Forgiven

by Karen Kingsbury

  She took a few tentative steps toward the girl’s bed. “Sarah Jo . . .”

  There was no response, of course. Machines were keeping her alive at this point, and even so, she looked worse than she had this morning. Katy stared at her eyelids, bruised and swollen shut. The same eyes that Katy had made up before several of the Tom Sawyer performances.

  One conversation came back to Katy. She had been putting mascara on Sarah Jo’s fine eyelashes before the last show, and the girl had smiled at her. “I’ve learned something being in Tom Sawyer.”

  “Really?” Katy had dabbed the mascara wand at Sarah Jo’s lower lashes. “What did you learn?”

  Sarah Jo held still as Katy finished with her eyes. “I learned acting can be fun.” She giggled. “It can even be funny.”

  The conversation faded from her mind, and she gripped the edge of Sarah Jo’s bed. God, don’t let her die. Please. She should be singing from a stage until she’s old and gray. Please, God.

  Sometimes when Katy prayed, she could almost hear God’s answer—the quiet, still resonance of a Scripture deep in her heart or silent words of wisdom spoken by her parents or the Flanigans.

  But this time a song filled her heart, one that grew and worked its way through her being until it sounded ever so softly on her lips. “‘Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee. . . .’”

  The song came in all its fullness, the lyrics reminding her and Sarah Jo and anyone who happened into the room that God would have the final word. She had tears on her cheeks as she finished singing: “‘All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!’”

  There were heavy steps in the hallway, and she heard Mr. Stryker talking to the doctor. It was time for her to leave. She slipped past them and down three doors to the waiting room. She stayed there another hour, praying and remembering and begging God to give Sarah Jo a second chance at life.

  During that time she heard commotion in the hallway, people hurrying in the direction of Sarah Jo’s room. And at one point she heard the muffled sound of weeping. Katy blocked out all of it, refusing to believe that anything worse had happened to the sweet ingenue who’d lit up the stage last summer.

  She continued believing everything would be okay, that Sarah Jo would have a miraculous change and start making improvements toward recovery, right until Mr. Stryker appeared in the doorway of the waiting room. His face was red and tearstained.

  “How is she?” Katy stood and their eyes met.

  He grabbed the doorframe and squeezed his eyes shut. That’s when Katy figured out what had happened. The man’s expression told her everything she needed to know. There would be no miraculous recovery for the girl down the hall, no improvements and no recovery.

  Sarah Jo Stryker was dead.

  The meeting was scheduled for seven o’clock at the Flanigans’ house—two hours for the kids of CKT to cry together and pray together. Katy had no idea how she was going to get through a minute of it.

  By the time Katy left the hospital at five o’clock, Alice Stryker was awake and aware of her daughter’s death. The last thing Katy heard as she left was Alice screaming about not getting the chance to say good-bye. Katy had driven home in a trance, sick to her stomach. Then she asked Jenny Flanigan if they could hold a prayer meeting at their house tonight.

  She called Rhonda and Bethany, and between the three of them they divided up the names of every student in CKT and spent the next hour calling them about the vigil.

  Now Katy was in her apartment over the Flanigans’ garage trying to sort through all that had happened. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Saturday’s callback auditions had gone well, even though she and Rhonda had been in a fog throughout the morning. When auditions were over, they told the kids about the accident. The hugs and tears then would be mirrored on a larger scale tonight.

  Katy had her Bible out. She wanted to read from 2 Corinthians, the first chapter, where the Christians were told that the sufferings of Christ would overflow into their lives as surely as the comfort would. But before she could open the cover, she heard the doorbell ring.

  The Shaffer family was first to arrive and the Picks after that. Again and again, as more people came, the group exchanged hugs and tears and questions. Mostly questions. What was going to happen to the drunk driver? How were the others—Joey and Alice Stryker and Brandy Hanover? And how were they supposed to go on with a show when the loss was so great?

