A Scarlet Cord (18 page)

Joel’s heart broke as he realized that, because of him, Melanie would have desperate need of solace in the days to come.

He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine sprang to life. Turning out of the parking lot, he glanced in his rearview mirror. Toliver’s unmarked car followed him at a distance. The inspector would wait while Joel dropped the envelope in Melanie’s mailbox. By the time she discovered it, Joel would be a hundred miles away.

Melanie picked up Jerica at the LaSalles’, then ran by the grocery store for milk and eggs. It was after 6:30 when she pulled wearily into the driveway.

Jerica ran back to her room to play, and Melanie changed out of her business suit.

While she put the groceries away, she absently dialed Joel’s number. It rang four times before the answering machine picked up.

Even filtered through the phone lines in the form of a recording, Joel’s voice stirred something inside her. She listened with a soft smile on her face until the tone prompted her to leave a message.

“Hi,” she said softly into the receiver. “It’s me. Just heard you were missing in action. Hope everything’s okay. Give me a call when you get home. I love you.”

She dropped the phone in the cradle and went to the front door to check the mail. As she pulled a pile of catalogs and other junk mail from the box, she noticed a long ivory envelope with her name on it—no address, no postmark. She recognized Joel’s handwriting.

She dropped the mail on the hall table and took the letter to the kitchen table. Her hands were trembling as she opened the envelope.

Later, she would wonder why she had somehow known—even before she opened the envelope—that the letter within would change her life forever.

Joel sat on the edge of a sagging mattress in a hotel room on the outskirts of Chicago. Another safe house. He almost laughed at the irony of the name. Nothing about this dingy room felt safe.

He put his head in his hands. He had never felt so alone. He’d thought he had experienced the ultimate loneliness when he’d entered the Federal Witness Security Program the first time. But this was worse. With the advent of Melanie and Jerica into his life, his dreams had been handed back to him beyond anything he could have prayed for. He had experienced restoration, and now, unbelievably, it had been taken from him as cruelly as his very identity had been wrenched from him in the beginning. Even the biblical Job had not had to suffer the loss of his restored life.

How could he ever trust God again? The only thing that kept a spark of hope aflame within him was the thought of another chance to testify against the man who was responsible for Victoria’s death and now for this exile from everything and everyone he had come to love in Silver Creek. From the day that vile criminal had stolen his past from him, Joel had lived a lie. Against his will, he had been made into someone he was not. Now he didn’t know who he was anymore. It was almost as though he didn’t exist.

Yet he
must
exist. For only a living, breathing man could feel this pain that was a physical ache in the region of his heart.

He picked up the Gideons Bible from the stand beside the bed. Through the veil of his tears, the words rippled and melted into a language he could not interpret.

He sank to his knees and tried to pray, but the words caught in his throat. A low moan—a voice he didn’t recognize as his own—came from somewhere deep within him. Had God, too, been lost to him?

If that were so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on living.

Melanie unfolded the letter and something coiled out onto the table—the thin, red satin cord that had always hung from the rearview mirror in Joel’s car. She twined the braided cord between her fingers, her mind spinning. What was this all about? Trembling, she sank into a chair and tried to make sense of the words on the page in front of her.

Melanie
,

I don’t know where to begin or how to make you understand what I am about to tell you. I love you with all my heart, but something has happened that makes it impossible for me to stay here. You must trust me that for reasons I cannot explain to you, it is for the best that I go away and that we end our engagement
.

As difficult as I know this will be, you must not hold on to any hope whatsoever that my circumstances will change. Please don’t worry about me. I will be okay, but I will never be free to share your life, and I beg you to go on … even to find happiness with someone else. I don’t know what you’ll tell people, but whatever you do, you must not come looking for me
.

I know you believe you knew me, Melanie, but there is so much you don’t know about me because I have not been totally honest with you. I ask your forgiveness for that. I can’t explain except to tell you that too much of my life has been a lie. But Melanie, you must believe this: My love for you was the one true thing in my life. My feelings for you were never anything but honest and
true. My love for you and my faith in God were the only things I could ever count on
.

I am so sorry for disappointing you in this way. And Jerica—I love her as though she were my own daughter. I don’t know how you will explain this to her, but please let her know that I will always love her and pray for her. It would have been a sacred privilege to be a part of your lives. I am so sorry that I have hurt you both … so sorry that it has to end like this. But there is simply no other way
.

