through the open window. He flashed a dazzling smile at whoever sat there, then walked towards the outdoor counter to place his order.
Paying no attention whatsoever to the conversation Chief Randall was having, I slowly moved away from the counter to get a better look at who was sitting in the passenger seat. When my suspicions were confirmed, I casually moved towards the car, approaching it from the back bumper.
“Gosh, Niles,” Stefia said when she sensed me coming up by her window. “You’re always so fast.”
Then she looked up from where she sat.
Two things happened at exactly the same moment. One of them was that Stefia realized I wasn’t Niles. The second was that I noticed Stefia’s skirt was cinched up on her left leg—so high that I could see the turquoise colored lace on the edge of her panties.
“Just your neighbor?” I said, watching her fingers clasp at the hem of her skirt as she slowly pulled down the fabric to cover her thigh.
She stared straight ahead out the windshield like I wasn’t even there. I put my hand on the roof of the Cutlass and bent down so she could see my face.
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