She kept her eyes on the page a few moments, and then, quickly, thumbed through a few more pages. “And we read in Psalm eighty nine, “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.””
She paused a moment to sit up more fully before continuing.
““And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints. For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him. O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.””
What had any of this to do with Rahab, he wondered, but kept listening as she read. Or was that merely a verse in the midst of what she was trying to point out to him?
““The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our horn shall be exalted. For the Lord is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our king.””
Now, he was the one confused. Yes, God is merciful, he granted that, but what about the rest of this she’d read? God was preserving him, and He was faithful even when Brice was not. He knew the end from the beginning, and knows all things. Brice knew he certainly didn’t.
Was she trying to say that it’s alright to make a mistake? Even to misjudge something he had no understanding of?
But it could also be something else: only God was and could be God. He alone can judge rightly, and walk in mercy all the time. Only He could be totally holy and strong.
“Do you see what I’m trying to get at here,” he heard his wife asking, the words coming through his thoughts as fog rolls in over water. “God doesn’t ask us to be perfect; not in the way He is perfect. He understands we are flesh and blood; we are but grass, as the Psalmist once wrote,” she continued. “I just think we need to stop being so hard on ourselves and others and leave the judging up to God. After all,” she said, looking into his eyes, “He’s the one that sees our hearts, isn’t He?”
Nodding in agreement, Brice let his thoughts move in the direction of the Scriptures they’d read; all three of them together.
Be loving, have mercy, but remember that God has more love and mercy for those in their lives that they ever would. Do what you can to glorify Him, and leave the rest in His hands. It sounds so much easier than it is, though, he thought to himself.
“We may as well use those as our devotionals tonight,” Melody said after a few minutes of silence. “I think God’s given enough for us to think on this evening. And besides,” she continued. “We should be celebrating the safe return of the people who we thought might not be coming back, shouldn’t we?”
She set the Bible down on the silvery comforter that covered their bed and slid back out from between the sheets, readjusting her robe. “I think some sparkling cider and cookies might be just the thing,” she said cheerfully. And then, before he knew it, she was out the door in search of her goodies.
Brice sighed, closed the Bible carefully, and then followed her into the kitchen.
May as well.
She was right. The group of seemingly prodigal people had returned, and for all they knew, they hadn’t even been careless at all.
Maybe, just maybe, they cared more than some of the rest and it took them going missing for twelve days before the people around them realized their own misunderstandings about the importance of the event. Of the mirror. Of life itself.
Of obedience, in spite of it making no sense.
Twenty Two
Portland, Oregon… May 22, 2025
Quentin Quimby sank into the chair of his counselor’s office and smirked.
Finally, he was going to be able to get down to business; he just had a few details to plant in the man’s mind, and then, he should be set.
It wasn’t as if he was off doing no good; he was working at a little café out in the Troutdale area he rather enjoyed. And they knew his history, as much as he had disclosed. He’d had to. The first three places he thought he’d be working at hadn’t panned out at all. But Noah and Carolinia Torrance had been kind.
The Farmers’ Café wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but it gave him time to reflect between customers. He knew that one of Paloma and Edward’s friends had worked there; in fact, for some reason, they had suggested it as a potential place of work.
Why, he had no idea, but he was thankful for it now, even if it did mean he felt ingratiated toward them for the information that led to his employ. And Noah had him help with the chickens, as well.
Until he started working at the café, he hadn’t really been around animals much at all, let alone been one of the people to care for them. He’d never seen the point, and his parents never had when he was a child, either.
“Mr. Quimby,” Chase Waters-Warren said as he entered the office, extending a hand Quentin’s way. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Your previous counselor had some interesting things to say about your background, but, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear things from your own perspective, looking back on your life today.”
Mr. Waters-Warren was a tower of a man, big and blocky and at least six eight. He wore suspenders to keep his pants up rather than a belt, and a blue polka dotted bow tie that made it look like he’d stepped out of the fifties. His big belly hung out in three sections, strained as it was with the suspenders over it.
His eyes, though, were kind, and his expression curious, as though he actually cared. For the first time in years, Quentin wondered if he’d found someone that might listen to him without judgment.
Could it be possible?
He looked down at his own dark hands, the uneven nail beds and calloused fingers a reminder of all the changes in his life recently.
“Well, I’m not exac’ly sure where I c’d start, do you,” he asked the man, who was just sitting down in the rolling office chair across from his own.
