Healing Stones (33 page)

There was, however, no knock at the door, nor any indication that I was being thrown out when I poked my head out. That was my first surprise of the day.

The second came when Jayne sat herself at the snack bar with her basket full of M&Ms and said, “I think we should go to the CCC chapel for Easter.”

I stopped beating a bowl of eggs. Audrey stirred on the window seat.

“I love that,” she said. “Dr. Kaye is preaching.”

“Can we, Mom?” Jayne said.

“Let me think about it.”

“The service starts at ten,” Audrey said.

“It's eight-thirty now.” Jayne hopped down from the stool. “I'll go take a shower first—that okay, Aud?”

“Wait,” I said, eyes still on the spinning eggs. “Ladies, I don't know what other people are going to think of me going back there. I didn't leave under the best of circumstances.”

“Hello!”

I turned to catch the end of a Jayne eye roll.

“Who cares what anybody else thinks?” she said, in a voice clearly reminiscent of my own. “They have no idea what you're dealing with.”

I set the whisk on the counter.

“All right,” I said. “Everybody get dressed.”

Sully fidgeted with the tie all the way to the chapel. Neckwear had never been his thing, but he felt like he owed it to Ethan to get dressed up. He had to borrow the necktie from him, of course, and take a refresher tutorial in how to tie the thing. Right now it squeezed his Adam's apple.

He'd only been in the chapel once, to hear Ethan preach at a weekday service which, to his chagrin, only a handful of students attended. Today the place was packed, and the chapel itself was ready for all the people who went to church on Christmas and Easter and counted themselves good to go.

The sanctuary was a riot of uncultivated looking lilies and primroses, which separated only to form a path of oyster shells up to an empty rough-hewn cross.

“All right, Ethan,” Sully whispered.

He squeezed into a back pew full of college guys in faded cotton polos and immediately took off his tie.

“Yeah, dude, lose that thing,” said a long-armed, redheaded kid. “You were lookin' a little overdressed.”

“Thanks,” Sully said.

As a parade of swishing skirts and just-purchased pumps moved past, he saw familiar movement. A tall woman with a straight Washingtonian walk took the aisle, flanked by two young women, and Sully sat up straight in the seat. It was Demi.

She apparently hadn't seen him, and, ushering the two girls into a pew in front, she wouldn't unless she turned around to gawk, which wasn't her style.

Sully decided he could slip out at the end of the service. It was going to be embarrassing enough for her when they did talk next— she didn't
need to have that conversation here. Already, a row of coeds three pews up swiveled their heads toward each other as if on cue, eyes bulging like Ping Pong balls, mouths already shaping, “Are you serious?”

Sully looked at her as she sat in the pew between the two girls, looking down at the bulletin he was sure she wasn't reading. This was the last place he would have expected her, and another glance around told him he wasn't the only one. Less discreet than the coeds was the woman in top-to-toe pink who openly nudged the man next to her and nodded in Demi's direction.

Sully groaned. He'd have known Kevin St. Clair's baggy eyes anywhere.

A violin's sweet strain lifted above the din, sounding like sunrise itself and pulling Sully to his feet with the rest of the congregation. Ethan's voice joined the strings with the announcement, “He is risen! The Lord is risen indeed.” The congregation responded with “Alleluia! Alleluia!”

Sully didn't know what had possessed Demi to come, but this was why he was here. His own Alleluia was belated, and the redheaded kid gave him a friendly smirk. It was Easter, and he was part of it.

“You ever heard him preach?” the redhead whispered when they settled in for the sermon.

“Oh, yeah,” Sully said. “He's great.”

The kid looked at Sully as if he'd grossly understated the issue. “He's
amazing.
I just hope this isn't the last time.”

Ethan's voice hushed the sanctuary.

“Wouldn't it be great if someone came to you and said, ‘I'll pay off all your debts. No matter whether they're foolish debts, notes you took out for less-than-savory reasons, accounts that have been in arrears for years—I'll pay them off. You'll be debt free.'”

