The Breath of God (23 page)

The embarrassment Grant felt from the previous night's debate suddenly seemed petty compared to her story. Not knowing how to respond, he chose to say nothing. He extended his hand and brushed away the tears rolling down her face. She rested her cheek in his palm.

Within a minute she regained her composure and wiped her face with her napkin. “Enough of my history.” She perched herself on the edge of her seat and leaned in close enough for him to catch the faint fragrance of her curly hair. “Time for yours.”

Grant reached for his damp glass, swirled the drink again, and said, “Spring of my sophomore year. Pretty stressed. Working two jobs to pay tuition and taking extra hours. For some stupid reason, I thought graduating early would be a good idea. Did well at first. Made straight As. That is, until I received the call.”

He gulped his vodka tonic, tasting the hint of lime in the cold drink that warmed his stomach. “Dad was in the hospital—heart attack.”

“You mentioned in Bhutan that your dad was a preacher, like Brady. Right?”

“We hardly spoke anymore. When I went to UVA and rejected his fundamentalist teachings, he cut off communication. In his eyes I was going to a godless institution. I'd told him I wanted to study religion as an academic; he knew I would never enter the ministry as he did.”

The two of them had a shared passion in religion, but the fire that woke Grant up every day was in direct opposition to his father's goals: Grant wanted to demystify religion, at least Christianity, to uncover its historical roots and origins. By the time he'd entered grad school, he'd grown out of believing in the myths his father had taught him as a child. He'd learned to study the Bible as one would critically examine any ancient text. The books were written by real men, and the words didn't just appear on paper by God's sending a bolt of lightning from the sky. The authors would have been influenced by their own personal agendas, and their views were colored by living in an ancient
world. That didn't even begin to cover the editing that happened over the centuries.

“Your mom?” Kristin's voice snapped him out of his brooding.

“She was the only real link we had. I drove to Richmond, where he'd been flown in a Life Flight helicopter from our small town. When I arrived, he was in intensive care, unconscious. My mother was by his bed, but she couldn't even speak.” For the first time, his voice faltered. “Just a shell of a woman.”

“Seeing her husband like that must have been difficult.”

He shook his head. “Dad's heart attack occurred while he was in bed—at Lorraine's house. The twenty-four-year-old church secretary.”

“Get out!”

“All his talk of sin and righteousness—” Grant grimaced. “In this small town, you can imagine how quickly word spread after the ambulance pulled up to Lorraine's and carted the minister out in his underwear, while the paramedics—two of his parishioners—pumped away on his chest.”

“Your mom had no idea?”

“Not until the hospital called.” Telling the story brought everything back to Grant. He shivered at the memory of the cold hospital room, listening to the beeping from the machines, and breathing in that hospital disinfectant smell. His larger-than-life father had tubes snaking out of his nose and mouth, and his face had assumed a pallid blue tint. His body seemed shrunken.

Kristin's hand on his arm returned him to the present. “That's awful,” she said.

“All I could think of was the arguments we'd had: about his sermons, about the church, about my education. When I stood over his bed and my mom cried in the chair beside me, I wished for his death.” Grant locked on to her eyes. “He died that night.”

Her grip on his arm tightened. “You felt guilty?”

“Thought I handled the death well. The day I returned to school, I started to swim—a mile every morning. Two weeks later I ended up in the infirmary with an ulcer. But the medicine took care of that, and I threw myself into my classwork, determined more than ever to pursue my degree in religious studies. But the harder I studied, the more difficulty I had focusing. I fell farther
behind, rewriting papers endlessly and rereading texts I'd already read twice. I panicked when finals approached, thinking I didn't have enough time to study for all my classes.”

“So you took a shortcut?” she guessed.

He nodded. “Intro to Western Philosophy. Instead of an exam, we had a final paper. I'd already composed an extensive outline. My girlfriend at the time offered to write the paper for me.” He swirled his drink again. The ice had almost melted. “A week later, I received a voicemail from my professor, requesting a meeting. Hardly slept that night. You see, I'd been in such a mental fog, I never even read the paper my girlfriend did for me. I just turned it in.”

“When I arrived at the professor's office, the department head and the dean of students were sitting with him. They weren't there to discuss my unique theories. Instead of using my outline to write the paper, my girlfriend simply downloaded one from a site selling college research theses. As bad luck would have it, the paper I turned in as my own work was an assignment a grad student had written three years earlier for this same professor. I broke down in the office with these three men staring at me. I told them the story about my father. Looking back on it, I wish I'd been stronger.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself. You were still suppressing grief from your father's death, maybe even some humiliation too. When your academic world then came crashing down on you, it was only natural for you to react like that.”

“Dad brought on his own suffering. But my academic reputation—” His face hardened. “I knew what I did was wrong, but I rationalized I'd already done the intellectual work on my outline.”

“How did they respond?”

“Because of the extenuating circumstances and my previous high grades, they allowed me to remain in school. I wrote the paper I'd already outlined and turned it in a week later. I received an A on the paper but still failed the class, and the incident was kept on my record. I'm pretty sure that's the reason I didn't get into Harvard for grad school.”

“And your girlfriend?”

“I left her role out. Dumb of me for agreeing to the idea in the first place, but we did break up because of it.”

“In Punakha you mentioned that Billingsly helped get you admitted to Emory.”

Grant nodded. “The plagiarism incident was a red flag in my file from UVA. After I explained to Billingsly what had happened, he went to the admissions committee and vouched for my integrity and qualifications. I owe him everything.”

Kristin reached across the table, unhinged his fingers from his tumbler, and interlaced them with hers. The warmth from her skin was comforting. “How could Brady have dug up that information?”

