Dawn's Light (41 page)

Doug's clothes hung on his thin body as he stood before them. He stumbled through his stories about Beth, trying to weave frayed threads that made sense out of the madness. But there was no sense to be made.

Kay sat stiff as a statue as betrayal permeated her thoughts. God had chosen not to answer her prayers. He was the God who had set a world into motion, full of curses and disease and violent men who inflicted their heartless cruelty on innocent children. The God who had raised Lazarus from the grave had left Beth dead.

She had no warm fuzzies for the Lord right now. No glory to give him. She couldn't sing praises to him or bow her knee to thank him for Beth's life. So she kept her mouth closed and sat rigid, railing at him in her heart and mind, demanding answers that she knew she might never get. As they lowered Beth's polished white casket into the hole prepared for it, she turned her rage in on herself.

She was a terrible mother. She'd done everything wrong. She had misread her child in her darkest moments. She had failed to protect her.

She deserved everything that had happened.

Her grief and anger imploded, collapsing her soul. She didn't hear a word as people whispered condolences and offered hugs.

She couldn't imagine there ever being comfort for her again.

ninety-nine

D
OUG FOUND
K
AY IN THE DARK BEDROOM, SITTING ON THE
bed and staring into space. He turned on the lamp. The light from the bulb deepened the shadows in her face.

He felt weak, hollow as he sat next to her. “You okay?”

Kay's eyes were dry, hard, colder than he'd ever seen them. “We asked for a fish, and he gave us a stone. God betrayed us. I believed, and my faith was
huge
.”

He looked at his hands. She was waiting for answers. Why couldn't he give them? He was the spiritual leader. The stockbroker-turned-preacher. Doug had been asked biblical questions many times since he'd started his little lakeside church, and usually he answered calmly with the plumb line of God's Word. But he had no proverb for Kay's question, no scriptural band-aid for unanswered prayer. “I have all the same questions you do.”

Kay's face twisted now, as if he'd made it worse. “Then how do we get back from here?”

He moved to his reading chair and set his elbows on his knees. As he looked at the floor, his mind reached for something that would ease Kay's pain. His voice cracked. “When I was a kid, I had this friend named Joey. Joey had been taking violin lessons since he was three years old. His parents were accomplished musicians who played with the symphony orchestra in my town. Sometimes they would take us to rehearsal with them, and we'd run around the building while they rehearsed. They made a record, and Joey could play along flawlessly, in perfect harmony, as if he sat in that orchestra with them.”

He saw the impatience in Kay's eyes, but he spoke as much for himself as her. “I envied him, so when I was about ten, I asked my parents if I could start taking violin lessons. They got me a violin. I practiced hard and learned ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ ” He chuckled softly. “When I got really good at it, I put on the record—Beethoven's Fifth. I tried to play along, but I didn't sound anything like them. My strings squeaked and my notes were off key. Eventually, I gravitated back to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ and played that instead. But the record kept playing. Beethoven's Fifth went on perfectly. They never missed a note.”

“Where are you going with this, Doug? I'm not in the mood to talk about your failed career as a musician.”

“Just listen.” He got up and went back to the bed, sat on it facing Kay. “Praying in God's will is just like that. He tells us if we pray anything according to his will, it will be done. But our prayers aren't always in line with that symphony.”

Her eyes flashed. “So you think my prayer for Beth was like playing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’?”

His eyes rimmed with tears. “I think God was playing something much more beautiful.”

She slammed her hand on the pillow. “The Holy Spirit helps us pray! Jesus intercedes with groanings too deep for words.”

“But that's just it. Jesus knows the song, and we don't. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interpret our prayers according to
their
music, even if we're out of key and playing something else.”

“Then what's the purpose in praying at all? Why even bother?”

“Our prayers matter, Kay. He listens to them. But his symphony is grander than ours.” He pursed his lips, trying to go on. “He didn't neglect her. He knew the days that were numbered for her before there was even one.”

Kay squeezed her eyes shut. “She was a child! How could he take children?”

“He takes everyone, Kay. It's what we humans do. We live and we die.”

“Then don't tell me our prayers aren't useless!”

