From The Dead

by John Herrick

  “No, but …” Jesse knew she was right. Indeed, when it came to his life apart from her, he had filled it with errors and regret. Nonetheless, he struggled with anger over today’s revelation, so he pursed his lips and paced the room.

  “Jess, you know me.” Her eyes a plea, she peered up at him. “You know I’d never hurt you on purpose.”

  Confused, Jesse gazed into Caitlyn’s face and saw the girl he’d once loved. She was right: He knew her heart. So he made his way back to the sofa and sat beside her.

  Caitlyn rested her head on her hands. “I didn’t try to mislead you.”

  He sighed, unsure what to think. “I know you didn’t.”

  “Look at me,” Caitlyn said. Their eyes met. Caitlyn’s dripped with sincerity. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do. I promise. This wasn’t your choice. You don’t need to provide. You can walk away if you want to, and Drew would never know you were here.”

  Jesse could tell her offer was an honest one. It wasn’t an attempt to remove him from the picture. Rather, she offered him a place in it.

  Eleven years ago, they had found themselves drowning in an unexpected predicament. His departure had been by mutual agreement, though he knew it must have rubbed her heart sore at the time.

  Jesse glanced at Caitlyn, who massaged her temples. Regardless of her past choices, he knew she must be scared to let him in again.

  Neither knew what to say; each had launched the other into a state of confusion.

  As Jesse got up and walked over to the fireplace, Caitlyn caught a glimpse of her high-school sweetheart—the same person, just a tad older. And tanner.

  The room felt so still, Jesse could hear himself breathe. He searched for something to say, something to ask, but what? They had each made their share of mistakes.

  On the mantle sat an arrangement of pictures. Jesse picked one at random, took in the sight of Caitlyn and a friend in front of a museum.

  And then another picture captured him.

  As he leaned in, his eyes widened. Jesse reached out and retrieved the framed photo.

  “Wow,” he whispered as he stared at the young boy in the picture. He glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Is this him?”

  Engrossed, Jesse couldn’t remove himself from the photo.

  Caitlyn joined Jesse at the mantle. He sensed a bond between Caitlyn and himself, a mutual knowledge of how he felt at this moment: the overwhelming sense of joy when a parent looks at a child and realizes that child is your child. Together, Jesse and Caitlyn gazed into the picture of Drew in a Cleveland Indians baseball cap, a duffel bag in hand on his first day of summer camp.

  Drew was now ten years old.

  “Yes,” Caitlyn replied, her voice gentle. “It’s him.”

  Blown away, Jesse stifled a chuckle of pride. “Light blond hair,” he said under his breath, then glanced over at the boy’s mother. “Just like his mom’s.”

  Caitlyn smiled; her demeanor softened in the moment. “He’s artistic.”

  “Like his dad …” Jesse whispered to himself.

  While Jesse studied every detail in the photo—his first introduction to his son—Caitlyn examined Jesse’s subtle reactions. In a subconscious manner, Jesse ran his finger along the edge of the frame; the corner of his mouth twitched with the delicacy of a feather.

  Caitlyn returned her gaze to the picture. “He’s been asking questions about his father lately.”

  “He has? Like what?”

  “General things. What he was like, why he left.” She chewed a fingernail. Her eyes darted from Drew to Jesse, then back to Drew again, the photo of her son without his father. “Maybe … maybe I can introduce you to him.” Before Jesse could respond, she held up her hand to cut him off. “But we need to take it slow. I need to protect Drew.”

  With a nod, Jesse bit his lip in authenticity. “I understand.”

  For a few minutes longer, they looked at the picture without speaking. Jesse savored the moment. More than a decade had passed since they had shared such close proximity. Somehow, it didn’t seem so long ago when they had felt secure in each other’s presence.

  Before he left the house, Jesse gave her his cell number.

  When Caitlyn shut the door behind him, she leaned her head against the door frame. Then she moved to the window and gazed out the window at the only man she had ever loved—the one who walked back into her life less than an hour ago.

