A Heart of Flesh
Page 17
A candle burns low just inside the window, and I catch Dad’s shadowy figure by its light. He clears his throat, shoves his hands into his pockets, says nothing. I swivel my gaze away, refocusing on the silvery puddles in the yard.
I wish he hadn’t come out here, and I blow a lungful of air through my pinched lips and dig the knife deeper into my carving. He shuffles around, and I hear the wicker chair creak when he lowers himself into it. Silence.
“Does your mother know?” he finally asks.
I grow still, lift my chin slightly, surprised that he mentions Mom.
“Know what?” My voice sounds hoarse, unconfident.
“About your marriage?”
I turn then.
“Not yet. It just… kind of happened.” I study the yard. “But she knows about Diana. She won’t be surprised.”
He nods once. I swallow, keeping my eyes averted.
“We’ll go to Eden for a visit once we have the kids back into routine.”
Dad nods again. “I’d like… to be there… when you tell her. If it’s okay.”
I don’t answer. With his request, the awkwardness finally comes to settle in between us, wedging that divide back into place. In the quiet calm following the excitement of the past few days, it’s evident we have nothing beyond the superficial to say to each other. The distance of the last four years is thick, and I don’t know how we’ll ever get around it.
After a few silent minutes, Dad stands, hands in pockets again, and casts his eyes out into the darkness. I lean over the railing again and resume my whittling, but then I stop and look up.
“You should have told Klayre what to expect, you know.”
My voice breaks the momentary silence. I don’t know why I bring it up. Maybe it’s because I simply need something to say. Maybe it’s because I still want to be mad at him for something. Or maybe it’s because I believe Klayre deserves some justice, even if she doesn’t realize it. It’s stupid, I know, but I pin a heavy glare on my Dad and wait for his response.
He scans the yard, running his fingers over his dark beard. “Does it really matter now?”
“Yes. Honesty always matters.” And that’s the real point.
He purses his lips, and for a second it looks like he might argue, but he finally nods. “You’re right.”
Silence. I let my knife hang loose from my fingers, gearing up to ask the question I’ve wanted answered for too long.
“What about Mom?”
The question jolts him. I know, because even in the dim light, I notice when the tears spring up. His lower lip trembles as he fights against them.
“I screwed up there,” he whispers. “I blamed her… more than I blamed you.” He gulps back a threatening sob. “I couldn’t even look at her without feeling… hatred. The one person who was supposed to be on—on my side—”
He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, working to staunch the emotions boiling over. I don’t speak. I let him spill it all, fully aware that if there’s going to be any kind of healing in my family, he needs to say everything in his heart.
“I regret it.” He wipes a big hand across his face and dries it on his pants, nodding repeatedly. “And I’ve been a miserable man because of it.”
A catch in my chest sends a twinge of sympathy through me that I’m not expecting. I hang my head, a keen tension raking over me. This is my chance to salvage something—anything—that might be left of my relationship with my dad, and I’m scared of what that might look like. I suck a trembling lip between my teeth, my grip tightening around my carving.
“There’s still time, Dad.”
I straighten. Our eyes meet, his wet, and I’m moved. My dad’s a big man, but I’m a good two inches taller, and in his current state, he seems so small. He sniffles once.
“I lost myself, son. Lost sight of who I was. My work became my life. I pushed you away. Pushed her away. I was wrong.”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
I toss my carving on the couch, close my knife, and shove my hands into my pockets, not sure what to say now. No sense in beating him up when he’s acknowledging his faults. As he should.
I cringe immediately after I think this. Right. I have plenty of faults to count without pointing out my father’s. Dad moves a couple of steps away, wipes a hand over his face, and turns back toward me.
“I have something I’ve been meaning to say to you all day.” He swallows once, eyes on the ground. “So I’m going to humble myself and say it.”
I lift a brow, waiting.
“You were right to take those kids,” he blurts.
Any response I might have had is shocked right out of me as I absorb this announcement. At my reaction, Dad nods once and presses on.