  By seven o’clock, nearly a hundred people packed into the Flanigans’ giant great room. Bethany had asked Katy to lead the meeting, and now she prayed with every breath that she’d have the strength. Katy found a place on the far wall, where she could see the faces of most of those gathered. Some were crying; others had their arms around one another.

  “This is a hard night for all of us.” Katy felt a stinging in her eyes, but she blinked back the tears. The kids needed her to be strong. “But God promised us something about times like this.” She sniffed and looked around the room. “He promised to be faithful, not to turn or change or leave us.”

  Bailey Flanigan raised her hand. “I don’t know if I’m the only one—” she glanced at the others sitting near her—“but I feel so mad at the drunk driver.” She clenched her teeth as she spoke. “It was his choice to drink and get behind the wheel, his fault.” She exhaled hard, lifted her hands, and let them drop in her lap. “Sometimes I think I hate him. I guess I don’t know what to do with all my anger.”

  “All of us have probably felt that at one time or another over the weekend.” Katy’s tone was kind, compassionate. She and Bailey had talked about this earlier, and Katy understood. Bailey was a person of absolutes, of black-and-white lines. Forgiveness would be an issue for her and the others as time took them beyond these early days of grief and shock. Katy looked straight at Bailey. “Anyone struggling with forgiveness can talk to me later tonight. Okay . . . anyone else have something?”

  No hands shot up.

  Katy spotted Tim Reed’s mother crying silently in the back of the room. She and Alice worked together on the costume committee, and because their kids had had the lead roles in Tom Sawyer, they shared a lot of Saturdays. Katy swallowed hard, doing her best to stay composed. “We need to remember something. The Bible says God’s mercies are new every morning. That’s what we have to hang on to if we’re going to stay strong together, if we’re going to find—”

  The doorbell interrupted her.

  Bethany slipped out of the room, and several kids followed. After a few seconds the kids returned, their faces masked in shock. “The Hanovers are here!”

  A minute later, Bethany trailed as Mr. and Mrs. Hanover and their daughter, Brandy, entered the room. Brandy was in a wheelchair, her broken leg propped up in front of her. Little Ben’s funeral would take place in the morning, so no one had expected them to come.

  Katy studied Brandy, the look on her face. In Tom Sawyer she had played Aunt Polly’s irritating daughter, the one who wanted to catch Tom and turn him in.

  In her eyes now there was none of the mischievous pigtailed girl she’d been in the play. She was only eleven years old, but the wisdom in her expression was that of an adult. Mr. and Mrs. Hanover anchored themselves on either side of Brandy’s chair, and the three of them focused on Katy. Mr. Hanover nodded, as if to say carry on, that whatever was happening tonight—they only wanted to be a part of it.

  Katy could barely speak, so she looked across the room at Tim Reed. “Did you bring your guitar? I think we should sing.”

  Tim left the room and returned with his guitar. They started with the CKT favorite, the song they sang in the greenroom before every performance. “‘I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice . . . to worship You, O my soul, rejoice!’”

  From there they sang a handful of songs that the kids had enjoyed singing whenever they were together. The last song was by Casting Crowns called “Who Am I.” It brought up the point that all pe
ople are merely fading flowers, vanishing waves, or transient vapors in the wind. Around the room the kids’ voices rang as one.

  Katy glanced at Brandy. She had her eyes closed, but tears made steady streams down her cheeks. She held the hands of her parents on either side of her.

  When Tim was done playing, Mr. Hanover cleared his throat and looked at Katy for permission to speak. She motioned for him to go ahead. The room was utterly silent as he took a few steps forward. “Many of you are probably thinking that it would be difficult to put on a play after what’s happened.”

  There were several nods from around the room. Katy couldn’t help but nod along with them. How would they get together and focus on making the production Annie come to life, when all around them everyone would be too sad to sing or smile?

