“Right now,” she said.
“Right now what?”
“Let me shave your head right now. If you hate it, you’ll have your hair back long before Christmas.”
“That’s rather . . . unconventional.”
“And that’s why you came to me instead of buying white paper plates, lunch-meat trays, and two-liter bottles of generic soda from Safeway. Right?”
He rubbed his head, barely causing a ripple in what little sandy hair he had. “Maybe I’ll try it at home.”
Julia was possessed now, her imagination filled with the image of him with a smooth head and jaunty camel fedora, greeting guests with a new confidence that said I’m going places, wanna come? And it would be no lie because he already knew she was a terrible businesswoman and had arrived prepared to share his gifts in exchange for hers.
“Now or never,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, laughing. “If you have an unused razor in this office, then I’m in. But I’m betting you do not.”
Julia went into the bathroom—also perfectly decorated for any occasion—and returned with a disposable razor still in its wrapping. “I win,” she said. “You in?”
Matt grinned. “Be gentle.”
Julia set up a chair for him in the outer office. She spread out tissue paper on the floor and his shoulders, then used a dampened towel to moisten his head.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he said.
“Still time to back out.”
“Not in a million.”
“Then hush up and sit still.” She lathered up a decorative soap that was lightly scented with lemon and scrubbed the lather into his head. “Last last chance,” she said, razor in hand.
“Not a chance.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Matt grabbed her hand as she went to put down the razor. “Not a chance—that I’m backing out.”
“Do you want to watch in a mirror so you can see the transformation?”
“Sure.”
She set up a makeup mirror. The whole time she worked, he watched her instead.
“This is insane,” she said, blushing. “I might owe you a wig.”
“Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Second-guess.”
Julia wrapped the damp towel around his head. “My judgment is not as . . . let’s say reliable . . . as it should be.”
“We all make mistakes.” He turned in the chair so he could see her directly. “Surely you believe in redemption.”
She rubbed the soap off his head, deliberately covering his face with the towel so he couldn’t see hers. “I try,” she whispered.
Praying night and day, day and night. Painting and working and praying all over again, and still Destiny’s birthday and Hope’s birthday would come once again and there would be no way to staunch her grief except to pray, paint, work, and pray all over again.
She took away the towel and held her breath.
“Wow,” Matt said.
“Is that a good wow or a bad wow?”
“That’s a wow, I didn’t know that guy was there under that sorry hair.”
“I did,” Julia said, relief a flood now because his head was perfectly formed and, without the distractions of his wispy hair, the strength of his jaw and spark of his gaze were clear. “You need a little tan to even out the color but otherwise—”
“Hush now,” he said, “and let me enjoy the moment.”
Julia enjoyed the many moments of getting to know Matthew Whittaker. Planning the first gathering that became a combination seminar on how faith and finance intersect. Digging into a business plan that elevated her from an inexpensive freelancer to a soughtafter event artist. Teaching him the difference between superficial and classic—between artifice and essence.
Attending the same church service on Sunday. Finding each other at potlucks and small groups so they wouldn’t have to enter as strays.
Keeping her pain between them like a shield so there was no chance of being hurt, or hurting each other.
Until eight months later—on Hope’s fourth birthday—Matthew Whittaker ruined everything by asking Julia out on a date.
18 Years Earlier, June
Matt Whittaker asked Julia out every Tuesday for two months.
Telling him no, thank you had become a chore. He was always kind and cheerful; she was drawn to him fiercely and feared that intensity. Why ruin what they had together by turning friendship into infatuation?
“Why not?” he asked.
“You think you know me. You don’t.”
“So tell me.”
“I value our friendship too much.”
“Oh.” He squinted, eyes suddenly distant. “That old line, huh? It’s not you, it’s me, but I still want us to be friends. Is that what you’re saying?”
“In our case—or I should say, my case—it’s true, Matt. I’m damaged goods.”
He laughed, put his hands on her shoulders. “We should all be so damaged.”
Julia broke away from him. “That’s not cute.”
“You think I don’t see the pain you carry? Most people wear it like a martyr’s cloak so they can be fussed over. You’ve veneered yours.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So tell me.”
“I count on you, Matt. I count on your experience and your wisdom and the way you calm my waters. I know you count on me to keep you away from striped polo shirts and mini wieners in biscuit dough, and to make your seminars something that draws people to your authenticity, your experience.” She forced a smile. “We’re good, just like this.”
He wasn’t buying it. “I’m waiting, Julia. Tell me why we couldn’t be even better.”
“Don’t,” she said. “You don’t want to get caught up in the trail of my tears—”
“Oh, baloney.” He slapped his hand on the table. “You can’t hide behind that forever. Life is tough. I’ve screwed up. Poor me, don’t get too close because it’ll be poor you. What a load of manure. If you don’t like me, just say so.”
Julia wanted to, wanted desperately to dismiss him. The truth was that she did like him. He was fun. Smart. Good company. And sexy—not just his looks or the way he carried himself—but because of the kind of guy he was. That made him dangerous to a girl like her.
