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

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Let the Children Come to Me

  Though Beau was always looking for a chance to heal, his focus paled compared to Adam’s. Wherever he went, Adam checked for physical ailments, particularly pain, his healing specialty.

  On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Adam and Peter accompanied Beau and Luke to the park. After speeding through the gauntlet of spite at the end of the driveway, with the boys holding their hands over their ears, it was a short five minutes to a park with elaborate castles and bridges for the boys to conquer and defend. They liked it especially on a Saturday, when there would be lots of other boys and girls to join in their fantastic games.

  Beau sat on a bench in the partial shade of a scrawny maple tree reading a biography of a powerful man in the U.S. tech industry, someone he had met once. Though his reading comprehension would suffer for it, Beau spent almost as much time watching the boys. He watched to make sure that Adam and Peter stayed close to Luke, who was still small for such a large and rowdy environment, and to see if Adam had spotted his next healing subject. Generally, it was a matter of when, not if, in a crowd of kids this size, especially kids that Adam didn’t know and whom he hadn’t already tried to heal.

  Engrossed in a description of the tech titan’s family life, Beau stayed with the book for a few minutes uninterrupted, his right arm resting on the back of the wooden bench, the book cradled from below by his left hand. In the shade, a pink long-sleeve shirt unbuttoned over his blue t-shirt felt perfectly comfortable on that calm and sunny day.

  An unusual silence in one section of the park awoke Beau from his reading. He looked up to check on the boys. When he located them he located the reason for the noticeable noise reduction. A little circle of children, along with a couple of parents, stood around Adam and Peter. Beau hoped Luke was there too, though he couldn’t see the little two-and-a-half-year-old. Standing up calmly, noting his page in the book, he sauntered toward the action.

  Children all over the walls of the castle and along the bridges had stopped to watch what was happening. Just when Beau got a glimpse of who was at the center of that circle with Adam, the whole impromptu gathering burst into cheers and applause. Between the running and jumping children, cheering or dashing to tell their parents what they had seen, Beau could see Adam and Luke focused on a six or seven-year-old girl. She held some small object in her hand and spoke animatedly to Adam. Luke looked up at her with the most satisfied smile Beau had ever seen on that little face.

  When Adam saw Beau approaching, he said something to the little girl and Luke and then ran to meet Beau. Grabbing the hand not carrying a book, Adam towed Beau to the scene of his triumph.

  “This is Deirdre,” he said, gesturing much like he might when rolling dice on the ground in front of him. Adam was rarely self-conscious, in his excitement even less so. He bounced as he recounted what happened.

  “Luke was trying to talk to this girl, Deirdre, and she said she couldn’t hear him ‘cause she had hearing loss in both ears. Luke didn’t understand except that she needed healing, so he called me over.” He paused to reassure Beau. “I was just up there where I could still see him. We were playing castle and he was out on the bridge.”

  Deirdre, not too shy to jump in, said, “I couldn’t tell what he was saying when he pointed at Adam, but I got the idea I was supposed to wait, so I did.”

  A woman in a purple cardigan joined them. “Deirdre, what’s going on?”

  As if glad to finally be rid of them, Deirdre handed two small plastic objects to her mother, for that’s who the woman was. “I can hear now,” she said, looking up at her mom with the biggest grin her little blushing face could accommodate. She pointed at Luke and said, “It’s ‘cause of Luke and Adam.”

  Adam remembered his manners and stepped up to Deirdre’s mother and shook her hand. He probably could have relieved her of her jewelry and shoes at that moment, for the petite, dark-haired woman stood frozen and unresponsive to the world around her.

  Beau noted the paralysis of the mother and decided to bypass that to get the story of how it happened. “So how did you do it?” he said to Adam. To Deirdre’s mother, the intonation must have sounded wrong, because instead of asking, “How in the world did you do a thing like that?” Beau sounded like he was asking more of a methodological question. He did have a hint of a proud father smile about him, but no sign of surprise.

