“Hmm. Let’s see. No, they do not pay me. If they did, I’d still have other goals in addition to leading small group. The first being a doctorate in philosophy.”
“That’s a ton of school.”
“Exactly.”
“Why philosophy?” She swung her feet in an alternating rhythm and joined his stargazing. So many pinpoints of light, peeking down at Earth for millennia.
“I want to understand people. What makes them believe certain things or act certain ways. And I want to be able to teach them the right way to believe.”
“Like you do now, at church?”
A breeze wafted over them but didn’t cool the air. “Yeah, like that. But with more education, I’ll be more effective.”
“Will you be allowed to read the original Bible translations? Since your degree’s in philosophy?”
Austin nodded.
“I think that’s an amazing dream.” And the perfect transition to her second question, if she could spit it out.
Austin shrugged, but his eyes settled on her, and he smiled. “If number one had four facets, I’m afraid to ask about number two.”
Violet ran her thumb over the silver shark fin fastened to his wrist with a black leather cord. When she gave him the charm off her bracelet, he’d said the cord would keep it from looking like girl’s jewelry.
“Violet?”
Just ask. Out here, nestled close on a kiddie ride washed in floodlight, even the crickets and cicadas wouldn’t hear her words. Still, her lips froze.
“Come on.” Austin nudged her shoulder. “You can ask whatever you want.”
“It’s a … a theoretical question.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Suppose … for the sake of discussion … a person knew someone for a long time without knowing something dangerous about them and then discovered it. And this thing could hurt other people … and maybe the police really should know about it … except if they did, that would affect another person too. Maybe hurt them.”
Maybe make them suicidal. Not literally. Khloe was the world’s best exaggerator. But still.
The pansy charm seemed to burn Violet’s wrist. She burrowed against Austin’s arm for courage. “Would the person who discovered this thing be … obligated to report it?”
Austin stood up and reached down a hand. “Let’s walk a bit.”
She let him tug her to her feet. They retrieved their flashlights and Violet’s purse and shoes from the ground, then meandered to the concrete walking path. Austin followed its direction but stayed on the grass. Beneath the choir of cicadas, a bullfrog thrummed a one-note bass. A pond rested beyond the tree line.
The silence sweated from Violet’s pores and dripped down her back. She shouldn’t have asked, even abstractly.
“I think the answer lies in the results of each possibility,” Austin finally said.
“Okay,” she said. “In the first possibility, someone goes to re-, um, jail.”
Austin’s feet froze on the path. “You should have said re-education, to begin with. That changes the question.”
Violet glanced up at him. Contemplation creased around his mouth and between his blond eyebrows. Ambling through the dark, garbed in a scholar’s scowl, he looked older than twenty-one. How did she look to him?
“So you know a Christian.”
“Um … I … might.” She traced a five-point star with her flashlight. The beam swung up, down, across, back.
“The answer’s yes. It’s your duty to report them.”
“But, Austin, this person’s not dangerous. They’d never hurt anyone. They’re just … messed up when it comes to God.”
“Are you hearing yourself? Violet, some Christians live quiet, legal lives for years and then one day walk out their door, buy a firearm at Walmart, and go on a shooting spree.”
She almost laughed at the image of Clay toting a tommy gun like a 1930s gangster. But if that reality lurked in his head for real …
“Re-education would help this person,” she said.
“Would save this person,” Austin said. “Maybe save others.”
He resumed walking along the sidewalk, beneath maple trees whose leaves barely whispered in the still, hot night. They circled the whole track, back to the merry-go-round. Austin perched on the edge of the platform, but Violet’s legs folded before she got there. She sank to the damp grass.
“I don’t know how,” she said.
“How?” Austin propped his elbows on his knees.
“You know, how to report someone. Who to call. I know the emergency number for the con-cops”—of course, everyone knew the universal number: three digits, like 911—“but this isn’t that kind of emergency, and anyway, I don’t have proof, unless I go to the meeting.”
Austin’s eyes seemed to drill right into her brain. “You got invited to a Christian meeting?”
What must he think of her? A Christian would trust only his closest friends with an invitation like that … probably only his Christian friends. “It’s not like that, Austin, really. I just have to go. Or maybe I shouldn’t.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Austin sprang up from the merry-go-round and dropped to his knees in front of Violet. “I should.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A buddy of mine is a field agent with the Constabulary. He’s spent half a year trying to find this network that’s hiding Christians. Nobody can figure out who they are, how they know each other, how they communicate, but you—you got an invitation.”
A sudden breeze slithered over Violet’s arms. “I don’t think it’s like that. I think it’s just some people meeting for … well, for church.”
“We need to find out. Somehow.”
He was right. She could make a difference. “I’ll go. I’ll find out where they meet.”
And report them. Report Clay. If she could.
“Not you. It’s too risky,” Austin said.
“I think my friend would notice if you go in my place.”
He huffed and raked his fingers through his hair.
“I’ll play along, Austin. They won’t do anything to me.”
His mouth crimped, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, the frown remained, but his eyes shone with … respect, maybe. For her.
