Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Marcus pressed the back of his hand to his nose to catch the salty trickle. “Hide your family.”

  “You harass me again, I call them.”

  “Hide your—!”

  The door shut quietly.

  Marcus’s head sagged forward, but he forced it back up. The guy could be calling the police, reporting a trespasser. Go. Now. He forced his feet back toward his truck.

  He should have … Well, what?

  He started to drive. Almost one o’clock now. He’d missed church. Tonight, his family had met in Janelle’s basement storeroom. Chatted and prayed and studied Bible verses, written out on notebook paper in Abe’s arthritic handwriting. No one risked bringing an actual Bible. They especially must have prayed for Jim and Karlyn.

  The silence in the truck cab pushed an ache into Marcus’s chest. His family’s voices always filled him up inside, readied him for another week. Were they okay? Had the Constabulary identified anybody else? He turned the truck toward Janelle’s store. Only a few miles from here. He’d drive past. Check for yellow crime tape. Just to be sure.

  Ten minutes later, he coasted down a neighboring residential street. Almost there—wait a minute. A yellow street bike was parked up ahead at the curb. Clay’s bike, which he rode without a helmet half the time and had been known to floor down the street after their meetings. Caution and Clay had never met. Farther down, on the other side, a red foreign car and a gray sedan. Phil and Abe’s cars.

  Church should have ended half an hour ago. Why would their vehicles still be …?

  His heart seized. He parked half a block over and started to run. God, my family, please, my family.

  7

  No yellow tape. No circling green lights. No activity in front of the store, or in back. Marcus’s head drummed in time with his heart. He forced himself to use the cover of the row of trees alongside Janelle’s store. God, please. God, please. The words had pounded from his feet the whole way here. He should wait a minute, observe, be careful. But the strain of standing here, doing nothing, was going to wreck his head. He stepped out from the trees and dashed to the shadows alongside the building. He crept around the corner and faced the door. Were they still here? Why?

  He knocked. Caught his breath for a minute. Knocked again. A sudden gust of wind pierced his jacket.

  A whisper came through the crack in the wood of the door. “He prepares a table.”

  Marcus shut his eyes and swallowed the burning in his throat. God, thank You. “Before us.”

  “In the presence of.”

  “Our enemies.”

  The door opened halfway, and he slipped inside. Warmth and darkness and scent embraced him, that vaguely delicious mingling of every conceivable candle flavor. He breathed in. Home.

  “You?” Janelle’s voice sounded stuffy, as if she had a cold.

  “Um, yeah, me. I mean, Marcus.”

  Five-foot-nothing, she all but bowled him over with her hug. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not in jail. Thank You, Jesus, that he’s not in jail.”

  Oh.

  “Come on, the others need to see you.”

  Marcus followed Janelle to the storage room, though by now he could find his way easily without the light. Her store was small, its layout simple, shelves of candles and figurines and random country knickknacks placed to allow a clear path from the front door to the back room. Janelle tapped on the storeroom door, and the light seeping under it disappeared. She let Marcus and herself into the room and shut the door, and the light sprang back on. Weathered, cautious routine. They hurried down the half staircase.

  At the bottom, Marcus glanced toward Janelle, and every muscle in his body turned to stone. Tears stained her cheeks, reddened her eyes, left damp marks on her light blue shirt. Her cropped salt-and-pepper curls stood up as if she’d been pawing through them for hours.

  “Janelle, what—?”

  The rest of them sat in a circle on the cold white tile, or at least they had been sitting. Almost as one, Phil and Felice, Clay and then more slowly Abe stood and crowded around Marcus.

  “What happened to you?” Felice’s voice wobbled worse than Janelle’s.

  Phil fiddled with his eyebrow ring. “Seriously, bro, we thought you were—”

  “We’ve been praying,” Abe said quietly. “For you.”

