The Living Room (24 page)

It took every second of the drive home for Amy to unwind. And she had no one in her life she could talk to about what had just happened. Not Natalie. Not Jeff. And of course not Ms. Burris, who was the one person who could provide her with a helpful perspective.

At home Megan and Ian were sitting at the kitchen table doing homework. It reminded her of the days when they shared crayons.

“Why are you working in here?” she asked.

“So I don’t have to go into Megan’s room to ask her a question about social studies,” Ian replied.

Megan was reading a book and had a yellow highlighter in one hand. It made her look like a college coed. For Amy, the jump from crayons to college prep was far too quick.

“How was school?” Amy asked her.

“Okay,” Megan replied curtly.

Ian closed his book. “I’m done. I’ll shoot baskets in the driveway while you talk about secret stuff.”

“Did you finish the section about urban planning?” Megan asked.

“Yeah.”

Megan grabbed Ian’s book and asked him a few questions that he answered while tapping his feet against the floor. Amy watched in amazement.

“That’s enough,” Ian said. “You’re harder than Ms. Burkholder.”

“We’ll have a review after supper,” Megan said.

Ian put on his jacket and ran out of the kitchen.

“He’s studying urban planning in the fourth grade?” Amy asked. “The last time I checked he was learning about the Lost Colony.”

“It’s part of the unit on economic development and growth over the past hundred years. They skip around in the text. It’s not chronological.”

“Thanks for helping him.”

“I told you I’d do it.”

Megan sounded grown up. Amy hoped her maturity would continue into their next conversation.

“Did you talk with Ms. Robbins?” she asked.

“Yeah. She’s going to set up a meeting for Nate and me. Mr. Ryan and Coach Nichols are going to be there, too. It may not do any good, but I want to show Nate I can sit in the same room with him and look him in the face without crying or having a nervous breakdown.”

Megan’s expression as she sat at the table seemed resolute enough.

“I think Dad can come,” Megan said slowly. “But I don’t want him to say anything unless he clears it with Ms. Robbins first. Both of Nate’s parents are going to be there.”

Amy bit her lower lip at being excluded.

“Your father doesn’t know what the text message said. And I don’t think he should find out in a roomful of people.”

“Ms. Robbins told me that won’t be the point of the meeting. It has to do with Nate making a serious apology. She’s not going to let him get off with an ‘If I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry’ kind of thing.”

Amy was impressed with the counselor. Learning how to deliver a bona fide apology was something few adults knew how to do. And Ms. Robbins wasn’t just teaching Nate. At some point in her life, Megan would also need to know what to do when she wronged someone.

“Okay,” Amy said. “I’m going to cook spaghetti with meat sauce for supper. Does that sound good to you?”

“I had it for lunch at school, but it was so bad it made me want to barf. Yours will get the bad memory out of my brain. Will you put mushrooms in it?”

“I bought some fresh ones the other day.”

“Yummy.”

Megan left the kitchen. Amy took the ground beef out of the refrigerator and put a large pot of water on the stove to boil the pasta. At times, Megan was like a plate of wet spaghetti noodles—impossible to unravel.

After supper, Amy, Jeff, and Megan discussed the upcoming meeting with Nate at the school. Megan immediately tried to set limits on what Jeff could do.

“You will not tell me what I can and can’t do as your father,” Jeff said in a tone of voice that left no room for debate. “I’m glad you believe I should be at the meeting, but I was going to come anyway.”

“Okay,” Megan replied in a mousy voice. “I’m going up to my room.”

After Megan left, Amy turned to Jeff.

“Way to go,” she said.

“It all goes back to our responsibility to let Megan know we care about her. She felt secure when we set boundaries for her as a little girl, and she needs to know that there are limits to her wishes, even in a situation like this.”

Amy leaned over and kissed Jeff on the cheek. “How did you get to be so smart?”

“You’re smart; I’m practical.”

Later, while sitting together in the family room, Amy told Jeff about
Deeds
of
Darkness
and her conversation with Bernie Masters. Jeff’s eyes widened as Amy gave him the “elevator pitch.”

“I’d read that book,” he replied. “Are you going to have any action in it?”

Amy knew what Jeff meant. She’d never written a fight scene, and the idea made her chuckle.

“What’s funny?” Jeff asked.

Amy punched her fist into the air. “I guess I could describe someone throwing a punch, but if you want a bunch of scientific details about what happens to the bone structure of the nasal cavities when a person’s face is crushed, this won’t be the book for you.”

“No, but if the bad guys are as evil as you say they are, they will try to dish it out and deserve to reap what they sow.”

“That’s biblical.” Amy nodded.

“I’ve been reading my Bible some during breaks at work.” Jeff smiled.

