But she’d had a place in a world where Sam had lost his own, and somehow that made him feel more unstable than ever. He thought of her two little girls—how old were they? somewhere close to Parker’s age?—and how adrift they would be in a motherless world. He thought of her husband, Clay.
If Melanie were dead…he couldn’t even fathom calling her anything but wife, so there was no way he could ever call her dead. He couldn’t imagine the pain Clay must be suffering. And with children…the man wouldn’t even have the grace of falling apart for a while. He’d have to find a way to hold it all together for the sake of his daughters. Maybe that was a grace of its own.
God might not be listening to him these days, but Sam had nowhere else to go with a story this sad. He offered up a prayer for the little girls, for Clay, for Raul, even for Amanda. For the first time in months, he thought his words might have made it past the rooftop.
He focused on the rhythm of his own breathing, fighting to clear his mind of all its doubts.
Murderer-whisperer.
He knew what Dani had meant. Fortunately or unfortunately, people tended to confide in him. Before his fall from grace, his role as a counselor in the church had been more time-consuming than his role as preacher. Sam wasn’t sure why that was. Maybe it was because he’d had such an ever-present sense of his own failings, that other people felt comfortable sharing theirs. He might have been the world’s worst hypocrite, but he’d never been holier-than-thou. Maybe it was because he truly wanted to know. He’d learned first-hand, after his spectacular disgrace, that most people hid from others’ wounds and scars. They might ask how you were, but what they really wanted was permission to move past you with a smile. When Sam asked, he was listening for the truth in every answer. He knew how hard it was to wear a mask. He didn’t want anyone to ever feel as if they needed to wear one around him.
He couldn’t turn his back on Amanda, no matter what she’d been accused of. No matter what she’d actually done.
And who was he kidding? He wiped at the sweat burning his eyes with an impatient hand. He’d do anything Melanie asked him to do. Pretty much now and forever.
Damn it.
He added another ten pounds. He needed this to hurt just a little more.
Chapter Six
Six a.m. came as early as it always did. Sam rolled out of bed, groaning, his muscles protesting last night’s extra push. He pulled on a pair of jeans and shuffled down the hall to Parker’s room.
He’d learned long ago that the kinder, gentler method of parenting—or uncling, in his case (uncling was a word, wasn’t it?)—did nothing for getting kids out of bed.
He flipped on the light, yanked back the covers, and yodeled Good Morning! at the top of his lungs. Parker moaned and made his customary, fruitless lunge for the blankets.
“Uncle Sam! Every morning! Why?”
Sam cataloged that question as rhetorical. Opening a dresser drawer, he tossed a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in Parker’s general direction.
“You’re going to need some major intervention with that hair this morning,” he warned his nephew. Parker’s snow-white hair was sticking up like he’d been electrocuted in his sleep. Parker glared, his face disappearing as he wrestled his way into his shirt. Sam wasn’t sure why kids seemed to have such a contentious relationship with sleeves and neck holes.
“See you downstairs. Don’t forget to make your bed.”
Not that Sam had any intention of making his own bed. He’d get Parker off to school, help Dani with the breakfast rush, then fall back into the sheets for his mid-morning nap. One benefit of not being a preacher anymore was that he didn’t have to keep “decent” hours. He scheduled his CPA appointments for the afternoon, not that that was exactly a booming business these days. Turned out there wasn’t a lot of work for accountants without Internet access.
In the small, back-of-the-house, kitchen—as opposed to the larger, health-department-approved, café kitchen—Sam grabbed some leftover bread slices and hastily fried up some French toast and sausage before Parker came downstairs. He had a feeling the kid skipped a lot of lunches, so Sam wanted to be sure he at least had a good breakfast. Sam didn’t know what was going on with Parker, but he recognized the bleak look in his nephew’s eyes. It was not the look of a kid who was doing well in the lunchroom. Or on the recess grounds.
Parker’s feet were dragging when he appeared in the doorway. He was still glaring.
“Uncle Sam, I’m ‘spended, remember? No school. Why did you make me get up?”
Oh, crap. He’d completely forgotten. But hey, ninety percent of being a grown-up was faking it, right? Right.
“Just because you’re not going to school doesn’t mean you get to sleep late. That sounds more like a reward than a punishment to me. You need to stick to your schedule and help your mom in the café until you get some work from your teachers.”
Dang it. He could have totally slept in! And now he was going to have to keep getting up early all week to prove his point to a seven-year-old. Being a grown-up sucked.
Parker didn’t protest, just sat down and started shoveling bread into seas of syrup and scooping it into his mouth. Sam piled up his own plate and sat across from him, trying in vain to find the same level of consolation in sugar and fat that his nephew did.
Sam resisted the urge to ruffle up Parker’s slicked-down hair as he cleared the plates. “Now go brush your teeth before meeting me in the shop. We can’t have you breathing morning-and-sausage breath all over the customers.”
“You brush your teeth!” Parker rejoined.
“That’s fair,” Sam agreed placidly. “We’ll both brush our teeth. Then you can clear dishes and refill the pastry case, and I’ll do whatever your mom tells me to.”
