Sinner

by Ted Dekker

  She swallowed.“No. It’s about Jesus, who had the audacity to stand on a hill and say, ‘I am the Way, and no one will find their way into the kingdom without me, and without me you will be condemned to hell.’ The majority of the world now believes that’s hate speech.”

  Darcy hit the speed dial on her phone. “But he’s love, not hate.”

  The phone rang twice before Annie Ruling answered.

  “Darcy?” Annie sounded surprised.

  “Hello, Annie.”

  “Hold on.” Darcy could hear her tell someone that she needed to take this call, and then she was back.

  “You’re alive.”

  “More than you know,” Darcy said. “You thought I was dead?”

  “Well . . . we had our doubts. Where in the world have you been? Do you have any idea what kind of mess this has all become?”

  “Actually I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know that Paradise was incinerated last night. What I don’t know is if anyone was hurt in the blast.”

  “One dead that we know of. They were apparently warned. By you?”

  “By Billy and me.”

  The phone felt heavy in Darcy’s hand.

  “So . . .”

  “So,” Darcy agreed.

  “You’re not telling me that the reports are accurate.”

  “If they’re saying that Billy and I have seen the light and joined Johnny, then yes, the reports are accurate. We all survived the blast. Brian Kinnard—or should I say Marsuvees Black?—killed Katrina Kivi. We have her body with us.”

  Annie Ruling remained silent. Her world had just become rather more complicated. She had to choose her words carefully, Darcy knew. What Johnny, Darcy, and Billy could do as a team was hardy thinkable. Clearly Annie didn’t want them as enemies.

  “And Kinnard?”

  “He’s dead,” Darcy said.

  “We haven’t recovered a body.”

  “You won’t. Is any word of the attack on the Net?”

  “A few images, nothing except for some footage that appears to be the faithful whipped up into a frenzy. Some footage taken during the deto-nation, nothing that changes anything if that’s what you’re asking. The spin is all in our favor.”

  As they’d predicted.

  “I was wrong, Annie. Just so you know, I was wrong.”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s moot at this point, isn’t it?”

  “We have a deal for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You owe Billy and me a favor. You may not feel obligated to honor your promise to me, but I did deliver what you asked, and you do owe me.”

  “Go on.”

  “No one knows if Johnny, Billy, or I survived the attack. Let the world think we’re dead. And don’t come after us. It’s better that way for now.”

  “For now?”

  “Paradise,” Johnny said, as a reminder.

  She nodded at Johnny, who was watching her from behind his sun-glasses. “Rebuild Paradise from the ground. Pay damages to the tune of a million dollars to each resident.”

  A pause. “And in exchange?”

  “I’m not finished. Drop any case against anyone who participated in this debacle. The three thousand go home peacefully. If any lost their cars, buy them new ones.”

  “And?”

  “And in exchange we will consider your obligation to us met, and we will agree not to undermine this administration or any of those on the council. You do realize that we could bring any individual down quite easily.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, just making sure you realize we aren’t powerless. Does this work, or do I have to come out there and speak more frankly with you?”

  Annie chuckled on the other end.

  “I’ll have to make some calls—”

  “No, I want this agreed to now. You promised me far more.”

  “You step foot back in Washington and the deal is off.”

  “Agreed,” Darcy said. “And Katrina Kivi’s mother gets a federal stipend of five hundred thousand dollars to help with her daughter’s funeral.”

  Annie was silent.

  “Agreed?”

  “Fine.”

  “I want to verify all of this.”

  “You’re sure you want to do this, Darcy? We could have done so much together, you and I.”

  “We could have. But I’m seeing things differently today. It was fine working with you, Annie.”

  “And you, Darcy.”

  “I hope we don’t cross paths again. It could be a problem.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good-bye, Annie.” She hung up.

  “So she agreed, I take it?” Billy asked.

  Darcy took his hand in hers. He was the sinner but then so was she, and no less guilty than he. She would love him and cover a multitude of his sins, because she liked Billy very much.

  No, she loved him.

  Darcy squeezed his hand. “She agreed.”

  “How many do you think there are?” Billy asked, facing the burnt-out valley.

  “How many of what?”

  “Kinnards. Kellys.Makes you wonder if one of them has a 666 stamped on the crown of his head.”

  “There are three fewer than yesterday,” Johnny said, turning with him.

  They let the statement stand.

  Darcy sighed. “Now what?”

  “Now we run for the hills,” Johnny said. “We run for the hills and we pray that the end will come quickly.”

  THE END

  Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all people because of me.

  At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

  The love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom of light will be declared in the whole world as a testimony to all.

  And then the end will come.

