by Clare Revell
“Which one?” he spat bitterly. “My biological parents who didn’t want me around, so they left me with a baby sitter, and went and deliberately drove their car off a cliff? Or the succession of foster parents and care homes who didn’t want me either? Oh, they were all good, church going people; made me dress up in a tie and jacket, and attend church and Sunday School. Then they beat me and burned me and locked me up, before handing me back like a piece of garbo, when I acted up or they got tired of me.”
He clasped the wheel hard, his fingers whitening. “So, if heaven is full of people like that—two-faced liars who don’t want a kid because he’s different and can’t do what every other kid his age can—then I’m cheerfully going to hell. And you, you’re no different to the rest of them!”
“Me?” she spluttered.
“Your stepfather wanted to adopt you! But, no, you’re too busy being pigheaded to see that he loved you as his own.” He slammed on the brakes, stalling the engine. He twisted to look at her. “And before you tell me how bad hell will be, let me tell you something. I’m already there. I have spent the best part of my life, and I use the term ‘best’ very loosely, in hell already.” Anger burned his eyes and he swallowed the huge lump in his throat. “But you wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
Her soft touch on his arm almost broke him. “Jed…”
He shook himself free. And cleared his throat. “East, right?”
“OK.” She nodded slowly, but wouldn’t let it drop. “So, what can’t you do that all the other kids could? Run, catch a ball? Fish?”
“Read!” he snapped. He slammed his feet so hard on the brakes that the Ute stalled. “I can’t read.”
8
Jed turned away, trying to restart the Ute. As always his temper had gotten the better of him. He hadn’t intended to blurt any of that out; especially the bit about not being able to read. What would she think? An educated sheila like her would just despise him all the more.
Lucy leaned across and touched his hand. “Jed…”
He yanked away, her touch burning him. “What?”
She laid her hand on his arm. “Look at me.”
He thumped the steering wheel hard with both fists, close to losing it. “Stop flipping touching me, woman!” He fumbled with the seatbelt, finally freeing himself, flung open the door, and jumped out into the pouring rain. He stood with his back to the Ute, sucking in a succession of deep breaths.
“Jed, please…”
“Just shut up. What do you want from me?” he snapped.
Silence met him.
Grateful for that, he wrapped his arms tightly around his stomach. He was soaked through, the rain plastering his hair to his head. He’d felt many things about his past—anger, fear, hatred, but never this. For the first time, he felt ashamed.
How could she bring him so low? He was worthless. He counted for nothing.
The rain continued to fall. Like that line from one of the songs one of his foster mothers sang to him. Where the rain kept falling like helpless tears.
“Jed?” The voice came from his left.
He spun around.
Lucy balanced on the crutches behind him, her injured leg not touching the ground. “What in the blazes are you doing?” he snapped.
“Trying to talk to you, but you’re not making it easy for me.”
“Well, maybe that’s because I’m not worth talking to. Get back in the Ute before you catch your death.”
“Not unless you do.”
Irritation replaced the shame. “Oh, that’s just bonzer, that is. Now she wants me dead.”
“That’s not what I said and you know it.” He got the feeling if she could have stamped her foot, she would have. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?” he demanded.
Lucy shook her head, shivering as the rain soaked into her white shirt and shorts.
“Get in the Ute,” he told her, more harshly than he would normally.
“No.”
“I said, get in the blasted Ute!”
“I heard you, and I said no.”
“Oh, my days, woman!” Jed swept her into his arms, letting the crutches fall to the ground and ignoring her scream of protest. His feet slid in the mud as he strode around the Ute, fighting to keep his balance.
He was almost at the passenger door, when both feet slid from underneath him. He somehow managed to keep hold of Lucy as he fell.
Pain jarred him as he landed awkwardly, but he shook it off, more concerned by the scream of agony from the woman in his arms. He rolled over and laid her on the ground. “Lucy?”
“Knee hurts…” she managed.
He gently felt her knee. “It’s not dislocated.”
“Hurts.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He pushed the soaked hair from her face, his other hand sliding up her thigh to rest on her hip. “I’ll get you something for it.”
“OK.”
He held her gaze, her face mere inches from his. “Lucy…”
“Jed?” Her fingertips touched his cheek, wiping away the rain drops.
Giving into the impulse filling him, he leaned down and, capturing her lips with his, kissed her.
~*~
Lucy sat in the truck, the silence almost palpable. Mud stuck to her clothes, skin and bandage.
Jed hadn’t said a word since he kissed her. Simply put her in the truck, tossed the crutches in the back, and driven off.
Her fingers rose to her lips. She could still feel him there, taste him. She wouldn’t admit he was the first man to kiss her. Or that she liked it. But it didn’t mean anything. Did it? Even if it did, she couldn’t let it go further. He didn’t like what she stood for, who she was, and any relationship with him would compromise her faith.
Kissing him was a mistake. So why did it feel so good and make her feel…she couldn’t put a word to how she felt. She glanced at him. “Jed?”
“Don’t say it,” he muttered, his voice gruff and stilted.
“Say what?” Had she done something wrong when she kissed him back? Had her inexperience angered him?
