by Bodie Thoene
Adam interrupted the small talk. “What is it you need, Mister Bittner? Why did your client ask to see me?”
It was clear from Bittner’s expression that he had no idea why. He answered all the same. “Well, my client would like to know if the church has made a decision. To remove the star … or will you rally the faithful to follow it to the Supreme Court?”
Adam replied, “There’s a public hearing tonight. Is that all?”
Cutter addressed the issue of his wife. “She was ‘saved’ in his church. Doesn’t just attend.”
Bittner said, “I’m sorry, John, is there another matter?”
Cutter, an official-looking file in his hands, stepped to the bars and addressed Adam and Bittner. “My wife, Mister Bittner, got ‘born again’ in his church. Isn’t that right, Pastor?”
“Yes,” Adam answered.
Cutter smiled coldly at Adam, then held up the file. “Know what’s in this file, son?”
Adam scanned the label: WELLS, ADAM: STERLING INVESTIGATION AGENCY, WASHINGTON, DC, CASE #098654.
Bittner, suddenly alarmed by his client’s actions, hissed, “Would like to know where you’re going with this, Senator. That file is—”
Cutter addressed Adam. “Opposition research.”
“—privileged,” Bittner finished.
Cutter did not take his eyes from Adam’s face. “‘Bout you, son.” Cutter handed the file to Bittner. “Read the highlights aloud, if you would, Mr. Bittner.”
Bittner hesitated. “Like I said, John, the information in that file is—”
Cutter argued, “The privilege of the one who paid for the investigation.”
Adam defended, “I don’t know what you think you have in your file, but I’ve been preaching the gospel since I was—”
Cutter filled in the blanks. “Six. Braces at thirteen. Busted femur bone at ten. Lost mama to ovarian cancer at eight. Daddy died eleven years after your wedding day. Know more about you and yours than you know yourself. Can assure you of that. Even know what had you in and out of the Taylor Police Department records room three times last year.” Cutter knew he was striking Adam close to home. “Just read what’s in the yellow, Mister Bittner.”
Bittner opened the file. Adam saw the yellow highlights throughout the document.
Chapter Fourteen
HEADS TURNED as the silver Porsche rolled into the high school parking lot. Anne and Calvin sat in silence a moment.
Calvin asked, “Your high school, huh?”
“I go here.” The first bell rang. “So, um, thanks for the ride.” Anne grabbed her backpack, opened the car door, and climbed out.
“Wait, Anne. I have a gift.” Calvin opened the glove box.
She eyed him warily. “A gift. Okay.”
Calvin jumped out of the Porsche and carried a small white box to Anne. “Here. Open it.”
Anne opened the box, revealing a grotesque gargoyle necklace. “Wow, really.”
“So, like, what’d you think?”
“Think Adam doesn’t like it when I bring demons home.”
“Not giving the gargoyle to the Ad-man. Giving him to you, Anne.”
“Then, I think, why are you giving me a gift? You don’t even know …”
Calvin smiled. “Isn’t a gift appropriate on a birthday? Your mother told me it was your birthday today. I was at your house last—”
“I know.”
“Of course, if you don’t want him, you don’t have to—”
“No. I’ll name him Chuckles.”
Calvin seemed pleased as he slipped the chain around her neck. “Class president. Scholarship basketball. Not just some boy Maurene knew in high school.”
Anne considered him. “Wow, really.”
The second bell rang. “You and Chuckles better get to class. Don’t wanna make you tardy.”
She started to leave but said quietly, “She always makes pancakes on my birthday. A piping hot stack with a candle that’s also a number on top.”
He asked, “And this morning?”
“Forgot.”
“Well, she remembered last night, Anne.”
“And you picked up Chuckles at the Quickmart this morning.”
“Something like that.”
Anne stared at Calvin. Still unsatisfied with his vague explanation, she hurried into the school.
Calvin waited until Anne disappeared into the building before he climbed into the Porsche and picked up his cell phone. Dialing the number he had scrawled on a scrap of paper, he pushed SEND.