“I messed up in the worst way,” she said. “And there’s no getting around that.”
Matt picked at his thumbnail. “Did you murder someone?”
“No.”
“Did you rob a bank?”
“Stop it, Matt. Not everyone is like you.”
“Really? You think you know me, Julia.”
She smiled. “You’re easy to know. Easy to like.”
“Know this, then. I broke my grandfather’s jaw,” Matt said. “I was a strong teenager and he was eighty years old, and I outright assaulted the man.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“No, ma’am, I am not. My dad was stationed in Kuwait and I was running a little wild. Whoopin’ it up with some booze and weed. Out all hours, even on school nights. My mom couldn’t cope with my pa away, so Gramps took my car keys. I hotwired his truck and took that out for the weekend—sixteen years old—and when I came back, he tried to tan my backside. So I swung and broke his jaw. He had to have surgery. His jaw was wired shut for almost two months.”
“Did you . . . go to jail?”
“I could have,” Matt said. “If he was of a mind to bring charges. He didn’t.”
“Because he loved you.”
“Unconditional love is sometimes penalty enough.”
“Do tell,” Julia said.
“It took me three days before I went to the hospital to see him. The side of his face looked like a shredded tire, all dark and battered. You could see the wire in his mouth, see him having to breathe around crusted blood. I wanted to beg for his forgiveness, but the tears and the regret were jammed up behind my brainstem. He motioned m
e to him and showed me this little white erase board he had by his bed. He had already written on it before I had even come to see him.
“I forgive you, Matthew.
“When I tried to apologize or find a way to, like . . . maybe pay his hospital bill, he’d write debt paid. I’d heard those words all my life in church and didn’t understand until I saw Gramps get the stomach flu and then almost choke on his own vomit. He had to keep wire cutters with him at all times just in case something like that happened. One morning he almost didn’t get the wire cut in time. He threw up, this strange whine in the back of his throat because the pain was so bad. I tried to wipe his face, but that caused him even more pain.
“‘I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,’ I said, crying. And he looked up at me and mouthed the words debt paid. And then he had to have more surgery to reset the bone and get wired up again, and the only thing he would write to me was I forgive you, Matthew. And when he finally got set free of that, he came to school and had me waived out of class. He took me in his arms—there was not much to him at this point—and he said in this scratchy voice so I’d know he really meant it, I forgive you, son.
“He died about three months after that. Caught the flu and was just so weak, he couldn’t shake it.”
“I’m sorry,” Julia said. “That must have been devastating.”
“It was pretty terrible. And I blamed myself, made myself sick for days with shame. And then in the middle of the night I got on my knees and prayed—no, begged—God to forgive that stupid, prideful moment when my fist connected with his eighty-year-old jaw. I felt the Holy Spirit”—Matt laughed as he wiped tears from his eyes—“whack me across the back of the head, and in a pretty much audible voice that sounded like my grandfather’s deep Texas twang, that Spirit said, You know better, son. Shame off you. Jesus died to take the shame off you, so let Him.”
Matt took both of Julia’s hands. “So when are you going to let Him take the shame off you, Julia McCord?”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“Then trust me enough to tell me,” he said.
Julia told him everything. The raging hunger that was Tom Bryant, the searing pain of a daughter ripping from her body and then ripping from her heart. The sweet summer that was Andy Hamlin—who remained unnamed because she couldn’t bear to even think of him—and the dull ache of growing a second child in her body and knowing from almost the beginning that she would have to watch her leave too.
Graduation and planning Jeanne’s wedding numbed some of the pain. When Jeanne and Patrick paddled away in their kayak, the pain came roaring back like the icy Maine ocean. After all the guests had left, Julia remained to clean up the last flutters of napkins and paper plates. She stuffed everything in a trash bag and then stared at the water.
The sun beat down on her shoulders, a high-noon heat in July. She closed her eyes and imagined Hope somewhere in a covered stroller, three months old and smiling. Destiny would be walking—probably running because she was born to run—under a sprinkler maybe, her dark eyes squinting against the water.
That ache in Julia’s womb grew until it swallowed her and she could see nothing but pain and shame, scorching her skin so that she knew—with certainty—that she was like soot, something burned and black that you tried to wash away with a hose and forget.
The ocean stretched before her, cold and endless.
She could walk from this pebbled beach into its icy waves. Three steps in, her feet would be numb. By the time the water reached her neck, she would feel nothing but the shame that reverberated inside her head. She could duck under the water and let the current take her out to sea. Her daughters—her precious baby girls—would never know that she had existed.
She stepped into the waves. Even in midsummer, the ocean off Maine was bone-chilling. She welcomed the numbness as it spread from her feet up her legs.
Ashes to ashes. Death was a gray veil that she could pull around her like a shroud because what else could blot out her shame?
And then her fingers itched.
