Beyond the Farthest Star (7 page)

The answering machine beeped and picked up the call. Maurene, with no intention of lifting the receiver, wandered nearer to hear the monitor.

It was Adam times two. The first voice was their recorded pastoral greeting: “Praise the Lord! You’ve reached the home of Pastor Adam and Maurene Wells. You are so very important to us and to the Lord Jesus, so please leave a message and we’ll get right back to you.”

This was followed by Adam, live, so that he was speaking to himself. He often did that, she thought. Her eyes narrowed with that truth. Adam so frequently made pronouncements about how things should be done that Maurene frequently tuned him out.

“Hey, Mo. Wanted to remind you Margaret’ll be by at eleven to drive you to the luncheon. She’ll have my notes, just in case. Hope you won’t need them.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Maurene could not escape the accusations in the closed Bible and the blank notepad.

“Really, I think it’s wonderful you’re taking the initiative with the address. Your speech will be great.”

Maurene headed toward the bathroom without waiting to hear the rest of the message. More important than the notes and the bath, she needed the contents of the pink shoebox, now resting behind the lower rack of clothes in the closet.

A
DAM LEANED FORWARD
over the desk in his church office. Despite the fact he was alone and the door was shut, he spoke in a guarded tone. “Really, I’m sure it’ll be great. It is going to be great, isn’t it, Mo?” Now wasn’t the time to tell Maurene about the destruction of the crèche. She’d hear about it at the luncheon anyway, but the longer she could go without any additional stress, the better.

Once, on another occasion when Maurene was supposed to speak, someone had told her of the death of a mutual friend five minutes before she went on stage. It was a disaster. Maurene had mumbled and stumbled her way through fifteen disjointed minutes, then sat down in a flood of tears.

Maurene was not strong, like him. She needed to be sheltered from her own fragility, he thought. Just as he’d protected her nearly seventeen years earlier and had ever since.

Adam had the greatest sense today’s speech writing had not gone as well as Maurene had bragged, but it was going to be all right anyway. Adam was prepared for Maurene’s failure. He was always prepared for her failure.

Margaret barged in without knocking, waving a Post-it note.

Leaning back in his chair, Adam lightened his tone abruptly for the rest of the phone message: “Know you’ll be a real blessing to our women. Can’t wait to hear the praise report. Lots to tell you later. Bye.”

Margaret ignored the glare Adam bestowed on her, apparently secure that the importance of the yellow sticky note justified her uninvited entry. She held it out for Adam’s inspection, and he plucked it from her fingers.

“Holden Bittner? Cutter’s lawyer?”

“Pro-fesh-in-al
lie
-yor, if you ask me,” she said vehemently. “All the way from Washington, DC. Wants to meet you a-sap … the talon-toed demon.”

“Margaret,” Adam scolded, “no matter what we think, let’s hear what the man has to say before we consign him to the lowest circle of hell.”

Margaret sniffed. “Of course, Pastor. Just like you say.”

From inside his briefcase, Adam retrieved the copy of the speech he’d written for Maurene to give and handed it to the secretary. “And Margaret, Maurene asked me to review her speech before the luncheon,” he lied.

Completely justifiable fib, he figured. No reason to give gossip a chance to start. Adam felt a brief glow of pride at the way he was covering for his wife. Women might be weaker vessels, but he would protect his wife’s reputation. “It’s excellent. Please return it to her when you pick her up and tell her I said so.”

Hanging up the receiver, Adam lifted it again and began to dial the number on the note. He had punched three keys before he noticed that Margaret was still hovering over the desk with an eager expression. No doubt she wanted to hear him confront the “talon-toed demon.”

“That’s all, Margaret,” he said in dismissal. “Thank you.”

Margaret sniffed again, louder than before, then exited.

Pausing before completing his dialing, Adam turned toward his computer screen, open to an Internet news site. He studied the headline once more, the receiver dangling in his grip: TOWN OF WILL’S POINT DROPS APPEAL ON NATIVITY RULING.

Underneath the main heading a line of smaller type explained: “Appeals court signals lower ruling will not be reversed. Public display of religious symbols must go.”

Savagely Adam stabbed the last digits while looking past the computer screen at a family portrait.

Calm. He would need calm when dealing with a hostile civil liberties attorney.

The framed photograph was of Adam and Maurene with a six-year-old Anne. Where had that sweet child gone, he wondered, and who was this stranger in black clothes now living in his home?

The reminder was not calming.

Sixty women politely stared up at Maurene as she read Adam’s speech in the First Church social hall. She knew Adam had not only written the message for her, he had written the message
to
her.

Not very subtle, Adam. The story of Sarah, longing to conceive and give birth when she was barren. Like me, huh, Adam?

After she’d prayed for years to conceive another baby to follow Anne, every month when her period arrived completed another cycle of disappointment.

Finally Maurene had stopped believing God heard her prayers. She was convinced He had turned away from her when …

She shook the thought from her mind. But the message of hope and miracles Adam had prepared today for her to deliver to the women’s group was stillborn in her own heart.

Maurene read Adam’s words without inflection. “And so, in conclusion, we see that Sarah laughed.”

Trying to maintain emotional detachment from material that hit too close to home, she hoped her anger toward Adam was not evident in her voice. His selection of canned subject matter was both thoughtless and cruel.

“Twice she laughed. Once at the promise. She was, after all, ninety years old and … barren …”

Among the small crowd, Maurene’s gaze fell on the brimming eyes of Candy Cutter. The senator’s wife was childless, and clearly the speech touched her deeply.

