“You step here next to me, Corin,” his mom said.
Corin hesitated, then stepped on the back of the pontoon next to his mom and brother.
“That might be too much weight . . .” His dad stared at them.
Corin glanced at the pontoon as it sank into the dark green water, then back at his father. “Dad?”
“Get off!”
Too late.
“Jump! Before it flips and hits you—”
His dad’s words were smothered as the combined weight of his mom and him flipped the craft over and Corin was pulled underwater.
Something thumped him on the head and he started to go dark. No, he had to get to the surface. He kicked hard but didn’t move. Corin opened his eyes and looked up. The pontoon was upside down, and he was next to one of the bicycles. Next to the handlebars. He kicked again.
Nothing.
Then he saw why. One of the straps of his life jacket was wrapped around a handlebar of the bike.
He yanked on the strap. It was like a steel cable.
Suddenly, movement beside him. He whirled to see his mom next to him. She grabbed the strap and yanked on it. It didn’t budge. She pulled again. Nothing.
She wrapped the strap around her hand and wrenched on it a third time. Slight movement. Too slight.
He was running out of air. Please, Mom! Get me to the surface!
Twenty more seconds. He could hold his breath twenty more seconds.
She motioned with her hands as if to tell him to stay calm and then swam for the surface.
No! What are you doing? Don’t leave me!
Fifteen more seconds before his air was gone.
An instant later his dad was next to him, grabbing the strap with his iron hands and yanking it so hard the handlebars bent.
Ten seconds.
He was still tied to the bike. He clawed at his dad, tearing into his skin, not caring, only knowing he had to breathe.
Seven seconds.
Another heave with all the strength his dad possessed. Corin kicked his legs as hard as he could, knowing it wouldn’t help but unable to stop himself.
Three seconds.
Another pull by his father. Corin grabbed the handlebar as if he could break it in two. His eyes went wide, his mouth opened to scream.
One second.
A moment later Corin let out his air and sucked in the coldness of the lake.
His dad was still pulling on the strap when the darkness took him.
Corin laid his shaking hands on his jeans and tried to smile. Although he’d relived the memory thousands of times, when awake and in his dreams, it was the first time he’d told the story out loud.
“You didn’t almost drown that day.”
He shook his head.
“You died.”
Corin nodded at Nicole and sucked in a quick breath. “Clinically dead for five minutes. Revived and the doctors said there was no damage to my mind.”
“Except for your fear of the water.”
Corin took off his hat and massaged the Rockies logo with his thumb. “If there is a God behind this chair of yours, He certainly has a sense of humor.”
Nicole tilted her head and glanced at him. “How so?”
Corin let out a bitter laugh. “Did you know that Olympic-caliber coaches can spot an athlete with innate natural talent as young as three?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I was picked out of a crowd of four-year-old boys as having exceptional talent, and I exercised that talent for the next six years.”
“What was the sport at which you showed such aptitude?” She asked the question as if she already knew the answer.
Corin stared at the water for a few seconds before turning and looking at Nicole. “Swimming, of course.”
“I’m sorry.” Nicole sighed and gave a tiny shake of her head. “Do you ever miss it?”
“Never.”
It wasn’t true. Swimming wasn’t an extreme sport, didn’t give him the rush that hang gliding or BASE jumping or street luging did. But in the water he’d always felt free, alone with the surge of the water as he pulled himself to another record-breaking time for eight-year-olds, then nine, then ten-year-old boys. While the water terrified him now, an atom-sized part of him missed the water, missed what it used to be to him.
“Did your mom carry guilt for what happened?”
“She had giant backpacks stuffed with guilt and she carried them everywhere she went till the day she died.” Corin picked up a handful of gravel and started tossing the pieces at the water. “I never stopped trying to convince her to let the guilt go, but she couldn’t ever watch Olympic swimming after that. She blamed herself for my not wearing gold around my neck. Never could accept that the accident wasn’t her fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?”
“Everyone has some kind of kryptonite in his or her life. I suppose that’s one of mine.”
“So you need a lead box in which to mute its power?”
Corin rubbed his collarbone. A lead box? Sure. If only the solution for his life could be as simple as it was in his comic books. “Are you offering?”
“In a way, yes.”
“How so?”
“The chair.”
“It can heal me, huh?”
“It is a way to healing.”
“What does that mean?”
Nicole patted his hand. “I’m sorry; I can’t tell you that part.”
“I have to figure that out on my own.”
She nodded. “A man who is told learns with his head; a man who experiences the lesson learns with his heart.”
“Who said that?”
“I did.”
Maybe it was time for him to sit in the chair again. He wasn’t sure what had kept him from trying it a second time. Maybe he was scared it wouldn’t work. Maybe he didn’t know exactly what to believe for when he sat in it. Maybe it was because it might peel back a fear so deep he’d never faced it.
