Courageous: A Novel

  “Good. The job is yours. Walter will go over the specifics with you. I’ll announce it to the staff next week.” He started to sit down. “Oh, and, Javier? Thanks for your integrity. It’s rare.”

  Walter shook Javier’s hand and opened the door for him. “Well done. After six times, I was getting discouraged.”

  Javier thanked both men and stepped out of the office. There was a bounce in his step as he strode down the hall.

  Carmen was working in the kitchen, grateful for every minute after ten o’clock. But at 10:10, the phone rang.

  “No, no, no. Please, God. No.” She tried to compose herself as the phone continued ringing. “Carmen, be strong for him,” she said aloud. “Be strong.”

  She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Carmen.”

  She sobbed. “It’s okay, Javy! It’s okay, baby. We’ll get through this.”

  “Carmen, no, listen to me. I . . .”

  “The Lord will take care of us, Javy. We’ll get through this.”

  “Carmen, listen, they—”

  “I know you trust God. I will, too. You are a good man. A good husband and a good father. I am proud of you.”

  “Carmen, stop! You’re not listening! They didn’t fire me. They promoted me!”

  Carmen froze. “What?”

  “It was a test. They wanted someone they could trust. They made me a manager. And they raised my pay!”

  “A test?”

  “Yes, Carmen. I got a promotion. Everything will be okay.”

  Carmen held the phone out and screamed, jumping up and down. The kids ran into the room, terrified.

  “What’s wrong, Mamá? Please don’t cry.”

  Carmen hugged both of them while holding the phone.

  “Hello?” Javy said. “Is anyone there?”

  “Yes! I am okay. We are all okay!”

  “Tell the children that God heard their prayers. He gave us much more than we asked!”

  “I’ll tell them. I love you, Javy!”

  “I love you, Carmen. Tell the children I love them too. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Gracias a Dios,” Carmen whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Adam, Victoria, and Dylan walked toward the Westover High School track. Dylan wore his uniform and carried a team duffel bag.

  “We’ll see you after the race.”

  Dylan jogged ahead while Adam and Victoria walked up to the fence and watched the runners stretch and warm up.

  “You know this is a long shot, right?” Adam asked Victoria. “He’s only running the 400 because one of the older students got sick. Billy Reeves is a senior, and he owns the district record. Every guy on our team is faster than Dylan—but maybe there’s somebody from Monroe he can beat.”

  Victoria put her hand on Adam’s shoulder. “That’s only the third time you’ve explained it. You’re as nervous as he is. He said he just doesn’t want to come in last. But I say it’s okay if he does.”

  “Let’s get a seat.”

  Victoria looked at the mostly empty stands. “When you come an hour early, that’s no problem.”

  Adam watched Dylan from the stands. Despite attempts to loosen up, Dylan looked very tight to Adam, who now knew his routines and habits. He seemed so young alongside the upperclassmen. The Mitchells spoke with other parents as the stands filled up and a few other events took place. But to Adam, these were preliminaries. His son’s race was the main event.

  Coach Kilian approached Dylan, gestured, and spoke. Though Adam couldn’t hear exactly what he said, his attempt to lip-read yielded, “Just try to stay with the group.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Adam said.

  Victoria wondered if Adam would be all right.

  “I’m proud of him no matter what,” Victoria said. “His grades are better, and he does his chores without my reminders.”

  “Well, I’ve been reminding him,” Adam laughed. “But not as much. The key is, he’s growing spiritually. He’s really becoming a man.”

  “Does he know that’s what you think about him?”

  “Well, yeah, I think . . .” Adam stopped. “Maybe he doesn’t.”

  Adam popped out of his seat and walked down the stairs toward the track.

  Victoria reached out. “Where are you going? Are you supposed to . . . ?”

  Warm-ups were over, and they were moments away from the lineup. Adam saw the disapproving stare from the coach. But he walked up behind Dylan and put his arm around his son’s chest, startling him. Adam spoke into his right ear so only his son could hear.

