“My son wants you,” stated Mary. “And to show His love and relentless affection, He has sent along a gift. Leticia?”
From within her shifting robes of light, Letty produced the ring Gerald had given Lilly.
Lilly laughed out loud. “You took my ring?”
“Better than leave it for a snake,” Letty replied.
“It was always meant for you, dear one.” Mary took the ring and held it out to her. “It is a Betrothal ring, a promise of a wedding.”
“Adonai wants to marry me? Why?”
“Lilly, in you dwell we all. You embody both our breaking and our healing,” said Eve, as she and Mary surrounded the girl. “You are the one!”
“But I can’t have any children!”
“That’s what I once believed about myself,” admitted Eve. “I didn’t trust, but Mary did. See? When I got caught between the promise and impossibility, I chose to turn away. Mary kept her face toward Elohim, and by trust participated. God did the impossible, and the promise was soon born.”
Eve gently took Lilly’s hand in hers. “My daughter, have you learned nothing from my turning? God wants you to abide face-to-face with Him. Dwelling in and with Him is the greatest Good.”
“How did you do it? How did you trust when it was impossible?” Lilly asked of Mary.
“I had a lot of help,” Mary said. She looked at the Angel standing next to Letty. “Right, Gabriel?”
“A little,” came a distinct and powerful voice.
“Always humble,” groused Letty, but her voice was also full of affection.
“Is this like an arranged marriage?” Lilly asked, still overwhelmed.
“Are there other kinds?” asked Mary, and they all laughed.
“I have one last question,” Lilly declared.
“Ah, John warned me about this,” Mary said.
“What do I do now?”
“You wait,” declared Mary. “For the appointed time. And while you wait, your work each day is to trust Him in whatever lies before you. When time is full, my Son will come for you and take you to the grandest wedding celebration, the one creation is longing for.”
“Do you accept this invitation?” asked Eve. “To daily trust and wait?”
It was that simple. “I do,” she said, and put the ring on her finger. Mary and Eve placed their hands on hers, and Mary touched her forehead to Lilly’s. “Child, God keeps Their promises.”
Lilly closed her eyes. “Today, I trust Them.”
Twenty
* * *
BEGINNINGS OF THE END
Lilly opened her eyes and found herself standing once again in front of the Vault’s door. Letty, having resumed her teeny form, was beside her, still holding one of her hands.
“Did that happen?” she asked.
“Too beautiful for words!” Letty said in the shrill, high-pitched voice that Lilly now adored.
“So what now?”
“You already know,” answered the Guardian. “Now the real work begins! But you are going to need this.”
Lilly saw what Letty held out to her, and she laughed. Anita’s silver key. “I should have suspected when you gave me the ring! You took the key too?”
Letty shrugged. “I knew more than the givers did about why it would be needed.”
The girl looked down at the key, flipping it over in her hands. “I think I know what this is for, but I’m scared.”
“To fear is to be human. But remember, you are loved.”
“No one will ever believe what has happened to me here. Will I remember?”
“God will give you wisdom about what to say to others, and yes, this you never will forget.”
“Thank you, Leticia.” Lilly grinned.
“Letty will do, little one.”
“Letty, one day you will have to tell me all the times you saved me.”
“Teenagers!” Letty laughed. “We Guardians sometimes refer to you as job security.”
Lilly felt stronger and took a step away from her Guardian. Her injured foot wobbled underneath her.
“That thing is going to take time to get used to,” Letty said, tapping her cane on Lilly’s leg. Its response was hollow and metallic.
“What?” Lilly pulled up her skirt to look at her metal leg. “What happened to my freckles?”
“Prosthesis!” Letty grumped. “It’s the best your world and time can offer right now. It will have to do.”
Lilly stooped and pulled the woman close. Letty returned the hug.
“Don’t leave me, okay?”
“Lilly, I will always be close. But Adonai will never leave you nor forsake you. As Mary said, They always keep Their promises.”
“Okay, then let’s do this.”
Lilly slowly turned away and hobbled her way down the hall. She didn’t have to go a great distance, but she was short of breath by the time she got to the locked door that John had warned her about, the one she had tried to open her first day in the Vault.
She turned the knob. Still locked.
For a minute she stood staring at the door, knowing that if she went through it, nothing would be the same. But then, nothing was the same anyway. What she once thought was true about herself and others had been turned on its head; what she once tried to control had been surrendered to Adonai. Certainty had been revealed an imposter and control empty imagination. What did she have to lose? There was no reason to stay at the Refuge. If God would never leave her and Letty remained close at hand, if the work was simply to trust Adonai one day at a time, she could do that. At least for today.
Lilly inserted the key into the lock and turned it. Then she opened the door.
• • •
THE SPACE WAS WARM and inviting, a living room with chairs and a sofa, a desk, and cabinets full of books. Lilly recognized it. She had been here many times before. It was a safe place, where healing was encouraged as far as Lilly would allow it.
