A Scarlet Cord

by Deborah Raney

  Her dress, a simple street-length shift of satin and lace, had gone in for alterations weeks ago and had finally come back. To her relief, it fit perfectly. Jerica’s dress was a miniature version of Melanie’s—pale pink-tinted beige with creamy lace overlays. Melanie refused to let Joel see his bride-to-be in the dress, but she had finally given in and allowed Jerica to model her dress for Joel. They had dissolved in joyful laughter when the little girl gazed approvingly at her reflection in the mirror, then sighed dreamily and exclaimed, “Oh, I just can’t wait till our wedding.”

  Smiling to herself at the memory, Melanie checked in at the receptionist’s desk, then took the elevator to the second floor. Knocking quietly on Jeanne’s open door, she tiptoed to the bedside.

  The woman stirred in the bed, opened her eyes, and smiled when she saw Melanie. “Hello, there.”

  “Hi, Jeanne. I’m sorry if I woke you. How are you feeling?”

  “Like I was run over by a truck. But don’t tell Darlene I said that. I am starting to get antsy to go home though, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

  Melanie reached out and took her frail hand, squeezing it lightly. “Well, I hope it’s not long before you can go home.” Melanie laid the card and package on the nightstand. Jeanne scooted up in the bed to look at them, while Melanie helped her adjust the firm hospital pillow behind her back.

  “How are those wedding plans coming along?” Jeanne inquired. “It’s just a few weeks away now, isn’t it?”

  “Five weeks, three days, ten hours and”—she looked at her watch playfully—“thirty-seven seconds.”

  Jeanne gave a weak laugh. “I’m so happy for you, Melanie. And Jerica, too. Joel is all she could talk about in Sunday school last time I was there … Her new daddy. Speaking of whom”—her voice held a question mark—“you don’t happen to know where Joel was today, do you?”

  Melanie wrinkled her brow. “Why, he was at work as far as I know … at the church.”

  “Oh … well … Darlene was here just a few minutes before you came in. She said Joel hadn’t come in to the office today. It’s Pastor Don’s day off, so Darlene called Pastor at home, and he didn’t know where Joel was either. They were kind of concerned.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. Pastor told Darlene that he thought maybe Joel had told him last week that he was taking the day off, and he just forgot to mark it on his calendar.” Jeanne Hines leaned forward in the hospital bed. “Just between you and me, Darlene thinks Pastor Don is getting a little forgetful in all the hubbub over this building project.”

  “Hmmm,” Melanie said, ignoring Jeanne’s disclosure, perplexed over the revelation that Joel hadn’t shown up for work. “I didn’t think Joel had any other plans today. I haven’t seen him since church yesterday, but he didn’t mention anything then. I hope he’s not sick.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to worry you. I just thought you might know where he was …” Jeanne’s voice trailed off. An uncomfortable silence followed as Melanie racked her brain to remember if Joel had said anything about taking today off.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” Jeanne said finally. “He’s probably out buying you a wedding present or something, and now I’ve gone and spoiled the surprise.”

  Melanie brushed off the apology. “Oh no. Don’t worry about it.” She looked pointedly at her watch and stood to leave. “Well, I’d better go pick up Jerica. You take it easy now, Jeanne. We’ll be praying for you.”

  “Thank you. And thanks for coming, Melanie. Tell Jerica I’ll treasure her little card.”

  Melanie backed out of the parking lot, her mind turning over Jeanne’s news about Joel. It wasn’t like him to miss work without calling. In fact, now that she thought about it, he had mentioned that he had an especially busy week ahead, because they were going to be finalizing the curriculum for the coming Christian education session.

  Instead of going straight to the LaSalles’ to pick up Jerica, Melanie swung by the church. The parking lot was empty except for Don Steele’s battered VW. She drove by Joel’s apartment, but his car wasn’t there either.

  Fifteen

  “What are you doing here?” Joel stood with one foot against the partially open door, his right hand rigid on the doorjamb. It was a stupid question. He knew exactly what Toliver wanted.

  The burly man shifted his weight and stared at Joel. “Can I come in?”

  Joel moved his foot and opened the door. Toliver stepped into the entryway and started for the living room, but Joel stood in his way.

  “There’s been a new development.”

  “Yeah. Thanks a lot. I read about it in the paper.”

  Toliver seemed to miss the irony in Joel’s voice. “You moved on us, Joe. It took awhile to track you down. That’s good.”

  Joel ignored the comment and waited for Toliver to deliver his news.

  “We have a new witness, Joe. A girl who lived next door to the house that burned. She was in a bit of trouble with the law herself back then. She was afraid to step forward. But she’s ready to testify now. She ID’d you going into the house that night. She never saw you come out, but she witnessed Difinni going in sometime after midnight. The prosecutor thinks we have a case again. But we need you to testify. We won’t lose this time, Joe.”

  His head was spinning. “But … they think I’m dead. If I show up now, the game starts all over again …”

  “If you don’t show up, Difinni will walk again. We have a real chance of getting a conviction this time,” Toliver said. “We need you, Joe.”