“If you hadn’t—”
He breaks off and looks me in the eye, truly connecting with me for the first time since his arrival. Heart-to-heart. Man-to-man. Father-to-son. One look—and I’m reminded of who I am, who he is, and what that means. It awakens a flood of emotions that crash over me and usher in the tears.
“Let’s just say,” Dad continues. “I know myself well enough to know that I would have become impatient. I would have toyed with the Serum, trying to perfect it, not once considering that maybe it needed time to learn. To marinate, so to speak.” He half smiles through his tears before his expression turns serious again. “I was driven enough to jump ahead of myself, searching for an instant remedy. I never would have made the discovery I made today had you not intervened. And my pursuits would have more than likely … killed another child. And so…” He nods. “You were right to take them.”
After a minute, I chance a weak smile. “So is this your stab at an apology?”
His jaw clenches, but when he sees the twinkle in my eye, he laughs.
“I guess so.”
We laugh together, and a barrage of memories wells over me. Childhood days riding on Dad’s back, holding his hand, learning how to give an injection, set a broken arm, identify an organism under a microscope. The hard times press in, too. Seeing Dad work himself into the ground, only to see failure after failure of whatever he was chasing. I didn’t know what it was at the time, which only made watching him do it that much more painful. I’ve never forgotten the initial angry hurt that stampeded across his face when he found Ian and me by the incinerator burning up the last bag of Serum. It broke my heart to break his, even though I knew I was doing the right thing. So I’ve remained stoic, stood my ground, refused to listen to Dad’s case.
But now… Nick and Stephen are proof of the cure. That changes things. And Klayre?
I watched her all evening. Watched her interact with the boys. Watched how they responded, how they communicated with her, with each other, with Sophia and Diana. She’d tapped into both Nick and Stephen’s nanos. I don’t understand all the technical logistics, and I don’t have to. Somehow, thanks to an awakened communication system, she linked herself to them—like a computer circuit board. And somehow, she balanced things out. I’m fascinated.
I found myself admitting Liza did the right thing in bringing Dad to the farm. A thorough scan proved Nick was close to imploding due to his increasing Serum levels. Klayre reached him just in time.
I see all of this, and I have to ask myself… how can I not acknowledge that I might’ve been wrong? How can I not consider that perhaps my dad has proved his case and deserves a chance to finish his work? After what I’ve seen today, how can I not give in, just a little?
I look to the sky, and my heart flutters once. The answer is easy.
I can.
I don’t wait another tense-filled minute. I don’t rethink my decision or wait for Dad to make the next move. I simply reach out and tug him into a long-awaited hug. When I feel his arms encircle me for the first time in years, the tears flow freely.
“You have your cure, Dad,” I finally admit. For the first time, I feel hope in those words.
He squeezes me, then pulls back, holding me a
t arm’s length. We look at each other, unable to control our grins. Dad’s might be an inch bigger, and it should be. Today, we saw possibility become reality. We saw a cure. In his mind… immortality.
Today, Dad became my hero again.
Today… Dad saved the world.
Epilogue
That day marked the beginning of a different era.
My dad went back to Eden and finished his work. In the year that followed, every baby born in and around Eden—and without the strawberry mark—was given the Serum. Lives were saved. Superhumans became a natural part of the fabric of every family on both sides of the river. Before long, the term Outsider was obsolete.
Jesse and Liza had a boy—with a strawberry birthmark on his left thigh. They named him Michael after Aaron’s late brother. After he was born, Jesse left for Kate’s village with a supply of Serum and news of the cure. Ian and Kate only came to see us once in the next twenty years. Other than falling in love and seeing the birth of my first child, it was one of the best moments in my life. I hugged Ian tight, a crushing embrace. That bitterness I once felt? It was as if it never existed.
Kate’s village was thriving and as the population grew, other nearby villages sprouted up, some taking over the broken down cities in an attempt to revive what had been lost. Before long, people on both sides of the river found ways to regenerate electricity and running water until Eden wasn’t alone in this. And it was good. Technology rose up out of the leftover dust of the Fall, and life finally moved toward a new progress.
