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

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “That’s what we’ve heard from everyone we’ve talked to. The residents got out of the house itself, though they stayed within the compound, not coming out onto the street, where a large crowd of protesters is always present. The fire burned for about ten minutes and damaged one end of the house. People who have been watching the house, as part of the protest, say they think the firebombs were aimed at the master bedroom suite, which might have been where Beau Dupere and his . . . ah . . . his . . . his wife would have been this late in the evening. But that too is just speculation.”

  “And these firebombs were launched from some distance, is that right? Not just thrown by hand?”

  “Right, launched by some kind of giant slingshot. The police captured the equipment, including unused bottles of flammable liquid. From where that equipment is in relation to the other fire, some have concluded that the second fire was the attackers accidentally setting off a firebomb close to their own position. This has led some to speculate that the person who was injured away from the house may have been one of the assailants.”

  The anchorman’s voice escalated with incredulity. “But, then that would mean that we’re hearing reports that Beau Dupere ran out to help rescue one of the attackers?”

  Dixon turned down the volume on the report. “Sounds like all they have is a bunch of speculation.” His voice sounded tight in his throat.

  Sara ignored the missing details and vented about the attack. “Who is doing all of this? Do they really think God wants them to harm these people?”

  She didn’t consider her audience before blurting her reaction, but then her family was as caught off guard by the story as she was and didn’t have their lines of defense in place either.

  Kristen said, “Must be some really crazy people.”

  “Kinda like terrorists, right?” Brett said.

  Dixon didn’t like where this was headed and tried to moderate the prevailing attitude toward the opponents of Beau Dupere. “Well, people feel pretty strongly about their faith, and all through history there are people fighting for what they believe in, sometimes good people.”

  Even as he finished this unedited statement, Dixon regretted the impression that he might be defending the attacks. But he silenced the three-pronged racket of exasperated responses by turning up the volume on the TV and gesturing to the screen. “Looks like the police are making a statement.”

  They all turned to the screen, Sara seething at her father’s sympathy for the attackers, but keen to hear something official about what actually happened.

  “This is, of course, an ongoing investigation, so we can’t comment on that,” the police commander said. “I can confirm that the Dupere family are all safe, and the fire has been extinguished in their home. I can also confirm that a second fire was set by accident at the site from which the apparent firebombs were allegedly being launched. We have in custody a man who may have been part of the attack. He was reported to be severely injured, but is in good health now and on his way in to the station for questioning. We are assuming that the motivation for the attack has something to do with opposition to the sort of work Mr. Dupere does, but can say nothing further on what happened here tonight.”

  Reporters listening live to the commander exploded with questions as soon as he stopped talking. After several seconds, he managed to silence them and took one question.

  “Is it true that Beau Dupere ran from the house and helped to heal the man who was injured, possibly one of the attackers?” the reporter said.

  The commander shook his head. “We can’t comment on that. We’ll be investigating this further and will issue a more complete report as we gather more facts.”

  Sara, Kristen and Brett all moaned at the generic response from the police commander. Dixon looked at them, beginning to feel like a minority in his own home.

  “Well, you know how these things go. People think they see something and then later you check it out and everyone changes their story, or the stories don’t match up. They have to investigate to find what really happened,” Dixon said.

  Sara rolled her eyes and slapped both knees. “You just can’t believe that someone could really go and heal a man that just attacked his family, just because you can’t do anything even remotely like that.”

  Like her father a few minutes before, Sara regretted her tone and the spiteful accusation, as soon as she said it. The look on Dixon’s face deflated her soul. His open mouth, wide eyes and face fading pale, revealed the shock to his own heart.

  Sara stood up and dashed to the front door, running from her own anger as much as her father’s intransigent opposition to someone she considered a hero of faith. She swung back to grab her purse, cast a look of forlorn disgust in her mother’s direction and spun back to the door. She couldn’t even speak to apologize, and the tears in her eyes turned opening the front door into a desperate scramble. Her frustration broke out in frantic sobs that her family could hear even as she swung out the door and jumped off the porch, running toward her car.

  Kristen made it to the porch as Sara started her car and began to back down the drive. “Be careful, Sara. Settle down before you drive home like that,” she said, not knowing how to respond to what her daughter had laid on Dixon. Her immediate concern for Sara seemed the most clear of the dozen pulsing emotions she wrangled there in the warm summer air.

  Heeding her mother’s warning, Sara pulled to the side of the residential street a block from the house. Her gush of frustrated sorrow increased as she leaned her head on the steering wheel and let loose. Even as her entire body injected its energy into that catharsis, she recognized the fear that sparked her desperate response. She really feared that her father was condemning himself by siding with the wrong people, actually setting himself against God.

  Back at the house, Dixon and Kristen sat in their usual places, stunned at the storm that had driven their daughter out the door again. Brett snuck out of the room, recognizing toxic air for what it was. When the news story switched to the unexpected death, by heart attack, of movie producer Vincent Corelli, known to be friends with Beau Dupere, they didn’t notice.