“Senator Whitmore. Friend of John Cutter. That’s right, Senator John Cutter. He is … he’s expecting my …”
Looking into the rearview mirror, Calvin spotted Maurene’s blue minivan idling into the parking lot behind him.
“I’ll need to get back to you, Senator Whitmore. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. Thank you.”
Late for class, Anne caught Stephen’s eye as she slipped into Mrs. Harper’s classroom. Susan Dillard was speaking. A ridiculous poster of a tabby cat in a bonnet was on the easel beside her.
Susan simpered about the cat, “You were giving us signs, but we refused to see …”
Anne looked out the window as her mother’s minivan pulled up beside the silver Porsche.
Susan went on with great drama, “Then finally the reality hit me. And I cried all day and all night long.”
Both vehicles cruised slowly out of the parking lot. “Not just a boy Maurene knew in high school …”
Suddenly the window blinds crashed down, blocking her view.
“Eyes forward, Miss Wells!” commanded Mrs. Harper. “Unless you’d like me to call Pastor Wells so you can explain to your father why you were so late to my class this morning.”
Glowering at Mrs. Harper, Anne craned around to set her murderous gaze upon Susan who, at the front of the class, swallowed hard and flashed a phony grin.
Mrs. Harper crossed her arms. “You may continue, Miss Dillard.”
Susan stammered, “Well, I …”
Mrs. Harper urged, “Please, Susan! Continue!”
Susan resumed her insipid poetic essay: “Why don’t you just purr? Please go back to the way you were.”
Anne stared in disbelief at Susan and the poster-size photograph of the cat.
Susan poured pathos into her delivery. “Don’t you want some tuna fish? Just one bite is all I wish. Then suddenly everything seemed to be okay, because you weren’t going to hurt another day.”
A loud bang, like a gunshot, erupted from the back of the class. Susan screamed. Mrs. Harper ducked.
Pearl City! Columbine!
The whole class started and then dissolved into snickering. Mrs. Harper’s eyes crept up above the desktop to find Stephen standing beside Anne’s vacant desk.
He explained, “Was jus’ the door, ma’am. It slammed when Annie ran out.”
Anne, right outside the door, narrowed her eyes and grinned.
Chapter Fifteen
ANNE CUT ACROSS THE FIELD through the tree farm, following the two vehicles. When Calvin and Maurene rolled to a stop along the dirt farm road, Annie took shelter in the clump of willows a mere fifteen yards away. She crouched lower as her mother leaped from the minivan and marched back to Calvin’s Porsche.
Maurene’s anger boiled over as Calvin smirked through the window. “I sent you an e-mail specifically telling you not to come here.”
Calvin, still smiling at Maurene, cranked up the radio, playing the eighties’ music he had given her last night. “I know how you still worship these guys, Reney.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I mean, how could you not? The big hair. The spandex. Know what the lead singer’s doing now, Reney?”
“I’m not … I don’t …”
“He manages a Pack-n-Save in Kansas, and he’s bald as an extraterrestrial. One minute he’s calling out to evil spirits of the netherworld in front of a sold-out crowd at Cobo Arena, and next he’s calling out for a cleanup on aisle fi
fteen. Behind the freakin’ music, huh?”
“Go home, Calvin! Just go home!” Maurene pleaded.
“I wanted to see you again.” He switched off the music. “I mean, I was really psyched to see you at the reunion, so when you didn’t show I started seeing you everywhere, which is why—”
“I chose Adam, Calvin. Not you.”
“Call me Callie, Reney.”
“So don’t ever try and see me again. Ever again. Do you … Please tell me you understand?” Now Maurene was begging.
“Question’s still did the Ad-man choose you, isn’t it, Reney? Hey, I’m staying at the Starlight Motel in Wilma. Room 215. Have a few inquiries of my own. Didn’t feel comfortable discussing in front of your husband.”
Calvin turned the ignition, slipped the car into gear, and sped
off.
Tears stung Anne’s eyes as she watched her mother climb wearily into the minivan. The driver’s side door was still open when Maurene noticed a folded sheet of paper sticking out of the hymnal on the dashboard. When she pulled it out and read it, tears began streaming down her cheeks. Then, crumpling the paper, Maurene threw it to the ground in a cry of anguish.
