The Atonement Child (15 page)

Dynah went back into her bedroom and began unpacking her suitcases.

Chapter 4

Hannah Carey had had strong premonitions for months that something was wrong with her daughter. She had been praying unceasingly for Dynah since January. It had started when she awakened in the middle of the night. She hadn’t been dreaming, or if she had, she couldn’t remember what it was about. All she knew was that something had happened, something awful. She had called Dynah the next day, but Janet reassured her all was well and Dynah was fine. The few conversations she had had with her daughter over the past months had convinced her both were untrue.

Now she knew her premonitions were founded in something concrete. Dynah’s little blue Toyota with the NLC sticker in the back window was parked in front of the house, and it was a week too early for spring break.

“Dynah?” Hannah said, entering the kitchen from the garage. Dumping her purse on the counter, she headed through the archway into the family room. “Dynah!”

“Mom!”

Glancing up, Hannah saw her daughter running along the corridor and down the stairs. “Oh, baby,” she said, filled with joy at the sight of her. Laughing, she held her arms open as Dynah flew into them the way she had as a child.
Thank God! Oh, thank You, God.

“Oh, Mom,” Dynah said, clinging to her mother as she had when she was a little girl and had been hurt. “I had to come home. I had to. I’ve missed you and Daddy so much.”

“We’ve missed you, too,” Hannah said, crying happily, stroking the blonde hair back. She had missed her more than she could, or should, express. The hardest thing she had ever had to do was let Dynah go. That day when she and Douglas had put their daughter on the flight to Chicago had been almost unbearable.

“You gave her to the Lord before she was ever born, Hannah,” Douglas had said when she cried all the way home from the airport. “Don’t you think you can trust God to take care of her now that she’s a young woman?”

“I’ve been so worried about you, honey.” Drawing back, Hannah tried to search her daughter’s face. “You’re home a week earlier than we’d hoped. And in your car. We were going to wire money so you could fly.”

“Can we sit down, Mom?”

There it was again, that feeling she couldn’t shake. A sick dread filled Hannah. “Have you eaten? Come on into the kitchen, and I’ll fix you something.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Some milk. I made cookies yesterday.” Toll House. Dynah’s favorite. It had been a kind of therapy to fix them. Something to do to kill time while waiting for Dynah to come home. And now she was home, and the worry didn’t ease. It grew.

Dynah laughed bleakly. “Okay,” she said, though Hannah sensed it was more to soothe her mother than because she wanted anything to eat.

Hannah took six cookies from the ceramic bear and arranged them on a pretty china plate. She poured a tall glass of milk and brought both to the kitchenette table in the bay window overlooking the street.

“It’s so good to have you home again,” she said, going back to the cupboard to take down the tin of flavored coffee. She filled a coffee cup with water and put it in the microwave, tapping in the numbers and pushing Start. She glanced back and saw Dynah toying with one of the cookies. “We’ve been counting the days.” She noticed the dark shadows beneath Dynah’s blue eyes, the pallor of her skin. Her hair was limp, as though she hadn’t shampooed it for days. Her face was thinner, with lines of strain around her mouth.

Oh, God, what’s happened to my baby?

“Daddy’s in Los Angeles until tomorrow night,” Hannah went on, spooning instant coffee into the cup of steaming water. “He goes about once a month now.” She brought her coffee over and sat down at the table with her daughter. As Hannah watched Dynah eat one cookie, she noticed something else.

Heart sinking, she put her hands around the cup, trying to keep calm. Her daughter’s lower lip quivered slightly, and Hannah found herself fighting tears of empathy.

“You can talk to me, honey. You can talk to me about anything.”

“It’s so hard.”

Life was hard. Grueling. Heartbreaking. She could see how hurt her daughter was, and already she was creating scenarios in her mind.
Jesus, I thought everything was going so smoothly. I thought her life was all laid out like a beautiful mosaic glorifying You.
“It’s about Ethan, isn’t it?”

“Partly.” Dynah sniffed.

Hannah took a hankie from her sweater sleeve. She had gotten in the habit of tucking one into a pocket or sleeve or waistband since Dynah was a baby. Douglas always teased her about it. Old habits were hard to break.

“Thanks,” Dynah mumbled, smiling in self-deprecation and blowing her nose softly. “The engagement’s off, Mom.”

“I gathered that,” Hannah said gently. “No ring.”

“I gave it back to him.”

Thank God it hadn’t been the other way around. She had prayed her daughter would never feel that kind of rejection. “You must have had a good reason.” Was another girl involved? Or was it his relentless ambition? Douglas had noticed that when they met Ethan. “He’s on fire all right, but sometimes that kind of fire can burn churches down.”

“No, Mom. I just . . . I just didn’t trust him anymore.”

Something tightened inside Hannah. “Did he try to do something to you?”

Dynah’s eyes came up. “No, Mom.”

Hannah knew she was pressing and lowered her head, staring into the black coffee. “I’m sorry. Of course, he wouldn’t.” Questions poured through her mind, one tumbling on top of another, rousing anger with them. Not at Dynah. Ethan must have done something to her daughter. Dynah had been head over heels in love with him last summer. Why would she break the engagement?

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Hannah reached across the small table and took her daughter’s hand, fear curling like a snake in the pit of her belly. “I love you, honey. Nothing you can tell me will alter that. Nothing.”