  Joel’s heart sank, and he glared at the inspector. Toliver may as well have sentenced him to the gallows.

  It was obvious Toliver knew he had him. “It’ll take a few months is all. You can stay put for now. Nothing has to change. You’re secure. We just need you to be ready when we call. Find a way to take a sabbatical when the court date comes up. When it’s over you can pretend this never happened. Pick up where you left off.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is possible. I don’t think you have a choice.”

  Joel fought to rein his anger in. “You don’t understand. I have commitments here. I have … I have a fiancée … with a little girl.” But he knew in his heart that it was a last-ditch plea against a destiny that had already been decided.

  Toliver puffed out his cheeks and released a stream of breath, leaving no doubt that he saw this as a complication. But he shrugged. “Okay. If we need to, we can bring them in too.”

  “No.”

  “It’s highly unlikely we’d even need to do that, Joe. We’ve got a solid case. The guy won’t get off this time. Chances are this’ll all be a distant memory by Christmas.”

  Christmas was ten months away. And he knew these things sometimes strung out for months beyond the original trial date. “No, John. I won’t drag Melanie into this. I can’t.”

  “Then you’d better tell her good-bye for a while.”

  Joel brought his fist down hard on the counter and gritted his teeth. “I want out! I don’t want anything to do with this! You guys already own half my life. Just leave me alone.”

  “They’ll slap a subpoena on you. You know they will, Joe. My hands are tied. I have my orders.” He glared at Joel, then his eyes softened. “Besides, you don’t want that scum to get away with what he did, do you?”

  Toliver’s words hit their mark, and Joel knew that he could never refuse an opportunity to put the man behind bars forever—the man responsible for Tori’s death and his own exile.

  He pressed the palms of his hands hard on the countertop and slumped in resignation. “What do I have to do?” he breathed.

  With Toliver’s instructions implanted in his brain, Joel moved quickly, packing a few boxes and loading them into the trunk of his car. His gaze panned the small apartment. How easily he had removed every trace of himself from this place. In a few short minutes, it was as though he’d never set foot in Silver Creek, Missouri.

/>   He closed the door and locked it behind him, leaving his keys and a final check for the rent in the mailbox. The tinkle of wind chimes broke through his rising distress, and impulsively he yanked Melanie’s gift from the nail on the eaves. Would there be anything to celebrate on the next tenth of May? Or would he have yet another false date to eschew by then?

  In the Taurus, the cord that hung from the rearview mirror caught his eye. A symbol of his faith in God—and more important, of God’s faithfulness to him. Could he still believe that? Even now? He slipped the cord from the mirror and tucked it into the envelope with the letter he’d written Melanie. He had never told her exactly what the cord meant to him—he never would now—but somehow, it seemed important that Melanie have it. She did know that it represented a scripture that comforted him. Perhaps it would remind her, too, to seek solace in God’s Word.

  Joel’s heart broke as he realized that, because of him, Melanie would have desperate need of solace in the days to come.

  He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine sprang to life. Turning out of the parking lot, he glanced in his rearview mirror. Toliver’s unmarked car followed him at a distance. The inspector would wait while Joel dropped the envelope in Melanie’s mailbox. By the time she discovered it, Joel would be a hundred miles away.

  Melanie picked up Jerica at the LaSalles’, then ran by the grocery store for milk and eggs. It was after 6:30 when she pulled wearily into the driveway.

  Jerica ran back to her room to play, and Melanie changed out of her business suit.

  While she put the groceries away, she absently dialed Joel’s number. It rang four times before the answering machine picked up.

  Even filtered through the phone lines in the form of a recording, Joel’s voice stirred something inside her. She listened with a soft smile on her face until the tone prompted her to leave a message.

  “Hi,” she said softly into the receiver. “It’s me. Just heard you were missing in action. Hope everything’s okay. Give me a call when you get home. I love you.”

  She dropped the phone in the cradle and went to the front door to check the mail. As she pulled a pile of catalogs and other junk mail from the box, she noticed a long ivory envelope with her name on it—no address, no postmark. She recognized Joel’s handwriting.

  She dropped the mail on the hall table and took the letter to the kitchen table. Her hands were trembling as she opened the envelope.

  Later, she would wonder why she had somehow known—even before she opened the envelope—that the letter within would change her life forever.

  Joel sat on the edge of a sagging mattress in a hotel room on the outskirts of Chicago. Another safe house. He almost laughed at the irony of the name. Nothing about this dingy room felt safe.

  He put his head in his hands. He had never felt so alone. He’d thought he had experienced the ultimate loneliness when he’d entered the Federal Witness Security Program the first time. But this was worse. With the advent of Melanie and Jerica into his life, his dreams had been handed back to him beyond anything he could have prayed for. He had experienced restoration, and now, unbelievably, it had been taken from him as cruelly as his very identity had been wrenched from him in the beginning. Even the biblical Job had not had to suffer the loss of his restored life.

