Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2) Page 15

  Especially after my grandmother was killed in a car accident last year. Sometimes, if I catch a glimpse of him when he thinks no one is looking, I swear I can still see the fresh terror in his eyes. They’d been together since high school, and to have their time on Earth ended by a frazzled mother who ran a red light has been a hard thing to overcome.

  For the first time since it happened, though, I’m wondering about the faith of it all. Did the woman who was driving the minivan believe in God? Does she now? Did she count it as grace that she and her children were spared in her few seconds of error, despite the fact that my grandmother, alone in the car, died at the hospital some hours later due to a severe brain injury?

  “Gramps?” I ask after checking to make sure the rest of the family is out of earshot. “Why didn’t you ever sue the woman who hit Gram?”

  A year ago I wanted to know based on the indignation I had that someone did this to my family. Mom told me not to talk about it with my grandfather. Ever. But, now, as I stare into the still-youthful eyes of my mostly jovial grandfather, I can’t help but feel like something more was behind it.

  He hardly seems shocked by my question, but looks around just like I did to make sure no one is listening. “Come,” he says, walking through the kitchen and toward the side door, stopping to pour two cups of hot cider before leading me out onto the deck.

  Grabbing my scarf on the way out the door, I unfold it to drape around my shoulders, warming my hands on the mug of cider.

  “What?” I whisper, despite having fewer ears around than before we exited the house.

  Gramps sets his mug down on the edge of the deck and looks out into the woods. “Your mother would kill you for asking,” he starts, matter-of-factly with a slight chuckle.

  I chuckle back. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry—”

  He puts a hand up. “Don’t apologize. You have questions. Valid ones.”

  “Okay …” My voice trembles as much from nerves as from the thirty-degree air.

  Gramps takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes trained on something in the distance. Something that isn’t really there, perhaps. “Losing your grandmother has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. I know there aren’t any guarantees in life, but I was sure I’d go first. Men usually do.” He shrugs and smiles sadly.

  Staring at him, wide-eyed, I don’t have anything to say. We don’t usually have these kinds of conversations … ever. I don’t have a script.

  “Anyway,” he continues, “you can figure out that your mom wanted to sue the pants off the woman that caused the accident.”

  “She did?” I don’t recall Mom being particularly rabid during that time last year. The grief was too thick.

  He nods. “She wanted to take everything.”

  “Go big or go home,” I quip dryly. “How’d you talk her down?”

  “I pointed out that not too long ago, that could have been her in the car. Tired, stressed, maybe worried about money, with loud, crying kids in the back seat. Racing from one job, to preschool pick-up, then to another job …” Gramps pauses to clear his throat. “It could have been any one of us behind the wheel that day. In either car.”

  I scrunch my eyebrows. “So you cut her a break because of all the potential reasons she wasn’t focused on the road?”

  Gramps shakes his head and looks at me, tears welling in his eyes. “No, love. I cut her a break because what she has to live with is painful enough, I didn’t need to have her separated from her kids if she ended up going to jail. Honestly, I wish she didn’t have to feel all of that guilt. There’s so much hurt in the world. I cut her a break because … because judgment isn’t mine to hand down. It’s just … not my job.”

  Is he … is he talking about God?

  I silently watch my grandfather as he sniffs and looks back into the woods. “Nothing I, or the justice system, could have put that woman through would have brought your grandmother back. I just trust that she learned a lesson is all. I don’t want her walking around guilty her whole life, but, maybe her side of the story can help someone someday.”

  Yours could too, Gramps.

  “So … when you talk about judgment … ” I prompt, nervous about the new level this conversation has the potential to reach.

  Gramps smiles and turns back to me. “I think it’s good, that school you’re going to. I may not agree with everything I read about in the news, but the world could use a little less pain, don’t you think?”

  “You know most of the kids that come out of there are card-carrying republicans with an agenda against most of the things you stand for, right?” I’m being honest with him, and also reminding myself of the realities of Carter University graduates.

  With a broad smile and throaty laugh, Gramps gives me a firm pat on the shoulder. “So change their minds, girl.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “And how, exactly, do you propose I do that?”

  He shrugs. “One student at a time.”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m hit with Dean Hershel Baker’s words of warning.

  You’re a threat …

  “It’s a one-hundred-year-old institution, Gramps, with tentacles further than I can reach.” I turn for the door, but his voice stops me.

  “Please,” he pleads through a hoarse near-cry.

  I turn to find him working furiously trying to avoid sobbing. “What’s wrong?”

  Gramps shakes his head. “Don’t give up on that place, or them, Kennedy. You have a good, fierce heart. I see it in your eyes. It’s the same kind of look I had when I entered seminary.”

  “Hold up,” I shout, walking back out onto the deck. “Seminary? I’ve been to church with you, like, once. When was this? You and gram were together since high school. What was your plan there?”

  “Just after high school,” he admits plainly. “I felt like I was meant for bigger things. It was an Episcopal seminary, so my relationship with your grandmother wasn’t in jeopardy. Turns out, I didn’t have the spine for it.” There’s a long pause before he takes a deep breath. “I really liked Roland, Kennedy. I saw a lot of myself in him, and it was really hard on me and your grandmother when everything happened between him and your mom. It was just … inexplicable. When we tried to pray with your mom about it, she rejected it venomously, and told us when her baby was born she would be the one to filter God for her child. She wanted nothing to do with the God that I had a relationship with.”