  As Jesse approached his car, he felt at peace. For the first time in months, he felt as though he had done something right.

  CHAPTER 25

  That evening, Jesse walked into Eden’s house stunned.

  From the kitchen, Eden called out, “Jess, is that you? I’ll be there when the popcorn’s done. I put The Breakfast Club into the DVD player so we can hang out tonight.”

  The DVD player, by default, moved from its menu and started to play the movie. On any other night, Jesse would have looked forward to his favorite film. He headed into the living room and plopped down on the sofa, where he stroked his chin and replayed the Caitlyn scenario in his mind.

  With a bag of popcorn in hand, Eden shook its contents as she walked into the room. She settled in at the other end of the sofa and crawled under a fleece throw. “What’s up with you tonight? You’re so quiet. Did you see Caitlyn?”

  Lost in thought, Jesse remained subdued. “Everything changed today.”

  “You seem distracted. Didn’t it go well?” Steam wafted from the bag as she tore it open. She savored the first buttery bite.

  “She had the baby.”

  “What?”

  “Look, don’t get worked up about this, but Caitlyn and I … she got pregnant years ago. Back when I was ready to move to California.”

  “How could—”

  “I kept it a secret from you because I was scared Dad would freak out. Cait was ready to start college, I was ready to leave Ohio. So we agreed on an abortion.”

  “You what?”

  Jesse watched as shock registered on Eden’s face, followed by the relief of a social worker who placed babies in adoptive homes. “She didn’t go through with it. She said she couldn’t, that she changed her mind after I was gone. But she couldn’t contact me because she didn’t have my new phone number, and I’d made her swear never to tell you or Dad. It wasn’t her fault; she did nothing wrong. But she wanted the baby and has raised him all along.”

  Eden’s arms went limp as she fell back against the sofa. “All by herself …”

  Jesse nodded. “His name is Drew. I haven’t met him yet; we’ll ease into it. And we won’t tell him the truth until later.” Jesse glanced at his sister. “I know you want to ask questions, but my mind is running in circles and I don’t have many answers for you. So why don’t we try to salvage the evening since you went to the effort of the movie?”

  From the way Eden sealed her lips, Jesse could tell she fought to restrain her questions. In her eyes he saw compassion. She held the bag out toward him, and he slid a piece of popcorn into his mouth. It was after seven, and he hadn’t had a bite to eat since lunch. Not that he could consume much with an edgy stomach.

  So they stared at the movie. They laughed less than usual as the group of teenagers, who sat bored in the school library, bickered back and forth on the TV screen. Soon the students delved into their lunches, and Judd Nelson watched as Molly Ringwald prepared her sushi with prom-queen delicacy.

  Jesse turned to Eden. “Please don’t tell Dad about Drew, okay?”

  She sighed. “Not a word.”

  “I know you hate to keep secrets from him, but I’ll tell him in my own time. The only reason you and Dad didn’t hear about it already is because word doesn’t travel from a half hour away. Cait’s pregnancy wouldn’t have started to show until months after she graduated, so by then, everybody that went to her school was off at college or had already moved away. For the most part, she and I used to hang out with each other alone anyway.”

  Eden took another p
iece of popcorn and seemed to grow deeper in thought as she examined its edges. “Since I can’t tell Dad, can I just tell Blake so I’ll have someone to confide in? You know him: He’ll keep quiet about it.”

  Jesse nodded. He didn’t want her to share the secret with anyone, but it didn’t seem fair to have her bear the burden alone.

  Eden crunched on the piece of popcorn. At last she brightened up. “So you have a son to meet.”

  As he became acclimated to the concept, Jesse smiled. “Like I said, we’ll take it one step at a time for Drew’s sake. Besides, we have to figure a plan. She caught me off guard about Drew, and I caught her off guard when I showed up at her doorstep.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Jesse snickered before he changed the subject. “Tell me about your job. You must enjoy it if you stayed there this long.”