  Marcus trembled from the inside out. “I’m okay, I—I couldn’t come, but I had to—I had to check the store, to make sure—and then I saw the cars, and—”

  Janelle swiped at her cheeks. “You’ve never missed church. Never. Everyone misses sometimes, but not you.”

  “I … I.”

  Felice pushed past her fiancé and didn’t pause when Phil patted her shoulder. She marched straight up to Marcus and hugged him. Something eased around them, a breaking of tension, a snapping of restraint. Phil grabbed Marcus’s hand and shook it while Felice still hugged him. Abe shuffled forward and rested a hand on Marcus’s shoulder.

  He was hemmed in. Surrounded. He wrestled the ache before, oh heck, before his eyes could start to burn. No. He bowed his head, but they didn’t step back. He pushed the ache down deeper in his chest, but the way they wrapped him up, the way they cared. He would protect them, all of them, whatever he had to do. It was what he had to offer.

  Abe’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “Dear Father, thank You for Your protection over Marcus. We’re out of words tonight, Father, but we want to thank You for answering the prayers for our dear brother. You heard us and You shielded Marcus and You brought him here to us tonight. We love You, we trust You, and we thank You. Amen.”

  “Amen,” everyone whispered.

  The huddle loosened and backed away. Felice raised her hands to her cheeks, hiding tears. Her nails were electric blue tonight. Phil circled his arms around her. Abe’s hand stayed on Marcus’s shoulder.

  Clay stood to one side and grinned. “Let’s just say we’re glad to see you.”

  “Don’t ever do that again,” Janelle said.

  Marcus nodded, swallowed the leftover soreness inside, and offered a prayer to accompany Abe’s. God, for my family. That they’re safe. And here. And that I have them. Thank You.

  They must be ready to leave. He should let them. Look at the time. “What’d I miss?”

  Felice giggled. “Don’t tell him. He’ll flip out.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Felice.” Janelle hustled around the room straightening boxes of inventory that were already straight. “It was nothing.”

  Felice smirked at Janelle’s back. “So, Marcus, you know the crack in the front door …”

  “I told Janelle I’ll replace the door.”

  “It has character,” Janelle said over her shoulder without a pause in her straightening. “It’s the original door.”

  “Anyway.” Felice huffed. “Like I was saying. You know the crack in the door …”

  “We want to go home before tomorrow, babe,” Phil said.

  Clay propped himself against a man-sized box—what was in there?—and crossed his ankles in front of him. “Summary. Janelle thought she saw a light through the door, before anybody got here, and convinced herself it was a Constabulary raid and intercepted all of us as we were arriving and told us to run for our lives.”

  How could any of them be amused by that? But only Abe wasn’t wearing a small, tolerant smile. Well, Abe and Janelle, who hid her blush by walking down an aisle of shelves to sort already sorted candles.

  “What was it?” Marcus asked.

  Janelle raised her voice from the other end of the aisle. “The night light I leave on when the store’s closed. I guess the crack in the door got wider over time and made it look brighter.”

  “Janelle, let me replace the door. I’ll do it for cost.”

&nbs
p; “Not a chance,” she called.

  “Family discount.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  He’d convince her later. “Prayer requests or anything?”

  “Mostly for Clay’s family,” Phil said.

  Clay nodded. He pushed a fist against his palm, cracking the knuckles. “Obviously, they’re still not here. And they’re still going to Elysium on Sundays.”

  “Con-cop hole.” Janelle emerged from between the candle shelves smelling like them. “And get this, Marcus, Elysium used the s-word the other day. Clay’s daughter learned all about it.”

  What …?

  “Sin,” Clay said. “Self-Imposed Negation. We’re all too hard on ourselves, and we need to quit it and get with God’s program of a rewarding lifestyle.”

  Not surprising, really. Elysium Fellowship of Believers was all about government-sanctioned spirituality. Still, Clay had to feel helpless. He couldn’t force his family to come here, though Marcus sometimes wondered why not. But Clay’s wife was so afraid of the Table meetings, she’d begged Clay not to reveal her name or their daughter’s.

