Betwixt Two Hearts (Crossroads Collection)

by Amanda Tru

  Caroline studied him. The photograph was old, but the kind features on the man’s face were clear in spite of the picture’s age. “He must have been a very nice man,” she remarked.

  Mrs. Cho broke into a serene smile, and she lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh, he is. He loves the Lord so much.”

  “How long were you married?” Caroline asked.

  “We were wed two years before the start of the Peninsula War.”

  Caroline did a quick mental calculation. If Mrs. Cho was a young woman at the start of the Korean War, she was even older than Caroline had guessed.

  Mrs. Cho set down her teacup and let out a sigh. “It’s been so long. I pray for him every single day.”

  Caroline was confused. Did Korean Protestants pray for their deceased?

  Mrs. Cho was still staring at the man in the photograph. “My husband and I made a promise to love each other no matter what, to believe all things, to hope all things, to endure all things. When we made that vow, we certainly didn’t expect God to put our devotion to the test so soon.”

  There was no way Caroline could have contained her curiosity at that point. “What happened?”

  “When the war broke out, my husband was a pastor. We were living near Pyongyang at the time. In fact, his father and grandfather were both evangelists whose witness God used greatly during the Pyongyang revival at the turn of the century.”

  Caroline tried to not let her surprise show. A revival somewhere as closed to the gospel as North Korea? Maybe she should have studied more about the history of the Korean church before traveling to Seoul on a short-term mission trip. Then again, how could she have guessed that her host would be speaking about events that happened over a century earlier?

  “The two of us met at church. My father was a deacon, his father was the pastor. It was obvious from the beginning that God was calling us to join our lives together.”

  Caroline wasn’t used to hearing language like this. When she and Calvin decided to get married, they talked about what kind of house or apartment they could afford to share, what kind of potential honeymoon destinations were within their budget. Not whether or not their destinies were joined together by God Almighty.

  What if Caroline had been a Christian at the time? What if she’d bothered to pray all the way back then? How different would her life have turned out…

  “Shortly after we married,” Mrs. Cho went on, “God blessed us with a beautiful, healthy boy. It was prophesied over him that he would grow up to lead many to Christ, to spread the Word of God’s salvation to distant shores. He was colicky, a very fussy baby, and yet if he saw his father reading his Bible, he would crawl up on his lap and sit perfectly still. An anointed infant.”

  Mrs. Cho’s voice took a nostalgic tone before it trailed off, and Caroline steeled herself for whatever was to come.

  “When war broke out, God told us that Pyongyang, once a haven for the spread of the gospel, would become a danger and a snare to all believers. My husband had just become the pastor at the time. He didn’t want to leave but urged me to go ahead. My sister lived near Seoul, and he wanted me to take our baby there. He meant to join us shortly afterwards.”

  Mrs. Cho sat as if waiting for a response, but Caroline had no idea what to say. Finally, she managed to croak, “What happened then?”

  “I lived with my sister until she died five years ago,” Mrs. Cho answered. “Up until then, we ran the orphanage together. Her husband’s will left us this home and provisions to continue to care for the children.”

  “And your husband?” Caroline winced, hoping she hadn’t asked the wrong thing.

  “I have not heard from him since the day I took our baby and joined my sister here in Seoul.”

  “Do you even know if he’s still alive?” As soon as she asked the question, Caroline wished she could take it back.

  Thankfully, Mrs. Cho’s serene expression remained unchanged. “I do not. However, God has given me a dream.”

  “A dream?” Caroline repeated lamely.

  Now Mrs. Cho’s face looked as if it were beaming, illuminated by her own faith or conviction or love. “In my dream, my husband is old, like me. His body shakes with tremors as a result of his age. His face is wrinkled, his body stooped. His eyes, Lord have mercy on the dear man, ceased seeing years ago, and yet he hides a Bible in his home, a Bible he cherishes and guards with his life, even though he can no longer read the words it contains.”