“And again the day she held Isaac, her newborn baby and God’s manifest promise in her arms …”

Maurene could not bear to look into Candy’s brimming eyes. Adam’s newest convert had not lived the Christian life long enough to experience the reality of unanswered prayer or disappointment with God. Candy was too young in her faith to know it was better not to hope. So she hung on every word that came out of Maurene’s mouth as though it was … gospel.

Maurene was Adam’s puppet, merely mouthing the words of the puppet master. And she hated every minute of it. “So if the miracle you’re wanting to give birth to seems like a joke, remember Sarah, whose descendants would eventually outnumber the stars in the firmament … and know there’s a miracle birth of a great nation in you.”

“Right, Adam. A miracle for me? After what I have done? With the lie I’ve lived for seventeen years?”

She smiled wearily as a smattering of applause wrapped up the luncheon. Only a few minutes more to endure, responding to polite greetings, before she could go home and be alone!

Maurene no longer believed in miracles. She wondered if she ever had. Her marriage was a joke. Her life was a great acting job. Appearance was everything. Inside, she wasn’t laughing as she played the role of devoted-wife-of-a-preacher.

Before they crucified Jesus, hadn’t Pilate asked, “What is truth?”

If the truth had been known about the pastor’s wife, it would have choked the ladies at the women’s luncheon:
Maurene Wells. Hopeless. Faithless. Phony as a three-dollar bill.

And yet Candy Cutter and a second, teary-eyed woman stood and continued enthusiastic applause. Evidently Adam’s words meant something to someone. Maybe that was enough to keep Maurene going—pretending to be alive, dragging herself out of bed every morning.

Maurene thought bitterly,
Thank you, Adam. Great speech. If only they knew the truth.

Principal Johnston disliked conflict. He hated disciplinary meetings. He despised contract talks. Every time he had to chastise a supplier about shoddy merchandise or short measure, he fell back on writing letters or e-mails in hope of avoiding personal confrontation.

He thought of himself as a referee, not a combatant. He liked to work from consensus, not by laying down the law. He had achieved his position by being golfing buddies with the school board president and the mayor. Those connections insulated Johnston from most criticism.

As long as things were running smoothly at Leonard High School, Principal Johnston was happy. When things did not go to suit him, it was always someone else’s fault, and the sooner they understood that fact, the better for all concerned.

Johnston was in his office, planning a three-day golf outing for the holiday break. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s there were no games or plays or meetings requiring his presence. He and his foursome were going to give the courses in San Antonio some serious attention while their wives trolled the River Walk shops. Perfect, and not a conflict in sight.

Mrs. Harper burst into Johnston’s office without knocking.

For a moment the principal was confused. Had he missed a meeting of the department heads?

His confusion was not relieved when Mrs. Harper slammed a handwritten note down on his desktop. “What’s this?” Johnston sputtered.

“What the administration
and
the police missed at Columbine
and
Virginia Tech, Mister Johnston.”

Mrs. Harper was at the top of her tight-lipped, most-demanding form.

At the references to school massacres, Johnston’s blood ran cold. In Leonard? At
his
high school? Whom should he call first? The sheriff? The National Guard?

“But what
is
this?” he said again, hoping to buy time and collect his shattered thoughts.

“It’s that new girl—the pastor’s daughter, Anne Wells.”

Johnston bent over the paper, struggling to decipher the handwriting. In his teaching days Johnston had been a gym instructor. The only writing he ever had to interpret was excuses for getting out of PE. “It looks like a poem,” he ventured.

“A poem?” Mrs. Harper shot back. “A vile, evil collection of homicidal thoughts! Alien pods bursting from bowels! Slime and acid! What are you going to do about it?”

Johnston still felt like he was racing to catch up. “You found this? Another student turned it in?”

“No! The Wells girl read it aloud in class.”

“She … volunteered this?”

Mrs. Harper’s voice grew even shriller at the suggestion she was overreacting. “Don’t you see the threats behind the words? Her in her black clothes and black makeup and smirking ways? We need to investigate immediately. What do we really know about her background? Is she on drugs? Does the pastor own a gun? And what brought them to Leonard from California,
really?
Have the proper background checks been done?”

Johnston could have asked what background checks were
required for a pastor’s family to move from one state to another, but he wisely refrained.

“I’ll call the sheriff,” Johnston said. “This is a matter for him.”

The drumbeat of the marching band rehearsal echoed from the football field as the sheriff’s car pulled into the school parking lot. Anne, Stephen, Kyle, and Clifford sprawled on the picnic tables to catch the afternoon sun.

Anne spotted Principal Johnston and Mrs. Harper as they greeted Sheriff Burns. Both men and Mrs. Harper turned at the same moment to cast stern looks toward Anne and the boys. What was up? Was this about Kyle? Anne noticed that he became even surlier beneath the authority’s watchful gaze.

The hiss of snare drums sounding a quick march gave the atmosphere a kind of half-time feel. The second half of an important game was about to begin on the school campus.

Kyle glanced away guiltily as Principal Johnston crossed his arms and stared in their direction. Mrs. Harper gestured forcefully, making a point.

At the same instant Susan Dillard, flanked by two of her ditzy friends, sauntered toward Anne. Susan extended a notebook to Anne.

“It’s a petition,” Susan announced. “Signed by everybody, stating that just because you’re a little different from the rest of us and because your favorite color is obviously black and you probably do own a trench coat …”