  Eden’s faced beamed. “It’s amazing to watch dreams come true for parents who can hardly wait to have children. I have my rough days, though. Some of the girls find themselves pregnant without supportive families. Some of the babies’ fathers find out their girlfriends are pregnant, and they take off—”

  Jesse pretended to keep half an eye on the movie, but he wanted to bury his face in shame. He fell into the category.

  When she noticed Jesse’s discomfort, Eden stopped. “I’m sorry for that remark. I didn’t mean to insinuate—”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. God knows I deserve worse.”

  Eden tilted her head, her face warm with care.

  “At least you got a second chance.”

  CHAPTER 26

  When Jesse pulled into the church parking lot, he blinked out of reflex. He couldn’t believe he was here. An era had reached its end. When he left for California, he planned never to come back. But as the years rolled by, the notion of his return lurked in the back of his mind and, after a while, he considered it inevitable. Eventually. But he hadn’t given thought to this particular moment, nor had he planned what he would say. He expected it to be awkward. Yet from hundreds of miles away, he could banish it into the unforeseeable future.

  But no longer: His day of reconciliation had arrived.

  Frightened, Jesse reminded himself that such an emotion was ridiculous. After all, he’d come to see his father, not a cruel stranger. But facing his father didn’t trouble him; rather, fear of the unknown did. What would come next?

  Jesse decided to move forward. If he took each step as it came, the rest would fall in line.

  So he climbed out of the car. Jesse marveled at how the trees in the church’s lawn had changed. When he left town, they were five years old; by now they had doubled in size. The building, a sprawling, maize-colored structure with a chocolate-brown roof, looked the same as he remembered. A patch of tulips in bloom swayed along the building’s perimeter, tickled by the hint of an otherwise imperceptible breeze.

  And in a far corner, Jesse identified a window which he knew to be a replacement. Jesse grinned at the sight. One summer afternoon as a kid, he had broken that window when, by accident, he hit a baseball through it. His dad had forced him to spend the next two days pulling weeds out of this massive lawn. It marked the first of many incidents. Once Jesse reached his teenage years, he had developed a keen rebellious side—one that savored the challenge of pissing people off.

  He and Eden had spent as much of their childhood at this church building as they had spent at their own house. Not long after they moved to Hudson, their father started the congregation with a handful of families. At first they met in a storefront, a former grocery store on Streetsboro Road, which the congregation rented, painted, populated with furniture, and called home. Within three years, the congregation multiplied in size and showed signs of sustained growth. The group required a larger campus to keep up with its rapid expansion in membership, so after several years of waiting and saving for a down payment, they built this current building near the southeastern corner of town. Jesse was thirteen years old at the time.

  Five years later, he left.

  Jesse noticed a motorcycle parked outside the front entrance. According to Eden, their father still drove one—he’d adored them for as long as Jesse could remember. And a mere eighty feet away, Jesse mused, his father sat in his office and didn’t have a clue what he would encounter.

  Jesse wiped his damp palms on his jeans. From his pocket, his cell phone chirped. Not now. He debated whether to answer, then opted against it. Soon another tone sounded to indicate the caller had left a voice message. Jesse would listen to it later.

  As a minister’s son, Jesse spent his youth in his father’s shadow, where Jesse suffered comparisons from outsiders and endured muttered public criticism when he rebelled. None of these were his dad’s fault; his father had encouraged him to ignore the murmurings that occurred. Yet a teenaged Jesse blamed his father—he had to blame someone. All Jesse sought was freedom, an escape from the microscope of scrutiny, which seemed the one thing beyond his reach. To his astonishment, people seemed to wonder why he fled to the coast.

  At first, he tried to sneak unnoticed into the church through a rear door, which he remembered to be left unlocked on days the maintenance man worked outside. But not today. Jesse would have to walk through the front office door in full view. He hoped to find everyone out to lunch.

  Save a receptionist on the phone, the room was empty. He found an assistant pastor’s door shut, perhaps due to a counseling session inside. When Jesse reached the receptionist’s desk, he didn’t recognize the woman, who hung up the phone and wrote a message. He wanted to walk past her, but she had noticed him when he walked through the front door. With a glance she revealed she didn’t know Jesse from an average Joe, but her smile invited his approach. Instantly he felt less like a stranger.

