As we were leaving the funeral I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I turned around. It was Grace’s mother.
“Are you Eric?”
I just glared at her.
“You’re Eric. I know you are. I just wanted you to know that…” She began to cry. I stared at her, unwilling to offer sympathy. Her voice pitched. “…My baby wanted you. When the ambulance came for her, she asked for you. Your name was the last thing she said.”
I just looked at her as she wiped her eyes with a crumpled tissue.
“Thank you for being there for her.”
“If I was there for her we wouldn’t be here,” I said. I turned and walked away.
CHAPTER Thirty-eight
To truly forgive is to accept our own part of each failure.
GRACE’S DIARY
God flooded Noah’s world so why couldn’t he have cleansed the earth again? I knew enough theology to remember that a baptism by water is followed by a baptism by fire. Fire seemed appropriate. That coward Khrushchev had missed his calling.
My parents, Joel, and I walked into the house without a word. I was done with my family. I had enough money to make it to Denver to see Grace’s aunt. And then who knew. The truth is I didn’t care where I went. I spent far less time thinking about where I was going than what I was leaving.
My mother followed me to my room. “Eric.” She tried to put her arms around me but I pulled away.
“Stay away from me.”
“Eric. You have to talk about this.”
“I don’t talk to murderers.”
“Murderers?”
“You killed her. You and Dad and Joel and her pathetic, worthless mother and those stupid, idiotic policemen who just couldn’t wait to be heroes. I told you they would hurt her and you made me tell them. You killed Grace. You all killed Grace. I hate you. I hate all of you. You should have died, not her.”
My mother was stunned, but her gaze was still full of compassion. “No, Eric. We didn’t kill her.”
“You and the police and Joel…you all killed her.”
“Eric, her stepfather killed her.”
Then, I fell against the wall, sobbing uncontrollably. “No,” I said. “I killed her. I told you where she was. She’d still be alive if it wasn’t for me.”
My mother put her hands on my shoulders and turned me toward her. Tears were running down her face. Her voice was strong but loving. “Eric, listen to me. We didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill her. A very bad very sick man killed her, not you. You tried to protect her. But you’re only fourteen. It was too big for you. You did the best you could. You loved her and she loved you.”
“She’ll never forgive me,” I said. “She shouldn’t forgive me.” My knees buckled and I fell to the ground.
My mother crouched down, holding me. “Eric, sometimes horrible, unspeakable things happen in life. What happened was wrong. But it’s not your fault.”
I looked at my mother, my face twisted in anguish. “I miss her so much, Mom, I want to die. I want to die.”
My mother was crying as hard as I was. She stroked my forehead. “I know you loved her, sweetheart.”
“I can’t stand the pain. What do I do?”
She pulled my head in next to her cheek. “You just keep on living, Eric. And you hope.”
“Hope for what?”
“For grace.”
CHAPTER Thirty-nine
Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow…
ISAIAH 1:18
It snowed Saturday night.
Outside my window the winter wind had rippled the snow like sand dunes, piling drifts in crusted peaks.
I put on my tennis shoes and climbed out my window onto the crystalline blanket. The snow slid up my pants and bit my legs.
For the first time since Grace left, I returned to the clubhouse. Our footprints from that night were gone, evidence covered over at a crime scene. Everything was white.
The clubhouse didn’t look the same to me. It was the same feeling I had at the funeral service staring across the room at Grace’s body. She was gone. The clubhouse was just a corpse.
I kicked at the snow by the door and pried it open.
I crawled in and turned on the light. There was frost on the walls and the Christmas tree was still there, the water in its bucket frozen hard. Grace’s things were there, just as she had left them. On top of the sleeping bag was her yellow diary.
I held it for a moment before I opened it and began to read what she’d written. She had recorded all that she’d been through, the horror and the joy. My emotions rose and fell with each page. The happiness she felt that her mother had found someone and her disappointment when she saw the real side of the man. She wrote of the first time Stan had gotten to her. And the day she realized she was pregnant.
I suppose the diary was a prayer of sorts, written only for God’s eyes. On nearly every page she wrote of her hopes of finding someone to help her. Someone to love her. That is, up until the day she met me. As I read each page I realized what my role had been in her life and how much I meant to her. The last thing she wrote was this.
He is the only thing on this earth I believe in. Eric is my Hawaii.
I stared at those words. Then I closed the book and held it near my chest and I curled up in a fetal position. I had been there for a long time, when I heard something outside. I looked over to the door. Joel was there, looking at me. He was afraid of me, but he was there, just like he always had been.
“Hi,” I said. I sat up, my back pressed against the wall.
He crawled the rest of the way in and sat down next to me, his knees touching mine. We sat without words, both of us looking down at our feet. “It’s cold,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I got mad at you. I know it wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. You’re my best friend.”