The congregation nodded as one, with the exception of Kevin St. Clair, who, Sully noticed, sat self-righteously like a man who'd never used a credit card.

“And what if,” Ethan continued, “this person said to you, ‘I want you to be so grateful that you don't go out and incur more debt.'” Ethan smiled his I'm-right-in-there-with-you smile. “We'd all agree to that, wouldn't we?”

More head nodding. Sully grinned contentedly. He knew where Ethan was headed.

“Now imagine that same person saying, ‘However, if you do get into more debt—and you will, simply because you're human and won't be able to resist the lure of ninety days with no interest—I will take care of that debt too.'”

Sully's gaze drifted to Demi, whose face tilted toward Ethan as if she were absorbing light. She slipped her arm around the dark-haired girl next to her and pulled her in, rocking the young woman's head until it fell onto her shoulder. She looked too old to be Demi's thirteen-year-old. Sully had the pixie-child on the other side pegged for that.

“You'd expect for there to be strings attached, wouldn't you?” Ethan said.

Demi rested her cheek on the dark head, which trembled beneath her. She had to be the pregnant girl.

Ethan said, “There are no strings.”

Get this, Demi,
Sully thought.
Get it for yourself, too.

“‘But I do have expectations,' your generous benefactor would say.”

I knew every person there with a pulse felt like Ethan was talking directly to him or her. Ethan had a gift for sweeping each individual up with his eyes. Mine he held for longer than a fraction, and I couldn't tell if he wanted me to hang onto the words, or if he was merely as surprised to see me as everyone else obviously was. Kevin St. Clair had already delivered several looks, ranging from indignant to incensed, with flabbergasted in between.

“‘I expect you to do things for others with the extra money you will now have,'” Ethan said. “‘I want you to be generous.'”

By then Audrey was in my arms, crying silently as silk. On the other side, Jayne looped her arm around my elbow.

“You're doing that for Audrey,” she whispered.

As I twisted to kiss her on the forehead, I felt as if a long-forgotten pocket inside me were being unbuttoned, containing a feeling I'd thought was no longer mine to feel. Warm and real and soft as a sigh, it whispered,
You are good
.

Ethan moved from his stance at the top of the shallow steps and down the aisle, so that he was even with our row. Unfortunately, if I were going to watch him, I was forced to have the St. Clairs in my line of sight.

I straightened myself up and focused on Ethan.

“Now imagine this fabulous person,” he said, “instructing you to tell people who it was who got you out of debt and saved your life.” Ethan's face seemed to deepen. “‘Tell everyone you meet,' this person would say, ‘and that I will do it for them, too.'”

Until then I could embrace every word Ethan said. But this part . . . these words . . .

Tell everyone you meet that I did this for you. That I forgave you.
That I gave you a chance to make a difference in someone else's life in
spite of what you've done.

As hard as I fixed my eyes on Ethan, Kevin St. Clair was still a palpable presence behind him, daring me to expose myself to the community that waited like a slavering wolf. How could I tell everyone Christ had forgiven me, when the very thing I'd been forgiven would humiliate what was left of my family and strip Ethan Kaye of his already shredded credibility?

How, in fact, could I ever share Christ's love publicly again?

Inside me, that pocket closed over itself and buttoned back up.

Ethan beamed at us. “Now, your debt-payer will warn you that this doesn't mean people won't try to take advantage of this new-found wealth, or even succeed sometimes. But he wouldn't want you to get all hung up on that and think you have to go into debt again in order to ‘set things right.'”

Ethan's eyes settled on Sully.

You're talking about yourself, aren't you?
Sully thought.

“He'd promise to help you through it, help you learn about yourself in the process.”

Sully untangled his legs and refolded them.

“‘Don't become bitter if thieves and swindlers get away with it.'” Ethan put an earnest fist to his chest. “‘
I'll
take care of them.
I
will.'”

Sully felt as if his shoulders suddenly wouldn't hang on their own.

“There probably isn't a person here who wouldn't agree to all of that, if our debts could be wiped clean—and not only the ones we already have, but the ones we'll incur in the future, even though we swear we never will.”