People wrote books about my dad, calling him one of the greatest scientific minds alive. The man with the cure.
As for him and Mom, she took him back exactly like I knew she would. I saw a true picture of God’s forgiveness in her that I will never forget. She endured to the end and saw the fruit of her labor. And until the day she died, she never mentioned a single mistake Dad had made in his quest for glory. No record of wrongs. Just love.
It became Penelope and Aaron’s mission to stay on at the farm to raise and train the children. They were teachable now in their interconnectedness. All five of them grew to be exceptional people. Strong and beautiful and God-fearing. Brothers and sisters of a different kind. A group of indestructible beings like we would never see again on earth. They lived their lives in service of others. They were true superheroes, and even found themselves in a couple of comic books along the way. Nick was dubbed the Silver Soldier. We had a good laugh over that one a few years ago. The stuff heroes are made of.
Diana and I had four children of our own—three boys and a daughter. Two of our sons needed Serum, and that was fine with both of us. It was a surefire guarantee that Diana would never lose another child to the virus. And she didn’t. Henry, Caleb, Isaac, Jonah, Seth, Elizabeth: every one of our six children outlived her.
After Dad found the cure, Diana and I moved to Eden where I joined Dad in his work. I finished my studies and became the doctor I’d always wanted to be. It was a dream come true.
Even more importantly, I learned to study the Scriptures. They were full of amazing examples of godly men and promises and even things of science and medicine that confirmed my faith in God even more strongly. It was through these studies that I learned to be the husband and father my family needed. I learned how to leave the past in the past and strive for tomorrow.
I didn’t tell Diana everything that happened to me out by the creek on what turned into our wedding night—not until we’d been married for years. A black thing tried to steal my soul, and God worked a miracle in my heart in the most supernatural way. I guess I wanted it to be my moment with him. I couldn’t have explained it anyway. Not back then. But I should have shouted it from the mountaintops.
When my dad died, I wept for three days, and then I finally told her. Because what God did for me? He’d done it for Dad too. Dad cried out to him on his deathbed, and God saved him. I’d prayed for that for thirty years. Thirty years. Only then did I truly understand that God was faithful in all things.
As for Diana, I loved that woman more than my own life, and the day she died an old lady in my arms was the loneliest moment in time. I was lost for a while. Our children were grown and had families of their own. A couple of them already had grandchildren. For the first time, I felt useless. Not needed. I had nothing left to do, and because of the little bit of Serum still stirring in my blood, I had no chance of dying any time soon.
At least one of my children came to visit every week. My grand and great-grand children called me Pa. It was cute. But they always left at the end of the day.
They always leave. Such is life…
Today, an old man, I sit on my porch, watching the hustle and bustle of the city zoom past. Several years ago, the dome of Eden was taken down, and the real true, blue sky now spreads for miles overhead. I scan the clouds with my old eyes, and I see something: a tiny cross-shaped cloud. I straighten, breath catching in my chest.
A wind kicks up. I clutch the arms of my lawn chair, and in that moment, I remember who I am. I remember every hill and valley and peak, and I remember what God made of me. I think of Diana—a treasure I basked in for sixty-three years of marriage. She was a woman who learned to seek God’s will in everything. She taught me through her struggles what it meant to be brave. To be fiercely prayerful in the midst of adversity. To be thankful in the good times and the bad.
My heart was stone when she decided to love me. Through her love and through many years of failures and successes, Yeshua changed that. Because he loved me more than she did. He took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh to replace it. Year after year, he wrote his word all over it. He reminded me that I was blessed with every good thing afforded to man, and that one day, I would be with him, face to face.
I watch the cross-like cloud until it evaporates, and I remember that promise.
“Thank you for this life, Lord.” I croak the words, but he hears me. He always hears. “Thank you for every trial that made me stronger. I could never have asked for anything better.”
A still, soft whisper answers, and with a sigh, I sink into a place of contented peace.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the last prayer I ever uttered. The next day, I woke up in the arms of Yeshua.
Diana was sitting at his feet.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue