Pocketful of Pearls

by Shelley Bates

  And in Gathering this morning there had been a whiff of that very thing, telling her something was wrong. It made her a little nervous.

  “I don’t know,” Claire admitted. “They go to church.”

  “You can’t find peace in a worldly church. Everybody knows that.”

  “Do we know it?” Claire asked. “Or are we just told that? I mean, has any of us actually gone and seen what happens in a worldly church?”

  “Melchizedek went once. He said it was empty of the Spirit and full of noise. They even had a rock band up front.” Dinah had a sneaking suspicion that it would have been in Melchizedek’s best interests to say so, in order to keep his flock from going and experimenting with other churches themselves, but there was no way to say such a thing aloud. He was probably just speaking the truth as he saw it.

  “Well, regardless, Julia is happy and there was no wall between us. We talked about everything and everybody, same as always. She sends her greetings.”

  “Thanks. What did your relatives say when you went over there?”

  Claire shrugged. “It’s not like I was staying with them and I’d have to tell them where I was going. I was in a hotel. I didn’t see them every night, and it’s really none of their business who I visit anyway.”

  But it was something to conceal. And something concealed from God’s people was by default something wrong, as Dinah knew only too well.

  “They live in Ross’s condo,” Claire went on. “It has this little grass courtyard and the complex has a pool where Ross takes Kailey to swim every day. It’s a whole different life for her now.”

  Dinah had heard a rumor that the child had been kidnapped by her now-deceased mother and brought up in a cult. “Is it true she’d never seen her father before last summer?”

  Claire nodded. “They’re making up for lost time, let me tell you. He’s a cop, right, so his time isn’t really his own, but he’s involved in her school doing talks and field trips and stuff. So is Julia.”

  “How does she like being a mom?”

  “It seems to suit her. Want to know a secret?” Dinah grinned, amused at the way Claire’s voice dropped. “Her family doesn’t even know yet, but she missed her period while I was there.”

  “No kidding.” So Julia was to be a mother twice over. Dinah could tell her a thing or two about formula and baby food.

  “Don’t say anything. I’m sure she’d want to tell them herself.”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  Claire eyed her. “I believe that. You don’t say a word about a lot of things. Tell me, what’s this I hear about you and Matthew?”

  “Me and Matthew? Not this again. What’s to hear?”

  “I overheard Julia’s mom and Rebecca inside just now. Apparently Phinehas is staying with Blanchards because he didn’t have freedom of spirit at your house. That doesn’t sound like the Traynells I know.”

  “No freedom of spirit?” People lost their freedom when they mingled with worldly people. That was why Dinah had been so surprised when Claire had said there were no barriers between herself and Julia. Freedom of spirit was a mark of fellowship among the Elect, and when it was missing, it meant something had gone seriously wrong with one party or the other.

  “Yes,” Claire said. “He says it’s because of you and Matthew. ’Fess up. What’s going on?”

  How dared Phinehas say he’d lost freedom of spirit, implying there was something wrong with her and her mother? Blaming the victim. He was doing it again. What he’d lost was his freedom with her body, and just as she’d feared, he’d chosen this way to retaliate. And Dinah couldn’t say a word in her own defense.

  Even though Claire had shown every sign that she could be trusted as a friend, Dinah still couldn’t tell her the truth. Not only would Claire not believe her, she’d be Silenced for saying such a thing of the senior Shepherd in public. He could say he’d lost freedom because, really, who could prove he hadn’t? It was spiritual, ephemeral, and totally damaging—and it was doing its work.

  That, she realized suddenly, was why Derrick had blushed.

  “Dinah?” Claire said, tilting her head to look into her downcast face. “Did you hear me? Or are you thinking of a nice way to tell me to mind my own business?”

  In spite of herself, Dinah smiled. “Matthew is our hired man. That’s it.” The only man she’d ever allowed to see into her damaged soul. Who looked and didn’t run, but instead made her think and act in ways she never would have dreamed of before.

