“Don’t,” Chloe said. “We might need that for . . . evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” Jack jumped to his feet. “Did he rape you because, I swear, I will kill—”
“No. Jack. No.”
“So you were a willing participant in this?”
“Destiny thinks that he gave me something . . . to loosen my inhibitions.”
“Do you hear yourself? Are you telling me this girl in the video is who you really are?”
She put her hands to his cheeks. “I don’t want to be a facsimile of a wife, not anymore. I want to be the wife you can trust.”
“So what was the point of this encounter?”
“For me—pushing the boundaries. And that’s really all on me. I see that now.” Chloe had to keep talking, not let herself dissolve. “And his? To extort money. For all your sophistication in our computer stuff, he learned pretty quickly who I really was. And it only took a few lines of conversation to see the gaping need in my life.”
“Need! What could you possibly need? We are so privileged, Chloe.”
“I need to be who God is calling me to be. Serve with the gifts He gives and not slip into a role you assign because that’s easier.”
“Oh, I’m a tyrant? Is that how we’re going to play this?”
“No. It’s just . . . you’re so self-assured, confident—”
“So it’s my fault because I know who I am and what is expected of me?”
Chloe clutched at his shirt. “I told myself that so I could just keep trailing in your wake.”
“How much does he want?”
“Half a million.”
Jack snorted. “Give it to him.”
“No.”
“If this goes public, it would kill your mother.”
“We have a plan.”
“Who is we?”
“Destiny, Julia, and Tom Bryant. Destiny’s father. He’s a lawyer.”
Jack yanked away from her. “You told them before you told me?”
“They kind of saved me from . . . I don’t know . . . maybe he would have raped me. Destiny and Julia tracked me down at the motel and Destiny tried to batter her way through the slider. I remember that hideous music and some sort of banging. He grabbed his stuff and pushed his way out of there, shoving Destiny into the snow. She held on to his ankle, so he kicked her in the face.”
“Really? I may need to assess my opinion of her.”
“Don’t be assessing or reassessing anything. Take the time to get to know her.”
“What happened with Julia?”
“He threw Julia down but she got a good look at his face. So—between the three of us—we put together a sketch.”
“I want to see it.”
She went to the dresser, pulled out a photocopy of the drawing. “We’re going to use an assault charge to get the video. Tom’s got an investigator—”
“Wait a minute! How many people know about this?”
“You can’t save me from everything.”
He sat down hard on the bed, head in hands. “Apparently I can’t save you from anything.”
“Don’t you see, Jack? That was never your job.” Chloe pulled him into her arms and held him until both of them had run their tears dry.
Friday, 1:44 p.m.
Destiny studied the lab slip, willing it to speak a different truth. She had always wanted to be unique—but not like this. Julia’s type A and Tom’s type B combined to AB negative—the rarest kind of blood group.
As if all she was could be captured on a single piece of paper.
Would Julia be done with her now? Would she put her on a plane for Los Angeles and focus all her attention on Chloe? Not that Destiny wanted anyone’s attention. She already had two parents and a sister. Could she blame Julia for another twenty-four years of silence, now that Destiny had come up short?
Maybe she’d wait to tell her after Chloe got tested. If her sister were type O, Destiny could introduce her to Dillon. He and Chloe weren’t much of a match, but they were as close genetically as Destiny and he were.
Did genetics even matter? Would she have been less of a pain-in-the-gut to her parents if she had real Connors blood running in her veins? None of that mattered at this point. She was an adult, had made adult choices—not always good ones—and her life was on her.
An easy choice. Involve a parent or friend or lover—or God—and then choices got harder. Then again, deciding she would donate to Dillon hadn’t been hard at all, once she knew him. If he had the stick-up-the-spine attitude of a Jack Deschene, she might not have been inclined to consider the donation. Was that right—basing an act of self-sacrifice on the personality of the recipient? If her parents had been like that, she might be in a prison or on the street.
