The Divine Appointment (17 page)

Anna had rarely been to church. Even when she was a child, her parents took her only on special occasions, such as Easter and Christmas. She had heard the name of Jesus Christ but had never had anyone ask her the questions that Eli now asked. This strange mix of anxiousness and desire and emptiness all rolled into one was inexplicable to her. She had never felt anything like it before. Her eyes darted back and forth between Eli and Tag.

“Look, Eli,” Tag said. “We appreciate your concern, but you don’t have anything to worry about. I have no doubt that both Anna and I will be in heaven when we die. One way or the other.”

“But I don’t think you understand how it works,” Eli pressed. “People don’t just end up in heaven without—”

Tag cut Eli off in midsentence. “We understand completely, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Anna wished Tag had kept quiet and allowed Eli to continue. Something inside her yearned to hear more of what Eli had to say.

Eli relented. “I won’t bring it up again, but if either of you ever want to talk any more about it, I’ll be more than happy to talk to you.”

Eli stood to leave and thanked Tag and Anna for listening to him. He said good-bye, and Anna escorted him to the door. She wanted to grab his arm and beg him not to leave. But he left anyway. She stood in the doorway and watched him drive away.

When she returned to the den, Tag was still there.

“What did you think about what Eli said?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think we have a Jesus freak for a lawyer. That’s what I think.”

The Faulkner residence, Jackson, Tennessee

“Tell me how your visit with Tag and Anna went,” Sara requested as they sat down for dinner. Eli detected an excitement in her voice that he’d unfortunately have to dispel. Both of them had been praying for an opportunity for Eli to share Jesus Christ with Tag and Anna. He wasn’t interested in his meal. He was still bothered by his meeting with Tag and Anna.

“Not very well. They didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. It was strange. I don’t recall ever being in a more awkward situation, where I was talking about something that no one else in the room cared anything about.”

Sara passed him a roll and filled his water glass. “I hate to hear that. I really thought that this was going to be the divine appointment we talked about. But that just goes to show that we don’t get to decide when the Holy Spirit will move.”

Sara always knew what to say and spoke with wisdom. God did have a plan. He had a plan for Sara and him and for Tag and Anna. Eli needed to find it, rather than trying to make God follow his.

He smiled. “You’re right, and I’m not going to worry about it anymore. I’ll just keep praying for them. Some people sow and others reap. Maybe a seed has been planted that someone will harvest later.”

“At least you tried. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian is bold enough to share their faith with others.”

The Greenhills Memorial Garden, Nashville, Tennessee

A steady drizzle pelted Jill Baker’s umbrella. Some of it splattered against the sleeve of her hooded blue raincoat. The ground beneath her waterproof Timberland boots was soggy. It was a miserable Friday morning, and under her breath she complained that Eli had made her come. But someone needed to be present when the body was exhumed to make sure everything went correctly, and it made more sense for that somebody to be her instead of Eli.

At least that’s what he’d said.

She watched as the employees from the coroner’s office unloaded a backhoe from its resting place on a flatbed trailer, and soon the grass and earth that covered Jessica Caldwell’s grave were being removed rapidly. The coroner’s office employees were soaked and muddy. Time constraints necessitated that the exhumation be conducted that day, regardless of the weather. It was a short week the following week because of the holiday, and Dr. Stephenson had promised Judge Blackwood to have Jessica Caldwell’s body back in the ground by the next Friday.

Greenhills Memorial Garden was not far from the Caldwell residence in Belle Meade. Jordan and Heddy Caldwell were both standing nearby, watching the violation of their daughter’s grave. Jordan wore a maroon, long-sleeve pullover and held a blue-and-white golf umbrella large enough to protect both himself and Heddy. Heddy wore a blue raincoat similar to Jill’s and had her hands in the pockets. Jill noticed the epitaph on the grave marker: Our Loving Daughter. She wondered what Jordan and Heddy thought as they watched the coroner’s office employees unsealing Jessica’s grave.

