The Heaven Trilogy (94 page)

“In New York? Roald and Karen both.”

“Karen?”

“Yes, Karen.”

“So you’ll see her again.”

“In a matter of speaking. At a meeting. She
is
still the agent of record on this picture, and she stands to gain or lose a tremendous amount of money, depending on how well it does. Not that money was ever Karen’s primary motivation.”

“No, you were,” Helen said with a smile. “Or maybe your status was.”

“Perhaps. Betty tells me that she’s seeing someone in New York. A producer. It was just as well she moved back.”

“Well, you don’t need her in the office anyway. You have Betty and the others.”

“It’s still a bit quiet. Roald’s been to the office only twice since . . .”

“Since you married the tramp,” Helen filled in.

“Nonsense!”

“You know that’s how he feels. Don’t worry, I’m used to it.”

“And you shouldn’t be used to it.” His face was suddenly red. “Ever!”

“Okay, Jan.” She couldn’t help her smile.

He exhaled and continued. “Anyway, you’re right: the others have been very supportive. It’s nearly like the old days, only without Roald and Karen. And actually, you’d never know anything had changed by the flow of money. I’ll tell you, Helen, I’ve never seen so much money. When you deal in millions, the world changes. Speaking of which, your Mustang is due in at the dealership today. Should I have it picked up?”

“Serious?”

“It is what you asked for, isn’t it? A red convertible?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s in. I’ll have Steve pick it up.”

She looked at him with a sense of wonder. It was hard to believe that she actually owned half of what he did, which was a lot now. And it wasn’t bothering him one bit. The Mustang was the least of it. They had spent the first week in Jamaica and there Jan had begun with the gifts, each given as if it were but a small token of his love. A diamond necklace over a candlelight lobster dinner, a pair of sparkling emerald earrings on a moonlit beach, impossibly expensive perfume under her pillow. A dozen others. But it was the new home he had conceived for her—the castle, he liked to call it—that often lit his eyes. A home twice the size of this meager cottage. One fit for his bride, nothing less would do. He’d already purchased the forty acres on which construction was slated to begin in one week. Two months ago the expense would have been unthinkable. But to hear Jan speak of it, now anything less would be beneath them. It consumed most of his energies these days. The book, the movie, the money; they were the fruits of love. And there seemed to be no reasonable limits to his desire to express his love. She was his obsession.

And not his alone.

Jan looked out the window. “You know, if it wasn’t for all this money, I wonder if Roald would have carried out his threats. I think he and his boys are still fuming under their collars, but the money has silenced them. Not that I’m complaining; they’ve done well to keep the matter private. Karen too. But I wonder where they would be without the money.”

“You question their belief in you?”

“I never would have thought so, but I don’t know now. Not everyone is as understanding or noble as you, my dear.”

Noble?
No, Jan. I may have captured your heart, but I am not noble
.

“Money is the glue that holds us all together now,” he said. “The ministry, the movie, the book—it all seems to have boiled down to a few million dollars.”

“Wars have been fought for less,” she said.

“True enough. But I think that when this movie is over, both Roald and Karen will be out of our lives. Of course, we won’t need them, will we? We have enough now to live our lives out in comfort in our new home. I will be free to travel at leisure, speaking as I like. Not even their rumors will affect us.”

“Sounds good to me.” She stopped. “What rumors?”

He blinked. “Rumors. They’re nothing.”

“They’re about me?”

He hesitated.

“They’re about me. Tell me.”

He sighed. “An article was written in a leading evangelical periodical, casting suspicion on any religious leader that would marry a woman with . . . how did they say it . . . questionable morals. You see, that is what they say. But they don’t know you. And they certainly don’t know me. And besides, like I said, as soon as the movie is made, it won’t matter.”

Heat washed over Helen’s face. They were asinine! Hypocrites! When had one of them ever reached out to her with Christ’s love? Even after she’d publicly prayed for forgiveness in Jan’s church. And she had done it with complete sincerity, yet now these leaders were turning on her, openly questioning her morals? Men were such pigs. Churched or unchurched, they were evidently all the same. Except Jan, of course. Guilt nipped at her.