“I’ll give you my buddy’s work number. As soon as you get there, find a way to text the address to him. He can send in a team to bust them.”
“Okay. See, it’ll be fine.”
“Wherever they meet, you don’t go inside. Come up with whatever excuse you have to, but stay out.”
“Right.”
He huffed again. “This is madness.”
Ever the scholar. Her lips tugged into a smile. She ducked her head and twisted blades of grass around her fingers. One of them snapped. A mosquito landed in the crook of her arm, and she smacked it.
“Do you know,” he said, “sometimes you amaze me.”
“Because I killed a mosquito?”
“Because you’re willing to do something like this. You’ve got this … this tough thread, running under the softness.”
No, she didn’t. But this mission didn’t require toughness. It only required love.
The Hansens would hate her when they found out.
Maybe they didn’t have to. Ever.
Austin enclosed her in his arms. “We have to plan this out.”
“Didn’t we just do that?”
“I want you to know exactly what you’re doing before you get there.”
“Are you going to teach me kung fu or something?”
His lips moved over her hair. “If only I knew kung fu or something.”
“I’ll be careful. The most careful I’ve ever been in my life.”
“That doesn’t make it—”
“Talk later.” She kissed him and, with each breathless second, resolved to do her duty. Duty to Clay, to Austin’s Constabulary friend. To the group of dangerous, misguided people who needed help. Khloe, I have to. For the good of everyone. Violet would wear the pansy charm on her wrist forever, a pledge of silence to herself.
“It’s the right thing,” she whispered against Austin’s mouth.
“I know.”
Austin lowered her to the soft grass. Yes. Through her clothes, his hands surveyed her body as if he hadn’t already mapped most of it. Please want me.
“Violet.”
She kissed the thumb that traced her mouth.
Austin lowered his head to the crook of her neck, and his sigh warmed her collarbone. “Three months, babe.”
4
Maybe it was last night’s near encounter with a Bible bust that caused Clay to soak up the voices floating in from the kitchen. Buoyant voices. Violet and Khloe had no idea their conversation carried so far.
“Wow, she actually looks sexy with her hair blowing around her face.”
“She said she was worried about the breeze at first, that it would make her look messy, but Mom was like, ‘Nature’s fan, it’ll look great.’”
“I can’t wait till your mom does our senior pictures.”
Someone let the oven door fall open with a thump. A cookie sheet slapped onto the counter. Sleepover details had evolved as the girls grew up. They made cookies from scratch now, no more refrigerator dough, and their film of choice transitioned from girl-meets-horse to girl-meets-guy. The giggling remained a constant. Tonight, the safety of that sound loosened his inner knot of reproach, but the accusations still muttered. You could’ve been arrested last night. Your family could be sitting in a Constabulary interview room right now.
Clay settled into one of the stuffed chairs, woke his laptop from hibernation, and signed into his email. Yup, seven new messages in the Lit Philes thread. The newest one showed up first, less than a paragraph from Zena. LOL. No way. Prof Hansen will confirm my viewpoint.
Oh, excellent. His students were squabbling. He clicked Omar’s email, the last one sent before Zena’s.
How can you place limitations on deconstructionist theory? The definition of the theory precludes limitation.
Clay cracked his knuckles over his keyboard and grinned at the screen. If only these bubbling, blossoming English majors knew how they prevented job withdrawal over the summer. The group had picked up a few new students every year for the last three. Right now, they numbered eleven, including him as facilitator. He clicked on the oldest unread message. Apparently several of them were already well into reading My Antonia, not the ideal work for deconstructionism. Then again, Omar applied deconstructionism to, well, everything.
Khloe barreled into the den and flopped down on the sofa, her frame barely stretching across all three cushions. Violet followed at a stroll and perched on one arm.
Khloe half buried her face in the cushion. “Dad, can we claim the TV now?”
“Don’t you want to wait until the cookies are done?”
“Can’t you smell them?”
He inhaled and noticed the aroma that had resided in his subconscious for a while now. “Oh, yeah. They don’t smell burned or anything.”
Khloe threw a pillow at him. “They’re not.”
“I’ll trade you the TV for a few cookies.” They’d been making the same bargain since Khloe and Violet’s first batch of Pillsbury, spooned from a plastic tub of premade dough, baked with Natalia’s eye on the timer, and presented to Clay with great ceremony.
“It’s a deal,” Violet said.
Khloe turned her head toward Violet. “Let’s make smoothies, too.”
“You’d better wash the blender,” Clay said.
“Or Mom will disinherit me!” She flailed on the couch like an overturned turtle.
“And kick you out.”
“For my own good, to teach me responsibility, because a clean blender is a sign of character.”
Clay stood and stretched, drawing the motion out with all the drama of his daughter. “I’m just saying I’m not cleaning it this time. To teach you responsibility. Would I like the movie?”
“Nope,” the girls chorused.
He gave a mock bow and carried his laptop under his arm, through the kitchen, past the paper plate on the counter. He swiped two warm cookies and stuffed one into his mouth. A melted chip smeared his thumb. Mmm. Sweet and a little gooey. Natalia’s laptop sat a few feet from the cookies, still cycling through the slideshow of Britney Yokomoto’s senior pictures. The girl stood in an orchard, a line of trees blurring behind her. The tilt of her mouth and the lift of her glossy hair lent an almost provocative aura to some of the pictures. For Pete’s sake, she was only eighteen.
