A Spark of Light(79)

He thought about how he and Lil had once been part of a Thirty Days for Life vigil with the church: where the congregation took shifts round the clock huddled in a prayer circle in front of the state capitol. They had brought blankets and lawn chairs and thermoses of hot chocolate and had held hands and asked Jesus to help lawmakers see the right path. Lil had been a child—maybe eight or nine—and she and some other kids in the congregation had run around while the adults prayed. He could remember watching them spell out their names with sparklers in the dark, and thinking this was what the movement for life was all about.

How could Lil have gotten an abortion?

She had to have been pressured. Someone here must have told her this was the right thing, the only thing, to do. She couldn’t have possibly believed that he wouldn’t have helped her, raised the child, done anything she wanted.

In the back of his mind was a thought like a worm in the core of an apple: what if this was what she wanted?

George didn’t believe it; he couldn’t. She was a good girl, because he had been a good father.

If the first half of that statement wasn’t true, didn’t it negate the second half?

Lil had accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. She knew that life began at conception. She could probably rattle off five Bible verses proving it. She was kind, generous, beautiful, smart, and everyone fell in love with her when they met her. Lil was, quite simply, the one instance of perfection in George’s life.

He realized, of course, that everyone was a sinner. But if there was any splinter of evil in his daughter, he knew where it had come from.

Him.

George, who had spent nearly two decades trying to scrub clean the stains from his soul by giving himself to the church. George, who had been told forgiveness was divine; that God loved him no matter what. What if all that had been a lie?

George shook his head clear. It was this simple: something terrible had happened; someone was to blame for it. This was a test from God. Like the one Job faced. And Abraham. He was being asked to prove his devotion to his faith, and to his daughter, and he knew exactly what was expected of him.

He slipped on his coat and zipped it up halfway. Then he took the pistol out of the glove compartment and tucked it into his waistband, concealing it beneath the fleece. His pockets were already full of ammunition.

He started sweating almost immediately, but then again, it was easily eighty degrees outside. He began moving toward the hazard-orange building. It was garish, a scar on the cityscape. George ducked his head, pulled his collar up.

There was a fence around the Center, and on that perimeter was a cluster of protesters. They held up signs. There was a woman sitting in a folding chair, knitting; and a big man holding a sandwich in one hand and a baby doll in another. George thought about Lil. He wondered if he was walking the same path she had.

A Black woman was leaving the clinic. Her husband or boyfriend had his arm around her. As they passed the protesters, he folded her more protectively into the shell of his body. He crossed paths with the couple, and kept walking. The big man eating the sandwich called out to him. “Brother,” he said, “save your baby!”

George continued to the front door of the Center, thinking, I will.

—


OUT OF SHEER BOREDOM, Wren was eavesdropping.

“Dr. Ward’s been at it since nine-thirty,” Vonita was saying. “We had a fifteen-week come in for Cytotec this morning and she’s in the back now.”

“All that while I was sitting home eating bonbons?” The girl with pink hair laughed.

“Bonbons,” Vonita sighed. “I wish.” She took a sip from her tumbler.

“What’s in there?”

“I hope it’s the ground-up bones of supermodels,” Vonita said sourly. “This crap is the work of the devil.”

“Why do you even drink that garbage?”

Vonita gestured to her generous curves. “Because of my torrid love affair with food.”

Aunt Bex stood up. “I think I’m growing roots,” she said, starting to walk in small circles. “How long can it take to give someone a prescription?” Wren watched her lift her arms over her head, bend at the waist, and do it over again.

Oh my God. Her aunt was doing old-person yoga in public.

A buzzer hummed on the reception desk, and Vonita glanced up over her reading glasses. “Now who does this one belong to?” she mused.

Wren craned her neck. The glass window in the door of the Center was specially made, so that they could see out but whoever was on the outside could not see in. She glimpsed a middle-aged man squinting into the mirrored surface.

She heard a click, the buzz of a lock being released, like Wren had seen in movies about New York apartments. “Can I help you?” Vonita said.

About a year ago, Wren and her father had been driving a deserted road near Chunky, Mississippi, when suddenly all the hair stood up on the back of her neck. The next minute, a doe had bolted from the woods and slammed into the car. They had been hit hard enough for the airbags to deploy and for the windshield to shatter. It was the one truly prescient moment of her life.

Until now.

Wren felt a shiver of electricity, the brush of an invisible icy finger. “What did you do to my baby?” the man said, and then the air around her cracked into pieces.

She fell to the floor, covering her ears. It was as if her body had reacted on instinct, while her brain was still struggling to catch up. She couldn’t see Vonita anymore, but there was a pool of blood spreading where the reception desk met the floor.