  “Dylan, I’ve watched you take more responsibility. I’ve seen you own up to your mistakes and be honest, and I admire you for it. I want to tell you that today I consider you a man. I love you. Your mother and I are proud of you no matter what. Do what God has gifted you to do. Run your race. God has made you fast, so when you run, just like Eric Liddell, feel God’s pleasure.”

  Adam let him go. Walking briskly, he saluted Coach Kilian and hopped up the stairs back to his seat.

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I said what it was time for him to hear.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted him to know I believe in him.”

  Soon the announcer called the runners to their marks for the 400.

  Victoria squeezed her husband’s arm. “I know how excited you can get, Adam, but remember there are other people around.”

  “So I shouldn’t embarrass you? I’ll make no promises.”

  The gun went off. Runners sprinted down the track. Near the first turn, Dylan was seventh of the eight. As they went through the turn, Dylan picked up his pace and moved into sixth place.

  As the runners swept around the turn to the back straightaway, Dylan passed another.

  “He’s in fifth!” Adam yelled. “Go, Dylan!”

  “Come on, Dylan!” Victoria yelled—louder than Adam.

  As they continued down the back straightaway, the lead runner, Dylan’s senior teammate, extended his lead, but Dylan passed another runner.

  “Fourth place! He’s in fourth place!” Victoria shouted. She jumped up on the seat.

  “Go, buddy! Go!” Adam yelled.

  The runners got to the final turn and fought for position. Dylan edged to third.

  Now half the crowd was on its feet, and people all around were yelling.

  “That’s it! Go, Dylan!” Adam and Victoria both screamed, felt their throats go raw, and didn’t care.

  As Dylan came around the turn, the lead runner, Billy Reeves, pulled out of reach, but Dylan gained ground on the second-place runner from Monroe. The entire Westover crowd cheered, and anyone who didn’t have a favorite cheered for Dylan. Dylan and his opponent neared the finish line neck and neck.

  “He’s doing it! He’s doing it!” Adam yelled.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Victoria’s voice went hoarse.

  Dylan crossed the finish line a half step ahead of the runner next to him, taking second. His coach, teammates, and friends mobbed him.

  Coach Kilian was astonished. “Where did that come from? You haven’t run like that all year!”

  Dylan fought to breathe while everyone patted him on the back and embraced him. He looked up in the stands to see his father and mother jumping up and down, celebrating his victory.

  “Dylan, you’re the man!” Adam shouted. He grabbed Victoria’s shoulders. “My son is the man!”

  “My little boy is the man!” Victoria yelled. Her voice gave out completely on the word man.

  “Let’s get down there,” Adam said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the track. They pushed toward Dylan.

  “Way to go, Dylan,” his father said, voice raw.

  “You were terrific!” His mother mouthed the words, but no sound came out.

  “What’d you say, Mom?”

  The winner, Billy Reeves, back from his cooldown, approached the mob around Dylan and looked confused. “Hey
, what’s going on? I won the stinkin’ race!”

  Ninety minutes later, Adam, Dylan, and Victoria headed for the parking lot. Adam’s arm was around Dylan. “So your mother doesn’t want me to yell too loud and embarrass her, and pretty soon she jumps up on the bench and screams like a banshee.”

  “You were actually up on the bench, Mom?”

  “I guess I got a little excited,” she whispered.

  “I was pretty excited myself,” Adam said, “though I certainly held it together better than your mother. How are you feeling, Son? You must be on top of the world!”

  “It was amazing. I kept thinking about Eric Liddell when he came from behind.”

  “So did I!”

  Dylan tossed his duffel bag onto the truck’s backseat. “I kind of felt bad for Billy.”

  “Billy always wins. He ran well, but it wasn’t a personal best. He got first, but it was your night. Hey, let me pray right here. Father, You gave Dylan such a great night. Thanks! Please help him enjoy his success and be grateful to You and give You credit.”

  “I think Dylan should pick the restaurant.” It took three attempts for Victoria to communicate this opinion.

