CHAPTER 28

You all right? Your face is acting like a split personality,” Corin said as he approached his store.

A. C. stood at the front door, the expression on his face shifting from bewilderment to joy back to confusion every few seconds.

“Fine. I’m good.” A. C. shifted his weight from one leg to the other and rubbed his shoulder.

“Then why’d you say you were freaked yesterday and why do you want to talk first thing this morning?” Corin opened the front door and they walked inside.

“Something has happened.”

“To you?”

“Yeah.” The alternating emotions on A. C.’s face morphed into an all-out grin.

“And the cause of your apparent happiness?” Corin flicked the switch on the coffee maker behind his sales counter.

“You,” A. C.’s eyes fixed on Corin, “and the chair.”

Corin sucked in a quick breath. “Talk to me. What happened?”

“It worked.”

A chill played rugby up and down Corin’s back as he studied A. C.’s eyes. Was his friend trying to be funny? Hardly, it wasn’t A. C.’s style. It wasn’t a joke; A. C. was serious.

“You’re saying you’re healed.”

“Yep.”

“You’re no longer scared of public speaking?”

“Yes.” A. C. rubbed his left ear, his eyes full of laughter.

“Yes what? You’re still scared? Or you’re not scared?”

“I’m still not a fan of getting up in front of a crowd of more than one person.”

Corin’s heart rate settled back to normal. “I’m not following you. I thought you said the chair healed you and you’re ready to go out on the speaking circuit.”

“Not exactly.” A. C. ambled to the vault at the back of the store and glanced inside. “Where is the chair?”

“I took it home and locked it up.”

“Good idea.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You need to keep it in a safe place.” A. C. walked back to Corin and settled into a Hepplewhite dining chair from the early 1900s. “I’ve never been a religious person, but if God were to come down out of the sky and fill me up with Himself, sitting in that chair is what I think it would feel like.”

“What are you saying?”

“As soon as you left me alone the other day, the chair started giving off this electrical charge or something—I felt like I was wrapped up in this ocean of warmth and peace. Wow, it felt good. Then this light sweeps around the room—yeah, I know light doesn’t sweep a room like that; I’m just telling you what I saw.”

A. C. closed his eyes “It was like a merry-go-round made of light, and I was in the middle slowly spinning as the outside of the ride whipped by like cars at the Indianapolis 500.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Because I didn’t know if I’d imagined it or not.” He laughed. “And I didn’t want you to ask what kind of mushrooms I had on my omelet that morning.”

Corin poured himself a cup of coffee into his Thor coffee cup and offered A. C. some as well.

A. C. shifted in his chair. “You know why I didn’t end up playing pro ball, right?”

“You blew out something, your knee if I remember correctly.”

“Shoulder.” A. C. squeezed his left shoulder and stared at Corin. “It never healed right and I couldn’t hit like I used to. Cortisone shots, physical therapy, three operations. Nothing helped. I couldn’t get used to the pain shooting through my shoulder every time I crunched a running back. I missed my window.” He pushed on his shoulder with his fingers and gave tiny shakes of his head.

Where was A. C. going with this? That’s why A. C. was freaked out? Because he got some spiritual buzz? Because his brain played a few tricks on him while he sat in the chair? Corin opened the blinds and let the October sun stream in and light up the dust particles swirling through air. “I need to change the air filter again.”

“Listen to me, Cor.”

He turned toward A. C., then back to the blinds. “I’m listening.”

“No, look at me.”

Corin faced him and gazed into eyes more intense than he’d ever seen in A. C.

“In all the years I’ve worked concrete or helped you haul furniture back and forth, I’ve never lifted anything without a dull ache reminding me of that shoulder injury.”

Corin sat and took a drink of his coffee as he realized what his friend was about to tell him. Tesser’s words reverberated in his mind: “Healing power.”

A. C. stood and grabbed a Sheraton Revival mahogany coffee table with his left hand and hoisted it over his head. “No ache.”

Corin stared at his friend.

A. C. set the table down and grasped his shoulder again. “I went to the gym this morning and benched 350 pounds. No pain, not even a shadow.”

“You’re telling me—”

“It’s healed.”

“You’re serious.”

“You’ve got something in your house,” A. C. jerked his thumb to the north, “that’s out of control.”

Heat surged through Corin’s body. It worked; it had healed again.

And this time it wasn’t some kid he didn’t know.

He needed to find Nicole. He needed answers. And he needed them now.