In that idle moment, Lila asked the sort of question that Willow had been answering for years.
“So how do you do it?” She turned in her chair, the recliner near the fireplace, as if she expected to see an answer as much as hear it.
Willow looked sidelong at Lila briefly, and answered in a way that she had never tried before.
“Do you remember that Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears a Who?” Though that was an obscure beginning to an answer for most people, that book had been one that Lila loved as a girl, identifying with the little people needing to be heard.
“You gonna tell me you hear little people talking to you out of dust balls?” Lila said, sounding more like Annetta than before Willow had put them together.
Willow laughed at that echo of her old friend’s voice coming out of Lila. She waited a moment to be sure Lila was not genuinely confused by the literary reference. A gentle grin from Lila let her move on.
“The thing is, God is always talking, always trying to tell us about himself, about ourselves and about others. But this world is so full of noise... ” She paused to be sure she wasn’t answering more than what Lila really wanted to know. That temptation to unload everything she believed came with answering questions like this for so many people, over so many years. Lila waited for her to go on.
“The point is, that it’s not so much that God talks to me, or talks more clearly to me, it’s just that he gave me these big ears,” she paused for a playful flash of one delicate and feminine ear in Lila’s direction. Willow laughed. “But mostly he’s taught me to get really quiet and listen carefully, and then to just trust that he really does want to talk to me and really does want me to deliver his messages to people all over my life.”
Lila looked out the window, as the last fragment of daylight refracted off a mirror on a parked car across the street, briefly sparking into Willow’s living room.
“Pretty much the only time I’m quiet is when I’m mad, and that ain’t no time for that sorta listenin’,” she said, rolling her eyes toward Willow briefly before returning to that last ray of sun.
Willow followed that venturing gaze and then said, “You just gotta start small, girl. That’s all. Just start small.” It was her turn to talk like Annetta, and she laughed quietly at herself when she heard how she sounded.
“You gettin’ all old and wise, like Annetta?” Lila said with a smirk.
“Older I can guarantee,” Willow said. “Wiser, I’m not so sure about.”
She was thinking about the conversation she had with Scott on the phone the night before. Neither of them had yet recovered from the late-night rescue, and Willow had just returned home from seeing Lila at Annetta’s house. That visit had caused her to skip a meeting with close friends from church. And, at the end of that broken-down day, she and Scott talked for half an hour.
After catching up on current events in each other’s life, Willow thanked Scott again for helping her with Lila. They laughed again about the clumsy miracle that made their escape possible. The cell signal over which they spoke broke the laughter into dashes and dots for Willow.
Scott took up a different topic, vaulting off the springy laughter. “What are your plans for this weekend?”
Without thinking about it, Willow sighed like the tired woman that she was. Instantly, she sensed a rise in anxiety over the cell phone. Her sensitivity could be a liability at such times. She knew why Scott’s doubts rose, and she knew why he had misinterpreted the signs in her weary pre-reply, but she tried to look deeper into why such a subtle messages awoke anxiety in him. This, in turn, alerted her own defenses. In a pair of seconds, their relationship had shifted onto uneven and uncertain ground.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll have to deal with Lila. I don’t know what her plans are, if she has plans. And I’m supposed to lead ministry time at the Saturday service.” She let go another one of those sighs.
“You sound busy,” Scott said, stating the obvious, and doing it in a tone that communicated another turn in the downward spiral.
Willow knew in that moment that she could easily start their relationship into an uncontrolled skid that might end in an unrecoverable crash. She was always busy. She had a full life before she met Scott. But she hadn’t yet figured out whether it was full only of things that her heavenly father had in mind for her. All of that was fog on the road, and Willow knew she could clear things between her and Scott with a simple apology. In her tiredness, she felt the temptation to fall back on old crutches, to rest on the familiar props that had kept her single all these years. This, too, only took her two seconds to consider.
“Scott, I’m sorry. You’re right. I am busy,” she said, hoping for some momentum to carry this forward, where she felt gravity pulling her back. “But I’m only tired because of the stress from last night and lack of sleep. I’m not tired of you.”
There. She said it. Instead of stopping the long run toward the finish and beginning to walk wearily, she opted for a little extra sprint, like remembering to pump her arms to add energy to her stride.
This time Scott sighed, and it was not a weary breath but a relieved one.
“We’re both grownups,” he said. “We’ve both built lives for ourselves and have survived being single for this long. I can content myself with the time that we do have for each other and try not to regret what we don’t have.”
Willow knew this was more a pep talk for himself, than words of reconciliation for her. But, in a growing relationship, it’s good to hear things said out loud that both of you know in silence.
Back in her living room with Lila, Willow startled at a poke from the long limbed woman stretched out in the recliner next to her. “Hey, Willow, are you in there?” This teasing sounded more girlish than anything Willow had yet heard from Lila.
Willow snorted a laugh through her nose and shook her head at herself.