Then again, maybe it was time to sell it. “There’s this pastor of a megachurch who wants to buy the chair.”
“I see.” Nicole glanced at the sky and folded up her umbrella. “Do you think you should, or is there something or Someone orchestrating a symphony here greater than you know? Can’t you feel it?”
Corin hesitated. The obvious answer was to say yes. But was there? Emotions were not reality, and even though he’d felt an affinity toward Nicole, felt hope after A. C. was healed, felt a sense of wonder after little Brittan was supposedly healed by the chair, it didn’t mean some Higher Power was directing the whole thing.
And what if God was behind all of it? Maybe Mark’s offer was God’s way of sending him a boat to rescue him from the encroaching waters. A path of hope he could offer Shasta that might lead to a healing that seemed insane to hope for two weeks earlier. “I don’t know if something greater is going on here.”
“When does this pastor want his answer?”
Corin smiled at her. “You know who the pastor is. I think you’re tracking me.”
“I’m watching out for you.”
“It seems a common hobby for people these days.”
“Quite.”
Corin tried to stir up a feeling of mistrust toward Nicole. Impossible. Tesser had said to trust no one, and the counsel was wise, but with Nicole he couldn’t help it. “I have three days to decide. And one of them has already passed.”
“Why would you sell it?”
“I need the money to keep my store from going under.”
“Anything else?”
Corin shrugged. “A friend of mine has to have an operation.”
“Has to?”
Corin hesitated. “Yes.”
“And this money could pay for it.”
“Yep.”
“Why not have your friend sit in the chair?”
“Because from what I’ve seen, the chair decides what it wants to heal and what it doesn’t want to heal, and I can’t risk this friend sitting in the chair and getting nothing.”
“Why is that?”
Corin stood and stepped toward the lake. Sorry, no one got that story. After two or three minutes he sat again.
“Have you sat in the chair, Corin?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It didn’t heal me of anything.”
“Did you believe it would heal you?”
Corin didn’t answer.
“Maybe you should sit in it again.”
“I don’t have anything wrong with me except a stiff knee.”
“That’s all the healing you need?”
“It’s rarely stiff.”
“Healing is healing. Western culture makes the distinction, but God does not. What good is an arm or leg that is healed when the mind is still broken?” Nicole paused till Corin looked at her. “Also, you might consider your sitting in the chair might not be only about your healing, but about someone else’s.”
“Can you explain that with fewer cryptic drapes covering up the meaning?”
“I think we’ve had enough time together for the moment.” Nicole stood. “We’ll talk again soon, Corin, I promise.”
On the way home, he gripped and regripped his steering wheel as if he could strangle it into giving him an answer as to what Nicole meant. But he didn’t need it to speak. He already knew.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Nicole knew all about Shasta. Why did she want Corin to push his brother into sitting in the chair? Did she truly believe it would heal him? And why would his sitting in the chair help his brother?
It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be dragging Shasta to the table inside the restaurant of Hope-U-Get-Healed. If God wanted that done, He would have to do it Himself.
But maybe Corin would sit in the chair again.
Maybe tonight.
CHAPTER 32
Corin strode through his front door, tossed his keys onto his couch, and stared at the door to his basement.
Should he? Shouldn’t he? An old football injury stiffened up his knee a few times a year. The forefinger on his left hand ached sometimes due to breaking it when he was in the sixth grade. That was it. Sit in the chair for those things? No. And certainly not for his fears.
Healing for those? Sorry, Nicole, I’ll get through my mental torments on my own. He’d learned to live with his kryptonite.
No you haven’t. You need to sit again.
The thought flashed through him with such clarity, Corin’s head snapped back and he blinked.
No, he didn’t need to.
He needed to sell the chair to Mark and use the money to get Shasta that operation.
He didn’t need healing.
He didn’t.
But the lie kept sticking halfway down his throat and refused to be swallowed.
He paced in his living room, trying to decide whether to face the truth or build himself a web of self-deception. After three minutes he admitted the real reason he didn’t want to sit in the chair. He was just like his brother.
For twenty-four years Corin had tried to get healed of his claustrophobia and fear of water. Through hypnosis, acupuncture, counseling . . . And just like Shasta, he wasn’t willing to release even a sliver of hope that would once again only be obliterated.
Come sit.
The impression was stronger this time.
Great. Now he was hearing voices.
Come.
Corin strode over to the basement door and yanked it open.
Fine. He would sit in the chair. And he would believe. And prove to himself the chair wouldn’t heal anything inside him.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he went to turn on the lights, hesitated, then left them off. He could use the light from his cell phone to unlock the padlock on the door.
Corin slid his cell phone into his pocket as he eased the door open and stepped inside. He could almost feel the chair ten feet in front of him. One more step. Then another.
