The sun grew warm as it climbed the blue ladder of sky, and when the girls finally tired of the slides, Melanie and Erika found a spot in the shade on a bench near the edge of the walkway where a forest of water geysers spouted randomly from the ground. The women watched and laughed while the two girls danced and splashed in the cool spray.
The zoo was crowded on this first warm weekend of the year. Melanie leaned back on the bench and observed the other children and families who had come to enjoy a day at the zoo. She battled to keep her thoughts in check as everywhere she looked couples strolled arm in arm, and fathers hoisted daughters onto their shoulders for piggyback rides. Perhaps the zoo hadn’t been such a good idea after all. She squeezed her eyes shut, grateful that the dark sunglasses she wore veiled the threatening tears. Help me, Lord. Don’t let me ruin this day for everyone else. Help me to dwell on the blessings you’ve given me. Thank you that Jerica seems so happy. I have so much to be thankful for. When she looked up a few minutes later, she felt better.
Until she saw him.
He stood not ten feet in front of them with his back to her, watching a group of rowdy boys. His arm was draped over the shoulder of a leggy blonde, but the familiar sway of his back, the way his hair curled into the collar of his shirt, were unmistakable. Melanie’s heart beat a tight staccato, and the blood pounded in her temples. Oh no! She could not risk letting Jerica see him.
She sat upright on the bench, and she must have gasped, because Erika turned to her with alarm on her face. “What is it, Mel? What’s wrong?” Erika followed her gaze to where the couple stood. Just then the young woman laughed, and the couple turned to face the bench where Melanie and Erika sat.
The man’s eyes held hers for a second, then in the absence of recognition, swept on to another stranger. Behind wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes were a deep, burnished brown, and his face bore little resemblance to Joel Ellington’s—nor did his cheek bear Joel’s distinctive scar. Relief and disappointment flooded her in concert.
“It’s … nothing …” she told Erika, who was still watching her carefully. She shook her head and took a deep breath, entreating her heart to slow its pace. “I think I … fell asleep for a minute.” It wasn’t really a lie, was it? Perhaps it had been a wisp of a dream that caused her to conjure Joel from a complete stranger. It was understandable that on this day that was to have been her wedding day, Joel would be in her thoughts.
“I’m exhausted,” she told Erika now. “Are you about ready to call it a day?”
“Whenever you are, dear.” Erika began to gather up their things and load them back into the little wagon.
“Jerica … Ami.” Melanie hollered for the girls, giving the stranger one last longing glance as he and the woman strolled on down the path arm in arm.
The following Tuesday evening, the shrill ring of the phone split the air. By the time Melanie picked it up in her bedroom, Jerica had already answered in the kitchen. Answering the phone was a new privilege, and Melanie listened in to see how the little girl would handle the call.
“Hello, this is Jerica LaSalle speaking,” the little voice chirped.
“Well, hello there, Jerica LaSalle,” Jerry boomed on the other end, obviously amused by his granddaughter’s well-rehearsed spiel.
“Grampa!” she squealed.
“Can I talk to your mommy, please?”
Melanie moved her hand off the receiver. “I’m right here, Jerry. What’s up?”
“Hi, Mel.” His voice softened for a minute. “Jerica, can you hang up the phone please? I need to talk to your mom.”
The silent breathing continued on the other end. “Jerica, hang the phone up right now,” Melanie scolded.
They listened for the click on the extension, then Jerry’s voice became serious. “Melanie, I got a call from Don Steele this afternoon. There’s some bad news that might … well, it concerns Joel.”
Her heart stopped beating, and she tightened her grip on the phone. “What is it, Jerry? What’s happened? Have they found him?”
“No … Some money from the building fund is missing.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Just under fifteen thousand dollars is missing from the fund for the new addition. Darlene wrote a check to the contractors for the down payment, and the church got an overdraft notice today. When they checked the account, they discovered that the money was missing.”
Slowly, the implication of what he was saying began to soak in. She was immediately defensive. “What? Jerry, what does that have to do with Joel?”
“I don’t think I have to tell you, Melanie. It looks like we’ve found Joel’s reason for disappearing.”
“What are you talking about? No. I don’t believe that!” Her voice rose a pitch, and her hands felt clammy on the receiver. “Joel would never do something like that, Jerry. No … I don’t believe it.”
“I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you, but the news will be out soon enough, and I wanted you to be ready for what people will be saying.”
“Is there any way they can prove it was Joel?” She tried to rouse that defensive spirit again, but in the space of a minute it had shriveled like an airless balloon.
“I don’t know, Melanie. I haven’t heard all the details yet, but it … Well, it does make sense. Joel was in charge of a lot of the fund-raising. He made some of those deposits—or at least that’s what he told Darlene. It looks like the cash deposits from several fund-raisers and donations never made it to the bank.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The correct deposits were all there on paper—on the church’s records—but when Darlene compared it with the bank’s balance, they discovered that some of those amounts weren’t included. That money never got deposited,” he repeated. “At least not in Cornerstone’s account.”
