“Nick, we thought we’d lost you!”
“I think they told me I was going to live,” he whispered. “Unless I was dreaming.”
“You better live,” she said. “I have a lot to tell you.”
He squeezed her hand and stroked the soft skin there. He couldn’t believe she had been locked away in a trunk for three days. It was like being in the belly of a whale. He wondered if she felt anything like Jonah.
He blinked back the tears in his eyes. “You saved my church,” he whispered. “You saved all those lives. You saved me.”
Tears burst into her eyes again, and he saw the way her mouth trembled as she tried to hold back her emotions. “Not me,” she whispered. “God.”
A tear fell. “I’m glad you see that. I’m glad you understand. He was watching over us, wasn’t he? My church was not a building, but I had forgotten that until I heard those bullets flying and people dropping to the ground. Those people are the church. Not a bunch of wood and bricks. The church is the people who inhabit it. It’s the God who inhabits them. God didn’t take my church away from me.”
Emotion welled up in his throat, and he swallowed it back and closed his eyes. When he looked up at her again, she was crying too. Their eyes locked into each other’s, and he felt an intense connection with her. He couldn’t remember ever having that kind of connection before.
There was something about her, he thought, something that had always gotten to him, under his skin and into his heart. And it was still here, stronger than ever. Even when he had resolved never to be unequally yoked, when she bent over and hugged him, he couldn’t help wrapping her in his arms, holding her close to him.
But they were unequally yoked. Then it occurred to him. She had agreed that God had saved the church. And if she understood that, then maybe…He let her go and pulled her back enough to look into her face. It was only inches from his, and he could see the little golden flecks in her dark eyes, the pink rims, the redness of her nose.
“You said that God saved the church,” he said. “You believe now.”
Those tears came even faster down her face as she nodded her head.
“You’ve accepted Christ?” he whispered, astounded.
She only stared at him for a long moment, and in that moment he convinced himself that she was going to say no, that she hadn’t gone quite that far. Maybe she had a cursory belief in God, understood that there was a supernatural power directing things around her. But a relationship with Christ was another thing.
“I have accepted him,” she whispered, and his heart took wing. He tried to get up, but she made him lie back down. “That’s not the amazing thing. The really amazing part is that he’s accepted me.”
Nick’s mouth opened. He couldn’t think of words that adequately expressed the joy soaring inside him. It was a miracle, an even greater miracle than God stopping the shooters from killing anyone in his church. God had saved Issie Mattreaux.
Overcome with the miracle of that grace, he framed her face with his hands and pulled her closer. Their lips met, and he kissed her hard and long with all the joy and sadness and grief and anxiety and desire that he had felt for her for so long. And he could feel in her kiss that she felt it too.
She didn’t see him as a big brother, or a protector, or even the preacher who barraged her with customized sermons. No, she was kissing him like a man.
They heard someone in the doorway of the ICU, and a nurse’s shrill voice cut across the moment. “Time for you to go, honey. Visitation is only fifteen minutes.”
She nodded to the nurse, then turned back to Nick, her eyes swimming with tears.
“I love you, Nick Foster,” she whispered.
He was so shocked he couldn’t speak as she sat back down in her wheelchair and allowed the nurse to push her out. As she disappeared from his sight, he began to weep with relief and joy and hope like he’d never felt before.
Was God going to give him permission to pursue his relationship with Issie? The thought that that might happen overcame him as he closed his eyes and began to pray. And for the first time in a long while, he began to realize that God’s plan for him might be even better than he expected.
Chapter Seventy
The courtroom was full of reporters from both national and local stations, all waiting to capture the arraignment of each of Cruz’s followers. Thanks to Jake’s testimony, the police had rounded up everyone involved in the murders and the church burnings.
Sidney Clairmont, Cruz and Jennifer’s grandfather and the grand wizard of the KKK, hired his own lawyer from New Orleans to represent his surviving granddaughter. He marched into the courtroom with a suit that looked like it had fit ten years ago, and with a smug grin on his face that said this was a minor setback in their lives, but they would clear it up before long.
Jennifer sat in an orange jumpsuit with dirty hair and a gray cast to her skin. She had stopped eating since seeing her brother killed by the pipe bomb he had meant for the church. She was going to follow her martyred brother, she had declared, and didn’t care whether she did it from jail or from home.
Judge DeLacy, who had been on the grounds of Aunt Aggie’s when the shooting had occurred, and who had even had his kneecap shattered by a bullet, had excused himself from the case and had the hearing moved to Slidell so that another judge could handle it. Still, he sat in the courtroom, hoping the whole group got all they deserved.
When their case was called, Jennifer came before the judge.
“What do you plead?” the judge asked.
“I don’t care,” Jennifer said, her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her.
“You have to give me a plea,” the judge said.
Her lawyer whispered something in her ear, and finally, she brought her dull eyes to his. “Not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“Insanity,” the judge repeated distastefully. He leaned up on the bench and glared down into their eyes. “Since you’re so insane, you won’t blame us for lockin’ you up. Just to make sure you don’t have a mental lapse again.”