“Well, why don’t you start at the beginning. Your earliest memories, and how they come across to you now,” the man encouraged, pulling out a notepad from the desk behind him. “And then, we can go from there. Whatever flows from it, we will take a look at. Conversely,” he continued, “you could work your way backward, which might be more preferential to you.”
“Might be more pref-what?”
“You might do better working backward with your memories,” the man said again, adjusting the pad of paper
Quentin thought back to his childhood, and then to more recent events. Really, he’d prefer not to discuss either, but if he had to choose one.
“So, the people who done put me behind bars helped me fine this job recently,” he began, trying to figure out what else to say. “And I actu’lly like the place.”
“So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Mr. Waters-Warren asked Quentin about an hour later, looking through his notes. He shifted in a rather uncomfortable-looking way in his chair a moment, his belly shifting at a different rate than the rest of him..
> “You met Paloma when you were eleven and nine, respectively, and you were still getting over your parents splitting up. She was one of several girls you had as friends, at first, but you were attracted to her, in some fashion, even as an eleven year old, and you’ve wondered on and off if it was because she grew up fairly normal, until her parents died,” the man began, then looked up at Quentin for confirmation.
He nodded at the doctor and rolled his neck, which was getting stiff. Oh, how he hated sitting still, and more so, sitting still by court order.
“When her parents died, you felt it was your responsibility, in part, to look after her, along with her brother, Jason, who you didn’t really get along with or like. And eventually, you “talked her into” dating you, and after several years of that – rocky years – you asked her to marry you, she agreed, and you started cheating on her, and not for the first time. But for the first time, you were caught because you had a child with someone else.”
Quentin sighed.
Now that the doctor put it that way, it sounded kinda bad. As though he’d gone out of his way to sleep around, instead of that Paloma just wouldn’t put out, which in his eyes, was the natural reflection of their relationship.
He nodded, uncomfortable; the room suddenly felt a little too warm for his comfort.
“Paloma then broke things off after she discovered that Lovan was your son, and not your sister’s, as you initially told her, and, because of reasons unknown to you, she agreed to stay friends, once she had cooled down a bit. You requested she babysit, and for a while, she did so willingly, until all of a sudden, she changed her mind. Or, in your eyes, it seemed all of a sudden.”
Waters-Warren glanced up at him, looking him in the eye, and suddenly, Quentin felt very exposed. What was going on? It was almost like the doctor was trying to get him to see things from Jason and Paloma’s perspectives instead of his own.
How was he doing that?
Quentin had moved his way through four different therapists and counselors during his stint, and gone over this a hundred times. Never had he sensed this roiling in his belly, or actually considered what they might have been thinking or feeling.
And he wasn’t sure how he felt about the man because of it.
Nevertheless, Quentin nodded, then looked down at his sneakers, flicking away some imaginary particles from their red surface. He ran his fingers over the laces, then, finally, sat back up and looked at the counselor once more.
“When she cut things off, you went to her place of business with a weapon, hoping to scare her into coming back to you and it backfired because someone else was present you didn’t expect, and she ended up married to him. You moved to California, then New York, with your son, and adopted other addictive habits to try to keep her off your mind, but spent most of those years in shelters and odd rooms in people’s homes, until you finally moved back to the Portland-Vancouver area,” the man continued as though Quentin hadn’t rudely interrupted him to clean his already clean shoes.
“You beat up one of their friends three days after you arrived simply because you felt you could, and you were coming down from heroin and cocaine, and he pressed charges – something Paloma had never done when you’d roughed her or her place up in the past. Then, you escaped from the jail to crash the woman’s birthday party, with yet another woman you barely knew in tow, and using your son as an excuse to do as you pleased,” the man continued, looking between his notes and Quentin’s eyes a few times as he spoke, his words moving faster as he spoke.
“You were caught, and finally, that time, she and her husband – scared for their lives and the lives of their children, whom you had through innuendo threatened before they were even born – pressed charges and you went to prison. You and a cousin of yours – an Arthur Reynolds? – got into it several times before you got transferred from Salem to Pendleton, where you did the remnant of your time. At some point, your victim and her husband took care of Lovan because your mother got ill, and did, from what I understand, a smashing job of it. And then, as your years were winding down, Paloma and her husband, one,” he checked his notes a moment, “Edward Stuart, visited you. They told you they forgave you, and in the end, even gave you a handful of places they would be willing to recommend you for a place of work as long as you purposed to continue in your journey to healing and becoming a better man, and at present, you are working at,” he glanced down again, “the Farmers’ Café, which was one of the places they’d suggested might work out. Have I forgotten anything?”
Quentin looked into the man’s eyes – round, brown, searching, and gentle all at once – and shook his head.
