“I didn’t know if you were going to come, so I already ordered a latte.”
“You need to be taught patience.”
“I do?” Gen asked with a laugh, closing her book and taking a sip from her cup. “Who has been harassing me for the last couple of weeks?”
“I’m sorry. I just know that time is winding down and you’ll be moving soon.”
“I have to finish this paper first before anything else happens.”
“Are you sure you have time to—”
“Yes, I do. It’s fine.”
“Mind?” I asked, pointing to the coffee bar.
She shook her head no, of course not, and I went and ordered a large vanilla latte. I was nervous. It was the first time we had been together in public, except for church, since that conversation in the hospital the night Erik almost died. I had spoken with her numerous times on the phone—though it had taken her a while to call me, and another few days to call again. She had deliberately kept her distance, always being friendly and polite and herself but never seeming to be anything more than a friend. I didn’t know where she stood on things—on us—and I didn’t want to ask her. Not yet. I found myself content to hear her voice, to express to her things I hadn’t managed to tell her before. I was elated to know she still had a place for me in her life, whatever it might be.
This meeting tonight at the bookstore had been her idea.
“So how are you doing?” she asked me when I sat down again. “How did it go?”
“Well… I did it. So I guess that’s good.”
She threw me a searching glance. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little surprised to realize it was true.
Genevie knew I had planned to visit the Larsen household, though I had forgotten to tell her about the divorce. Truth is, I had forgotten about it completely. The house was still listed under Mike and Amanda Larsen on the Web site I checked.
“So,” she said, “were they there? What did they say?”
“The Larsens separated.”
“Oh no.”
“Mrs. Larsen was there.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“She didn’t want to talk.”
“Really?” Gen asked.
“Yeah. I guess I really didn’t think it’d be easy, not after all this time. But I had hoped for something. I don’t know—anything.”
“What’d she say?”
“That she held me responsible, that I killed her daughter, that I never got the punishment I deserved. Stuff that I couldn’t reply to because I knew she was right. All I could say was ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Gen reached out and touched my hand. The gesture shocked me into silence. “That was a brave thing you did.”
“No. It was just long overdue. On the way home all I could think about was how it will be with her husband. I don’t even know where he is. He hasn’t called me in a long time.”
“I’m sure that once the time comes, it will go well.”
She still held my hand and I couldn’t help but look at her soft, slender hand in mine. She smiled and half ashamedly took it away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“No. It was all right. Really.”
“No. I shouldn’t have—”
“Why?” I asked her.
“I don’t want to complicate things.”
“How can you complicate things?”
“Sheridan.”
“Gen, I need to know something.” I couldn’t help myself any longer. Seeing her brought back too many memories. Feeling her gentle touch made me need to ask her. “Where do we stand?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“My feelings for you haven’t changed.”
“It’s not that easy, Sheridan.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. It’s not that easy.”
“Is it because you’re moving?” I asked.
“It’s more than that. It’s going to take me a while to fully trust you.”
“But I told you everything.”
“I know. It’s just—I don’t know. Please, let’s not talk about that tonight.”
I wanted to say more, but I suddenly realized how much I still loved her. I didn’t want to pressure her. And for all the time in my life that I had wasted, a simple day or a month or a year didn’t mean anything. Not anymore. “Okay,” I said simply.
“So, are you coming to the service on Sunday?”
I looked across the table at the dark-skinned beauty smiling gently at me. Sometimes she still took my breath away. “Sure. You know, I’m thinking of asking Erik to come too.”
“Think he will?”
“Maybe. I’ve mentioned it in passing, and I think he might if I give him a little push.”
“Is he receptive at all?”
I shrugged. “I’ll just tell him to come this one time. He owes me, so he will. It’s a good service.”
“The Easter service is wonderful. It’ll be the last big service I’ll attend at my church for a while.”
“You’re already counting the days until you leave?”
“It’s only a couple of weeks.”
“That soon, huh?” I was counting the days and the hours.
“I still wonder if I made the right decision.”
“Gen, come on.”
“I do.”
“We talked about this. You did. You made the right decision.”
“It’s just such a big change. I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“I don’t know much, Gen,” I said. “I have no idea what’s going to happen after I graduate. I got such a late start on my life, and I have no idea what’s in the future. And yet the one thing I do know is that you’re making the right choice. And that I’m not going to give up on us.”
“That’s two things.”
“Well, maybe I know two things then.”
“Didn’t you once say you weren’t good at long-distance relationships?”
“I said that?”
“At your parents’ house on Christmas.”
“Oh. I guess I did say that. I’m an idiot.”
“You were being honest, though.”
“I guess I was. But there are a lot of things I haven’t been good at that I’m wanting to change. That could be one of them.”