Upstairs in the writing room, Amy expanded the elevator pitch into a synopsis. She thought about Bernie’s warning against killing both Roxanne and her husband and knew the agent was right. The mother and father couldn’t both die. She toyed with the idea of killing Roxanne and keeping the father alive, but his tangential connection with the main thrust of the story made that an unappealing option. However, she couldn’t get away from the possibility that one of the children might not make it through the final chapter alive. Amy had never allowed a child to play a main role in either of her other novels, much less be a tragic figure. In her books children were rarely seen or almost never heard.

Amy stopped typing.

What if one of the children in her new novel wasn’t a toddler but rather a teenage niece whom Roxanne took in and adopted after the young girl was abandoned by her parents? The adoption would bolster reader sympathy for Roxanne and her husband and would be a poignant subplot. The niece would be an interesting mix of tough-knocks maturity forged by difficult life circumstances and a loving, sacrificial attitude toward her baby cousin. Thinking about the niece and her possible willingness to put her own life in serious jeopardy for her cousin, Amy felt a rush of emotion. It could be a powerful plot twist. She quickly wrote down a few notes to capture her thoughts and feelings.

That night, after Jeff fell asleep, Amy lay in bed and thought some more about the world of her new novel. A mixture of excitement and apprehension bubbled to the surface. If she’d heard the verse from Ephesians about exposing the deeds of darkness prior to writing
A
Great
and
Precious
Promise
, she never would have turned on the computer and typed “Chapter One.” The first and second novels sprang from gentler seeds. Now she was ready for a deeper, more serious challenge.

After all, it was all make-believe.

sixteen

T
he night before Megan’s meeting with Nate Drexel, Amy spent an hour praying in the writing room. Her heart was still unsettled when she lay down and fell asleep.

And went to the living room.

Peace recognizes no foes in the courts of the Lord. The truth that God prepares a table for his children in the presence of their enemies finds its ultimate fulfillment in the place where he reigns supreme. When awake, Amy was an unwilling mystic, but during her nighttime visions, she knew that to doubt would be foolish.

As the dream came to an end, a new series of pictures and images flooded her mind in rapid succession. Each one was indelibly printed on her memory, but only for a split second. Once the impressions stopped, she couldn’t specifically recall any of them.

After she woke up, Amy lay on her back wishing she could hold on to the wisps of the nighttime encounter that slipped through the fingers of her mind as soon as she left the living room. But there remained a gulf between the two realms.

“I’ll be at the school at three thirty,” Jeff said to Megan as they ate a bowl of oatmeal the following morning.

“Okay,” Megan replied. “I wish I could stay out of school until then. It’s going to be hard to think about anything else.”

Amy was eating a grapefruit she’d sectioned with a sharp knife.

“Look to Ms. Robbins for guidance,” Amy said. “That’s her job.”

“Or Mr. Ryan,” Megan replied. “I stayed after class yesterday, and he told me about a similar situation that happened when he was in high school. Later, the boy did something worse and ended up in jail.”

Amy wasn’t exactly sure how that related to Megan. She turned to Jeff.

“Call me at work as soon as the meeting is over. Do you want me to pick up Ian?”

“No, I’ll be off the clock, and there’s no use going back for an hour or so. I’ll get him.”

Megan went upstairs. Jeff finished his oatmeal, too, but continued to stare at the empty bowl.

“What are you thinking?” Amy asked.

Jeff looked up at her. “That I don’t want to lose my temper. I’ve tried to imagine everything that could be said so I won’t be caught off guard, but that’s no guarantee it won’t happen.”

Amy went to the door to make sure Megan couldn’t hear them.

“Then you need to know exactly what Nate sent in his text,” she said. “Megan didn’t want me to tell you, but it’s not something you should find out for the first time in a roomful of people.”

Amy repeated the message to Jeff. She saw red streaks come up the sides of his neck. He picked up his spoon and began tapping it against the bowl.

“If you knew, why didn’t you tell me before now?” he asked in a tense tone of voice.

“Maybe I should have. I didn’t want to upset you more than you already were, but when you mentioned your concern about surprises, I knew I couldn’t keep quiet.”

“If I’d done something like that, my father—”

“I know,” Amy interrupted.

Jeff glanced up at her. “It’s going to take a lot to convince me this boy is sorry enough for what he’s done.”

“Do you think you should go to the school early so you can
talk to Ms. Robbins? I’ve been so impressed with her during our phone calls.”

“No. Just pray that I say and do the right thing.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“No, I’m committed to it.”

Amy bit her lower lip. “Then don’t dwell on the text all day. It’s not something I want rolling around in your mind. And no matter what’s said in the meeting, promise me you won’t lose your temper and do anything rash.”

“Like you said, there will be a roomful of people,” Jeff said. “That will help keep me in check.”

Ian came into the kitchen.

“I’m going to pick you up from after-school care,” Jeff said.

“Cool. Can we go by the new indoor batting range? Bobby’s dad took him. They have machines that pitch the ball at different speeds.”