You told me once that time heals all wounds. I know now that there is some truth to that, and I pray that time will go quickly for you in the next weeks and months and that you will soon come to a place where you can remember our short time together with a measure of happiness
.

There is nothing more I can say except that I will never forget you. Your love has been a blessing beyond words, and your name will be in my prayers every day for as long as I live
.

With all my love
,

Joel

She let the letter fall to the table and tried to stop her hands from shaking. It seemed unthinkable that this could be happening. What could possibly have caused Joel to abandon her like this? Especially when he claimed that he still loved her. It didn’t make sense.

She felt panic rise in her throat, and she willed herself to remain calm, to think things through rationally. But no matter how many times she read the letter over again, no matter how she tried to read between the lines, she could not understand what it meant.

She picked up the satin cord and ran her fingers along its length.
Why had Joel given her this now? Why, when he never would explain its meaning to her beyond telling her that it reminded him of a passage of Scripture that comforted him? She couldn’t imagine what was so personal or secret about it that he would continue to deny her an explanation. She’d always suspected that it had something to do with Tori. That he hadn’t wanted to tell her for fear it would hurt her feelings or make her jealous. But if that were so, why had Joel given her the cord now?

She felt sick to her stomach. She had to find him, had to talk to him, and find out why he was doing this. But she needed help. Whom should she tell? To whom could she go?

He had said in his letter that he hadn’t been totally honest with her. What did he mean by that? She remembered the night he had asked her to marry him and how he had struggled to tell her about Tori and his former engagement. Had he lied to her then? Was there more to the story than he’d told her?

And what did he mean that she must not come looking for him?

Suddenly nothing in her life made sense anymore.

Sixteen

Melanie sat woodenly, staring across the kitchen but seeing nothing. Her thoughts were a confusing swirl of senseless words. Her mind swam with sordid possibilities—some too ugly to entertain. She didn’t know what to believe now.

What if Joel was in some kind of danger? Yet nothing he had ever said gave her a hint of what it could be.

Suddenly a small voice broke into her musings—

“Mommy?”

Jerica! Oh, dear God, how will I ever explain this to her?
How could she ever make this precious child understand that she had been robbed of another daddy?

“Hi, sweetie,” Melanie said, swiping at tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“It’s okay, Jer. I … I just got some bad news.” She struggled to control her voice.

“What happened?”

“I’m … not sure yet, baby. I need to call Uncle Matthew and talk to him. I’ll tell you about it after I talk to Uncle Matt, okay?”

Jerica nodded silently, her eyes round.

“Can you do me a favor and go find a video to watch for a little
while? I need you to be very quiet and not interrupt me while I’m on the phone, okay?”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Melanie was barely aware as Jerica shuffled off to the family room. She took the letter to her bedroom, slumped onto the mattress, and dialed her brother’s number.

“Hello?”

“Karly?”

“Melanie! We were just talking about you. We got our airline tickets today. Oh, I am so excited that we’re finally going to meet your Joel. How is everything going?”

“Oh, Karly, it … it’s not going so good.”

“Mel? What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“Joel’s … left, Karly.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“He broke our engagement.”

“Oh, Mel, what happened? Are you okay?”

She started crying. “I’m just really confused right now. I … I’ll tell you all about it later, but … right now I need to talk to Matt. Could … could you get Matthew? Please …” She heard Karly put the receiver down and call Matthew to the phone, her voice on the other end echoing Melanie’s urgency.

“Melanie?” Her brother’s deep voice came on the line, and Melanie tried to draw some of the strength from it. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Oh, Matt. Joel’s gone! I … I got a letter from him, and he’s gone. I don’t know where he went. I don’t know what happened. He just left.”

“What? Melanie, what are you talking about? Joel left? I don’t understand. He broke off your engagement? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned.

“Well, what did he say?”

“He wrote a letter, Matthew. It … it says something has happened that makes it impossible for him to stay here.” She smoothed the letter out on the quilt, but the words blurred through her tears. “It says that … he loves me, but he can’t marry me … that he’ll always pray for Jerica. It says … Oh, Matt, I don’t know what it says.” She beat a fist impotently on the mattress. “None of it makes any sense at all. Everything was fine yesterday.”

Matthew swore softly into the phone. “How could he do this to you, Mel? How could he do this to that precious little girl? So help me—”