Finding Stefanie

by Susan May Warren

  “Shh . . . shh. Stop. Please stop crying.”

  She couldn’t help it. She was trying to do everything right, trying to honor her father and become a good missionary, but Gideon’s words hurt. Why? Why couldn’t she have him? She was so confused . . . so . . .

  She turned in his arms and looked up at him. He thumbed away a tear from her cheek. The streetlight touched his face, made his dark eyes glisten, and she couldn’t help it. “I want . . . you to be my boyfriend too. . . .”

  His hand went behind her neck, but his eyes stayed on her. He tried a smile, but it came out lopsided and funny. “Can I . . . do you think . . . ?” He swallowed. “I’d really like to kiss you, Libby.”

  She nodded, and there was a real smile on his face a second before he kissed her gently on the lips. It was everything she’d hoped for, everything she’d remembered. A thread of sweet pleasure twined around her heart with his touch, so Gideon-like—kind and protective and tender. She wound her hands into his T-shirt and let herself kiss him back. He smelled so good, of the outdoors and hard work. He was her best friend; his was the smile she longed for at the end of the day. Gideon. How did she expect to leave him at the end . . . ?

  She pulled away. “I still have to leave for college.”

  He touched his forehead to hers. “Yeah, I know. But three months is a long time. And maybe I might surprise you. Maybe I’ll go away to college too.”

  He kissed her again, wrapping his arms around her. But the bath of light in the street reminded her that anyone could be watching. In fact, her father could be standing at his window down the street. Wouldn’t that be a fun conversation to have? So she pulled away again. “I gotta go.”

  Gideon nodded and blew out a breath, scooting away from her. “I’m going to ask your dad.”

  She stopped with her hand on the door latch. “Ask . . . ?”

  “If I can take you out on a date.”

  Oh. “Maybe you should go to church first.”

  Gideon smiled. “See you Sunday. And then I’ll ask him.”

  Libby nearly floated as she got out of the car. Certainly her father would say yes if he met Gideon, really saw his heart. Please, God, can’t You make that happen?

  She looked over her shoulder twice and saw Gideon sitting there as she walked from the pool of light toward her house. She heard his car start up and pull away but didn’t turn because he was behind her and she knew he’d follow her.

  She was nearly to her alley when she heard the car pull up behind her quickly, the door opening. Suddenly a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream and pulling her backward. What—Gideon?

  She tried to turn, managing a kick to his shin, but he pulled her back, and she fell with him into the backseat.

  She bit hard into the hand, and whoever had her swore and slapped her. Then, as he held her arms behind her back, the car peeled out, away from town, into the night.

  “Gideon!”

  CHAPTER 18

  GIDEON COULDN’T REMEMBER a time when he’d felt this happy, this right about anything. He’d thought that the mistakes he made would haunt him forever. But fate—no, maybe God, like he’d told Libby—had helped him escape it. These past two months had set him free from all the refuse that cluttered his life. For the first time he had a home and people who believed in him. He had a good job and was learning to take care of animals and people. Macey had stopped cutting herself, and Haley had begun to speak, even to him.

  Last night Haley had climbed onto the sofa beside him, leaned over, and kissed his bandage. Like his mother might have done. The act had left him without words, his throat so full he thought he might cry.

  Gideon watched Libby now as she disappeared down the street, then tried to start his car. The engine didn’t roll over right away. This stupid car. When he’d seen it on the road, it had been marked for towing, abandoned, he thought, because of its downright ugliness. He should probably put the sign back on it. He saw another car drive by him. Libby had disappeared into the darkness between town and her house. “C’mon!”

  The engine finally turned over, and he put the car into drive. He didn’t really think that anything would ever happen to Libby; after all, Phillips was about the safest place he’d ever been. He just liked her smile to be the last thing he saw every day, to take it home with him in his chest.

  Still, as he drove closer, something irked him about the way the car that had just passed him tore away from . . . Libby’s house.

  A scream. Gideon’s lights flashed against the back window of the sedan and he saw bodies. One of them struggling.

