From The Dead (15 page)

Eden took another piece of popcorn and seemed to grow
deeper in thought as she examined its edges. “Since I can’t tell
Dad, can I just tell Blake so I’ll have someone to confide in? You
know him: He’ll keep quiet about it.”

Jesse nodded. He didn’t want her to share the secret
with anyone, but it didn’t seem fair to have her bear the burden
alone.

Eden crunched on the piece of popcorn. At last she
brightened up. “So you have a son to meet.”

As he became acclimated to the concept, Jesse smiled.
“Like I said, we’ll take it one step at a time for Drew’s sake.
Besides, we have to figure a plan. She caught me off guard about
Drew, and I caught her off guard when I showed up at her
doorstep.”

“I know the feeling.”

Jesse snickered before he changed the subject. “Tell
me about your job. You must enjoy it if you stayed there this
long.”

Eden’s faced beamed. “It’s amazing to watch dreams
come true for parents who can hardly wait to have children. I have
my rough days, though. Some of the girls find themselves pregnant
without supportive families. Some of the babies’ fathers find out
their girlfriends are pregnant, and they take off—”

Jesse pretended to keep half an eye on the movie, but
he wanted to bury his face in shame. He fell into the category.

When she noticed Jesse’s discomfort, Eden stopped.
“I’m sorry for that remark. I didn’t mean to insinuate—”

“I know. Don’t worry about it. God knows I deserve
worse.”

Eden tilted her head, her face warm with care.

“At least you got a second chance.”

CHAPTER 26

When Jesse pulled into the church parking lot, he
blinked out of reflex. He couldn’t believe he was here. An era had
reached its end. When he left for California, he planned never to
come back. But as the years rolled by, the notion of his return
lurked in the back of his mind and, after a while, he considered it
inevitable. Eventually. But he hadn’t given thought to this
particular moment, nor had he planned what he would say. He
expected it to be awkward. Yet from hundreds of miles away, he
could banish it into the unforeseeable future.

But no longer: His day of reconciliation had
arrived.

Frightened, Jesse reminded himself that such an
emotion was ridiculous. After all, he’d come to see his father, not
a cruel stranger. But facing his father didn’t trouble him; rather,
fear of the unknown did. What would come next?

Jesse decided to move forward. If he took each step
as it came, the rest would fall in line.

So he climbed out of the car. Jesse marveled at how
the trees in the church’s lawn had changed. When he left town, they
were five years old; by now they had doubled in size. The building,
a sprawling, maize-colored structure with a chocolate-brown roof,
looked the same as he remembered. A patch of tulips in bloom swayed
along the building’s perimeter, tickled by the hint of an otherwise
imperceptible breeze.

And in a far corner, Jesse identified a window which
he knew to be a replacement. Jesse grinned at the sight. One summer
afternoon as a kid, he had broken that window when, by accident, he
hit a baseball through it. His dad had forced him to spend the next
two days pulling weeds out of this massive lawn. It marked the
first of many incidents. Once Jesse reached his teenage years, he
had developed a keen rebellious side—one that savored the challenge
of pissing people off.

He and Eden had spent as much of their childhood at
this church building as they had spent at their own house. Not long
after they moved to Hudson, their father started the congregation
with a handful of families. At first they met in a storefront, a
former grocery store on Streetsboro Road, which the congregation
rented, painted, populated with furniture, and called home. Within
three years, the congregation multiplied in size and showed signs
of sustained growth. The group required a larger campus to keep up
with its rapid expansion in membership, so after several years of
waiting and saving for a down payment, they built this current
building near the southeastern corner of town. Jesse was thirteen
years old at the time.

Five years later, he left.

Jesse noticed a motorcycle parked outside the front
entrance. According to Eden, their father still drove one—he’d
adored them for as long as Jesse could remember. And a mere eighty
feet away, Jesse mused, his father sat in his office and didn’t
have a clue what he would encounter.

Jesse wiped his damp palms on his jeans. From his
pocket, his cell phone chirped.
Not now.
He debated whether
to answer, then opted against it. Soon another tone sounded to
indicate the caller had left a voice message. Jesse would listen to
it later.

