The Turning (19 page)

“Well, it worked.” She sipped from her mug, sighed, and turned to stare out over the pale wash of another LA dawn.

“What is it?”

“I can’t thank you enough for the chance,” she said slowly. “It will be hard going back to being Barry’s aide.”

“Then don’t.”

She continued to stare out over the Hollywood skyline. Imperial palms rose like inked-in silhouettes against the gathering light. “I found myself thinking back to that earlier trip out here.”

“Your screen test,” Trent recalled.

She nodded slowly. “There is only one line of work open for an actress with dead eyes. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Because I am beautiful and fresh, they offered me a million dollars.” She lifted her mug, then set it down untasted. “I was so tempted. I hated myself for how much I wanted something that I would be willing to degrade myself in that fashion. I left LA the next day. I promised myself I would not come back until I could do so on my own terms.”

He reached for her hand. “Let’s do this together. You and me. Make the dreams real for both of us.”

She looked at him, her expression solemn, her eyes holding a grave light. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

WASHINGTON DC AND WESTCHESTER COUNTY

T
hey traveled straight from the Kennedy Center to the airport, flying north through a starlit night. Kevin’s production crew spent the journey huddled together, working on a concept they aimed to put online before dawn. John heard them field several calls from the Gospel Channel, but did not try to follow the high-octane discussion.

It was after two in the morning when they arrived back at the Barrett Ministries’ center. They wished one another a good night and drifted away, all but the production crew. John slept peacefully, a deep and dreamless slumber that held him in a sweet embrace far longer than normal. He was vaguely aware of Heather rising and leaving. He heard birdsong and the sounds of his wife dressing and closing the door behind her, then he slipped off once more. He’d felt a vague desire to join her, there and gone in an instant. When he awoke, the cottage was silent, and the bedside clock read almost noon. He had not slept so late in years.

John dressed and headed toward the main house. The angle where the porch railing met the grove of cherry trees had become their designated prayer corner. As he climbed the stairs, Ruth and Jenny Linn and her parents halted their quiet conversation long enough to greet him. John asked, “Where is everybody?”

“Busy,” Ruth replied.

He took that as a polite dismissal, went inside. The two young women were setting up a buffet lunch on the long central table. Well used to maintaining a discreet distance from Ruth and her guests, they greeted John, directed him to the coffee urn, and returned to their work.

John borrowed a Bible from the shelf holding a dozen or so well-thumbed volumes. He took his mug back outside and down to a wooden bench placed between the oaks and the creek. A hummingbird flitted into view, hovering not two paces away so as to drink from a wildflower. He drank his coffee, read a few passages, but mostly he sat and listened to the wind creak the boughs overhead. John sensed a vague rumble of thunder on the horizon, which was absurd, since the sky overhead was clear and milky blue. He thought it probably foreshadowed some great effort that was going to be required of him. But he drained his cup and leaned back in the bench and stretched out his legs. For the moment, it was enough.

He must have dozed off, for the next thing he knew Richard Linn was saying, “John?”

“Eh, yes?”

“The ladies would like to have a word, if you wouldn’t mind.”

John shifted his bones, stretched, and decided he needed another mug. “Where is everybody?”

“Following your lead.”

He rose to his feet and followed Richard back toward the house. “What do you mean?”

Instead of responding directly, Richard said, “What you said last night was truly inspired.” There was a certain formality to the way Richard spoke that left John feeling like his words were only a small component of what was going on inside his head. Richard paused at the foot of the stairs. A head shorter than John, stumpy and strong, his dark eyes burned beneath their Oriental fold as he said, “I felt the hand of God resting upon you while you were with the children.”

John had no idea what to say, except, “So did I.”

Richard went on, “My wife and I are honored to be a part of this.”

John felt the day’s ease slip away. He knew without being told that beyond Richard’s compliment rose yet another duty. He thanked Richard and followed him up the stairs, then pushed through the kitchen door and recharged his mug. He needed to be more awake than he was for whatever they had waiting for him out there in the prayer corner.

The warm afternoon wind rushed through the trees to his right as he seated himself in the rocker. John knew they were giving him a moment to settle, and appreciated the gesture. When they did not speak, he repeated the question, “What’s going on around here?”

It was Jenny who answered. “I woke up this morning with the strong need to follow your lead. I spoke with the others, and they agreed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We have recorded your message for different audiences,” Jenny explained. “We combined your two communications into one.”

“My daughter did this,” Richard said.

“It is very beautiful,” his wife agreed. “Most compelling.”

Jenny went on, “Alisha has addressed the African American community. I spoke the words both in Cantonese and Mandarin. Aaron has spoken in Hebrew, Yussuf in Arabic.”

“The message is going out to all the world,” Richard said, marveling.

“Sounds great,” John said, though he couldn’t help but think that theirs was a feeble effort compared to the might of the Mundrose empire.

His unspoken thoughts must have showed, for Ruth said, “Tell him what’s happening.”

In response, Jenny reached for her laptop. She typed for a time, then handed John the computer and said, “Hit ‘play.’ ”

The impact of the video caught him totally off guard. He scarcely recognized himself. The stark power of his words seemed utterly alien. When it was done, Jenny asked, “Do you want to see it again?”

“No.” He handed back the laptop. “No.”

“GMC is playing the video once an hour. The online site has received over four million hits.”

Richard added, “The producer, Kevin, says it’s gone viral.”

“GMC wants to interview you for a clip they will air with their nightly news program,” Jenny said. “I have asked if they could give you the questions in advance, so I can help you with the responses.”

