The Atonement Child Read online

  “I didn’t do it, did I?”

  “Don’t push me, lady. You scared the life out of me!”

  She glared up at him. “I’m still breathing. I’m still pregnant!” Lowering her chin, she looked away.

  The words knocked the anger out of him. He stared down at the top of her head. Was that all she thought he cared about? A lot she knew.

  Sitting down beside her, he let his breath out slowly and set his own feelings aside. He rested his forearms on his raised knees. “What changed your mind?” he said gently.

  “Not the baby.” Turning her head, she looked at him, straight on, eyes glittering. “I don’t care about it. In fact, I hate it!”

  He heard the challenge, knew what she expected him to say. Well, he wasn’t going to give her that kind of assistance.

  Dynah waited. “Well?”

  “I heard you.”

  She searched Joe’s face and saw no condemnation or anger. Ashamed, she looked away and blinked back tears. “I couldn’t swallow them. Satisfied? I kept wondering what my mother and father would think when they found out I was dead.” She shook her head. “I talked to Mom a few days ago. She knows something’s wrong. If I . . . if I . . . well, killed myself . . . she’d find some way to blame herself. She’d want to know why. It’d all come out. And Ethan. How would he feel? And Janet. What would she think?” She looked at him. “And you.”

  He told the blunt truth. “I wouldn’t get over it. Not ever.”

  She saw he meant it. Somehow, it eased the anguish inside her, the feeling of being alone. “Oh, Joe, every which way I look, there’s no way out, is there?”

  “Maybe there doesn’t have to be.” He knew it wasn’t what she needed to hear the moment the words were out of his mouth.

  “Don’t you dare tell me there’s a reason! Don’t tell me God was in this, because if He was, I’ll hate Him for it. I’ll hate Him just like I hate the man who raped me!” She buried her head in her arms.

  Someday he’d learn to keep his mouth shut and not feel impelled, like Job’s friends, to say something.

  The problem was, he believed God had a reason for everything, and Dynah knew that. Life experience had taught him God was close and personal. He and Ethan had had frequent discussions on the subject and agreed. It was easy to accept God’s sovereignty when everything was going great, when life was a bed of roses. Seeing God’s hand in this kind of grief was something else again.

  It was testing his faith.

  Was it obliterating hers?

  “I want out,” Dynah said, not raising her head. “Oh, God, I want out. Can you understand, Joe?”

  “Yeah, I can understand,” he said grimly, “but killing yourself isn’t the answer.”

  “And the other?” she said tentatively, unable to say baby.

  She didn’t have to say it. He knew exactly what she meant. “What did the pastor of Community tell you?” he asked, hedging for time, trying to think of what the Lord wanted him to say.

  “It’s legal.”

  Joe clenched his teeth, his blood going hot. What a cop-out that was.

  “But you wouldn’t approve of me, would you?”

  “My feelings about you wouldn’t change.”

  She raised her head and looked at him. “Are you saying you’d approve?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying.” She looked so confused, and he didn’t know how to make it any clearer without telling her everything. And he couldn’t do that. Not now. Not under these circumstances. “I want to help you, Dynah. Any way I can. Tell me how.”

  Her mouth curved sadly. “I wish I knew, Joe. Things can’t be undone. They just are.” She looked away, staring off across the fields toward the freeway. “Maybe God will be merciful, and I’ll miscarry.”

  Joe didn’t say anything to that, but he was thankful she didn’t ask him to pray for it.

  Dynah sensed his dilemma. Ashamed, she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She didn’t want to talk about anything. Her feelings were so jumbled. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?” That was innocuous enough.

  Joe could feel the tension in her, the rigid self-control she was exerting. For his sake. He’d feel better if she let it out. “Reminds me of Antelope Valley. Ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t look like this, but it has the same feel. Desolate. And then spring hits, and everywhere you look are splashes of colors. Poppies, lupins, Indian paintbrush. When I was growing up, my mom’d drive my brother and sisters and me out there every May. I went every year until I turned thirteen.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I started running with the gang.” His mouth tipped wryly. “Going to see spring flowers wasn’t cool.”

  A light breeze moved past them, reminding them both that winter wasn’t that long ago. There was still a bite in the air. “Did you ever go back?” Dynah asked, still looking out across the rolling fields of crushed winter grass. Sprigs of green were just beginning to push from beneath the dark surface.

  “First place I went after being baptized. I even took a picnic and invited a couple of my old buddies to go with me.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning, “but they thought I’d gone completely nuts. Crazy for Jesus.”

  She turned her head toward him, smiling sadly. “You still are, aren’t you?”

  “Convicted. Redeemed. On a mission. But it’s not like it was in the beginning. That emotional high. Feeling on fire. There’s effort, day by day, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other effort. And trust. That’s been hardest for me. Trusting God. Walking in faith that He knows better than I do what’s good for me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  Joe’s heart squeezed tight at the look in her eyes. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Reaching out, he gently tucked a tendril of blonde hair behind her ear. “The Lord hasn’t abandoned you, Dynah.”

  “I know that, Joe. His hand is heavy upon me.”