  He choked on his panic as he drew closer, honking. Libby?

  His infuriating Impala coughed, refusing to respond. “Please, please, don’t die on me!”

  He gunned the gas, and his lights scraped the back end of the car before it edged ahead of him and blinked out completely in the dark. Why was it driving without its lights?

  The night seemed to swallow the landscape, the car, everything. Please . . . God. Please! He hadn’t lied when he told Libby he’d attended church in jail, had even begun wearing a cross around his neck as a sort of hope in what he’d learned, the faith he tried to have in the Savior he’d met. He especially hadn’t lied when he told her he’d attend now, but as he floored the gas pedal, he made every promise he could think of. Please, God!

  The road cut to the left, and he nearly careened off it into one of the fields, but he knew the route well enough to react. The Impala spun out and stopped in a puff of dust. As it cleared, as his heart thundered in his throat, he saw the briefest flash of lights on a side road behind him.

  A car door opening?

  Libby!

  He floored it back to the road and discovered a rutted track over a cow gate leading off into a field. He cut his lights and prayed that he didn’t bottom out or go over a gully. God gave him enough light from the moon to see the silvery grass. He rolled down his window. And heard screams.

  Everything inside him began to boil. By the time he spotted the car, he was halfway out of his own. He hit the ground running, letting his Impala, engine still running, roll toward the brown sedan that he recognized now from Lincoln’s work site.

  Luther.

  The sounds of scuffling, of pain, erupted from a gully, and he launched himself right off the edge of it, landing on JB Denton. Gideon hit his chin on a rock and tasted blood in his mouth, but he came up swinging. JB had seemed twice his size and tough as a bull at the work site, but he went down when Gideon unloaded on him. Gideon spotted Luther coming at him but kept his attention on JB and finding a home for his fist right in the center of JB’s nose. JB went down, blood spurting through his fingers.

  Gideon turned to meet Luther, but he was already in midair. He tackled Gideon; they crashed into the rocky bed. Something inside Gideon cracked, and pain speared through him, but he sent his elbow into Luther’s ear, his nose, his eye. Luther rolled off him, and Gideon bounced up, hesitating between sending his boot into Luther’s gut or going to Libby.

  Libby sat in a ball, rolled into herself, hand over her bleeding mouth as she stared at Gideon.

  Gideon sent a final “stay down” message to Luther with his boot, then ran to Libby, hauling her up by her elbows. “Libby!”

  She seemed dazed and looked at him as though she didn’t know him.

  “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” He knew that was the stupidest question ever—of course they’d hurt her. Her shirt was torn, her mouth was bleeding, and by the looks of her bloodied fists, she’d put up a fight.

  “Oh, Libby . . .” Without looking back, he lifted her into his arms. She didn’t move, didn’t cling to him, didn’t cry.

  He didn’t know if that was a bad thing or not. Or where to take her.

  He put her in the Impala, which had slammed into the sedan, and backed away from the crash, then turned the car around.

  Libby watched him with wide, glassy eyes.

  “Please . . .” Was he too late? He reache
d out to take her hand, but it was cold and limp.

  He didn’t know where to go, so, afraid and panicked, he drove to the closest ranch.

  The home of Lincoln Cash.

  Lincoln leaned back in his chair, listening to the nurse’s assessment of Alyssa’s condition. They had stabilized her night terrors, and the frequency of her seizures had lessened. But she was still largely catatonic, unresponsive to the world.

  “Perhaps if you came to visit,” the nurse said, referring to the way Alyssa had reacted to Lincoln’s visit six-plus months ago. Her response—the way her eyes lit up as if recognizing his voice—had made him vow to return more often. A vow he had forgotten, being too consumed with his own terrors to keep that one.

  He clenched his fist, watching it tremble just slightly. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He hung up and sat in his dark office. He wondered if that was how his disease would crawl over him, making him unable to react to the world, overwhelming him until it trapped him in a dark, terrifying place.

  He’d been having his own version of night terrors.

