Last Light (50 page)

Tears came to her eyes. “It might have been an act. He learned from the best.”

“I don’t think so, sweetheart. He helped me look around the house for any sign of where Vic might have gone with you. He could have kept me out of certain rooms if he’d known about the stuff that was stashed there, but he didn’t.”

Deni got up and went to the window, looked out into the neighborhood. “Does he know I killed his father?”

“I’m not sure.” He slid off the bed and came to stand behind her. “Honey, stop beating yourself up. You saved my life. You had no choice but to pull that trigger.”

She wiped a tear rolling down her cheek. “I know. But it feels awful. Less than a month ago, I was joking with Jeff over the things I would kill for. A bike, a glass of water . . . But I didn’t mean it. Even in self-defense, it’s hard to live with. Why did it have to come to this? So many people dead.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Seems like the world is a little more evil than it was a month ago. But there’s still a lot of good in it. And we can do our best to represent that good.”

She gazed up at him for a long moment. “God dealt with me, when I was on the road. He showed me what a wretch I’d been. He made me new.”

Doug nodded. “I know. I can see that.”

She was glad it was evident. “Dad, I’m so thankful you came for me.”

He wiped a tear off her cheek. “Me, too.”

“That first day, when the power went out, and we got our bike stolen . . . I treated you like you were a coward.”

He smiled. “You sort of did, didn’t you?”

She breathed a laugh. “I was an idiot. You’re not a coward. You’re my hero. When I think of God’s love for me, your face always comes to my mind.”

Tears glistened in his eyes as he leaned over and hugged her. “I love you, sweetheart.” He pulled back and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Now go talk to Mark. He’s not having the same kind of warm fuzzies about his dad. Go easy on him, okay?”

What would she say? He was the son of her tormenter. But her father was right. Hadn’t Mark tried to talk her out of going with him? And she’d known him for years. Mark had always had character and integrity, despite his father. In many ways, Mark was as much a victim as she. Maybe even more, since he hadn’t brought any of this upon himself. “All right, I’ll talk to him.”

She went down the stairs and out the front door. Mark sat on the porch, waiting for her. His eyes were red, and his face held myriad emotions—anger, grief, shame, guilt.

She stepped toward him. “Hey.”

He got up and tried to speak, but stopped, and only shook his head. Finally, he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Deni. So, so sorry.”

She swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”

“You’ve got to believe me,” he said. “I didn’t know he was a killer. I suspected his business wasn’t legal, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined—” His face twisted as he struggled with the words. “I had no idea my dad was capable of murder.”

Deni’s heart swelled with compassion. She reached up and hugged him, felt his body quaking with his sobs.

“He might have killed you,” he whispered against her hair.

She let him go. “God protected me.”

“I know He did. I was constantly praying for you. Praying that my dad would be stopped before he . . . hurt anyone else.”

Deni looked down at her feet. “Mark, did you know that I’m the one who shot him?”

He nodded. “I heard the story from the Caldwells. What else could you do? It was the two of you, or him.”

She saw no anger in his eyes, not at her. “Your brothers . . .”

“
Half-
brothers,” he said bitterly. “I don’t even know where they are. I haven’t seen them since right after Dad left.”

“Do you think they’re involved?”

“Probably. Over the last few years, they’ve all made a lot of money, and nobody knew exactly how. One of their wives told the sheriff she knew they were dealing in pornography. The police are looking for them, but I have a feeling they might not be coming back. Once they heard Dad was wanted for murder, they probably hit the road.”

“I hope the police find them.”

“Me, too.” He studied her face for a long moment. She felt as though he could see straight to her heart, and read her deepest thoughts. “Do you believe me, Deni? That I wasn’t involved?”

She realized that she did. “Yeah, I believe you.”

“Good,” he said, “because a lot of people around here don’t.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“I’d appreciate that.” He looked down at his feet, then shrugged. “Guess I’ll go now.”

She watched as he started down the steps. “Wait.”

He turned back. His eyes were soft, fragile.

“You really prayed for me?” she asked.

“The whole time.”

She stepped down, and looked up into his face. “Your prayers worked, Mark. God sent so many miracles. A babbling brook when I was dying of thirst. A church when I desperately needed to feel His presence. A couple to take me in at the right moment. Even a flat tire to slow me down, so Dad could find me. Things changed in my heart. He’s gonna make me different from now on.”

