“I didn’t cry that much,” she said. “I am the pastor’s wife, after all. I wasn’t about to let the devil steal my peace.”
Hank frowned and turned his head as far to the right as the thick bandages on his face would allow. Peace. Would he ever feel that again?
“Son,” Randall said, placing his hand on Hank’s arm. “Talk to us. We know you’ve been through hell. We’re here for you.”
Slowly, Hank turned back to his parents, regarding them in the dim light. Brenda sported a short, layered haircut, and between that and the fact that she diligently covered her gray, people often mistook her for Hank’s older sister rather than his mother. Though she’d put on a few pounds since Hank was a boy, she still looked shapely. She was a petite five-foot-two, in contrast to Randall’s towering six-three height, which Hank had inherited. As well he had his father’s square jaw, but his small nose, blond hair, and blue eyes came from his mother’s German side of the family.
Gazing at his mother, who was known as a pillar of strength in their community, gave him the courage to ask, “What happened?” He cleared his throat. “To the plane?”
Brenda frowned. “They think it was guerilla soldiers.”
So that’s what Peter had meant when he said, “We’ve been hit.” Hank sighed, grateful to hear that the crash had not been the pilot’s fault. No matter what the Bible said, he did not know if he would ever be able to forgive Peter if the accident had been due to some gross neglect on his part.
When he glanced to Brenda’s left, his father was studying him with coffee-colored eyes that could see into the soul. It was a gift that had served him well over his past twenty years as pastor of Life Christian Fellowship church in Austin, Texas, but now made Hank writhe in discomfort. He had to ask the question that was tearing him up inside—his parents surely knew the answer—but Hank was terrified to hear it.
A long silence passed. Finally, Hank swallowed and said, “Martin’s dead. What about everybody else?”
His parents exchanged a glance, and Brenda picked up his hand while Randall spoke.
“Barbara is in another room two doors down, in much the same shape you are. She’ll be able to fly home in a few days.” He paused. “Peter and Kelly didn’t make it.”
Hank was unsure how to react. The joy he felt at knowing Barbara would be all right was overwhelmed by a flood of grief over the loss of the other two men, especially Kelly Williams. If not for Barbara, Kelly would have been his best friend. The two men had grown close over the past three years, going on missionary trips together and co-leading one of the youth small groups at Life Christian.
“Leave me alone,” Hank said, refusing to cry in front of his father. “I want to be alone.”
“Son, don’t push us—”
“Randall, come on.” Brenda released Hank’s hand and stood, bringing her husband up with her. “He needs some time. Some space. Sweetheart,” she said, gazing at Hank with compassion-filled eyes, “we’ll be right outside if you need anything.”
His parents walked out, the door clicking shut behind them. Hank stared at the ceiling for a long time, scenes from the events leading up to the crash flashing through his mind. He saw himself laughing with the pastor of the small church in Honduras the missionaries had just helped build. He saw himself and his friends board the plane, exhausted. Had he had any sense of impending doom that might have been a warning to postpone the flight? Had any of them?
Lord, why didn’t you warn us? Maybe He had, but none of them had enough energy to listen. Or maybe He hadn’t. Maybe He’d allowed the crash in order to stretch his and Barbara’s faith.
No. God wouldn’t kill three of His children just to teach two of them a lesson.
Would He?
The idea was too much to bear, and he gave in to the fatigue slowly creeping up his legs, over his chest, and paralyzing his arms. The last thing he recalled before slipping back into the darkness was an envelope.
It was on the floor of the airplane. I picked it up. Do I still have it?
What did it matter? Whoever it belonged to, they were dead. Hank dropped the thought from his mind and let sleep conquer his grieving mind.
CHAPTER 2 - November, 1997
Sheila Carson drove into the parking lot of Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School at about five miles an hour, taking great care to look all around her to make sure there were no small bodies in her way. As always, she backed into a space while twisting her neck around to see behind her. She did not trust the mirrors; they had blind spots, and she would not risk not being able to see every square inch of ground that her car moved over.
