Coming Home Page 21

  Jessie looked at the house. “Guess things change, huh?”

  “Sometimes,” Laura whispered.

  “Hey, sweetie, don’t make your mom mad by talking to me.”

  “Mom’s passed out on the sofa.”

  “Oh,” Jessie replied. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “My bottom is real sore,” Laura told her, and then before hanging up, she whispered, “Thanks for the number. I’ll never lose it.”

  Jessie put the cell phone in her pocket, locked the car, and headed up the sidewalk. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Laura pull back the curtains again and wave. Jessie waved back.

  “Please, God, wherever you are,” Jessie whispered, “save this precious child.”

  Why was it so easy to slip back into the old patterns of praying to God as if He would answer? Wishful thinking, she thought, but was that so wrong? At the very least, it was the kind of wish that should be true: a God whom you could trust.

  “Get it out, sweetie. God isn’t scared of your anger,” Mrs. Robinette had said. “How could God make it up to you?”

  By saving my mother, Jessie thought suddenly, to which Betty Robinette would have replied, “But He did, honey. He took her home.”

  Jessie looked up at the closed curtain again. “Save that little girl,” she whispered once more, and tears filled her eyes, not just over Laura’s situation but over the terrible things she’d said to her grandmother. “I never had time to explain,” Grandmother had said.

  At the door of her old house, Jessie reached up and found the key again. Then she took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and pushed her way in. The old click and whirr happened again, and she almost expected to see the old couch. Instead, as before, the dungeonlike darkness permeated every corner of the room. Yards of dark fabric covered all the windows.

  She closed the door and stood in the entryway for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust. She remembered her mother’s letter in her pocket and decided this would be the place to read it.

  Jessie headed upstairs. It was dark, so she counted the steps again, just as she had as a little girl. When she reached her mom’s room, she paused in the entryway. The sense of anticipation had completely replaced the fear. She nestled against the corner of the room, on the floor, just a few feet from where she and Andy had sat.

  Chuckling to herself, she realized she’d forgotten a flashlight. She leaned her head back against the wall and pulled out her cell phone to check the time on the illuminated face. Just as well. She had to meet Andy in thirty minutes. She dialed his number and he answered on the first ring.

  “I might be a little late,” she said.

  “Oh, you’re not here?” he asked. “I’m just pulling up.”

  “You’re early.”

  “Couldn’t wait to see you.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” she said. “I can’t wait to see you, either.” When they hung up, Jessie looked around the room, holding her mother’s letter in her hand.

  “Your mother is …” her grandmother had said.

  My mother is what?

  A slip of the tongue is all, Jessie thought.

  “You left so quickly,” her grandmother had said.

  By now the room seemed lighter. Exposure, she thought. Look into the dark long enough, and you become accustomed to it… .

  Your mother is …

  Means nothing, Jessie repeated to herself.

  And the computer records?

  “Nothing,” Jessie whispered, realizing again she might have to live forever with the constant unfinished feeling. I’ll have done my best, though, she thought. I will have looked under the bed and faced the boogeyman. She remembered the mathematician whose life was featured in the movie A Beautiful Mind, a man who’d learned to function in spite of his ever-present hallucinations.

  You grow to accept it. You look into the dark and become accustomed to it.

  And if the fear disappears, well … I’ll settle for that.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  THE MAN JESSIE had referred to as Cowboy Bill answered the door, and sure enough, he was wearing a cowboy hat—soiled white and rippled.

  “You must be Andrew,” Bill welcomed with a grin.

  Andy returned the smile, shaking Bill’s hand.

  Bill stepped aside, opening the door wider. “I was just planting a few flowers around the gazebo.” Bill gestured for him to follow. “I’m afraid Doris is a bit … under the weather… .”

