by Alana Terry
CHAPTER 21
Kennedy could only guess how long she and Carl sat on that cold pavement. He didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any false reassurances or tell her to calm down. Didn’t accuse her of overreacting or offer any pastoral guilt trip that if she only prayed or read her Bible more she wouldn’t be such a mess.
Once her sobbing quieted down and she could breathe somewhat normally again, he checked her limbs for any injuries, asked if she had hit her head when she fell. And then he held her longer, as if his only reason for being near the Boston courthouse tonight was to make sure she felt safe.
“I’m glad I saw you,” he finally said. “They invited me here to give a prayer, but I was running late. Couldn’t find my keys. Must be providence, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have seen you ...” He didn’t finish his thought, and Kennedy was thankful to avoid hearing the eye-witness account of her own embarrassing meltdown.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “I was fine one minute, then all of a sudden ...”
“Shh. Don’t you worry about it.” Carl glanced at his wristwatch. “Listen, I’m already late, and there’s no way I’m leaving you here alone.” He leveled his gaze to look at her as sternly as he could pull off. “You didn’t take the T alone, not this late at night, did you?”
“No, I came with my roommate, but we got separated.”
“Well, let me call my friend and tell him I can’t make it. He’s the one who arranged all this. I’m sure he’ll understand.” Carl held his old-fashioned flip-phone to his ear.
“I don’t want you to miss out.” Kennedy took in a deep breath to prove to both herself and Carl that she could. “I don’t mind ...”
“Stuff and nonsense,” he interrupted and then held up his finger. “Hello, Dominic? Can you hear me?”
Kennedy still couldn’t understand why he always needed to shout when he talked to someone on his cell.
“Yeah, it’s Carl. Something came up, and I’m not gonna make it.” He yelled for a minute longer about how sorry he was for missing the vigil and then ended the call.
“That’s a good man,” he said as he put his phone in his back pocket. “Most godly saint this police force has ever seen.”
“Was that the chaplain?”
“That’s right, Dominic. You know him?”
“A little. We met at the ... He was at the hospital last night. He didn’t tell me he was the chaplain. I just thought he was an officer.”
Carl let out a little laugh. “That’s Dominic for you. Most humble, unassuming man I know.” He groaned as he stood up and then reached down to help Kennedy to her feet. “You up for a little walk? I had to park behind the bank.”
She nodded. “I’m better now.” Part of her wanted to leave Carl and go find Willow, pretend none of this had ever happened. But then she saw the ocean of bodies and heard the sound of an acoustic guitar strumming over the loudspeaker. She would never make it back in that crowd. “You sure you don’t want to stay? I could wait here while you go pray.”
Carl jerked his head toward the courthouse, where some folk singers with only slightly more talent than the Babylon Eunuchs were singing an over-embellished version of Imagine. “I’m not that big of a Beatles fan these days, truth be told.” He grinned and extended his arm. “Want a little extra support?”
Kennedy was pretty sure she could walk on her own, but she took Carl’s elbow and allowed him to lead her slowly down the street until the sounds of the crowd and mediocre singing faded into the darkness.
CHAPTER 22
Carl insisted that Kennedy spend the night with him and Sandy in their Medford home. She didn’t have a way to let Willow know where she was, but Carl volunteered to drive all the way to her dorm to get her cell phone while she and Sandy had tea. Of course, by tea he meant cookies, cinnamon rolls, and any number of Sandy’s baked goods, but Kennedy wouldn’t turn that down. Not tonight.
Sandy was pulling a tray of banana nut muffins out of the oven when Carl dropped her off at his house. Sandy set the muffin tin on the stovetop and wrapped Kennedy up in a 360-degree hug. “Carl told me you’d be coming. I’m so sorry about Reuben.”
It had only been a few hours since Kennedy was here eating pork chops, but the first whiff of cinnamon and vanilla set her stomach grumbling.
