Redemption Road(130)

“I don’t know what any of that means.”

“It’s all wrapped up together, childhood and innocence and trust.” He opened the door and held it for her. “Come on inside.” The dirt was as she remembered it, the greasy rags and bits of engine. “He’s in the bathroom.”

“I’ll wait.”

“It’s not like that.” He indicated she should walk with him. “Not in the shower or anything. The boy felt unwell and wanted to be in there just in case. He knows you’re coming.” Her father gestured again and let her move in front. He was to the left, one hand reaching for the knob as she settled into the hollow place between his arm and the door. “There’s such love in a child,” he said. “And that’s the thing I tell myself. Everything that happens. The road that leads from here.” His hand touched the knob. “It’s all about the innocence.”

“Are we still speaking of Gideon?”

“Gideon. Family. The next hour of your life.”

Her father opened the door, and Elizabeth saw it like a blur: Gideon and an injured girl, blood and skin and bright, silver tape. She saw it all and, in the span of a heartbeat, felt the world collapse to something inexplicable and cold. She didn’t know what was happening; couldn’t possibly. But the battered eyes were Channing’s, and that meant nothing in the world was as she’d thought. She moved on instinct to duck and turn, to find space to figure this out. But he was behind her and ready. He drove her into the doorframe with one hand and used the other to push something hard and slick against her neck. She got a foot on the frame, but knew even then she was too late. Energy ripped into her neck, and he followed her to the floor, keeping the charge against her skin as she twitched and drummed and felt a scream that never left her throat. Her body was burning, on fire. She smelled the charge and through the bathroom door saw Gideon, openmouthed, and Channing, the girl, whose own scream was every bit as trapped as hers.

*

The preacher stood, breathing hard. He felt old, but the feeling would pass. What he’d told Elizabeth was true. It really was about the love—what he’d done, what he was doing—and nothing was stronger than a father’s love for his daughter.

Not God’s love.

Not his wife’s.

He’d cherished his daughter more than all of those things combined, more than breath or faith or life itself. She’d been the world entire, the warm, bright center.

Of course, this wasn’t his daughter.

Not the one he loved.

He nudged her with a foot and heard the same voices in the dark of his mind, the lot of them disharmonic and thin, saying, “Stop now, turn away, come back to God.” But he’d learned years ago that the voices were but pale remnants of cast-off morality, mere ghosts that knew nothing of loss or grief or betrayal’s lancinating pain. He’d been a young father with a wife and his own church. His daughter had loved, respected, and trusted him. They were as God meant them to be. The family. The child. The father.

Why did she turn away from that?

Why did she kill her unborn child?

Those were the cornerstones of the great betrayal, and he confronted them every time he tried to sleep: the lowered eyes and false acquiescence, the secrets and lies and the blood on his porch. She was supposed to be in bed, yet he’d found her there, half dead and womb-stripped and unrepentant. His hands bore the stain even now, the red in the cracks only he could see. His daughter’s blood. His grandchild’s. She’d defied her own father, and God had let it happen, the same God who’d allowed the butchery in the first place and delivered her heart, in time, to Adrian Wall. The betrayals were so large they drove even light from the world. What room remained for the father who’d first held her? For the man who’d raised and taught her, and whose own heart, even now, was broken?

No room, he thought.

None at all.

So he did what he had to do. He took the gun, then bound her hands and feet and watched her eyes in case she woke. He didn’t care to explain or debate. He wanted her, at last, on the altar of her youth. There, she’d trusted him most, and there he’d find her if he could. Deep in the eyes. All the way down.

He looked at the children in the bath and felt the first and only remorse. Would they die, in the end? He didn’t know. Maybe Elizabeth would. Maybe it would be him. He only knew the clamor would cease. No more longing or despair, no voices in his head or plaintive cries from those he’d tried to love and buried, instead, beneath the church. He lifted the pistol and wondered. Would it quiet the voices if he put it in his mouth? Would it reveal God’s true face, at last? Such contemplations weren’t the first, but these were more immediate. He would find his daughter or not. And should he not—should she die in the search—did it not make sense for him to die as well? Would there not be closure in such a thing, a conjoining at last?

He tilted the gun and put it in his coat pocket.

“Stand up, son.” He gestured for Gideon, who rose as if on a string. “Come here.” The boy did as he was told, wide-eyed and washed out. “Necessary things. You remember our discussions?” The boy nodded. “Purpose. Clarity. Do you believe I possess such things, and that what may seem cruel is, in fact, a kindness?”

“Is she hurt?”

“Just sleeping.”

“And the girl?”