“Your honor,” the attorney said, straightening his tie and shuffling papers as if this was a routine case. “She’s just a kid.”
“Not according to the law, she isn’t.”
“But we both know that she is,” the attorney said. “She just lost her brother, and she hasn’t been well. Their mother is a fine, upstanding Christian woman. Let her keep this young lady at home and get her through this bad time until the trial.”
“We all know who her mother is,” the judge said, “and who her grandfather is. Thank you, but I b’lieve I’ll stick with my original order. She will be held in custody pending the trial, and I don’t care if she eats or not.”
Jennifer gave no response, but her grandfather got to his feet.
“Your honor,” the lawyer said, “I’d like to have her mentally evaluated to see if she’s even competent to stand trial.”
“She’s gon’ stay in jail, Counselor.”
“Judge, when you hear how this child was abused by her daddy for most of her life, you’ll understand her instability. Jennifer here was sexually abused, and her brother was beaten repeatedly throughout his life. They were both exposed to repeated acts of violence throughout their childhoods, acts that seemed normal to them. I’d like a mental evaluation to prove—”
The judge banged the gavel again. “I’m sorry for their past history, Counselor. But thousands of people who were abused as kids live decent, law-abiding lives every day. They don’t kill people. The victim defense won’t work in my courtroom. I’m sick to death of hearing people come up with excuses for committing horrendous crimes. I don’t care about excuses. I care about seeing that justice is done.” He looked at his bailiff. “Next case.”
Jennifer was compliant as the bailiff led her out.
Chapter Seventy-One
Six months later, the new sanctuary was filled to overflowing with people who had come to dedicate the building and listen to Nick
preach the first sermon in it. Nick gave an invitation that day asking anyone there who wanted to walk the aisle and profess their belief in Jesus Christ to come to the altar.
Issie, whom he’d baptized in Bayou Lafayette as soon as he had recovered a few months ago, walked the aisle with her brother, Mike, his wife, Lois, and her nephew, Jake.
For the past several months she had been in a Bible study group that Nick had led in his home, and he’d found her to be an enthusiastic student of the Word of God. She soaked up the things he taught her with a hunger that surprised him, and gradually he saw the emptiness in her heart being filled with Bread of Life and Living Water. He saw her father-longing satisfied as she learned what it was to be embraced by the paternal arms of the One who loved her enough to die for her.
He had seen joy in her like he’d never seen before, and he’d seen purpose, for now she knew why she was here. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been back to Joe’s Place since the night he had rescued her from herself.
When the service was over, Nick took them to a room in the back and talked to Jake and Lois and Mike about their salvation. And then he deferred to Issie as she began to explain the simple concept of grace to her nephew, who had trouble believing he could be forgiven for some of the things he had been a part of. Awaiting trial for being an accessory to murder, he knew he would serve time in jail. How could God forgive him when the justice system could not?
Nick was proud of her, so proud that he could hardly stand it. And even as he listened to her teach those she loved about her own salvation, he found himself struggling to hold back the tears.
Later as she and her family left the church, he watched them walk out to the new parking lot and get into their car. He stood at the door, moved by what he had seen here today, the fruit she was bearing, the burden she had for telling those she loved about Christ.
He heard footsteps behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Mark, Dan, and Stan come up behind him. Stan put his hands on Nick’s shoulders and shook him roughly, affectionately.
“So what are you waiting for?” Mark asked.
Nick looked over at him, saw Mark leaning against the doorway’s casing, his arms folded and a smug grin on his face.
“What do you mean, what am I waiting for?”
Dan grinned and nodded toward the car driving out of the parking lot. “It’s pretty obvious that you and Issie are made for each other,” Dan said.
Nick grinned then, understanding. “I’ve been waiting for a lot of things,” he said. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking advantage of her in her vulnerability. A baby Christian, struggling to walk. I didn’t want to get in the way of that, or interrupt it in any way. And I didn’t want to wonder if she was trying to be something I wanted, or if I was trying to be something she wanted. I wanted to watch her for a while, make sure her salvation was real, and disciple her.”
“She’s bearing fruit,” Mark said. “That looks like a good sign to me.”
Dan shook his head. “She’s not the same party girl that she used to be. She’s really getting into this church thing. Her heart is different.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, her heart is different.” But he hoped it wasn’t too different, for he couldn’t forget the words she’d whispered to him in ICU months ago.
I love you, Nick.
Since then, they’d dated frequently, but he had deliberately taken things slow. He didn’t want to rush her, didn’t want to get in the way of God’s work in her life, didn’t want to interrupt her healing.
But he didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
He grinned as they all watched him watch her drive away. “I think she’s getting better looking all the time too,” he said.
They all roared as if their favorite team had just made the winning touchdown, and all of them patted him on the back and hugged him roughly.