“You had such a hard night, sweetheart.” Sandy led Kennedy into the dining room and sat her down at the table. “You just get comfortable. I have tea heating up right now, and you can keep me company from there while I finish up my baking.” She glanced at the door that led to her garage. “Where’s Carl?”
Kennedy explained how he went to get her phone so she could call Willow and let her know she wouldn’t need a ride home.
“And how is your roommate, sweetie? Are you two still getting along well?”
Kennedy accepted a cup of tea and added a spoonful of honey. “Yeah. I’m kind of surprised by it all, but we’re getting along great. We’re going to room together again next year.
“That’s fabulous, darling. It’s so nice when God brings friends like that into our lives.”
“I don’t know that God had much to do with it in this case. I mean, Willow is about as far from Christianity as you can be.”
Sandy threw some cream cheese into an old-fashioned electric mixing machine. “Sometimes those are the ones who fall for God the hardest when their time comes.”
Kennedy allowed herself to chuckle at the thought of Willow turning her life around that drastically. Sandy whipped up some frosting in her mixer, and Kennedy wondered what life would be like if she hadn’t known the Lindgrens, if she arrived at Harvard without any kind of support system, like Willow who flew here all the way from Alaska. How did people endure the loneliness? The Lindgrens’ home wasn’t just a place to satisfy her sweet tooth or keep her from becoming anemic. It was a place where Kennedy found love, unconditional acceptance, a sense of peace she’d never been able to fully experience in the dorms.
More than anything, this was home.
Sandy pulled a tray of fresh-cut fruit from her fridge and set it on the table. “I thought we’d start with this while the muffins cool.” She winked. “That way, we can at least pretend that we’re eating healthy.”
Kennedy took a pineapple chunk and remembered her conversation with Reuben in the student union. He had wanted more than anything to avoid a confrontation with the police. Why? Was it because he didn’t want to get arrested? Did he have some sort of premonition about what would happen to him? Or was there more to it? She replayed her conversation with him on the phone. What was it he’d wanted to tell her?
Sandy took a dainty bite from an oversized strawberry. “So tell me, darling, how are you doing with all this?”
Kennedy had no idea what Carl said to her when he’d texted Sandy from his car. Did she know about the panic attack? The last thing she wanted to do was to relive those few awful minutes at the vigil, recall how scared she’d been, certain her heart would give out from adrenaline overdose, certain she would die quite literally from fright.
How was she doing? How was she supposed to know? How could she take the time to assess her emotional well-being right now while Reuben was locked away in some cell? Would he be alone or with others? Was he safe? The first day of the semester, her children’s lit class had discussed a book depicting a gang rape while the main character was wrongfully imprisoned. At the time, she wondered how the story could have found its way through any juvenile fiction press’s editorial process.
Sandy patted her hand. “It’s all right if you don’t know how to answer. Sometimes our brains know it’s time to switch to survival mode, get us through the crisis. We don’t always get a chance to deal with the emotional side of things until later on.”
It made sense, but in another way, wasn’t Kennedy here at the Lindgrens’ home because of an overdose of unruly emotions? If there was something she could take to deaden her senses just a little, she could handle it all. She was used
to stress. She was used to pushing herself out of her comfort zone. What she wasn’t used to, what she would never get used to, were these debilitating panic attacks that could swell up in her, overwhelm her at the slightest provocation and the most inopportune times. Her anxiety had already cost her so much. Sleep. Energy. Her grades would start to suffer if she didn’t get things under control soon. She could only guess what all this trauma was doing to her health, but she’d be surprised if she made it through another year at Harvard without her gastrointestinal tract breaking out into a dozen ulcers.
