To Know You (9781401688684)

by Ethridge, Shannon (CON)

  “Your parents trust you with a table saw?”

  Dillon laughed. “They ain’t happy about it. But, yeah, they kind of have to because, like . . . what else do I have? I put it together so it looked like a palace. Then I shot some stills of it so I could storyboard a film. And the candy caught the light from the flash in the coolest way so that all the walls looked like they were . . . alive, I guess. And some of the candy with uneven thickness broke the light up, like a prism. The colors were spectacular.

  “And I thought, Where can I see this kind of light with my own eyes?

  “I got this strong feeling. Heaven. And I realized I don’t want to die, and I went through the whole progression again—not fair, everything to live for, I’ll be good, and all that bargaining stuff. And the image of the light and the sound of the word—heaven—kinda seeped into my bones and I thought, Okay, this is my imagination.”

  Dillon lowered his voice. “Because my imagination has been known to work overtime.”

  “Been there,” Destiny said. “Not sure if something really is true or you just want it to be true so badly that you created it into existence.”

  “I let it rest there for a few more months. My candy fort was dusty by this time, but I was afraid to even touch it to brush off the dust, with the sugar being brittle and all. And then I got to thinking, maybe the dust would make an even cooler picture, so I photographed it. It was, like, intriguing—but I didn’t like the flash as much as before, so I gently took the thing out in the yard and put it in direct sunlight.”

  “Sounds like it was pretty fragile,” Destiny said.

  “Yeah, it was. But I thought, You’ve got to risk breaking what you love to get something better. So I laid it on this rise in our backyard, where it caught the sunlight.

  “And it was insane, how awesome the light was. I lay there in the grass with my sugar palace, watching the light from all different angles. My dad finally came out and asked what I was doing and I told him about the light. Not the heaven thing because I didn’t want to freak him out and make them give me some brain MRI or something.

  “He lay in the grass with me and stared at the different lights. An hour or so later Mom got home from some florist meeting or something and stretched out with us.

  “‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  “I didn’t say a thing—I couldn’t, honestly—so Dad finally said, ‘Revelation 21. Son, make sure you take a peek at that.’

  “And I thought, Whoa. They told me to steer clear of Revelation because I made a movie about the seven bowls of wrath and they were so freaked out about it. Now here Dad is saying I should read part of it. Have you ever read it?”

  “Long time ago,” Destiny said. “It was pretty much incomprehensible.”

  “Isn’t that the fun of it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Anyway, I read the chapter about the New Jerusalem that shines like precious jewels. That’s when I knew—heaven. And I thought—no, I knew—that when the time came, I’d know the way there. That simple.”

  “I wish,” Destiny said.

  “Ah, you grown-ups make it too hard.”

  “I guess we do, Dil.”

  “Dad’s coming to take my blood pressure. Thanks for listening, man.”

  “Thank you,” Destiny said.

  “Hey, if you don’t make it to Dallas, no prob. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  He clicked off the call and left her staring at a blank screen.

  Friday, 11:32 a.m.

  Getting the test done was easier than Destiny expected. She went to the urgent care clinic at the Colorado Springs hospital, under the pretense of having the doctor check her jaw. They took photos, promising that her record would be available to her—or her attorney.

  I’m here. I might as well get it done.

  Destiny explained everything to a sympathetic doctor. They drew her blood and asked her to wait for an hour while they processed it with the next batch to be run. “You’re lucky,” the doctor said. “We’ve got a full suite of surgeries going today and lots of requests for type-and-matches.”

  The clinic waiting room was small and clean. Two mothers waited with her, both with runny-nosed children. I need to stay away from them. I have to stay healthy for the surgery.

  The receptionist called her back in and asked her to sit outside a procedure room. The doctor finally appeared, lab slip in his hand. “Ms. Connors,” he said. “You’re type AB, Rh-negative.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s great for you. You can receive blood or tissue from any blood type.”

  “What about donation? Who can I donate to?”

  “You’re pretty limited. What type did you say your halfbrother was?”

  “Type O,” Destiny said.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Type O needs a type-O donor. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  She shook her head and thanked him for his time. And then she called the Broadmoor shuttle and rode back to the hotel to tell Julia that Chloe was Dillon’s last hope.

  Wounded, quivering, needy—and pretty much useless—Chloe Deschene.

  Friday, 12:21 p.m.

  Chloe met Jack in the lobby, made small talk as she led him to her suite. Once inside, she motioned him into the bedroom and locked the door.

  “What have you been doing?” He studied her. “You look so worn.”

  She took off his glasses and caressed his face. She needed him close so he couldn’t look into her eyes.

  “Hey, hey,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m here now.”

  The familiar comforted her—his button-down shirt and navy blazer, the scent of his shampoo, his everlasting mint, the tight muscles in his back, the silk of his hair. She pulled him tighter.

  Jack took her shoulders and carefully held her at arm’s length. “What’s going on?”

  Rob Jones can’t extort you if you have nothing to hide, Tom had said. The words were hot on her lips—I’ve been stupid and cruel and I cheated on you—but somehow they came out, “My biological father cheated on his wife with Julia.”

