“Oh, God! Oh, God. I'm sorry!” It was true! The realization pummeled him like a battering ram to the chest. God! Helen's God. Gloria's God. Spencer's God.
The
God!
And he had said,
I love you, my beloved!
The injustice of it all twisted Kent's mind, and he wormed in agony. The anguish of a mother having smothered her child. The desperation of a husband having tossed aside his bride for the whore. A wish for death.
A new surge of Helen's heaven crashed through Kent's bones, and he trembled under its power.
I love you, my beloved.
Kent screamed. With every fiber still intact in his throat he screamed out for death, for forgivenessâbut his vocal cords had seized with the rest now. They produced nothing more than a long, drawn-out groan. “Uuuuuuhhhhh . . .”
I have died already. I forgive you.
No, no, you don't understand! I am human waste. I do not know how to love. I am death!
You are my lover.
I am your hater! Kent's body buckled, and his forehead hit the steering wheel. Tears ran down his cheeks. The gross incongruity of these words swung like a steel wrecking ball against the sides of his skull.
You are my lover!
The notion that this being of white-hot love could want to love
him!
It could not be! He arched his neck and faced the Towncar's plush ceiling, his mouth stretched wide. It was then that he found his voice again. And he used it to roar, full throated. “Nooooooooo! I caaan't!”
Please love me.
The whisper thundered through his body.
You were made to love him,
a small voice said. Spencer's voice. Then it giggled.
Yes, Kent. Love him.
That was Gloria.
Then Kent fell apart and heaved with sobs on the front seat beside Helen. In one twisted bundle of agony and ecstasy, of deep sorrow and bubbling joy, Kent loved God.
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.” He drank the forgiveness as if an overwhelming thirst had brought him to the edge of death. He gulped at the love like a fish desperate for oxygen. Except this was God filling him with breath, and it brought an unabashed quiver to each fiber of muscle still capable of movement. He reached out with every ounce of his being, every conscious thought, and he begged to be there with him.
For a few moments he
was
there with him. Or a part of God was down here in the Lincoln with him.
And then the light vanished, leaving Kent gasping for breath, draped over the steering wheel. He fell over Helen's lap and sobbed.
She stroked his head gently. Time lost its meaning for a while.
“SO YOU saw him?”
Kent sat up, dazed. He looked at Helen and then back out the front windshield, misted now with condensation. “God!”
“Yes. Words just aren't adequate, are they?”
“So that was . . . God?” He knew it was. Without the slightest question.
“Yes.”
Kent turned to her slowly. “Is it that way for everybody? How come I've never heard of this?”
“You've never heard about it because you've kept your ears closed. Is it that way for everybody? Yes and no.”
He stared at her, wanting her to continue.
“No, not everyone will see what you have seen here tonight. At least not in the same way. But yes, in many ways, it is the same.”
She turned to the windshield. “Let me tell you a story, Kent. You remember a story in the Bible about a man named Job?”
“I heard them, Helen. I heard Gloria and Spencer. They were laughing.” A smile curved his mouth.
She smiled, bright eyed. “Yes, I know. You remember this man, Job? From the Bible?”
“They're in heaven, Helen,” Kent returned, still distracted by the thought. “They're actually in heaven. With
him!”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Kent. I'm asking you a question here. Do you know of Job in the Bible?”
“The man who suffered?”
“Yes. Satan lost his challenge that he could make a righteous man curse God. You remember that?”
“Job remained faithful to God. And in the end he received twice the wealth. Something like that.”
“It actually happened. He lost everything. His children, his wife, his wealth.”
Kent turned to her, blinking.
She faced the dark sky. “Not so long ago, Satan cast another challenge before God. A challenge of reversals. This time he insisted that he could keep an unrighteous man from responding to God's love.
“No matter how you draw him, no matter how you love him, no matter how you lure him,”
Satan said,
“I can keep this man from responding to your love.”
“You're saying this actually happened?”
