Return the Bible. Say as little as possible. Keep the secret.
Violet repeated her checklist as she searched for Marcus. Juana finally pointed her outside. Sure enough, Marcus sat with his back to an oak tree, next to the parking lot, one knee bent. The tree’s late-afternoon shadow sprawled across the sun-washed grass.
Around his mostly straightened knee, Marcus had wrapped one of those rice-filled heating pads, its flannel material patterned with red and blue birds. He’d shaved since Violet last saw him, and his face without the beard looked thinner but more like himself. He seemed to be watching nonexistent traffic pass and leaves fall and … well, there wasn’t a whole lot else to watch. He looked intent on it, though.
Maybe she shouldn’t walk up to him without a warning. “Hey.”
He jolted, then turned his head. As their eyes met, his smiled, worn crinkles showing around the edges. “Hi.”
He’d be a good brother. If only she hadn’t ruined it. The part of her the Bible called her “old man” wished Austin had never told her. If she didn’t know, she could have been Marcus’s little sister without any dishonesty.
“I won’t bug you,” she said. “I just came to bring you this.”
She held out the Bible. Marcus took it in both hands and looked down at the cover. His thumb caressed the worn leather at the spine’s edge.
He gave a long coming-home kind of sigh. “Thanks.”
“I, um, I highlighted. With pink. And I wrote in it. I think I started around Luke—and Acts and Romans. I wrote a lot in Romans.”
Marcus opened the book, found Romans, and began to turn the pages. Heat rushed into her cheeks. The pink highlighter and green pen—good grief, ink was everywhere. She hadn’t realized at the time how much color she was spilling, all over. She just kept reading things she didn’t want to forget.
“I’ll get you a new one, if you want. There’s a bookstore in the church that sells them, and I’m going to get a job as soon as I can, and—”
“It’s okay.” Marcus looked up at her. This time the smile that started in his eyes reached his mouth.
She hadn’t seen his mouth smile since he’d come back to them. She sank down next to him, and the grass tickled her ankles. “I thought it would be over. When we got here.”
“Over?”
“If Walt’s right, there’s danger here, too.”
“Not for you.”
“Only because I’m not worth anything.” Was it the old man who felt the relief of that?
Marcus glared at her. “Don’t.”
“Well, I don’t mean—”
“I know Lee would call you her friend. And I know you’ve been showing her love. Showing her Jesus.” His voice caught on the Name.
Violet crossed her ankles in front of her. “I try to.”
“Well. It isn’t worthless.”
It would be wonderful if he was right, but four months had taught her the difficulty of witnessing to Lee. Maybe they were too different, their personalities. Maybe the gap between them existed because Violet had never in eighteen years hated herself and, for some reason, Lee lived with self-hatred every day. These days, praying was all Violet could do.
The side door of the church opened, and Juana marched out, an apron over her T-shirt and jeans, a plate in her hands. Marcus gave a small sigh.
“I see you found him.” Juana squatted down in front of him. “Surprise.”
“Juana, I had lunch.”
“Three hours ago.”
“I’m barely hungry.”
“Barely counts. Come on. Protein and carbs.” She held out the plate of potato salad, baked beans, and a grilled burger with cheese and relish oozing from under the bun.
Marcus took it and set it over the Bible in his lap. “Thanks.”
She grinned and disappeared back into the church.
“I think Lee put her up to this food-every-three-hours thing.” He picked up the burger and took a bite. He chewed as if he were thinking hard about it.
Dear Jesus, I didn’t need another reminder that he’s hurt and weak.
She wouldn’t be able to keep the secret forever. Look how that had gone with Khloe. Sometime, the truth would slip out of her, or maybe out of Austin—he’d already done that once.
Being disowned might hurt less if she did it now. And Marcus deserved honesty.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She glanced down. Her thumb was rubbing phantom charms on a phantom bracelet. Would she ever break the habit? Her wrist no longer felt naked, but every once in a while she caught herself rubbing her wrist as if the bracelet still hung there.
“Violet.”
She tried to bury the tears, but they surged into her eyes. “Marcus, the con-cops didn’t figure it out. That you were leading the resistance.”
For a moment, he looked like a statue. Then he set the plate aside, in the grass.
She pushed the words out before he could ask questions, interrupt, kill her nerve. She tried not to tremble. “Austin told me. Clay gave you up to them. I know in heaven I’ll be your sister in Christ, but I know this means I can’t be, here on earth. I didn’t want you to know, but I had to tell you.”
Marcus’s hands curled on the cover of the Bible. “Clay thought they had his daughter. He thought he was making a trade.”
The shuddering inside her went still. “You … know?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Austin tell you?”
He shook his head. His hands tightened to fists.
“You …” She shouldn’t keep pushing, but he’d treated her like a sister anyway. She had to know. “When did you find out?”
Marcus drew in a breath, too sharp, like the sound Lee made before her panic attacks. The whole time. He’s always known. Locked in the dark, he’d known who put him there.
Her tears overflowed. “How can you not hate me?”
“You didn’t want it to happen.”
“Do you hate Clay, then?”
Marcus looked away. “I don’t think so.”
He probably thought she couldn’t understand. Well, she couldn’t, not what had happened to him. But some days, she thought she might hate her mother. It was so hard to tell. She didn’t hate her every day, for sure. And when she’d only half woke from the worst of her dreams, thinking Lee was gone, in hell, she’d hated the robber with the gun. Even when reality cleared, she’d had to pray to stop hating him.
“Does this mean …” She swiped at her tears. “I can still be your sister?”
“Violet.” He said it on a sigh, as if she’d been completely ridiculous to think otherwise.