  Walking into the entryway was an experience. The ceiling was twenty-five feet high if it was an inch. Jessie was right. This place was incredible. Bill led him through a set of French doors to the left into a sunlit alcove, then through another set of doors leading outside to a brick-covered courtyard. A white gazebo stood in the middle of the yard, reminding him of the one in Palmer Lake. The flowers, exploding from nearly every vacant spot, were reminiscent of Mrs. Browning’s garden.

  “Jessie will be here shortly,” Andy said and then felt presumptuous, as if he knew something Bill didn’t.

  Bill stopped in front of the gazebo, pointing to a small plot of bare soil near its edge. “Whadd’ya think?”

  “Looks to be the only spot left.”

  Bill laughed as if Andy had told a whopper of joke. He gestured to the gazebo swing. “Care to give it a spin?”

  Sitting on the white wooden slats, Andy was surprised with the size of the gazebo, at least fifteen feet across.

  Bill leaned against the railing looking out at his garden. “I’m afraid I’ve enjoyed this thing more’n Doris,” he offered. “At least she likes to look at it.”

  Andy pushed himself gently on the swing.

  “Jessie tells me you was engaged to that TV preacher’s daughter?”

  Andy smiled. He’d probably be telling that story for the rest of his life: The fish that got away … her name was Elizabeth and her daddy was … and watch their eyes bug out. “What was he like?” they would ask. But his whole perspective regarding Elizabeth had changed. He no longer felt he had missed his only hope for happiness. There are second chances, he thought and right there, sitting in the middle of the yard, talking to Bill, he realized his dad was right; love had taken but a moment. His poor mother would spend a week or longer recovering in bed.

  Andy provided a few interesting details about Elizabeth’s father, the behind-the-scenes activity of a TV ministry. Bill listened with fascination. “So ya think he’s the real deal?”

  Andy chuckled. Elizabeth’s father had reminded him of a backslapping salesman, the kind he hung out with all day, but he couldn’t vouch for his integrity.

  “He seems sincere,” Andy finally replied, and Bill winked as if he got what Andy hadn’t said.

  “I go to this tiny church over in Widefield,” Bill told him. “After I drop Doris off at her ‘dress-up church’ downtown.”

  Andy nodded and Bill took it as a cue, describing his pastor as rather feisty and the congregation as a bunch of well-intentioned sinners humbly seeking God. Andy wondered if Jessie knew Bill was a Christian. Yet he was intrigued with this cowboy. His manner put Andy completely at ease, and they were now having a conversation as if they’d been friends for years.

  Bill slapped his leg with something apparently hilarious. “We got this guy at our church … Buzz, right?”

  “Buzz?”

  “That’s what his wife calls ’im.”

  “Does he look—”

  “Yep. Buzz cut an’ all.”

  Andy laughed and Bill continued. “They tell me this guy used to swear like a sailor. Drink like a fish. And he was rather nasty. But all that changed one day.”

  Andy felt his eyes glazing over, figuring Bill was about to go into the conversion experience.

  “Buzz had himself a near-death experience,” Bill went on.

  “Some kind of heart attack or something.”

  That’s even worse, Andy groaned inwardly. He’d often wondered if near-death experiences, or NDEs, as he’d heard them termed, we
ren’t simply hallucinations. Like the sightings of UFOs.

  Cowboy Bill was just getting started. He described Buzz’s “testimony,” complete with an out-of-body experience, the tunnel thing, the life review, and best of all, the Being of Light.

  Or the devil himself, Andy thought humorously, remembering the general cynicism about the nature of NDEs.

  “He said he’d never felt more completely loved, more fully known—a total sense of serenity. He said it was like the best drug you can imagine!”

  That’s a new one, Andy thought, smiling charitably. “A drug?” Bill shrugged. “He said the words to describe it were basically worthless. He was angry when they resuscitated him. Angry for days, in fact. Said he’s been spiritually lonely ever since, but in the meantime, he stopped chewing, stopped drinking, stopped swearing, and started going to church.” Bill chuckled. “And he’s not a halfbad guy!”

  “So … what do you think, Bill?” Andy asked.