They had stuck with her. And so she would too. If Julia was crushed because her firstborn was incompatible, so be it. Destiny would stick with her, stick with Chloe, and see what she could do to help.
Did I get it right, God?
She closed her eyes and listened. She heard nothing. Colors swam through her mind like vibrant jewels and she thought, Yes—Dillon’s heaven.
Her phone buzzed. God doesn’t use cell phones, but glanced at it anyway. A text from Julia.
I’m in the hall. Please let me in.
Destiny shoved the lab slip into her jeans, grabbed her phone, and walked to the door.
Friday, 1:47 p.m.
Julia rushed into the suite’s sitting area and pulled Destiny into a hug. The girl melted into her as if they had been doing this for a lifetime.
“I have to leave,” she said. “Dillon’s back in the hospital. He needs me.”
Destiny pulled away, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I never should have asked you to do something so . . . extreme. And then leave you in Colorado. I’ll make sure you have a flight home.”
“Just shut up for once.” Her daughter pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket. “This is what I’m sorry for.”
Julia smoothed it out, squinting to understand what she was looking at. “Oh, God,” she cried and the anger swept through her, and she drew back her arm and was about to punch a wall—
—when Destiny caught her arm and held her. She pulled her into a hug now, holding Julia as they both sobbed. Chloe watched from her bedroom door.
“Thank you,” Julia said between gasps.
“I’m not good enough,” Destiny said.
“You’re everything you need to be. That’s all that matters.”
“I wanted to be Dillon’s sister. Now that I know him.”
“That doesn’t change.” Julia used her sleeve to soak up Destiny’s tears. Destiny did the same for her and they both laughed.
Chloe wrapped her arms around both of them. “What’s wrong?”
Jack appeared—out of nowhere, it seemed—with a box of tissues. Chloe wiped their faces while he went to the mini-bar and brought them each a bottle of water.
Julia handed Chloe the lab slip. Her eyes widened. “You got tested, Dez?”
Destiny nodded, wiped away more tears. “I’m not compatible.”
“Where did you get tested? I’ll go,” Chloe said.
Julia held her breath, waiting for Jack to forbid it. Instead, he said, “I’ll take her before we meet with Pastor Hamlin.”
“What?” Destiny said. “You’re in on this now?”
“She wants to,” Jack said. “So I’ll support her in that.”
“Who gave you happy juice?”
He laughed.
Chloe would never make it through the psychological screening. Julia couldn’t tell her that, could only pray that Chloe would be compatible and would be smart enough to fake her way through the screenings.
Julia gently disengaged from Destiny and hugged Jack. “Thank you.”
“We’ll be okay,” he whispered. “I promise.”
“I told him about the video,” Chloe said.
Destiny doubl
ed over, sinking to her knees with her phone in hand. “Oh, God help me, please don’t do this.”
Everyone turned to look at Destiny. Jack helped her up while Chloe took the phone from her. She read a text, hand to her mouth, and then handed the phone to Julia.
Luke in ICU, coma from head injury. Cedars-Sinai. Come NOW. Not good.
“This is my fault,” Destiny said. “My fault.”
“Not your fault,” Julia said, pulling her close.
“I’ll book a flight to Los Angeles,” Jack said. “We can go with her. I understand you’ve got to head home.”
“I’ve got the jet,” Julia said, cradling Destiny. “Sally can get us there right away.”
“Dillon,” Chloe said. “You need to get to Dallas.”
“And I will. After I get Destiny settled. You two have some work to do here. Correct?”
Jack put his arm around Chloe. “Yes, we do.”
Chloe leaned into him and Julia thought, You are the God who sees. You are the Father who knows. Now please be the God who makes whole.
On the Plane to Los Angeles
Friday, 2:30 p.m.
Julia tried to take Destiny’s hand.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I hate you.” Hate felt good. It was the only thing Destiny had left as fear spun in her stomach like a razor-edged propeller.