Nobody had been able to put his life together in a nutshell in less than ten minutes before, and made him really think about his actions and how they’d affected the other people. About not only Edward and Paloma, but his son, and Tom and Tawny Henleigh, and even his own extended family. Even Arthur.
And now that his heart had been opened to the idea that others might have had reason to do as they’d done, there was no way to close off that part of his understanding.
What the years in prison hadn’t accomplished, with all its classes and counselors; with solitary and the horrid sights, sounds and smells of life behind bars, a man he’d never met before had drawn from him in less than two hours.
So now what, he wondered before realizing the man was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.
“Not a thing,” he told the counselor, “other than Mama died and my own boy barely wanted t’ see me t’ tell me ‘bout the fun’ral, but… kinda don’ blame him now I look back on it.”
Chase Waters-Warren nodded at him, and scribbled another brief note before standing, setting his notes down on the chair, and moving to stretch.
“Well, now that we know where the starting place is, I think we’re good,” he continued once his belly had moved back into place from the stretching. He unselfconsciously readjusted the suspenders as Quentin stood, taking his cue.
“So we’ll start on Monday, then. Let’s begin two sessions a week, same time each week, ,” the man asked him, giving him a pointed look. “Check with my secretary on the way out, and she’ll set you up for the first six months and print out the schedule.”
And with that, Quentin nodded one last time, followed the hulking man out the door, turned left toward the main part of the office, got his appointments set up, and headed for work.
And the bus ride seemed to pass in a blur as images of all he’d done passed through his mind, and he prayed to God he wouldn’t start crying before he was able to get into the bathroom, at the least. He’d prefer it if he could be back in his room at his cousin’s before the tears began to flow.
Twenty Three
Meridian, Mississippi… May 23, 2025
Romeo watched Angus as he made his way back up the swimming pool steps, and over to his chair.
The sky was becoming overcast, and he briefly wondered if another tornado was coming, or if they were finally through for the season.
Calico, still in the water, smiled at him through a mass of wet curls that had escaped the clip she’d pulled them into earlier. A recent perm had done some to help create smoother, looser curls than those she had begun to grow naturally around the time she’d been pregnant with Angus. Still, though, her hair wasn’t as tame as it had once been, and Romeo, for one, was glad for it.
In his eyes, it created a bit more mystery. As did the new hair color: a deep burgundy with three shades of blonde streaked through it, and just a mite of pale, baby blue framing her face.
She had certainly come a long way from when they’d first met, the dreadlocks she wore so perceptively uncomfortable to her, and foreign to her way of living. But now, she seemed free.
Free of all the worries that had plagued them in California, and most certainly free of all that had happened in Oregon.
If he didn’t know any better – and he did – he’d even have suspected that she was done with the nightmares; the n
ight terrors and sweaty thrashings-about that came from memories locked inside of her, trying to escape.
“Papa, Papa,” his son exclaimed as he came shivering toward him. “Did you see? I did a summysault in the water, and Prudece didn’t even have to help me this time!”
Romeo nodded, smiling down at him as he grabbed one of the brilliant Caribbean blue beach towels they’d brought down to dry the boy off.
“I saw your somersault. You did a great job!”
The boy beamed as he allowed Romeo to wrap the towel around his trembling form.
He waved to Prudence Song, who couldn’t be missed in a Hello Kitty swimsuit with a gigantic white flower pinned to the left shoulder. “Thanks, again,” he called to her as Calico moved to get out of the pool.
“No problem at all. I enjoy this time; since I cannot do so with…” She paused. “I enjoy time with Angus,” she said again. “It lifts my spirits and helps me more than you might ever realize.”
He nodded, thinking of the abbreviated story Calico had told him about the woman’s son. It took a lot for him not to reply to the unspoken that she’d nearly shared with the whole poolside of people.
While there weren’t a lot of people out at the moment, he knew it was a sensitive topic she didn’t want broadcast around. And really, who could blame her?
Calico made her way over to the towels and dried off, then took Angus by the hand.
“We ready to head back inside,” she asked him, then looked to Romeo.
“Absolutely,” he told her, standing to stretch.
“Hey, if you want to stop in for dinner later, maybe about six, feel free,” he heard his wife call to the woman, who beamed at them as she stepped out of the pool. Her hands wrung out her long dark hair a few moments before she replied.
“Thanks, but I actually,” she looked around and stepped closer. “I have dinner plans already, but maybe tomorrow?”
The Angels' Mirror Pack 2: Books Four through Seven Page 73