Happily Ever After

by Jenn Faulk

~Cammie~

  She didn’t have to ask him if she could go along. He didn’t even look back as he opened the door to the truck and helped her up, then went around to the driver’s side, starting it up and leading them away from her house, where Kait and Piet would likely eat the breakfast she’d made for David and continue on with plans to reduce him to nothing more than his last name.

  Oh, David...

  “He was right,” David said softly as he drove. “My father. He was right when he said that something was off with everything here. I mean, he said it the last time I saw him. Said there was something not quite right with it. With the board’s involvement, with personnel, with what was left behind here in Namibia. How can he be such a jerk and still have such clear discernment, half a world away?”

  Camille thought back to David’s sermon at the youth event, back when she’d wondered over how he could be who he was now. “David, you never named the country where you served. Back in the US. You left that out.” She looked at him. “Was it because of your dad? The convention?”

  “It was stupid,” David said, shaking his head, not meeting her eyes. “But I figured the more generic I could keep it, the less it would change my life here. It was enough to know that Paul Connor’s son was on the field. If I went around talking about the specific place... they’d know about it. Everyone would. Not just the board. Everyone. And people can’t stay away when they hear about Paul Connor. I just wanted my own place, you know?” He looked up at her. “I know it’s selfish. Especially with all that Kait said could happen here if the rest of the world just knew what God had been doing. But I just...”

  “Just didn’t want to be in the spotlight,” Cammie said.

  “Well, I was,” he said. “Back there at that meeting, where we saw each other. So, what was it all worth anyway?”

  “You weren’t, though,” she said. “You kept this quiet. No one would have known. Until now, of course. But I understand, David. I really do.”

  “And they only asked me to that thing because of him,” David added, shaking his head. “I thought it was because of what I’d done. But none of it has been because of that. It’s all been because of him.”

  Cammie thought about it all, about how it was true likely, even as David pulled off the road, put the truck in park, and hit the palm of his hand against the steering wheel. Hard.

  She jumped a little.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I just... I just can’t get away from him!”

  “I’m sorry, David,” she said, reaching over to take his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I was so excited when I came here. So excited that I was doing this on my own,” he said. “That I was finally in a place where I was who I needed to be, who I could never seem to be in his shadow. And now? Now, he’s suddenly the reason behind everything I do.”

  “He’s not the reason,” she said. “Jesus alone has been the reason. And, David, who’s to even say that as we go and share what’s going on here that it has to be about your dad at all?”

  “It’s all for him,” David said, insistent.

  “That’s their plan,” she answered, “but God can still work through that, can still show the convention what’s going on here, can open the way for so much more to be done. It wasn’t right what they did... but God can still use it. For your good, for the work here... for His glory. And I think He will.”

  He watched her sadly. “Do you even want to go back to the States now? Now that you know you’ll just be a part of it all, too? Being puppets for Paul Connor and for the board both?”

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, David,” she said sincerely, meaning it with everything in her.

  “Why?” he said. “Why would you follow me? Why would you trust my judgment? I’m not qualified. You heard them say it. I’ve just been everyone’s puppet. Kait and Piet’s puppet. The election committee for my father. My father himself. Why would you do anything I think you should?”

  “Because I trust you,” she said simply. “And because you’re leading this team.”

  He looked away again. “I’m sorry that you’ve been dragged into it all, too.”

  Dragged into what? This mess? Sure, that was bad. But dragged into being beside him as he went through this, as he fought his way out of all the feelings, and as he tried to be who Christ called him to be, despite all of this?

  There had been no dragging. She’d walked into it willingly.

  And she’d stay in it willingly, if it meant staying by David.

  He took a deep breath. “When did she say we’re doing this?”

  “New Year’s.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “Didn’t give us any time to think it over, did she?”

  “A few days,” Cammie murmured.

  “And that,” he said, pointing to the magazine in her lap. “How long has everyone else known about that and not told me?”

  “It’s a January release,” she said, looking at the date. “No one’s gotten it yet.”

  “Except my dad,” David noted. “He probably knows all about this.”

  Probably. Cammie thought about it, about the rest of the Connor family getting news about David coming home for a visit, probably even now.

  Oh, David... Cammie thought it even as she looked at the magazine.

  Kait had done her homework.

  She had somehow gotten her hands on the glossy spread in the convention magazine early as well, likely because half of the pictures looked to be ones that she had taken. The Legacy of Paul Connor was emblazoned at the top, with a picture of David and his father at New Life-Dallas, taken sometime fairly recently. Scattered throughout the article were pictures of David growing up, pictures of him at the church, and a picture of him in Namibia, with a group of teenagers.

  Cammie put her hand on that last one, overcome once again by all that she felt for him, after all this time. Before she could say anything, David sighed. “Pretty sure she had me airbrushed in that one.”

  She looked closer. “No, David,” she said softly. “That’s how you look.”

  “Well, she totally airbrushed that one,” he said, pointing to one of them both, seaside, David with his guitar, grinning, and Cammie squinting into the sun.

  “Not enough,” she groaned. “Look at me. Why did Kait let them put that in there?”

  “Looks good,” he murmured. “Especially next to that one.”

  Cammie studied the picture for a long moment, trying to place it. She was sitting on the steps in the sanctuary at New Life-Dallas, barely sixteen, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, and a brightly colored name tag on a lanyard around her neck. Cammie. And over her shoulder was David, dressed in basketball shorts and a ratty old shirt, with his own name tag wrapped around his head.

  “VBS,” she exhaled finally. “We were all scheduled to work with the kindergarten class. Me, you, Charity, and Hope.”

  “And Charity,” he said, “came down with mono.”

  “The kissing disease,” Cammie whispered, just like she had back then, smiling up at David, giggling even as she did so.

  “Good grief, Cammie,” he said sarcastically. “Are you still twelve?”

  “Some days,” she murmured, still grinning.

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and then Hope came down with the kissing disease, too. Leave it to her to get mono from her twin sister. It was the longest summer of my life with the two of them so sick.”

  Cammie laughed out loud at this. “And they left us to handle the class by ourselves. It’s like they knew those five year olds were all living terrors!”

  “They were particularly rotten,” David affirmed. “Evil from birth, like my dad would’ve said. And he was right.”

  “You were so good with them, though,” she said. “So sweet and gentle with them, even at your age. And you’d sit there during the Bible story and look ten times more interested than they did when I’d teach them about Jesus.”

  She remembered the way he had looked ther
e at New Life-Dallas, three five year olds in his lap as he listened to the story, as he clapped and sang along to wee sing songs, and as he ran around the gym with them all chasing him, trying to teach them the rules of dodgeball.

  Such good memories. Such incredible, life-defining moments, spent at that church.

  “I have so many good memories there,” she said softly.

  He exhaled. “The Legacy of Paul Connor,” he murmured.

  And she swallowed the words she hadn’t been brave enough to say, even as David started the truck back up again.

  And all of my best memories have you in them, David.

  THe convention