If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Anna picked up on something else Rhonda said. “So you went with Beau to a healing meeting?”

  “Yeah, he always takes some of us with him if he can. We have different gifts that God can use in a big meeting.”

  “What’s your . . . ah . . . gift?” Anna was unfamiliar with the language, but she was also distracted by Beau coming in from the kitchen with a boy about eleven years old.

  “Oh, I can see things,” Rhonda said simply.

  “Like Beau sees things?” Anna said, casting a look at Beau as he stepped up next to Rhonda.

  Rhonda glanced at Beau, but didn’t hesitate to continue the conversation. “I see different things than he does some times. I tend to see spirits and angels more.”

  “Spirits and angels?” Anna said, again glancing at Beau. But again he remained patient, allowing Rhonda to answer for herself.

  Here Rhonda turned to Beau and grinned. “He calls me one of the ‘scary women,’” she said, with a little laugh. “’Cause we see in the spirit realm and can tell him things that are going on that he doesn’t always see.”

  Here, Beau did step in. “She’s being generous,” he said. “I very rarely see the kind of spiritual detail that Rhonda sees, or Emma sees, or some others.”

  “Emma is one of the ‘scary women’ now too,” Rhonda said, clearly as proud of her title as she was amused by it.

  Beau laughed with her. “Yeah, kids see things more easily than adults. We just have to be careful to make sure they feel safe telling us what they honestly see, even if us grownups can’t see it. Rhonda is especially helpful there. She can sort of translate what the kids are seeing and confirm it for me.” He shook his head. “I still have some of those adult prejudices against trusting kids.” Here he turned toward the boy next to him.

  “Why do you look at me?” the boy said, elbowing Beau in the side.

  Beau and Rhonda both laughed. Anna smiled uncertainly, on the outside of an inside joke, apparently.

  “This is Adam,” Beau said, introducing the blonde-haired boy, whose hair, narrow shoulders and light blue eyes showed no resemblance to the man standing next to him.

  Anna shook his offered hand, and saved her question about the boy’s relationship to the patriarch of the house for when she had Beau to herself. Before she could say anything, Adam spoke.

  “Do you have any pain in your body?” he said.

  As Anna stared for a second, Beau filled in an explanation. “He asks that of everyone who visits here. He can heal any pain you might have.”

  Anna hesitated at the thought that anyone could claim to heal every pain, but decided to give it a try. “I do have a sore neck, like a pinched nerve or muscle cramp, or something,” she said, rubbing the right side of her neck with her hand.

  “Can I touch it?” Adam said, asking politely, but with brevity that implied he had asked that question many times before.

  “Sure,” Anna said, her voice coming out more mousy than she expected.

  Adam, a half a foot shorter than Anna, reached up and gently touched her neck near where she had been rubbing it. Anna straightened up almost immediately, as an electric buzz began beneath Adam’s touch.

  “It’s buzzing,” she said, her eyes wide and eyebrows arched.

  Beau smiled and nodded, no hint of surprise on his placid face.

  Rhonda whispered something into Adam’s opposite ear, so Anna didn’t catch any of it. Adam nodded.

  “Tension, you go away right now,” he said, with a tone that reminded Anna of a boy playing a game in which he was a commander of troops.

  She didn’t pause to ponder this odd tone, however, because the buzzing and the pain both disappeared immediately after Adam’s command. Raising her right hand to her neck again, Anna began to twist and bend it. A surprise birthday party kind of smile spread over her face.

  “That’s awesome,” she said, reverting to her teenage vocabulary in that unguarded moment.

  All three of the others laughed. Adam dropped his hand to his side and looked at Beau.

  Patting Adam on the shoulder, Beau teased Anna. “You look surprised. What did you expect would happen?”

  Still bumping along with her wheels off their tracks, Anna blurted a question she had been forming since she first met Maggie. “Does this stuff just run in your family?”