  The Cost of Caring

  Dark clouds blew in over the ocean, the kind of clouds that seem to bulge with the weight of the water they carry. Yet, they hung on and left the coast dry again. Land so close to water yet so constantly dry reminded Beau of people that he knew. These would stand and watch as a partially blind person received perfect sight, close enough to the glory of God to reach out and grab some for themselves, yet they pushed back instead. They stay dry while people all around them pull the rain out of the clouds before letting them pass.

  Beau sat on a chair with his pool behind him, looking out over the Pacific, the water nearly black under the stormy skies, dashed with white here and there, as waves foamed into the air, whipped by the wind.

  Vince’s death nearly smothered Beau’s heart, a weight like a collapsed building pinning him, helpless. He knew the deepest part of that pain was not his own. He hadn’t given his life for Vince, he hadn’t known him from before birth, he hadn’t watched him every moment of his star-studded life, nor hovered over his devastated soul. Beau could heal, but he couldn’t save. It wasn’t his failure. But it still hurt.

  As he often did, when driven down by the weight of caring for people who could not grasp the treasure so freely offered to them, he remembered who he had been before fully grasping the reality of that grace. He remembered his struggles against the draglines of various escapes such as alcohol and sexual promiscuity, he remembered his weakness to resist. In those memories, he could understand the stubborn failure of those who refused to receive, even when they witnessed that grace given without a list of rules, without condemnation for the sins of the past, or even the present.

  Along this path, Beau uncovered a memory of an early meeting he had with Jack Williams, just the two of them. Jack had seen a rough version of the healing gift that God had laid on Beau, but he knew that Beau needed help
in carrying that much treasure in a corrupt and greedy world.

  “You gotta give in completely,” Jack said, sitting with his hands behind his head, leaning back on the couch in his living room. “If you just go half way, your gifting will eat you up, swallow you whole, and we’ll never see you again.”

  Beau was a successful stock trader by then, making intuitive deals that made him lots of money, yet he found little excitement in the millions. He had looked elsewhere, into drugs and drinking and women, in search of something that did excite him. By this point he knew how hollow those options were and had returned to his childhood faith and committed himself to church.

  “This healing gift that we saw again last Sunday, the way that guy’s hand just straightened out right before our eyes,” Jack said, “it’s a sign of who God is and who you are in God. This is not isolated from the things inside you that drive you to look for something more, something better, something big. This is that something big, and not just the healing, it’s the God who does the healing that’s the big deal, the real deal. But you’ll have to give up everything if you really want all of him.”

  Beau remembered looking at Jack, and knowing that he really meant what he said. Beau had succeeded in business by being able to read people, and he knew that Jack was as real as the deal he was offering. This was not some super-spiritual sap, selling the usual religious formula. No, this was a man who feared very little, if anything, beside God. And he was a man more passionate about God than the traders he worked with were passionate about the deals and the dollars.

  In the healing lines, Beau had felt the power of God at work through his hands, even before he really understood what that gift was. In being healed in his own body, Beau had seen God give before he understood why his creator gave, and especially why he gave anything to him, before he had fully committed himself to serve.

  To the challenge Jack issued that day, Beau had answered, “Maybe later.” He didn’t ever say this explicitly, of course, but he showed it with his renewed efforts at work and persisting in his back row sort of faith. During those months and years, he advanced in his healing abilities, but only slightly, and most of the time Jack and others knew he was just going along with what they expected. He wasn’t striving toward the mark set by a higher power than his own ego and his own ambition.

  Remembering all this, eased the frustration for Beau when he thought of friends like Vince, that pulled away, instead of pushing in closer when they saw the hand of God at work.

  Brushing his hair back to adjust a swirl drawn by a swift wind, Beau noticed Olivia rounding the end of the pool toward him. He smiled at her, in spite of his dark thoughts. Olivia smiled back, her red lips curving like the scrolling at the edges of an illuminated manuscript. Beau had always thought of her as an exotic beauty, unlike Dianna and Justine who looked like actresses or models. If Olivia were an actress, she would play the clever friend of the leading lady, the sidekick with a sense of humor and almond eyes that looked on with irony. She was wearing her hair in corn-rows these days, dangling earrings swinging in the breeze, where her braided brown hair left them free to catch the brunt of the approaching storm.

  As she stepped up close, Beau knew that she came with purpose, and not just a friendly visit, or even a mundane message, like lunch being ready. He still smiled at her, even when he knew she came to offer a poke, a prod to keep his focus where it was supposed to be.

  Olivia liked the way Beau could anticipate a difficult conversation. She had seen over and again that he used the forewarning from the Spirit to prepare his best response, not his best defense.

  “You are an eternally brave woman,” Beau said, greeting her by standing for a long hug that formed a brief shelter from the wind between them.

  “Oh, you think you’re so tough, do you?” Olivia said, the jousting tone of a tease tweaking her deep voice.

  “I could have you for breakfast, little one.”