  Caroline stared at her hands in her lap, unworthy as she felt to witness the peaceful, glorious luminescence shining from Mrs. Cho’s entire countenance. “Do you think God spoke to you in that dream?”

  Mrs. Cho’s smile widened. “I do. I first had this dream over fifteen years ago. I asked God if it was a message that my husband was still alive, still serving our Savior, and he answered by giving me the same dream several times since.” She sniffed and stared into her tea cup. “Sadly, it has been several years since the last time this dream came to me. When I ask God why this is, he answers me only with silence.”

  Caroline didn’t want to guess what that silence could mean and was thankful when Mrs. Cho changed the subject. “But of course, I will continue to pray for my husband until the day God calls me home. At least I know that my beloved and I will be reunited again.”

  “I’m glad you have that comfort.” Caroline felt her heart constricting between her lungs. What would it be like if she could say those words about Calvin?

  Mrs. Cho offered her a warm, sad smile. “It seems we both have hurts to lay before the throne of heaven.”

  “I guess we do,” Caroline had to agree.

  “Well then,” Mrs. Cho replied, taking Caroline’s hands in hers, “maybe we should pray, no? For my husband, God bless his soul, as well as yours.”

  Drisklay was more tired than he’d expected to be when he pulled up in front of his house.

  His former house, that is.

  Caroline didn’t know he was living here while she traveled the world on her errands of mercy, but she’d never asked him for his key. He needed that time to pack up the rest of his things. Besides, the old house was only a ten-minute drive away from work, and it beat sleeping in his office or cheap motels.

  He disarmed the security system. This was one of the first times he’d been home since he started working the Rebekah Harrison case. He was looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed and not his office chair.

  He walked straight to the kitchen cupboards and pulled out the Aleve. He popped four pills then shoved the bottle deep into his pocket. Caroline never used the stuff. By clearing his junk out of here, he was actually doing her a favor. Wasn’t she always the one who complained that he didn’t pick up after himself? Well, now he could make up for lost time.

  Before closing up at the office for the night, Drisklay had done a quick web search on various schools of Christian thought and came to the original conclusion he’d maintained before. Carl Lindgren might be one of the Boston area’s most popular pastors, but his personal opinions on theology had no bearing on his current case. Drisklay still hadn’t shaken the gut feeling that Rebekah Harrison’s father may have somehow been involved in her death, but if so, Carl wasn’t going to be the one to point him in the right direction.

  Well, he’d pack up a few things, sleep off his last pot of coffee, and start tomorrow with fresh eyes. Maybe he should look into that best friend again, at least bring her in for more questioning. He’d worked on the force long enough to have developed an uncanny intuition regarding when something was about to break, like joints that flare up right before heavy rain, and he knew that this case was about to be blown wide open.

  He just had to be ready, and hopefully awake, when it happened.

  He turned on the TV in the living room. Caroline had left the station on to some televangelist. Figured. This guy had sleaziness dripping out of his spray-tanned pores. Drisklay switched the channel to catch the score of that night’s Red Sox game—mostly to see how un
ruly the bars would get—then he turned to the news.

  Thankfully, the media had already moved on from Rebekah Harrison’s death. Tonight’s headlines covered election campaigns, gay rights, and a missing teen girl. Probably a runaway, but she happened to be a skinny blond cheerleader from suburbia, which meant that her story trumped the hundreds of other missing teen cases that took place every day.

  Drisklay opened one of the cupboards, trying to decide if he should make himself another pot of coffee. Probably not. He kept the TV running and headed down the hall. He’d pack up a few more things, then see if he could get to sleep.

  He was surprised that nothing in his bedroom had changed since he moved out. The room was a little tidier, but his nightstand looked completely untouched. He’d half figured Caroline would have tossed his junk into boxes herself, as eager as she’d been to see him leave. Oh, well. She was probably too busy with that beloved church of hers.