  Joe moved closer and put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. Comforted, she leaned into him. The silence between them was companionable rather than lonely. Dynah remembered how the prairie reserve looked in September, the tall grasses dry and moving like the sea.

  “I miss the ocean,” she said wistfully. “That’s the one thing I’ve never gotten over. Not being able to see the ocean. I miss the smell of the sea, the sun on the sand. Watching the gulls flock and the pelicans dive. I used to go out to the beach whenever I could. Mom and Dad liked to go up the coast at least once a year. Highway 1. When I was a little girl, I used to wish I could live in Mendocino. Or Fort Bragg. It’s so beautiful there, the redwoods behind you, the ocean stretching as far as you can see, and the fog rolling in like a gray blanket.”

  The wind came up again, and she shivered.

  Joe noticed. “What do you say we go someplace and have something to eat?” In another hour, it would be sunset. He stood and held out his hand to her.

  Dynah didn’t want to go back. Ethan would be waiting. Ethan with his solutions and demands. Ethan with his righteousness and anger. Ethan with his conditional love. She wanted to stay here in the quiet remoteness and think about other things, anything but Ethan and what he expected her to do.

  “I’ll be all right, Joe. You don’t have to stand guard over me.”

  He hunkered down and tipped her chin up. “You wanna stay, we’ll stay.”

  She took his hand in both of hers and looked into his eyes. “I want to stay awhile longer, Joe, but I don’t want to talk.”

  “Okay.” Straightening, he walked away. Stopping beneath the biggest sycamore, he shoved his hands into his pockets. His right encountered the bottle of pills. She needed to be alone. He could understand that. What she didn’t need was isolation.

  She didn’t move until the sun was setting. Then she stood and watched the horizon change color. Putting aside her situation and the turmoil, she drank in the beauty. It didn’t last long en
ough. The oranges and yellows melted away in the encroaching darkness. The North Star appeared like a tiny spot of light in the heavens. Joe joined her. She felt his hand lightly push her French braid back over her shoulder.

  “You ready now?”

  “I guess so.” She couldn’t stay here forever. She had to go back and face whatever came.

  They walked back along the trail together. Joe took her hand when they reached the creek. “Careful,” he said, his fingers closing firmly over hers. He lifted her the last foot and set her on firm ground. When they reached the parking area, she dug in her pocket for her keys.

  “Oh, no.”

  “They’re in my trunk,” Joe said, unlocking it.

  She blushed. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. . . .”

  He held her purse out to her. “I locked them up for safekeeping.”

  She knew better than that. What would she have done if he hadn’t arrived when he did? She hugged him, her arms tight around his waist, her cheek against his chest. “Thanks, Joe.”

  He held her close, his hand cupping the back of her head. He heard her soft, shuddering sigh and then felt her withdrawal.

  Joe followed her back to NLC. He sat in his car, the motor running, and watched her go up the dorm steps and inside. He waited a few minutes longer and then headed for his apartment. Ethan had left a message that he was helping at a youth rally in Wheaton.

  Taking the bottle of pills from his pocket, Joe uncapped them and dumped them down the garbage disposal. Turning the water on full force, he hit the switch. When the harsh grinding sound changed to a steady hum, he flicked the switch and tossed the empty bottle into the trash under the sink.

  Slouching into a worn chair, he raked his hands through his hair and held his head. “Jesus,” he said softly. “Jesus.”

  “Miss Carey, Dean Abernathy would like to see you in his office at your earliest convenience,” said the pleasant female voice.

  Dynah clutched the telephone tightly. “Did he say what it was about?”

  “I’m sorry, no. All he said was it’s important. Do you have free time this morning?”

  A sick dread swept over her, a premonition. Her grades had dropped in the past three months, and she knew her scholarship was at stake. “I can see him between ten and eleven if that’s all right.”

  “He has an appointment at ten, but it shouldn’t take long. Why don’t you come to his office at ten fifteen?”

  She couldn’t concentrate during her British novel course. She had finished reading Dickens’s Bleak House but didn’t participate in the discussion about the characters or story line.

  What would her parents think if she lost her scholarship? She was counting on it to get her through. She couldn’t very well ask her parents for financial support after she married Ethan, and she and Ethan together couldn’t make enough to pay the tuition and fees.

  “Miss Carey,” the professor said when the class was dismissed and students began filing out. As they did so, they picked up their graded midterm exams on a table near the door. “May I speak with you a moment, please?”

  Heart sinking, Dynah noticed the blue essay notebook in his hand and knew it was her midterm. Nodding, she took a swift glance at her watch as she gathered her books. She had twenty minutes before her appointment with Dean Abernathy.

  “Sit down,” Professor Provost said, nodding to a desk in the front row. As she did so, he took a chair and turned it, sitting down in front of her. He handed her the exam without a word. She felt the blood running out of her face as she stared at the circled F on the front, then felt it flood back hot with shame. Her eyes pricked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not looking for an apology, Miss Carey. I’m looking for an explanation.”

  “I guess I didn’t study hard enough.”

  “The results of that exam show you didn’t study at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again softly, keeping her head down.

  “I had you in class last year. I know what kind of work you’re capable of doing. You’re one of the brightest students I’ve had. You had a solid A in this course. Then you stopped participating.”