“Do you think Jesus' prayers were useless? He prayed, ‘Not my will, but Thine.’ He understood that there was a symphony playing. What if God had been compelled to answer Jesus' prayers to remove the cup? We'd still owe the debt of our sins. Instead, the Father saw the end from the beginning. His will was done. And thank God it was. Jesus' life wasn't wasted on that cross. And Beth's life wasn't wasted, either.”

That just made her angrier. She slid off the bed and crossed the room. “Those were things that impacted the world. We're just one little family. She was one little girl! Why did he even
give
her to us? Why did he give us all those years to love her if he was going to rip her away …
while
I prayed?” She thrust her angry face into his and ground her teeth together. “I was in the janitor's closet on my face, praying for her while she died! How does that make sense?”

Doug's chest tightened as his own sorrow overflowed. “It doesn't.”

“Why would he take her and leave me here, when I
want
to die?”

“Don't say that, sweetheart.”

“Why not, if this is all there is? Struggles and heartache and waste. I wish she'd never been born!”

“Kay, you don't mean that.”

“Want to see?” With that, she threw open the door and stormed out.

Despair rendered him useless. He had no more arguments, no more defenses. He couldn't help his wife. He couldn't even help himself.

one hundred

K
AY BOLTED THROUGH THE KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM
and ran up the stairs. Beth's door was closed. Craig had been sleeping on a pallet in Doug's study since she died. The room hadn't been opened since that last night at the hospital. She turned the knob, threw the door open. It swung back and hit the wall. She stepped in, her chest rising and falling with the anguish that had driven her there.

It looked so serene, so pretty, and that fed her fury. She had decorated it herself when Beth was ten. She'd picked out the wallpaper, the colors, the curtains, the comforter. She remembered Beth bouncing with joy when they'd had the big reveal.

What was she to do with it now?

Livid, she pulled Beth's favorite childhood book off the shelf. Beth had memorized it before she could read. Now Kay hated the sight of it. She slammed it on the floor.

“What was it for?” she asked God through her teeth. “What good was any of it?”

One by one, she pulled the books out of their places, hurling them onto the floor. She tore the comforter off the bed. Pink flannel sheets lay underneath. She yanked them off, cushy mattress pad and all. They wouldn't be needing comfort in here anymore.

“Mom! What are you doing?” Deni came in and tried to stop her.

Kay flung the pillow to the ground. Then she attacked the drawers and began throwing Beth's clothes out, her socks, her yellow shorts, her favorite T-shirts. She dragged the top drawer out, let it crash to the floor. Barrettes and bows and hairbrushes scattered across the rug. Paper sacks, little boxes, Ziploc bags of Beth's treasures.

“Stop!” Deni said.

“I won't stop,” Kay cried. “It was all a hoax!”

“What are you talking about?”

Jeff came to the door, and Logan peeked in, horror on his face.

“The pregnancy, the birth.” She jerked out another drawer, let it crash to the floor. “Every single day of teaching her and loving her and caring for her. Worrying what she ate and who she was with.”

She slid her arm across the top of Beth's dresser, knocking off trophies and framed pictures.

“You're wrecking all her stuff!” Logan flung himself to the floor. “Stop, Mom!”

Strengthened by adrenaline, she rolled up the area rug on Beth's floor, trapping all her things in it. “None of it mattered. Isn't this what you want from us, God? To amputate her from our lives?”

“It did matter!” Logan screamed. “It did!” He wrestled the edge of the rug out of her hands. “Dad!”

She heard Doug's footsteps pounding up the stairs, but she wasn't finished. She grabbed the pictures off the walls, tore down Beth's posters.

Doug grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. “Kay, I won't let you do this.”

“You can't stop me!” she cried. “I want it gone, every last bit of it!” She dragged the picture frames onto the rug and tried again to roll it.

Doug's face twisted as he got down on the floor with her, picking up the scattered things. “Please, Kay. Don't destroy what's left of her.” He picked up a picture of Beth and her friends. The glass had shattered, but the memory could be saved. “I want to keep this.” He grabbed the bows and Beth's hairbrush, and the paper sack that had fallen out of a drawer. He opened it and looked inside.