They headed back into the church.
Mike took Lois and Jake to the restaurant they had chosen for lunch, so that they could hold a place in line while he took Issie home. She wasn’t hungry, she said. She wanted to go home and be alone for a while.
She rode in the passenger seat of her brother’s car, her gaze fixed on some invisible object outside the window.
“So is Nick coming over for lunch?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Then why don’t you want to eat with us?”
She shrugged. “He said some things in his sermon today. I want to go home and look them up, and put them in context, and study them while they’re fresh on my mind.”
Mike grinned. “Man, you’ve changed.”
“Not enough,” she said. They rode in silence for a while, and finally, she looked over at him. “Mike, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad lately.”
“Dad?” he asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The concept of God being my Father sort of keeps it coming to mind. That didn’t sound like a good thing to me, you know? To me, fatherhood meant neglect, indifference, absence…I didn’t get a warm, cuddly feeling when I thought of God as that.”
“I can relate to that,” he said.
“But lately, with Nick, I’ve felt that security and that love and that sense of being cherished…all the things that fathers are supposed to give to their children. All the things I missed with every single man I ever dated, because I never knew that I didn’t just have to rewrite the last chapter in my relationship with our dad. I didn’t know that I could rewrite the entire story, and start with a different type of man, one who had all those paternal traits that I wanted so much.”
“So that’s what Nick is to you? A father figure?”
“Not exactly. I’m just now understanding that maybe what I need in a husband is a man who can love me as a wife, cherish me and enjoy me, and be attracted to me and flirt with me…but also nurture and protect me with that fatherly security I never had. It changes everything, Mike. I wish I’d known it before, when I was choosing rogues and rats to go out with. I wish I’d known that I could have what I always wanted. But I didn’t know. I thought I could find what I wanted by choosing unavailable men like Dad, and through my wiles and my looks, capture them into falling for me. But men like that never do fall that hard for a woman, and they’re never more available than Dad ever was.”
Mike frowned as he let her thoughts sink in. “I should have been that for you. I was your big brother. I was supposed to take care of you.”
“But you were as neglected as I was. How could you know any better? We were two kids bringing ourselves up. You did the best you could with what you knew.”
His eyes misted over. “What if it doesn’t work out with Nick, Issie? What if he never asks you to marry him?”
Her gaze drifted out that window again. “I’ll be disappointed, but not broken. Because Nick will have given me something pretty important. He’ll have shown me, just for a while, what God’s father-love for me is all about. And I know God can take it from there.”
The next afternoon, a huge portion of the town turned out for the drill that would help the emergency personnel of the town prepare for another disaster. They staged a hurricane with tornadoes, and mock casualties lay all over the school grounds.
Attired in his turnout gear and his mask and tanks, Nick helped with the triage operation that the paramedics were involved in. They ran from actor to actor assessing invisible wounds.
He saw Issie across the bodies, watched her pretending to administer care to a victim.
Nick found it hard to concentrate. He’d been trying to ask her to marry him for the last week, but every time he got close to her, his heart raced and his palms sweated, and he found himself gazing into her eyes and forgetting any rational thoughts he’d ever had.
He knew he should just come out with it, tell her he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but some part of him feared that she would say no. He didn’t want it to end just yet. He’d been carryi
ng the ring every day in his pocket, and he had it on him now, but he didn’t know when he would get the chance to ask her.
He looked around for where he was needed and saw that the firemen were almost finished with their work. The paramedics had the wounded under control. They were nearing the end of the day, and he knew the drill had been successful.
He went back to the fire truck and took off his mask and cap, hung his tanks on the back of the seat, opened his turnout coat. Issie came around the truck, hurrying to put her crash cart away in her own rescue unit.
She winked at him as she passed. “Kind of a fun day, huh?”
“Yeah, fun.” He reached down and grabbed her arm, pulled her back. Her eyes brightened into that flirtatious look he loved, as she looked expectantly up at him.
He leaned back against the fire truck. “You know, it’s not so easy being around you, keeping my thoughts to myself.”
She smiled. “I know the feeling.”
He leaned down and kissed her. The fact that she didn’t recoil, that she always let him come close, continually surprised him. “So what are you going to do after this?” he whispered.
She slid her arms under his turnout coat and around his waist, and threw her head back to look up at him. “I don’t know. I thought I might rent a movie, invite a nice man over to watch it with me. A preacher type, maybe. You know anybody like that?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about today.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“I meant what are you doing for the rest of your life?”
Her eyes grew serious as she gazed up at him, unable to answer.
“That’s my stupid way of asking you if you thought maybe you’d like to spend it with me.”
For a moment the shock on her face was hard to read. He wasn’t sure if she was thinking of a nice way to let him down easy, or if she was so stunned that she couldn’t think of a way to say yes.
Then she burst into tears. He let her go, suddenly ashamed and full of remorse. It was too soon to ask her, he thought. How could he have been so stupid?