Clay ambled out to the deck with his cookies and his laptop. He’d texted a few buddies, thrown together a bowling night, but nobody was free before nine-thirty. So he lounged here in an Adirondack chair, typed an email to his lit students, and listened to the girls’ laughter from inside the house. Something like nostalgia rolled over him for the days when Violet stood as high as his hip and Khloe six inches shorter than that, and neither of them cared to look sexy.
Enough old-man thoughts. He wasn’t even forty yet, though the unsettling number loomed only months away. Just as Clay signed his email and hit Send, his phone trilled through the screen door. He hopped up, opened the door, and reached through to grab the phone off the table. Not a local area code.
“Hello?” he said.
“You know who this is?”
Marcus. “Twice in one—”
“Shut up.”
Clay dropped back into the chair. “Shutting up.”
“I need help. A … delivery. Tonight.”
Delivery of a fugitive? A Christian on the run, an active target? Danger hummed in Clay’s head. Don’t agree to this. “Okay.”
“I wouldn’t ask, but I’m too far away.”
Probably not even in Michigan. Probably carting around some imperiled people in the bed of his pickup. A sense of the bizarre dripped into this conversation. “I’m in. What’s the—”
“Fifty-four-sixty-three Indian Trail, half an hour. I’ll call back. If you’ve got the item, I’ll give you the delivery address.”
“It’s a plan.”
“If you can’t do it, tell me now.”
“I just said I’ll do it.”
“Don’t take the bike.”
“Got it.”
“If they don’t believe I sent you, tell them I’ve been awake since last Thursday.”
“Okay.” An inside joke? Last Thursday. He couldn’t forget that detail.
“Okay. Um. Thanks.” The line went dead.
Clay stepped back onto the deck and woke his laptop. The slideshow screensaver disappeared, replaced by desktop icons over a photo Natalia had taken last year of Niagara Falls. Clay pulled up the Internet and searched for directions to 5463 Indian Trail. Twenty-three minutes from here.
He could leave now without an explanation. The girls knew he was going bowling tonight. But how long would he be gone? How far would he have to take this person? He went to the living room and stepped in front of the TV.
“Hey.” Khloe sat up straighter.
“Mute, please,” Clay said.
“Pause.” Khloe aimed the remote and hit a button, and the TV at his back went silent.
“A friend of mine needs help with something. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but tell your mother not to wait up if she doesn’t want to.”
Khloe drew her feet under her and sat up straighter. “What kind of something? What about bowling?”
“Classified kind of something. More important than bowling.” That would really send her into a curious frenzy. Oh, well.
“We’ll be f
ine, go ahead.” Violet swished her hand toward the doorway, but her eyes lingered on Clay, then darted away. Strange.
Khloe must not have noticed. She crossed her arms, but the drama was deliberate now. “We’ll eat all the cookies before you get back.”
“Possibly, but I’ll try not to be gone long.”
In the garage, he stroked the Kawasaki’s handlebar, then hopped into the Jeep. Not the roomiest vehicle, but at least it had a backseat. He pulled out his phone and started a group message to Yul and Brandon, and oh yeah, to Scott DuBay. Clay’s history with Scott didn’t go back to college the way it did with the other two guys. Technically, he’d known Scott for ten years, and he’d tried a few times to get to know the guy, if only to be sure Violet had a decent father. Not that Violet had said anything to make him suspect otherwise. Anyway, he and Scott had never really clicked. He’d offered another invitation tonight expecting a pass, but Scott had surprised him.
He typed a group text. Rain check tonight. Something came up. His thumb froze on the Send button. What was he doing?
The right thing. He pressed the button. Marcus had actually called. God must want Clay to help him out.
5
Any minute now, Khloe would come looking for her. After all, a girl only needed so long to use the bathroom. Violet tugged open another desk drawer. Empty. There had to be something dangerous in Clay’s study, anything to justify her planned … betrayal. Really, that was the only word for it.
She slid the desk drawer shut and ran her fingers over the book spines sandwiched in the shelf behind the desk, careful not to knock over the framed picture. Six-year-old Khloe grinned at her, wearing strawberry blonde ponytails and a glittery purple shirt, perched on a dappled gray carousel horse. On the shelf below, she and Khloe waved from another picture frame, thirteen years old and standing on either side of the Fort Mackinac sign. If she’d been born to him, Clay would have a picture of Violet as a toddler too. Or even a baby.
If she were his daughter, would she have turned him in by now?
She moved to the next shelf. Most of Clay’s books were classics, from Richard Adams at the top left to Tennessee Williams at the bottom right. All the stuff teachers thought would enhance your worldview. Violet skimmed more titles, but none of them shrieked a warning. Of course, even if Clay did own a book called How to Bomb the Wicked or Killing Pleases God, he probably wouldn’t shelve it next to The Glass Menagerie.
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