  Adam’s eyes shot past Victoria, and he froze. About forty feet from their truck, a man in jeans and an old jacket watched them.

  Victoria turned pale. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered.

  “Get in the truck. Both of you.”

  Adam walked toward the man, who looked down. When Adam got within fifteen feet, he stopped.

  “Mr. Mitchell, I saw on the Westover website that your son was running today. I figured you’d be here.”

  Adam remained silent, but his eyes betrayed his intense emotions.

  “My lawyer told me not to communicate with you or your family.”

  “Maybe you should have listened to him.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about what I did.”

  Mike Hollis tried unsuccessfully to find a safe landing site for his eyes. “I start my sentence in a few days. I’ll be in prison a long time, but I wanted to tell you that . . .”

  His eyes and Adam’s finally met.

  “I’ve got a little girl, too. She’s seven, lives with my ex. It would kill me to lose her.” He paused a moment and swallowed hard. “I guess I will lose her. I know I can’t do anything for you, Mr. Mitchell, but I had to tell you . . . I’m sorry. I know you must hate me. I understand.”

  Adam braced himself. “Look, Mr. Hollis . . . Mike.” Something changed when Adam stopped thinking of him as “the drunk” and called him Mike. “I don’t hate you. I hate what you did. But hating you or trying to get even won’t bring Emily back.”

  Mike looked down.

  “There’s just one thing you can do for me.”

  “What?”

  “You can never touch alcohol or drugs again—not now, not when you get out. And go to your little girl while you still can and love on her. View every moment you spend with her as priceless. Hear me?”

  Hollis wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

  “And just so you know, God is your judge, not me. Jesus Christ forgave me. How can I not forgive you? I do. But above all, Mike, you need God’s forgiveness.”

  “Thank you. But if you knew everything, I don’t think you could forgive me. I . . . saw you at the Fun Park not long before the accident.”

  What does he mean? Adam hadn’t been to the Fun Park for six months, when he last took Emily.

  “I’ve felt the same way myself, Mike. I guess if we deserved forgiveness, we wouldn’t need it. God’s seen me at my worst and still loves me. He knows everything about you too. And if you ask Him, He’ll forgive you.”

  Mike nodded. “Thank you.”

  Adam walked back to his truck, weighing what had just happened.

  “What did he want?” Victoria whispered.

  Adam closed the door and sat with his hands on the wheel. He took a moment to calm himself. “He said he was sorry. I told him God loves him and we choose to forgive him.”

  Victoria looked incredulous.

  “We have to. Jesus has forgiven us for all our worst sins. He commands us to forgive others. Mike Hollis is no exception. That’s the gospel.”

  Dylan listened from the backseat. “He’s going to prison, right?”

  “Yes, for a long time. And he has a daughter, who’s seven.”

  Victoria looked at him, then stared straight ahead. She prayed aloud, barely audible, “God, give me the grace and strength to forgive. I want to, but I need Your help.”

  “He will help us,” Adam said. “Each of us.”

  They sat in silence. Finally Adam said, “Dylan, you had an amazing night. And if Emily could talk to us right now, she’d say the same thing I think Jesus would—‘Go out and celebrate!’ So, Son, where do you want to go? You name it.”

  Dylan took a full five seconds to decide. “Bruster’s Ice Cream. I want a turtle sundae.”

  “Hot fudge brownie for me,” Victoria might have said; Adam wasn’t certain.

  “And,” Dylan said, “I want a banana split with a pretzel rod and extra whipped cream.”

  “You got it, Son,” Adam said, already picturing a Bruster’s peanut butter cup.

  Adam pulled out of the parking lot, spraying gravel.

  “Way to peel out, Dad!”

  “If I had the patrol car, I’d turn on the lights and siren.”

  The next evening Dylan and Adam stood in the driveway cooling down after a run.

  “You’re quiet,” Adam said. “What’s on your mind?”

  Dylan stretched. “There’s something I think I should tell you.”

  Adam leaned toward him.

