Chapter 29
He was reading through James when the first call came.
Melvin put down his Bible, the one Anita had given to him for his fortieth birthday so long ago.
He hadn’t touched it even once for twenty-two years.
Until the week he had buried her. Tucked inside, he’d found notes in her flowery, feminine penmanship, that talked about various things.
Verses, mostly. Notes from sermons and Bible studies she’d attended throughout the years.
Her personal reflections and beliefs, and sometimes funny little opinions that had sounded so much like her he’d almost been convinced he could hear her saying them right next to him.
After he had lost her, he had found those notes. They had brought him closer to her somehow. He would never forget that.
It was almost like God had led him to this part of her now.
He answered his phone immediately. Forty years with the TSP had conditioned him to make sure he never missed a call. Lives had depended on it at times. That was a lesson no one would ever forget.
He didn’t know when it stopped mattering back then. He’d like to think he was better now. A better man. One who had been redeemed.
He had to remember that. He had been redeemed, not by any of his own earthly actions, but by the blood.
Melvin listened. His heart caught at the words. “I did not want this.”
“It has to be done. What are you going to do about it, Melvin? Just tell all? Confess your sins and you too shall be saved? All that fucking bullshit again? When does it end? Anita has been gone long enough for you to get over this bullshit.”
The voice on the other end was one he had heard countless times now.
Had been a friend so long he could not remember even when they had first met.
Someone he had trusted. He knew they did not understand why he had changed after Anita.
But he had. His friends—they joked and mocked him now. But he had expected that.
He continued to pray for their souls every day. So that they too would understand. “I just want the broken to be fixed, the darkness to end. I just…mostly want to forget.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. Maybe you’ve found some sort of salvation, but that doesn’t exactly erase what you’ve done.
And with what those morons did at those fucking Barratts’—what do you expect will happen?
We have things to clean up. Or do you want to spend the rest of your fucking life in a cage?
I sure as hell don’t. And I’m not going to.
No matter what I need to do, or what I have to pay to those bitches. ”
No. He didn’t want to go to prison, either. He could not do that to Skylar. He just couldn’t.
He couldn’t be the man God wanted him to be if he was in prison for things he had done before God had come into his heart.
He couldn’t be there for Skylar. She already felt he hadn’t been there for her when she’d been growing up.
He couldn’t do that to her now. He wanted to be there when she married, when she had children.
He wanted to be Grandpa, to tell those beautiful future children how much their grandmother would have loved them, how much God loved them now, and to share what he had amassed with them, so their futures would be brighter than his own.
That was all he wanted now.
But…there were still shadows on his soul. Actions for which he needed to make some sort of restitution.
He could not do that if he went to jail. “I won’t, either. That doesn’t mean it sits well with me.”
“Sometimes, you have to do what’s necessary, Mel. You just have to. That was a lesson we all learned long ago. People die. Get over it.”
Lessons learned. Well, he had plenty of those.
Just…now he wondered who would pay for the sins he’d committed so long ago.
He just stayed where he was after he disconnected. And prayed. For his eternal soul.
And for forgiveness for the things he had allowed to be done.