Julia dipped her hands in the water, desperate to deaden this urge because her urges—her desire—could not be trusted.
But I can be trusted, daughter.
You don’t know me, Father.
I do. I know you and I love you.
She backed out of the water, wanting to silence what she could not believe. She fell to her knees, tried to crawl into the water but her hands pulled backward, across the pebbles and sand, to the fire that she had doused after the guests had left.
Julia reached into the stew of ash and water and found a blackened stick of wood. She had no canvas except her own bare legs, so she let her fingers have their way, sketching and writing what they would while she looked longingly at the ocean.
When her hand dropped the charred stick, she knew it was time to see what she had done.
My grace frees you, Julia.
She washed the words away—not with the cold ocean—but with her own tears.
Fourteen
Colorado Springs
Friday, 8:05 a.m.
Destiny woke up with the sun in her eyes and a jackhammer in her head. Concussion—or too much drama? Normally she liked drama, except when she was in the middle of it. Had she overstepped her bounds by calling Tom and by insisting Chloe tell Jack to come to Colorado Springs?
She called Luke to ask what he thought. It went directly to voice mail. “Hey, babe. Where are you? It’s gotten a bit over-the-top here—here being Colorado Springs. Can you give me a call, do a sanity check? I need someone outside the madness to talk to.”
She got up, washed her face, and then peered across the sitting room. Chloe’s door was still shut. The girl needed her rest, with the very odd and ugly day that lay ahead.
Destiny dialed the number of the one person she knew would be awake and looking for company.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Dillon said. “Whassup?”
Everything. “Not much. Your old man make it home all right?”
“Yeah. Got bags under the eyes and was pretty ripe, but after he jumped in the shower he was the same old, same old. Did you get to meet him?”
“No, man. Sorry. He was in and out.”
Dillon went silent. Destiny waited a beat, two more, and then said, “I feel like I know him. Your mom told us how they met. Pretty cool stuff.”
“What does she say about me? Other than I’m dying.”
Knife in the heart, God. Thanks a bunch.
“You like to put it out there, huh?” she said.
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah, bro. We’re pretty much peas in a pod, you and me.”
“Except that I’m dying.”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“Because you’re the only person I can say that to.” His voice wavered. “Am I creeping you out?”
“Hang up,” she said. “Let me call you back.”
“You are creeped out.”
“Hang up.” He did, and Destiny redialed so she could Skype him. He answered, a broad grin on his face.
“See it and believe it,” he said. His skin had brightened from the deathly pallor to a more injured yellow. Bad news, Destiny knew, and so did he.
“Why aren’t you . . . ripping apart the furniture or something? I know I would be.”
He shrugged. “Because I feel worse than I look. So if I wanted to, like, tear the head off something, I couldn’t. And what would it get me except a mess that my father would have to clean up?”
“I’m sorry, Dillon. I really am.”
“That’s okay. I’ve kind of made peace with it.”
“How the heck does anyone make peace with that?”
He laughed. “Okay, the first thing you need to know is that I’m no saint. My parents like to think I am because I’m sick. That’s the worst part of it, I swear. They smile and pat my head and everyone puts me on this stupid sick-kid pedestal. Their friends, people at church, my friends�
�� parents. You can see it in their faces. Poor kid, big burden to bear, what a special kid he is. Makes me want to puke.
“They had to explain the illness to me pretty young. Because of the frequent tests and all that. Needles are not my friend. Mom would say to pray and I’d get mad because what kind of God is this, letting little kids get poked with needles and enduring exams where they push your belly really hard?
“Then they started explaining about transplants and I thought, What kind of God is this that He can’t get it right the first time? Like you have to go to the human-parts version of the junkyard to try to salvage something? That is so not cool. I freaked out about it for months, thinking about some dead person’s liver—or worse, some little kid’s liver—being cut out of them and shoved into me. Know what the worst part is?”
Destiny shook her head. “Not a clue.”
“The worst part is that the dead guy’s liver would work better than mine, even though I was alive and the donor was dead.”
“Really stinks, man.” Destiny pressed her thumbnail into her palm to block her tears. “So how come you’re still smiling?”
“You sure you got time for this?”
“I called you, remember?”
“Okay, back when I was in fifth grade, they had these special activities after school. Volleyball and gym hockey and stuff like that—cool things I wasn’t allowed to do. My mother especially worries about a blow to the liver, even though it’s my bile ducts that don’t work. Am I wigging you out yet?”
“No, your mother explained the whole thing. And I googled it to learn more.”
“Hey, I googled you. You’re all over imdb.com.”
Destiny laughed. “Yeah, mistress of the monsters. So what happened with these special activities?”
“I took this candy-making course. They taught us a bunch of stuff, but I really loved doing the sugar stained glass. I made all these different colored sugar sheets and carefully broke them into pretty large pieces. I even scored them with a box cutter, trying to get good shapes. And then I polyurethaned them to make them stronger. I cut some light-weight balsam wood to hold them—you know, grooves and glue?”
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