  Only tonight, for the first time in a week, he didn’t see his life spiraling away, out of his reach. No, he’d had a nice dinner with Stefanie, listened to her talk about Macey and Haley and their recent training efforts with Bill. He’d laughed at her sorry efforts to use chopsticks and lingered after she’d kissed him good night at the door, thinking about Nick’s definition of love.

  He’d sat in his office a long time wondering if this was how his life could look. He might be okay after all.

  Lights skimmed his windows, and he heard a horn honking as tires skidded to a halt on the gravel drive.

  Lincoln was just finding his feet when Gideon roared in through his front door, looking like he’d done a few rounds in a Lincoln Cash movie.

  “Help! Please help!” Gideon whirled and ran back outside.

  Lincoln followed him down the front steps and peered in the open door of the rusty Impala. Libby Pike sat curled in the front seat, bleeding from her mouth.

  Something sick went through Lincoln. He rounded on Gideon, everything inside him boiling. “What the—?”

  “It wasn’t me, dude! I wouldn’t hurt her!” A broken look came over his face, a sort of desperation. “I swear I didn’t hurt her. It was Luther and JB.”

  And just like that, Lincoln believed him. He’d had a look not unlike Gideon’s once—horror at seeing someone he cared about hurt, possibly because of him. On that long-ago day, Lincoln had watched his countenance in the hospital windows morph from revenge to disbelief to remorse. He wasn’t sure if his expression had ever really changed.

  “What happened to her?” Lincoln climbed into the driver’s seat. “Are you okay?” he asked Libby.

  Libby lost it, starting to cry and shake.

  Lincoln reached out for her. She recoiled. “Libby, let me help you,” Lincoln said, but she was curled into a ball, and he knew he couldn’t possibly move her. “Gideon, go around to the passenger side; lift her out.”

  After Gideon carried her into the house, Lincoln debated only a half second before he got on the phone to the sheriff.

  Sorry, Gideon.

  When he hung up, he went upstairs to where Gideon sat with the sobbing girl. Gideon was crying a little too, and from the looks of his busted face and the way he’d winced when he carried Libby up the stairs, Lincoln knew there was more to his hurt than Libby’s wounds.

  “Gideon, I had to call the sheriff,” he finally said.

  Gideon sat on the bed, holding Libby, smoothing her hair. He looked over the top of her head and nodded. The look on his face told Lincoln that he didn’t care if Social Services found him and hauled him and even his sisters back to whatever group home they’d escaped from.

  “And I think you both need to see a doctor.”

  Gideon nodded again.

  Then Lincoln went back downstairs and called the pastor.

  He was standing in the living room when Pike arrived, and he blocked the stairway before the pastor could go upstairs. “What you see isn’t Gideon’s fault,” he said, but Pike pushed past him.

  Lincoln winced at Pike’s sharp intake of breath when he saw Libby, at the pain he saw in the pastor’s eyes.

  Lincoln had studied characters for years, and he supposed he might look exactly the same way if someone he loved had been hurt like Libby. He might even turn on the person he blamed, his hands fisted, as if he’d like to use them, just like Pastor Pike rounded on Gideon.

  “What did you do?” Pike roared.

  Lincoln had to give the pastor credit for not diving at Gideon’s throat, even though the evidence on Gideon’s face suggested that the boy had done battle saving Libby’s honor . . . maybe even her life.

  She hadn’t stopped crying.

  Gideon stared at Pike, eyes wide, everything on his face screaming guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said, which might have been the worst possible thing to say because the pastor had a nearly rabid look on his face. Gideon followed up fast with, “I tried to protect her.”

  “You did this to her—”

  “No!” Gideon shook his head, defending himself even as Pike yanked his grip from his daughter, pushed him onto the floor. “I didn’t hurt her. I’d never hurt her.”

  “C’mon, Libby,” Pike said, scooping her into his arms. She curled into his chest, still crying. He cast a look loaded with fire and brimstone at Gideon and carried her toward the stairs.

  “She needs to go to the hospital.”

  “I know!” Pike snapped. “I’ll take her.”

