The dinner conversation evolved into travel stories, and Austin’s gut knotted around the meatballs. What could they say? That they would’ve been busted in Illinois, but Austin’s Constabulary badge saved the day? That they’d been robbed over the Oklahoma line, and Violet had had a nightmare about it last night?
A convenient thing about most people, though—if they were talking about themselves, they often didn’t realize you weren’t talking about you. Especially people who were only now able to tell their stories without fear. The voices around the table didn’t take turns, pause, ask questions. They poured over and around each other. Everyone listened, yes, but no one thought to prod others into sharing. When forks clanked empty plates, Austin sighed.
Lee had gone more silent than usual, and her mouth crimped every time she slanted a look at Marcus. Austin shifted his attention from the strangers to his companions. There were only tiny giveaways—the pallor and tightness around Marcus’s mouth, the way he gripped the edge of the table, hand concealed by his plate. A few minutes later, Lee stood up.
“I’m rather tired,” she said. “Marcus, would you walk me back to the rooms?”
Austin sat back in his chair and tried to signal her. Do you need help with him?
She gave a slight shake of her head.
Marcus looked up at her. “It’s okay.”
Lee frowned but waited for him. He looked around at all of them and straightened in his chair.
“I hurt my knee, and it’s still … mending. So Lee helps me walk.”
He had to know these people had read the aftermath of illness written on his face, on his body. They knew an injured knee was the least of it. Someone would ask. But instead, a tension unnoticeable before now lifted from everyone, and voices chimed together.
“Anything you need?”
“I can help you get back to your room, if you …”
“You should talk to Yvette, there’s some first aid supplies …”
Lee spoke over all of them. “Thank you. We will be fine.”
Collective disappointment sighed. These people took it seriously, solidarity against persecution or whatever they called it. Brotherhood, family.
Relational conditioning.
For a few seconds after Lee supported Marcus away from the table, silence reigned.
“You came with them, right?” The question came from Becca, a middle-aged brunette who had spoken to Marcus several times as if they were personal acquaintances.
Austin nodded.
“Is he …? I don’t know how to ask this.”
“He’s recovering.”
The group seemed to lean forward for more. Austin stood. “Excuse me.”
He caught Violet’s gaze, tilted an eyebrow. She offered half a smile. “I’ll talk to you later.”
He nodded and strode away. Hopefully, he could catch Lee alone, once she’d settled Marcus.
He found her in the classroom hallway beside a closed door, propped up by the wall, head tilted back. She sensed him coming and straightened, then relaxed when she saw him.
“How is he?”
“Resting.”
“Okay. Good.”
She twisted her fingers together, then lowered them back to her sides. “Yes.”
“But he’s … fine?”
“No.”
“I meant relatively.”
Lee pushed away from the wall and walked away from him. He ought to let her go, and he would, but first he followed her. She shot a glare over her shoulder and quickened her pace.
“I need to ask you something,” Austin said before she could break into a gallop.
She didn’t slow. “Perhaps another time.”
“Violet wants me to tell them everything.”
Lee stopped.
“She isn’t objective about them,” he said.
“I would agree.”
“I told her no. But I was trained on a psychological model that links religious zeal to impulsive violence. I don’t know that I’m objective either. I was hoping for a … fair evaluation.”
“From me.”
“You haven’t been indoctrinated by anyone.”
Lee started walking again. Maybe she had an actual destination. She navigated the forked hallways back toward the gym and ignored everyone they passed. Her taut shoulders contradicted her blank expression.
He should let her go. But he couldn’t.
Lee halted outside the kitchen. From the other side of the swinging door, dishes clattered and people talked and laughed. Before Austin could ask, she gestured to the door. “I came to volunteer for cleanup.”
Oh. He should do the same. This aid mission didn’t run itself. But …
Lee faced him with her soldier stance, hands behind her back.
“My opinion is based on acquaintanceship with several Christians in my lifetime, mostly through my job, as well as allowing Violet to live with me, as well as over ten years of friendship with Marcus. He has been a Christian less than four years, so I’m able to compare his lifestyles before and after.”
Right. That was Austin’s point. He nodded.
“My rejection of Christianity is not in any way linked to my interaction with Christians. In most instances, they have treated me with respect and even compassion. They are as safe and stable as anyone else.”
“So you would tell them … everything.”
“No, I probably wouldn’t.”
What?
“But not because of fear.” Lee pushed the kitchen door open and stepped through it.
Thanks, Lee, so helpful.
40
She did not belong here.
Lee commandeered the sink, and no one tried to argue. Dish duty seemed last on everyone’s list, which made it the most appropriate task for her. She let the water scald her hands while their buoyant voices flowed around her. Family talk. A nephew going into medical school, an aspiring painter winning an art contest, a newlywed couple closing on a house—all announcements were met with joy from the others. Lee scrubbed plates and silverware.
They didn’t talk to her. She didn’t talk to them.