  Beau laughed louder. “You mean like a genetic healing gift?”

  As far as Anna was concerned, there was nothing more absurd about that idea than the idea that an eleven-year-old could just tell pain to leave.

  “It’s not genetic,” Rhonda said, as if she thought Beau was being too silly to provide a serious answer. “It’s just what they’re taught as soon as they can speak their first words around here.”

  Beau did reign in his laughter, and said, “That’s right. It’s environment not genetics.”

  Anna nodded. She looked at Adam. “Well, thank you for taking care of that. It would have cost me plenty to see a chiropractor or massage therapist for that.”

  Adam grinned and looked at Beau again, with a sly smile.

  Beau laughed again, but said, “No Adam, you cannot.”

  Anna furrowed her brow, wondering exactly what that was about, but suspecting it had something to do with requesting payment for his services. She knew Adam was kidding by the way he laughed back at Beau. Then Adam did something almost as surprising as offering to heal her neck. He slipped his arms around Anna and gave her a hug.

  When he let go, Adam said. “That’s all the payment I want.”

  Frozen like a mannequin, Anna offered half a smile in reply.

  “All right. You can go now, champ,” Beau said to Adam. “Thanks for your help. Now stop flirting with my guest.”

  Adam pushed off of Beau’s solid chest and sprinted for the stairs. “Hey, you can’t have all the women in this house.” And he bounded up the stairs two at a time, squealing with glee as Beau faked a chase.

  That cheeky comment brought back Anna’s question about Adam. “Is he your son?” she said, as Rhonda returned down the hallway from which she had emerged and Adam’s stomping faded into the distance.

  “No,” Beau said, with a more subdued smile. “In spite of that last comment, not all of the women here are my wives.” He motioned toward the huge living room to Anna’s left and led the way as he talked. “Tammy is Adam’s mother. I don’t know if you met her. I think she was next to the pool the last time you were here.” Beau swept his hand in a gesture that offered a variety of cream-colored couches and chairs on which to sit. As he waited for Anna to choose a spot, he continued. “We’re still holding out some hope that Adam’s father will take his wife and children back. Emma is Adam’s sister.” He added that last sentence when it occurred to him that he had heard something about Emma praying for Anna.

  Anna set her purse on a glass coffee table big enough to sleep two adults and dropped her flip-flops as she pulled her feet up under her on a long couch that felt like silk against her bare legs. “So, how many children do you have, and how many live here now.”

  Beau grabbed a bulky armchair and tugged it around thirty degrees to face more in Anna’s direction. He answered as he sat down. “I have eight children, five of them live here right now. My three oldest have moved out. Joanna is at Pepperdine, so she’s not far, but she lives in a dorm. You met Maggie, I know.”

  “Right,” Anna said, her throat tightening as she wound up her courage to press into the topic that had intrigued her most, before she met the people in that house. “And those are your children with Justine,” she said, as if summarizing.

  Beau nodded and pursed his lips. “Then there are the four younger ones,” he said. “You met Luke, his mother is Olivia, who was probably with Gracie in the pool one of the times you were here before. Gracie is actually adopted. Olivia’s sister died and left her custody of Gracie, whom I don’t think you’ve met.” Beau slowed down here because Anna was just getting her digital recorder settled on the table in front of her.
r />   Seeing his hesitation, Anna said, “Oh, it’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Do you wanna test it though, to make sure it’s working, and I’m loud enough?”

  Clearly, he had done this before. Also clearly, he felt he had nothing to hide.

  Anna picked up the recorder and rewound it to where she had turned it on, then played it back: “probably with Gracie in the pool one of the times you were here before. Gracie is actually adopted. Olivia’s sister died and left her custody of Gracie, whom I don’t think you’ve met.” His voice sounded clear enough.

  “Do you want me to start again with the children?” Beau asked.

  “No, I can remember most of it,” Anna said. Then she started the recorder again and reviewed what he had said about his older children with Justine. He nodded that she had remembered correctly.