What was he thinking? He was sneaking up on an inanimate object. But the next moment he smiled as a faint light emanated from the middle of the room.
No question. The chair was glowing. The faintest of lines ringed its outside edges and the light seemed to be creeping counterclockwise.
After two more steps the glow faded and vanished.
Darkness enveloped him as he stepped forward and felt for the chair. There. He had it. Its surface wasn’t hot. Wasn’t cool. It felt normal.
He slid into the chair without hesitation, closed his eyes, and waited for . . . what? Corin didn’t know. What had Avena said? A. C. had seen a light show, a feeling of warmth and peace.
After a minute Corin still felt nothing.
Two minutes. Still nothing.
“God? Did Your Son make this chair?”
Silence.
“Did He?”
Then a tingling in the chair, so soft he couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined, but at the moment he decided it was real, it vanished, and again he wasn’t sure if it happened only in his mind.
Five minutes later he still felt nothing.
Maybe he needed to concentrate on what needed healing. Isn’t that what Tori and he had talked about? As Corin let the emotions of the lake rise around him, he swallowed and his breathing grew shallow.
“Take me,” he whispered the words, then louder, “take me!”
He clenched the seat of the chair till his fingers ached, as if he could squeeze a reaction out of the ancient artifact. “Heal me. Please.”
Cynicism gave over to hope and he tried to imagine a heat coming from the chair or a great peace. A comfort. Anything.
“Do something!”
The only alteration was the seat growing slightly cooler.
He closed his eyes again and tried to relax.
Corin glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. How long had Brittan sat in the chair? A. C.? He couldn’t remember—as if it would matter.
“Change me.” The words were almost inaudible.
Again, an impression filled his mind.
Call him. Offer healing. Not through the surgery of men.
Corin gave a slight shake of his head.
Impossible. Shasta wouldn’t come.
Call him.
The thought lit up his mind like lightning; there for an instant then gone, and afterward his mind felt darker than before the idea had come.
Twenty more minutes of sitting in the chair didn’t bring any light and something told him the next day wouldn’t get any brighter.
THE NEXT MORNING, Corin grabbed a cup of straight-drip java at Jade Shot Coffee, made sure the lid was on tight, and half jogged toward his store. He was already late.
Sixty seconds later his progress was thwarted by three men who looked like the NFL’s version of the Hells Angels. Each of the four men towered over Corin by at least five inches. In the middle, with his arms folded, black sunglasses on, stood Mark Jefferies.
“Good morning, Corin.”
Corin took a sip of his coffee as his eyes bounced from one end of the line to the other. Mark motioned the man on the end with a flick of his head, and the four linebackers eased around Corin till they encircled him. Great. He would be even later thanks to this religious whacko.
“What a pleasure to bump into you, Mark. With you up here so much lately, who’s preaching back home?”
Mark motioned with his head again. The mountain men moved two ste
ps closer.
“I see you flew in some of your congregation.” Corin took another sip of his coffee. “What do you want?”
“To talk. To see if you’ve made a decision on my offer.” Mark glanced at his watch. “It expires in a little over thirty-nine hours.”
“I’d love to chat, but I’m late.”
“This will only take a moment.”
Corin glanced around the circle. “It looks to me like you’re getting ready to threaten me. Or something maybe a little bit grander than that.”
“Not at all. I only want to know if I’m going to write you a check or not.” Mark pulled a set of papers out of his back pocket. “We could sign everything right now if you like. Since we haven’t talked in the past two days and you haven’t responded to my e-mails and phone calls, I simply thought it would be good to have a little chat.”
Corin motioned toward the men who surrounded him. “Do they chat?”
“Sure. But do they need to? Or do you understand their body language?” He glanced up and down the street. If any of the pedestrians thought their gathering looked odd, they didn’t express it.
“I suppose this is the part where you tell me if I don’t accept your offer, you still want the chair, won’t take no for an answer, and your buddies here will use their body language on me in a way that is universally understood.”
“Once again you’ve misunderstood me.”
“I keep doing that.” Corin offered his finest plastic smile and gave a quick nod. “No idea why.”
A condescending smile rose on Mark’s face and quickly faded.
“The chair is yours to do with as you want. And always will be. This isn’t a TV show. I simply want you to understand how serious I am about my beliefs and about giving you the money.” Mark cracked his knuckles. “We want to understand; we want to help you. And if you don’t accept my offer, I will still continue to help you in any and every way I can.”
He suspected accepting assistance from Mark would be like living in that old Eagles song “Hotel California.” He’d be able to check out any time he liked, but he’d never be able to leave Jefferies’s clutches. “And if I don’t want help?”
Mark smiled his half smile, part of his teeth showing, most covered by his Elvis-sneerlike mouth. “You need my help.”
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