  “I’ll keep praying,” Marcus said.

  “Thanks, man.” Clay lounged against the box.

  The conversation drifted. Maybe everybody else was more affected by Janelle’s night-light scare than they wanted to admit, or by thinking Marcus had been arrested. Whatever it was, nobody hurried to leave. Marcus breathed in the scent of candles, and his family’s voices trickled around him. He thought of the rest of the psalm, the one they used for their passcode. My cup overflows.

  8

  By the time she reached her mother’s house, Aubrey would have all the details of the morning’s top local news story, interspersed with infant wailing from the car seat behind her.

  “… recovered eleven copies of various banned Bible translations from—”

  The howl neared a scream. Elliott’s face was as red as the fuzzy blanket waiting for him at Grandma’s house. Aubrey didn’t have to see him to know.

  “… charged with multiple—”

  “Take a breath, baby boy,” Aubrey said, as if the content of this story didn’t threaten to shut down her own lungs. She didn’t know these people, but she didn’t have to.

  “… including possession with intent to distribute—”

  Yeah, eleven Bibles signified that. She pulled up the incline to park in the driveway that circled a Japanese maple. She killed the radio. Deep breath. Had to calm down before she faced Mom.

  She wasn’t sure if Jim had a Bible of his own or if Karlyn’s served for both of them. Two Bibles between two people would be unusual, excessive. Either way, though, the reports of their arrest hadn’t mentioned any illegal materials found. Where had Karlyn managed to hide even one Bible from the comprehensive search?

  Aubrey rounded the car and opened the door. Elliott’s flushed face went still when she unbuckled the car seat and turned it toward her.

  “I haven’t been ignoring you, baby. I talked to you all the way here.”

  She carried the car seat up the steps to her mother’s front door. A wooden snowman grinned from one corner of the porch, half his face obscured by a straw hat. A sign between his cotton-puff hands bore painted red letters: “Deck the halls, y’all!” For a woman most proud of her doctorate degree, Mom had interesting decorative taste.

  The doorbell echoed throughout the house just as Elliott’s hiccups began. Aubrey swung the car seat to her other hand, and seconds later the door opened.

  “Hi, honey.” Her mother stepped aside for her to enter, her black cat called Hareton under one arm. According to Mom, that Brontë character warranted a feline namesake more than Heathcliff did.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I heard about Karlyn on the news. I’m so sorry, honey. Hopefully she’ll be out soon.”

  “You mean hopefully she’ll deny everything she believes in? Do you want me to hope that along with you?”

  Mom shut the door and set Hareton on his six-toed white feet. “Considering the alternative is prison …”

  The time for their courteous war wasn’t now. “I haven’t heard back from the doctor yet. About the implant for Elliott. By the end of the week, I should know if he qualifies.”

  “Tell me if I’m wrong here, but it seems like Karlyn’s arrest could renew their interest in you.”

  “Mom, I’m late for work.”

  Her mother blinked at her. Aubrey blinked back. Calm. Stay calm. Distress fueled the blaze of Mom’s agenda.

  Her mother sighed, not a retreat but a redeployment. “I’m making your father some beef and barley soup tonight, if you’d like to join us for dinner.”

  By “making,” she meant adding water to a packaged mix. Aubrey hadn’t inherited her mother’s enjoyment of the kitchen, because none existed to inherit. She smiled away some of the tension between them. “I can do that.”

  She kissed her fingers and rested them a moment on the curve of Elliott’s nose. Then she hugged her mom. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Good.”

  Aubrey swallowed the tightness in her throat and hurried out to her car.

  She’d been trying for the last month to prepare for confrontation. The notorious anniversary approached like a hurricane offshore, invisible from the beach but a mass of red and orange on the radar. Six months since her breakup with Brett. For six months, she’d dodged her parents’ poorly veiled attempts at drawing her out.