  MATTHEW 24:9–14

  To dive deeper into how

  the themes and issues in Sinner

  are unfolding in our world today, visit

  Teddekker.com and click on the

  “Free Speech” link.

  prologue

  The view from my therapist's window is unremarkable. Four stories down, the parking lot blacktop ripples under waves of Texas's blazing summer heat. I stand here facing the view because it's easier to look at than the two men in the office behind me. There is dear Dr. Avers, the wisest old soul I have ever met. He might be eight)', judging by that wrinkled cocoa skin and his head of hair whiter than cotton, but he's agile as a fifty-year-old. My beloved brother, Rudy, is also here. He has kept me tethered to my sanity in ways that should earn him sainthood.

  Rudy comes to these sessions because he knows I need him to.

  I come—have been coming for weeks now—because I am trying to put the past behind me.

  But today I am here because tonight 1 will see my father for the first time in five months. My encounters with Landon are hard enough in the best of circumstances. They always end the same, with flaring tempers and harsh words and fresh wounds. But tonight, I must confront Landon. Not about my past, but about his future.

  Yes, I call my father by his first name. The distance it creates between us helps to dull my pain.

  "So your dilemma," Dr. Aycrs says to my back, "is that you fear the consequences of confronting him could be worse than the consequences of staying silent.

  I nod ai the pane of glass. "Of course, I'd rather avoid everything. Even Rudy thinks I should wait until I know . . . more. But if I'm right, and I don't speak up now . . ." Why am I here? I have made a mountain out of a molehill and am wasting everyone's time. I should drop this. "Landon probably won't even listen to me. Not the way he listens to you, Rude."

  "He listens to you too." Rudy says. Always looking for the
positive spin.

  The truth is. Landon docs not listen to me. But Rudy, who is deputy campaign manager of Senator Landon McAllister's bid for the United States presidency, is following in the man's footsteps and so has his undivided attention. Also, Rudy doesn't look a thing like our mother, as I do. Mama was a Guatemalan beauty with a cafe-au-lait complexion, t have had her personality and her looks since the day my head of thick black hair came in. Even today, I wear my hair short and windblown, the way she did. I have her leggy height, her long stride, her laugh.

  Against all odds, our father's recessive Irish genes won the genetic dispute over Rudy. As for me, [ have always believed it is painful for my father to look at me.

  "And [ don't think she should gloss over this," Rudy says to the therapist. "I think Shauna should step very carefully. Avoid burning more bridges with Dad, if it can be helped. If she's right, God help us all."

  I finally turn to look at my brother. "It's not my goal to burn anything, Rudy, even though I'll never have what you have with Landon." This truth pains me more than the truth of what I've learned. And what I've learned, partial though it may be, is monstrous.

  The tension headache that has started at the top of my spine spreads its fingers over the back of my head. The sickness I feel right now might come from what I suspect, or it might be rooted in my certainty that he will reject me again tonight.

  Yes, I'm pretty sure that I am nauseated by the prospect of another rejection.

  I'll never forget the first time my father turned his back on me, though the second time was more painful, and though all the times since have clumped together in a unified throbbing heartache.

  Rudy was the unwitting cause of Landon's first abandonment. My brother came into the world when I was seven, and our mother died nineteen minutes after his birth. I remember not being able to breathe when I heard she was gone. I honestly thought that I might die those first few hours, my mother and I both dead in the same day all because of this baby boy.

  Rudy was the unwitting cause of Landon's first abandonment. My brother came into the world when I was seven, and our mother died nineteen minutes after his birth. I remember not being able to breathe when I heard she was gone. I honestly thought that I might die those first few hours, my mother and I both dead in the same day all because of this baby boy.

  My father said it was God's fault, though he seemed to blame Manias passing on me. I guess I was the more tangible target.

  After Mama's doctor delivered the crushing news, my father turned away mumbling something about my uncle and carried Rudy out of the hospital without me. Uncle Trent round me two hours later, hiding behind a chair in the waiting room.

  Truth not only hurts, it shames: at the time, I wished Rudy were dead. The day I stood at the head of Mama's casket, I wondered what would happen to Rudy if I covered his squalling face tight with that silky blue blanket. Wishing that the balance of the universe might require Mama to come back.

  It took just one night for me to understand that Rudy's heart had been broken into more pieces than my own. The tears he cried for Mama came from some well that would not dry up. That night t fed him a bottle of warm milk and took him into my bed, promising to keep Mama's memory alive in this little boy who'd never met her.

  I'm twenty-eight now, and I have long since realized that the wounds of rejection do not heal with time. They reopen at the lightest touch, as deep as the first time the)' were inflicted. The pain is as real as flash floods in the wet season here in Austin, overwhelming and unstoppable.

  'The pain, even when I can successfully numb it, has kept me at a distance from people and God. Now and then I consider the irony of this: how it came to be that my mother's God, who once seemed so real and comforting to me, managed to die when she did.

  So many deaths in one night.

  And here I am, expecting yet another tonight. The death of hope. For most of my life, hatred of my father and hope of gaining his affection have lived in stressful coexistence behind my ribs.

  I'm crying and didn't even notice I had started.

