Waiting for Morning (24 page)

Victoria nodded once. “Okay. Shawn’s a lot of fun and I enjoy dating him. But still …”

Matt looked up once more.

She met his look. “One day … who knows?”

Matt held her gaze a moment longer, then exhaled dramatically, leaned over, and tapped the textbook opened up in front of her.

“So, what is it you’re studying anyway?”

Shawn and Victoria continued dating, and her presence in his life seemed to change him. He became more responsible, more aware of the future and its looming reality. While Matt dated occasionally, for the most part he was too busy studying and playing basketball. He spent his free time with Shawn and Victoria, and the threesome became as integral a part of his college life as the school’s hardwood gymnasium floor and stuffy locker room.

Before graduation Shawn followed Matt’s lead and applied for admission to Pepperdine Law School. His father worked in the movie industry, and money would not be a problem. Funds weren’t as easily abundant for Matt’s family, but his grades, student
involvement, and application essays were such that he received a full scholarship.

Shawn burst into Matt’s dormitory when he received the news. “I’m in, man! You and me. Law school. Conquering the bad guys.”

Matt stood up and slapped his friend on the back and the two embraced. “Don’t worry. It’ll be even better than the NBA.”

Shawn grinned. “Now, I doubt that, man. Seriously. But hey, this calls for some kind of celebration.”

“Yeah, let’s plan something. The three of us.”

Shawn pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. “I’m seeing Victoria tonight.”

Matt glanced from the box to his friend. “What’s this?”

Shawn opened it, and there inside lay a glimmering diamond solitaire engagement ring. “Tonight’s the night, man.”

Matt’s momentary disappointment turned quickly to elation for his best friend. “Hey, that’s great. She have any idea?”

“Oh, you know the female gender.” Shawn flashed his famous grin. “Probably been expecting it for months.”

“You sure you’re ready?”

Shawn grew suddenly serious. “I’ve never loved anyone like I love her, man. She’s my life.”

That night, Shawn and Victoria went to dinner at Gladstones on the beach. They ate steak and lobster and later walked on the sandy strip beneath the restaurant where Shawn got down on one knee and proposed. Matt got the whole story later, all the details—including how Victoria grew teary-eyed and accepted.

The two were walking hand-in-hand along Pacific Coast Highway looking for a less crowded stretch of beach when a Volkswagon careened out of control and struck them from behind. Shawn was knocked onto the shoulder of the roadway, scraped but not seriously hurt; Victoria took the full force of the hit. She flew twenty feet in the air before landing on the pavement, motionless. Shawn scrambled to her side and cradled her
broken body, begging her to hang on. He was still holding her that way, sobbing, when paramedics arrived and told him what he already knew. She was dead.

The driver of the Volkswagon had been drunk.

Matt did his best to help Shawn get over her death. They started law school and tried to keep busy. But they were both devastated.

The drunk driver was given ten days in prison and a five hundred dollar fine. He’d been convicted once before, but he was young, and the judge thought he’d be better off taking alcohol education courses than wasting away in a prison. Shawn hated the man, could have gladly killed him given the chance. But none of it would bring back Victoria, and as the one-year anniversary of her death grew near, Shawn dropped two of his classes and spent hours sitting on the grassy Pepperdine hillside overlooking Malibu Beach.

Matt had tried talking to him, tried to help him work through it. But all to no avail. On the one-year anniversary of Victoria’s death, Shawn Bottmeiller took a gun from his parents’ closet and wrote two letters—one to his parents expressing his love and sorrow for what he was about to do; the other to the man who killed Victoria. In it he expressed his anger and hatred, his inability to forgive the man for what he’d done.

“When you killed her, you killed my dreams. You killed me. Today I’ll finish what you tried to do a year ago.”

Then he drove to the beach, walked down to the sandy strip where he had proposed to Victoria a year earlier, and shot himself in the head.