  “Hello. May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “I’d like to see Pastor Chuck, please.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “No. Is he busy?”

  “Well,” she replied, her best effort at a polite rejection, “unless it’s urgent, he tries to schedule appointments when possible.”

  Though he understood her reply and figured the receptionist screened all unexpected visitors, Jesse felt like an object of the woman’s scrutiny. “I’m … his son.”

  Once the receptionist recovered from the rapid blinks of her eyes, she, in all likelihood, scurried to assemble a suitable reply. How should you respond when your minister’s son—a son everyone knows exists, one upon whom many have never laid sight—materializes before your eyes after more than a decade of disappearance? Jesse almost felt sorry for her.

  “Oh, I … you’re … Jesse, right? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Maureen.” They shook hands and Maureen’s smile returned. Her shock swallowed, she seemed delighted to meet him. “He’s putting together some notes for a sermon, but he’ll be thrilled to see you.”

  Jesse thanked her. Before she could rise to lead him, Jesse was halfway around her desk and on his way to the office. After all, he already knew which door was his father’s. Jesse could indeed feel her stares, but then again, could he blame her?

  With a quiet tap on the door, he cracked it open. His pulse on the rise and his hands in a sweat again, Jesse, who felt like an imposter, took a quiet step inside.

  An unsuspecting Chuck Barlow, with his back turned to the door, stood in front of a bookshelf and paged through a Bible commentary. His New Testament bookshelf, Jesse recalled.

  Without even a turn of his head, Chuck assumed his receptionist had walked in. “Maureen, did we hear from the folks in Solon?”

  “Dad …”

  Jesse could only imagine the look on his father’s face. From a posterior view, Jesse watched his father’s shoulders go rigid. Chuck dropped the book on the shelf and spun around—elated.

  “Jesse.” Frozen in place, Chuck’s mouth fell agape as he gazed at Jesse, in the flesh and not an illusion. Then he ran over to his son and embraced him taut with fervor.
/>
  Now it was Jesse’s turn to freeze. Though Jesse returned a half hug, the gesture settled bittersweet in his stomach. After eleven years away from the man’s physical presence, Jesse wasn’t used to this. It felt like when he was fourteen, when he underwent a self-conscious phase and refused to hug his father and anyone else of the same gender.

  Chuck stepped back and took another look at his son. Though Jesse wondered whether Chuck was familiar with his son’s adult appearance, he assumed Chuck had seen him strut in the background in a handful of films.

  “Why didn’t you come back for a visit all this time? I’ve been worried sick about you!” But before Jesse could respond, his father waved off the rapid-fire, concerned-parent questions. “Have a seat!” he said as he settled behind his own desk. Jesse sat in a cushioned chair across from him.

  Chuck himself was a tad overweight, but only by ten or twenty pounds. Though he’d started to bald toward the back of his head, his now-graying hair had once matched Jesse’s shade of blond. A man familiar with current trends, Chuck dressed in a sport shirt and jeans. In fact, Jesse knew his father didn’t even own a clerical collar and, on one occasion, had to borrow one from a friend, a Lutheran minister. Jesse’s father fought the image of a stereotypical minister. Chuck hated pretense and performance; to Chuck, the importance lay in connecting with people, and he didn’t believe God minded his Calvin Kleins. Or his motorcycle.

  After years of distance, Jesse noticed a change in how Chuck acted around him, as if Chuck now treaded with caution. Still, though delighted to see his son, he was also a minister with an acute ability to read people, Jesse was aware. On second examination of his son’s demeanor, Chuck squinted but didn’t pry for information. As a dad, although he might have imagined what Jesse’s life in L.A. involved, the dares and the detours, Jesse had relayed only minimal details to him.

  “This is a surprise. A pleasant one,” Chuck said. “I can’t believe Eden didn’t mention you were coming home. How long will you stay?”