Jill didn’t like cemeteries. They caused too many bad memories to surface. There were only two funerals she had forced herself to go to since her parents had died fifteen years ago. One was her grandmother’s and the other a college sorority sister. Her grandmother had reared her and her brother after their parents had died in a car wreck while the family was vacationing in the Gatlinburg area of the Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. She had been fourteen, her brother sixteen. They had survived the accident, but their parents were buried in the family cemetery in Springfield, Tennessee. She and her brother were left with only $150,000 each from insurance. After their grandmother died, her brother had moved to the Florida Keys to work on a shrimp boat. His money was gone. Jill’s was safe and growing. Her family was now at the law offices of Elijah J. Faulkner.

Randy Dickerson was at the cemetery also. He made Jill’s skin crawl. He was dressed like a Chicago criminal-defense lawyer. His pin-striped suit was getting soaked under his small umbrella, and that pleased her. He sloshed over to where Jill was standing. The soles of his wingtip shoes were covered with mud and wet grass.

“I see Eli sent you to do the dirty work,” Randy said.

“He was afraid he might melt but knew that neither of us would.”

Randy smiled. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t like you at all.”

Randy stopped smiling. They both directed their attention to the men working at Jessica’s grave site.

“You know you can’t win this one, don’t you?” he said patronizingly.

The rhythm of the drizzle intensified on Jill’s umbrella. Randy was getting wetter, and that pleased her more.

“If anybody can, it’ll be Eli.”

“Not even Eli.” Randy spoke confidently. “You know your client’s DNA matched the skin fragments under the decedent’s fingernail, don’t you?”

“Eli told me the report was back, and there was a match. But it doesn’t matter. We’re still going to win.”

Randy chuckled. “You’re not going to win, and this certainly isn’t going to help.” He pointed at the men who were unearthing Jessica’s grave.

By now Jill was mad. She was also worried about the DNA testing on the fetus and couldn’t tell whether Randy knew more than he was telling or not.

“Whoa, that’s enough,” one of the coroner’s employees yelled.

He must be the foreman
, Jill thought.

The employee held his hand up at the backhoe operator as a sign to stop. “I can see the top of the vault. You guys climb down in there and shovel the rest of that out by hand.”

He waved at two other employees who slid down the muddy embankment and began tossing scoops of mud onto the large pile already created by the backhoe operator. Jill watched as the two men fully exposed the top of the concrete burial vault. After several more minutes, the top of the vault was removed, and straps and chains were attached to the coffin inside. As delicately as possible, the coffin containing Jessica’s decomposing body was removed by a hydraulic lift and placed in the back of a box van waiting to carry it to the coroner’s office. The lid to the concrete vault was replaced to keep water, mud, and debris out of it until the coffin could be returned.

Jill saw Heddy Caldwell turn her head and bury it in Jordan’s shoulder as the coffin crested from the burial vault.

“I hope this is worth it, Eli,” Jill whispered to herself.

The van drove away with the coffin secured inside. Mud, water, and grass splattered from the tires until it reached the pavement of the narrow driveway, then left the cemetery grounds.

Jill walked the few steps back to her car without saying good-bye to Randy. She sat in her car with the engine running. The windshield wipers cleared away the drops of rain almost as quickly as they fell. She watched the Caldwells as they miserably made their way to their car.

To her surprise, they returned to Jessica’s grave. In the rain they set fresh flowers on the top of the tombstone.

For the first time Jill read the entire inscription on the marker. The day the coroner’s office employees removed her body from the grave would have been Jessica’s twenty-eighth birthday.

Jill rested her forehead on the steering wheel and felt miserable.

The Grissom residence, Brentwood, Tennessee

“I forbid you to go,” Tag said to Anna.

That angered her. She wasn’t a child. She would make her own decisions. “Tag, I’m going. And you can’t stop me from going.”

Anna was standing in front of the dresser mirror in their bedroom, putting on her pearl earrings that matched her necklace and double-checking her hair. It had been so long since she had been to church that she had forgotten what women wore to church. She just wanted to look her best, so that’s what she wore—her best summer dress. It was white, embellished with flowers, and comfortable.

Tag had been complaining since Anna finished her shower. At first it was just a low murmur, but as she continued to get ready, it grew louder. He finally used the word
forbid
, and she still wasn’t unnerved. She was going, and he wasn’t stopping her.

Tag stood, growling, behind her as she put on the finishing touches to her wardrobe. She could almost feel his hot breath on her neck. She glanced at his image in the mirror.