Joel’s eyes welled up. “I’ve missed you.”
I put my arm around him.
“I’ve missed you too, buddy.”
“I really liked her,” he said.
Then I began to cry. “I know. So did I.”
The truest grace is not to forgive, but to have never found fault.
GRACE’S DIARY
EPILOGUE
Christmas tales have always been about redemption. I suppose that’s what Christmas is all about. My whole life I have hoped for redemption. Redemption and grace. I don’t deserve it, but I still hope.
My father fully recovered from the Guillain-Barré. By the next summer he was walking without crutches. We moved from that dump of a neighborhood and built a home in the Cottonwood area, a nice suburb of Holladay. Not long after, my aunts and uncles sold the old house to developers, who bulldozed it, along with the clubhouse, to put up low-rent apartment units. I was glad to know it was all gone.
Years passed. My father was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He died July 4th of 1976, the day America celebrated its Bicentennial. My mother is still alive. She resides in southern California in a townhouse about a mile from Joel. She never remarried.
Joel and I never spent a summer together like that again. By the next summer I was into cars and girls and all that comes with growing up. But Joel did all right for himself. Turns out he was better at baseball than any of us knew. He made the varsity baseball team his sophomore year of high school—the first time a sophomore had ever done that. He wore his letterman jacket and had a thousand friends and even more girlfriends. Unlike me, Joel managed to be cool.
He made All State in baseball his junior year and by his senior year word of his talent had spread wide enough that he was hounded by scouts from every major college. Joel returned to California, attending UCLA on a full-ride athletic scholarship. He played in the Pioneer Leagues for two years, then played second base for the Mets for another six before his knees gave out. He has a baseball card with his face on it. Imagine that, my little brother on
a baseball card. Just like DiMaggio.
Today he has a beautiful wife, four children, two grandchildren, and a ten-thousand-square-foot house with a swimming pool surrounded by potted kumquat trees. He owns a Honda dealership in Simi Valley. We talk on the phone every Sunday night. I miss him.
Hard things, if they don’t kill you, make you grow. Sometimes they even make you lose your fear. I never backed down again. A week after the funeral, one of the hoods bullied me. It took two teachers to pull me off of him. He and his friends never bothered me again.
I became a serious student with good enough grades to get accepted to Stanford Law School. After graduation I returned to Utah and at the age of twenty-nine I was made assistant prosecutor at the Utah Attorney General’s Office. At thirty-four I was appointed the youngest prosecutor in the state’s history. I have spent my life hunting down and prosecuting people like Grace’s stepfather. I carry Grace’s locket into every trial. I’ve earned a reputation as a fierce courtroom combatant who takes every case personally. What Grace saw in the candle was true of me as well. I am feared.
A reporter once asked me what drove me. I looked down for a moment, then softly replied, “Grace.” She wrote it down but she didn’t understand. I wouldn’t have explained anyway.
I don’t know what happened to Grace’s mother; all I know is that she moved out of Utah. A part of me hopes she’s in Hawaii. Grace would have liked that.
Stan is still alive, or he was the last time I checked. He got out of prison after seventeen years for “good behavior.” I’ve seen him. I paid him a visit after his release to a halfway house. I needed to know for myself that he wasn’t still a threat. I also wanted to let him know that I was, and that I was watching him. My visit wasn’t necessary. He was a broken shell of a man; nothing but a shadow and a stain. I thought of the line from Isaiah: They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?
I don’t know if he paid his debt—that’s up to God to decide—but he took something beautiful from this earth. He took something that no one could ever give back.
Today I continue my crusade. I have testified about child abuse before state lawmakers more times than I can remember. I’ve lived to see child advocacy become a public concern. I am grateful that the world finally has the courage to open its eyes. My wife asks me when we can retire, but I tell her I’ll die in the saddle. With my last breath I’ll continue to fight for these children. I cannot save them all, but I can save some of them, and that’s worth doing. There are other Graces out there.
When I was a ten-year-old boy sitting in a Methodist Sunday school, my teacher asked what we would do if we had been at Calvary. Would we deny Jesus like Peter had? Or would we carry Jesus’ cross? As one who had read more than his fair share of comic books, I said I would take a machine gun and mow down all the Roman soldiers who were crucifying Jesus. My teacher nodded understandingly, then asked, “Then who would save us?”
I was never able to answer this. The whole thing seemed just a colossal miscarriage of justice, but then, I guess that’s the point. But this has always been God’s way, wringing good from evil. In some ways, this is true of Grace’s life.
I loved Grace; time has only confirmed this to me. But life goes on and so must we. At the age of twenty-three I was married to Brooke Christine Mitchell. Four years later we tried to have our first child. We learned that neither of us could. Brooke cried for nearly two weeks.