“Oh.”
Marcus let her cry a little more, and then she sat against the tree with him, and their outstretched legs made a right angle from the trunk. He finished eating the burger, then put the plate down without touching the potato salad or the beans.
“Marcus.”
“Hm.” He was beginning to sound sleepy.
“I was part of what happened. It’s … inside me. Even though God forgave me, and you forgave me.”
Cars passed on a main road out of sight, and a bird sang in the tree limbs above them. Maybe Marcus had fallen asleep. After a while, he pulled the heating pad from his knee and began to massage it. He didn’t speak for another minute, until he leaned against the tree with a strained sigh.
“Last winter, I watched a man get arrested. An old man, preaching in a store parking lot. The agent told me to go back in the store. And I did.”
“You couldn’t have stopped it, though,” Violet said. It wasn’t the same.
“Probably not. But I let the agent think there was only one Christian standing there. I listened to the customers cheering while the agent put handcuffs on the guy. I didn’t say anything. And that’s just one thing inside me, and … compared to a lot of things, it’s … well, small.”
“I have more too,” Violet whispered.
“Well. There are things inside everybody. Even after God forgives us. I don’t know if they’re supposed to be gone or not. I know for God, they are. But for me, there’s still … a stain of them.”
“Do you know what Lee’s inner things are?”
The quiet stretched out like their shadows, until he said, “Some of them.”
Those were what Violet had to pray for. And Austin’s, too. That he’d left his sisters at home—that was one thing he felt the stain of inside. She needed to learn more. The more she knew, the better she could pray. And … well, he was Austin. Everything about him was worth knowing.
“Lee’s going to talk to you soon, I think. After she … well, she would call it processing.”
A bird of hope soared in Violet’s chest. Maybe Lee was processing the Bible and would talk to Violet about it. Marcus’s tone didn’t leave room to ask, so Violet said, “I’ll wait.”
“Thanks.”
She leaned her head against the bark and let herself remember a night she’d huddled against a tree at least the size of this one, having run from a half-lit country store. A night she’d hidden and waited for the ruining of lives. She’d never be so stupid again. So young.
Minutes passed. Marcus’s chin dipped toward his chest. Violet should go, let him sleep here in the sun if he wanted to. She drew her knees up to stand.
His hand jerked, struck the paper plate. Potato salad and beans spilled over the grass. A breath shuddered into him.
“Hey,” Violet said. He didn’t look at her.
He probably wanted her to leave him, but she couldn’t yet. She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched from the corner of her eye while he pulled in another breath. Should she say more or stay quiet?
“I keep doing that,” Marcus said. So flat, the voice didn’t sound like his. His hands curled, pulled into his lap.
She scooted away from the tree to face him and sat cross-legged. She waited.
“Falling asleep.” Still flat, but now he glared at his hands.
Violet reached back to yesterday, a conversation with Lee about what to expect. “It’s called convalescing.”
His glare cooled as his forehead crinkled.
“You know, getting better. You heal while you sleep.”
He shook his head. Opened and closed his fists a few times, old scars stretching over his left knuckles, new sharpness to his wrist bones.
“Marcus?”
He met her eyes, unblinking. Before he’d dozed off, he’d been having a real conversation with her, words falling as easily as they ever did from Marcus. Now he seemed lost. Violet propped her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and held his gaze.
“I can promise you this—Juana won’t be offended if she comes outside and finds you sleeping. And neither will anybody else.”
Another head shake, and distance rose behind his eyes. He blinked and it was gone, his focus on her again. He was her brother, safe and steadfast, but there was more to him now, more in his head, and she had to remember that for as long as he needed her to.
“You’ve got to stop that,” he said.
“Um …”
“Trusting.”
“Trusting Juana?” He wasn’t making sense. Violet tucked her hands under her thighs and leaned closer, as if a few inches could help her understand.
“All of them.”
“Marcus.” She didn’t try to smooth the tremble from her voice. “You ate spaghetti and meatballs with them last night. You slept here, and you were safe.”
“I didn’t know then.”
“Know what?”
“Constabulary. Here.”
“They’re still our family. We can trust them.”
“No.”
He couldn’t mean it. Violet folded her arms over her chest but kept her eyes locked on his. She waited for him to take it back, qualify it somehow.
He didn’t.
“This is why you didn’t tell them who you are.”
No denial. No response at all. In the fusion of their gazes, something passed between them—an acknowledgment that she wasn’t going anywhere. But what could she say? If he refused to trust people who’d done nothing to him, then he didn’t trust an ex-spy who’d gotten him arrested, whether she’d meant to do it or not.
He sat watching her, silent and still. A crease formed between his eyes. Lee would know what he was thinking. Violet couldn’t begin to guess. She huddled closer to the tree, threw out a prayer, and imagined it floating up through the branches above them, into the cloudless Texas sky. Jesus, help me help him.
Talk? Sit quietly with him? What was she supposed to do? A long sigh poured out of her, and Marcus cocked his head. Questioning.
“It’s just …” She shook her head. “I think you’re wrong about them. But how am I supposed to convince you when I’m not any better than they are?”
In fact, she was worse. Her stomach panged. Maybe she should go.
“No,” he said. “You’re you.”
“Yeah.” Just me.
“I mean …”
She wrapped her arms around her knees and waited for him to explain. His eyes wanted to tell her something, but the words seemed trapped in his head. Certainty shrouded Violet. Deep down, Marcus was hurt more than anyone knew.
“Marcus?” She made her voice as gentle as she could. “Do you mean … you do trust me?”
Slowly, he nodded.