Lila continued. “I bet it’s about that man, then,” she said, as if some matter had just been settled between them. “Ain’t many men would do what he done for me the other day,” she said more thoughtfully. “I know, ‘cause I know men.”
Willow settle her eyes on Lila now. What started as a girlish tease about Willow’s boyfriend, had turned introspective and even deflating for Lila. Willow said what they both knew.
“Not all men are as bad as the desperate characters you deal with every day,” Willow said, weariness back in her voice. “You need to get away from all that and find some real men, men like Scott.”
With that, Willow knew that she would follow her own advice and get away from her exile, a self-imposed imprisonment intended to punish the people who had robbed her of her innocence, but which only confined her within its walls.
Now, two introspective women sat looking at the dimming twilight, nothing more to say on that subject.
Hearing and Responding
A strange black knife, as if made of something other than metal, a white shirt under a blazer, a circle of red, a stain spreading, a scream of pain, a gunshot, and then all of it flashing again. Willow shouted and sat up in bed. Even as she reentered the conscious world, she knew she had just witnessed a crime before it happened. Then the headlines formed before her mind’s eye. “President Stabbed, Critical Condition.” “President Dies in Bethesda Hospital after Midnight.”
Overwhelmed with the realization of what she had just seen, Willow unleashed a curse and didn’t even stop to apologize.
“You’re really showing me this?” she said to the one who never left her nor forsook her. “You can’t be serious!” But she knew that serious was exactly what this was.
She swore again. Again, she didn’t apologize. She knew her lone listener in the dark had heard all those words before and would not be sullied by them. She also knew that if she left those curses unsaid, they might steep in her heart for long enough to brew a poisonous elixir. Not immune to resentment, she nevertheless knew how to let it slip out of her hands as soon as she picked it up.
“You
said you would do anything I asked, at any time, for anyone,” she heard, in the darkness, like a gentle whisper from a father putting her to bed for the night.
It seemed unfair for him to quote her back to herself. But she had done the same to him thousands of times.
She sunk back into her pillow, staring at the ceiling, shaded in purples and grays from lights outside.
“Am I really gonna do this?” she said silently, asking her father even as she asked herself.
How could she not?
Even as she prayed for the courage to run an even bigger risk, Willow fell back to sleep. She slumbered deeply for more than an hour and then returned to dreaming. But this dream was far different.
In her dream, she was fully aware of the plot against the president. She was not panicked nor anxious. And she was determined to do what her father asked. As usual, in the winter, she pulled on a long, plaid flannel robe and walked out into her living room.
In the dream, as soon as she stepped into the living room, she was tackled, rolling on the carpet and overwhelmed from behind. But instead of an intruder, or the police coming to arrest her, this surprise attack came from a huge St. Bernard, so happy to see her that he could not restrain himself. After pouncing, he rolled with her and wound up on top of her with his paws draped over her shoulders, enthusiastic wet kisses following.
Willow had seen this dog in her dreams before, the affectionate St. Bernard. And she knew that he represented her father in Heaven. This was how much he adored her, appreciated her and longed to simply throw himself on her and love her. The St. Bernard reminded her of the prodigal father in Jesus’s parable about the wayward son. Just as that father ran to meet his boy when he finally returned home, Willow’s St. Bernard waited for any opportunity to pounce on her and lavish her with affection.
When she awoke for real, she knew that God had come to her in that form to express how much he loved her, as well as how happy he was that she was willing to help him with the vision he had given. More than a lavish thanks for her obedience, Willow also felt a reassurance that the God who loved her that much, would have her back throughout whatever resulted from reporting her dream about the assassination plot.
As soon as she finished her juice and cereal that morning, she called the private number for Kellan McGregor. She knew it was even earlier on the West Coast, but she felt certain that Kellan would willingly receive her call.
“Hello,” he said, his voice not yet at a living volume.
“Kellan, it’s Willow. I’m sorry to call so early, but I know you’ll forgive me once I tell you why I called.”
He made a noise that sounded like acknowledgement and then she could hear him sitting up to receive her news.
Willow related the entire dream to Kellan and then added several facts that flowed into her head even as she told what she had seen in her sleep. “The assassin will be in the White House with someone who was invited there to receive an honor from the president. Because the assassin works for one of the security agencies of the government, as a contractor overseas, he hasn’t been fully checked out. I know that about him and I know now that he is going under an assumed name. The first name is David.”
Willow could tell that Kellan was writing this down, making sounds echoing her report. She waited for him to finish. When he did, he covered the phone and said something to his wife, then pulled his hand back from the phone.
“Sorry, Willow. We’re just catching up here.”
“No problem.”
Kellan asked her the obvious question. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Of course,” she said, feeling a bit like she was watching herself from the back row of the theater, holding back a shouted warning just like when she had watched horror movies as a young teen.
“I’m going to try to contact that federal judge we had in Denver,” Kellan said. “And the lead FBI agent on your case. It can’t hurt to get some endorsements, even if only to show that you’ve done something like this before. They still have to decide if it makes sense.”