A phone vibrated on the counter, nearest to Lee. No one else heard the buzz. She shut off the water, dried her hands, and picked it up.
“Who does this belong to?”
“Oh, that’s Heath’s.” Juana leaned out the doorway to bellow into the gym. “Heath! You left your phone in here!”
She took it from Lee as it stopped buzzing, and Lee began to wash a ceramic serving dish, stenciled with leaves and caked with cheese.
Heath plowed through the doorway, and Juana handed him his phone. “Thanks. I had it in my hand when it was time to bring out the food trays. Got distracted. Y’all look sudsy and busy.”
“The sudsy one is …” Juana gestured. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Lee.”
“Lee volunteered to do the dishes, so of course, we let her.”
Heath grinned at them, but his eyes held something else for Lee. Knowledge. She tried not to bristle against it.
“How’s your friend?” one of the women said. Oh, right, she’d shared a table with Lee at dinner. Rachel, wasn’t it? “His knee okay and … everything?”
Marcus was certainly asleep. He’d collapsed against her as soon as Lee shut the door to their room. She would have intervened sooner at dinner if she’d realized how fast his energy was draining. She pushed away the memory from less than an hour ago—the labored sound of his breathing, the fatigue that weighted his limbs to the bed, his pained whisper. “Tired.”
“He’s fine.”
“My husband and I, we’ll pray for him,” Rachel said. “Whatever’s affecting his health, that God will be with him and work out His will.”
Crack.
The s
erving dish lay in the sink, broken in half, her hands still gripping it.
Everyone was still, and then everyone moved. Toward Lee. Gaping.
“Oh, no, Juana, your dish …”
“That was my mom’s.”
Lee lifted her wet hands and backed away from the sink. “I apologize.”
Juana’s dark eyes pinned her, welling with tears. “She gave it to me for—”
Lee charged through the group of women without touching anyone. Let me out. They did. She collided with the swinging door and emerged into the hallway, empty for the moment. She dried her hands on her jeans as she ran to the closest red-lit exit sign and hit the crash bar. The door opened into a parking lot. Lee stumbled over the cement divider between sidewalk and blacktop. To her right was the street Graham had parked on. She walked around the corner of the building. She sank onto the cement steps where she’d sat with Marcus, mere hours ago. The sun that had warmed their faces dipped to the horizon now, touching the leaves and the grass with a pink glow.
Lee lowered her head to her knees and inhaled composure from the warm evening air.
They would think she’d fled in mortification or remorse. Over broken ceramic.
She pressed her hand to her right ribs, one after the other, lingering at each location of a break in Marcus’s body.
“… and work out His will.”
She couldn’t reside here, couldn’t converse with them or even look at them without wanting to scream. She lifted her head from her knees.
Heath stood in front of her.
He might have been looking for her, but the wide unblinking eyes hadn’t expected to find her here on the steps.
Unlike socially normal people, Heath didn’t mumble an apology and walk away. He stood gazing down at her, took one step forward, and stopped. He squatted down to sit on the curb, a safe two bodies’ lengths away. His knees stuck up almost to his chin.
“Juana knows it was only a dish.”
“Fine.”
“She’s not going to hold a grudge over an object, Lee.”
“Good.”
Heath propped his arms on his knees. “You didn’t escape because of that, did you?”
“I wasn’t escaping.”
He nodded and said nothing. All right, then, they could sit in silence. Lee pretended to watch the shadows of the trees lengthen. Heath seemed competent in nonverbal communication. Eventually, he would get the point.
He stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “What was it that angered you? Rachel’s asking about Marcus, or what she said about God?”
She glared.
“You’re right, I usually get to know someone for a week or two before I pry about their philosophical views.”
“I’m not interested in this discussion.” Since he wasn’t comprehending subtlety.
He didn’t answer. Sitting on the curb couldn’t be comfortable, but he didn’t look inclined to move. He watched a breeze whisper in the tree limbs above him. Formulating his debate, no doubt.
He drew his knees up again. “Are you an atheist, Lee?”
“No.”
“What sort of God do you believe in, then?”
“Yours, I suppose. More or less.”
That earned her a cocked eyebrow. “Yet you approach church entirely quid pro quo, and the mention of God’s will makes you break dishes.”
Lee gritted her teeth against his easygoing persistence, against the boiling that must not come out.
“Why don’t you want to discuss it? Whatever your views, you’re not going to offend me.”
Oh, really? Lee leaned forward for the first blow. “Your God is a perpetrator of evil and a sadist.”
Heath didn’t stand up to rail at her irreverence. He didn’t wince and walk away. His face remained smooth and accepting. Fine. She’d hardly begun her attack.
“You preach that He is omnipotent and good. Yet you look at someone who has suffered torture for Him and call it His will. You pray, and when you are ignored, call it His will.”
Heath crossed his ankles and sat back, hands flat on the concrete, nothing defensive in his pose. Invitation or not, her words were on an automatic trigger now and he deserved every one of them.