And if he were to discover the truth she might have to slit her wrists!

“You’re right,” Jan said to her silence. “It’s absurd. It means nothing. Helen, look at me.”

She did, feeling small and dumb at his table, but she did look at him. His eyes were sad and his mouth held a slight smile. “You must know one thing, my dear Helen. You are more precious to me than anything I could possibly imagine. Do you understand? You are everything to me.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know that. But the world obviously doesn’t share your feelings. It’s a bit awkward being the hated half of a celebrity known for his love.”

“No, no, no. Don’t say that. Some love my book; some hate my book. It’s not me they love or hate. And just because a few religious men take exception to you doesn’t mean the whole world hates you.” He grinned mischievously. “In fact, sometimes I think my own staff prefers you to me.”

“Yeah, well that’s Betty and John and Steve. But I swear, the church people . . .” She shook her head.

“And the church leaders are not the church, Helen. We are all the church. You and I. The bride of Christ. And you, my dear, are my bride.”

His smile was infectious and she returned it. Jan threw his napkin on the table. “I have to go.” He rounded the table and took her face in both of his hands. They were large, tender hands that had been brutalized by war and now took nothing for granted. “I love you, Helen,” he said.

“I love you, Jan.”

“More than words,” he said, and he bent down.

She closed her eyes and let him kiss her lightly on her lips.

If you only knew, Jan.

He released her face and when she opened her eyes, he was already at the front door. He turned there. “Helen, when I am gone, be careful. Guard your heart. I could not bear to lose it,” he said. Then he smiled and left without waiting for a response.

Helen was not so accustomed to praying, but she prayed now. “Oh, dear God, help us. Please, please, help us. Please help me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

IVENA STEPPED from her home Friday evening and took a long pull of fresh air into her lungs. The heat had been tempered by rains over the past few days, and looking at the boiling skies, she thought it would rain again tonight. Janjic had gone off to some meeting in New York again. Perhaps she would call Helen and ask her if she would like to come for a visit later. She was a bottle of heaven, Janjic’s girl. And in some ways she was Ivena’s girl too.

Ivena locked the door and stepped past her rosebushes onto the sidewalk. A black car rolled by slowly, headed in the same direction as she, toward the park three blocks west. A man looked absently at her from the side window. Thunder rumbled on the far horizon. The breeze swept through a row of huge leafy spruce trees across the street, like a green wave. Yes, it would rain soon but she wanted to walk for at least a few minutes.

Her mind buzzed with the awareness that he was near. That God was near. In fact, not since the days following Nadia’s death so many years ago had God been so close. And when God was near, the human heart did not fare so well, she thought. It tended to turn to mush.

Ivena looked back to her small house with its greenhouse hidden behind the tall white fence. He was certainly in there, crawling all over his jungle of love. She stopped and faced the house, tempted to return to the garden. To the flowers and the aroma that could no longer be contained by the glass walls. The green vines had taken over not only the garden but her own heart, she thought. To step into the room was like entering the inner court, the bosom of God. She’d smelled the flowers a block from home once and feared someone had broken in. She’d run all the way only to find them swaying in the light breeze that sometimes moved through the room. She never had found its source.

Ivena turned and continued on her walk; she needed the exercise.

She could not be gone from the garden too long without being overcome by a yearning to return. And she had noticed something else. She was remembering things very clearly for some reason. Remembering the expression on her daughter’s face when that beast Karadzic had pulled the trigger. Remembering the even drawing of Nadia’s breath. And the slight smile. “I heard the laughter,” Nadia had said.

“Oh, Father, show me your laughter,” she mumbled quietly, walking with her arms wrapped around herself now.

Boom!

Ivena flinched. It was thunder, but it might as well have been the bullet to Nadia’s head.

She sighed. “You know that I love you, Father. It still does not seem right that you’ve taken Nadia before me. Why must I wait?”

