Grounds to Believe

by Shelley Bates

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  The pager beeped as Ross took the freeway exit to Hamilton Falls. He guided the pickup truck with one hand and pulled the unit off his belt to glance at the number.

  “What does it say?” Kailey took it and studied the readout. “555-7212,” she read slowly.

  “Good job. Whose number is it?”

  “Daddy, it’s Julia.”

  “Should we call her back, or surprise her and just go to her house?”

  “Go to her house.” Kailey nodded firmly and gave it back to him.

  It was crazy that an investigator who had been hardened by pretty much the worst human nature had to offer should feel such a lift of anticipation at the prospect of seeing one woman. Ridiculous it might be, but Ross was learning to savor the simple pleasures of life, such as looking forward to a weekend with Julia, or the feeling of accomplishment he’d shared with Kailey when she’d learned all the numbers up to one hundred and made it halfway through the first-grade reading list.

  In a few minutes Ross wheeled the truck into the driveway at 1204 Gates Place and noted that Rebecca’s car was gone. Not surprising. If he remembered correctly, she would be at the Elect prayer meeting. As they climbed the stairs to the top-floor apartment, they heard shrieks of laughter through the open windows. Was Julia baby-sitting? He turned the knob and he and Kailey went in without knocking.

  Julia and two little kids, one of whom he recognized as Hannah Blanchard, were sprawled on the floor around a board game, laughing about something that probably had less to do with the game than the story Hannah was trying to tell. The little girl broke off in midsentence when she saw they weren’t alone.

  “Auntie Julia, it’s the angel from hell.” She giggled and poked the other child in the ribs.

  “Hannah Nicole, how many times have I told you not to call him that? His name is Ross.”

  “Investigator Malcolm to you, shrimp.” Ross pulled his best stern policeman face and sent Hannah off into another paroxysm.

  Kailey couldn’t take her eyes off the brightly colored board game. “Daddy, what’s that?” she whispered.

  “It’s called Candy Land,” he whispered back. “Want me to teach you?”

  “I’ll show her. We just learned.” The blond boy rolled to a sitting position and waved her over.

  “And who might you be?” Ross crossed the room to sit next to Julia, who had pulled herself onto the couch and sat with one leg draped over its arm. She leaned against his shoulder and smiled up at him.

  “I’m Ryan,” the boy said indignantly.

  Ross sat up straight, dislodging Julia from her comfortably boneless position. “You are not.”

  “Am too.”

  He blinked. “So you are.”

  Ryan’s cheeks had filled out, the skin no longer stretching over bone. While the flush of laughter had faded from them, leaving them pale, at least he looked like a kid instead of a skull. His hair was no longer lifeless and flat, matted to his head with sweat. It was blond and freshly cut, springing up from his scalp, practically bristling with life. His eyes were clear and very blue.

  “Now, that’s what I call a recovery,” he murmured to Julia, when the kids were absorbed in the game.

  “More like a miracle. Once he came home from the hospital it was like watching a video on fast-forward.”

  “Since when do you know anything about videos?”

  “I went in the video shop,” she said proudly. “And watched a whole movie on the display screen. I didn’t rent anything because I don’t have a VCR to play it on, but I went in there.”

  “It’s a start,” Ross allowed.

  “It felt weird at first, but I got used to it. Next step is a movie. In an actual theater.”

  “Something appropriate for children, perhaps.”

  “That would be pushing it. The only reason I have the kids at all is because I insisted. Everyone has gone to Spokane for the hearing.”

  “So they’ll still talk to you?”

  “Oh, yes. Once I’m Out no punishments apply, you see. They treat me like any common acquaintance on the street. I just happen to be related. And even my mother could see that having the kids along today would be a bad thing.”

  “I notice you didn’t take them to prayer meeting.”

  Julia gazed at the children. “I thought about going for the kids’ sake, but I think moments of togetherness like this are more important than listening to Melchizedek thunder about the children of Israel hewing and slaying.”

  He squeezed her shoulders, then ran a soothing hand up and down her arm. “Do you miss it?”

  After a moment in which he watched her struggle to find an answer, she said, “Yes. I do.”

  “What do you miss most? Not about your family. About the Elect.”

  “There’s the whole social aspect. The phone doesn’t ring as much as it used to.”

  “It works both ways.”

  “I know. But I don’t have anything to say to Claire and Derrick anymore. They think I’m deceived, and any time I try to tell them about how flawed the Elect system is, they fade out and leave. Eventually I gave up.”

  “A person’s relationship with God is something they have to discover on their own. The way you did.”

  “I know, but their relationship is more with the system of worship than with God.”

  “That’s also something they have to see on their own. So what about yours?”

  “My what?”

  “Way of worship.”

  “I’m not ready yet, Ross.”

  “I know. But all worldly churches aren’t deceived. You know that, right?”

  “Hearing you say it is different from experiencing it myself. But God loves me whether I worship in a church building or not.”

  “Of course He does. But it’s hard to love someone you don’t know. And it’s hard to learn about Him if you don’t have teachers and fellowship with other believers.”

  “I have the Bible, and prayer. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Having the relationship is what matters.”

  She was silent, and he grieved that the woman he loved should have been so damaged by her family’s devotion to a system of worship instead of the One who deserved their praise that she was avoiding religion altogether.