“Your blind acceptance of His actions is repulsive.”
“So,” Heath said before she could continue, “since evil exists, God must be evil.”
“It’s a logical conclusion.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Lee’s neck prickled. She pulled her heels against the base of the cement step.
“It presupposes too much. For example, you don’t allow any motivation for God’s restraint other than sadism. And with prayer, you don’t allow any outcome to be greater, better, than human desire.”
Neatly argued, shifting burden of proof from his beliefs to Lee’s, matching vocabulary with her. The Texas twang had caused her to underestimate his education. She wouldn’t fall into that again.
She had debated this with Marcus for years, and he had never been able to articulate a rebuttal. Not that articulation was his strong suit. But she’d asked the question of other Christians, too—years ago, when they could legally respond—and they utilized platitudes, which signified they couldn’t answer any other way. Heath wouldn’t be able to either.
He just did, didn’t he?
She could refute him, though, shift the burden of proof back.
“Why did God create us, Lee?”
Was he changing the subject? “To observe us. A cosmic theater of sorts. The universe entertains Him.”
“And Jesus?”
Lee’s jaw tightened. “What of Him?”
“Well, you said you believe in my God. My God is a Trinity.”
“Upon Marcus’s conversion, I conducted historical research of the first century, focusing on primary source material. I encountered obstacles in categorizing Jesus Christ as merely human. He likely is a form or representation of God.”
Another eyebrow arc. “Really.”
“Even if your belief system is true, and He paid for sins, it doesn’t remove the moral problem with allowing sins in the first place.”
“Okay. But it does mean we weren’t created for God’s entertainment. The theatergoer doesn’t get up onstage and join in the drama. And he definitely doesn’t pay the bill if the actors go on a rampage and damage the set.”
Lee pushed up with her hands and feet to sit one step higher. “Fine. If Jesus Christ is God, then our purpose would be …”
“To have a relationship with God. Jesus makes that possible, and the Bible repeatedly states that God desires a relationship with us. With Adam and Eve, with Israel, with His church.”
Adam and Eve? He was shameless, bringing obvious mythology into the discussion. “Are you attempting to distract me from the issue?”
“Not at all.”
Heath stood and stretched, but not for a moment did he appear to consider walking away. He brushed his hand against the leaves above him, then sat on the grass easement this time, cross-legged, facing her.
“I’m not going to tell you evil is necessary for good to exist. Some people make that statement, and I don’t accept that, because it would mean something was intrinsically wrong, missing, from God’s original act of creation that He calls ‘good.’ But being God, He can use evil’s existence for whatever purpose He chooses. And He chooses to use it, in part, to enhance our relationship with Him.”
She rolled her eyes. You see, Heath, that doesn’t even merit a verbal response.
“We can stop talking about this now, if you want.”
Did he think she was intimidated? She leaned forward and curled her hands around her ankles. “You cannot make a logical case for that assertion.”
“Some things are defined by what they are, some things by what they’re not
, and some things by both.”
Fine. She’d let him tie this noose and hang his argument to death. “Such as?”
“Light is illumination. It’s also the absence of darkness. If darkness didn’t exist, our human minds couldn’t explain light or have any real concept of its existence.”
“The same with heat.” Help him out. Accelerate the defeat.
“Right. If there’s no cold, then what? Heat is just a constant state without degrees, without definition.”
“Those are scientific properties.” And you’re not as intelligent as you think you are, if this hasn’t occurred to you.
“Well, what about freedom, then? Would you be aware of freedom if no one had ever experienced chains? Would you be aware of compassion if no one had ever behaved cruelly?”
He’d prepared that snare, and she’d stepped into it. Time to regroup. At least he had distracted her. Her intellect worked now, quieting the emotions that twisted her stomach. She held in a relieved sigh.
She didn’t have an instant rebuttal for him, though. His debate skills were honed. Defeating him would be more satisfying for that fact. She let him continue.
“God didn’t want us to be unaware, Lee. He wanted a relationship with beings that could comprehend their own multifaceted existence. And He gave us free will knowing what that gift would do but also knowing how He would redeem it all. Our depraved choices put His mercy on display, when we accept it.”
“I don’t agree,” she said.
“Don’t agree with what? That God wanted us to be aware? Or that evil enhances our awareness of good?”
Both. But … no, if God hadn’t wanted Lee to be self-aware, then she wouldn’t be. Violet said that. Something like it.
Heath leaned forward, onto his knees. “Can you consider that what I’ve described to you might be reality?”
Possibly. After all … “It’s convenient for God, isn’t it? A way to justify anything He does to us.”
“So you believe God has to justify Himself to you?”
He was putting words in her mouth. Not entirely. Your statement does imply that. She gritted her teeth.
“Because now we have a different conversation. If God has to justify Himself to you, then why bother calling Him ‘God’?”
Take and Give Page 25