  “Well, Peter thought that since Luke was the one who found her, maybe he was supposed to be the one that healed her, so I told Luke to put his hands on her ears,” Adam said.

  “I had to bend down for him to do it,” Deirdre said.

  “And I told him to tell deafness to go away, and he did,” Adam said. His voice hopped as he said “he did,” aiming a grin at Luke to accompany that declaration.

  Luke sensed a cue for him, so he said it again, “Deafness, go away,” as if to demonstrate how easy it really was.

  Deirdre’s mother had recovered her ability to speak by then. “You can hear? You can hear without the hearing aids?”

  “Yes!” Deirdre exclaimed. “I can hear you, and I can hear the kids, and I can hear that jet flying overhead.” Everyone looked up at a jet flying at least twenty thousand feet above, its engines barely breaking through the noise of a hundred children at play.

  The mother blinked at her daughter and then at the three boys. She looked to Beau, perhaps hoping an adult could convince her that this was not just some sort of trick, or a child’s game. Beau smiled at her and said. “God is good!”

  She just shook her head, perhaps not denying God’s goodness, but rather admitting her momentary loss of confidence that she knew anything for sure.

  Deirdre covered her ears with her hands and then uncovered them, using her hands like flaps, opening and closing, to hear the sound come and go. “I can hear everything,” she said, in a playful sing-song voice, an octave lower than normal.

  Adam and Peter laughed, and Luke put his hands on his own ears to emulate Deirdre.

  “So, God . . . did this?” Deirdre’s mother said to Beau.

  Beau nodded and introduced himself. “I’m the dad,” he said. “Beau. And you are?”

  “Deirdre’s mom, Katie.”

  “Pleased to meet you. You wanna sit down and talk about this?”

  Katie nodded, but failed to follow Beau back to his bench initially, still trying to find all of the gears that had once driven her through her very normal and predictable life. Beau motioned for her to follow.

  “Go, Mom,” Deirdre said, pushing her mother toward where Beau had paused to wait for her.

  Adam laughed at the comic contrast between Deirdre’s lack of inhibition and her mother’s stupefaction. Beau waited patiently. He had seen all this before.

  Forgiveness for What?

  The next morning, after Anna survived her first grilling by the press, she persisted in feeling responsible for what happened to Dianna. She carried this backpack full of guilt through her morning routine, from shower to dressing, to breakfast, to makeup. Not until she was driving to work did she decide she finally had to just do it. She turned her car toward Malibu and the Dupere house. She called the office to explain that she was going for a follow-up interview. She knew she had lots of leeway with her editor, given that her article had sold more papers than any other in the history of that publisher.

  When she cut off the call on her Bluetooth earpiece she settled back, thinking of what she would say, and how she would say it. Throwing herself to her knees, grasping Beau’s feet, or maybe Dianna’s feet, came to mind. Weeping seemed unavoidable. Her throat tightened every time she thought about her role in turning even more people violently against Beau and his family.

  While she sat there on her knees, at Beau’s feet, she wondered if she could offer herself, as penance. She would work for them, do anything they asked, because they were such good people and she . . . well, she was. . .

  An accident along the side of the highway drew her out of her fantasy apology, or whatever
that was. Attention to merging lanes, bumper-to-bumper traffic and mounting heat inside her inadequately air-conditioned car drained much of her ardent repentance and spontaneous resolve, such that, by the time she pulled down the long straight road leading into the Dupere’s neighborhood she was second-guessing the direction her car was rolling.

  What if they aren’t awake yet? What if they aren’t home? What if they laughed at her for thinking she could be forgiven for what she did?

  That last notion made Anna cringe. That’s not like them, she thought. Where did that idea come from?

  She passed inspection by a sheriff’s deputy and rolled toward the end of the driveway.