  She shook her head, her throat closed up tight, the exam clutched in her hands. All she could see was the red letter, solid evidence of her failure.

  “I’m aware you’re getting married in August, Miss Carey, but that doesn’t mean you have to toss your education to the wind.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing, sir.”

  “No? Well, I’ve seen it happen before. A bright student with a scholarship and great potential arrives; she meets the man of her dreams, gets engaged, and her education flies right out the window. I’m not against matrimony, mind you, or a woman wanting to be a wife and mother. What I am against is waste. God has given you gifts, Miss Carey, special gifts. It’s your responsibility to make the most of them.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” she said, feeling acutely his disappointment in her. “I’ll try harder.”

  “Don’t try, Miss Carey. Do it. You have the rest of the semester to bring that grade up. I hope you won’t disappoint me.” He stood and slid the chair back toward his desk. “You’re dismissed.”

  Dynah stood outside the classroom doorway, her stomach twisted in a hard knot. Trembling, she glanced at her wristwatch again. Shifting her book bag, she headed down the corridor and out of the brick building. She stood between the marble columns, looking out at the quad.

  She was five minutes late getting to the dean’s office. He looked annoyed despite her apology. “Sit down, please, Miss Carey,” he said, indicating a wingback chair in front of his massive mahogany desk. As she set her book bag down and took the proffered chair, he pressed the intercom button and told his secretary that he wasn’t to be disturbed. Dynah waited, her heart drumming with foreboding.

  Dean Abernathy took his seat and leaned forward, arms resting on his desk, his fingers tapping together lightly. “This is difficult,” he said grimly, his brows knit.

  “I know my grades have fallen, Dean Abernathy. I’m hoping to change that since changing jobs. I have more time to study now.”

  “I didn’t call you here to discuss your grades, Miss Carey,” he said solemnly, “but your condition.”

  Her head came up, eyes wide.

  “It’s come to my attention recently—” he lowered his hands—“that you’re pregnant.”

  Her face went hot with humiliation.

  “I know the circumstances,” he said quickly, raising his hands slightly to appease any distress she might have. “And I’m much aggrieved about it. But we still need to face the possible ramifications.”

  Ramifications? Shutting her eyes, she lowered her head. “Who told you?”

  “Ethan,” he said grimly. “I assure you, he didn’t volunteer the information easily. He didn’t want to tell me, but it came out during our appointment yesterday morning. I’d noticed a drop in his performance and wanted to find out what was the matter. He’s been at the top of his class since entering NLC. A number of men on the board of trustees have been watching his progress with great interest, as have I. I think Ethan will be one of our most persuasive preachers one day. If nothing distracts his focus, he will continue to do well. When I asked him what had happened to his concentration, he made excuses. That isn’t like him, and they didn’t satisfy. I pressed.” He sighed heavily. “I’m almost sorry now he told me, because it’s put me in a painfully awkward position.”

  She clasped her hands tightly; the room felt cold and filled with shadows.

  “He’s very distressed about what happened to you,” Dean Abernathy said with sympathy. “As I’m sure you are as well, Dynah. And I’m sympathetic; believe me I am.”

  She raised her head and looked at him, sensing what was to come.

  “Unfortunately I can’t change the rules, and they are very clear. Any young woman found to be pregnant is immediately removed from enrollment at NLC. I’ve little choice in the matter, unless you wa
nt me to go before the board of trustees and tell all the details of what’s happened to you.”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You’ve suffered enough humiliation already.”

  “Am I being expelled?” she said weakly, crushed at the unfairness of it.

  “That’s the last thing I’d call it, Dynah, but you can’t stay on here unless you agree to publicly expose what’s happened. Unless you’re able to do that, I’ll have to ask you to withdraw from school. I won’t have any choice in the matter.”

  What was he saying? That she would have to stand before a general assembly and tell everyone she was raped? Then people might feel some compassion for her condition.

  And how many would feel as Ethan did, that what she carried was an abomination?

  “Please try to understand,” he went on gently, leaning forward. “If only a few of your closest friends know of the circumstances of your pregnancy, what’s going to be the common assumption on this campus? That you and Ethan have committed fornication, and NLC has condoned it by allowing you to remain as a student here. Can you see the potential problems? All manner of difficulties could arise from it. We don’t want people to get the wrong message.”

  No, of course not. She understood. They might be titillated. Then they might commit a sin, and it would be her fault. “What about Ethan?” Would he be asked to leave as well? It would destroy him.

  “Ethan’s not to blame for this. I’m going to work with him over the next two months. I’ve taken personal interest in his career since he was a sophomore, and I don’t want to see his opportunities diminished by this tragedy. He’s agreed to see one of our campus counselors on a biweekly basis, and I think that will help. We’ll do everything we can to help him get his studies back on track again.”

  It wasn’t what she was asking, but it answered questions she hadn’t even thought to ask. The disparity struck her heart. Ethan’s not to blame for this. Was she?

  “Ethan wants me to have an abortion, Dean Abernathy,” she said before she thought better of it, reacting from hurt and self-preservation. Ethan, the chosen one, righteous and blameless before the Lord.