  Bill shrugged and looked down at the floor, then frowned as if he’d seen something that displeased him. He looked out toward the fence for a moment before replying. “I thought about it a bit, you know, and it occurred to me, I don’t really know one way or the other, but—” Bill repositioned himself against the railing, pausing again—“I got to thinking, would the real thing be any less?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Well … if the near-death thing is fake, or if it’s the devil, or whatever, wouldn’t whatever really happens on the other side be as good, if not better?”

  Andy had never thought of it that way.

  Bill continued. “Buzz described a personal being who knew everything about him, warts and all, yet smothered him with unconditional love. A personal being who knew the exact moment he was going to visit the other side. He showed up just to tell ’im his time wasn’t up!”

  “Let me guess. They told him he needed to clean up his act and start loving people.” Andy couldn’t keep the cynicism from his voice.

  “Naw. Actually He didn’t tell ’im to do anything. But Buzz said he started loving God that day. I guess the ‘obey’ part came later.”

  Bill wiped his face with his plaid sleeve. “For the longest time it bothered me, ’cause I don’t usually buy that kind of thing. But I saw how Buzz changed and all, and I actually wanted to believe him. And then one day it just occurred to me that I didn’t care whether Buzz was right or not. Like I said, I knew that what was waiting for me, for all of us, had to be as good if not better.”

  Andy thought again of his friends worshiping God, experiencing Him personally. They seemed to know what God was like. Bill was right. God had to be better than the best thing you could imagine. But it certainly didn’t prove that Christianity was true.

  Bill cleared his throat. “So … where ya at with all this?”

  Andy sighed. Country-bumpkin Bill couldn’t even begin to keep up with the kinds of struggles that crossed Andy’s mind. “I have a problem with the historicity.”

  “You don’t think it really happened?”

  “I just … doubt it,” Andy said softly.

  Bill seemed to consider this for a moment and then launched off into the typical argument regarding Jesus: “Who do you think He was? A liar, lunatic, or Lord?”

  “If it was all made up, or if it’s a legend, then you can’t use that argument,” Andy replied.

  “Then what do you do with the apostle Paul?” Bill was still leaning against the railing, and so far his tone was casual, nonthreatening—but that often changed when people got serious about discussing religion.

  Andy was already planning a conversational exit strategy. “I’m sorry?”

  “Seems like Paul had a good head on his shoulders. At one time, he was dead set against the gospel, wasn’t he? What convinced him it was true?”

  “He had a hallucination.”

  “But he knew the disciples, right?”

  “Sure, but …”

  “Did they pull the wool over his eyes? And then submit themselves to terrible deaths to prove a lie? If I were Paul, considering his background and all, I would have had a few questions to ask. And one would be: ‘Hey, boys, where’s the empty grave?”’

  Andy gave an accommodating smile, and Bill took off on another subject.

  Jessie was driving back when her cell phone buzzed.

  “I wasn’t able to get back with you sooner,” the woman from the Rose Garden Cemetery explained. “And I have to apologize,” she continued.

  “Oh?”

  “Well … most of my records are up-to-date, but for the life of me, I can’t find any record of your mother’s interment.”

  “Interment?”

  “Burial,” the woman clarified.

  Jessie was confused. “She was cremated, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but according to my preliminary records, burial of the urn was scheduled but never completed. I mean, I should have a record of it, but I can’t find it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jessie said. “Why might that be?”

  “Well … I’m sure we just lost the records, but …” The woman’s voice trailed off. Then she sighed into the phone, “This is so embarrassing.”

  Jessie tried to make sense of it. “Maybe my grandmother changed her mind?”

  When the woman didn’t answer, Jessie realized she’d blown it. This was the first time she had mentioned another party. Perhaps the woman was thinking through the implications.

  “You’re not—” a rustling of papers—“Doris Crenshaw?”

  “I’m her granddaughter.”

  “Oh,” the woman replied nervously. “I should probably speak with her, then.”