“Can it be that easy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Keeping in touch. I’m moving to California, Sheridan. It’s a long way from Chicago.”
“I know. A big change for Ralphie too. You know, Erik’s going to be pretty sad when you leave. He’s really attached to that puppy.”
“So both of you guys will be in the dumps.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, nodding and holding my hand over my heart. “I’m attached to that little guy too.”
Gen shot me a feisty look and then broke it with a laugh I knew I was really going to miss.
April 18
Dear Amy,
The school year draws to a close, and so do my letters. I feel a weight has lifted off my shoulders even as I know I still have so far to go. For years I thought my horrible mistake required my silence. Now I know that silence has been one of my mistakes these past years—that and my fear that God could not forgive me. How could I be so arrogant as to think I was above God’s forgiveness? And how could I not forgive myself if God could?
Looking at this stack of letters, I find myself thinking back to that day in the counselor’s office a couple of years back. She told me to write letters to you, even if no one ever saw them. I scoffed at the idea, just like I scoffed at every single one of those counseling sessions. I was such a hardheaded, hard-hearted guy back then. I never listened to anything. But I guess I did listen a little. At least, I started writing to you, and I believe this has helped me in many ways. I thank you for that.
Genevie’s departure nears, and I wonder how I will say good-bye. For so many years I have feared telling others
good-bye, yet I don’t fear saying that word to Gen.
That’s because I truly believe we’re not saying good-bye forever.
Sheridan
twenty-two
On Easter Sunday, I sat with Gen on one side and Erik on the other. I would love to describe some memorable and moving service that culminated in an altar call that drove my roommate out of the pew and down the aisle and on his knees before a congregation singing “Just As I Am.” I really would love to describe that. But that didn’t happen. Nothing like that happened with Erik. At least not that I could see.
God is the only one who can see in our hearts, a voice told me. And he might have been working on Erik even then. I hope he was. I know he was working on someone else, someone who still needed a lot of divine labor. A concrete-encased heart was finally being chiseled at. An iced-over soul was finally beginning to thaw. The change was slow—slower than the coming of spring—but I could feel it coming.
That morning in church, I heard about the same Jesus I had heard about on Christmas Eve. The same Lord and Savior who had ministered to the poor and the prostitutes. The same prophet who had declared himself the Son of God, who would take on all our sins and die on a cross, the same cross I had helped erect. I saw him hanging there, a man of flesh and bone, dying, mocked by strangers, abandoned by his friends. Giving up his most precious gift—life itself—that we could find it.
He did this for you, Sheridan. He died for you.
In the pew, my heart and soul were stirred. Once again I felt the guilt wash over me like a cold engulfing river. But this time, in its wake, I felt the warm, comforting flow of mercy and forgiveness. I realized he had died not only to atone for my horrible crime, an offense in which I helped to kill a young woman I would never know, but also for every other sin I had committed and would commit in the future. And he had not stopped there. It would have all been a hopeless tale if not for the glorious Easter reality: He arose from the dead. He died, was buried, and then came out of the tomb. The images and stories were familiar but they were more than just images and stories—they were the truth.
Growing up, I had never fully lived out this belief. I had held it in my heart but never nurtured it, never acted upon it. It was easy to get lost in the modern world and fall into treating the Easter reality as simply another hope-filled fairy tale, but it was so much more. Now I knew I needed to do more than simply believe what Christ had done. I needed to stake my life on it.
Thank you, Lord, I prayed silently that Easter morning. Thank you for conquering death—for giving me new life. And new hope.
I wasn’t a new creation. I was a work in progress. But the cross and the empty tomb were more than simple images. These things had happened. They had happened for a purpose.
But was there a purpose in Amy’s death? It had to be more than simply bringing me back to you, Lord.
I wondered if I would ever know the answer. Perhaps not in my lifetime. Perhaps I’d have to wait and ask God in heaven. In the meantime, though, I had work to do.
What do you want of me, Lord? What does my future hold?
I held Gen’s hand and wondered about us. On my right, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Erik’s rigid figure. What did his future hold?
We sang “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” As we got up to leave, I saw an answer to one of my prayers—to one of my questions about what the future held, and what it was all for.
Mike Larsen stood in the middle of the aisle as people passed him, walking out of church. He stood, wanting me to see him, looking uncomfortable in a suit and a thin tie. I didn’t hesitate. I started walking toward him.
Gen, right behind me, looked at Mike and then at me.
“Can you give me a few minutes?” I asked her. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay. Are you sure? I won’t be long.”
I nodded and walked over to face the father of the girl I had killed years ago.
“Well, Blake.”
“Mr. Larsen.” I didn’t understand why he was here. I didn’t know what he was going to do. But I knew I had to talk to him.