“I get you’re angry.”
“You think?”
They were scheduled to land in Burbank in two hours. Just in time for Los Angeles rush hour. They had to make it in time—please, God.
No. Look what dabbling in God got Luke. And what good had faith ever done for Julia? “This is your fault.”
“Please. Tell me how,” Julia said.
“If you had stayed in Dallas, Chloe would still be an oblivious college student and Stepford wife. And if you had stayed in Dallas and minded your own business, Luke would be okay.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I wouldn’t have left him.”
“May I remind you—you were in the process of throwing him out when I turned the corner. I heard you shouting with the car windows up.”
“I was trying to make a point. Because you Christians love to talk talk talk but when it comes time to listen, you just spout and then spout some more.”
“Your break-up had nothing to do with me. Unless you want to blame me for how you push people away. Because you have a right to do that, correct? That’s what you’ve told yourself your whole life. You were abandoned by your birth mother. So you had the right to put people at arm’s length in case they wanted to abandon you.”
Destiny got up, walked the ten paces to the back of the plane, back to the front. Trapped in a tin can with her fury and this woman who had disrupted everything less than a week ago. “That’s a load of crappy psychobabble. You don’t like that I can stand on my own two feet—unlike your other daughter who can’t make it a day without some man in her life.”
“You don’t stand on your own two feet. You stand on your manufactured anger and your sharp tongue.”
“And you stand on your old-time religion. So who’s deceiving themselves? Huh? You’re as ticked as I am. You admitted it—you want to take a swing at God, but He’s not exactly showing His face, is He?”
“Do you think my anger or yours is powerful enough to keep Him away?”
Destiny spread her arms wide. “Do you see Him here? Do you?”
“I see you in a private jet, rushing to be with the man you love. What if I just left you to go to Los Angeles on your own? Would you rather wait in a ticketing line, then security, and then wait in a boarding line, only to have to make a connection somewhere? Look all around you and see His provision.”
“That what if game doesn’t work with me. Never has. Not going to start now.”
“So you haven’t played what if from the time your parents told you that you were adopted?” Julia smiled, pointed her cast at Destiny. “You have, haven’t you?”
“Every child plays that game. What if I were a princess or a professional baseball player or rock star? What if my daddy had a zillion bucks and I could have a pony? It’s fantasy. But Luke, he was—he is—reality.”
“And what is Luke’s reality?”
“He’s confused.”
“Do you really think that, Destiny?” Julia stood, blocked her path so Destiny was trapped between the cockpit door and the first row of seats. “And if Luke were here, he’d be asking you, ‘What if God is real, Destiny? And what if He is right? What if the biggest leap of faith one can make is to assume that there is a God?’”
“You don’t even know Luke, so don’t try to put words in his mouth. Nor do you know me, so save your sermon for someone who buys your bull. I’m done with it, done with it all.”
Colorado Springs
Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Chloe stared at her birth father and his wife. What kind of insanity is this?
Jack made polite and intelligent small talk with Andrew Hamlin while she sat like a lump, embarrassment backing up her throat so that she could barely breathe.
Kathleen Hamlin alternated between glaring at her husband and studiously avoiding Chloe.
This had been a terrible twenty-four hours for the Hamlins. The revelation of what Andrew had tried to bury forever. Now to be face-to-face with the product of his affair had to be devastating. Why they even agreed to see her was a mystery. And what was she supposed to get out of this? With Destiny and Julia on their way to Los Angeles—and two lives on the edge—what did any of this matter?
“Do you hate me, Mrs. Hamlin?” Chloe said, interrupting the stream of conversation.
“Right about now I pretty much hate my husband. But this isn’t your fault.” Katie glanced her way, tried to force a smile.
“I’m the face of what your husband did. How can you even look at me?”
Jack squeezed her hand, remained silent.
“You are the face of the redemption of what Julia and I did,” Andy said.