Willow said, “Uh-huh.” She had just started feeling like a passenger, as Kellan took charge of the legal aspects of this next risky adventure.
“Do you have an idea when?” Kellan asked.
Willow paused to see if she did know. “Two days is what comes to mind,” she said.
Kellan sighed a waking-up sigh, and perhaps a getting set for an ordeal sigh. “Okay, I’ll get right on it. Have you called anyone else?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t tell anyone any of the details of the vision, I’d say. Not even that it’s about an assassination attempt. I think we need to keep control of the information flow right from the start on an issue like this.”
Willow was glad she had called Kellan first. He was thinking all the sorts of things that would never have occurred to her, short of divine revelation.
“Sure thing,” Willow said. “And I’ll wait for you to call back, then?”
“Yes. It will depend on who I can reach on a Saturday morning.”
“Okay. Thanks, Kellan. My apologies to your wife.”
Kellan chuckled lightly. “I don’t think this was your idea. We’re gonna all give you grace on this.”
Willow sniffed a bit of a laugh back over the phone. Then they hung up after a brief goodbye.
Now she had to decide who to call and what to tell them. The first three people who came to mind were her mother, Annetta and Scott. There were others to whom she reported at church and at work, but those people would have to find out later, or second hand, she decided.
Instead of calling right away, however, Willow sat down in her recliner, her legs pulled up under her, her arms wrapped tightly around her, in a sort of self-hug. She stared out the window at the pale gray of a cloudy February day. Details about the last time she had contacted law enforcement began to parade through her head. She thought of all the people she had blessed because of her imprisonment—her fellow prisoners, the people at the psychic convention, and even the judge and the stenographer at her trial. She briefly imagined prophesying to her guards and fellow-inmates from a wire cage at Guantanamo Bay, then laughed at herself.
Her cell phone buzzing from the counter where she had left it, startled her back into reality. She unfolded her legs and stepped around the chair to the counter, expecting to see Kellan’s name. Instead, it was Scott’s name that appeared there. She picked up the phone, hesitating just a second in disbelief. She tapped the screen to answer.
“Hello?”
“Willow, is something wrong? I just woke up with a feeling that you were in trouble, or going to get into trouble of some kind.”
She started to laugh, but pulled back out of consideration for Scott, knowing how infuriating it would be to receive such an insane response to such an urgent call.
“Well, I’m not in trouble just yet,” she said. “But I started the day by calling my lawyer who is calling a few federal employees even as we speak.”
“Federal employees?”
“I agreed to not be specific about what I saw this time, until the appropriate authorities are contacted.” She paused. “That was my lawyer’s idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I really want to tell you everything.”
Scott hummed for a second and then said, “You should probably hold off, if Kellan said to.”
Willow had forgotten that Kellan and Scott were acquainted in some roundabout way, which had come to light when she told Scott about her jail experience. She bypassed all of that, however, noting something else that was significant to her.
“I’m glad the spirit let you know that something was going on with me. That’s reassuring,” she said.
Again, Scott hummed for a second, but this was lower and sweeter, like the noise you make after tasting a wonderful dessert. “Yeah, me too.”
Speaking to the Powerful
Willow sat in FBI headquarters in Denver, Kellan next to her, two agents standing o
n the other side of the table. This was not how anyone wanted to spend a Sunday, especially Willow, who looked forward all week to worshipping and hearing God in the middle of her congregation, her family.
Tipping her head back to look at the face of the taller of the two agents, Willow unintentionally read a bit of his mail, as her pastor liked to call it. She caught a glimpse into his life and something God wanted to address. But this didn’t seem like the time. The agent was talking very earnestly.
“I’ve had to deal with the Secret Service before,” he was saying, over his prominent and nearly white front teeth, his chin pointed at Willow. She could still see the outline of his short-cropped afro. “And you don’t wanna mess around with them, I assure you.” His partner nodded.
That second agent would have been hard to describe to police: medium height, Caucasian, short brown hair, no distinguishing marks. To Willow he was distinguished only by the intensity of his focus on her. He seemed to be trying to drill into her head with his eyes. She figured this was supposed to unnerve her, but she knew she was better at that sort of drilling than he was.
Kellan spoke up. “Doesn’t the fact that we’re still sitting here mean that they found things just as Willow said they would be?”
The two agents looked at each other. Willow knew that they were still undecided as to how much to tell her. She took a shot.
“They found the man named David and are holding him right now, aren’t they? Only he’s not in a room like this and he’s not being treated so politely,” she said. “He had the weapon on him, isn’t that right?”
The tall agent rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Now you’re startin’ to freak me out. I don’t know how you know all of this, but you should stop now, while you’ve still got a chance to sleep in your own bed tonight.”
Again Kellan asserted himself. “Are you threatening my client? Or are you just relaying somebody else’s threat?”
Willow hadn’t figured out yet whether Kellan was getting information downloads like she was, or whether he was just very clever about his work. But he set both agents to pursing their lips and exchanging a very long and intense look.
The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2) Page 26