Anne remained concealed while her mother sat, sobbing, in the idling vehicle for what seemed like an eternity. And then Maurene drove slowly away.
For a long time Anne stared at the wadded sheet of paper that hung on the verge of a rut in the road. At last she straightened herself and walked cautiously to retrieve it. Opening the paper slowly, she saw her mother’s reply e-mail to Calvin Clayman. Scrawled on the bottom was Adam’s angry handwriting, in all capital letters: WHY DID YOU LIE ABOUT HIS E-MAIL, MAURENE? The word LIE was underlined three times. The pen had cut through the paper.
Anne’s mind raced to put together the pieces, but she was numb. Yet, somehow, she felt her feet moving. She wasn’t sure of the direction but found herself standing in front of the garden shed at the tree farm.
The window was already broken. Anne reached through jagged shards of glass, unlocked and turned the knob from the inside. Hinges creaked as the door swung open, and Anne slipped in.
A wheelbarrow leaned against the wall. She remembered raking autumn leaves at the church in Michigan as a tiny girl. Adam had heaped the leaves in a pile so she and her friends could run and jump in them. And then he had given her wheelbarrow rides around and around the trees. Other families in the congregation had joined in until the fall cleanup had become a celebration.
Home. Was that the last time she had been really, completely happy? Anne wondered.
She rolled up her sleeves and stared at her forearms as though the scars on her flesh belonged to someone else. She thought of Midnight’s scars, the roadmap carved into the hide of that sweet and beautiful horse. Michigan. Montana. Two cities in California. And now … Texas.
Where along the road had Anne lost her ability to return a smile?
She sank onto an upturned crate among shovels, rakes, and sharp pruning shears. Morning sunlight glinted on the razor-sharp pieces of glass. If she reached up, dropped her wrist down hard …
Her mother could say, “It was a terrible accident. She didn’t mean to.”
She imagined them finding her here in the garden shed—lifeless in the midst of a pool of liquid scarlet. She saw them loading her limp body into the wheelbarrow, rolling her to a new grave in the old church cemetery, planting her there.
Would a tree grow from her grave?
Would her mother plant yellow tulips—her mother’s favorite flower?
Would anyone know that it had not been an accident?
Would anyone care?
Where, along the road to this day, had Anne lost her joy?
She reached for a shard of glass.
Closing her eyes, she remembered Doctor Cruz’s instruction: “Anne, the happy thoughts are just as easy as the dark thoughts.”
She searched her memory for one—even one—happy thought. She whispered, “Oh, Jesus! Help me! I can’t remember …”
Then the scent of Stephen’s barn, the gentle nicker of the horse, came clear in her mind. “Midnight.” She spoke the mare’s name aloud.
Stephen’s words returned. “Just scars. Not anything we can’t live with. She’s got heart, this girl. What happened in the past … doesn’t make one bit of difference to her bein’ sound … not one bit.”
Anne rummaged in her backpack for her cell phone. She switched it on. A glance showed four frantic texts from her mom:
Anne! You must take your medicine!
Please come home!
Where are you?
Worried sick about you!
One text from Stephen followed:
Annie-girl. Praying for you. Meet me and Midnight at twilight.
You know the place … where we can almost see the farthest star.
Bittner was relentless, quietly cruel, as he recited the yellow highlighted points of Adam’s life. Cutter smirked behind the bars of his cell.
Adam, in response, seemed blank and unaffected.
Bittner mocked, “You were on the fast track in the God biz, Adam. Thanks to your father, megachurch pastor Jacob Wells. Time, Life, and People all did hope-for-tomorrow pieces on the ‘Miracle Preacher Boy.’ And yet, at his retirement, Jacob Wells hands his megachurch over to a graduate from Bob Jones University who shows up for an interview … instead of to his own son.”
Bittner hesitated and Cutter chimed in. “What’d he do to so disappoint Time and Life and People, Mr. Bittner?”
“We know what he did, sir.”
Lifting his chin, Adam snorted. he studied the jailhouse graffiti adorning the walls, unconcerned with the ominous exchange.