  But the discussion of Brett, of her decision to leave him, would be delayed for now. Instead, Dad and Mom would want to discuss Jim and Karlyn. The arrest was ammunition against Aubrey’s “religious obstinacy.” Really, what remained for them to oppose? She didn’t own a Bible. She no longer attended her church. But they’d find some way in which Karlyn’s arrest heightened the danger to Aubrey and more importantly, it sometimes seemed, to their grandson.

  Aubrey drove toward work and tried to formulate a script in her mind for use at dinner tonight—a script that wouldn’t hurt or marginalize anyone, including herself. She had to face her parents down, to “swim upstream,” as Karlyn would say. But that waterfall-leaping woman had been someone else, someone who would never cower in an interrogation room.

  9

  Who would have thought a single punch could make you look this beat up? Marcus had slept most of the night with a cold gel pack over his face. The sealed plastic edge ended at exactly the right place to poke his eyelids, but it numbed the leftover throbbing. More important, maybe he’d wake up with less of a bruise.

  Talk about wishful thinking.

  The face in the mirror looked ridiculous. The blow had landed on the left side of his nose, possibly the only thing sparing him a break. Blue pooled from there into his cheek and the hollow beneath his eye. The eye wasn’t swollen, but he had no way to conceal the aftermath. He looked … well, like he’d been punched.

  Over the next several days, clients would ask, but he could lie to them. His plans after work today were the source of the dread that settled in his gut. Lee.

  She would read him like one of her books. Whatever he told her, whatever his clients swallowed whole—she’d chew it into tiny, transparent bits and spit it back at him. And she’d want to know why he was lying.

  Marcus showered and dressed in the time the coffee took to brew. He downed one cup while he fried his eggs and fed his dog, and he was working on another by the time he tied his steel-toed work shoes. He checked the mirror one last time before leaving, as if in the last half-hour, maybe God had decided to erase the evidence of last night’s failure.

  Nope.

  He drove to Keith’s great-aunt Penny’s house. The woman’s condominium had flooded due to an upstairs neighbor’s toilet malfunction. The job wasn’t his typical work. Her homeowner’s insurance had already sent a restoration company to replace, mud, and sand the drywall. In the
meantime, Keith had gotten his hands on the estimate and thrown a fit over what they were charging. He’d asked Marcus to do the priming and painting and ordered the insurance company to cash out the estimate’s remainder. Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten paid to paint. Most people only paid him for jobs they couldn’t do themselves.

  The first step of this job, though, wasn’t priming the ceilings and walls. It was deciding what to tell a brand-new client about the fiasco of his face. Maybe she’d have the tact not to ask. In case not, he invented an explanation while he parked his truck behind the rust-gnawed, maroon Corsica in the driveway.

  The scrawny woman answered her door wearing a paisley blouse and white cotton pants.

  “Hi. I’m Marcus, Keith’s—”

  Her veined hand reached toward Marcus’s cheek. “You do that on the job?”

  He stepped back in time to avoid the stiff claws of her fingers. “It won’t keep me from working.”

  “Don’t tell me—a big board came up and smacked you. And you can’t even get worker’s comp from yourself, can you?”

  “Um, no, but it’s not—”

  “Oopsy-daisy, I’ve forgotten my manners. Come in, young man. I’m Penny Lewalski. And you’re here to paint my house.”

  “Yeah.” He followed her into the tiny kitchen.

  A well-used foam roller tumbled from her white hair. Marcus scooped it up. Who had advised her to lay carpet in her kitchen? The stuff was the color of mud, at least twenty years old, and stained in various shapes and colors. Tearing it out should be his next project.

  “Here’s some of it, those gray spots on the ceiling. That’s where the other young man fixed the holes they had to drill to let the water out.”

  She turned back to look up at him, and he handed her the roller. “Why, thank you. You’re doggone courteous. Like I was saying—” She stopped to eye his face again. “You know, looks an awful lot like somebody popped you one. Weren’t in a brawl or anything, were you?”