“I don’t need your pity or being patronized. Bad enough being a grown man unable to do what most every six-year-old can do.”
Oh, he meant the reading thing. “I wasn’t going to mention it,” she said gently. Although she was a tad confused.
He couldn’t read, but he’d worked the computer well enough.
“Goodo.”
Silence fell again. But as wrong as it might be, she liked the sound of his voice. “How many foster homes did you have?”
He shrugged. “Nine, ten, twenty, I lost count. The longest one was for a year when I was nine. Really hoped that was the one, you know? They were nice people—didn’t care if I was behind in school. Then she got sick, and he said it was my fault.”
“Was it?”
His fingers tightened on the wheel, his shoulders hunched as he peered into the wet murk. “I guess. I wanted to play soccer in the park and she took me. There was a really bad storm. She caught a fever. Went into hospital and never came out.”
“That doesn’t make it your fault,” Lucy said, the doctor in her trying to rationalize it. “There could be a hundred different things wrong.”
“She got wet in the storm, got a fever. Had this real bad cough and would cough up blood. They gave it some fancy name—long winded one—berk something.”
“Sounds like tuberculosis,” she said thoughtfully.
Jed jerked his head. “Aye, that’s it.”
“Jed, I promise, you can’t get tuberculosis from standing in the rain watching a football game.”
He glanced at her for the first time since they got back in the truck. “You can’t?”
“No. It’s a bacterial disease and can only be caught from prolonged contact with someone who either has it or carries it.”
He sat silent as he took in what she said. Then cleared his throat. “Anyhow, after that no one wanted me. I’d spend a few
weeks or a couple of months in church places all over the state. Different schools, churches…”
“It must have been hard.” No wonder his schooling suffered. He’d fallen through the cracks in the system. A forgotten, uncared for child, who’d grown into the bitter, angry man he was today.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
Lucy stretched her leg, balancing it precariously on the bag by her feet. “Did they really beat you?”
“It didn’t take much. I’d be late in, or didn’t pay attention to what they said. Or wagged school. I got used as an ashtray a lot in one place. The snake tat covers the burns. Joining the army was a way out of the system. And an alternative to jail.”
“Even though you can’t read?”
Jed scowled. “Told ‘em they needed fighters, not nerds. I passed the physical and became a digger.”
“Digger?” she queried.
“Soldier.”
She nodded. “The boomerang tattoo on your back.”
He jerked his head in response. “The unit I was in. I did fifteen years, then came out. Been doing this ever since. Mate of mine set me up with the job and Ute.”
“Do you like it?”
He shrugged. “It’s a job. Not many people to face. Just me, the road and my music.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel.
“Can I ask something? You say you can’t read, yet you managed the computer…”
“A few words,” he muttered, the drumming of his fingers increasing in speed. “That’s it.”
“Are you all right? You seem on edge.”
“Need a ciggy. Don’t smoke much, but…”
“Have you tried the nicotine gum? It’s good stuff, really works.” She opened the glove box and handed him a cigarette. “Here.”
He lit it. “Didn’t think you approved.”
“I don’t.” She smiled wryly. “But, no one’s perfect. I’m a right moody cow if I don’t get chocolate every day.”
Jed slammed on the brakes, and they slid to a halt. He stared at her, his eyes wide and his eyebrows vanishing into his hair. “I beg your pardon.”
Lucy laughed hard. “You heard.”
He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be jiggered.”
“I can swear as good as you, just choose not to, because I’d rather please the Lord than the devil.”
“There’s a bag of chocs in the glove box. Help yourself.”
“Thank you.” She took one and unwrapped it.
“No worries. I can’t have a cow in the Ute. The weight might topple us sideways.”
“Oy.” She scrunched up the wrapper and threw it at him.
Jed laughed. “You started it.”
She smiled. “You should laugh more often.”
“Not much to laugh about,” he muttered. “So…you’re not perfect then?”
“Far from it.” She shifted on the seat, trying to get comfortable, as Jed started driving again. “I did all I could to make things hard once Mum started seeing Harold. I cut my hair really short and spiky and dyed it purple. I played rap music as loud as possible while studying.”
“Rap?” His eyebrows vanished again.
“Yeah. Rap.”
“Strewth…and you criticized my music.”
“Yeah, well.” Lucy smiled.
“What changed you?”
“I got caught shoplifting.”
Jed’s jaw dropped. “Bulldust.”
“Nope.”
He whistled. “I bet your oldies just about spat the dummy over that.”
She grinned, not needing him to translate that one. “Mum was disappointed. She grounded me for a month. Harold was livid. He told me he could lose his job because of what I’d done, and that I’d go to hell.”
“For getting him sacked?”
“Apparently—or for breaking the law, he didn’t differentiate between the two. But that didn’t bother me as much as upsetting Mum did.”
“But that’s still a long way from where you are now. What convinced you all this God stuff was—” He broke off.
Lucy studied him. He had a strange look on his face, but he was asking questions, and that was amazing in itself. Nothing short of a miracle. “Real?” she asked.
