Take and Give Read online

  “Chilly out here,” she said.

  Austin nodded. “Tamara, listen. I’m … not interested in … that.”

  Her smile seemed to catch on something. “I get it.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Whoever she is, she’s still got you.”

  “Her name’s Violet, and I haven’t seen her in four months.”

  Tamara leaned against her SUV wannabe and crossed her arms. “Why?”

  “Because …” No excuses. So his brain had blacked out. So his body had assumed Violet was a real threat, the kind that could pick you up off the floor while you were watching TV and toss you into the wall. None of that justified the irrevocable moment in time when he hit her in the face.

  “How about you just tell me? In lieu of a first and last date.”

  “I hurt her.” The words rusted over between them while Tamara watched him. His thumbs pressed into his burning eyes then lowered. “And she found out about my job.”

  “Maybe you should call her.”

  Like he hadn’t tried forty-six times in the last four months. “She doesn’t answer.”

  “Well, she can’t fall off the face of the earth.”

  “She did.”

  A frown creased her face. “Huh?”

  “Nobody has seen her. In four months.” Not her parents, not her best friend, not her coworkers or anyone from the small group at church. Tamara was new, or she’d have met Violet, back in the other lifetime. The lifetime that started in February when he met Violet and ended on a humid night in June when he’d proved how no-good he really was. When she’d marched out his front door without looking back.

  “Oh …” Tamara touched his shoulder. “What’s being done to find her? Are the police looking?”

  “Her parents haven’t filed a missing persons report because they say they know where she is.” With the Christian resistance.

  “But—”

  “I’m looking for her. With the … resources I have.” When his boss wasn’t paying attention. Agent Mayweather had explicitly ordered him to leave Violet’s case alone, told him there was “no case.”

  The four-month-old fear never let go of him. Either Violet’s mother was right, and she had remade her life, or she’d gone to the Christians for help and somehow threatened them, which made no sense if you knew Violet. But for some reason, the Christians hadn’t let her come home.

  How could Mayweather say this wasn’t a case?

  “I hope you find her.” Tamara opened her car door. “And thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “For, you know, being … honest, when you thought I wasn’t. You’ve got me excited to believe in my own dreams again.”

  She leaned away from the car on tip-toes and set a kiss on his cheek. “In lieu of a first and last date.”

  3

  Violet should be studying, yet the sound of the television drifted to Lee as she removed her shoes in the foyer. She headed toward the living room.

  “Is that you?” Violet called.

  “If it’s not, we have a problem.”

  “Come quick, you have to see this.”

  Lee hurried to the living room, where Violet sat in one corner of the couch with her feet up on the coffee table, one sock blue and one yellow. Her GED study guide, highlighter, and flashcards littered the couch cushions.

  Violet pointed at the TV. “The President had a press conference, and now they’re interviewing all these people about what he said, but they keep replaying the speech, too. You won’t believe it.”

  The news channel showed footage from outside a sprawling brick building that looked like a library. A crowd was gathered, painted poster board signs raised high and waving. “Good Riddance, TX.” “Lone Star Has Fallen.” Various other signs told Texas where to go and what to do to itself.

  The news anchor was interviewing a young man in a pink hoodie. “It’s great, you know? Those Texans were weighing down the economy anyway, and everybody knows it.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Violet said.

  Lee perched on the stuffed chair across from her. “He doesn’t know.”

  The footage cut from one interview to the next, varying locations across the country, a recorded montage. Every person praised the decision of the federal government. Texas wasn’t worth fighting or fighting for, everyone said. Letting them go allowed the rest of the states to concentrate on maintaining law and order, on fighting terrorism in their own backyards. Two of the interviewees wore gray Constabulary uniforms, and in one shot, half a gray squad car jutted into the screen from the far left, green lights flashing. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in a strong wind that billowed dust. Nothing like a photo op.

  Now the newscaster became a voice-over, as the footage shifted to a gray-haired man in a blue suit, stepping up to a podium. “If you’re just joining us, the President has announced that the United States will recognize the New Republic of Texas as a sovereign nation and will respect the borders of said nation. This decision has been supported by a great majority of citizens, several of whom we were privileged to speak with today and, with their permission, we share their opinions with our viewers.”

  With their permission, of course. What hoodie-wearing college kid wouldn’t enjoy seeing himself on national news?

  “I don’t get it,” Violet said. “I thought they’d try to stop Texas. Remember two months ago when the media was all, ‘the Christians could gather in Texas and amass weapons and attack us in the name of God, danger, danger’?”

  “Something’s changed.” Lee shrugged.

  “Don’t you want to know what, though?”

  The fate of Texas did not affect Lee. Her life would continue tomorrow unaltered, and her energy couldn’t be spent on pointless anti-Constabulary curiosity. Michigan Christians and those aiding them were no less threatened because of this decision.

  The news program transitioned to a new story. Some female celebrity’s bar fight.

  “Finally,” Violet said. “They’ve been looping and looping it, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything, if it changed. Sometimes they tweak little words and things.”