“Aw, dear God …” He fell back against the wall, his hand covering his face.

Kay stopped her pillaging and took the sack. She reached in and pulled out a handful of Beth's hair. Trembling, she brought it to her face. She could almost catch the scent of her child. Almost feel her.

It knocked the wind out of her … brought her to her knees. She fell into Doug. “Look what I did to all her stuff.”

“It's okay,” he whispered in a soft, soothing voice. “We'll just put it all back, okay? Until we're ready to let it go. All of us.”

What had she just done to her children? She had ramped up their grief, intensified their mourning. What kind of mother was she? All these years, she'd been so careful to care for them, to protect them. Who would protect them from her?

Logan wiped his face with the back of his hand. “We'll help you, Mom.”

Deni and Jeff got down on the floor, unrolled the rug, and opened the comforter.

Doug held her as tight as a swaddled baby while her children began to refold their sister's clothes. Kay watched, spent, as they put the clothes back in the drawers, the barrettes and bows back in the dresser, the books back on the shelves.

“Her veil.” Deni's lips quivered as she picked up the veil that Beth had worn when she'd played Mary in the Christmas play. “She was a good Mary.”

Thoughts of Mary, Jesus' mother, flooded Kay's mind as she remembered Beth's portrayal of the young girl not much older than she—perhaps even the same age—who had found herself with child by the Holy Spirit. Suddenly Kay felt an affinity with the woman who gave birth to the son she had later watched die on the cross. Mary had suffered as Kay was suffering. She had probably wondered what it was all for. All the love and heartache, all the years of teaching, nurturing, and worrying had seemed to end with three nails and a spear. Kay knew Mary's heartbreak. This woman who was remembered two thousand years later hadn't seen the whole picture when she surrendered her child to the cross.

The sacrifice was too great. Kay wasn't up to it. If all the suffering in the last year had been to make her stronger, it had failed miserably. She was as weak as a poisoned kitten.

But she laid her head against her husband's chest, accepting his strength.

When everything was back in its place, the room looked almost as it had before.

But it was different. Beth wasn't coming back, and Kay didn't know if she could ever forgive God for that.

one hundred one

T
HE DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL
, C
ROCKETT CELEBRATED
July Fourth at the soccer park. Tonight, fireworks would mark their freedom jubilee and the beginning of their recovery. But Mark wasn't interested. He stayed with Deni, trying to lend her his strength. When he left her that afternoon, he sank into depression. That sorrow took him back to Magnolia Park late that afternoon, and the swing where Beth had often sat. He watched Melissa Tomlin's house while she kept the killer's secret.

Had Melissa already left for the soccer field? Was she in a festive mood, or was her secret eating her alive? She hadn't been to the jail to see her father even once, but her mother came every day.

A few people sat on the park benches, their small children playing, but most of the neighbors had gone to the soccer fields. Mark sat alone, praying that God would bring resolution to Beth's case—and justice to Clay Tharpe's accomplice. Maybe it would comfort the Brannings.

He heard the clicking of bicycle wheels and glanced back at the man turning into the neighborhood. He rode by on his mountain bike, never looking in Mark's direction.

Mark's heart bolted as he realized that the man was Ned Emory. Leaving the swing, Mark stepped behind the monkey bars, watching as Ned turned into Melissa's driveway. The garage door came up, as though she'd been watching for him. Melissa stood in the shadows of the garage. Ned rode inside, got off his bike, and kissed her.

So Ned had lied, and all of his workers had covered for him. He had come here in broad daylight, probably thinking that the neighbors would be at the soccer field.

As the garage door closed, Mark's mind raced with thoughts of Ned's son Zach, still not fully recovered from his gunshot wound a few months ago. His other son Gary, his depressed wife, Ellen. Before his eyes, a family was being ripped apart.

Clay Tharpe had said there was another person who wanted Tomlin dead. Melissa's father had given them Ned Emory's name, implying that he was involved in the murders. But why had Scott Anthony gunned down Tharpe? He sure hadn't done it to protect Ned.

But here Melissa and Ned were, together in her house. Mark had to do something, but what? An affair wasn't enough to justify an arrest warrant.