“I guess so, yeah.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. “I mean, religion is for Sundays, right?”
“It isn’t religion at all. That’s just a set of rules impossible to keep. Being a Christian is a life changing event. Happens from the inside.” She paused, not having told anyone this for years. “It was a Sunday evening, early February. When I left home, I swore I’d never go back to church and didn’t. Anyway, my best friend Ally went each week with her boyfriend, John. They kept asking me to come with, but I didn’t. This one week, their church was having a free student lunch after, and they asked me to go. I was out of money until the grant check came through and starving, so I agree to go.”
“Just for the free meal?”
“Yeah.” She paused, studying her fingernails. “We walked there in the snow. It was a weird service—nothing like I was used to. The guy in charge just spoke to God directly, like he knew Him. The people seemed full of joy and the singing was amazing. The pastor preached on the garden of Gethsemane and Judas’s betrayal and Jesus appearing before Pilate. I’d never heard it explained like that before. I mean, I knew the story well enough.”
Jed nodded. “Yeah. Kinda hard to go to church and not know that one.”
“Yeah, but it occurred to me as the pastor spoke that Jesus could have stopped this at any time. He is God, after all, but He didn’t. And He didn’t because He loved me. The Pastor said that people often wish they’d been there to ask for Jesus to be released, but if we had, we’d have done what everyone else did. Got caught up in the emotion of the time and yelled for Barabbas to be freed. OK, I hadn’t killed anyone or committed adultery, but I was just as guilty. I couldn’t even go half a day without losing my temper or lying or stealing food from someone else’s cupboards. And then lying about that too.”
Jed raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “Really?” he asked, astounded.
“It’s not something I’m proud of. As soon I had money I’d replace it, until next time.”
“I bet that confused people.”
She nodded. “Yeah, it did.”
“So,” he said, his tone changing to flippant. “You got the call and prayed the prayer and here you are.”
Lucy closed her eyes for a moment. She thought she’d been getting somewhere, but apparently not. “Yeah, more or less. I’m not perfect now, but the difference is I’m forgiven. I’m not alone. And every time I do mess up, I know God will forgive me.”
“Yet, you still haven’t gone home and sorted things out there. Sounds like you need to do some forgiving yourself.”
She sat up straight, shock engulfing her. “What?”
“For all your talk about love and forgiveness, you still hate your stepfather for marrying your mum and taking her away from you. For having other kids with her. Who, incidentally, are your brothers or sisters, and you still don’t go visit. You haven’t even told me their names.”
“How dare you?” Her stomach churned and she stretched out her fingers in dismay and guilt.
“Well, no one else will. I don’t have a family to turn around and walk out on just ‘cos they do stuff I don’t approve of. And even if I did, there is no way I’d ever do that. It’s just me.” Jed stopped the truck. “Need to top up the gas tank.”
He jumped out into the storm, slamming the door behind him.
Lucy sat there dumbfounded. The horrid realization that Jed was right hit her like a two by four. She bit her lip, the hollow feeling in her stomach growing and swallowing her whole. Oh, God, forgive me… As soon as they got out of here, if they got out of here, she’d call her mother—parents—and arrange to go home and visit.
Lightning flashed, followed almost immediately by the roar of thunder. The storm seemed to be getting worse, rather than better.
Jed slid in, soaking wet. “There’s a village a few miles up the road. We should try to get there and stay tonight.”
“I didn’t think you liked people.”
“I don’t,” he growled, starting the truck. “But you can’t sleep in the truck again and we need shelter from this.”
They drove only a short way before he braked hard.
Lucy peered through the windscreen but couldn’t see anything. “What is it?”
“Not sure, looks like a fallen tree. Stay there. I’ll be back.” He got out and vanished.
Lucy rubbed her knee, her face scrunching as she gave into the pain for a moment. She straightened as Jed climbed back in. “Well?”
“We need to get out of here, fast.” He shoved the truck into reverse, backing up as fast as he could. His fingers brushed her shoulders as he laid his hand over the back of the seats, his head twisted towards the rear of the truck.
“Why, what’s up?”
“It’s not a fallen tree. It’s a road block. There are rebel forces just beyond it. They’ve set up a camp.”
“Did they see us?”
“No, they’d have shot me if they had.”
“What do we do?”
The truck swung around in a one eighty turn. “I’m going to cut across and risk the main road. But tomorrow in the daylight—we’ll stop a couple of miles back the other way. You need rest and food before we go any further.”
“I thought the main road was too dangerous.”
He glanced at her, a hardness and fear in his eyes that terrified her. “We don’t have a choice anymore. Not if we want to get out of here alive.”
9
Stuck in the truck after a cold meal and only tepid water to drink, Lucy pulled up the Bible app on her phone. She still had no signal, but wasn’t surprised as the rain pounded unceasingly on the roof of the truck and they were also over a hundred miles from anywhere. Jed didn’t want to waste water on cleaning their teeth, and had offered her a piece of gum instead. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.
She glanced at Jed. He sat upright, twisting his knife in his hand. He’d already cleaned and loaded the two guns he kept in the truck.
“You really think we’re in that much danger?”