  He grabbed a shoebox from under the bed and swept everything from his nightstand into it haphazardly. He’d sort through it all later. When he peeked into the closet, it was similar to the nightstand, almost eerie in the way nothing had been moved or handled since he’d left.

  He walked over to Caroline’s side of the bed, glancing at the books on her nightstand several titles about praying for your husband, one called Scripture Promises for the Christian Woman, everything you’d expect from a Christian convert. Her Bible was gone, no doubt with her at that orphanage. She wouldn’t have left something as precious as that at home while she went out to parade as Mother Teresa.

  Well, he hoped she was happy in the life she’d chosen. Drisklay himself wouldn’t be caught dead shuttling himself across the planet, posing as a do-gooder just to earn a few extra bonus points with God. He pulled back the covers, tossed off his pants and climbed into bed.

  He rolled over with his back to his wife’s nightstand, feeling nothing but exhausted, and hoped for a long night dreaming of just that.

  Nothing.

  “I think Da has taken a liking to you.” Mrs. Cho offered Caroline a warm smile as she cleared the dishes from the children’s lunch.

  Caroline held baby Da and didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to admit that yesterday was the first time she’d changed a diaper since she was a teenager, babysitting to earn a little spending money while she was in high school.

  The children were napping upstairs, and from the looks of Da’s drooping eyelids, he was going to be ready to join them any minute.

  “I wish Calvin and I’d been able to have children.” Caroline’s admission sounded strange, almost an affront to her marriage. She’d felt this way for over a decade, but had she ever spoken the truth out loud so succinctly?

  “He didn’t want to be a father?” Mrs. Cho asked.

  Caroline shrugged. “I was in a car accident when I was twelve, and they told me then I wouldn’t be able to conceive.” As soon as she realized she was talking to a woman who made it her life’s mission to look after orphans, many of whom waited eagerly to be placed in adoptive homes, Caroline felt like she had to defend herself. “I always planned on adopting, but to Calvin that was out of the question.”

  She expected some sort of chiding remark, but Mrs. Cho just nodded her head. “Some people do feel that way.”

  Confronted with the grace of Mrs. Cho’s response, Caroline felt suddenly even more uncharitable. “Well, I wish he’d felt a different way.”

  Mrs. Cho frowned. The expression looked entirely unnatural and unpracticed on her wrinkled face. “Surely if God wanted to bless you with children…”

  Caroline was glad when baby Da squirmed and Mrs. Cho shifted her focus to calming him down.

  “Tell me about your son.” Caroline was eager to change the subject. “He was still a baby when you came to Seoul?”

  Mrs. Cho nodded. “Yes, and he is an answer to the prophecy God has given him. He lives in China and spends his life training North Korean refugees, teaching them the gospel and equipping them to return home as undercover missionaries.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Caroline remarked.

  “It is. Several times, he has been imprisoned by Chinese police.”

  “No, I mean for the missionaries,” Caroline explained. “The ones he sends back to North Korea.”

  Mrs. Cho was silent for a moment then finally said, “Yes. He fears that many of them will lose their lives in service to the gospel.”

  Caroline wondered if she’d ever have the courage to do anything even remotely similar. It took her two full weeks to get up the nerve to tell her husband she was getting baptized. What would happen if her choice was to curse God or die? She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know the answer. Not right now. Maybe if she was more mature in her faith, if she’d had more time to study Scripture, if she was as close to God as someone like Mrs. Cho, then it would be easier.

  Wouldn’t it?

  “Do you worry about your son?” she asked.

  Mrs. Cho chuckled. “No. I told God that I would rather have my son beaten and bruised in body than for his soul to perish in hell. He is serving the Lord, just like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him. What greater honor could there be for a mother?”

  Caroline didn’t know from firsthand experience what it would be like to be a mom, but she could imagine how great the burden must be to want to see your children walking with the Lord.

  “I sometimes feel that way about my students,” she admitted and thought about the kids who’d come and gone in her classroom over the years. Some were grown with children of their own now. She’d always believed in the teacher’s ability to influence and encourage her students, but she wasn’t allowed to talk about religion in the classroom. “I just don’t know what kind of spiritual impact I can really have in the classroom,” she confessed.