“Yes.” She looked at him and nodded, teary eyed now. “Yes. And God accepted the challenge. The heavens have been lined with a million creatures, intent on that man's every move for months. And today, God has won the challenge.” Helen smiled.
“M . . . me?” Kent asked, stunned.
“I was this man?”
“Yes.”
The notion seemed absurd. “This was all engineered, then? How . . .”
“No, not engineered, Kent. You were drawn. In ways none of us may ever fully understand, you were drawn by the father. And you were pulled . . . in a thousand ways you were pulled by Satan. Away from God.”
Kent's mind spun back over the last few months and saw a long string of events full of extremes. Death. But in death, laughter, because Gloria and Spencer were laughing up there. Wealth. But in wealth, death. Or very nearly death. A whole reality behind the stage of life.
“He must have switched strategies halfway through,” Kent said absently.
“Satan?”
“Yes. Killing off my family didn't work, so he set out to make me rich.”
She chuckled. “Yes, you're getting the picture.”
He turned to her again. “But why me?”
She sighed and shook her head. A car drove by, its lights glaring like halos in the windshield. The dull thump of rock music for a moment and then silence once again.
“That's just it, Kent. Your case is unique because of what we were able to see. But otherwise it's not so different than the challenge made over the young man or woman behind the wheel of the car that just passed us.”
“It's the same for everybody?”
“You think God loves any one man more than he loves another? Does he draw one more and another less? No. Over every man there is cast a challenge. It is as intense for every man. We just don't see it. If we could . . .” She shook her head. “My, my, my.”
Kent's chest began to swell, and he thought he might be reduced to tears again. This changed everything. It seemed so obvious now. So right. The meaning of life all bundled up in a few statements and yet so few knew the truth.
“So then behind this . . . this flesh . . . this physical world, there is activity . . . enough activity to blow our minds.” He shook his head, overwhelmed by the notion. “We see only the tip of it all. And then only if we open our eyes.”
“We fight not against flesh and blood. And we fight a war that is fleeting. Believe me, this life will pass quickly enough, although sometimes not quickly enough, it seems. Then it will be forever. Somewhere.”
“Why don't more people know this? Why has no one told me this?”
She turned to him. “You think Gloria never told you this? We prayed every Thursday morning for five years for this day. You were just too wrapped up in this world to notice.”
“Yes, you are right. You are so right!”
“Today you start over, Kent.”
Lacy!
He grabbed Helen's arm. “We have to get to Lacy!”
“Lacy?”
“Yes. She lives in Boulder.” He started the car and pulled out into the street, sliding on the snow. “Do you mind? I need you there. She'll never believe me.”
“Why not? It's a beautiful, snowy night for a drive. I was rather hoping for an entirely different destination, but I suppose Boulder will do for now.”
LACY ANSWERED the door dressed in a plaid flannel shirt that hung below her jeans. “May I help you?”
Kent stood behind Helen for the moment, his heart pounding like a locomotive in his chest. He saw Lacy's eyes shift to him, questioning at first, and then recognizing. “Hello, Lacy,” Helen said. “May we come in?”
“You? Kevin, right? I met you in the restaurant. What do you want?”
Helen answered. “We are not who you might think. My name is Helen. Helen Jovic. This is my son-in-law, Kent Anthony. I believe you know each other.”
Lacy's eyes grew round.
Kent stepped around Helen, steadying a tremble that had parked itself in his bones since his eyes had been opened. “Hello, Lacy.”
She stepped back. “That's . . . that's impossible! Kent's dead.”
“Lacy. Listen to me. It's me. Listen to my voice.” He swallowed. “I know I look a bit different; I've had a few changes made, but it's me.”
Lacy took another step back, blinking.
“You hear me?” Kent pushed. “I told you the whole plan on a Friday night, sitting right there,” he motioned to the dinette table, “drinking your coffee. Twenty million dollars, right? Using AFPS? You slapped me.”