“Well, good morning, young lady! Please, come on in.” The woman who spoke sat behind a laptop computer at the desk, but she closed it and took off her glasses, set them on the desk, and rose to extend a hand.
She was tall and slim and black, dressed in a colorful skirt and blouse. The woman was almost regal, with a demeanor informed by the dignity of wisdom and kindness.
“Please, sit. Anything I can get you?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” replied Lilly, choosing a chair that looked comfortable. The woman drew up another alongside Lilly, close enough to comfort but not invade.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the doctor helping you to process the tragedies you’ve experienced, your losses, and your recovery. My name is Evelyn.”
She smiled. “And mine is Lilly Fields.”
The doctor looked surprised. “That’s good, Lilly. Since you’ve been here, you’ve sometimes coped by taking on other personas, which is entirely understandable given the intensity of your experiences.”
“Personas?”
“Yes. There is Kris, and there is the Princess.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” admitted Lilly, recalling the names given to her by her broken mother and the men who had used her. “But I don’t think I need them anymore. If I’m going to do the work of getting well, I probably need to figure out how to be one person.”
Evelyn’s lips parted for a moment before she spoke, as if Lilly had startled her again. “Excellent. Sometimes it takes a person years to get to this point.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About a year, but much of that was in the medical wing. Some of the most brilliant people in the country have been working hard to restore you physically. I don’t know how much you remember, but you almost died before they found you.”
“I remember,” Lilly stated. “Shipping container. Trafficked. I remember.”
Evelyn’s eyes registered shock, but her smile radiated warmth and hope. “Good, that is where we will work from.” She reached for the folder on her desk and took
out one piece of paper. “Lilly, we have received a request from your biological mother. It took a lot of time to find her. She is in a halfway house, in recovery from addiction. She has requested permission to see you. When you are willing.”
The request was unexpected, and a wave of anger and resentment took her breath away. Trust, she thought, and the room came back into focus. She focused on the light slanting in through the windows. “Do I have to decide now? I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”
“No, not at all. I wanted you to know. I am not one who likes secrets. I would rather have—”
“Good surprises for another time, right?” said Lilly, and the woman laughed.
“Exactly! Like you read my mind. Also, two other therapists will be joining us. They’re a husband-and-wife team, specialists who are new to us. Today they’re going through orientation, so you’ll meet them tomorrow. From everything I’ve heard, I think that you and I will get along well with them.”
“And John?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Evelyn sat back, as if trying to make a decision. “John? The volunteer caregiver?”
“Right,” said Lilly.
“Lilly, John was elderly and passed away a couple of days ago. He simply fell asleep and didn’t wake up. I’m sorry that no one told you.”
“It’s okay,” Lilly said, but some tears found their way into her eyes and down her cheeks. She didn’t hide or wipe them away. “John would come and visit me. I liked him. He was kind when I wasn’t, and funny, and he went out of his way for me. I am going to miss him, that’s all.”
The doctor nodded. “To grieve the things we’ve lost, and the people who have slipped out of our lives, is human and important.”
“What about Letty?”
“Letty? Oh, I think you mean Leticia, the night custodian? It seems like she’s always around. That woman! Keeps giving me these things she knits and I don’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t even know what they are.” Evelyn’s laugh held affection. “Like this one,” and reaching over to a shelf, she pulled out a knitted something. “Gave it to me just yesterday.”
“I’ll take it!” offered Lilly, reaching out her hand. “Whatever you don’t want, just pass them off to me. I collect them.”
“You’re a collector, are you? Then it’s a deal,” Evelyn exclaimed, handing it to her. In doing so she looked at Lilly’s hand. “That’s an unusual ring. I don’t remember having seen that before.”
Lilly turned it on her finger. “It’s a special ring. From one of the few trustworthy men I’ve ever known. It’s a promise that I have always been worth loving.”
“Lilly, if you know that profound truth, there is nothing we together can’t find our way through.”
Lilly smiled. “I know!”
Evelyn picked up a pad of paper. “So, Lilly, are you ready to do the hard work? It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.”
“I’m ready. Where do we begin?”
Lilly’s Poem
* * *
There is a
True, above,
between,
beyond the
One or Two.
Both One and
Two, They
are the Three
within Whose
Love They sing
you into being
and becoming.
It is there I
rest from
death’s
demands,
from works
that turn my
face away,
and in this
ease I breathe
in life and,
re-turning,
hear the Voice
I trust, and
I am known,
am freed,
to now and
evermore
participate
in seeing.
Author’s Letter
* * *
Dear Reader,
The book you hold in your hands bears a cover image that grabbed me from the first moment I saw it—and even more so when it prompted vigorous discussion internally at Simon & Schuster. “I love your book,” early readers said. “But why does the cover feature an apple when you have Eve and Adam eating a fig in the book?”
“Aha,” I replied. “This is a terrific question.”