But, as so often happens in life, from our hurts come our greatest blessings. Brooke and I made a decision that changed many lives: we adopted the first of our eight children, each of them taken from an environment of abuse or neglect. With each child we saved, a cycle has been broken. We now have more than a dozen grandchildren who know only security, peace, and a parent’s love. What Grace planted in me will save generations from neglect and abuse. I do not take credit for this but I do take hope in it.
I believe there is a life after this one. I hope it is a place of second chances, a place where all things are made whole. That, to me, would be heaven. If there is such a place, I’d like to see Grace there. I’d like to see her without worry or pain. I’d like to sit with her and hear her sweet voice, feel her soft lips against mine and laugh until milk shoots from our noses. I hope to look with her into the flame of a candle and hear all about where she’s been and where the world is going. Most of all, I hope to tell her how much I love her still. I don’t deserve it, but I hope.
Maybe someday, through God’s grace, I will.
A LETTER FROM RICHARD PAUL EVANS
Dear Reader,
While the story you’ve just read is fiction, at this moment there are thousands of stories like Grace’s happening in real life.
Through the blessing of your readership and the help of many friends, I have been able to establish The Christmas Box International, an organization dedicated to building emergency children’s shelters and providing services for abused and neglected children. Since we started more than a decade ago, we have served more than twenty thousand children. Most of the children we help are young, sometimes just infants, and usually entering state custody or foster care for the first time.
With the release of this book we have launched an exciting new and massive project called The Christmas Box Initiative. Our goal is to help every youth in America who is aging out of foster care. Right now these youths face serious challenges including; crime, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, poverty, and suicide. With no one to help them, many of them return to abusive home situations or end up homeless and on the streets. We can make a difference. The Christmas Box Initiative is a four-phase plan:
Phase 1. Working with local child protective services, The Christmas Box International will provide Christmas Box Lifestart Kits to youths as they leave state care. These kits include simple but vital things youths need to start their transition to adulthood such as dinnerware, cooking utensils, a first aid kit, a tool kit, bed sheets, towels, and more, including important information to help these youths navigate life on their own. Giving these kits also connects us with these youths in a relationship of trust.
Phase 2. Assist communities in helping their own youth by creating local “Christmas Box Rooms.” A Christmas Box Room would consist of a room or space supported by community members and agencies that would be used to collect and store items needed by youth in that area.
Phase 3. Assist in finding a mentor for each of these youths. A mentor could consist of an individual mentor or a mentoring family. This will be the most challenging of our goals but will eventually accomplish the most good.
Phase 4. Providing an information hotline and internet site to help these youth not only in crisis situations, but also in finding the many resources available to them, including housing and education.
Our ultimate goal is to help every one of these youths live happy, productive lives as law-abiding citizens and break the cycle of abuse and neglect they were raised with.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
You can help by joining with Operation Kids in support of this program. Operation Kids is an international charity that has supported the Christmas Box House for nearly ten years. Their enthusiasm for this program includes a match of all donations received online. For only $100 you can provide a Christmas Box Lifestart Kit to a youth leaving foster care.
I know that you are probably already giving to many important charities. But if just one out of twenty of my readers decides to help just one youth a year (about 27 cents a day) by donating to Operation Kids, your donation will result in the purchase of a Christmas Box Lifestart Kit for every transitioning foster child in America. Of course you or your business is welcome to assist as many youths as you like.
Will you be one of those special angels? I promise that one hundred percent of your donation will go to creating these kits, and Operation Kids supports that promise. Any overhead associated with this program is covered through my book sales and the
support of many wonderful individuals and organizations like Operation Kids. To join our cause, go to www.operationkids.org/lifestart and click on LIFESTART KITS. Or call: 1-888-257-KIDS.
Thank you and God bless,
Richard Paul Evans
JOIN THE RICHARD PAUL EVANS MAILING LIST, GET A FREE GIFT AND HELP A CHILD
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The First Gift of Christmas
Written and read by Richard Paul Evans
HELP A CHILD. Also, for everyone who joins Richard’s mailing list, Operation Kids will donate $1 to The Christmas Box International to help abused and neglected youth.* To join now go to RichardPaulEvans.com and click on the Join Mailing List button. Then type in your first name, state, and email address. (Note: Richard respects your privacy and does not share or sell his mailing list.)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When Richard Paul Evans sat down to write The Christmas Box, he never imagined his book would become a number one bestseller. The quiet story of parental love and the true meaning of Christmas made history when it became simultaneously the number one hardcover and paperback book in the nation. Since then, he has written twelve consecutive New York Times best-sellers. He is one of the few authors in history to have hit both the fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists and has won several awards for his books, including the 1998 American Mothers Book Award, two first-place Storytelling World Awards, and the 2005 Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award.