The Rose Conspiracy (54 page)

It was becoming harder for Blackstone to endure as he rummaged through box after box. Until he couldn't do it anymore. So he turned to leave.

He caught sight of the wide-brimmed hat that Marilyn used to wear when she worked in the flower garden.

He lifted it up off a box.

Something appeared from underneath the hat.

It was Marilyn's faded blue Bible.

In one particular page she had inserted a bookmark. Blackstone opened it to that page. It had been placed at the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John.

He closed up the Bible, and with it in his hand, turned off the light, pulled down the metal door, and locked it. He had decided to take one
memento of his wife, and it would be the Bible he had seen her leave with every Sunday morning on her way to church with Beth while he stayed home, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper.

When Blackstone got back to his condo, he turned on the lights and checked his voice mail. There was one message. It was from Julia.

“Hey, partner,” she said brightly on the message. “So we are set for horseback riding tomorrow. Sounds great. I'll swing by your place at nine. Can't wait! Can't wait to see you! Bye.”

Blackstone smiled and looked through his pile of mail quickly.

Then he took his wife's Bible and carried it into his bedroom and plopped down on his bed with it. He flipped it open to the bookmark at John, chapter eleven. He now noticed that the page had some of Marilyn's notes written in the margins.

The notes were next to the part where Jesus had been told that Lazarus had just died a few days before.

Marilyn had underlined, with red ink, the verse that recorded Jesus' response: “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?' ”

“How can I believe that?” Blackstone muttered out loud.

Then he noticed the writing in the margin next to that verse.

It was as if Marilyn were standing next to him, with her gentle smile, reminding him of something deceptively simple. But something said so very truly that Blackstone could not shake the feeling of it, could not hide the sense that until that moment he had been living in a dark, closed room with no windows, no light…and it was just then that a door was cracked open.

The note read, “
Because forgiveness is forever, death isn't.
”

Blackstone read it again. And then again. Then he read through the chapter about the miraculous raising of Lazarus by Jesus in the presence of a crowd of witnesses in broad daylight.

Lying in bed, with his head propped by a pillow, he turned to the very beginning of the Gospel of John.

He would begin reading.

And then he would keep reading.

But before he did, he said something out loud, very quietly, but
enough so he could tell it had been said. Was it a prayer, exactly? He couldn't say, not then at least.

If this is truly true, help me find the way to believe so I can know for certain that it is true…so then I can truly believe…

Then he started at the first verse of chapter one of John. He would not stop reading until sometime very close to the end of that Gospel, the time he reached the twenty-first chapter, when his eyes began to close.

That was when Blackstone noticed his eyes growing heavy, and so he kept them shut for just a moment.

An instant after that, he was deeply, and deliciously, and soundly asleep.

And J.D. Blackstone would remain asleep, straight through the night, until the next morning, when finally he would be awakened by the sound of Julia ringing the doorbell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Craig Parshall
is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of the National Religious Broadcasters Association. He speaks nationally on legal and Christian worldview issues, is a magazine columnist, and has authored seven legal-suspense novels: the five installments in the Chambers of Justice series, and the stand-alone novels
Trial by Ordeal
and
The Rose Conspiracy.