John wished he was able to hear such requests without having his gut congeal with fresh fear. “You might as well give me the rest.”

Heather reached over and took his hand, the caring wife delivering dreaded news. “Your story is coming out.”

He felt nerves rise to his throat.

“Everything, John.”

Ruth looked more frail today, her voice a slender thread that still managed to carry great strength. “I want to tell you something. Are you listening to me, John?”

He forced himself to reach beyond the horror of knowing his secrets were now revealed to the world. “Yes.”

“The only reason they are attacking us is because we are succeeding. Do you understand?”

“You don’t know. You can’t …” John took a deep breath. Another. John fastened his hands to the rocker arms. Knowing they needed to hear this. Wishing he had said it before they put him on air the first time. “When I was nineteen years old, I was a sophomore at Ohio State and a star of their football team. I was rambunctious and aggressive and full of myself. After we won the regional final, I went out drinking with my buddies. I got into a bar fight, I lost my temper, and I beat a man within an inch of his life…” John felt engulfed in the torment of thirty long years. Finally he recovered enough to continue. “The man still suffers from what I did to him. No help I send can ever restore the damaged state I left him in. I was arrested and convicted and did six months in the state farm. I lost my scholarship. I was kicked out of the university. The only person who didn’t abandon me was Heather.”

He released one hand to clench the flesh over his aching heart. “My entire life headed off in a different direction. My every step, my every job, my every loan application, my every interview—it’s all been tainted by that one dark night. My life never recovered.”

John slid from his rocker and landed on his knees by the arm of his wife’s chair. “I’m sorry, Heather. So sorry.”

“Oh, John.”

“What I’ve put you through—”

“My dear, sweet, loving man.” She held his face in both of hers. “You have been a wonderful husband and father. You have given me everything you had to give.”

“It’s not enough. It never has been.”

“Have I ever asked you for anything more?”

“No, but you should have. And you should have gotten it.”

“I am so glad I’m married to you.”

Jenny reached over, gripped John’s shoulder, and said, “Lord, as you calm the seas, so calm my brother’s spirit.”

“I say, amen,” Richard said.

“Sit up, John,” Heather said.

The others waited as she guided him back into his chair. Though it cost him, John met each gaze in turn, and realized, “You can’t still want me to do this.”

“No, John,” Ruth said. “We think God is going to
use
this.”

LOS ANGELES

S
oon after daybreak Trent sent Gayle to check them out of the  Bel Air Hotel. An inexpensive apartment-hotel two blocks from their offices, on the wrong side of Wilshire, would do. Trent knew Gayle was disappointed, but he also knew it was the right decision. His bungalow cost twelve hundred dollars a night and he could better use the drive time either working or sleeping. There wasn’t time for anything else, and his ego did not require such elegant stroking. He would leave that for a time when he could truly enjoy it. Once he had survived the current crisis. Because that was what he faced. Either he made this work, or all this was just part of someone else’s dream.

Trent left the office building in the bleak light of predawn Los Angeles. The desert to the east felt closest in this vague hour, when the streets were as empty as the sky overhead. The palms lining Wilshire Boulevard were etchings inked into a pale blue-grey wash. Trent stumbled down the side street, checked in to the new digs, and threw himself onto the bed. His weary brain echoed with faint tendrils of worry and stress and fear. His vague nightmares never completely managed to wake him.

Too soon the phone rang with his wake-up call. His body ached with the need for more rest. But he had to get back. He rose from the bed and discovered someone had deposited his suitcase inside his doorway. Trent showered and dressed, left the hotel, and winced at the roar of a city already well into its morning routine.

But as soon as he entered the Wilshire Building, he felt the fatigue and uncertainty slip away. He was back in his element, feeding off the crew’s mad energy. A fresh breakfast buffet had been set up in the lobby. Trent made himself a sandwich and poured a mug of coffee. He laughed at a joke he did not need to hear, and climbed the stairs, food in hand, to the fourth floor. He heard chatter echo through the stairway’s concrete cavern and knew others felt as he did, that the elevator moved far too slowly for such a time as this.

He passed through the central office area and greeted several of the people on his strategy team. Their clothes were rumpled and their eyes red-rimmed, and some of the hands jerked with the tight spasms of too much caffeine. But Trent saw the pride they were taking in their work and knew the hours they invested, and he thought he had never known a taste quite so sweet as leading this group.

He entered the office Colin had let him have at his request and swiftly became absorbed in the time sheets he had been working on before departing. He turned at a knock on the door.

“My name is Dermott McAllister, Mr. Cooper. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“No, sorry.”

The man was narrow and dressed in a nondescript brown tweed suit. “No matter. Mr. Mundrose suggested you might want my assistance.”

“Father or son?”

His smile was as small as the rest of him. Perhaps that was the case with all his motions. Certainly his voice was soft enough to go unnoticed. Then again, Trent reflected, the asp was one of nature’s smallest snakes, and also one of the most venomous. Dermott McAllister replied, “I am not certain that Mr. Mundrose Junior is even aware of my existence.”

The man appeared oddly put together. At first glance, the face belonged to a man in his thirties. But closer inspection revealed extensive plastic surgery. And Trent was fairly certain the man wore a toupee. Dermott McAllister’s face was reworked into a form that might have been handsome, except for how a few angles were not quite symmetric. The chin was a few degrees to the left of center. The nose tilted slightly to the right. One ear appeared a fraction lower than the other. The neck was creased in a couple of places, as though the surgeons had not quite pulled the slack tight enough. But the man’s most remarkable quality was his eyes. They were brown and flat and empty as an open grave.