  The crowd along the street, all the way down to the next intersection, was impressive for nine o’clock in the morning. She saw a sign with a picture of a nurse covered in red paint, and she knew the hardcore crazies where present and accounted for. And this renewed her momentum toward throwing herself at the mercy of the Dupere household.

  In the driveway, the guards had been doubled, and none of the four looked familiar to Anna. This cast her entire enterprise into doubt. She didn’t have an appointment and they wouldn’t recognize her.

  She pressed the button for the driver’s side window, which crept down the rest of the way. A dark-haired young man, his muscular shoulders bulging against his black t-shirt, leaned down and looked in the window.

  “Are you the reporter? Anna?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Okay, they thought you might be by today. Go on through.”

  The two-second delay between when those words entered her ears and when she next moved, to follow the guard’s gesture toward the gate, was shorter than it would have been a few weeks ago. But, in all her anxiety over begging for forgiveness, Anna hadn’t ever paused to think that they might be expecting as much from her. Or was that what they were expecting?

  Driving under the influence of overwhelming consternation is difficult but not impossible, as Anna discovered. She coasted into her usual parking place, noting the absence of Beau’s Land Rover and a couple of other cars she was used to seeing there. They were expecting her, but did they know when to expect her? As she stepped out of the car, she thought, maybe they were expecting me, and all ran away so they wouldn’t have to see me.

  Again, she noted how strange that thought seemed in the context of the people she had met in that house. Where were these thoughts coming from?

  Anna actually had to ring the doorbell and wait. No one seemed to be poised at the other side of the door, politely waiting for her to finally get there, let alone had come outside to greet her and help her up the steps.

  The front door opened and a young woman with very long, straight brown hair stood in a loose cotton dress and bare feet. “Of course, her feet would be bare,” Anna thought.

  “Hi, I’m Anna Conyers. I was hoping to speak with Beau or Justine, or maybe Dianna,” she said, assembling more words than she had planned.

  “Come on in,” said the young woman. “I’m Miranda Hollister, their administrative assistant. They’re all out just now, but I can call and see when Beau or Justine will be back. Dianna’s at work.”

  Anna hoped that her disappointment didn’t show, but how could Miranda not notice the effect of such grand and fragile hopes popping and sputtering to the earth?

  This time, Anna kicked her shoes off immediately when she entered. That spontaneous act felt like kicking off shackles, for reasons she couldn’t even guess. She almost giggled.

  Miranda led Anna toward a part of the house that she hadn’t seen before, pushing a door open and gesturing toward a huge overstuffed couch, as she settled gently into a tall office chair made of black mesh, curved to fit her back. “Have a seat, I’ll get one of them on the phone and see when we can expect them.”

  Anna, still carrying the stunned silence that hit her at the news that all of the protagonists were out of the house, followed Miranda’s directions and took a seat on the couch. She lowered her shoulder bag to the floor in front of her and pulled her legs up under her, to avoid having her feet dangle a couple of inches above the floor. She felt vulnerable enough without that added evidence that she was just a child among adults.

  The side of Miranda’s phone conversations that Anna heard sounded like leaving messages on voice mail, both on Beau’s phone and Justine’s. Miranda hung up the second call and turned her chair toward Anna.

  “I know they don’t have big meetings or anything this morning. Justine was shopping and Beau was seeing a friend for breakfast. That leaves their times of arrival pretty flexible. How flexible is your schedule?”

  Anna looked at Miranda, wishing she were as cool and unburdened as her hostess. We must be about the same age, she thought. How could she have it so together? Then Anna realized that asking questions was her job, so she would just do that.

  “I know I didn’t call ahead, so that’s my bad,” she said. “But I wonder if I could ask you some questions to follow up on my article and some of the things that have happened since.” She felt like she was faking it, but she hoped that she came across as professional and almost confident.

  Miranda smiled. “Sure, no problem. Beau said you might want to talk to me, after I setup your meeting with Steve, the accountant.”