Dani eyed her son over the cappuccino machine as the two of them emerged into the bustling shop. Her lips twisted shrewdly as she whispered to Sam, “Did you forget something?”
Sam scowled. “It was a strategic move. You don’t want him happily sleeping in every time he gets in trouble at school, do you?”
Dani laughed, undeceived. “Oh, sure. Parent of the year, you are.”
The next hour passed in a blur. Sam was still slow at foaming milk, so he let Dani man the cappuccino machine while he took orders and piled pastries on plates. Parker, with his white hair getting fluffier and fluffier as it dried and his bright blue eyes sparkling, was a hit in the dining room as he did his best to clear tables, even when he dropped as many crumbs on the floor as he managed to clean off. The customers were too charmed by his efforts to question his presence.
A couple of older women still sat by the window sipping drinks, while three or four customers browsed the shelves of used books, but by eight o’clock, the breakfast rush was over. From now until lunch, the shop would be quiet, easily managed by Dani on her own. She waved Sam off.
“I know, I know. You need your beauty sleep. Just grab me Parker’s bookbag, would you? His teachers finally emailed me some work for him to do this week. Oh, and I checked online for you. You have a visit with Amanda Garcia this afternoon at one-thirty. Don’t wear anything that shows off your cleavage, or they won’t let you in.”
“Very funny. But thanks for setting that up for me.”
“No trouble. I would like to know when you’re going to take off your hair shirt, though. It’s been over a year now.”
“People survived thousands of years with no Internet access. I can, too.”
“Not really. Using it vicariously is still using it.”
They’d had this argument a dozen times, at least. But Sam paused to look his sister right in the eyes.
“Dani, it’s worth it to me. And it’s all I can still do.” Sam’s sex addiction hadn’t extended to prostitutes or late-night hookups with strangers, but his compulsive relationship with online pornography had been no less damaging. He’d tried and failed and crushed Melanie’s spirit more times than he could count. Maybe sacrificing any connectivity wasn’t the
healthiest route, but he’d fouled up too many times to even trust himself, much less ask anyone else to. He couldn’t walk through a door he kept padlocked. Some nights he counted those locks again and again, measured their heft in his hand, but he never pulled out the keys.
Dani threw up her hands and returned to scrubbing down the back counters. “Fine, fine. Hair shirt it is.”
Sam satisfied his urge for hair-ruffling in Dani’s fair mop and she growled up at him, swinging the dirty washcloth at his face. He laughed, easily holding her at bay.
“Must be nice to have monkey-arms,” she told him, mock-grumpily.
“Oh, it is.”
He whistled to himself as he mounted the stairs, retrieving Parker’s bookbag before returning to his own room. His first purchase when he’d moved in had been a pair of blackout curtains. His second had been a white-noise machine. Sleep had become his bane and his prey. He pursued it relentlessly. The trick, he’d learned, was living on the ragged edge of exhaustion all the time.
Two restless hours later, he was up, not quite ready to help Dani tackle the lunch rush before driving over to the county jail.
Hot shower water sluiced over his shoulders. He half-hated the feeling of his own skin under his soapy hands. He missed Melanie so bad, he ached for her. He wondered if she’d appreciate his new, harder physique, or if she’d tease him for becoming a gym rat. He closed his eyes, picturing her under the hot water—the way she used to meet him with that wild hunger that left no room for shyness or shame, the heat in her gray eyes, the bite of her nails in his back, the weight of her hair in his fist, the flavor of her heavy breast in his mouth.
God, he hated showers.
Chapter Seven
Raul stared at him with the gaunt expression of a man who had lost the ability to comprehend any new information at all.
“Preacher?” he said dully.
Sam didn’t correct him. They were standing in the parking lot of the county jail. Raul had been coming out as Sam was going in.
“Raul. How is Amanda?”
Raul shrugged, looking as if the effort cost him his last ounce of energy. “I don’t know. She won’t see me.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. A half-dozen platitudes crossed his mind, but he rejected them all.
“I’m sorry,” he offered lamely instead.
Raul gazed off, as if something on the horizon could help him take one more step. “I have to pick up Tomas. He’s with my mother.”
“Raul. Come by my sister’s shop when you get the chance. Bring Tomas—my nephew is seven and has a room full of toys. We can talk, and the boys can play.”
Raul nodded vaguely and wandered in the direction of his car without saying good-bye. Sam didn’t know if the man had even heard him.
The visitor routine at the jail was a familiar one. Sam had visited more parishioners here than anyone would guess. Christians didn’t have fewer problems than anyone else—they just dealt with them differently. Most of the time.
Some of the time.
He was surprised when Amanda actually appeared on the other side of the glass. After what Raul had said, he’d already given up this visit as a wasted effort, expecting to be rebuffed as well.
Dressed in a red jumpsuit, Amanda shuffled in, her ankles shackled and her hands cuffed to a chain at her waist. A female deputy unlocked Amanda’s right wrist so she could lift the phone to speak to him. Sam thought she looked better than Raul. Her hair was frizzy and her brown skin pale, but her eyes burned with an energy that Raul had lost.