  I tilt my head in confusion. “But she raised me in the church.”

  “She didn’t really have a Plan B, and we didn’t feed her told-you-so’s. She just kept herself at a distance and figured out along the way it was easier to let you make your own choices with God since, according to her, we never gave her that choice. But my point is, I see the same fire in your eyes that he always had. He wasn’t on a pastoral track back then—well, not one he was aware of.” Gramps laugh as if he and God are sharing a private joke. “Anyway, I don’t know what’s ahead for you, Kennedy, but I know you can’t give up. Not on the school, not on God, and not on yourself.”

  I’m a bit dizzy from this new grandfather standing before me, talking as if we’ve always had these kinds of revelatory conversations. “Did you ever contact Roland after he and Mom split up?”

  Immediately, Gramps eyes shoot to the ground. Guilty.

  “Gramps …” I lower my voice, which is shaking again against the sinking feeling in my stomach.

  He clears his throat and lifts his chin in the Hamilton Family way. “I trust your confidence in this,” he says, not asks.

  I nod anyway.

  “I know Dan has already accepted responsibility for it, but …”

  Blood rushes through my ears and I can barely hear the next words out of his mouth. I know what they’re going to be.

  “I sent that picture to Roland, Kennedy. When you were five. It wasn’t Dan. He didn’t even know about it until your mother called him all crazy back several weeks ago.”

  My mouth hangs
open like a broken screen door. “But … the handwriting. It was Dan’s … wasn’t it? Wouldn’t mom have recognized your handwriting?”

  Gramps looks unfazed. “Sometimes when people are looking for an explanation, they’ll see things that aren’t really there. It helps them protect themselves. Dan called me after he talked to your mother that day. His hunch was right. I sent it. He agreed to take the heat for it, because he knows your mother about as well as I do and knew she’d be in a fit if she found out it was me.”

  “Why?” I ask breathlessly.

  He smiles the sweet Christmas morning smile he has year-round. “He did deserve to know. He deserved to know that you were healthy and happy and being taken care of. And, I’d been in contact with his parents only two or three times before that, but I knew his life was in the pits. But, I remembered that fire. The one in his eyes that was there every single time I saw him. I know that fire, Kennedy. When you’ve seen it once, you know it anywhere. I was hoping, beyond hope, that seeing that picture of you would rekindle what I knew was in him.”

  “God,” I state flatly.

  He nods. “God.”

  “So you’re responsible for … all of this?” I wave my hands, meaning to indicate Roland’s life, my attending CU, and my brand-new status as a PK.

  “You know better,” Gramps teases, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and leading me back toward the door.

  “God,” I mumble.

  “God,” he whispers into my ear, opening the door with the silent understanding between us that that conversation is to stay out on the deck where it happened.

  “Everything’s different now.” I stretch out on Mollie’s bed as the sun sets, and my Thanksgiving meal still fills my stomach.

  “That’s an understatement. I can’t believe your Gramps sent that picture. Or that he was going to be a priest. Or that damn sack-of-shit Hershel Baker.”

  I roll onto my stomach, growling into her pillow.

  Yeah. It’s been quite the afternoon at Mollie’s. I told her everything. After spending most of this semester feeling guilty about keeping most of Roland’s life a secret from her, I’ve decided that honesty is, without a doubt, the best policy. And, she’s the only person I can fully trust with everything. She’s the only one who won’t overreact and sue the school, like my mom would if she caught wind of Dean Baker’s behavior, and the only one who won’t spread rumors. I still don’t fully trust my friends at CU. At least not the way I should.

  I need to pray to let go of my suspicions and judgment of them, but it’s hard. I could probably trust Matt with the Dean Baker stuff, but they did seem awfully chummy the other day.

  “Was it weird at Thanksgiving lunch today?” she asks, mindlessly braiding my hair as I continue to lie facedown on her bed.

  I shrug. “Probably not for anyone but me. Gramps was his usual self, Dan and Mom ignored all the stress of the last few weeks and actually enjoyed their meal—”

  “And wine?” Mollie cuts in.

  “And wine,” I confirm. “And Jenny and Paul were their normal lovey-dovey selves before they headed off to her mom’s.” Jenny has always been diligent about splitting holidays between her two parents. A “problem” I’ve never had to deal with.

  Until, maybe, now.

  “Crap.” I sit up, allowing the unbraided half of my hair hang in my face. “Am I, like, supposed to spend holidays with Roland too, now?”

  Mollie shrugs. “Do you want to?”

  I shrug back.

  “Maybe if we keep shrugging,” she teases, “we’ll find our answer?”

  Pushing all of the family drama aside, I offer the first non-CU, non-Roland piece of conversation since I got off the train yesterday. “Are we going to Trent’s tomorrow night?”

  Mollie cracks her hand against the side of my butt. “Yes!” she cheers, nearly orgasmically, “I was waiting for you to bring it up. We’re so going.”