As a minister’s son, Jesse spent his youth in his
father’s shadow, where Jesse suffered comparisons from outsiders
and endured muttered public criticism when he rebelled. None of
these were his dad’s fault; his father had encouraged him to ignore
the murmurings that occurred. Yet a teenaged Jesse blamed his
father—he had to blame someone. All Jesse sought was freedom, an
escape from the microscope of scrutiny, which seemed the one thing
beyond his reach. To his astonishment, people seemed to wonder why
he fled to the coast.

At first, he tried to sneak unnoticed into the church
through a rear door, which he remembered to be left unlocked on
days the maintenance man worked outside. But not today. Jesse would
have to walk through the front office door in full view. He hoped
to find everyone out to lunch.

Save a receptionist on the phone, the room was empty.
He found an assistant pastor’s door shut, perhaps due to a
counseling session inside. When Jesse reached the receptionist’s
desk, he didn’t recognize the woman, who hung up the phone and
wrote a message. He wanted to walk past her, but she had noticed
him when he walked through the front door. With a glance she
revealed she didn’t know Jesse from an average Joe, but her smile
invited his approach. Instantly he felt less like a stranger.

“Hello. May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“I’d like to see Pastor Chuck, please.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“No. Is he busy?”

“Well,” she replied, her best effort at a polite
rejection, “unless it’s urgent, he tries to schedule appointments
when possible.”

Though he understood her reply and figured the
receptionist screened all unexpected visitors, Jesse felt like an
object of the woman’s scrutiny. “I’m … his son.”

Once the receptionist recovered from the rapid blinks
of her eyes, she, in all likelihood, scurried to assemble a
suitable reply. How should you respond when your minister’s son—a
son everyone knows exists, one upon whom many have never laid
sight—materializes before your eyes after more than a decade of
disappearance? Jesse almost felt sorry for her.

“Oh, I … you’re … Jesse, right? I don’t think we’ve
met. I’m Maureen.” They shook hands and Maureen’s smile returned.
Her shock swallowed, she seemed delighted to meet him. “He’s
putting together some notes for a sermon, but he’ll be thrilled to
see you.”

Jesse thanked her. Before she could rise to lead him,
Jesse was halfway around her desk and on his way to the office.
After all, he already knew which door was his father’s. Jesse could
indeed feel her stares, but then again, could he blame her?

With a quiet tap on the door, he cracked it open. His
pulse on the rise and his hands in a sweat again, Jesse, who felt
like an imposter, took a quiet step inside.

An unsuspecting Chuck Barlow, with his back turned to
the door, stood in front of a bookshelf and paged through a Bible
commentary. His New Testament bookshelf, Jesse recalled.

Without even a turn of his head, Chuck assumed his
receptionist had walked in. “Maureen, did we hear from the folks in
Solon?”

“Dad …”

Jesse could only imagine the look on his father’s
face. From a posterior view, Jesse watched his father’s shoulders
go rigid. Chuck dropped the book on the shelf and spun
around—elated.

“Jesse.” Frozen in place, Chuck’s mouth fell agape as
he gazed at Jesse, in the flesh and not an illusion. Then he ran
over to his son and embraced him taut with fervor.

Now it was Jesse’s turn to freeze. Though Jesse
returned a half hug, the gesture settled bittersweet in his
stomach. After eleven years away from the man’s physical presence,
Jesse wasn’t used to this. It felt like when he was fourteen, when
he underwent a self-conscious phase and refused to hug his father
and anyone else of the same gender.

Chuck stepped back and took another look at his son.
Though Jesse wondered whether Chuck was familiar with his son’s
adult appearance, he assumed Chuck had seen him strut in the
background in a handful of films.

“Why didn’t you come back for a visit all this time?
I’ve been worried sick about you!” But before Jesse could respond,
his father waved off the rapid-fire, concerned-parent questions.
“Have a seat!” he said as he settled behind his own desk. Jesse sat
in a cushioned chair across from him.