  He continued. “Then there’s Dianna’s and my kids, Gretchen and Peter. I don’t know if Gretchen has been around at all while you were here. Dianna works as a nurse at a hospital nearby and the kids often stay with her former partner during the day-times.”

  “‘Former partner?’” Anna said.

  “Yeah, Dianna was in a lesbian relationship when I met her and she got pregnant with Gretchen. That was what started the whole expanded family we have here,” he said, as matter-of-factly as everything he had said to her. “I had an affair with Dianna a little over nine years ago, and then came clean about it. I wasn’t going to abandon her or the baby, and Justine wanted to take them in.”

  Seeing the look of discomfort on Anna’s face—as if she just realized that she was sitting on a live animal—Beau paused, waiting for a question.

  Anna waited a beat and then reached for clarity. “So, you had an affair with Dianna, while she was in a lesbian relationship, and she got pregnant. And Justine wanted to take her in?” Throughout her short acquaintance with the Dupere family, Anna had stretched and strained to try to hide her shock at things they said to her. She dropped the pretense here, her voice rising comically at the end of her question.

  Beau smiled tolerantly. “I know it’s unusual, but our churches really believe in forgiveness in a way that makes some unusual things possible,” he said. As Anna sat, shaking her head, he went on. “Justine forgave me and accepted me back after that affair, and was able then to be really open and compassionate about what we should do next. Dianna’s partner was not really a healthy influence on her, we all knew that, and Dianna was pregnant. We could’ve just supported her financially, in some condo around here, or something, but Dianna was really affected by the forgiveness she saw from Justine and wanted to change her life completely. She really needed someone like Justine to help her get free from old stuff holding her back, and she needed a father for her baby. It just made sense to make them part of the family.”

  Trying not to sound like a prosecuting attorney, nevertheless, Anna tried to clarify another fact. “And then you had another child with Dianna?”

  “Yep, that’s right. Peter. He’s six, a faithful follower of Adam,” he nodded his head in the direction of Adam’s escape up the stairs. Here was the first time Anna suspected Beau was trying to avoid discussing something. She pushed against that awkwardness between them but got flustered with the number of unanswered questions she could pursue.

  “So how did Olivia get into your family?” she said, only realizing too late that this left the topic of Dianna’s second child with Beau an incomplete story.

  “Olivia and Justine have been friends for about thirty years, although you wouldn’t believe they met in college after I told you that.” Beau smiled. “She was visiting us here after Dianna had joined us and was interested in pursuing a similar arrangement, the sort of extended family.” His voice wavered very slightly with that last phrase, and Anna knew she had finally found a point of discomfort.

  She took a breath, savoring a brief moment in which Beau’s vulnerability made her feel more settled with her own. “So Justine and Dianna agreed to add a third . . . wife?”

  Beau smiled. “Well, it’s illegal in California to have more than one wife. So, of course, she’s not a legal wife, the way the county measures such things.” His grin seemed playful to Anna, which annoyed her for the first time. Beau stepped into the void that her annoyance left in the conversation.

  “When I agreed to this interview, we all felt that I should be free to tell you everything you wanted to know, with one exception. Justine and the others wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t give any information about things that go on here in the privacy of the bedroom,” he said, sounding as if he was quoting someone exactly. “That’s why you heard me getting nervous there. I’m not used to holding back information, so I’m not very good at it.” His smile turned boyish, and almost shy.

  Anna nodded. Though she had, of course, been intensely curious about many details of their lives, she hadn’t expected sexually explicit revelations. Just how much Beau could, and would, say was entirely unpredictable, but she knew the conversation would stay PG-13 or lighter. What she did hope to establish is whether the accusers were right in saying that he had multiple wives, or at least multiple sexual partners. That goal, however, did demand some frank answers about who sleeps where and when. Processing the conflict for a couple of seconds left Beau waiting for her in patient silence, a thin grin on his pursed lips.