  Mr. Hanover stepped back, reached out his hand, and took Brandy’s again. “We wanted to ask you—as a family—if you’d please carry on.” His throat grew thick and his voice cracked. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and then he let his hand fall to his side. “Please carry on. If Ben . . . if he were here he would be sitting there opening night, front and center.” A sound that was more of a cry than a laugh came from him. “The day before auditions, Ben came up to me.” Mr. Hanover looked down momentarily, no doubt trying to keep his composure. He lifted his eyes again. “He told me if he was old enough, he’d wear a red wig and sing ‘Tomorrow.’ He told me he could probably be Annie. But he’d rather be Peter Pan.”

  A few soft chuckles came from the group. Everyone knew and loved Ben Hanover. The ache inside Katy was so strong, she might as well have lost her right arm. She made a fist and brought her knuckles to her forehead, seeing Ben darting around the crowd of kids and grown-ups at CKT, waiting for the years to pass so he could have a chance.

  Mr. Hanover waited until the room was quiet again. Then he said, “Thank you. Thanks for treating us like family and thanks for meeting here like this tonight. CKT . . . well, it’s what church is supposed to be like.” He nodded to a few of the older kids scattered around the room. “You go and put on the show of your life, you hear!” His voice was intense, the tears glistening in his eyes. “On opening night, we’ll be there as close to the front as we can get. And somewhere—” a sob sounded in his chest, and he covered his mouth with the back of his hand—“Ben will be watching too.”

  When he was finished, Katy took a step forward and held up her hand. “Let’s circle the Hanovers and pray for them. I’ll start, and anyone who wants to pray can pray.”

  They moved slowly, crippled by the grief in their hearts. But they all came, forming a cluster around the Hanovers. For fifteen minutes they prayed, asking God for peace and healing. Near the end, eight-year-old Mary Reed, Tim’s sister, asked Jesus to “give Benny a hug for me because he was my friend.”

  They also prayed for the Stryker family, and as they did, several girls who had been Sarah Jo’s friends broke down, falling to their knees and forming a weeping mound of sorrow. The circle shifted around them, and by the time they were done praying, Katy had the strangest sense: not that everything would be fine any time soon but that God would use the tragic loss of Ben Hanover and Sarah Jo Stryker to build something stronger and better out of CKT.

  Tim played another round of “I Love You, Lord,” then led the group in one more prayer: “Lord, please . . . let something good come from all this sadness. We understand that people die. But . . . well, we don’t understand this.”

  As he finished, the phone rang. Jenny Flanigan was standing near the kitchen so she answered it. From across the room Katy couldn’t make out what Jenny was saying, and for a moment they stood there, not sure how to end the meeting. But before Katy could think of something to say, Jenny hung up the phone, turned, and came back into the great room. She was smiling and crying at the same time.

  “That was Mr. Stryker.” She crooked her finger and held it against her upper lip. After a moment she moved it and looked from Katy to Bethany and around the room at the others. “They’ve donated Sarah Jo’s eyes to a little girl in Indianapolis. The surgery is tomorrow morning, and after that . . . she’ll see for the first time.”

  Fresh tears filled the eyes of everyone in the room. The information came just after Tim had asked God for something good to come from Sarah Jo’s death. It was a high note they could take away even if many of them would cry themselves to sleep tonight.

  Tim was right. None of them would ever really understand what had happened, why a drunk driver would hit a van full of kids or why two of them died. But they could understand this: somewhere in Indianapolis, for the first time ever, a little girl was going to see.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Katy and the others got the details through e-mail. The operation was a success. The girl who received the transplant was about Sarah Jo’s age. But that wasn’t all. This girl had an outgoing personality, a love for theater, and one wish—a wish that would’ve been nearly impossible without vision:

  That one day she might perform onstage.

  Kelly Parker’s talk about Kabbalah convinced Dayne to hit a midweek class at the Learning Center in Hollywood. With the tension between Kelly and him in recent days, a night of Kabbalah would be good for him. Then maybe he’d have a sense of peace when he caught the flight to Indiana tomorrow.

  One of Kelly’s friends—an actress in B movies—was celebrating her birthday tonight. Kelly was still paranoid about the paparazzi, so she invited the friend and six other actresses over for a girls’ night in. Another reason Dayne was glad to be going to the Learning Center.