She put the car in park and sat back, willing herself to have the enthusiasm she needed to face her Kindergartners. I haven’t been teaching long enough to be burned out. What is my problem?
She let out an exasperated breath, reaching over to grab her tote bag and her lunch. She had asked herself the same question several times since last spring. By the end of the long, quiet summer she was ready to go back into the classroom, but a few weeks ago her zeal for teaching began to wane again. Now, a couple days before Thanksgiving break, Sheila wanted nothing more than a vacation in an exotic place away from her everyday routine.
No, she wanted more than that. As a child, she had held a secret admiration for Mother Teresa. Other little girls fantasized about being a Barbie with a beautiful house, and a Ken who brought home loads of money from his lucrative career. Sheila, on the other hand, saw herself surrounded by poor, hungry children, whom she loved and fed and talked to about Jesus. Not that she dared tell anyone about it.
As she grew older and learned about the hard work and zero pay involved in missionary work, her practical side told her she could make just as much difference—plus a regular salary—as a teacher. Since the spring of the last school year, however, her childhood dreams had begun to return to her, and since the beginning of this school year she found teaching increasingly more a strain than a joy. She’d begun wondering if God was trying to tell her something.
As she locked her car, she saw the new teacher on the campus out of the corner of her eye. Hank Johnson stood a little over six feet tall and sported a beard and short mustache that matched his blonde hair, and his long legs and dangling arms reminded Sheila of Gumby. Since his fourth grade classroom was on the top floor, and her Kindergarten room on ground level, she rarely saw him except for faculty meetings.
That was fine with her. Although she got along with everybody, she mostly kept to herself. Her one close friendship was with one of the two Pre-Kindergarten teachers, Margaret Kennebrew, and their relationship satisfied her need for human connection.
She had no plans to befriend any males. She’d already destroyed one man’s life, and didn’t want to risk hurting another. The easiest way to avoid that risk was to keep every man she met, whether at church or at school—the only two places she socialized—at arm’s length. She was certain she would live alone the rest of her life, and the thought didn’t bother her in the least. She’d only dated one guy before, for a couple months during her freshman year of college, and though he was nice enough Sheila had known by their second time out they would never be more than friends. She’d never fallen in love, and figured she wouldn’t miss what she’d never had.
Hank turned, noticed her looking at him, and waved with one hand while balancing an armful of books in the other. She lifted her hand slightly, then bent over, pretending to look for something. She hated to seem rude, but she wanted to give no man any reason for thinking she might be interested in him. And she had to be careful with Hank. Gumby or not, he was so handsome she almost did a double take the first time she saw him.
Now, she scratched around on the ground, hoping he would be out of her sight by the time she reached the entrance.
A few seconds later, a tap on her shoulder startled her so that she jerked her head up, hitting it against the car door.
“I’m sorry!” The voice belonged to Margaret. “Are you all
right?”
Sheila turned, rubbing her head as she stood up. “It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”
“Did you lose something?”
“I got it,” Sheila said. She glanced in the direction of Hank’s car, then eyed the sidewalk leading up to the front door. Hank was nowhere in sight. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”
* * *
“Edgar, get a book and sit down.”
Sheila sighed and rolled her eyes as the small boy leapfrogged to the classroom library, snatched a book from one of the display shelves, and ran back to his table. She eyed the rest of the students sitting around the room. So many different personalities in such a small area, both a challenge and a bane to the teaching profession. Every year she had at least one like Edgar Hernandez, always moving, continually conversing, with himself if with no one else. Then there were the quiet ones to balance out the Edgars. This year it was Diana Manriquez. She never spoke while working, and rarely volunteered an answer or asked questions. But when she did, Sheila was continually bowled over by the maturity and intelligence that came out of her mouth, more like a fifty-year-old than a five-year-old.