  Jessie repeated the question but tried to make it sound hypothetical. “Does that happen often? Somebody changes their mind?”

  The woman hesitated. “No … not really.”

  Jessie was trying to grasp the implications. “Can you tell me—” Jessie paused. This was getting too weird. “… where they cremated the body?” She shivered just saying the words.

  The woman hesitated again. “Well, I suppose that’s not classified information. Let me see here …” Another pause. When she spoke again, she chuckled. “The paper work I have doesn’t list that, either. But there are only so many funeral homes in town. Call them all. One of them should have the cremation records.”

  After hanging up, Jessie pulled over to a convenience store just off Fillmore, found a phone book, and called the funeral homes with the most prominent yellow-page ads. Once again, while all claimed to have meticulous records, none of them had any record of Olivia Lehman.

  Maybe I missed one, she thought, getting back into her car. Now only ten minutes from home, Jessie tried to make sense of the whole situation. She’d set out today to find some kind of closure in the details of her mother’s death. Instead, she’d found exactly the opposite.

  One by one, she went through it all again, determined to find an alternate explanation. First item: No death records existed, except for the death certificate she was carrying around. Probable answer: Somebody failed to record the death certificate, that’s all.

  Number two: No cemetery records. Answer: Her grandmother changed her mind. Maybe the urn was in her grandmother’s bedroom. Maybe her grandmother sprinkled the ashes somewhere. There were a dozen maybes. Any of them could work, not to mention the possibility of errant records. Isn’t that what the woman suggested?

  Number three: No cremation records. Answer: This one was easy. She hadn’t called every funeral home in the book; only the ones with the biggest ads.

  Jessie sighed into the silence of the car. What difference did it make anyway? Her mother was dead. Case closed.

  Nice try, she thought, unconvinced by her own arguments. It was starting to feel as if she’d found a tiny piece of ice in the ocean, only to discover it was attached to a giant iceberg beneath the black water.

  She had no choice now. She had to visit the place of her mother’s death.

  By now Bi
ll and Andy had settled into a far more benign conversation.

  “Do you have family, Bill?” Andy asked.

  “A daughter,” Bill replied almost absently. “Ain’t seen her in thirty years.” He shook his head slightly as if trying to rid himself of the memory. “I tried to make contact once she hit her twenties. But she kept hanging up the phone. Returned my letters unopened, as if to make the point as clear as possible.” Bill sighed. “She remembers things I don’t, so I figure it’s only fair. She’s got a stepdad. Guess she only wants one dad at a time, although I can’t say I ever was much of a father.” His last words were spoken as if from a deep well of regret. “She’d be forty by now. I’ve missed her entire life.”

  Andy was surprised with how suddenly Bill’s manner had changed, and he was sorry he’d asked the question. Yet he couldn’t help wondering what Bill had meant by “she remembers things I don’t.”

  Bill must have read his mind. “I was a drunk,” he finally said. “Plain and simple. Knockdown, pass-out drunk. And I was a mean drunk.”

  Bill glanced over toward the house, and his face broke into a big grin. Andy followed his gaze. Jessie was just stepping outside and she looked beautiful wearing tan slacks and a colorful shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  Doris still hadn’t made an appearance by the time they left. Bill, on the other hand, was like a father hen. He walked them to the door and waved good-bye, grinning from ear to ear.

  Taking I-25 north, they turned off the Bijou exit, and in minutes, they were parking on the street in front of the restaurant. It had a long green awning and tall windows looking out toward the mountain range.

  After the hostess seated them, Jessie made a face. “Laura called me,” she said and then proceeded to tell the story. In between the details, the waiter came and took their orders. Andy ordered pasta; Jessie, chicken. “I wanted to put the poor girl in my car and just drive,” she told him. “Get her out of there.”

  “What would Betty do?” Andy asked.

  Jessie bit her lip and the saddest look flickered in her eyes. “Pray.” She took a sip of tea and pursed her lips regretfully.