“Several of my friends knew about it. But what concerns me is that it isn't just this one incident. The photos vanished from your camera and my computer, the translation was leaked, and Kinley has gone missing. Are we involved in some sort of conspiracy?”

She sat up straighter. “I just don't see how that's possible. Those events are unrelated to each other. Sometimes bad things just happen at the same time.”

He dropped her hand as a thought passed through his head. One common thread was woven through these events: the pictures, the email, the debate, even his relationship with Kinley:
Kristin
. Was it possible that this beautiful woman he felt so connected with, this journalist, had something ...

No
, he didn't believe that.
But
, the voice returned,
I've only known her a short time.
He shook his head. Something else was at work here. Billingsly had warned him that people would be threatened by his discovery.
But who?

He pressed his fingertips into his temples. “No one will take our discovery seriously any longer.”

Grant's self-pity quickly morphed into anger. Someone was trying to destroy his life. Blood flushed his neck and his pulse pounded even harder in his head than it had moments earlier. Just when he caught himself clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth, he heard a voice from his memory. It was Kinley speaking a single word:
dukkha
. Grant's cart had certainly come unhinged.
Actually smashed to smithereens was the more accurate analogy
, he thought.

Broken cart, broken leg, wild horses returning with a herd, fingers pointing to the moon—all Kinley's quaint aphorisms and parables, not to mention his meditation techniques, wouldn't resolve his current predicament. Grant realized that he couldn't accept this situation. He needed to do something.

He felt Kristin's gaze, waiting for him. “We just need to bring back the real texts,” he said.

“But how? You've called Karma twice a day, and he has nothing on Kinley's whereabouts.”

Grant stood from the table. She was right. He didn't like having to go through an intermediary to contact his monk friend. But he had no other choice for now. “It should be morning in Bhutan. I'm calling Karma again.”

While Kristin carried their dishes to the sink, Grant followed with the glasses. He then unplugged his cell phone from the charger on the kitchen counter.

After a ring that sounded as if it came from inside a shoebox, the doctor answered.

“Karma, it's Grant. Any news?”

The disposal growled loudly.

Kristin glanced up from the dishes. “Sorry,” she mouthed, cutting the switch.

Grant waved for her to continue. He walked through the living room across the Berber carpet, past the futon that was doubling as his bed, to the sliding glass door.

“Nothing new from yesterday, my American friend.” A pause longer than the distance of the call warranted followed before Karma's voice came over the line again. “But now it seems Jigme has left the monastery too. It's possible he left with Kinley.”

Grant stepped onto the small wooden balcony overlooking a mass of pine trees. The night had turned brisk, and he wore only a T-shirt and jeans. The cold sharpened his senses. He unsuccessfully tried to push away the thought that was intruding into his mind. Kinley and Jigme left the monastery the moment news of the texts became public. Certainly the monks couldn't have been playing him all along—or could they have? What if Brady was right?

He inhaled the crisp, pine-scented air, and sighed into the phone. “Karma, it's imperative that I to speak to Kinley.”

After clicking his phone closed and stuffing it into his jeans pocket, Grant leaned on the wooden rail and peered into the darkness. He could see only the
outline of the trees ahead of him. He suddenly shivered against the cold of the night.

He heard Kristin's footsteps behind him. Before he could turn, she slipped her bare arms around his waist. Her hair caressed the back of his neck. He could smell its floral fragrance. He felt the tension ebb from his body.

“Beautiful night.” Her warm breath touched his cheek.

“Quite beautiful.” He turned to her.

Her blue eyes searched his with the purposeful intensity that had both excited him and made him uncomfortable when they first met. He felt a powerful urge to kiss her.
But what if I'm just misinterpreting her touchy nature
? he worried. He didn't think he could handle getting rebuffed now. He needed Kristin as a friend more than ever.

To his surprise, she rose on her toes so that her face was inches from his. She slid her hands from his waist, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled herself into his body. She kissed him hard, yet her mouth was soft. A tremor passed through to his core.

After several minutes of the wood railing digging into his back, he reluctantly broke the embrace. “It might be more comfortable inside,” he said.

Without speaking, she took his hand and guided him, limping beside her, into the living room. She pushed him to the firm cushion of the futon, lowered her body on top of his, and brushed her lips along his neck. Grant traced his fingers from the delicate line of her neck to her collarbone and then down her spine. A sigh escaped her lips when he slipped his hands underneath her shirt and brought them to her breasts. She responded by biting his lower lip with enough force that he feared she might draw blood. He quickly forgot about his lip, though, when she pressed her pelvis into his, gently rocking her hips.

Barely able to contain himself, Grant dropped a hand to the front of her jeans, struggling for a moment with the button in his quivering fingers. Just when he succeeded, Kristin gently moved his hand from her waist up over his head, where she pinned it to the futon with her own.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

His mind raced. Did she mean, “Not yet at this moment” or “Not yet today”? He'd never experienced a woman as independent or as passionate as
Kristin, and maybe this accounted for his insecurity, but she'd sent him mixed signals as well.

After another half hour of alternating tenderness and urgent passion, Grant sensed that “not yet” had become “okay now” when she pressed her body more firmly to his. He untangled his fingers from the soft curls of her hair, which had become damp with perspiration, and slid his hands down her sides to her lower back. Her nails bit into his shoulders. He slipped his fingers just underneath the waistband of her jeans. She ground her hips into his.

This is going to happen
, he thought. He hadn't been with a woman in months and he hoped he wouldn't disappoint her. The brief doubts that flitted through his head were quickly replaced when her open mouth found his again. He liked the way she tasted, the way her hair fell around his face, the way her smooth skin swept in a graceful arch from her lower back to the top of her buttocks.