  “Ah, but it’s way too late for your breakfast,” she said, looking up at his face angled down toward her. They kissed and then he turned and pulled another chair close to his.

  Olivia sat down, her thin legs—tinged a pale olive in the low light of the cloudy morning—leaned toward Beau’s ruddier, hairy legs. She admired the contrast of their skin and their physiques, ever the admirer of God’s works of art.

  For a minute, they both sat watching the wind against the palm trees and across the tops of the waves, and they listened for the voice of the one that they both loved even more than each other, even more than their kids. From what they each heard individually, they knew how to speak to each other.

  “It’s about Maggie,” Beau said, offering Olivia the stage only after introducing her topic for her.

  “Umhmm.” Olivia continued watching the surging sea, still listening for how much was hers to say.

  “Should I go talk to her?” Beau said, his gaze in perfect parallel to hers, his voice smooth and sure.

  “Not right away. She needs a bit more time. The firebombing just stirred up what the assassination laid on her. She does need to hear from you, but she needs to hear future assurances, not just present comforts.”

  “Ah,” Beau said, “that makes sense. I knew I was missing the mark with her. A good long hug will usually cure as much as any number of words I try. But that wasn’t working either.”

  Olivia nodded. Her brow was clenched, her lips pressed together. She was trying to push through the emotion that came with what she had to say next. “The problem is,” she said, pausing to tighten control of her voice. “The problem is that she knows it’s going to happen again.”

  Beau nodded, rapid little motions with his head, his eyebrows curled down just above his dark eyes. He reached up and rubbed his right hand down from his mouth, over his chin, as if he still wore the beard he had when Olivia first moved in. With his other hand, he reached for hers and held on.

  “I think,” Olivia said, “that you should let us know more of how you’ll miss the ones you leave behind.” Her voice shook like loose shudders hassled by that wind.

  Beau reached back and slipped his left arm around Olivia. She followed that impetus up from her chair and down onto his lap. She wrapped both arms tight around his neck. This movement helped her to regain control of her emotions, but she felt him shaking beneath her, his head pressed against her neck, sobs convulsing his whole torso.

  She knew she had asked the hardest thing. She had asked him to allow his humanity to face what only the Spirit could endure, and she had asked it for her own benefit and for the children. The younger ones didn’t know or understand. But Maggie, and perhaps Adam, could tell that something was coming, and they needed the affirmation of a role model doing the same thing they felt compelled to do, to mourn. Olivia, and the other women, needed this too. Without it, they condemned themselves for indulging emotions and ignoring the comforts of the Spirit. However, they were all human, no matter how much supernatural power pulsed through their hands and minds.

  Beau sniffed long and hard, trying to regain control. He just shook his head with those little movements again, like his brain was caught between two immovable forces bouncing tensely back and forth between them. He too was still only human.

  A Prisoner of Fear

  When Anna heard about the firebombing at the house, she first drove over there, but the police wouldn’t let her near. She had to wait until the next day to see Justine and Maggie and Beau, along with a few of the little ones. She seethed at the sight of the blackened wood and brick against the pristine paint of the unmarred sections. But she comforted herself with the safety of the residents.

  Her next mission, as she saw it, was to pursue the attacker who was in custody, and whose life had been saved when Beau ran out of the compound to heal him. But she had to do this on her own time. The paper had tired of Beau Dupere, and wanted Anna to work on another story, one about a double amputee training for the U.S. Olympic team, her usual genre.

  She felt no remorse abo
ut using her press credentials to gather a story that she wouldn’t be able to publish, at least in the short term. When she arrived at the Malibu police station, where the prisoner had originally been held, she found that she was a day late. The prisoner had been moved to a federal facility in Los Angeles, under FBI custody.

  For six hours, in the maze of offices downtown, Anna talked with everyone she could get to listen, trying to schedule access to the prisoner. But the stack of policies between Anna and that goal was as tall as the Federal building in which she waged her struggle. When she was ready to give up, heading for the elevator at five p.m., an agent followed her down the hall.

  The tall, dark-haired man in his thirties cleared his throat and prompted Anna to turn and see who was so close behind her. “Let’s take the stairs,” he said, motioning behind him. A half dozen people got on the elevator. A woman with a holster over her shoulder held the door until Anna motioned for them to go on. Something in the face of the man behind her set her at ease, in spite of the clandestine feeling that his invitation carried, his voice slightly hushed, his face neutral, as if avoiding calling attention to himself.

  Anna followed him through the door to the stairs. They were ten floors up. It would be a long walk. She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder as the door closed behind them. The stranger stopped in the middle of the first flight and listened a moment.

  “I just have a minute,” he said. “I saw you trying to talk to that guy that hit the house in Malibu. He was on this slingshot thing lobbing Molotov cocktails at the Dupere house, and one of the bombs slipped loose and exploded at his feet, lighting him up. He wasn’t gonna die, like the TV news said, but he was burned pretty much all over.” The informant spoke steadily and clearly, intent on feeding Anna as many facts as he could in a brief conversation, it seemed.