Melanie sank down to the bed, unable to speak.
“Mel, I’m sorry. I am truly sorry … but at least now you know. Now you don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering what went wrong.”
“Jerry, I’ll … I’ll call you back. I can’t talk about this right now.” She hung up the phone and tried to cry, tried to feel a sense of relief that she finally had her answer, but the tears refused to come. Instead, she felt only a dull ache where her heart used to be.
All the papers carried the story the following weekend. It ran alongside a photo of Joel, cropped from their engagement picture. KMOV Channel 4 ran a tongue-in-cheek spot on the ten o’clock news that made Melanie sick to her stomach. The media apparently loved the idea of a mysterious disappearance, a jilted lover, a large sum of missing money, and of course, Joel’s close connection to the church’s building project.
Melanie lived the humiliation all over again. None of the stories accused Joel outright of the theft. The words alleged and suspected were carefully inserted in all the appropriate places, but Melanie knew there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Joel was guilty.
And in spite of the defenses that had come to her so readily when she’d first heard the news, in spite of the fact that she simply could not believe the man she loved was capable of such a thing, one nagging thought kept coming back to her: There didn’t seem to be any other explanation.
Twenty
Joel Ellington threw the newspaper down on the bed in disgust. “What are we going to do now?”
John Toliver leaned back against the low dresser in the shabby hotel room and eyed him thoughtfully. “Do you have the money?”
“You know I don’t.” Surely Toliver knew him better than that by now. The inspector had seen how frugal he’d been with the funds WITSEC had provided.
“Do you know who does have it?”
“I can’t imagine.” Joel paced the filthy, matted green carpet, his mind whirling at this turn of events. “Only three or four people have access to the church’s bank accounts, and I can’t imagine any one of them taking it. Unless they’ve hired someone new since I left … The bank only had one acc
ount. All the different funds were separate on paper only. The building-fund line item had been there for probably five or six years before I came to Silver Creek and it was never drawn on.”
“You mean the money could have been missing for a while and nobody discovered it until a check bounced?” Toliver scratched his chin.
“I suppose so. The donations could have been recorded, but the money just never got deposited.” He picked up the newspaper again and skimmed the article. “But this makes it sound as though they can trace the missing money right to the time I left.”
Toliver actually smiled. “Apparently someone took advantage of your disappearance.”
Joel still couldn’t fathom who at Cornerstone was capable of such a thing. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his face. “I hate it. I hate this whole thing. No one is going to question this story, and I can’t even defend myself. And who could blame them? It … it seems logical that it was me—even to me.”
“And that’s why we’re not going to do one thing. We’re just going to be grateful for the alibi it gives you.”
“Alibi!” Joel wheeled to face Toliver. “What’s going to keep them from starting a manhunt for me?”
“I hate to break it to you, but in the whole scope of things, fifteen grand from the coffers of a small-town church isn’t going to be a high priority. From where I stand, the alibi is worth more than that.”
“I don’t need an alibi! I need justice.”
“For now, you’re going to have to settle for the alibi, Joe.”
Joel glared up at him. “Quit calling me Joe. Joe Bradford is dead.”
Toliver waved a hand in resignation, slid from his perch, and rose to his full height. “I’m gonna head out. I’ll be back in the morning. With any luck, by the end of the week we’ll have a permanent place nailed down.”
Silence.
“Joe … Joel … if this goes like it’s supposed to, it’ll all be over in a few months, and you can have your life back.”
“Which life?”
The inspector acknowledged Joel’s query with a grimace and a slight bow of his head. Then, jangling his keys in his pocket, he went to the door and let himself out.
While Melanie sliced the last of the tomatoes from Jerry LaSalle’s summer garden, Jerica sat in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by fresh new boxes of crayons and markers and crisp tablets of writing paper.
“Can I go to school tomorrow, Mommy?” she asked as she restacked the pile of school supplies for the tenth time.
Melanie sighed and rolled her eyes. “No, sweetie. Three more days.”
“Not tomorrow, but the next day?” her daughter asked hopefully.
“No. Not tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, but the day after that. Then you can go.”
“But I’m too ’cited,” she whined. “Can’t I go a little early?”
“I’m excited too, honey, but you’ll just have to be patient. If you went tomorrow, you’d be the only one there. Besides, Thursday will be here before you know it.”
Melanie could hardly believe her baby would be starting first grade—in school all day for the first time. And she was excited for Jerica. Autumn had always seemed like a time of new beginnings for Melanie—more even than the advent of spring or the start of the new year. Something about the pungent smell of pencil lead and erasers, and the crisp bite in the evening air, had always held the promise of a fresh beginning and exciting possibilities.
Life had gone on. Each day took her a little farther from the heartbreak of Joel’s disappearance—his deception—and a little closer to hope.
Cornerstone Community Church had recently hired a new director of Christian education. Most of the financial losses had been recouped through donations and insurance, and the addition to the church building had begun to rise from the vacant lot. Even the news media had forgotten all about the scandal as more exciting new stories broke.