  “How long have you been watching this?”

  “An hour or something. All the studying was making me stupid, so I turned on the news.”

  Lee raised her eyebrows. Interesting choice.

  “I know, I know. Propaganda and stuff. But even if it’s only half true, it makes me feel less … you know.”

  Caged away from the world, living out her senior year as a philosophical fugitive who couldn’t even watch TV at night without shutting the blinds. Lee nodded.

  “Lee, this could be good for everybody. Right?”

  “For those who choose to flee, I suppose.”

  “If Texas had left sooner, would—?”

  Lee stood. “You should return to studying.”

  Would he be alive? Not the question Violet would have asked, surely—only the one in Lee’s head.

  Violet picked up her highlighter and study book. “I’ll work with the TV on, in case they say more.”

  “All right.”

  Lee crossed to her bookshelves and found an old favorite, a frontier nurse’s autobiography. The details of medicine-sans-technology had proved helpful to her work, and the words of another nurse were often affirming. She curled up in a corner of the couch and slipped into the old words.

  “Um, Lee, I don’t know if you remember, but the, um, memorial … I’m going to Chuck and Belinda’s tomorrow after dinner.”

  No reason to respond. Violet knew Lee wasn’t going. Trust Belinda Vitale to decide an official night of remembrance was in order, four months after his—

  Death. Stop stumbling on that word.

  Lee sealed her thoughts against everything but her book. Pages later, Violet shut off the TV. M
ore pages later, her voice broke in. “GED question of the night. Biology is the study of …?”

  “Living organisms.”

  “Actually, the answer in the book is ‘life.’ My other multiple-choice options are plants, water, and death.”

  “Impressive.”

  “See why watching the news is better for my brain?”

  Lee set the book aside and reached for the flashcards. “Should we try a quiz?”

  “Do you know it’s after midnight?”

  Oh.

  “You got home later than usual.”

  Time was difficult to track when she wasn’t at work. It never had been, before.

  “You went off to your place?” Violet whispered as if Lee were a deer in a thicket, poised to dart away.

  Tension ached in her spine. “Yes.”

  Violet set the GED book on the coffee table and stood up. Her mouth lifted at the corners, and Lee focused there, couldn’t look higher to the eyes that held warmth and sorrow. For Lee. “Hope it helped you. G’night.”

  Lee didn’t move until Violet shut the guest room door. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. No harm in telling Violet what “place” she escaped to, yet Lee couldn’t speak about her retreats to the local nursery, still open. She walked into the greenhouse like any other customer then stayed until they closed. Wandering the aisles, pea stone grinding under her shoes, flowers and foliage embracing her in color and scent. Letting her stop thinking, stop feeling. Letting her simply breathe.

  While he didn’t.

  Nausea pummeled her. No, Violet. It didn’t help.

  Bile burned the back of her throat. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t thrown up in several weeks. Regression wasn’t allowed.

  The Constabulary wouldn’t give burial to a body whose death had to be concealed. They would most likely cremate it. She should stop wondering about something so irrelevant. He wasn’t in that body anymore. He wasn’t anywhere.

  Or perhaps he was. Perhaps God had measured his sacrifices and considered them enough. Perhaps, as he’d always told her, his deeds weren’t part of the process at all, and God had decided his fate based on his faith in Jesus Christ. Either way, he couldn’t be denied a secure, painless eternity.

  Lee pressed her chest against her thighs and closed her eyes as if these unconnected physical actions could calm her stomach. She rocked forward, back, forward, back, and still she had to throw up.

  Control. Cope.

  She retrieved her book from the floor and opened it. Read. An hour later, the nausea had passed, though she’d only turned the page four times. She put the book away and padded down the hall to Violet’s room.

  If Violet slept lightly, Lee could never have developed this futile habit. She let the hallway night light angle into the guest room and crept across the carpet. She opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out the worn leather book, closed the drawer, and returned to the living room.

  Wind swept across the windows. She nestled into the throw blanket and pressed her back to the couch pillows. She opened the Bible and flipped through.

  His handwriting was concentrated in certain books, most in the second section, called New Testament. Sometimes the margins contained his questions, sometimes his prayers, sometimes his gratitude for the refuge he found in a passage. No one had known him better than Lee, yet she’d failed to see that fear clawed at him some days. He never gave it a hold on his decisions, never even expressed it except that one night in the Vitales’ kitchen, too tired to think. Too tired to hide weakness.

  She found another book filled with handwriting. Romans. But this was the end of the book. Lee flipped back, a page at a time, absorbing the even block letters in black pen.

  Saved so God will get more glory.

  He won’t let go.

  In chapter 8, Lee’s hand froze on the page. Her stomach tightened. His writing looked smaller here. Not afraid. Help me.

  She read the entire chapter and wanted to burn the book. God knew His people were abused and killed. Yet He continued to claim that nothing could separate them from His love. The evidence didn’t support the thesis.