  He backed his Escalade out of the garage. The night was warm, with a breeze off the ocean, and since it was already dark, Dayne drove with all the windows down.

  He’d read the Kabbalah book—as much as he could take in, anyway. There were whole sections he didn’t understand, but he’d picked up this much: the wisdom of Kabbalah taught ways to attain the upper world and the source of all existence. Only by realizing one’s true purpose could one attain perfection and enjoy the limits of space and time while living in the current world.

  Even that part was confusing.

  The traffic was light, and Dayne pushed the speed limit. Having the wind in his face felt cathartic, as if it could blow away the troubles from his mind and heart. He glanced at the seat beside him and the Kabbalah handbook he’d brought along. Whatever the upper world was, it sounded better than Los Angeles. Even on a warm, clear September night.

  He flipped on the radio and switched the channel to an oldies station. “Under the Boardwalk” was halfway through. Dayne turned it up and sang along for the remainder of the song. When it was over a commercial came on, and Dayne hit the Off button. The thing was, he really didn’t understand Kabbalah. That’s why he was going to the class. He only knew that a couple of his best Hollywood friends had found peace in it some way or another. Peace and freedom and—who could tell?—maybe even the upper world.

  Dayne rested his arm on the open-window frame. What was it he read in one of the chapters? Something about taking the first steps on the path to spiritual ascent, or was it reaching attainment of the spiritual realms? Dayne gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Maybe it was both. Whatever it was, he needed it. Otherwise the thoughts of Katy Hart would drive him crazy.

  Tonight’s class wore on for nearly two hours, and much of it was filled with Hebrew words Dayne didn’t understand. Listening to the teacher, he could only deduct that Kabbalah—for all its good—was also very difficult to follow.

  He was leaving when one of the other teachers approached him. “Too bad you got stuck with him.” He pointed his thumb in the direction of the teacher Dayne had listened to all evening. “That guy makes the Kabbalah book look exciting.”

  Dayne gave an uneasy chuckle. “He did go on a little long.”

  “A little?” The man laughed. “You’ll reach the upper world in no time listening to lectures like that.”

  For a moment, Dayne studied this
teacher. Many of the Kabbalists had an otherworldly look about them, but this guy seemed funny, more real. Almost like one of the guys he might hang out with at a bar or on one of the sets. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, so Dayne decided to push for a few answers. “Can you tell me something?”

  “Sure.” The teacher smiled at a few pretty girls as they walked by. Then he directed his attention back to Dayne. “Anything.”

  “Okay.” He lifted the Kabbalah book and looked at the cover. “I’ve been reading, but I’m not sure I really get it.”

  “First, I should introduce myself. I’m Abi.” He gave Dayne a firm handshake. “Abi Fenister.” He paused and his expression grew more serious. “Kabbalah is really pretty straightforward. There are six hundred and thirteen impure desires—those are the things that keep you from the upper world. Then you have your one hundred and twenty-five spiritual steps.” His voice fell several notches. “You know why there are so many?”

  “I wondered about it.” Dayne liked this. The guy was breaking it down, which was all he could ask for.

  “Because we’re all selfish. Selfish to the core, man. I mean, big-time selfish.” Abi gave an easy laugh and touched Dayne’s elbow. “That’s why you Hollywood guys get it so much faster. You’ve got it all, man—everything you could ever want. The money, the women, the cars, the fame. All of it.”

  Dayne wasn’t sure he was following this part. He frowned, trying to understand.

  “See, you actor types reach the upper world a lot faster because you give up worldliness so much easier.” Abi pointed at a picture on the wall, a large headshot of one of the most famous women in the movie and music industry. “Take her for example. She drops a few million at the center every six months.” Abi snapped his fingers. “Just like that, you’re halfway through the steps.”

  Dayne looked at the picture. It made sense to him. If people could give up millions of dollars, then they were—in a sense—dismissing fame, wealth, and materialism. All in as much time as it took to write a check. He cocked his head. “What happens then, once you give it all up?”