Melanie had resigned herself to never fully understanding what had gone wrong with Joel—not because she knew resignation was the right attitude to take, but because she had no other choice.
She still questioned God sometimes—especially when she saw a faraway look come to Jerica’s eyes as the little girl watched her friends climb onto their daddies’ laps in church or play catch with their fathers before a T-ball game.
But finally, more from exhaustion than altruism, she surrendered her will to God. He, after all, had never promised that life on this earth would be carefree or just or easy to understand. She took great hope in the promise of a life beyond this one, which had brought her mostly heartache and sorrow. For her daughter’s sake, she would go on with her life. She would not again expect it to give her joy. Then, maybe, it would not disappoint.
The first day of school came and went in a whirlwind, and unexpectedly, as the days went by, little joys began to work their way into Melanie’s life. Jerica adored school. Within weeks she was picking out words in newspaper headlines and sounding them out on her own. Melanie started finding little notes that Jerica had left for her around the house. Sometimes it was a challenge to decipher the phonetic spelling—what Jerica’s teacher called “kid writing.” But the “good nit mommy” or “wak me up urly” messages reminded Melanie what a delight the discovery of this form of communication had been for her when she was small, and what power there was in the written word.
“Mommy, look what we made in school today,” Jerica said, as she scrambled into the car one September afternoon. Her eyes were shining, her face alight with pride as she took the paper-towel wrapping off her treasure. She lifted up a string of macaroni painted with bright tempera colors. “It’s for you, Mommy. Mrs. Layton said we could keep it if we wanted, but I made mine for you.”
“Oh, honey, it’s beautiful! Are you sure you don’t mind giving it away?”
Jerica shook her head solemnly.
“Well, thank you. I love it.” A horn tooted behind them. “Oh dear, we’re holding up the line. Buckle up, honey … hurry.”
Jerica fastened her seat belt, chattering away about her adventures at school. Melanie pulled onto the street, smiling. It seemed that every day brought something new they could share together. It was a gift to be able to savor it all through Jerica’s eyes and Melanie was grateful for each diversion that kept her eyes on the future and put gentle blinders on what was past.
Yet each morning she awoke with a lingering awareness of a sorrow so deep that she ached—physically ached—from the raw power of it.
On a chilly October night Melanie and Jerica cuddled on the sofa in the family room reading from Johanna Spyri’s Heidi. One of Melanie’s most treasured memories of her own mother was the winter they’d read the classic novel together—a chapter each night. Now she sat in front of a crackling fire reading aloud to her daughter and realized with joy that she was handing a tradition down to the next generation.
“Yes, and do you know why the stars are so happy and look down and nod to us like that?” asked Heidi.
“No, why is it?” Clara asked in return.
“Because they live up in heaven, and know how well God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end. That’s why they are so happy, and they nod to us because they want us to be happy too. But then we must never forget to pray, and to ask God to remember us when He is arranging things, so that we too may feel safe and have no anxiety about what is going to happen.”
Jerica tugged on the sleeve of Melanie’s sweatshirt. “That’s what the grandmother told Heidi,” she whispered with a knowing nod.
“That’s right,” Melanie said, feeling her throat close over the large lump that had suddenly settled there. Oh, Father, I know you are arranging things for me according to your plan. Thank you for reminding me of that. Not sure she could trust her emotions, she stalled, leafing back a few chapters as though looking for the page Jerica meant.
“Remember, Mommy? Heidi
told the grandmother that she stopped praying because God didn’t listen to her prayers. But that wasn’t right, was it, Mommy?”
“No, it wasn’t.” Melanie brushed a strand of hair off Jerica’s forehead. Love for her daughter welled up inside her. “You have a good memory, squirt,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Keep reading, Mommy. You can read and cry at the same time. Grammy does it all the time.”
Melanie grinned sheepishly, cleared her throat, and flipped back to their bookmark.
The two children now sat up and said their prayers, and then Heidi put her head down on her little round arm and fell off to sleep at once, but Clara lay awake some time, for she could not get over the wonder of this new experience of being in bed up here among the stars. She had indeed seldom seen a star for she never went outside the house at night, and the curtains at home were always drawn before the stars came out. Each time she closed her eyes, she felt she must open them again to see if the two very large stars were still looking in, and nodding to her as Heidi said they did. There they were, always in the same place, and Clara felt she could not look long enough into their bright sparkling faces—
Melanie and Jerica were both sniffling a little when the jangle of the telephone broke the mood. They each grabbed for a Kleenex from the box that sat on the coffee table in front of them, dabbed at their eyes in unison, then broke into giggles at their seemingly choreographed movements.
“This better be important,” Melanie sniffed, blowing her nose and disentangling herself from the afghan that had covered them.
She went to the kitchen and checked the caller ID. Smiling, she picked up the phone. “Matthew! Hi, there.”
“Hey, Mel. How’s it going?”
“We’re doing good. How about you guys? Everybody okay?”
“More than okay.” Her brother’s voice held a huge grin.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“We just found out that we’ve got another baby on the way.”
A Scarlet Cord Page 17