Chuck himself was a tad overweight, but only by ten
or twenty pounds. Though he’d started to bald toward the back of
his head, his now-graying hair had once matched Jesse’s shade of
blond. A man familiar with current trends, Chuck dressed in a sport
shirt and jeans. In fact, Jesse knew his father didn’t even own a
clerical collar and, on one occasion, had to borrow one from a
friend, a Lutheran minister. Jesse’s father fought the image of a
stereotypical minister. Chuck hated pretense and performance; to
Chuck, the importance lay in connecting with people, and he didn’t
believe God minded his Calvin Kleins. Or his motorcycle.

After years of distance, Jesse noticed a change in
how Chuck acted around him, as if Chuck now treaded with caution.
Still, though delighted to see his son, he was also a minister with
an acute ability to read people, Jesse was aware. On second
examination of his son’s demeanor, Chuck squinted but didn’t pry
for information. As a dad, although he might have imagined what
Jesse’s life in L.A. involved, the dares and the detours, Jesse had
relayed only minimal details to him.

“This is a surprise. A pleasant one,” Chuck said. “I
can’t believe Eden didn’t mention you were coming home. How long
will you stay?”

Jesse shifted in his chair. “I’m
home.
”

Chuck nodded for a second. “Permanently?”

“Yeah.” Jesse peered down at his own hands, folded in
his lap.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’m crashing at Eden’s for now.”

“Your old room’s available at my house. You can stay
there till you get on your feet, if you’re interested.”

“Thanks, but I can’t do that.”

“Sure, I understand. So, are you working nearby?”

Jesse could see a longing in Chuck’s eyes, years of
hurt piled inside, yet his father’s responses remained measured.
Though Jesse pretended not to notice, he could imagine the pain he
must have caused Chuck by putting distance between them. Yet to
change gears today seemed unnatural, not to mention awkward, so
Jesse maintained a distance and pressed a hand against the pang of
regret that settled in his belly.

“Actually … look, this homecoming happened on the
spur of the moment. I don’t have a lot of professional skills after
all the time I pursued acting. I … I need to earn some income in
the meantime, just to get on my feet here. I realize you don’t owe
me a thing. I know I shouldn’t ask, but if—”

“You can come to work here. As long as you need. We’d
planned to find an assistant to help with maintenance anyway.
April’s almost over and the grounds will need more care.”

“That’s fine. I’ll do anything.”

“It may not be what you imagined when you asked, but
I—”

“Hey, I’m familiar with the weed formations out
there. I pulled so many of them years ago.”

Chuck laughed. He shook his head at the sight of his
son who sat before him.

At last,
Jesse thought. After all these years,
another weight removed from his shoulders.

“Show up here Monday morning, and we’ll get you to
work,” Chuck said.

“Thanks.” Unsure what should happen next, Jesse got
up to leave when an object at the corner of the desk caught his
attention. “Hey, is this the same Bible? The one you had when I
left town?” Jesse asked. He picked up the thick book, its leather
cover scuffed along the edges.

“Same one.”

Jesse traced his finger along Chuck’s name, engraved
in the lower-right corner of the book’s burgundy cover. Its spine
rebound, the pages appeared worn from frequent use, discolored with
age. True to memory, Jesse found the page margins filled with
Chuck’s handwritten comments that related to the verses. Stuffed
between pages, random sheets contained additional notes.

Although he fingered through the book with care, a
handful of sheets spilled out and fluttered to the floor. When
Jesse bent to pick them up, one particular item caught his
attention, its paper weight heavier than the others.

“You have my head shot in here?” Blown away, Jesse
examined the photo and recognized it as his most recent.

His elbows now on the desk, Chuck rested his chin on
his hands and grinned, the proud father. “Eden gave it to me. She’s
done it for years.”

Jesse had to admit, this revelation came as a
surprise. He’d wondered if his dad had grown so accustomed to his
son’s absence that Jesse no longer came to mind. But with the
discovery of his head shot, Jesse now knew his father cared about
his career in L.A. And to think, all this time he’d assumed Chuck
had felt ashamed of him.

Then a notion struck Jesse: Chuck didn’t know his son
would appear in his office, so this Bible must serve as permanent
home for the head shot.