  It was news to Anna that Miranda had setup that meeting, but she did remember now that it was Miranda that she had talked with in her initial efforts to interview Beau. So this was the assiduous assistant that buffeted her early queries? Not what she had pictured.

  “Great,” Anna said, still maintaining the charade of unflappability. “How long have you worked for them?” she said, pulling a notebook out of her bag.

  “Coming up on three years now,” Miranda said, crossing her legs under her loose, flowing dress and leaning back a bit, as if she planned on enjoying their little talk.

  “What did you do before?”

  “I was the personal assistant to Maya Clark.”

  “The Maya Clark? The pop singer?”

  Miranda laughed. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How did Beau get you away from Maya?” Anna said, remembering an interview she did with Maya a few years ago, before the young singer was a household name.

  “Well, he made a very generous offer in terms of compensation, and I got a chance to see the family and observe their style and such. It seemed like a dream job for me, much less pressure than the pop music scene and the high-paced lifestyle of a twenty-something diva.”

  “So he pays you more than Maya did?”

  “Yes, and the health benefits are unbeatable.” Miranda’s face lit up like a girl who wanted to tell a really good secret.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” Anna couldn’t figure out what could be funny about health benefits.

  “I’m never sick,” Miranda explained, still grinning.

  “Never sick?”

  “If I get any kind of negative health symptoms, I just have the family heal me. There’s always someone around here that can cut an infection or injury short. I never have to go to the hospital or see a doctor.” Her satisfied grin made sense to Anna now, though she was having difficulty believing what Miranda was saying.

  “So, in three years, you’ve never taken a sick day?”

  “Actually, at first, I did. But Beau sat me down and explained that I should always come to work, even if I’m sick, and they would take care of it. He even said, if I felt too sick to come over, he would send someone to come and heal me at home, or pray over the phone.”

  “That makes it sound so automatic,” Anna said. “Haven’t they ever found something they can’t heal?”

  Miranda grew a bit more serious, her grin fading and her tone more instructive. “Individually, I know that they have failed to heal things, but as a group, I have always seen everything healed by one or another of them. I’m at least two and a half years without a sick day.”

  Anna could feel herself getting mired in this point, and wanted to cover ot
her questions, so she forced herself to move on, with a shake of her head and a little laugh.

  “Well, as tough as all that is for me to absorb, I do want to ask you some other questions. So Beau pays better than Maya? That’s surprising to me.”

  “He’s a very generous man,” Miranda said. “Justine, too, and all of them. No one here seems hung up on having stuff or keeping things for themselves. Actually, since I am so well compensated, I’ve followed their examples in how to deal with having more money than I need.”

  “Were you a believer when they hired you?”

  “A believer?” Miranda said, measuring that word for its fit. “I went to church as a kid and definitely believed that God was real. But I didn’t really live like I thought God cared about what I did or would take care of everything I need.” She thought for a second, her green eyes drifting toward the corner of the room. “I guess I was a believer to an extent, but not like now, after all the miracles I’ve seen and the way these people treat each other. It does feel a lot like another conversion.”

  “Conversion to something beyond the faith of your childhood?”

  “Yes. Because the faith of my childhood was faith in a distant and uncaring God, who was mostly mad at me and everybody else. I mean the God I grew up with was just someone you didn’t wanna tick off, not someone who reaches into my life and loves me in every possible way.”

  Anna squirmed a bit in her seat, settling back down with her legs recrossed under her. Miranda’s personal faith seemed different than what Anna had understood from other Christians. And even Beau didn’t talk about his faith in the same fresh way that Miranda did. Perhaps it was just newer to the young assistant.

  “I can see that what I’m saying makes you a bit uncomfortable,” Miranda said. “I was like that when I started here. It was actually the only reason I hesitated about taking the job. I could tell right away that their way of loving God was so different from what I’d known that I would either have to shelter myself in some way, or I would end up giving in and accepting that love for myself.”