Ethan's voice softened. Whenever that happened in his sermons, we were at the place that I always clung to and carried out with me.

But today, this was the part where I closed my eyes and felt the pain in my chest and the thickness in my throat, the part where I grieved—for what I now could never do.

“Wouldn't it be fabulous?
Isn't
it fabulous?” Ethan held up both palms.“Substitute the words
separation from God
—what some might call sin—for the word
debt
. Replace the benefactor's voice with that of our Lord, Jesus Christ. See what happens.”

The silence in the sanctuary was pure, the air perfect for rearranging the words in my head.

I'll pay off all your sin, Demi. You are sin-free.

I want you to be generous with your forgiveness.

I want you to tell everyone that I did this for you.

I want you to, Demi.

You have to.

“Mom?” Jayne whispered. “You okay?”

I looked down to see her hand rubbing my fist, clenched so tightly my veins stood out like strands of blue yarn.

You have to tell everyone I did this for you.

“People will try to take away your freedom from guilt, Jesus says.” Ethan tilted his head kindly. “They'll try to shame you, pull you back into separation, tell you that you're stupid to believe He actually did this for you.”

Almost of its own accord, my head turned and my eyes moved Kevin St. Clair into focus. He stared straight ahead, as if not looking at Ethan would cancel him out. If a word reached him, it bounced off like so much hail on tin.

But it reached me—wormed down into me—pulled open the pocket—curled inside. I didn't know what to do with it yet. I only knew it was there.

“That, people,” Ethan said, “is what the Cross is about.”

Heads tilted back, pulled by his words to the cross he stood before.

“The death we grieved once again last Friday, there on that cross, was the final payment on all your debts—your sins—whatever you want to call them. The shame and the guilt—” He raised an arm, dignified and strong. “Gone. Now hear—and hear me well—because this is the Easter message. In His eyes, no matter what you have done—at the foot of this cross, where we are today—”

He scanned the congregation, making sure, Sully knew, that every eye, ear, and mind was centered there. “It is as if it never happened,” he said. “Never.”

Ethan's eyes swept across the sanctuary and came to me.

“Never,” he said again.

When he bowed his head, mine sank.

Now—I want you to be generous with your forgiveness, Demi. I
want you to tell the world that I did this for you. You have to.

By the time the final hymn ended, the chapel was alive. Risen, I thought, was the word. The congregation burst into exchanges of the rush we'd all shared in. Through it, I heard someone call, “Dr. C.!”

A lumbering body topped with red hair came at me, trailed by what looked like every student I'd ever mentored. The Faith and Doubt group—my ultimate concern in a life so far away from me, it seemed like a mirage even as it surrounded me with khakis and polo shirts and teetery sandals—and idealism and love.

Brandon lifted me from my feet in a hug, and hands of all sizes and states of moisture rubbed my back and touched my arms.

“We thought you were in a coma or something!” Marcy said.

They coaxed a laugh out of me—which faded as I looked over Brandon's bony shoulder at Sullivan Crisp, turning away and elbowing his way toward the door like he was chased by a pack of dogs.

I patted Brandon to put me down. The kids closed me in, away from Sullivan's retreat.

“This is like a total God-thing that you're here,” Chelsea said.

“You have to know Faith and Doubt is coming apart,” Brandon said.

Marcy's wide face opened up to me. “Can't you please meet with us?”

“There's no way they can keep you from being a consultant.”

“We'd meet totally off campus.”

“You don't even know what's going on here.”

“And you need to.”

Marcy pressed against my arm. “This isn't just a project anymore, Dr. C. This is about keeping this place from turning into a convent— and I am not kidding you.”

Brandon put his hand up. “Look, Dr. C.,” he said, “I know we messed around a lot when you and Dr. Archer were working with us—but that was before we felt like we were living under the St. Clair regime. I mean, Faith and Doubt is about what Dr. Kaye was saying.” He nodded, with a wisdom that belied the freckles and the frat-boy haircut. “But nothing like that is going on at this school. We can't let this keep happening.”