  No, it wasn’t even that. He didn’t make her do anything. He spoke his mind and allowed her to see he cared, and because of that she was free to think and act in new ways.

  Scary ways. Ways she was probably going to regret. But new and exhilarating and adult ways nonetheless.

  “Oh, my.” Claire’s gaze was frank and a little penetrating. “He’s a nice guy, but not everyone could put a look like that on your face.”

  A flush flooded Dinah’s cheeks. “A look like what?”

  “The look a woman gets when she thinks about her man. The look Julia has when she talks about Ross.”

  Her man. Oh Lord, can it really be true? “You’re seeing things,” she mumbled.

  “I don’t think so.” To Dinah’s astonishment, Claire slipped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She’d never touched the other girl, outside of shaking hands after Gathering, and for a moment she didn’t know whether to pull away or hug her back. Before she could decide, Claire dropped her arm and faced her again.

  “You’re lucky,” she said fiercely. “I’d give anything to feel that way about someone. But in this town, unless you want to marry a boy of twenty-one or somehow get adopted into a favored family and become Mrs. Derrick Wilkinson, there are no prospects at all.”

  “You can be adopted into mine if you want.” Dinah’s tone was wry.

  “You know what I mean. I’m twenty-six and no closer to finding someone than Melanie Bell.”

  “You need to get out of Hamilton Falls.”

  “I need something.” Claire gazed, unseeing, at the cars in the parking lot. “Or I’m going to go nuts here.” She glanced up. “Julia’s right. We should room together at Rebecca’s. Do weekends in Seattle. Forget to put our hair up. Wear red pajamas. Be wild and crazy.”

  “I can’t, Claire. Don’t forget Tamsen and the chickens.”

  “Oh, right. Boy, you should hear Linda Bell on that subject. No matter where I go these days, people are talking about you.”

  Oh, great. “Good or bad?”

  “Just talking. Nobody really knows you, Dinah. Half the time people just gossip about what little they know.”

  “I’ve never given anyone anything to talk about.” She fiddled with the zipper on her Bible bag, and ran a finger along the little pocket for her pen.

  “I’ll say. Time was, I really disliked you for being so perfect.”

  Perfect? The word was like a hammer blow. “Don’t say that.”

  “Oh, I know none of us are, me most of all. But my parents were always saying, ‘Why can’t you be more like Dinah Traynell? Her hair is always this way. Her clothes are always that way.’ Blah, blah, blah.”

  Dinah shook her head, a little bemused. “I always thought Julia was perfect. And look what she gave the gossips to talk about.”

  “Isn’t that the truth. I guess maybe I don’t want to be in a favored family after all.”

  “Everyone is always staring at you, wishing they were you. And here we are, wishing we were somebody else. Anybody else.”

  Claire gazed at her, a clear gaze that demanded the truth. “But you’re not really who everyone thinks you are, are you?”

  “No,” Dinah said. “Not anymore.”

  WHO SHE WAS didn’t seem to matter. Who she had been didn’t seem to matter either. Twenty-four years of trying to be the perfect daughter, perfect woman, perfect representative of the favored family, and what did she have for all her efforts?

  The beady eye of Alma Woods watchi
ng her, waiting for her to do something wrong so she could pick up the phone and tell someone about it.

  At least, that was how it felt after the notice came out in the Friday paper and people got wind of it. Elsie fielded a couple of dozen phone calls from the women in her circle, demanding to know what on earth Dinah was thinking of to take Tamara’s baby away from her, before she gave up and let the answering machine screen the calls. By Saturday afternoon, they stopped. Except for one.

  “Dinah, the phone’s for you,” Elsie called from the back porch. “It’s Melchizedek.”

  “He probably wants to have a young people’s meeting here or something,” Dinah said to Matthew as she crossed the floor of the barn to where the extension hung on the wall next to the door. Three of the chickens followed her, convinced she was going to get cracked corn for them.

  But a young people’s meeting was the last thing on Melchizedek’s mind.