  “What do you mean?”

  Caroline explained the laws that kept teachers like her from sharing the gospel in a public-school setting.

  “So, in a nation that boasts its religious freedom, you’re unable to teach your students the truth of the gospel?”

  Caroline wanted to explain it was more complicated than that. In fact, she’d heard other Christians, even Pastor Carl, speak out in favor of the separation of church and state. If Caroline could stand up and lead her classroom full of impressionable youngsters in the sinner’s prayer, what would stop a Muslim teacher from leading her children in the tenets of Islam, or a wiccan teacher from forcing her students to participate in witchcraft? But the words froze on her tongue when she looked at Mrs. Cho, whose husband stayed behind to lead a church in spite of grave dangers and whose son trained underground missionaries to venture into the most closed nation on the planet.

  “It’s hard to explain,” she finally replied.

  “But there are no laws that can prohibit you from praying, correct? In your own heart, not forcing anyone else to join you or listen in?”

  “No. There aren’t any laws like that.”

  Mrs. Cho’s smile returned. “Then that is your answer. You pray.”

  Was it really so simple? “I guess you’re right.” She looked away, hoping Mrs. Cho wouldn’t perceive that she was only saying what she thought was expected of her.

  “Maybe we should do that now, do you think?”

  “Do what?” Caroline asked. “Pray?”

  “Of course. How do you think I manage this houseful of young ones without losing my temper or my sanity?”

  Caroline couldn’t tell if Mrs. Cho was making a joke or not but guessed that she was. “That sounds like a great idea. Let’s pray, for the kids in your orphanage and the kids in my classroom.”

  “And for our husbands, as well,” Mrs. Cho added.

  “That’s right.” Caroline tried to ignore the pain zinging through her heart. “We’ll pray for our husbands too. Both of them.”

  Drisklay had almost forgotten what it felt like to sleep flat on his back, not slouched over his desk
in his office or reclining in the front seat of his car.

  He was exhausted enough that he didn’t get to enjoy the feeling for long before he was dreaming.

  Sirens. Screaming in his ears, almost drowning out the noise of the toddler in the front seat.

  Almost.

  “Hang in there, little guy,” Drisklay tells him. His voice is on edge. His palms are sweaty.

  Outside the rain pours.

  And the siren wails. In the distance. In his eardrums. All around him.

  “Hang in there.” He says the words almost like a prayer, even as the life drains out of the child.

  Drisklay isn’t new to the force, but this is the worst domestic violence case he’s ever been called out on. If he could get his hands on the judge that let the deadbeat out of jail in the first place…

  It’s Halloween. Apparently, the myriad of trick-or-treating children and their happily oblivious chaperones must assume the squad car and flashing lights are only there for display. Don’t they realize this is an emergency?

  Why are they all outside in this rain anyway?

  “Get out of my way!” Calvin shouts, but his voice is distorted. As if he’s underwater. As if the air is thickening around him, slowing him down, keeping him from speeding ahead. Doesn’t the universe realize this child will die if Calvin doesn’t get him to the hospital? The paramedics who should be here are held up in traffic, and this child has no time to spare. No time at all.

  “Move it!” The siren wails, piercing his eardrums, but the pedestrians are laughing and frolicking in the middle of the street, totally unaware. Deaf. Unmoving.

  “Out of my way!” Drisklay lays on the horn. Nothing happens. The siren continues to wail…

  He jerked himself awake. What was that sound? Was he still in the squad car?

  No this was his bed. At least, it used to be. What was making that noise?

  He reached out blindly until he found his phone. “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end was breathy. Almost panicked. “Detective Drisklay? This is Sandy Lindgren, Pastor Carl’s wife. I know it’s late. I’m so sorry to bother you, but I didn’t think this should wait for morning. It’s about that case you’re working on. The murder.”