Kennedy stared at the plate of fruit and wondered what they would feed Reuben in jail. She wouldn’t blame him if he hated her after this. Wasn’t she the one who suggested they go see Aida in the first place? Wasn’t she the one he was trying to protect before Bow Legs knocked him to the ground? And what had she done to help him? Whined to Daddy like a spoiled brat, but what had that accomplished? Would her dad’s lawyer friend even get to Reuben’s case before the weekend was over? Even when she tried to get the evidence she’d need to prove Reuben’s innocence, she had already filled up her phone’s memory with too many stupid pictures from chem lab. Why hadn’t she kept better track of her storage space? Why hadn’t she deleted all those useless photos once she didn’t need them? It wasn’t as though she’d ever have to pass pictures of her synthesized salicylic acid on to her descendants.
“What are you thinking about, sweetie?”
At first, Kennedy couldn’t splice any words together.
“What’s on your mind?”
Sandy’s question was as strong as capillary action, slowly defying gravity and drawing a response out of Kennedy’s mouth.
“He called me today. Reuben did. He got one phone call, and I couldn’t even help him.” She shook her head. Tears spilled down her cheeks like tiny drops of rain on oily asphalt. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Sandy nodded. “That’s one of the hardest things to go through when you’re unable to help someone you love. I know it’s not easy, little lamb, but God gives us the strength we need ...”
“But he hasn’t,” Kennedy protested. “That’s just the thing. I’ve prayed for strength. I’ve prayed for patience to get through all these things. I’ve prayed to be a good example to Willow, but I’m such a mess.” She looked down at her torso as if Sandy might see how filthy and defiled she really was. “It doesn’t make sense. I’ve done all the right things. I’m setting aside time each day to read my Bible. I’m praying all the time.” She let out a mirthless laugh. “And I’m a bigger nutcase now than I was a year ago.”
Sandy didn’t speak right away. Didn’t chide Kennedy for her blasphemous accusations. Didn’t remind her that all things work together for good or offer any of the other platitudes Kennedy was expecting. Instead, she took a long sip of tea and sighed. “I wish I had the answers for you.”
So that was it? That was the best Sandy could do — Sandy, who was married to the pastor of one of Cambridge’s most prominent churches? Sandy, who volunteered twenty or thirty hours a week at the pregnancy center and ran the children’s ministry and babysat her grandson three days a week and still found time to bake cookies for lonely college students? She was saying there was nothing that Kennedy could do, no way to make all the pain and trauma disappear. Then what was Kennedy even doing here? Why was she searching for answers to impossible questions if it was just a big waste of time? She imagined God up in heaven, shaking his head, telling her that her quest was as hopeless as Atticus Finch taking on the Tom Robinson case.
Kennedy stared into her mug. “Yeah, I guess it was pretty silly for me to expect the impossible.”
Sandy shook her head. “We never stop expecting the impossible, sweetie, but we have to temper that faith and that hope with the reality that this world is a fallen place. Sometimes evil prevails, but only for a time and only if it somehow works into God’s master plan. Now, I don’t pretend to understand how it fits together, or how God uses bad events to bring about good, or why he allows evil to persist when Jesus has already conquered. My soul yearns more every day for heaven when I think about how much God’s children are suffering in this world. I think about our son, our little Woong so far away in South Korea. Carl and I are his parents, but we can’t hold him. We can’t comfort him. We can’t snatch him out of whatever horror he’s had to live through. We can only wait. Do you know how that tears a mother’s heart up? But what can we do? We can claim that God is evil for allowing so much pain and injustice. We can lose all hope and turn our backs on him like Elijah was tempted to do in the wilderness. Or we can stick our heads in a hole, ignore the hurt and the suffering around us because it’s too much for our narrow view of God to handle. Or we can accept the fact that this world is full of misery, and we can do what we can — limited though our efforts may be — to be the love of Christ to those who are hurting. To be hope to those who are discouraged. To be family to those who’ve been abandoned. To be healing for the brokenhearted. Balm for the suffering.”
