Taken (9 page)

“Can we talk some about Chicago?” Matthew asked after they had eaten in Seymour and were back on the road. She was quiet but not brooding, and they shared a comfortable silence listening to music on the radio. He took a calculated risk that he could push a little.

“Depends on what you ask me.”

“You need to see a doctor, Shannon, and it’s a time-sensitive concern. I’d like to arrange for you to see a woman doctor who can give you a complete medical checkup, and for you also to meet with a woman counselor—someone who can give you some pointers regarding what kind of help would be useful to you over the next year.”

“No.”

He wasn’t as surprised by the answer as he was by the speed of it. “It’s in your own best interest to have these people in your life. It’s strictly private. No one has a conversation with either of them without your permission. I’ll even promise never to speak with them outside your presence if that would help.”

“Matthew—”

“It’s not a stigma to seek help, Shannon, and Becky proved to me the value of these early appointments. It’s useful to have help from professionals who don’t have the emotional ties of family and friends. At least let me arrange the medical work-up. ”

“It’s not that. I know why you’re asking. I’m not discussing my medical situation with you, but I’ve had that medical review. I went to someone I trusted. The blood work was extensive.
I know every bone that broke and how it healed, every injury that’s going to give me problems as I age. At some point I’ll see a counselor to help me process what happened, but it’s not an immediate concern. I’m processing it on my own terms in a way that is working for me right now. I don’t need another voice in my head directing what to work on next.”

Questions circled in his mind—who it was she had seen and where, how many bones had broken, what physical injuries were going to linger—but he didn’t ask them. He pushed the questions to the side and forced himself to simply nod. “That was smart, going to someone early on. Did she recommend follow-up with another physician?”

“I asked for the facts and she provided those. She then offered her advice. I’m taking most of it.”

“Good.”

Shannon smiled. “Shift your thinking just a bit, Matthew. I’m an adult, able to make unpleasant decisions and do what needs done. I hate having to see a doctor; I thought that when I was ten and I still think that. I did so anyway. I don’t mind you asking if something is on my list, questioning its priority compared to another item on the list, but I have a pretty good sense of what needs to happen.”

He felt intensely wrong-footed and finally said, “Let me apologize for my assumptions behind the question, that you would be inclined to avoid medical care and wouldn’t have done anything about it on your own. It’s not that I thought you were immature—like my daughter, and needing direction . . . well, maybe I was feeling that at the edges. I’m not used to a victim handling her own needs, not when it’s this close to the trauma’s end. You’re responding in ways I would expect in six months, Shannon, not in the first weeks after freedom. I clearly haven’t
adapted yet to where you are—physically, mentally, emotionally—and for that too, I apologize.”

“Apologies accepted.” She reached over and briefly touched his arm. “I didn’t know the day freedom would come, Matthew, but I’ve been preparing for this for a few years, and I’ve a working to-do list. I tried to anticipate what I could. I knew once I reappeared, matters were going to unfold quickly with a lot of pieces moving around. That’s why I sought out your help, not because I couldn’t handle this, but because I didn’t want to deal with all these different events on my own. But the details themselves—most of them I’ve thought through.”

“That’s helpful to me, Shannon.” He would figure out how to get on the same page with her. “Very helpful.” Her reply told him she thought she was ready for this. That actually gave him a good clue for where the first emotional crack would appear. She was braced and ready for what she had anticipated, but she had little margin right now for the blindside surprise. Protecting her from one, buffering her against such a thing when he couldn’t prevent it—that would be a good outcome if he could pull it off. “I like that about you. The fact you planned this, are facing head-on the difficult items like finding a doctor. I don’t know how best to say this . . . but I’d like to be your backup when you have more of those hard things on your list to do, if you’ll allow me to do so.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Good. Now, let me ask a different question.”

“Sure.”

“You meet with your brother. Then you meet family members as you choose to do so after that. Talk to me about the broader picture. Do you want to see a particular friend from high school? A best friend? Would it be helpful for you to have a conversation with someone from your church?”

“Friends from high school will have gone on with their lives. Catching up with them can wait until the news has died down. There are some I’d like to call in the first day or two after this goes public, say hi in person. But friendships have a natural life-span, and a best friend will have to reappear to fit my present situation.”

She shifted in the seat to face him. “I’ll enjoy being back at church, but which congregation I settle in with depends on where I’m living, and I doubt I decide that question for some months. While I’m still unknown, I wouldn’t mind going to services to sit in the balcony with you if we can avoid the church my family attends. Jeffery is a known face right now, and I’m not interested in calling attention to myself. But that wasn’t the substance of the second question you asked. You want to know if I would find it helpful to have a conversation with someone from my home church—have someone to talk with about the tough questions my experience has raised.”

“Yes.”

“Your daughter struggled with her faith because of what happened.”

He hesitated. “I’ll let my daughter talk to you about that one day. I won’t try to characterize her concerns. But it was a topic which did prompt a lot of conversations.”

“Thank you for that—for respecting Becky’s confidences. You gave an interview when your daughter was still missing. You were asked the question: ‘What has this done to your faith?’ You answered along the lines of, ‘God is good, and I love Him. Right now, God is permitting a very hard thing. Why, I don’t know, but I still trust Him. God will help me find my daughter.’ That interview and statement stuck with me. That’s one of the reasons I tracked you down. Do you
still think that way, now that Becky is home and you know her story?”

“I do. I struggled with trusting God in the first years after she was home, knowing what Becky had gone through. But I still believe God is good and I do love Him. It came back to what I knew to be true. My faith today is firm in that.”

“I’m glad. To your question, no, I don’t require a conversation with someone from my church, someone to help me with what this did—or did not do—to my faith.”

He looked over. “Your faith survived what happened?”