Mark smiled. “It’s good when God does that before a person gets married. That way you can put Him at the center of your home.”

Her smile faded, and she looked out into the breeze. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine marriage to Craig having anything but politics at its center.

“So,” Mark asked softly, “any thoughts of hitting the road again to get back east?”

“No. I need to stay here until the outage is over. I don’t have the fortitude or the courage to take off like that again. I don’t know how they did it in the old west.” She smiled up at him. “We have a lot, you know? Even if we don’t have air-conditioning and running water and electricity. We have nice homes, comfortable beds, people who love us.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking, too,” he said. “So what if we have to work a little harder? It won’t kill any of us.”

“We might even become better people.”

He smiled, but it was short-lived. Grief shadowed his face again. “Just so you know . . . I did love my dad. I prayed for him, too . . . for years. But ultimately, the choice of giving his life to Christ was his. The choice to die in darkness . . .”

His words choked off again. She wished she knew how to comfort him.

“Well, anyway . . . I’m really glad you’re okay. You get a good night’s sleep tonight. Rest easy.”

“Thanks,” she whispered.

She watched as he made his way down the sidewalk back toward his own home, and said a silent prayer that the neighbors would go easy on him and not paint him with the same stripes with which they painted his father. Mark didn’t deserve it, but it would take time for him to prove that to everyone. Such was the legacy his father had left him.

She went back upstairs and sat on her bed, and lit the candle on her writing desk. She got out her notebook, and started a letter.

Dear Craig
,

Afterword

You might say I’m delusional. I have that American virus, the one that says that all the trappings of this world, from prosperity to technology, from entertainment to security, from excess to extreme, will never pass away. I have that infection that makes me think that all this somehow has something to do with me, and that as long as I don’t mess up really bad, things will keep going along just as they are.

When an ice storm hits my unprepared southern town, and the power lines are knocked down by tree branches heavy with ice, we leave our dark, cold houses and ride around in our cars to get warm. We drive to the homes of friends to shower and wash clothes, and we mark time waiting for the power company to get those lights turned back on, so McDonalds will be operational again and we can watch the latest reality show, since our own reality is a little too mundane to bear.

What if it never came back on? What if, in His sovereignty, God said, “That’s enough. It’s time for it to stop. I’ve tried for years to get your attention, but you won’t look up. So I’m going to do something drastic.”

What would that drastic thing be? Might it be a massive power outage like the one in my books? Might it be hurricanes one after another, or tsunamis, or mud slides, tornadoes, or terrorists? Might it be war on our own soil?

Or might it be more personal? Something closer to home. Something that hurts from the center of our being, in that place in our gut where we never quite recover.

In the severity of that thing, whatever it might be, would we see His gentle hand? Would we see compassion from the God who loves us? Would we see His love manifested in our crisis?

And how would we change?

Would He prepare us first? Is He preparing us even now?

I’ll never forget the morning that my sweet mother-in-law was in a car accident that left her with a closed-head injury from which she would never fully recover. That morning, as I prayed, God prompted me to ask that I would be ready when tragedy hit, and that He would make my husband and me strong enough to sustain it when it came. Hours later, I knew why I’d prayed that prayer.

Over the next year, we watched that beloved woman suffer. She was never the same again, and spent the rest of her life in confusion and frustration, unable to do any of the things she’d done before, unable to even recognize her own home. She died of a secondary infection, but by the time she went, we had already said good-bye. In His gracious kindness, God had given us a year to release our hold on her. To realize that, in a way, she was already gone. In His compassion He made us ready for her passing home.

Sometimes He does that with our entanglements on earth. He tells us this is not our home, and He gently teaches us that the things here are just temporary. They’re not ours, any more than the things in a European hostel are ours when we’re traveling abroad. We have no ownership of that bed we slept in, or the table on which we set our things. The lamp in the corner belongs to someone else. When we return home, we will leave it behind.

The Bible says we are aliens in a land not our own, sojourners passing through, pilgrims on our way to a destination we haven’t quite reached. We should look at the things in our lives as temporary pleasures, things for which to be grateful, but things that we can easily leave behind.