  “You asked me before if there was an adult I bought drugs from.”

  “You ready to tell me his name?”

  “It’s eaten at me ever since Emily died. I feel so guilty.”

  “We talked about that. God forgives us.”

  “This is something else, Dad.”

  “Why? Who sold you the drugs?”

  Dylan put his face in his hands and mumbled a name.

  “Who?”

  “Mike Hollis.”

  “What?”

  “If I’d turned in Mike Hollis a long time ago, if I’d told you he sold to high school kids, then—” Dylan sobbed—“then he would have gone to jail. And Emily would still be alive!”

  Adam moved closer. “Dylan, you couldn’t have known. If we had do-overs, we’d all choose differently. Maybe you wouldn’t have done the drugs, but if you had and we had the kind of relationship that I think we’re developing . . . then you could have talked with me. And then maybe Mike Hollis would have gone to jail. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me.”

  “Both of you are wrong.” The voice came out of the darkness.

  “I’m no eavesdropper.” Victoria held her hands in the air as she approached from the side yard. “But when I go outside to find Maggie’s chew toy and hear my husband ask, ‘Who sold you the drugs?’ I hope you understand why I kept listening!”

  “Of course,” Adam said.

  “Then let’s talk,” Victoria said. “But it’s cold; can we go inside?”

  While the men showered, Victoria fixed decaf for Adam, hot chocolate for Dylan, and green tea for herself. They met in the living room, and Adam started a fire.

  Maggie curled up at Victoria’s feet. “Drink up and get your insides warm while I tell you what I think. Do you know how many what-ifs and should haves there are? I’ve come up with a hundred. First, I could have told Emily she couldn’t go to the party. Or I could have insisted that one of us pick her up from school and drive her to the party. I could have even discouraged Emily from ballet class as a seven-year-old, where she first met Hannah. There’s no end to it. But you know what difference I think all those things would have made?”

  The question sounded rhetorical, so neither answered.

  “Well, do you?”

  “No,” Adam and Dylan answered together.


  “No difference at all. Because either God is in control or He isn’t. And if God isn’t in control, if our destinies are in the hands of birthday parties, traffic flow, demons, or a man who gets drunk and takes cocaine . . . then God is not God. Why worship Him?”

  “But you believe God is in control, right?” Dylan asked.

  Victoria nodded and opened her Bible to a marked spot. “Listen to this verse from Proverbs 16:9: ‘In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.’ Did Mike Hollis have a choice? Yes. And he made a bad one. But Emily’s life was not in his hands. It was in God’s hands. God could have prevented that crash.”

  “Then why didn’t He?”

  “Dylan, I don’t know. Here’s another verse that might help. Genesis 50:20. When Joseph was maybe your age, his brothers sold him into slavery. But years later he says this: ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.’ He could look back in retrospect and see that what God intended triumphed over what his brothers intended.”

  Adam sat up straight. “You’re right! Think about Good Friday. It was the worst day in history, but we call it Good. Why? Because looking back, we know that God used the worst thing to accomplish the best thing—our redemption.”

  Dylan turned to his mother. “You really think someday we’ll see that God made the right decision when He let Emily die?”

  “I couldn’t say this a couple of months ago, but yes, I do. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane. I believe that if she’d never met Hannah, she still would have died that day. I don’t know why or how. But I do know this—God never lies. And He makes a promise in Romans 8:28—‘In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’”

  Dylan shook his head. “I don’t think I can believe that.”

  Victoria understood Dylan’s struggle. “Your father knows this, Dylan, and I wasn’t sure if I should ever tell you. After Emily died, I was really angry when someone quoted Romans 8:28 to us. I wanted to rip it out of the Bible. If He will work all things together for our good, the ‘all things’ must include the very worst thing that has ever happened to us—even Emily’s death. Could I believe that, in the end, God will use it for all of our good? At first I couldn’t. Yet, if it isn’t true, then Romans 8:28 isn’t true. And if it’s not true, the Bible’s not true.”