Redemption Road(132)

“Let go, son.”

“Reverend, please…”

“I said let go.”

But Gideon refused. “This is not right, Reverend, and it’s not you. Please stop!” He pulled harder, his feet dragging in the dirt. “Please!” He tried a final time before the stun gun touched his chest, and the Reverend Black—without looking twice—pulled the trigger and put him down.

*

Elizabeth woke to movement and shadow, the church gathering around her as if conjured. She was being carried past tumbled pews and colored glass, and for that instant it felt as if childhood, too, had been conjured. She knew every beam above her head, and every creak the old floor made.

“Father…”

After a moment’s peace memory began its aching return, the pieces, as dull and scattered as crushed glass. Silver tape. Pain. None of it made sense.

“Dad?”

“Patience,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

She blinked, and more of it came, the kids and the back of a car and the burn that took her down a second time. Was it real? She couldn’t believe it, but her vision was blurred, and she hurt as if the most vital nerves had been stripped from her body.

He was looking down and smiling, but no reason was in his eyes. “We’ll be together soon,” he said; and the rest of it crashed down: the struggle and the silence, a blue tarp and movement and the heat of Channing’s skin. She fought then, so he dropped her and put metal prongs against her skin. When she woke again, she was naked on the altar. “Don’t cry,” he said; but she couldn’t help it. Tears burned her face. She was hurt and terrified and choking. This was not her father, not her life. She strained to sit, saw Channing on the floor, and cried for her, too, that she also was in this place.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t be embarrassed.” He turned away, and she fought the ropes. “There’s no need for that here, not between us.”

He said it softly, removing his jacket and putting it on a pew. Beside the coat was a package. When he opened it, Elizabeth saw white linen, neatly folded. He shook it free, and that’s when the enormity of his sins took root and blossomed like some terrible flower.

His church …

Such horrible things …

“All those women.”

“Hush now.”

“This can’t be happening.” Her head rocked side to side. He put a hand on her forehead. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Whatever’s happening here, whatever you think this is, you don’t have to do it.”

“Actually, I do.”

He shook the linen again and spread it with care across her body, folding it beneath her chin until the top edge lay just above her breasts. He adjusted it at the bottom and sides, smoothed the wrinkles until it was just so. All the while colored light hung on his face, the light of her childhood that, as a girl, she’d thought to be the light of God himself.

“Dad, please…” She was breaking; she felt it. Her father. The church. “So many women.”

“They died as children. Stripped of sin.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hush now.”

“Gideon’s mother? God. Allison Wilson?” She choked again, but it was more like a sob. “You killed them all?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He stood by her side, both hands on the altar. “Does it truly matter?”

“Yes. God. Of course. Dad…” Her voice failed.

He nodded as if understanding her deeper need. “Gideon’s mother was the first,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way, didn’t plan any of it. But I saw it in her eyes, right here: the pain and loss and hints of the child beneath. It began as simple consolation. She was distraught and confessed all that troubled her, the failed marriage and abuse and infidelity. It was an old story, yet as she wept, I came back to her eyes. They were so deep and unguarded and such a color as yours. When she leaned into me, I touched her cheek, her throat. After that it happened as if I were a passenger on some unstoppable vessel. Yet even at that remove I felt the presence of profounder truth, how we passed from the sway of time and mere things. I saw her, then. Truly saw her. That’s when I knew.”

“What?”

“Innocence. The path.”

“And the others?” Elizabeth asked. “Ramona Morgan? Lauren Lester?”

“All of them, yes. Children, at the end.”

“Even Adrian’s wife?”

“She was different. I would take that one back.”

“Why, for God’s sake? Why any of this?” Elizabeth was grasping, desperate. He leaned above her, his face scraped clean, the eyes deep and dark. He smoothed her hair, and she felt revulsion more profound than anything from the basement or the quarry. The sickness was too close. His eyes, like her eyes. The same eyes. Her father.

“Catherine Wall was a mistake. I was angry at her husband. He took you from me, so I took his wife and his house. I admit the sin of it and am ashamed. Her death served no purpose. The house should not have burned. Both acts were born of weakness and spite, and that’s not my purpose.”

“What possible purpose?”

“I told you before.” He smoothed her hair again. “It’s all about the love.”