Matt, always the realist, always the achiever, doubled his efforts at law school and determined that Victoria’s and Shawn’s deaths would not be in vain. He finished law school top of his class and took a job at the district attorney’s office in Los Angeles. In the process, he met Sgt. John Miller and saw something different about him. When he learned about the man’s faith, Matt began attending a Bible-believing Christian church,
and a decade after the deaths of Shawn and Victoria, he gave his life to the Lord.

Then, when he had enough experience, he began specializing in one type of case, the only type that really mattered to him.

Cases against drunk drivers.

That had been eighteen years earlier, but now as he watched Hannah Ryan studying the photo of his two friends, it felt as if it had happened yesterday.

Hannah looked from the photo to Matt, and was surprised at the grief she saw on his face.

“Do your friends live here?”

Matt blinked, as though the question startled him, then shook his head slowly. “No.” His gaze drifted to the photo, then back to Hannah. “The day Shawn asked Victoria to marry him, she was killed by a drunk driver.”

Shock swept over Hannah, and she had to resist the strong urge to go to Matt, to put her arm around him and comfort him. No wonder she’d always felt such understanding from him.

But he wasn’t finished.

“One year later, on the anniversary of Victoria’s death—” Matt’s voice was ragged with sorrow—“Shawn killed himself.”

Hannah sat slowly back in her seat. Like her, Matt had lost so much. Because of men like Brian Wesley … the kind of men Matt had worked so long and so hard to prosecute.…

“And so you spend your life prosecuting drunk drivers.…”

“As many as I can.”

She could think of nothing to say. This was the compassion she felt from Matt, the understanding. He knew her pain, knew it personally.

Matt drew a deep breath. “After that, I doubted God for a while, too.” He lifted his eyes from the picture, and Hannah
was struck at the peace she saw in his gaze. “But then I found out the truth. God’s ways are not our ways. This world is a fallen place, and bad things do happen to good people. They even happen to Christians. Truth is, I couldn’t have made it through without his strength.”

Tears stung at Hannah’s eyes, but she refused to give in to them. What Matt was saying had the strong ring of truth to it, but she couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t believe God was real … that he’d done nothing but watch as her family was ripped apart … as Matt’s dearest friends were destroyed.…

Matt tucked the photograph back into the frame. “I know you don’t believe it, Hannah. But God loves you. Even now.”

She didn’t reply to that. Instead, she nodded. “It must help … prosecuting them.”

But he slowly shook his head. “Not really. The law is still pretty loose where drunk drivers are concerned. That’s why this is such a big deal. We’ll be making history if we win this one.”

Hannah glanced at Matt’s left hand and couldn’t hold back the question. “You’re not married, are you?”

Matt shook his head. “Never had time. I’ve spent ten years right here, increasing public awareness, waiting for the day when we could get it into the murder-one category.”

Good. This was safe ground. This was the kind of conversation she wanted to focus on. “Now here we are.”

Matt smiled, and again she saw understanding in his expression. “Not yet. We still have a lot of work to do.”

“And that’s where the victim impact panels come in.”

“Exactly. If we can fill this room with a dozen jurors who are familiar with the idea that killing someone in a drunk driving accident can be murder one … well, that’ll make my job that much easier.”

Hannah nodded. Her role was clearly defined and she was thankful. She would do this, working for the memories of Tom and Alicia, alongside Matt Bronzan, who had his own memories to fight for. They would win their murder-one conviction
and then, in their own ways, they could get on with life.

“Hannah …” Matt’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Do you mind if I pray for you?”

Her heart constricted. “Now?” She desperately wanted to avoid this, but she didn’t want to hurt him.

Matt smiled again. “No, not now. But throughout the trial. I don’t know …” He paused. “You’ve lost so much already. I guess I can’t imagine losing all that and God, too.”

Hannah glanced out the window and waited. After a long while she finally spoke. “You can pray, Matt.” She looked at him and felt tears well up in her eyes. “But everything I want, I’ve already lost.”

“I know. I’m not trying to change your feelings. But Hannah, my door’s open. Anytime you want to talk, if you need anything, I’m here. And I will be praying.”

She believed him, and it gave her a sense of comfort. And hope. She stood up then. “I’d better get going. I have to meet Carol.”