“Sam Geisler.” She said his name like it was a title. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
He couldn’t help the smile. “I have to say the same.”
Sam wasn’t sure if he was still on God’s payroll, but he knew he wasn’t on the law’s. Visits and calls in the jail were recorded, and whatever he was doing here, he wasn’t working for the prosecution. He didn’t know if that fact had occurred to Amanda yet, but he intended to tread carefully in this conversation.
“Raul doesn’t look good,” he told her flatly, his smile fading.
Her dark eyes filled with tears. She gripped the phone tightly.
“I’m not trying to hurt him.” Her voice shook, but she didn’t give in to the emotion that wracked her.
“But you’re not trying to help him?” Sam asked the question curiously, without judgment.
“Right now I need Raul to help me. To help Tomas. And seeing me will only make that harder for him. He has questions I can’t answer.”
That didn’t sound good. Most folks in jail were eager to tell anyone who would listen one thing: I didn’t do it. But Amanda hadn’t said that to Sam yet, and it didn’t sound as if she were inclined to say it to Raul, either.
So, Sam asked a question he thought maybe she would answer.
“Why did you agree to see me then, Amanda?”
She looked at him a long time before she spoke, her gaze unreadable.
“Everybody dies for the same reason, Sam.”
“What reason is that?”
“Their soul leaves.”
Well, he couldn’t argue with that.
“I watched Amy’s soul leave, Sam. Do you know what that’s like?”
He did. He’d sat at many bedsides and borne witness to what Amanda was talking about.
There’s no question about that moment when you realize the person you love simply isn’t anymore. All their trappings are still left behind—the clothes, the skin and bones, the way they combed their hair or applied their makeup is still there. But the person—that sly look, that laugh, all the secrets they never told—is utterly gone, with no trace left behind.
Sam thought deathbeds might be the most compelling argument against atheism. Every other argument, he’d grant, had thoughtful, reasonable people on both sides. But how anyone could sit beside the bed of the dying and doubt the existence of an eternal soul was beyond him. Mortal or not, we are so much more than the stuff of which we are made.
Sam simply nodded. He was realizing he had nothing to contribute to this conversation. He didn’t even know why he was here. All he could do was listen, so he did.
“Nobody’s perfect, right, Sam? So what sins really are mortal?”
Oh, boy, sure. Just leap right into the theological high water.
“Well, I guess the easy answer is that the mortal sin is the one of which you don’t repent.”
“That could be anything. Cutting in line at the grocery store. Being mean to the old lady on the corner with the dog that never stops barking. But grace covers a multitude of sins. So what is truly, completely unforgivable?”
“Are you asking if you can be forgiven of murder?”
“Is murder always a mortal sin?”
“I don’t think so, no. But it is a very serious sin.”
“Do you think God cares about why?”
“Justice is always interested in why,” Sam returned slowly. “So is mercy.”
“But God only shows mercy to the merciful, right?”
Sam spread his hands and shrugged. “I try not to say things like only and never where God is concerned, Amanda. Jesus did teach us to pray that God would forgive us as we forgive others, but I can’t pretend to know the whole justice of God. All we can do is pray, and come before him as humbly as we know how. Trust that his mercy will be enough.”
“What if it’s too late for that?”
“It’s not too late, Amanda. Life is hope, right?”
Her face twisted. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Her life is over.”
Abruptly, she laid the phone on the counter and stood up.
“Amanda!” Sam shouted uselessly into the phone, surprising even himself with his vehemence. “Amanda, talk to me!”
She extended her hand toward him, pressing her fingers against the glass in what looked for all the world like a benediction. Then she turned her back and knocked on the door behind her. The deputy reappeared, snapping Amanda’s wrist back into he
r waist restraint and escorting her away. Sam still sat there, feeling oddly stunned and completely confused. It wasn’t until the door reopened and another inmate stood there looking at him bemusedly that he roused himself and walked out of the visiting area.
He had no good news for Melanie. No good news for Raul. If anything, Amanda had all but confessed.
Chapter Eight
Unsurprisingly, trying to have a conversation about a former-Bible-teacher-turned-murderer over the dinner table without alerting a seven-year-old to said topic of conversation turned out to be remarkably difficult. Finally, after his third attempt at talking in a wide enough circle to avoid Parker and still engage Dani, Sam gave up.
“Look, you let him watch the evening news and those Investigation Discovery shows with you.” It was true. They’d grab a big bowl of popcorn and avidly discuss means, motive, and opportunity right up until eight o’clock, which was Dani’s bedtime. “This can’t be any worse than that.”
Now Parker was definitely interested. His bright blue eyes flashed from his uncle to his mom, and his chewing slowed perceptibly as he silently awaited his mom’s decision. He looked, Sam thought, as if he believed he could turn himself invisible if he sat still enough and really concentrated.
Invisibility turned out to be unnecessary. Dani gave in easily, a loud harrumph her only protest.
Parker resumed shoveling macaroni and cheese as quickly as he could, his eyes returning to his uncle with a clear expression of “go on, then.”
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