Cutter continued the narrative, amusement in his voice. “He got married, Mister Bittner. To Maurene Anne O’Connor in June. Then, in December of that same year, Maurene Wells gives birth to a seven-pound three-ounce baby girl. Little more than two months pregnant with this child when they said, ‘I do.’ That’s what he did.”
Adam plucked at a bit of lint from his sleeve. Though his eyes narrowed, his expression remained calmly confident.
Bittner closed the file. “Clearly disqualifying numbers in the God biz. I get it, John. And I suggest—”
Cutter broke in. “No. You do not get it, Mister Bittner. Does he, Pastor?”
Adam checked his watch, all business. Then he spoke for the first time. “My wife, Mister Bittner, was walking to her car in the parking lot of Terrman’s department store in Taylor, Michigan … and she was raped. We chose to keep Anne. A fact the ordination board of my denomination has known and has wholeheartedly embraced from the beginning of my ministry.” He picked up his briefcase. “A fact I will shout from the rooftops if necessary, Senator.” Adam checked his watch again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
Cutter’s thin lips curved in a knowing smile. “A fact the Taylor police were unable to substantiate with actual case records. Isn’t that right, son?”
Adam’s face hardened with hatred for Cutter. “Why don’t you say what you plan to say, Senator?”
“Think you know what I plan on—”
Adam took a step toward Cutter. “How you and your lawyer intend to—what’d you call it—’spin’ my life in order to discredit me … Well, that’s how you people operate, isn’t it? On lies and speculation, because you lack any real devotion to the truth if the truth doesn’t fit into your tiny, self-serving universe. Which is problematic for you now, isn’t it, Senator? Since your wife has come to know the Truth and can’t be lied to anymore.” He reached for the buzzer. “I’m late for a meeting.”
Cutter was undaunted. “‘Cept in your case, son, I have a sworn affidavit, so I expect I won’t be needin’ to lie to discredit you.”
Adam stopped, his hand inching away from the buzzer.
Cutter continued, “Affidavit I took last night. A friend of the pastor, here, Mister Bittner. Been assured a little DNA testing will verify.”
Cutter took the file
from Bittner. Then, removing the affidavit, looked it over. “Knew all about the child’s birthday bein’ today. Still months too soon.”
Adam turned. His gaze locked on Cutter. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow.
Seeing that his trap had sprung, Cutter returned the paper to the file and then offered the entire folder to Adam. “Here. Why not just—”
Bittner intervened. “Respectfully, sir, I cannot allow you to hand a month of opposition research to—”
Cutter urged Adam, “Why not read it for yourself, Pastor? Go on … take the file, son.”
Adam finally looked at the folder. Behind him the heavy metal door clanged open. He took the file, turned on his heel, and strode out.
Marching into the nearly deserted dispatch area, Adam slipped the file into his briefcase and stepped to the window. Outside, he spotted a gathering group of townsfolk drawn to the crime scene of the burned crèche.
“My dispatcher’s out there with them,” Sheriff Burns said.
“I’d better join them.”
“Pastor Wells, your daughter … ran off from school this morning. Pretty upset. Got Deputy Williams out looking for ‘er right now.”
A surge of nausea swept over Adam. “Is there a bathroom, Sheriff?”
“Down the hall. Third door on the right.”
Adam nodded and walked down the hall. Instead, he lunged at an exit door and burst into the alleyway behind the police station. Inhaling the fresh, cold air, he regained his composure in a measured fashion.
Slipping the affidavit from his briefcase, Adam began to read:
Maurene and I …
Adam was away …
We were young …
Blood test will confirm …
And finally:
Calvin Clayman …
Chapter Sixteen
A DISTINGUISHED BLACK MAN in a three-piece suit stepped up close behind Adam. The pastor was so lost in his thoughts he paid no attention, even when the newcomer addressed him: “They’ll be wantin’ a sound bite for the noon news cycle, Pastor.” The man gestured toward the gaggle of news folks who emerged from a satellite broadcast van like clowns from a circus car. Deploying cameras, microphones, and clipboards, the journalists waded into the protestors who thronged the town square around what remained of the nativity.