  How could he ever trust God again? The only thing that kept a spark of hope aflame within him was the thought of another chance to testify against the man who was responsible for Victoria’s death and now for this exile from everything and everyone he had come to love in Silver Creek. From the day that vile criminal had stolen his past from him, Joel had lived a lie. Against his will, he had been made into someone he was not. Now he didn’t know who he was anymore. It was almost as though he didn’t exist.

  Yet he must exist. For only a living, breathing man could feel this pain that was a physical ache in the region of his heart.

  He picked up the Gideons Bible from the stand beside the bed. Through the veil of his tears, the words rippled and melted into a language he could not interpret.

  He sank to his knees and tried to pray, but the words caught in his throat. A low moan—a voice he didn’t recognize as his own—came from somewhere deep within him. Had God, too, been lost to him?

  If that were so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on living.

  Melanie unfolded the letter and something coiled out onto the table—the thin, red satin cord that had always hung from the rearview mirror in Joel’s car. She twined the braided cord between her fingers, her mind spinning. What was this all about? Trembling, she sank into a chair and tried to make sense of the words on the page in front of her.

  Melanie,

  I don’t know where to begin or how to make you understand what I am about to tell you. I love you with all my heart, but something has happened that makes it impossible for me to stay here. You must trust me that for reasons I cannot explain to you, it is for the best that I go away and that we end our engagement.

  As difficult as I know this will be, you must not hold on to any hope whatsoever that my circumstances will change. Please don’t worry about me. I will be okay, but I will never be free to share your life, and I beg you to go on … even to find happiness with someone else. I don’t know what you’ll tell people, but whatever you do, you must not come looking for me.

  I know you believe you knew me, Melanie, but there is so much you don’t know about me because I have not been totally honest with you. I ask your forgiveness for that. I can’t explain except to tell you that too much of my life has been a lie. But Melanie, you must believe this: My love for you was the one true thing in my life. My feelings for you were never anything but honest and true. My love for you and my faith in God were the only things I could ever count on.

  I am so sorry for disappointing you in this way. And Jerica—I love her as though she were my own daughter. I don’t know how you will explain this to her, but please let her know that I will always love her and pray for her. It would have been a sacred privilege to be a part of your lives. I am so sorry that I have hurt you both … so sorry that it has to end like this. But there is simply no other way.

  You told me once that time heals all wounds. I know now that there is some truth to that, and I pray that time will go quickly for you in the next weeks and months and that you will soon come to a place where you can remember our short time together with a measure of happiness.

  There is nothing more I can say except that I will never forget you. Your love has been a blessing beyond words, and your name will be in my prayers every day for as long as I live.

  With all my love,

  Joel

  She let the letter fall to the table and tried to stop her hands from shaking. It seemed unthinkable that this could be happening. What could possibly have caused Joel to abandon her like this? Especially when he claimed that he still loved her. It didn’t make sense.

  She felt panic rise in her throat, and she willed herself to remain calm, to think things through rationally. But no matter how many times she read the letter over again, no matter how she tried to read between the lines, she could not understand what it meant.

  She picked up the satin cord and ran her fingers along its length. Why had Joel given her this now? Why, when he never would explain its meaning to her beyond telling her that it reminded him of a passage of Scripture that comforted him? She couldn’t imagine what was so personal or secret about it that he would continue to deny her an explanation. She’d always suspected that it had something to do with Tori. That he hadn’t wanted to tell her for fear it would hurt her feelings or make her jealous. But if that were so, why had Joel given her the cord now?

  She felt sick to her stomach. She had to find him, had to talk to him, and find out why he was doing this. But she needed help. Whom should she tell? To whom could she go?

  He had said in his letter that he hadn’t been totally honest with her. What did he mean by that? She remembered the night he had asked her to marry him an
d how he had struggled to tell her about Tori and his former engagement. Had he lied to her then? Was there more to the story than he’d told her?

  And what did he mean that she must not come looking for him?

  Suddenly nothing in her life made sense anymore.

  Sixteen

  Melanie sat woodenly, staring across the kitchen but seeing nothing. Her thoughts were a confusing swirl of senseless words. Her mind swam with sordid possibilities—some too ugly to entertain. She didn’t know what to believe now.

  What if Joel was in some kind of danger? Yet nothing he had ever said gave her a hint of what it could be.

  Suddenly a small voice broke into her musings—

  “Mommy?”

  Jerica! Oh, dear God, how will I ever explain this to her? How could she ever make this precious child understand that she had been robbed of another daddy?

  “Hi, sweetie,” Melanie said, swiping at tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  “It’s okay, Jer. I … I just got some bad news.” She struggled to control her voice.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m … not sure yet, baby. I need to call Uncle Matthew and talk to him. I’ll tell you about it after I talk to Uncle Matt, okay?”

  Jerica nodded silently, her eyes round.

  “Can you do me a favor and go find a video to watch for a little while? I need you to be very quiet and not interrupt me while I’m on the phone, okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Melanie was barely aware as Jerica shuffled off to the family room. She took the letter to her bedroom, slumped onto the mattress, and dialed her brother’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “Karly?”

  “Melanie! We were just talking about you. We got our airline tickets today. Oh, I am so excited that we’re finally going to meet your Joel. How is everything going?”