  “Dinah, I just had a very disturbing conversation with Phinehas. So disturbing, in fact, that he wasn’t able to speak to you, and he asked me to call you in his place.”

  “What is it?”

  Oh, Lord, be with me now. This can’t be good. I know now it’s not you who’s been throwing bolts of lightning at me all this time. It’s Phinehas. And it looks like he hasn’t lost his aim. Help me, Lord.

  “A young man came to the Blanchards’ this morning and gave Phinehas a document. Do you know anything about it?”

  Play dumb. “Who? What kind of document?”

  “I don’t know who it was, but Owen said he was Chinese or Korean. And the document was a legal notice.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of your intention to petition for the custody of your niece.”

  “Oh,” Dinah said.

  “Is this true?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Dinah, why on earth would this—this notice be given to our senior Shepherd?”

  “Did you read it?”

  “It upset Phinehas to the point where he couldn’t even pray, and he has to lead two Gatherings tomorrow.”

  “But did you read it?” she persisted. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe she could be vague and he would go away.

  “Yes, I read it.” His voice was heavy with years of the knowledge that he had stayed in her home, eaten meals with her, comforted her in her grief, and advised her in her distresses. “I can’t tell you how much this grieves me, Dinah.”

  “What does?” Was he talking about Phinehas’s fatherhood or her daring to get custody of Tamsen?

  “Please don’t play games with me. This is serious.”

  “I honestly don’t understand, Melchizedek. What is wrong with me trying to get some kind of legal status for my niece?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is the name on the document. Philip Leslie.”

  Oh. Any hopes that this might have been done quietly and with the least amount of pain evaporated with those two words. Her one hold over Phinehas vanished when he’d allowed Melchizedek to read the document. She should have known this would happen. She should have predicted that Phinehas would find some way to turn his sin back on her.

  “How could you do it, Dinah? How could you name a godly man, a Shepherd who leads a flock of hundreds, who has sworn himself to celibacy for the gospel’s sake, as the father of this child?” His voice broke.

  “I didn’t name him,” she said as steadily as she could. “It was on the birth certificate.”

  “A lie,” he said in a voice so hushed it was almost a whisper. “By a girl whose sins led this congregation to Silence her. A girl who is not worthy to serve the Shepherd even a cup of cold water.”

  “That girl is my sister, Melchizedek. Be careful what you say.”

  “Threats and accusations,” he retorted. “But I am armed against the darts of the wicked. Dinah, I must tell you the purpose of this call.”

  There was a purpose? “Yes?”

  “My first reaction when I saw what you had done was to ask Phinehas if we should call the Testimony of Two Men.”

  The bottom dropped out of Dinah’s stomach. The Testimony was only called when someone was to be Silenced. When it happened to Tamara, it had begun the nasty work in their father that the cancer had put an end to.

  “You’re going to have me Silenced?” she whispered. “But I haven’t done anything.”

  “You are very fortunate in the loving heart of Phinehas, Dinah,” Melchizedek told her. “He held me back from picking up the phone and calling it for this very evening. As it is, I’m going to be spending a good long time on my knees asking God to take this anger out of my heart. It grieves me that one of our Shepherd’s own flock should turn on him this way.”

  “But I—he—”

  “In the spirit of truth, he left me a message to give you.”

  Here it came. The final lightning bolt. Maybe she wouldn’t be Silenced, but the sick, rolling feeling in her stomach told her that Phinehas wouldn’t let this go without a fight. “What’s that?”

  “He believes you’re in danger, Dinah. His first care is for your welfare.”

  “In danger from what?”

  “Not what. Who. That hired man you have. Information has come to light that he’s more than a university professor, Dinah. He’s a predator. An animal.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dinah’s voice had risen in trepidation. Her gaze locked on Matthew, who was busy with bucket and rake under the roosts.

