Presumption of Guilt (35 page)

Beth threw her arms around his neck, too choked up to answer. Somehow, Nick was pretty sure that she was going to say yes.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

T
wo weeks later, Lynda bought Lisa a new bathing suit and got special permission to take her and Jimmy out to the beach that morning. But Jimmy and Jake were cooking something up, and they were late arriving.

“What do you think those two boys are doing?” T she asked the little girl.

“I don't know,” Lisa said. “Can we build a castle while we wait?”

“Of course we can. Come on. Let's go down to the water.”

“But we'll get wet.”

“It doesn't matter. A little water never hurt anybody.” Lynda got down on her knees just out of reach of the waves, and began helping the child pile the sand into a castle.

“When I grow up,” Lisa said with a self-conscious smile, “I want to live in a castle.”

Lynda laughed. “I thought that, too, when I was a little girl. And w hen I grew up, I got something just as good as a castle. But you know what? It didn't make me happy.”

The little girl hung on every word. “What made you happy?”she asked.

“People,” she said. “People I love. People who love me.”

“I have people who love me,” Lisa said. “Jimmy loves me. And my mom.”

Lynda's smile slowly faded. “Do you remember your mom, Lisa?”

She shook her head and looked across the water. The breeze blew her hair back from her face. “Not really,” she said. “But Jimmy's been telling me about her. He told me how much she loved us.”

“She did,” Lynda agreed.

“She died, though.” Her wistful eyes focused on the half-formed castle, and she started patting the sand again. “Do you love Jake?”

Lynda grinned. “Very much.”

They heard a plane overhead, and Lisa looked up as Lynda dug up more sand.

“Look, Lynda! What does it say?”

Lynda looked up. It was a skywriting plane, and it was writing something across the sky. Lisa stood up and waved, jumping up and down. “It looks like . . . M-a-r-r-y . . . Marry . . . me . . .” Lisa read. “L-y-n—”

Lynda got to her feet and shaded her eyes as she stared up in disbelief. “Marry me, Lynda.” She caught her breath. “It's Jake, Lisa! He's asking me to marry him! What should I say?”

Lisa began to dance and wave her arms with delight. “Tell him yes! Hurry!”

The cellular phone in Lynda's beach bag rang, and she pulled it out and, with a big grin, answered, “Yes, I'll marry you!”

Jake laughed out loud. “Will you, really?”

“Of course I will! Now get down here so I can kiss you!”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

T
hat night, after they had taken Jimmy and Lisa back to the home—which Nick was already running on a temporary basis until the state approved him to take it over permanently—Lynda and Jake sat out on the swing in her backyard, moving slowly back and forth.

“There's something I want to talk to you about,” Jake said.

“Something important.”

“More important than marriage?” she asked, smiling down at the ring sparkling on her finger.

“Not really. But maybe
as
important.”

“What?”

“It's about children.”

“I want them,” Lynda said. “Lots of them. And I hope they look just like you.”

He laughed. “I'd rather they look like you. But I was thinking of a head start, kind of. I was thinking of adoption.”

Her eyes caught his grin, and she sat up straight and cocked her head to look at him. “Jake, you're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you? Because I've thought it myself, only I didn't think you'd think—”

“Jimmy and Lisa,” he said.

“Yes!” she shouted. “Yes! We can be the best parents anybody ever had, and—”

“Let's call Nick,” he said. “I don't want to waste any time!”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Six Months Later

T
he plane Jake had named
Trinity
circled the airfield, to the cheers of the dozens of children—most of them residents of the St. Clair Children's Home—then descended for a landing on the long dirt runway. Nick and Beth watched from a crowd of children as Jake Stevens rolled the plane to a stop, and Lynda Barrett Stevens turned back to the crowd with her bullhorn.

“All right, guys! Who hasn't been up yet?”

“Me, Mommy! I wanna go!” Lisa jumped up and down in front of her, waving her arm in front of her face so she wouldn't be missed.

“You can go anytime!” Jimmy said. “Let Dad take
them,
Lisa!”

“But I wanna go too! I wanna see their faces!”

Lynda laughed and hugged the child that had brought so much joy to the home she and Jake were making together. “All right, sweetie. You're in the next group.”

Melissa and Larry Millsaps counted off the next group of kids Jake would take up for a flight, then herded them over to the wing, where Tony Danks and his fiancée, Sharon Robinson, stood waiting to pull them up and help them into the plane.

The children roared and cheered as Jake turned the plane around and taxied back up the airstrip.

Nick slid his arm around his wife and pulled her close. “They're loving this,” he said.

Beth laughed and ran her fingers through her hair. She had let it grow out some and had returned it to its natural color. “Yeah, it was a good idea. And you know he's not just showing them the clouds. He's got a captive audience up there to tell them all about Jesus.”

“The way things have been going at the home, they might just tell
him
about Jesus. You're a great influence for them, Beth. You never let an opportunity go by—”

“When they lie down, and when they rise up. I wish someone had explained it all to me earlier. Then I would have known that I was loved. That I wasn't just some throwaway kid that nobody wanted.”

“Not one of these kids feels like a throwaway,” Nick said .“They're happy, aren't they?”

“Yeah, I think they are. Bill Brandon's brainwashing goes deep, but Christ's grace is deeper.”

