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Kennedy had been wrong. She had spent the past day fully convinced that once she got all the facts straight about the Abernathy murder, once all her questions were answered, she could finally rest. The case was solved, but that sense of relief she expected remained elusive.
The Lindgrens had gone to bed. Kennedy should be sleeping soundly now, too. She made it all the way to sunset with only a short afternoon nap, but for some reason her body still refused to relax.
She’d taken Nick’s Lord of the Rings volume out to his balcony and sat beneath the dim security light, staring at the same page for a quarter of an hour.
She tried not to think about Noah and his family, but that proved impossible. Where was he now? Nick said the lawyer would push for a reasonable bail, but they wouldn’t have any of those details until his arraignment in the morning. It was probably a good thing her phone was still at the Lindgrens’ house, or she would have wasted hours by now on all the news outlets, trying to gauge how messy of a scandal the murders had caused.
She thought about Vivian, bereaved of her husband, probably spending the whole night worrying about her son. And Jodie. Such a shy little thing. Would this family drama force her to retreat even farther into herself?
Kennedy knew she should pray but lacked the spiritual stamina to do so. As a little girl, she’d once gone to a Christian summer camp where the speaker shared a story about what happened when he told his atheist friend, “I’ll be praying for you.”
“Why?” the atheist wanted to know.
“Because it’s so easy,” had been the speaker’s glib response. And for a decade or more, Kennedy had lived under the assumption that prayer was supposed to be simple, that if you could spend hours daydreaming about Shakespeare or your best friend whom you might never see again, you could just as easily spend that idle time in communion with the Father. Pray without ceasing. Isn’t that what the Bible said? And for years, she figured there must be something wrong with her. Since prayer was supposed to be so easy, she was even more pathetic as a Christian for not being able to do it right or do it well.
Well, since then she’d learned how wrong that camp speaker really was. Anyone who said praying was easy didn’t understand the mental energy it took to stay focused and faithful in spite of all of life’s distractions. In spite of the heaviness that could storm around your brain like a tempest.
No, prayer wasn’t easy. Neither was running a marathon. But that didn’t mean either was impossible. It just meant you had to start slow. Baby steps. Disciplined training. Kennedy couldn’t go outside tonight and run ten miles straight. But she could manage a mile. Maybe a little more. And if she did that every single day, after a week or two she could run two miles. Then three. The fact that she couldn’t spend a whole night in prayer didn’t mean that she should get discouraged and never pray at all. A couple minutes here, a few minutes there, and eventually her mind would achieve the degree of focus she needed for more prolonged spurts of time. She just had to be content to start with small bursts of progress.
She shut her eyes. Dear Father ...
“I was wondering where you ran off to.”
Nick. He had a Bible in one hand and a mug in the other.
“I just made myself some tea. I’m sorry. If I had known you were up here, I would have brought extra.”
“It’s ok.”
He sat down next to her. “How are you?”
She stared off to the part of the sky where the sun had recently set. All that remained was a faint blue afterglow that lit up some low-lying clouds. “All right, I guess.”
“Pretty intense day, wasn’t it?” Nick asked.
“Yeah.”
He glanced at the Tolkien book. “I’m sorry. If you want to be left alone ...”
“No, it’s all right. I can’t focus on reading now anyway.”
“I know what you mean.” He shook his head. “Such a tragedy.”
Kennedy couldn’t have agreed more.
“But I guess we can be thankful for the good that’s come from it.”
She looked over at him. “What kind of good?”
“Well, Carl and his foster son wanting to get together, for one thing. And Noah knowing his dad still accepted him before he died.”
“I guess so.” She sighed. “I feel worse for Noah right now. I mean, you can’t excuse what he did, but if he thought his counselor had betrayed him like that ...”
Nick set down his mug. “It’s pretty horrible. I never liked that whole ex-gay ministry movement in the first place, but still, I would never have wished something like this on Marcos. Or anyone else for that matter. I might not believe in his tactics, but I know he was trying to do good for those boys he was counseling.”
Kennedy was quiet for a moment. She recalled the beautiful girl in the green sundress photographed downstairs. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Mm-hmm.” Nick was staring at the same cloud streak so far off in the distance.
“What happened to your sister?”
His face was close to hers. His expression so raw, still so distant. “She died. Committed suicide the year after I graduated college.”
Kennedy didn’t know what to say.
He stared at his clasped hands. “She’d been going to see a counselor, someone like Marcos, someone who was trying to cure her of her homosexuality.”
Kennedy shut her eyes and could only see Lessa’s bright, dimpled smile from Nick’s picture.
“I tried to tell her to stop. She’d already gotten so much guilt from our mom over being a girl. Now she was going to this counselor getting even more guilt for being a lesbian. I’d done a lot of research by then. Made up my mind that being gay and being a Christian weren’t mutually exclusive like so many churches teach. But as much as she hated Mom’s structures and rules, she still had it in her head that was the ideal she was supposed to achieve. In the end, it’s what killed her.”
Kennedy regretted asking. It wasn’t worth making Nick rehash such horrible memories. Not tonight of all nights. “I’m sorry.”
He reached out and rubbed her back. His touch felt strange. Foreign. A certain shyness invaded the space between them. He took his hand away again.
Neither one spoke. Kennedy was too busy reliving pivotal moments of the day. Her talk with Sandy about Guy and his partner denying any sort of relationship with the Lindgrens unless they changed their views. Nick’s sister dying because she felt so much guilt over her sexuality. Carl and Nick who would never see eye to eye on the issue but refused to let that drive a wedge of bitterness between them.
A breeze picked up. Kennedy hugged her arms against her chest.
“Getting a little chilly, isn’t it?” Something about Nick’s expression made her feel nervous. Flustered.
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“So, anyway ...”
She didn’t turn to look at him. Could only guess what he was about to say.
“You remember earlier in my kitchen? I was going to ask you something?”
She nodded, certain she wasn’t ready for any of this. Not tonight. Not when she was so tired and confused and still hopelessly jetlagged.
“Well, what I wanted to know is if you’d be free Monday afternoons to help me run the Good News Club at Medford Academy.”
“Oh.” She’d been expecting something much different.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about prep work or anything like that. I just need someone to be there, help take attendance, keep the kids on task. Just two hours a week is all I’m asking.”
“Monday afternoons, you said?”
He nodded, his eyes brimming over with eagerness. “I could even pick you up.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got organic chemistry lab that afternoon.”
His whole being deflated.
“Otherwise I would have loved to.” She hoped she wasn’t being dishonest.
“Ok, then.” He stared off at the clouds again. “Maybe next semester or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
He stood up. “I think I’m gonna go back down now. It’s getting late.”
“All right. I’ll be there pretty soon.” She hoped he wasn’t disappointed. Why did she feel like she was always letting him down?
“Good night.” His footsteps were clunky as he walked away in his slightly oversized sandals. Kennedy sat in the dim artificial light, listening to the slight sounds of traffic, heavy from the darkness and silence that surrounded her.