  She wouldn’t read any more of this intolerable text, even the underlined portions. She’d read only the handwriting in the margins, and context could go hang itself. But she froze again at the third chapter, which was … highlighted.

  He never used a highlighter, and this one was pink.

  New handwriting. Green ink, painstaking cursive script. This is what God does for me!

  Lee flipped backward for pages, chapters, books. Throughout the Gospels and Acts, the feminine writing left notes. Every few pages, new lines had been highlighted.

  Something ice hot spurted through Lee’s veins and throbbed from her chest all the way to her fingertips and toes. She snapped the Bible shut and charged to the guestroom and flipped on the light.

  Violet rolled over and squinted up at her. “Hey …” She jolted up in bed. “Is it con-cops? Are they here? I’ll go hide—”

  “You had no right.”

  “What?”

  Lee’s hands shook. She opened the Bible to the first page of Romans, where the underlines lost to the highlighting. Only a single black-penned note: What I believe, not what I do. The green ink responded: So good to know this! The other side of the page bore a green flood. Jesus cares about this stuff! Honor Him with my body for the rest of my life! No more unrighteousness! The exclamation points were dotted with circles.

  Violet stared at the book open across Lee’s hands. A smile bloomed over her face. “You’re reading the Bible?”

  Lee snapped it shut.

  Violet withdrew against the headboard. “Lee—”

  “This book does not belong to you.”

  “Sure it does, he gave it to—”

  “Don’t touch it again.”

  Panic widened Violet’s eyes. She jumped from the bed and stepped toward Lee, mouth drawn tight. “Give it back.”

  The leather spine pressed into Lee’s palm. His book. Perfect lines, careful letters formed by his hand. He’d left bits of his heart in these pages, and Violet had scribbled on them. Lee pinned the Bible against her body.

  “You can’t take it.” Violet’s voice pitched with tears. “Please don’t take it.”

  Lee pressed the Bible harder against her stomach. She would preserve it from the stain of further green ink. Or maybe she would rip out every page until nothing remained but an empty shell. A corpse of a book.

  “Lee, I don’t think he’d mind if I write in it. I think it would make him happy.”

  Irrelevant. No, it’s not. Someone else had found faith in his God. In Jesus Christ. He would smile with the creases around his eyes. He would call Violet family.

  Lee clutched the Bible and the numbness.

  “Lee?”

  Do what he would want. She offered the book to Violet on an open hand. “You’re correct. It’s no longer his.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

  Do not be sorry.

  “I hate the con-cops for what they did to Marcus.”

  They shot him and watched as he bled out, as he struggled to the last to stay awake, keep breathing, fight the pain. Lee had dreamed the scene so many times, it was like a memory.

  “Listen, just because he gave it to me, it’s not only mine. I mean, if you want …”

  To read it. Violet surely prayed for her, for God to change her heart, which amounted to changing her mind. I won’t let You. She had made the only possible logical choice about God, long before what He had done to Marcus. She tried to walk to the living room with smooth strides, but they shuffled.

  Violet followed. “Lee.”

  “No.” She turned and put up a hand. “No.”

  “Do you want—?”

  “Go ba
ck to bed.”

  Lee waited until Violet trudged from the room, head ducked. Then she curled up on the couch, knees to her chin, small as possible. She tugged the blanket over herself.

  “You are dead,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  Marcus didn’t speak. Not for a moment did she believe he had. But she knew the words he would say, how he would inflect each one. She inhaled and tried to smell him, his soap, clean sweat, the work he loved—wood and sawdust and drywall. She shut her eyes and tried to feel the room as it was when he filled it. Pacing her rug, trying to rub the knots of stress from his neck. Broad and strong and earnest.

  “Your God did not save you.”

  “I’m okay. With all of it.”

  If she opened her mouth again, she might scream. How dare You abandon him. How dare You require his death. She tried to hear her name in his voice, the way he could speak a whole sentence, a whole paragraph, in only three letters. But silence pressed her down. The room throbbed, empty and cold. Lee curled tighter.

  4

  Agent Mayweather parked the car on a square of blacktop to the east of the detached garage. He shut off the ignition, and a glance from his laser-blue eyes was sufficient reminder, whether he intended that or not. Impress the boss or else. Austin didn’t allow himself to fidget.

  Mayweather shook a jingle from the keys. “Questions? You don’t get to ask any once we’re in there.”

  Yeah, why exactly are you taking the twenty-two-year-old rookie on this interview? Well, he’d rise to the privilege. “I’ve got it, sir. She’s a voluntary witness, we’re only here for her signed statement, straightforward and easy.”

  “Good summary.”

  Austin nearly said thanks, but that might not have been a literal compliment. Anyway, no use appearing overeager.

  Mayweather got out of the car and pocketed the keys, and Austin waded after him through a lawn overgrown with more weeds than grass, now brown and wilted by frosty mornings. Something poked his knee, and he glanced down at a burr stuck to his suit pants. He peeled it off and flicked it away.