  “So, you’re admitting to having children by three different women, all of whom live in this house with you, and with the full knowledge of the others, of course. But you’re not saying you have three wives (or more) because you agreed to reserve sexual details for the privacy of the others, and because it’s illegal in California to admit to having three wives while a reporter is recording you?”

  Here Beau laughed again, a big Santa Clause laugh. “You know, Anna, I’ve seen you struggling to understand what’s going on around here several times. But it sounds to me like you understand this part perfectly well.” And he laughed some more.

  Anna smiled and leaned back on a big, multi-colored Caribbean-style pillow that rested on the top of the sofa, against the wall. She tried to press down a bit on the facts she had gathered to make sure they fit into a whole story. “So it’s just the three women?”

  She imagined she could see Beau shuffling through the possible ways to take that question and the safest way to answer. What he might have been doing instead, however, is listening the that Truth inside himself.

  “Yes. Just three.”

  Anna saw a look in Beau’s eyes that reminded her of her brother-in-law on his wedding day, and she knew that it was fair to think of Beau with three wives, and no more.

  “Okay,” she said. “I think I understand you. And you seem to understand me. So, let’s talk about something easy, like finances.” Now it was her turn to grin at her own punchline.

  Beau laughed and bowed slightly, as if granting her the point and the game.

  Make that Two Billion

  After a trip to the kitchen and the obligatory lemonade— strawberry this time—Beau and Anna headed out for the patio, with hope that the wind had slackened enough to make it more comfortable out there.

  “With Adam and me in the house, we can be sure that Bethany will be wearing something, if she’s out here,” he said with a wink. He held the door open for Anna as she blushed and ducked under his arm.

  Around the pool, chairs and tables stood empty, except for one chaise lounge on the other side, in the shade of two palm trees. There, Maggie sat reading a book propped up on her knees. She waved at the new arrivals and returned to her reading. Beau selected a table on the same side of the pool, but at the opposite end. There they could sit in the shade of the pool house. All of the umbrellas had been tied down because of the wind. Anna laid the digital recorder on the table next to her pink lemonade, glad for the pool house’s partial shelter from the wind to make recording possible.

  She started with one of her prepared questions. “I’m sure you’re aware of the big town meeting u
p in Parkerville, where a group of conservative pastors warned their parishioners to stay away from you,” she said. But she slowed to a stop when she saw Beau shaking his head with a curious crease above his brow. Anna looked at him. “You’re not aware?”

  “I know there are some people in churches around here, and elsewhere, that don’t agree with things I say or do. But I don’t know anything about any particular criticism.”

  Anna stared. Then she reached for her big bag on the ground next to her, pulling out her laptop computer. They both had to wait as she connected to the wireless network in the house and then to find the video that Dixon Claiborne’s committee presented. When she found it, she and Beau scooted their chairs close together and Anna tapped the Play arrow. Beau watched calmly, the only change in his facial expression coming when Jack Williams showed up on the screen. He smiled mildly at the appearance of his old friend and pastor. Otherwise, he seemed no more impressed by the video than a tortoise is impressed by a tiny bird pecking at its shell.

  “You’ve never seen that?”

  “No. I don’t pay attention to critics. It’s something Jack taught me.”

  Ann looked at the video Web site. “It says over one-and-a-half million people have viewed that clip, and I know it’s posted in some other places too, so that’s not all.”

  Beau just shook his head. Anna scowled incredulously at him, trying to decide if he was being naïve or if he was truly uninterested in the opinions of others.

  “Well, I was wondering what you say to their assertion that you get rich off of your healing ministry,” she said, returning to her intended line of questioning.

  “I haven’t ever needed to ask for money for healing meetings or conferences,” Beau said. “If there’s an offering at one of my meetings, it’s always designated for the local congregation or for a local charity. I don’t even use healing ministry to raise funds for my charitable organizations.”