  “Phinehas believes that the truth will set you free,” Melchizedek said with all the authority of the law and the prophets. “This Matthew Nicholas that you’ve given a home to was arrested just a few months ago for the sexual abuse of one of his female students. That’s why he’s no longer a teacher. He can’t get a job anywhere in California.”

  Chapter 20

  THAT’S NOT TRUE,” Dinah retorted in a voice so harsh it was almost a whisper. “Phinehas is l—is misinformed.”

  “I’m afraid it is true,” Melchizedek said. “I have the newspaper clipping here in front of me. ‘Prof Arrested in Sex Scandal,’ it says, naming Matthew Nicholas, professor of English literature, who abused a student in his office under the pretext of prepping her for her exams.”

  “Where did it come from?” The notice had only been served this morning. How on earth had Phinehas dug up this information? She leaned against the barn wall, hoping it would hold her up. In the chickens’ area, Matthew murmured to a group of curious birds who were hoping he’d share some corn while he was raking up droppings.

  Pain needled under her breastbone, and she turned away.

  “Sometimes we have to use the tools of the Devil in order to beat him at his own game,” Melchizedek informed her. “Phinehas went to the library and in minutes Satan presented him with evidence of his work.”

  Any other time Dinah would have been amused at the thought of Phinehas, who preached fire and brimstone against television, music, and the Internet, being reduced to hunching over the little terminal with its thirty-minute limit in the Hamilton Falls Public Library and trying to figure it out. But at the moment all she could do was marvel at the lengths to which he would go to destroy her life.

  “Good-bye, Melchizedek,” she said.

  “Wait, I have more.”

  What more could there possibly be? Phinehas had taken Sheba. He had taken Matthew. The only thing left was Tamsen, and he would probably contest the notice and take her, too.

  “What is Phinehas going to do about the notice, do you know?”

  “Do? What is there for him to do but pray that you are forgiven for your malice?”

  “But is he going to contest it?”

  “Why would he? The child’s future has nothing to do with him. His care is for souls.”

  Thank you, Lord. “What more did you have to tell me, then?”

  “Only this. Phinehas charged me to advise you that he will not call the Testimony if you make three sacrifices. You must cleanse your home of this criminal so that the w
omen of our congregation will be safe. You must promise that only the three of us will ever know about the document he received. And you must restore freedom of spirit in your home.”

  “Consider the first two done.” She glanced at Matthew again, and winced at the spurt of fresh pain. “But the third is up to him.”

  “I understand that for his freedom of spirit to be restored, you must be willing to sacrifice your own self-will. In his words, to render again the service of love as you once did.”

  No. No. I’d rather be Silenced. I will never, never—

  “Dinah, are you all right?” Matthew laid down the bucket and rake and walked over to her. “You’re as white as your rooster over there.”

  Pain lanced through her knees and arrowed up through the muscles of her thighs. She hung up on Melchizedek in midsentence before she dropped the receiver altogether and pressed both hands flat against the smooth Sheetrock of the barn wall.

  “How could you not tell me?” she breathed. “Me, of all people?”

  “Tell you what? Dinah, please sit down. You’re about to drop. What did he say to you?”

  “‘Prof Arrested in Sex Scandal.’” She threw the headline bitterly into his dear, worried face. “No wonder you know so much about sexual abusers, Matthew. Just when were you planning to tell me that’s exactly what you are?”

  “SOMEONE’S BEEN DOING a bit of detective work, have they?”

  Matthew tried to slip an arm around her, but Dinah spun away from him. “Of all people to tell me, it had to be them, Melchizedek and Phinehas. Tell me they’re lying, Matthew. Tell me it was some other guy in the paper.”

  He’d wondered if this day would ever come. Wondered how he would bring it up, because of course he had to do so if they were going to move on to the kind of relationship he hoped for. But the longer he had let it go, the more she learned to trust him, and the more impossible it became for him to risk saying the words.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “It’s true I was arrested.”

  “Oh, lovely. Maybe you’d like to explain, before I write your last check and you go.”

  He had a little money now, enough to get back to California. The very last place he wanted to be.