“Yes. You seem surprised.”

“I think I am. Puzzled at least.”

“My relationship with God is fine.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m a cactus, Matthew. Not an orchid. They’re beautiful, but they can’t handle heat or a tough environment. The circumstances throughout my life have made me who I am. I can plan. Strategize. Think across long periods of time. Put me in a room with those who hate God, and I can still thrive. God has made me into a tough, battle-hardened believer. I am very grateful to have those eleven years behind me. But I used them. I chose to survive with my faith intact. I chose to come out strong and together. I endured, and now I’m going to thrive. I don’t expect life to be easy. I do expect God to be there with me. He was during the last eleven years.”

Matthew hesitated. “I’m not sure what to say.”

She smiled. “I’m my own person, Matthew, with my own strengths and weaknesses. You just bumped into one of my strengths. I can think for myself. Hold on to decisions I’ve made. I believe certain things about God. I
know
certain things about God. A family of smugglers didn’t stand a chance of
changing my mind about that, no matter how . . . horrifying my circumstances became.” Shannon briefly went quiet, then added, “I can tell the difference between the acts of a man and the acts of God. That’s why I still believe. I could always tell the difference.”

“You were hurt. Bones broken . . . and other violence,” he said, alluding to what he suspected had happened. She didn’t flinch from the comment. Her gaze held his when he glanced over. But it was the controlled gaze he’d seen in Atlanta, the enforced calm.

“It was men who hurt me, not God.”

“God allowed it,” Matthew said quietly, going to the heart of his daughter’s struggle with God.

“He did. And I wondered for a time if God still loved me.” Shannon was silent for a long moment, then smiled. “I used to wonder how I’d answer this question once freedom came and someone asked me about God. It’s not a conversation I think I want to have very often. But would you listen to my long answer, let me see if it makes sense to you?”

“I’d like to listen to whatever you want to say,” Matthew replied, surprised she was willing to further open this particular door with him.

“I realized something, probably about year two,” Shannon said, “that changed how I thought about God and what was going on. I’d like a featherbed world where falling out of a tree didn’t break a bone, where a guy couldn’t land a blow on someone smaller than himself, where no one ever got to touch me without my consent. That’s the world I would have created. But God decided to create a world where free will was more important than no one ever getting hurt. There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that
only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it. God sees something in free will and choice that’s worth tolerating the horrifying blackness that would appear if evil was chosen rather than good. I find that utterly remarkable.”

Matthew nodded slowly as he considered her answer. “From the very beginning, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, human beings have had a choice,” he agreed, beginning to sense how she’d settled this matter for herself.

“Can you imagine how marvelous Eden must have been? God walking with Adam and Eve in the evenings where they could talk face-to-face. God gave Adam and Eve that free will and a choice. He gave them one warning: eat of any tree that is here, including the wonderful tree of life, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Shannon paused. “I wish Adam and Eve had thought more about what
knowledge
meant. Eve saw it as a good thing, to know more. But how do you really
know
something? You experience it.”

Matthew looked at her, realized how pale she had become, and reached over to cover her hand with his. He felt her suddenly shiver. “I got a nasty taste of what evil is like these last few years,” Shannon went on. “The sad thing about evil . . . we did this to ourselves. It wasn’t God’s plan. God expected, fully intended, for Adam and Eve to obey what He had said, to leave the tree of good and evil alone.”

Shannon turned her hand under his, gripped it, seemed to seek and find comfort from that contact. “We’re Adam and Eve’s children, reaping their decision. We chose the knowledge—the
experience
of good and evil—and we found out just how bitter and dark evil really is. We experience it now. That’s our reality. There’s probably not a person alive who wouldn’t want to go
back and see that decision changed, now that we have tasted how bad it turned out to be. My faith survived because I realized God didn’t
want
this for us, He never had. I’m passionately looking forward to a new Heaven and Earth where only good exists once more.”

Matthew drove for three miles after Shannon finished her answer before he said, “I’m stunned at your reply.”

“Why?”

He quoted a couple of her statements back to her, about Adam and Eve choosing knowledge, which brought about the experience of good and evil. “That’s pretty deep theology, Shannon.”

“Time was heavy on my hands; I had some time to think.”

“It’s wisdom.” Matthew hesitated. “But it’s also abstract.”

“Then let’s not be abstract. God didn’t stop men from hurting me. Does that fact make God
not good
? I concluded that God was suffering as I was, but He didn’t want to end free will or bring the world to judgment yet, so He permitted what happened. People hurt me, not God. He didn’t divinely rescue me from the world I live in, even though that was within His power. He simply walked each hour and day of it with me, and promised me that justice was coming. And as hard as it was to accept, I reached the point I could accept it. God is
Immanuel
—‘God is with us.’ It’s enough truth to rest on. God has been acting honorably throughout history regarding what He wants. We’re the ones at fault. God is good. And I still really, truly like Him. My relationship with God is fine.”

Matthew drove in further silence, thinking about what she’d said. At last he offered, “Thank you, Shannon.”

“For what?”

“For convincing me better than anyone ever has that there is
such a thing as a tough, God-fearing, bring-it-on woman left in the world.”

She burst out laughing.

He smiled. “I hope my daughter turns out a bit like you one day.”

“God help you if she does,” Shannon replied with good humor.

The conversation felt mostly finished, and Matthew accepted that. “I’m glad it’s okay with you and God.”

“So am I. I’m not saying there weren’t some very dark stretches between myself and God. We certainly had our moments. But we worked through them as time passed—that had to happen early on, Matthew, or I wouldn’t have survived. The strength to survive, the planning, the long-term game theory, the strategies—that was God and I getting inside the dynamics of this group. I did it with God. So you can mark off your list wondering about my relationship with Him.”