  “You’d like my church,” he said thoughtfully, settling her more closely under his arm.

  “Ross. I need time. I need more than a few months to grow away from the Elect. It’s like withdrawal. Or breaking up with someone. I need a period of mourning.”

  “But you can’t spend the rest of your life mourning the death of the old without giving the new a chance to be born.”

  With a sardonic glance, she murmured, “Okay, let’s call it a gestation period.”

  “I don’t think there’s a gestation period to be born again. Just an open heart.”

  At this she straightened, and her elbow dug against his hip. He felt a spurt of alarm. Maybe he’d gone too far. Maybe in his love for her soul as well as her self, he’d pushed her away.

  “I do have an open heart,” she said. “I pray every day that God will show me His will. Meantime—”

  Both of them heard the footsteps on the stairs. Julia glanced at her watch. “That can’t be any of the Elect. Prayer meeting isn’t over yet.”

  Someone knocked on the door, and Julia got up to answer it.

  “Mom,” she said, and stood aside to let Elizabeth McNeill in.

  Elizabeth took in the children and Ross in one glance. “Hannah and Ryan would have been better off in prayer meeting,” she said.

  “I didn’t want to share them tonight,” Julia replied. “We had a good time together.”

  “Hello, Mrs. McNeill.” Ross held out a hand, and she took it after a second’s pause. With one shake, she dropped it again.

  “Hannah, Ryan, it’s time to go home,” their grandmother said.

  “Aw, Nanna. We just started another game. Kailey’s neve
r played Candy Land before.”

  “She can learn another time. Come on. Pack up.”

  Julia stood beside her mother, and Ross moved closed behind her. “So how did it go?”

  “I hardly think you’re in a position to ask. Besides, Mr. Malcolm probably knows much more than I.”

  Did her mother think that Ross represented the entire legal establishment? That he was personally managing her elder daughter’s incarceration? “Mother. She’s my sister. I have a right to know, too.”

  “You should have thought of that before you acted the way you did.”

  Julia bit the inside of her lower lip and controlled the words she wanted to say. “Mother, please.”

  “Nothing happened,” Elizabeth said shortly after a moment of drawing out the silence. “The doctor said she isn’t ready to be released from the treatment program. But,” she added, “her progress has been very good.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m sure you are. Hannah, you don’t need to bring the game home with you. Leave it here.”

  “Can we play it next time, Auntie Julia?” the little girl asked.

  “Of course you can,” Julia replied, and bent to give her a hug. The little girl felt solid in her arms. Healthy. Real. Amid the wreckage of her life, that was something to be thankful for. “Bye, sweetie. Go with Nanna, and give Daddy a kiss for me.”

  She hugged Ryan. No matter how many times she felt his thin little body, she couldn’t get over the feeling he’d be snatched from them at any second. But as long as Madeleine was in treatment, she supposed, he had time to get his strength back. What would happen when her sister returned to her family, she just didn’t know. That was up to the doctors and the judge.

  And God.

  The reminder whispered in her mind as the two children trooped down the steps after their grandmother and climbed into her car.

  She’d taken God for granted, she realized. She’d seen Him merely as the wallpaper backing her life, and not built the kind of relationship that would sustain her faith through a time like this. If she had, would her family’s withdrawal hurt so much?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  She curled into a ball in the corner of the couch. “I hate that she treats me this way.”

  Ross pulled one of her bare feet toward him and began to rub it, his strong fingers sure on all the nerve endings. “From what I saw, she treated you that way before.”

  “What?” She frowned at him, and tried to take her foot back. He hung on to it. “That tickles.”

  “Give me the other one.”

  She gave in, and he continued his skillful ministrations.

  “I mean her treatment of you hasn’t changed. From what I saw, anyway. It’s just that you’ve moved out of her shadow enough to be able to see it.”

  Julia fell silent. At least she was moving somewhere. Not that she liked the view very much.

  Kailey put the game board on the coffee table. “Daddy. Julia. Play Candy Land with me.”

  Ross smiled at his daughter with such love that Julia felt her own heart swell. “I never saw such a kid for learning stuff.”

  “I have to learn stuff,” Kailey said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “I have to catch up.”

  “Catch up to whom, sweetie?” Julia asked. “You can go at your own pace. You don’t need to catch up to anybody.”

  Kailey shook her head. “Hannah knows Candy Land and she’s just a little kid. I want to learn what other kids do.”

  Could she learn from a seven-year-old? Julia wondered. Maybe the thing to do was to absorb as much as possible so she, too, could reach out and grab life the way Kailey was doing. Maybe she, too, needed to catch up so that she could walk through life with Ross without feeling as though her side of the path were a step lower than his.

  Maybe she just had to stop talking about it and simply open her heart to the One who had the wisdom and love to lead her in the way she should go.

  Ross and Kailey were already bent over the board. He glanced at her, and in his eyes she saw the kind of quiet love that wouldn’t demand, that would only point the way. The kind of love she could trust to do the right thing for her, if she’d only let him.

  “Your move,” he said.

  She reached for the game pieces. “Yes,” she said. “I believe it is.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5344-9

  GROUNDS TO BELIEVE

  Copyright © 2004 by Shelley Bates

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