I love good questions. In fact, that’s the reason I write. I want to explore the feelings and assumptions we make when approaching the biggest questions. And what symbol is more loaded with assumptions than the apple? While the apple, figured here on Eve’s cover, is truly iconic, it is not mentioned in the Genesis story and the association possibly originates with medieval monks who were playing with words: “apple” being malus and “evil” being malum.
For centuries in the rabbinic Midrash storytelling tradition, various fruits and nuts were suggested as the fruit forbidden in the Garden of Eden, but there is one fruit that is in the Genesis story itself and also in the Midrash—not the apple we’ve all imagined, but a fig. The fig symbolizes brokenness in the scriptural stories. Consider, for instance, the New Testament references to Jesus cursing the fig tree or that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves as covering. There’s richness to that tradition, isn’t there?
When you eat an apple, you don’t eat the seed. You don’t ingest its core life. But when you eat a fig, you can’t avoid eating the seed. When you do, the fruit—the symbolic “brokenness”—becomes part of you. That strikes me as profoundly true.
What’s more, the iconic apple on the cover is whole, with no bite yet taken, thus it’s a perfect and complete image of the old view of the biblical story—the view Lilly has at the beginning of Eve. It represents my own assumptions growing up and possibly the ones you may have had when you picked up the book. My hope is that I’ve been able to challenge some of the existing assumptions and upset the applecart by the story’s end, restoring Lilly and maybe even the reader to a wholehearted and deeper reunion with God. This is an invitation to live in face-to-face union with the Divine and a declaration that each of us is a unique work of art, not to be constrained by cultural law or limitation.
Thus this small thing—the conversation this evoked—is part of what I hope happens with Eve in a larger sense. May it break our assumptions—and our hearts—open in a way that allows something profound to happen within each of us as individuals and together in community.
With great affection,
Acknowledgments
* * *
Eve has been the single most arduous creative work that I have ever engaged, a forty-year process of questions, study, and living life. One does not accomplish such a task alone. I am surrounded by a host of family and friends, in-laws and outlaws, a myriad of scholars and thinkers, dreamers, schemers, and artists; each who have contributed in unique and significant ways to this work.
At the center of it all is Kim, who gives me the gift of staying grounded; she believes in me but is not easily impressed. Our children, their spouses, our grandchildren, and the joy that each one brings, makes the work worth the sweat, tears, and prayer. As the ripples move outward, we are surrounded by the incredible friendships of those who continue to cover us with affection and prayers. To name them all would take another book, but these include: Closner, Weston, Foster, the Ninjas and the Posse, Scanlon, Linda Yoder, Graves, Troy Brumell, Miller, the other Miller, Garratt, the Toronto and Vancouver Minions, Huff, TCK family, Larson, Wards, Sand, Jordan, the NE Portland family, Gillis, my Canadian family (Young and Bruneski), including Mom and Dad, Debbie, Tim and their families, the Warren Clan, especially “The Force,” Goff, Marin, Gifford, Henderson, and MacMurray.
Special thanks to C. Baxter Kruger, who talked me off the ledge a couple times when the creative process took me there and has been a consistent and encouraging sounding board as I struggled to weave essential elements of coherent scholarship inside an accessible story. Also to Howard Books and Simon & Schuster, a publisher that has consistently been
encouraging, with a special hug to Jonathan Merkh and Carolyn Reidy, who have unequivocally supported this project from the outset.
I have always said that a good editor is worth their weight in gold, so thank you Ami McConnell, Becky Nesbitt, Amanda Rooker, and especially Erin Healy (Erin you were a godsend, truly).
Thank you to the myriad of voices being raised worldwide that will make this century the Century of the Woman, like Jimmy Carter, Stephen Lewis, and Emma Watson (your UN speech was profound); for organizations such as Opportunity International, Stop Demand; and a host of religious, political, business, and philanthropic organizations that are chipping away at the massive inequities in our world, especially those centered on women’s rights and issues.
I drew from many scholars, ranging in expertise from linguistics and antiquities to philosophy, psychology, theology, and science. Again, it would take another book to list them all, but I will highlight only a few. Thank you, Jacques Ellul, who now sits in the great cloud of witnesses, along with Katherine Bushnell. William Law, Karl Barth, and George MacDonald. Thank you too, to Fuz Rana, Hugh Ross, and the folks at Reasons to Believe, who helped me craft the days of creation in a way respectful to both the text and to science.
Another list, too long, would be the music that is the backdrop and sound track of my work, the constant companionship of bards and tune and lyric. My thanks to them is represented in my thanks to Bruce Cockburn, a poet of life’s journey. If I could have gotten the requisite permissions in time, I would have printed the lyrics of his “Creation Dream” and “Broken Wheel” at the back of this novel.
Thank you, Biliske Meiers (Spokane area) and Jay and Jeni Weston (Mt. Hood area) for space and time to concentrate and work. Such gifts are a great kindness.
Framing this project were two men and their families, without whom this project would have never gotten off the ground. Thank you, Dan Polk and Wes Yoder, who oversaw and hammered out each detail, men of integrity and compassion. No one represents my heart better than you two.