  “I guess we knew it would be something like that, since she withheld the name. Can you finally tell me who he is?”

  “Andrew Hamlin.”

  “What? The Andrew Hamlin?”

  “Julia worked with him one summer. His wife was on a mission trip in Africa and he . . . fell into a relationship with her.”

  “No one just falls into a relationship.”

  “Maybe not.” Chloe gave him a weak smile. “Anyway, here I am.”

  “How many of his books do we have? And I went to that men’s conference he led. I was so impressed and now this?”

  Chloe went to the window, stared out at the snow-covered mountains. “People make mistakes.”

  Jack took her in his arms and buried his face in her neck. She tipped his head back and kissed him. Tom Bryant was wrong. Some things are best left hidden. The merciful thing to do was to bury this thing with Rob Jones so deep that it rotted away to nothing.

  “You still want to meet your father?” Jack whispered. “Now that you know who he is?”

  “Yes. Of course,” Chloe said. “And I want you with me.”

  “That’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be.” Jack kissed her and, though she was ashamed of how she had let Rob Jones kiss her, Chloe wouldn’t let Jack stop.

  She held him tight and prayed that God would freeze them in this moment—nothing before, nothing after—just locked in an embrace with her husband. So close that he couldn’t possibly see the shame in her eyes.

  The pulse in his neck quickened and his skin flushed. She couldn’t let him make love to her, not until he knew.

  “Jack, I have something to tell you. Something I’m not proud of.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “With all the money I shift around for our trusts and the foundations, I have to be careful wit
h our online protections. One of the guardian programs spit out talkatnight.com. I thought it was an intrusion, so I set a feedback program. That caught the activity from your ISP account.”

  “Did you monitor all of it?”

  “No. I saw the first one and then . . . I let it go.”

  “You should have stopped me.”

  “I wanted you to have the space to work through whatever you needed. I hoped—with every ounce of my being—that in the end, you would choose us.” Jack gently disengaged her from his arms so he could see her face. She couldn’t bear his eyes on her, tried to turn away, but he held her by the shoulders.

  “I didn’t want you to come back to me merely because you got caught. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever done—giving you enough space to either run away or come back to me. I knew I couldn’t be your Holy Spirit. I’ve tried that, and clearly that pushed you away. I am so sorry for that.”

  Chloe’s chest tightened.

  Jack pushed back her hair. “Breathe. Just breathe. We’ll work through this.”

  “How did you bear it?”

  “Horribly. I wanted to throw away the computers, lock you in the house. After you sent me home from Boston, I realized smothering you was not going to help either of us. I decided to trust the God inside of you. I prayed so hard that you’d develop a keen sensitivity to your spiritual radar. And that I would develop a keen sensitivity to what you need. To who you really are. It’s not that we don’t trust you. We—your mother and I—hold you so tightly because we love you so deeply.”

  “That can’t be true, not anymore. You must despise me.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said. “Ever.”

  “You will when you know how horrible this is.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers, so close that her lashes brushed his cheek. “Tell me. Tell me, Chloe, and I will tell you it doesn’t matter. Regardless of what you tell me, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Oh, Jack, you have no idea.”

  Friday, 12:30 p.m.

  Julia’s phone buzzed, waking her from a deep sleep. Fuzzy-tongued and bleary-eyed, she answered it.

  “Hi, Jules.” Thomas Bryant. “I thought I’d better check in with the adult, see how things are settling.”

  “Thank you,” she said, heading for the bathroom. “For what you’re doing to help Chloe.”

  “I didn’t know about the second child until Destiny told me.”

  “You didn’t need to know. Why would I tell you I was pregnant again?”

  “No reason,” Tom said. “You couldn’t trust me, for sure. And I want you to know that I am so, so sorry for what went down between us. For how I bolted.”

  Julia dampened a washcloth, dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry for being such a lunatic stalker.”

  “You were just being a . . . mother. I can’t say enough how sorry I am for what you went through.”

  “Tom, I forgave you long ago. For years I prayed that you would find a good woman, have a lovely family. And just . . . go on.”

  “And I did, Jules. I did.”

  Silence settled between them. Not a bad or frantic silence. Comfortable.

  After a few moments, Tom cleared his throat. “So. This thing with Chloe.”

  “A mess. Is there anything we can be doing?”

  “I got a guy on the North Shore showing that picture around. If we can get a positive ID, we can strong-arm him with the assault charge. I don’t have a lot of hope for that, though. That he got through the Deschene online protection so easily speaks to a high level of technical sophistication. I can arrange for a trace when he calls back tomorrow, but I’d expect him to use a burner phone.”

  “A what?”

  “Disposable. Use it once, toss it. And his blackmail may be aimed at her husband.”

  “Clearly,” Julia said.

  “That’s not what I mean. Distract Mr. Deschene on this matter, draw out repeated contacts and meanwhile, this Rob Jones character is probing for ways to get into the charitable foundation and drain some funds.”

  “That’s disturbing.”