  “I think Gideon needs to go too,” Lincoln said softly. In fact, Gideon wasn’t looking good at all. “But I called the cops.”

  “Then you wait for them. I don’t care. I’m taking Libby.” He looked back at Gideon. “You’d better be out of this town by the time I get back from Sheridan.”

  Lincoln opened his mouth, then closed it and glanced at Gideon.

  The look on his face told Lincoln that Pike could likely expect exactly that. Don’t go, kid. Don’t run. Years ago, Lincoln had hit the road, putting as much distance between his mistakes and himself as he could. And he’d never figured out how to return.

  He had to give Gideon points for courage, however, because he stuck around, groaning as a deputy showed up and took his statement. Lincoln asked if he should call Stefanie, but Gideon looked at him with such despair that he decided it could wait.

  Gideon was eighteen. And apparently old enough to look after himself.

  With his eyesight still occasionally cutting out, the fact that his foot felt sluggish on the gas, and the memory of his recent accident in his mind, the last thing Lincoln wanted to do was climb behind the wheel of Gideon’s clunker. But with his truck still dead in the garage, waiting to be hauled in for repairs, and Gideon doubled over in pain, Lincoln had little choice. “Hang in there, Gideon. We’ll get there.”

  By the time they pulled into the emergency entrance, Gideon’s skin was ashen, and last time he’d coughed, blood had come up.

  Lincoln got out, grabbed a wheelchair, and pulled it up to the car, his hands shaking, only this time he had to believe it was the adrenaline pouring through his body and not a flare-up. The trembling didn’t stop, though, even after they wheeled Gideon away, even after Lincoln signed the papers saying he’d be responsible for the kid’s medical expenses.

  By the time Lincoln had gotten the paperwork processed, they’d already taken Gideon to surgery to stop the internal bleeding his broken rib had caused.

  Lincoln dialed Stefanie’s number and listened to the phone ring, each drone a moan of dread until she picked up. Then he explained quietly, in a voice he’d heard her use.

  “Don’t let him die, Linc,” she said, as if he had some magical power to stop their worst fears. He could already hear her jangling her car keys.

  Like a fool he answered, “No, I won’t.”

  He felt folded inside out, all his raw and ugly e
dges showing as he considered the orange molded waiting room chairs. Why couldn’t waiting rooms be filled with soft lights, soothing music, leather sofas? Lincoln wandered the halls. At 4 a.m., the hospital was a lonely place.

  Lincoln found Pastor Pike shortly before dawn sitting at the end of the hall on the second floor, his hands over his face. He stood there at the apex between two hallways, caught in indecision.

  The pastor met Lincoln’s eyes with such a look of sorrow that Lincoln moved in his direction. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Pike’s treatment of Gideon, but he was remembering a scene he’d done in Unshackled, where the hero, unable to help the person he loved, had poured out his helplessness by splitting wood. As that scene rushed back to him, he saw the same frustration on Pike’s face. He’d like to be splitting wood . . . if not something else.

  “You know he didn’t do it,” Lincoln said, sitting.

  Pike didn’t need a name. “He probably saved her life.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “No.” Pike covered his forehead with his hand. “No, thank God.”

  “And thank Gideon.”

  Pike looked up at him. “And Gideon.”

  “He really loves Libby, you know. Maybe he deserves a second chance.”

  Pike leaned back, his head against the window. Darkness still shrouded the Bighorn Mountains, although the slightest filter of gray had begun to lighten the gullies, dissipate the lights in the parking lot.

  Pike spoke quietly, not to Lincoln, it seemed, although he was the only one in the hall. “It’s not easy to raise two daughters alone. I gave myself excuses for how I protected them, even how I judged the people they spent time with. Missy was always so opinionated and strong, and she knew exactly what she wanted. But Libby is softer. More gullible.”

  “Maybe she saw something in Gideon the rest of us couldn’t see.”

  “You saw it.” Pike’s tone held self-recrimination.

  No, Lincoln mostly saw himself in Gideon. But he didn’t say that. “You said something in a service I attended—”