Sandy smiled softly. “That’s the third option, my dear. It means waking up every day and asking God how you can shed his light into the darkness around you. It means opening your heart to the feeble, the downtrodden, the afflicted. It means speaking up for the oppressed, loosening their chains. The real saints, the ones who are taking God’s message of love seriously, are the ones who can see the pain around them, feel the impact of sin, and instead of losing heart or giving into despair, they covenant with God that they are going to push back that darkness. Reclaim the lost for Christ. Resist the decay and pollution and oppression that’s brought the world to where it is today. That’s the power we have in us, precious. It’s a big responsibility.”
Kennedy had to chuckle.
Sandy laughed back. “What is it, dear?”
“You went from motivational speaker to Spiderman’s uncle without stopping for air.”
Joy lines crinkled around Sandy’s eyes, even though Kennedy wasn’t sure she understood the reference.
“You see what I mean, don’t you, darling?”
Kennedy nodded. “Yeah. It’s just hard.”
Sandy refilled her mug. “No, it’s just life.”
Kennedy reached for some cantaloupe. “I guess what I mean is I worry about what kind of witness I’m being for Christ. I mean, I don’t know if Carl told you, but I was a big sobbing mess before he brought me here. So I love what you’re saying about bringing hope to the lost and all that, but when I try to be strong I end up falling flat on my face more often than not.”
“Who said you have to be strong?” Sandy asked the question so pointedly Kennedy had to run through their entire conversation to see if there was something she had missed.
“I never claimed you were supposed to be strong to accomplish all those things.” Sandy brought the muffins over to the table and started to frost them.
“But I can’t even make it through a simple prayer meeting without hyperventilating and sobbing in front of complete strangers. How is that supposed to show God’s victory?”
Sandy set two muffins on Kennedy’s plate. “It’s during those times that we’re the weakest when God can show himself the most dramatically. And I’m not talking about just taking away your panic attacks, pumpkin, although if he wanted to do that, he certainly could. What I’m talking about is you having the freedom and courage to live out your life — stress, anxiety, and all — in front of others with a vulnerability and grace that can only come from above. Think about your roommate for a minute. What are her biggest reasons for hating Christianity?”
“She says the church is full of judgmental hypocrites.”
“So, she thinks that all Christians put on a mask and act phony to cover up their struggles. But you can show her how that’s not the case, how God can take someone at her weakest, at her most anxious, at her most traumatized, and how he can give her the faith to say, ‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’ That’s the message people like your roommate are hungry to hear.
It’s like Carl and me when the kids were younger. When we had our fights and disagreements, don’t you think we wanted to shut the door and keep our kids from seeing us at our ugliest? But we made it a point not to do that. We didn’t want them to grow up believing the lie that marriage is easy. No, we fought in front of the kids, and things could get pretty heated at times. But we did that to teach our children that a godly couple can have their disagreements and afterwards still show love to each other, still respect one another. It’s the same thing when we’re witnessing. If our goal is to make people think that Christians never struggle, we’re just setting them up for failure. What would your roommate think if she became a Christian because she believed you had a perfect, struggle-free life and wanted that for herself? Then, when she faces trials of her own, she’d feel like God abandoned her. So instead, you show her what it means to suffer and still have hope, to go through the valley of the shadow of death but know that the good Shepherd is right there, comforting you with his rod, guiding you with his staff. That’s the kind of witness people today need to see.”
She reached out and tucked a strand of loose hair behind Kennedy’s ear. “We should never try to do God a favor by hiding our weaknesses. Don’t hide your struggles. Just ask God to use them to show others his glory. Does that make sense?”
Kennedy nodded, and Sandy placed some more fruit on her plate as the door to the garage flung open.
“Did you miss me?” Carl brandished a smile and waved Kennedy’s cell phone in one hand. He sat down at the head of the table. “This smells delicious. Pass me that fruit plate. I’m famished.”
CHAPTER 23
Half an hour and two more banana muffins later, Kennedy’s body reminded her how exhausted she was from the events of the past twenty-four hours. She hadn’t thought until now about any of the toiletries she’d need, but Sandy always kept extra nightclothes and toothbrushes ready for occasions just like this.