  “No matter what, the best course is for Chloe to tell her family, take away his leverage. Can you persuade her to do that?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. It’s not like I have real standing with her.”

  “She’s your flesh and blood, Jules. There’s got to be something of you in her. There’s plenty of you in Destiny.”

  Julia laughed. “There’s a lot more of you.”

  “We did good, huh? We did bad and still—we did good.”

  “God did good, Tom.”

  “So let Him do some good here. Destiny can rattle some sense into the girl, but you’re the one who can settle her.”

  “I want to help. Unfortunately, my attention is divided.”

  “That’s the other thing. I got tested yesterday.”

  “You? Tom, why?”

  “We’re family, right? Destiny said you needed a type O. My mom had that blood type—you know she died from leukemia, right?”

  “Pottsie told me, a couple years back. I was sad to hear it.”

  “I would donate. I swear, I would. But I’m type B.”

  “Tom, just the fact that you got tested—thank you, thank you so much.” Her phone buzzed. Jeanne. “I have to go. May God bless you and your family.”

  “Back-at-cha, Jules.”

  Julia clicked to the incoming call. “Why are you calling?” she said, though she already knew.

  “Dillon’s blood pressure went sky-high. They’re admitting him.”

  “The list . . .” Tell me someone died so my boy can live.

  “Dr. Rosado said that he’ll be near or at the top. But nothing yet. Matt will call you as soon as he gets through admitting.”

  “I’m coming home. As soon as we can get the plane in the air.”

  “He’s stable for now. But I wouldn’t drag my feet getting here.”

  Julia ended the call. Her knees wobbled and she slid to the floor. Facedown now, smelling the carpet shampoo, feeling the wool on her cheeks. Head spinning, she rolled onto her back and texted Sally to prepare the plane.

  She speed dialed her son, delighted that Dillon picked up.

  “Mom. You’re gonna get me arrested.”

  “What for?”

  “They have all these signs in the ER about not using cell phones. I’m probably setting off five cardiac monitors as we speak.” His voice wavered. “I think they’re gonna put me on one.”

  “Auntie Pottsie told me your pressure spiked.”

  “That’s the bad news. The good news is that my MELD score is nice and high.”

  Julia blinked to hold back tears. No kid should have to know his own MELD—the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease that played a key part in moving a patient up the transplant list that UNOS maintained nationally.

  “Dil, how are you feeling?”

  He waited a beat, then said, “Like a turnip truck ran over me.”

  “Turnip? Why turnip?”

  “To avoid the cliché about dump trucks. And because I hate turnips. Are you coming home?”

  “Yes. As soon as we can get the flight plan scheduled.”

  “Is Destiny coming with you?”

  “You know about Destiny?” This was unexpected. Staggering.

  “Yeah. We’re kinda buddies now. Been talking a bit.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “During the blizzard. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “It must have gone right over my head, pal.” Let Dillon believe that he had been a topic of conversation. Julia was quite aware of why Destiny hadn’t mentioned they had spoken.

  “Ask her to come. She’s cool. And bring the other sister. We can party like it’s the end of the world.”

  “Dillon, Dillon . . .”

  “Sorry, Mom, they’re coming at me with more stuff. Love you. And tell Destiny that—if she doesn’t think that’s too weird.”

  “Honey, I love you,” Julia said. “I’ll be hom
e soon.”

  “And so will I, Mom. So will I.”

  Friday, 12:34 p.m.

  “You actually met this guy?” Jack said. “How could you do something so risky?”

  “Because,” Chloe said, “I was frustrated. Bored. Feeling trapped.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you . . . want to?”

  “I just wanted someone to talk to, that’s all.”

  “We talk, Chloe. All the time, we talk.”

  “You talk, I listen.”

  “Am I that controlling? Oh, God, forgive me—am I some sort of monster?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I let myself be . . . managed is too harsh a term. I let myself be guided because that was the calmer way. The easier way. The lazier way.”

  Jack kneaded the knuckles of his right hand into the palm of his left hand. “So what did you do with him?”

  “I drank too much. And it snowed too much so . . . I had to go to that motel.”

  “I thought you went there with Julia and Destiny.”

  “They found me there, Jack. They searched for me in a blizzard and they found me. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d better sit down.”

  He sank onto the bed, the color draining from his face. He knows what’s coming. How could he not put two and two together and come up with betrayal?

  Chloe took his hand, then scrolled to the video on her phone. If only Destiny could be here with her. Her sister would give her courage. No—Chloe needed to stand up on her own.

  “I am so ashamed and I am so sorry. You don’t deserve this.”

  “For Pete’s sake, Chloe. Just show me.”

  She tapped the Play button and the video began. When he saw her nakedness, he made a guttural noise.

  “I’ll stop it now,” Chloe said. “You get the idea.”

  “No.” He grabbed the phone from her. “I need to see all of it.”

  Jack watched to the end, his hand tugging on his cheeks as if forcing his eyes to stay open. Chloe breathed slowly, beating back any cries or groans because this was his time to grieve and she had no right to take it from him.

  When the video finished, Jack threw the phone against the wall.