“Can I… uh… can we sit?”
I nodded and moved to an empty pew. There were only a few people left in the sanctuary, probably talking about the service and their plans for after church. I examined the slightly overweight, balding man with a profound sadness. Just as his wife had said, I could never comprehend the way I had wrecked this family’s life. And I could never expect to be forgiven.
“You gotta know I’ve been following you,” Mike said in his familiar rough voice. “That’s why I knew you came here. So I came, too. I got some things I need to tell you. I thought that maybe here you couldn’t duck me as easy.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he held up a hand. “I’m not good at this sort of thing. I know what you’re probably thinking. But you need to hear me out on a few things. Please. That’s all I want.”
I nodded.
Mike Larsen took in a breath and looked around, nervous that someone was listening, his hands shaking as he clasped them together. “My daughter became a Christian a year before she was killed. Did you know that?”
“I read it in a paper.”
“Yeah. That’s all I heard during the funeral. About her being in heaven and all that. And all I knew was that I wanted to kill you and spit in the face of God. If there was a God, how dare he take the life of my little baby. How dare he! Hate was all piled up inside of me. I blamed the whole world for my problems. I blamed you. I think mostly I blamed God.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Please… Sheridan… let me finish. I want to get this out, and I need to get it all out.”
Again, I nodded.
“My wife and I never went to church. We never cared about any of that stuff. But a friend of Amy’s took her to a youth group, and that did something to her. Changed her. You could see it in her eyes. I remember thinking during the funeral, Will I ever see my baby again? What if heaven exists? What if I’m still mad at God? Will I be with my little girl? What right do I have to be with her, anyway?
“I know now that Amy’s death served a bigger purpose. I know this. And you need to know this. What you did was wrong. It was a felony that you walked away from. And I’ll never feel right about Amy being gone. But about a year ago I found myself totally alone. My wife made me move out. Things weren’t all that good between us before, but they really went down the toilet after Amy died. Anyway, I was finally alone, living in Chicago, and all I could think of was to try to find this God Amy had supposedly found. I wanted him. Maybe he even wanted me. I don’t know. But last July, I dedicated my life to Christ and asked him to come into my heart and forgive me for my sins.
“I didn’t do this because I wanted to see Amy again—even though I do want to. I did it ‘cause I knew it was right. And my life has changed. My heart has changed, I should say. Things still need work. And I fail. I failed that time I saw you in Wendy’s. I got a temper—I need to work on that. But that’ll come in time. All you need to know is that some good came out of all that happened. You need to know this.”
I nodded, almost overcome. I already knew that something good had come out of Amy’s death, but this I never expected. I wanted to ask him how he could come to me after all this time and why he had beaten me up and if he was even going to mention it. I also wanted to tell him how deeply sorry I was—that I knew I could never give him back the daughter I took from him through a heartless and mindless act, and how I could never repay his kind words. I wanted to say so much. Instead, I simply sat weeping in the pew.
The father of the girl I had killed put a large hand on my shoulder and patted it before standing up. “I got a long ways to go before saying I’m not still mad at you,” Mike said to me. “And there’s no way I’ll ever forget what you did. But if God can forgive a sinner like me—if he can forgive all us sinners who sent him to die for us—well then, I know I can and should forgive you. And I do.”
Mike looked at me and forced a smile on his heartbroken face before walking away. I continued to sit there with tears running down my face, words failing me again as they had so often my entire life. But this time I honestly felt it was okay not to say anything, that this was the way Mike Larsen wanted it. His words, his pat on the shoulder, and his smile meant more than any number of words I could ever say to him in a million years.
April 30
Dear Amy,
My heart feels strong and alive for the first time in years. Maybe it’s the beautiful spring that has finally come. More likely, it’s the fact that I no longer carry a cache of secrets around with me. I feel lighter about everything. School is almost coming to an end, and so are many other things. But for once I’m not dreading the changes in store for me.
There is so much I need to do after I graduate. First of all, I need to make amends with some of the people I have hurt over the years. I need to repair my stale relationship with my parents. I need to tell my old buddies what has happened.
I might continue to teach piano while I look for a full-time job. And I know I want to continue with my music. What that means, I’m not sure. But I’ve been writing a lot of music these last few weeks.
I will soon be telling my best student good-bye, though. Her name is Nita. She’s ten years old and very talented, and it’s time for her to move on to someone who can take her to a new level. But I do think I made a positive impact in her life, and that feels good.
I still can’t believe the meeting with your father and the words he said to me. I feel like they were a gift, something he opened and handed over to me, something that changed my life. I know I can never return his gesture and his kindness. But somehow I feel better knowing some good came out of all this pain.
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