Diana was a beautiful girl with straight, shoulder-length black hair, and a delicate face that could rival any collectible doll, though rarely graced with a smile. She also happened to be the spitting image of another little girl Sheila had known before she moved to Texas four years ago. The first two weeks of classes that year, Sheila had gone home every day and fallen to her knees, begging God for the grace to look at the child without feeling stabs of anguish and regret.
“Miss Carson, can I go to the bathroom?” A child poked at her arm, speaking his native Spanish tongue.
“Go,” she barked, as though he had purposely intruded on her dark reverie. In the next instant, she felt a sting of regret, and opened her mouth to apologize. But he was already gone.
The timer rang, indicating the end of the daily silent reading.
“Okay, you know what to do,” Sheila said in a singsong voice in Spanish, closing her own book and shifting herself in her rocking chair positioned at the front of the room. Teaching in a bilingual classroom had not been her idea, especially not Kindergarten. She had thoroughly enjoyed her first year teaching in a second-grade classroom. Sure, she’d had her behaviorally challenging students and the frustration of having three kids who still barely knew the alphabet. But overall she’d felt competent doing it and wanted to stay with second grade the rest of her life.
Her principal, Mr. Medina, had other plans. He’d heard her speaking Spanish—she’d taken four years in high school and was the top student in her class—and when one of Roosevelt’s bilingual Kindergarten teachers retired at the end of that year, he placed Sheila into the position.
She hated the first two months of her second year teaching. She’d never student taught Kindergarten because she’d declared she was never going to be a “glorified babysitter.” But by the end of October, the wide-eyed innocence and insatiable curiosity of her young charges had endeared themselves to her, and by the end of that year she’d decided she wouldn’t mind living out the rest of her days in the classroom as a Kindergarten teacher.
Now, Sheila silently asked how many of those days she had left as she waited for the students to sit in a circle in front of her. When most of them had settled themselves down on the carpet, she opened her mouth to say, “Buenos días,” but was interrupted by a loud, “Ouch!”
She looked across the room and saw Edgar pulling on Diana’s hair. Sheila bit down on the scolding words that came to her tongue, hoping her silence would encourage the children to work out the conflict on their own.
Then she realized that in the two and a half months since school started, Diana had never once missed any of Sheila’s instructions. She was the most compliant child Sheila had ever known. She knit her brows together. Something must be going on with her.
Diana took her nose out of the book while Edgar grinned down.
“The teacher told us circle time, didn’t you hear?”
Frowning, Diana looked up. With a sheepish expression, she closed her book, placed it on the table and padded over to the group.
“She didn’t push in her chair,” said a girl named Lucy, pointing to Diana’s table. Nothing like a class tattletale to give the teacher a play-by-play of every infringement of every rule.
Sheila put a finger on her lips and shook her head. “It’s okay. She just forgot this one time. Any news?” she asked the class in Spanish. For about five minutes, she scribed with a blue marker on a large tablet as eager kids waved their hands in the air and chattered like magpies about their respective weekends. She kept one eye on Diana, whose eyes held a faraway look. Sheila began to worry. She’d never known Diana to not pay attention.
Finally, Diana raised her hand. “Papá went to jail last night. So I get to live with my tía Rosa.” Diana’s placid face seemed totally incongruent with what she had just shared, and Sheila wondered if the poor girl thought that that was the norm in every family.
“I’m so sorry, Diana.” The marker in her hand did not move. “Are you okay?”
“Write it, teacher,” Lucy demanded.
Diana shrugged. “Sí. I really like my tía Rosa.”
Praying that Diana was as okay as she said, Sheila went on with the lesson. It wasn’t the first time a student had told her about a parent being jailed, and—as long as Sheila stayed in an inner city school—it wouldn’t be the last. She felt tempted to ask Diana if she knew why her father had been picked up, but it was none of her business, besides being an inappropriate question for a child that age.