One day she would join her daughter and that day could not possibly come quickly enough. But it would not be today. For one thing, her body was showing no signs of slowing down. It might be another fifty years before natural causes took her. For another thing, she had a part to play in this drama about her. This passion play. She knew that like she knew that blood flowed through her veins, unseen but surging with life.

Nadia had heard the laughter of heaven, and the priest had
laughed
the laughter of heaven, right there on the cross, begging to go. Now Janjic had heard the heavens weeping.

And then Christ had planted his love for Helen in Janjic’s heart.

Once Ivena understood that, she’d known that she was in a passion play. They were walking through Solomon’s Song. Solomon’s garden, more likely. A sprinkling of love from heaven, for the benefit of the mortals who wandered about, oblivious to the desperate longing of their Creator.

“And what of me, Father? When will I hear so clearly?”

Nothing but distant rumbles answered her. She reached the park’s entrance and decided to walk once around before returning home, hopefully before the rain.

This drama unfolding behind man’s eyes was a great thing. Much greater than the building of grand cities or towering pyramids. Greater than the winning of wars. It had a feel of far loftier purpose. As if the destiny of a million souls hung in the balance of these few lives. Of Janjic’s story,
The Dance of the Dead
. Father Micheal, Nadia, Ivena, Janjic, Helen, Glenn Lutz—they were the main players here on earth. And the masses lived in ignorance of the struggle, while their own future was being decided.

The how and why were lost on Ivena. Only this vivid sense of purpose. But one thing she did know: This passion play was not over. Janjic may make his movie, but the story was not yet complete. And now she was being called to play a larger role. She did have the benefit of the garden, but as astounding as that was, she yearned for more. For a glimpse of heaven itself.

“Show me, Father. You cannot show me? You showed Nadia and Father Micheal and Janjic. Now show me. Don’t leave me out here in the wind by myself.”

The park was vacant except for her, she saw. That car she’d seen drive by sat parked near the outbuildings to her right, but she saw no people. It was a warm wind that blew through her hair, carrying the smell of freshly mowed grass. It reminded her of the smells from the garden in which Janjic and Helen were wed. A smile bunched her cheeks at the memory. Janjic had invited some of his closest friends and all of his employees to a dinner party, explained his heart and then presented his fiancée.

They were a conservative lot for the most part, and they had gawked at dear Helen as if she were from a newly discovered culture. But Betty, the motherly one, had given a rousing speech in the defense of love. It had quelled their doubts, she thought. At least some of their doubts. The rest had slowly faded in the weeks following. It was not every day that a man as respectable as Janjic reversed his engagement for another woman. Especially after only two weeks.

The ceremony had been simple and stunning. The setting was idyllic, yes, with all those flowers and perfectly manicured bushes, but it was the sight of Janjic and Helen together that turned the event into an unforgettable day. Her dear Serb simply could not keep his eyes from his bride. He stumbled through the day grinning from ear to ear, responding slowly when spoken to, terribly shy and thoroughly smitten. It was enough to keep the entire party in a perpetual blush. If only they knew the truth—that this display was nothing less than a clumsy mortal’s attempt to contain a few cells from God’s heart in his own.

Their love hadn’t stopped there, of course. The two were inseparable. Yet, regardless of Janjic’s love, he was still human. As human as ever and sometimes more, Ivena thought.

And Helen . . . Helen was categorically human.

A shadow shifted to her left and Ivena turned. Two men approached her, large men dressed in black cotton pants, looking past her at something. They had appeared rather suddenly, she thought. A moment ago the park was empty, and now these two strode toward her, now less then ten feet off. How was that possible? She continued to walk and turned to her right to see what had caught their attention. But there was nothing.

Ivena had just started to turn back when a hand clamped around her face. They had come right to her! “Hey!” Her cry was stifled by a piece of cloth. The man was suffocating her!
Oh, dear God, these men are attacking me!

“Hey!” she cried again, both arms flailing. Her voice was completely muffled by the hand this time, but she did manage to hit something soft and she heard a grunt.