  Dr. Ayers's voice is gentle. "Do you believe your father is culpable in this matter you arc investigating?".

  The question behind the question stabs at the tender spot in me that longs for Landon's love. Do you believe your father is guilty of anything more than hurting you? Do you care about truth or only about the past?.

  Somehow I care about boih. Is that possible?.

  "I believe he is capable. More ihan that..." I sniff. "I don't know yet. Very soon, though, I will. Very soon."

  Dr. Avers leans back in his leather chair and folds his wrinkled hands across his slender stomach.

  "Tell me: what do you want this confrontation to do for you?".

  Several possible answers rush me. t want to be wrong, in fact. 1 want Landon to tell me that none of what I suspect is true. I want my father to reassure me that I have nothing to worry about, that he is an upright man who would never do anything so foolish, so hurtful. Nothing like what he has done—

  Rudy's eyes bore into the side of my head, and the truth of what t really want punches me in the stomach. I step to my chair and sit.

  "I want to bring him down," I say before I think it through. "I want him to know what betrayal feels like. I want to get him back."

  My tears turn into sobs. 1 can't help it. I can't stop.

  Rudy places his hand on my knee. Not to urge me to stop bawling, but to remind me that he is by my side.

  Hatred for my father did not become a part of my life until the second time he turned his back on me.

  I was eleven. Patrice had been my stepmother for three days when she took over my upbringing, with Landon's permission. He claimed Rudy and she got me.

  Her style of parenting, if it can be called that, involved locking me in closets and burning the scrapbooks my mother had made me and refusing to feed me for a day at a time. As 1 grew I quit trying to make sense of such behavior and simply became more defiant. She responded by graduating to more extreme measures. There was no hiding our animosity for each other.

  I suspect 1 reminded her, too, of my mother.

  When she turned brazen enough to beat and burn me, though, 1 broke down and told I.andon. I showed him the triangular burns on the inside of my left arm, imprinted by Patrice's steam iron for my failure to pull my clean clothes our of the dryer before they wrinkled.

  Landon handed me a tube of ointment and turned away, saying, "If you ever go to such lengths to lie about my wife again, I'll bandage those myself. And you won't like my touch."

  My wife. He had always called Mama my love.

  Dr. Avers makes no attempt to calm me. He has said before that crying is the best balm. Eventually I fumble through my mind for the words to justify what I have said.

  "If Landon pays for what he's done, I'll get closure."

  "On what?" says Dr. Ayers.

  On my past.

  He takes a few moments to respond. Rudy produces a tissue out of thin air and I try to compose myself.

  "So you're saying that closing yourself off from your past is what you need in order to move on with your life."

  There is more than an attempt at clarity in Dr. Ayers's tone—a challenge perhaps.

  "Yes." I swipe at my nose with the tissue. "That's exactly what I'm saying. I want to put the past behind me."

  "By inflicting on your rather what he has inflicted on you. By betraying him, you said."

  "No. By forcing him to remember me."

  "Ah! 1 sec. So when he remembers you, then you will have accomplished your goal and can forget your past."

  His words fill me with confusion. The way he says it, I have this all wrong. But in my mind, my goal is—was—clear. Isn't that how it works? Deal with the past, get justice, make the pain go away?

  "Something like that," I say.

  Dr. Ayers nods as if he sees everything clearly now. He rises and comes around the desk, propping himself against the front of it and leaning toward me.


  The doctor reaches out with an aging hand and touches my shoulder. "Would you mind if I gave you an alternative theory to consider?"

  Honestly, 1 have no idea.

  Dr. Ayers straightens. "It is possible that your plan will only root you more deeply in the pain of your past, not separate you from it."

  My confusion mounts. "So how do you suggest I put my past behind me?"

  "It is behind you, dear. And that's where it will be forever. You can't make it vanish—"

  "But I want to. I believe 1 can."

  "By creating more pain? The mathematics of that isn't logical."

  "I can't just ignore it!"

  "No, that's true."

  "But you think I shouldn't confront Landon."

  "Oh, I'm not making any judgment about what you should do, Shauna. I'm only talking about your motivations. What do you really want?"

  "To forget. I want to forget every single, stinging moment that was inflicted on me by people who were supposed to love me. I want someone to take these memories away from me."

  Dr. Ayers wags a finger in my direction, smiling. "I felt that way once."

  I take a steadying breath.

  "You know I used be a reverend before I began helping people here?" 1 Ic gestures to the modest office. "Ministry of a different but no less valuable kind. Clot thrown out of my pulpit by some folks who said they loved God but hated his black children. I spent a lot of years feeling the way you do now—that if I looked far and wide enough, I'd find a way to erase both the blight of my memory and the stink of people I held responsible for my pain."

  He leans forward again, encroaching on my space. "But I discovered something better. Shauna, your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not part of the plan."

  I exhale. "God and I aren't exactly on speaking terms. Especially not about his plans for my life."