It was too much for her to reject, he knew. She stepped aside as though in a dream. Kent took it as a sign to enter and he did so cautiously. Helen followed and sat on the sofa. Lacy closed the door and stood facing him, unblinking.
The room stilled to silence. What could he possibly say? He grinned, feeling suddenly foolish and small for coming. “So, I don't know what to say.”
She did not respond.
“Lacy. I'm . . . I'm so sorry.” His vision swam in fresh tears. She was searching her memory banks, trying to make ends meet, reconciling conflicting emotions. But she was not speaking. He saw her swallow and suddenly it was too much for him.
He
had caused this.
He
might have changed, but the remnants of his life lay in ruins. Gutted shells, hollow lies, broken hearts. Like this heart here, beating but broken, possibly beyond mending.
Lacy's jaw clenched, and her eyes swam in pools of tears.
Kent closed his eyes and fought his own tears. Yes, indeed, she was not so happy; that much was obvious.
Her voice came barely above a whisper. “So. It
is
you. Do you know what you've done to me?”
He opened his eyes. She was still staring at him, still clenching her jaw. But some light had come to her eyes, he thought. “Yes, it is me. And yes, I've been a complete idiot. Please . . . please forgive me.”
“And you came to me at the restaurant.” Her jaw relaxed.
He nodded. “Yes. I'm sorry.”
“Good. You should be. You should be terrified about now.”
“Yes. And I am.” She was going to reject him, Kent thought. She
should
reject him.
Lacy's eyes blazed. “And why did you come? Tell me why you came.”
“Because . . .” It was hard, this dealing in love. First God and now her. He blinked. No, not hard at all. Not in his new skin. Hard in his old self, but in this new skin, love was the currency of life.
He said it easily then. “Because I love you, Lacy.”
The words seemed to hit her with their own physical force. A tear broke from her eye. “You love me?”
Oh, what had he done to her? “Yes. Yes, I love you,” Kent said. He walked right up to her and opened his arms, desperate for her love.
She closed her eyes and let him embrace her, hesitantly at first, and then she slid her arms around his waist and pulled herself into his chest, crying. For a long time they said nothing. They held each other tightly and let their embrace speak.
When Lacy finally spoke it was in a soft, resigned voice. “And I love you, Kent. I love you too.”
Present Day
PADRE CADIONE turned from the window, his face wet with tears at the tale his visitor had shared over the last two hours. They had shifted about the office, reposturing themselves as the story sped on, at times leaning against the wall, at times sitting behind the desk, but always intent. The confessor had told the story with exuberance, with many hand gestures, with tears, and often with a contagious grin splitting his face. And now the tale had ended, much to the father's dismay. But had it?
Beyond the window he could see the east guard tower, stoic against the blue sky. Cadione turned back to the man before him. His chest felt as though a vise had screwed down on his heart for the duration. The visitor sat cross-legged now, swinging one leg over the other, his hands folded on his lap.
“This is true? All of it?”
“Every word, Father.”
The fan continued its swishing high above, drying the sweat gathered on Padre Cadione's neck. “You believe that God is capable of such a thing today, then?”
“I know it, Father!” The man stood to his feet and spread his hands wide. Cadione leaned back in his chair. “His love is greater than the greatest love man can imagine. The most extravagant expression of love is but a dim reflection of his own! We are made in his image, yes?”
“Yes.” The padre could not help but smile with the man.
“You see, then! The greatest passion you are capable of only hints at his love.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “But how is it possible for a man to experience God in such a way? The experiences you speak of are . . . incredible!”
The visitor dropped his hands. “Yes, but they are real. I know.”
“And how do you know?”
The light glinted off the visitor's eyes, and he smiled mischievously. “I know because I am he.”
Padre Cadione did not respond immediately. He was who? The man in the story? But that was impossible! “You are
who?”
“I am he. I am Kent Anthony.”
The father's heart missed its rhythm. “Kent? Your file says your name is Kevin. Kevin Stillman.”