Sheila spent the morning sneaking glances at Diana’s face, arms, and legs, checking for bruises or suspicious marks. Thank God, she thought with relief, finding none. No need to call CPS this time. She did notice, however, that her most diligent pupil had trouble with her work that morning, and began to worry that Diana was carrying around emotional wounds from the weekend’s events.
At lunchtime, as she was pulling her lunch bag out of her cabinet, someone tapped her hip. “Teacher,” a small voice said.
She turned around to face Diana, but not before throwing a stern glance at Edgar, who had begun to dance in the line of students waiting to go to the cafeteria. When he stopped, she stroked Diana’s hair and smiled. “Yes?” Please don’t tell me something more horrible. I already feel helpless enough as it is.
“I’m sorry if I made you sad this morning in circle time. I didn’t mean to.”
Sheila bit her lower lip, put her bag on a nearby table, and squatted down. She wasn’t helpless, she suddenly realized. She could do one thing for Diana, even if it meant crossing a line onto forbidden territory. She could, for the moment, forget she was a public school teacher, and become personally involved. And what if God had sent Diana to her to give her a chance to make up for the five-year-old accident?
Sheila asked, “Is it all right if we say a prayer for your papá?”
Diana nodded with wide eyes.
“Dear Lord,” Sheila prayed in Spanish, “Please help Diana’s papá to learn to do the right thing. Let him be a good father for her. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
To Sheila’s delight, Diana threw her arms around her and squeezed her, then raced over to the line where the rest of the students waited.
Lucy would have none of it. “Miss Carson,” she whined, “Diana ran.”
“Then,” Sheila replied, swallowing a sarcastic remark, “tell her in a nice voice to please walk.”
* * *
“You didn’t kill nobody, did you?”
No, but you might be on my list in a minute. Miguel glared at his youngest cellmate, a slow-talking white man named Will, and shook his head. He should have pretended that he didn’t speak English when the guard threw this kid into the cage with him. But there was no way to know that Will had a curiosity streak a mile wide.
The other three men in the cell, two blacks an
d another Mexican, José, hovered together on the other side, talking and laughing loudly. José had told Miguel that he had saved one of the brothers’ lives when they were both seventeen, and since had hung out and wreaked all sorts of havoc together. Their latest was trying to rob a convenience store, which had been foiled by a plainclothes police officer buying a sandwich.
“You’re lucky,” Will said, scratching a whiskerless chin. “I had a friend once who was driving drunk and killed two people. Got two counts of manslaughter, and ten years. How long you in for?”
“Kid, you talks a lot. One day, will get you into trouble big.” Miguel got up and walked to the door to give him the hint that he didn’t want to talk anymore.
Will didn’t get it. “That’s what my folks always said, you know. ‘Boy, one day that big mouth of yours gonna get you in a heap of trouble.’” He laughed. “They were right. I’ve gotten beat up pretty bad twice for back talking a couple of guys bigger’n me.”
He rambled on about his teenage squabbles, but Miguel tuned him out as he stared at the concrete floor, overcome with guilt. He’d known of other men with families who’d gotten themselves thrown into jail, but they were the ones who really didn’t care about their kids and wives, the ones who’d rather live for themselves.
Fathers like Miguel, who actually loved their children and wanted to be responsible for them were more careful, keeping themselves clean and on the right side of the law.
No, other fathers. Not like Miguel. He’d let his self-indulgence get the better of him, and now he’d let his daughter down. What must Diana be thinking of him?
At least he didn’t have to worry about where she was and what she was doing. His sister Rosa had a decent apartment, money for food, and would make sure her niece made it to school every morning. Maybe it would be a nice change for Diana, to live with a woman. Lately he’d been wondering if Diana would be better off being raised by a female.
Not that he would ever think of giving her up. And not that he felt inept in caring for her now. But as she grew, he knew that she would have needs that he, as a man, would be ill-equipped to fulfill.
Diana would need a mother, and soon.
He turned his gaze to the bars imprisoning him. Marcela, why did you have to die?