  I tuck some hair behind my ear. “Do you think it’s a good idea?

  She grins, her pixie-cut hair sitting a little shaggy across the top of her head. “I think it’s a goddamn fantastic idea. He needs to see the new, famous you, and then you can rub his stupid rich nose in it.”

  I laugh, tying my hair back in a loose bun. “I don’t think Trent is awestruck in the least. He’s probably thankful that he’s no longer in a relationship with a preacher’s daughter, given the things he begged to do with her on a regular basis.”

  The use of the term “rich” is superfluous in the context I grew up in. Everyone here has money. We live in one of the wealthiest communities in the United States for G—cripes sake, but still kids will focus on how much their parents have, in an effort to develop some sort of pecking order amongst themselves.

  But, as far as Trent is concerned, everyone considers him rich. His dad is some famous hair product mogul whose creations are frequently touted on the red carpet as “the absolute best thing ever.” His mother is an entertainment lawyer who rubs elbows with Hollywood royalty on a regular basis. How we ever ended up together makes less and less sense to me the more time I have away from the relationship, but it was what it was.

  I never asked to go to fancy parties with him and, honestly, I think that’s what he liked most about me. In spite of the fact that I refused to ever have sex with him, he knew I wasn’t dating him to get close to Hollywood big shots. It just never occurred to me to care, but he did have a history of dating girls who would do whatever he wanted them to do just so they could stay with him long enough to attend some gala, product launch, or other event. Then once they got what they wanted from entertainment royalty, or when they were rejected, they left him. He always made it seem like he was the one who ended the relationships, which was kind of true if you look at the girls he got involved with. By choosing them at all he was essentially sealing the deal on their romance from the start.

  With us it was different, though, which is why, I guess, he was so “different” once we broke up. I have no idea what he’s like now since we haven’t spoken in person more than a handful of words to each other since he graduated high school a year before me.

  “Oh, come on,” Mollie begs, bouncing on the edge of her bed like a puppy with a full bladder. “Screw him. Everyone is going to be there. You know that because you went to one of those parties the year you guys dated, when he was a senior and his brother came home from college. The whole damn school goes. Everyone who’s graduated, anyway. And we are those people now. We’ve been invited. It’s Facebook official.” She’s so serious in her delivery that I have to laugh.

  “Why do you want to go?”

  “Because I want to be cool,” she admits unabashedly. “I want to rub my Ivy League education in everyone’s face in the classiest way possible.”

  I roll my eyes. “Everyone we graduated goes to somewhere fancy, Moll.”

  “Right,” her eyes glisten mischievously, “and only some of them actually got in. I’m one of them, and they know it. My parents are self-made wealth, Kennedy. There’s no old money there, and certainly no prestigious university.

  She has a point. Her parents made a name for themselves in the catering world, working together to create sugar art like you’ve never seen. It’s a wonder that Mollie is only a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her parents met working at a restaurant in the city just out of high school. They were each attending community colleges nearby and started focusing on business classes. Once they honed their cooking and baking skills, and obtained their associates degrees, they opened up a little dessert shop in the Meat Packing District back when no one wanted to be there even when the sun was up.

  I don’t have to spell out how that played out. They’re enormously successful with their brand stamped on bakeries up and down the Eastern seaboard. They cater celebrity weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and almost everything else you can imagine.

  But, they didn’t buy their daughter’s way into Yale, which is not something every classmate of mine can claim. Mollie worked her
a—butt—ass off to get there, and is loving every second of doing it on her own accord.

  I narrow my eyes. “Fine,” I concede. “But only if you don’t wear any Yale clothing. Be nonchalant.”

  “Yahoo!” Mollie yelps, arms raised overhead. “And, duh. I need to be classy about it.”

  “Great,” I mumble. “Help me, too. I’m going to be a nervous wreck. Wait, who am I kidding? Who the hell is going to care that some Southern pastor happens to be my birth father?”

  Mollie chuckles. “Most of them are Jewish anyway, so wouldn’t they just kind of feel bad for you, or something?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sure that was offensive, somehow.”

  Mollie slides into her walk-in closet to begin her wardrobe selection for our new plans for tomorrow night, and I take out my phone. I feel bad that I haven’t connected with my roommates in a couple of days.

  Me: Hey you, how’s your Thanksgiving going? Have you decided if you’re going to that party tomorrow night?

  Eden: Food is sooooo good :) And, I think I’m gonna go. I have some friends who don’t drink who are going anyway, so we’ll stick together and can leave if it’s lame. What about you?

  Me: I’m going. It’s at my ex-boyfriend’s house. This house.

  On a whim, I copy and paste a Google image of Trent’s parents’ estate.

  Eden: :-o Are you serious? Is he famous, or something?

  Me: He thinks he is ;)

  Eden: LOL. Be careful.

  Me: You, too. Text me tomorrow and let me know how it goes.

  Eden: I will :)

  “What do you think?” Mollie emerges from her closet wearing a denim mini-skirt, knee-high boots and a baby doll t-shirt bearing the logo Harvard Sucks across her wonder bra-assisted breasts.

  I think I don’t know what I’m about to get myself into.