“Way deeper,” Nick said. He leaned over and kissed his wife, then pulled her into a crushing hug as the plane circled over their heads, and the burgers sizzled on the grills, and the children laughed and squealed and ran across the grass.

And the joy they all felt was a divine gift that couldn't be doused or destroyed by men, because God had chosen to bestow it on them like a beautiful package under a Christmas tree—

Or a marriage that blossomed brighter with each passing day—

Or an eternity without threat or malice.

Miracles, they were, all shining and bright beneath the warm rays of God's smile.

AFTERWORD

Recently, I was sitting in the Green Room at CBN Headquarters in Virginia Beach, waiting to go on
The 700 Club
, when God taught me one of those lessons that he often teaches when we least expect it. The producer had just come in and told me that I'd be squeezed on at the end of the program, and that I might get six minutes.

My heart sank, because I wanted so much to give my whole testimony about how God had convicted me to leave my career in the secular market and write Christian fiction only. There were so many miracles God had performed in my life, so many things I wanted the
700 Club
viewers to know about. But there was no way I could tell them all of it in six minutes.

The guest coordinator of the show and the executive producer were in the Green Room with me, and when the producer who had delivered the startling news retreated, I looked at the other two and confessed that I was nervous. That was an understatement. The truth was that I was in a state of sheer panic.

Without batting an eye, Jackie, the guest coordinator, began praying for me. She asked God to remind me that he had brought me here for a reason, and that he wasn't going to forsake me now. Immediately afterward, the two were called away, and I was left in the room alone.

Instantly, I began to pray again. I asked God not to let Terry Meeuwsen, the interviewer, waste time with fluffy talk about writing and publishing, but that the Lord would give her the exact questions that would move the story forward rapidly enough that I could get out the most important parts of my testimony. I asked him to give me peace about going out there under such time constraints, as well as a clear head so that my thoughts and my words would flow smoothly. And I prayed for the hearts of those viewers who needed to hear what God had done for me.

Peace fell over me, and when the producer came for me, I was calm. Terry asked pertinent and intelligent questions that jumped the story forward when it needed to jump forward, and I was able to get my testimony out. The interesting thing is that some parts of the story which I might have left out, God saw fit to leave in.Terry's questions prompted me to answer them.

What was the lesson I learned that day? I learned that when we do anything by our own strength, we have the potential of failing. But when we empty ourselves of our own intentions, our own plans, our own goals, God will fill us up with his Holy Spirit. When we're directed by the Creator of the universe, how can we fail?

God gives us everything we need. Christian friends, teachers, churches, pastors, the Bible . . . But if we just use those things to get us to some end—whether it be a successful interview or salvation itself—they're nothing more than tools. Without the Father to guide us, the Christ to motivate us, and the Holy Spirit to empower us, we have the potential to fail.

But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). And thanks to our Father for giving us not just the tools, but the reason and the power to go along with them. And thanks to him, especially, for giving us the outcome—success, always, pure and divine, the way he designed it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
erri Blackstock is an award-winning novelist who has written for several major publishers including HarperCollins, Dell, Harlequin, and Silhouette. Published under two pseudonyms, her books have sold over 5 million copies worldwide.

With her success in secular publishing at its peak, Blackstock had what she calls “a spiritual awakening.” A Christian since the age of fourteen, she realized she had not been using her gift as God intended. It was at that point that she recommitted her life to Christ, gave up her secular career, and made the decision to write only books that would point her readers to him.

“I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories,” she said, “and not just be politically correct. It doesn't matter how many readers I have if I can't tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life.”

Her books are about flawed Christians in crisis and God's provisions for their mistakes and wrong choices. She claims to be extremely qualified to write such books, since she's had years of personal experience.

A native of nowhere, since she was raised in the Air Force, Blackstock makes Mississippi her home. She and her husband are the parents of three children—a blended family which she considers one more of God's provisions.

LAST LIGHT

Chapter 1

D
eni Branning stepped down onto the tarmac, pulled out the handle of her carry-on, and glanced back up at her dad. He was just exiting the commuter plane as he chatted over his shoulder with the man who'd sat next to him on the flight. Doug Branning had never met a stranger, which accounted for his success as a stockbroker. He'd snagged some of his best clients on flights like this.

The oppressive Birmingham humidity settled over Deni like a heavy coat.
It's temporary
, she told herself. She wouldn't have to spend the summer here. Just this last week of May, and then it was back to D.C., her new job, and the fiancé she'd dreamed of for all of her twenty-two years.Yes, it was hot in the nation's capital, too, and probably just as humid.But its fast-paced importance made it easier to bear.

As her father reached the bottom step, his small bag clutched in his hand, the loud hum of the plane's engine went silent. A sudden, eerie quiet settled over the place, as if someone had muted all the machinery around them. The conveyor belt purging the cargo bin of its luggage stopped. The carts dragging the luggage carriers stalled.

She smelled something burning.

Her father seemed oblivious to the sudden change, so she fell into step beside him, rolling her bag behind her. “Look out! It's coming in too fast!”

She turned back to see the airline employees gaping at the sky. An airliner was descending too steeply from the sky, silently torpedoing toward the runway. “Dad—!”

She screamed as the plane shattered into the runway—the impact vibrating through her bones—and tumbled wildly across the pavement. Time seemed to stop in a nightmarish freeze-frame, then roll into slow-motion horror as the plane spun into a building.