Dynah’s hand gripped hers, hanging on as if it were a lifeline. “It happened in January,” she began slowly. “I’d just finished work at Stanton Manor House. My car was in the shop, so I was walking to the bus stop. A car—a white car with Massachusetts plates—pulled up beside me. . . .”

Hannah listened, her heart beating faster and faster as Dynah told what had happened. Tears came, flooding her eyes and pouring down her cheeks.
Oh, God, where were You? Where were You when this was happening?
Dynah’s fingers kept tightening as though she was afraid her mother would pull away from her. When Dynah finished telling about the ordeal at the hospital and the questioning at the police station, she stopped.

Hannah felt her trembling. “I love you,” she said softly. “I love you so much. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Dynah looked up at her mother’s stricken face, saw the tears running down her cheeks and the compassion in her eyes. It was easier to go on after that. “Ethan and I started having problems. He didn’t see me in the same way, Mom. Not for a while, anyway. Joe helped him a lot. He’d talk to him about his feelings, and he’d talk to me.”

“Joe?”

“Joe Guilierno. Ethan’s roommate. He’s from Los Angeles. A senior. He’s the exact opposite of Ethan in everything. Dark hair and eyes, tainted background. He came to the Lord in his late teens. He said someone dragged him to Victory Outreach, and he’s never been the same since. If it weren’t for Joe, I’d . . .” She shook her head, remembering how close she had come to swallowing all those pills.

Hannah wondered if Joe was the reason Dynah had broken her engagement to Ethan.

“But Joe couldn’t fix everything.” Dynah let out her breath slowly. “I’m pregnant, Mom.”

“Oh, God.” Hannah shut her eyes, feeling the hard punch of those words. “Oh, no . . .”

“Ethan was called into the dean’s office because he wasn’t doing as well in school. He was so stressed out over me and what I was going to do about the pregnancy. He told the dean, and then the dean called me in. I was given choices. I couldn’t face any of them, Mom. I just couldn’t. I could understand his point. I understood Ethan’s, too, but it didn’t help me very much. I gave the ring back to Ethan right after talking with the dean, and then I quit school.”

“You quit school?” Hannah saw the cost of that in Dynah’s eyes. Another dream crushed.

“I had to, Mom. I couldn’t stay there.”

“Honey, they don’t stone people anymore.”

“Oh, yes, they do.” They just didn’t
kill
the one they judged anymore. They left them broken and wounded.

Hannah clasped both of her daughter’s hands. “We’ll get through this, honey. Your dad and I love you very, very much. We’ll help you.”

Dynah started to cry—deep, wrenching sobs of relief. She heard the scrape of her mother’s chair and then felt her mother’s arms firm around her. Her mother cried with her, holding her and stroking her and saying over and over that it would be all right. Everything would be all right. She was home now. She was safe. They would take care of her.

The long days of travel caught up with her. The stress that had held her in a vise for so many days dissolved in the warmth of her mother’s embrace. She leaned into her, hanging on, grateful to have expunged her burdens, grateful her mother would now shoulder them.

“You’re done in,” Hannah said after a long while. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you into a hot shower. I’ll fix you something to eat. After that, you can go to bed and sleep as long as you want.”

As those things were being done, Hannah stilled the wild beat of her heart, silenced the screams inside her, capped the volcanic pain that threatened to erupt and pour out like hot lava destroying everything in its path.

When Dynah was safely tucked into bed and asleep, Hannah Carey went into her closet and knelt.

Oh, God! Oh, God in heaven, why do You still hate me so much? Will You never, ever forget what I did?

She wept. For herself. And for her atonement child, who slept in the room down the hall.

“She made it, Joe. She left a message. She got there about one thirty in the afternoon.”

Thank You, Jesus!
“How’d she sound?”

“Tired.”

Smiling, Joe leaned back into the worn overstuffed chair he’d bought at a thrift store and nestled the phone between his ear and his shoulder. “Oh, man, I’m feeling good right now.”

“Me, too. I’ve been worried sick about her. How’s Ethan?”

“Plugging along. I think it’s beginning to sink in what’s really happened. He was crying into his beer last night.”

“I didn’t know he drank.”

“Root beer.”

Janet laughed. “Do you think he’ll call?”

Joe leaned his head back. “I think he will.”

“Got a pen and some paper? I’ll give you her number, in case Ethan needs it.”

Joe got up and headed for his desk. Rummaging around, he found a Bic and some ruled paper. “Okay, shoot.”

She read off the Careys’ telephone number and asked him to repeat it. “You got it. First time. You’d make a great secretary, Joe.” She laughed and then added blithely, “Say hi when you talk to her, would you, Joe? Tell her I love her too.”

“Brat. I’ll call her in a couple days, after she’s had a chance to rest and settle in.”

“You mean after Ethan’s had first shot, don’t you?”

“You have an evening class,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Get going.” He punched the Off button and dropped the phone onto the desk.

Joe wrote the number on a sheet of clean paper along with a note:
Dynah made it home safely. Got there about 1:30 p.m. today.
He stuck it to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet.

Breathing a prayer of thanksgiving and relief, he raked his hands back through his disheveled hair. He took a shower—a long hot shower. Tossing the towel in the direction of a plastic laundry basket, Joe went into his bedroom, flopped down onto his twin mattress, and dragged the blankets over him.

Joe Guilierno slept soundly for the first time in a week.