Matt rose and reached for her hand. “Thanks for coming.” He looked suddenly self-conscious. “I probably told you more than I should have. But I thought you should know where I’m coming from. What I believe, what drives me.”

She nodded. She was grateful he had done so … and she felt a closeness to him that warmed her. With a start she realized she was holding his hand a bit too long, so she let go and crossed her arms. “Thank you, Matt. Maybe after the trial we can put this thing behind us—both of us. Unless there’s another delay, of course.”

“I’m not worried about it.” Matt slipped his hands in his pockets. “More time means more days to convince jurors that Brian Wesley is guilty of murder-one.”

Hannah tilted her head. “Some people would think that doesn’t sound very Christian.”

“My obligation to forgive doesn’t erase my obligation to provide punishment. Without rules and penalties, this country
would have fallen apart decades ago. I like to think that my job is actually quite Christian. Further questions?” He grinned.

Hannah studied him. “You certainly can argue.”

“Only when I believe in the cause.” He moved around his desk and opened his office door a bit wider. “Let’s stay in touch. I want to know how the first victim-impact panel goes, okay?”

Hannah nodded and thanked him again.

As she walked slowly back to her car, she considered Matt and Carol, their strong beliefs, and the role they played in this, her season of grief. She sighed. The world was filled with non-Christians, atheists even. All her life she had shared classrooms and committees and airplanes with them. She drove behind them on freeways, shocked at the boldness of their Darwinian fish and the mockery they made of the Christian world view. They seemed to rule Hollywood, the media, and the voting polls. They had elected Clinton, after all. Millions of them walked the United States.

Yet in this, her darkest hour, when she herself had finally come to join the ranks of nonbelievers, she found herself relying completely on the strengths and abilities of two very devout Christians.

Twenty

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within
,
my heart is poured out on the ground
because my people are destroyed
.

L
AMENTATIONS
2:11
A

The sun was sinking slowly behind the mountains, and Hannah wondered if theirs was the only house in America that didn’t smell of turkey and gravy and home-baked pumpkin pies. She had asked Jenny about celebrating Thanksgiving and got little response. Now it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Hannah had just about finished making a small platter of tacos.

“Jenny, time to eat,” she called from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on a paper towel and set the tacos on the table.

“I’m not hungry!” Jenny shouted from upstairs.

Hannah sighed. She should have skipped cooking altogether. It wasn’t as if making tacos instead of turkey could eliminate fifteen years of Thanksgiving memories. The smell of greasy hamburger made her nauseous. She walked to the foot of the stairs and yelled again. “Jenny, we agreed on tacos for today! I’ve cooked them and they’re ready. Please come down here and eat.”

Hannah could hear her daughter padding out of her bedroom toward the stairs. “Mother, I told you I’m not hungry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Jenny drifted down a few stairs so that Hannah could see her face. “If I wasn’t around—” Jenny was almost snarling—
“you wouldn’t have to cook at all. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Hannah stared at her for a moment, then her anger started to build. “I want two things, young lady, and maybe you’d better take notes so you don’t forget.”

Jenny rolled her eyes, something she never would have done before the accident. Now, she did it constantly. Hannah continued. “First, I want us to stop fighting. It’s getting old. We’re supposed to be helping each other through this, and instead we’re like enemies. It’s ridiculous.”

Hannah waited, but Jenny remained silent, her arms folded defiantly. “Second, I want you to get down here and eat your tacos.”

There was silence again. Finally Jenny released a frustrated burst of air. “Fine. Whatever. You wouldn’t know anything about losing your appetite because you don’t even miss Daddy and Alicia.”

“What?”
Hannah’s temper rose another notch. “How can you even say that?”

“It’s true! All you care about is that guy who hit us—Brian whatever his name is. You want him in prison so badly you’ve forgotten about Daddy and Alicia.”

“That’s a lie and you know it, Jennifer Ryan! Everything I’m doing is because I miss Daddy and Alicia, I miss—”

“Then how can you even think about eating
tacos
?
”
Jenny’s eyes blazed. “On Thanksgiving Day? I just don’t understand you, Mother.”