“Why now? Why all of a sudden do you want to go to church? It’s because of what Eli talked about the other day, isn’t it?”

Anna had been unable to shake the feeling she had when Eli mentioned the name of Jesus Christ. It had been four days, and that pain in her stomach was still there. It was Sunday, so she had decided she would find a church—any church—today with or without Tag. Just thinking about church eased the pain in her stomach.

She felt excited. Tag wasn’t going to forbid her. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Tag stomped around the foot of their bed flailing his arms. “You know I can’t leave the house. And because I don’t need church or anything it offers. And you’re not going either!”

His antics didn’t deter her. Anna slammed her hairbrush on the dresser and glared at Tag. His temples were pulsing. Clearly, he was angry. Anna couldn’t care less. He had too often told her what she could and couldn’t do. But not today.

“I’m going, and you’re not going to stop me. What are you going to do, Tag? Lock me up?”

Clutching her purse, Anna marched past him and to the garage. Tag yelled at her the entire way. She ignored him, got in her car—a black Infiniti FX SUV—and backed out of the garage. She nearly scraped Tag’s white Saab convertible.

Tag was still screaming as she pulled into the street. And she still ignored him. Anna pressed the button on the remote clipped to the sun visor, and he disappeared behind the garage door.

Anna exited the Governor’s Club subdivision. She didn’t know where to go and didn’t care. She just wanted to find a church.
Any
church. Soon she remembered seeing a church on Concord Road the many times she had driven that way. She decided to go there. It took her less than ten minutes to reach it. The medium-size church looked inviting from the street. It wasn’t large enough to be intimidating. It had stained-glass windows, dark red bricks, and a steeple with a cross.

The sign read New Hope Baptist Church. Anna had never noticed the name before. She parked in a space reserved for visitors. She glanced around at the few people who were walking toward the church building and inhaled deeply. Rousing her courage, she left her SUV and began to walk toward the building. The sky was clear, the sun brilliant, and the temperature pleasant. A breeze ruffled the hem of her dress. It was a beautiful day for a new beginning. As she walked, the church began to draw her like a magnet. She had never wanted to get anywhere as fast as she wanted to right then. Her legs tried to run, but her judgment prevented it.

She entered the front door and was greeted warmly by men and women she didn’t know. They talked to her like she was an old friend and they were glad to see her again. One gentleman handed her a brochure and escorted her to a vacant seat on an otherwise crowded pew in the middle of the sanctuary.

When she sat down, Anna looked at the brochure the man had given her. It read like a program for a play. At the top were printed the words
Order of Service
. Men and women of different ages sat in the pews around her. They spoke to her and she felt at ease.

Soon a choir marched in with all its regalia and filled the chairs in the loft in the front of the sanctuary. Words appeared on two big screens on either side of the choir. Musical instruments began to sound. The people stood and sang, and Anna sang with them. She didn’t know why. But her mouth opened and the words flowed out. She enjoyed singing.

After a few minutes a gentleman began to speak from the podium on stage. The Order of Service said he was the pastor of the church—Dr. Graham Frazier. He was tall, and Anna guessed he was in his midforties. He had thick black hair and his suit had been pressed recently. White starched shirt, necktie; and his black leather shoes sparkled. His voice was deep and soothing. She didn’t remember everything he said, but he talked about the need for a relationship with Jesus Christ. His words were similar to those spoken by Eli, she realized. The time went by too quickly.

Before she knew it, Dr. Frazier concluded his sermon—that’s what the Order of Service called it—and invited anyone and everyone to come and speak with him at the front of the church. The piano and organ played. The people sang again. She saw people walk to the front of the church. A young couple with a toddler. A middle-aged man wiping tears from his cheeks. Anna felt a yearning to speak to Dr. Frazier, but her feet were nailed to the floor. Her heart raced and she wrung her hands. Soon the music ended, Dr. Frazier prayed, and the people started to leave. She didn’t want to go but fell in line and exited the sanctuary.

Before Anna knew it, she was back in her car and staring at the front of the church building. It seemed as if it was only a minute ago that she had parked her car, but an hour and fifteen minutes had passed. The event had been like a whirlwind. She had never before experienced anything like it. It took five minutes for her to make herself start the car and drive away. She told herself that she would have to come back.