Chloe looked at Katie. “Do you believe that?”
“I have to. I have no choice. There’s no other way to make sense of what they did. You go into marriage with expectations. And when those expectations are dashed to bits—you just let God make sense of it when you can’t possibly. Not that I’m particularly fond of God right now . . . but we’ll be okay.”
“I was wrong in so many ways,” Andy said. “I let Julia walk out of IronWorks and I never called to make sure she was all right. The pregnancy never occurred to me, not once. I was consumed with guilt and trying to hide that guilt from Katie. For years, the affair ate at me. And then it got to the point where the callous was hard enough that I could persuade myself it didn’t really happen. But God knows the heart, and not telling Katie was like a cancer growing deep under the skin.
“When Julia and Matt arrived here yesterday, my first thought was to make them go away. I don’t think the Whittakers would have forced the encounter. Katie saw something in my face, said we had to meet with them. So after twenty-four years, I had to confess what I had done. What I should have confessed to her when she came to Albany all those years ago.”
“Mrs. Hamlin, you’re being so calm about it,” Jack said.
She laughed. “Oh, honey, I had a stormy night. And it’s not over, not by a long shot. Andrew and I—we’re going to need rain gear, trust me.”
“How will you do it?” Chloe clutched Jack’s hand. “Tell me how you go on when you’ve betrayed the one you love.”
Andy glanced at Jack. “You acknowledge the anger and the hurt. I have to give Katie the space to do that for as long as it takes. Take however much of her pain that I can, that she’s willing to allow me to bear. And then you accept forgiveness. That’s really the harder part.”
“What if it’s too . . . ugly?” Chloe said. “The betrayal.”
Katie shook her head. “You can’t go there. When any of us fall into that trap, we’re saying the blood of our Savior is insufficient to clean
se us. That we need something more. And, Chloe, there is nothing more because there needs to be nothing more. God does not despise us for stumbling in the wrong direction. Contentment and hope don’t come from perfect living—it’s a gift, Chloe. We have to surrender our emotional and spiritual pride to accept that gift. We can’t be worthy of it. I’ve been proud of the ministry that Andrew and I built. Do you hear me—even now, I’m saying we built all this. My pride needs to take a big hit.”
“I’m a proud guy,” Jack said. “Really good at making plans for everyone else. Especially when I think I know what’s good for them.”
Chloe linked her arm through his and said, “I did something pretty bad.”
Andy and Katie listened as she told the story, and in the end—she realized they heard the worst, and they stayed. And Jack would stay too. It was a good thing.
A gift.
Los Angeles
Friday, 6:05 p.m.
Destiny clutched Julia’s arm because her legs wouldn’t hold her.
“They found him in a ravine off Mulholland,” Sean Gagnon said. He was Luke’s fellow stuntman and closest friend. “He was riding up there alone. As close as the cops can figure, it was dark and his bike hit a For Sale sign that had blown off someone’s property. It was lying in the road. It was a hefty one, supposed to be nailed to fencing but we had some high winds that night. When Public Works was called to haul it away, they saw the skid marks. One of them went halfway down the ravine and saw Luke’s bike. Deeper down . . . they found Luke.”
“Oh, God,” Destiny said.
“Hold on,” Julia said, sliding her arm around her waist.
“He went off the road, down the slope, and he was out there since Lord only knows what time yesterday.”
Destiny couldn’t beat back the scene in her head. Luke, sprawled in the darkness, lying on sand and brush. A terrible head wound. So dizzy and hurt that all he could do was open his eyes and stare up at the stars. And look for Jesus.
And where were You, Jesus, when Luke needed You?
“The cold . . . ,” she said.
“It was cold, especially in those deep canyons. He was suffering from hypothermia when they brought him in. His body temperature was a bit over ninety-four. The neurologist said that might have saved his life by slowing everything down.”
To Know You (9781401688684) Page 30
