The Chosen (21 page)

He would also be alone—more alone than he had ever been. At least, when he
had
lived in the forest he
had known
that he had family
,
even if he chose not to see them or talk to them most of the time. This time it would be different. His niece and nephews were living in a foreign country; he would never see them again. He would never see Karyn again.  And even though he found Mike odd, he liked him—he’d always liked him. He’d always liked Jeff. Everyon
e was gone—everything was gone.
Now the only two choices left
to
him were to run away and pretend that he had never known any of them or to stay here and die with them. There was no big glorious ending for his life after all—just a choice about how he would live the next twenty-four hours and how he would die. To believe anything different than this required a faith that he had not allowed himself for many years. Only God could help them now, but Keith had not allowed himself to
think about God
for
a
very
long time. For the first time in years, he wanted to ask for His help, but he couldn’t bring himself to do
it.
By a
sking he would be admitting that he was wrong
—that
he had been wrong all along. As the reality of his situation sank in
,
as he sat
all alone in th
e
house, his own fear and sadness and sense of inadequacy crashed over him
,
and he put his head in his hands and sobbed as he had not done since the day he had buried Cassie and his baby.

Chapter
28

K
ris arrived at the house
just as t
he sun was
setting
.  Keith was still in the living room. His eyes looked puffy. “I gotta go…gotta finish up some stuff with Jessie and Kyle, since this is the last night,” he mumbled as he walked out the front door. She heard him insert his key and lock it behind him.
After purposely loitering on the street for about five minutes, he reentered the basement by the side door and then exited through the tunnel without her ever being aware that he had returned.

Kris was sorry to see him go; she had
hoped that they could spend this last
evening together—not to talk, not to do anything, just to be together. Just the presence of another human being would
have been
some comfort, but now she was completely alone in this tiny, ugly
hovel
.  As the sun
set
,
the wood siding walls seemed to close in smaller and smaller around her, and she could hear every creak of the floor and gurgle of the old pipes as if they were being magnified through an amplifier.

She thought about the day
nine months earlier when
she had first gone to see Julian. She had been so confident that they would win this suit that she had not even taken time to consider whether she had any other options.
S
he had told
herself over and over that God would not have
allowed
her
to
meet Michael, would not have let them fall in love, would not have given her the beautiful baby she had always wanted but had given up hoping for,
only to take them all away.
  That thought had sustained her durin
g the most difficult parts of the
process—the assurance that in the end they would
all
be together. Now,
that
she
was
less than twenty-four
hours away from
learning the
outcome of all
th
eir
work, she was not so sure. Maybe
it was
only
a test—maybe they were never meant to win.  Maybe Michael and Jeff were meant to die in prison, and she was destined to be executed. 

Alone in the house with only the sound of her own thoughts,
Kris
walked
through
the rooms and talked to God.  She thought about her parents.  Of everything she regretted in her life, she was
the
sorriest for their deaths. If she had made the decision to quit her job even one week sooner, they
might
still be alive.
I
f she had not walked into the FMPD headquarters and accepted the job as a
L
evel I Planner that day in March of 2014, none of this would have happened. 

Kris looked at her watch—it was past midnight.  She did not want to go to bed;
although she was
exhausted
,
she was too nervous to sleep.  Sitting down on the bare floor she leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she was transported back in time; it was the Fourth of July
,
2014.  The night was hot and clear and she and Karyn and Jeff were sitting outdoors at Enchanted Island watching fireworks with Jim and Janine. She could feel Seth’s head in her lap as she stroked his warm, sweaty curls. She could feel the warmth of Faith’s hand as she held it in her own.  She remembered exactly how everyone had looked and sounded and how she had wanted to stay in that moment forever. Just as unexpectedly as she had dozed off, she awoke with a start to find herself on the floor alone. Her dream brought back all of the events of that year with startling clarity.

She remembered the first day she had met Michael in the cafeteria at W. She had thought then that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen; she must have loved him from that first day. He had always been so strong—he could not have always been as unafraid as he appeared to be, but he acted unafraid, and through his courage he had given all of them courage. If she had known how this would end, would she have allowed herself to fall in love with him?  If she could have looked into the future and seen this night, would she have married him and borne his child?
Or w
ould they both have been better off if she had thrown away the mobile phone he had smuggled to her on her last day as an employee of FMPD?

No, whatever happened tomorrow, she would never regret having married Michael or having had Mitch. For all of the suffering they had all experience
d
, and for all of the suffering that might be ahead, becoming Michael’s wife was probably the best decision she had ever made in her adult life. Her happiness with Michael had been so intense that it had made all of the pain worthwhile.  These
p
ast
months
she had prayed for him every
day, all during the day, and suffered each day knowing t
hat he was in prison, sick, ill-
treated and malnourished.  She could not change what had happened, or even what would happen tomorrow, but she had fought for her husband and her child with everything that she had at her disposal. If that were not enough, then it was not enough. But knowing
Michael
, just having
been his wife, had helped her
find a strength she had never believed she could possess. She would die loving him, whether that death came in a few days or in forty years.

And Mitch…he had been only eight months old the last time she had seen him.  Now he was
almost
two years old
.  She wondered what he looked like now.  She tried to imagine him walking and talking—did he call Karyn “Mama”?  She had
missed his first word, his first step, all of the happy exciting firsts that parents wait and long for.  She took his picture out of her purse. It was carefully folded behind her Social Security card in her wallet.  Taken just before Michael and Jeff had been arrested, it was an eight-month old Mitch, his light brown curls
curving
gently around his face and framing his huge blue eyes with their dark lashes. His mouth was open in the shape of an “O” revealing a raspberry pink tongue and pink lips. He looked so happy and expectant in the picture.  She had been holding a
cookie
just off camera to
coax
him to smile
,
and he was frozen in time waiting for it with
an
eagerness that only a baby can
e
x
perience
.

Tears began to splash from her eyes onto the picture that she clutched in her hand. As the tears fell, her entire body was racked with deep sobs—for the parents she had loved and lost, for the sister who was gone, for the husband who might be about to die, and for the baby she might never hold again. After a long time, she cried herself to sleep.

Kris opened her eyes—a tiny rim of gold was just lining the underside of the dark clouds.  It was morning
. S
he had been awake
most
of the night
; s
he must have dozed off
just
before dawn.

The tear-stained picture of Mitch was lying next to her—she picked it up and put it in her purse so that she would not start crying again.  The night was over; morning
had come,
and there was no more time for tears. 

She got some water
from the kitchen faucet
to swallow a couple of the few remaining aspirin
she had
in her purse
. Her head hurt, her throat was sore
, s
he ached all over
,
but she thought
her pain
was
due to
stress and exhaustion rather than flu.

Keith had not come back
. S
he had wanted to say goodbye to him—to tell him how much all of his help and hard
work had meant to her.  She needed to find a way to tell him now
,
in case she did not see him again.
His laptop was still on the desk. He would almost certainly come back for it.
She would leave him a note—just in case. Kris’ hands trembled as she logged on and tried to formulate exact
ly how to tell her brother good
by
e
. When his homepage came up she hardly noticed
The Line Up
with its photos and descriptions of “domestic terrorists”, but something caught her eye that made her heart skip a beat and riveted her attention on the photo in front of her. “Lena St. Clair arrested April 1, 2018, along with co
-c
onspir
a
t
ors
Edward and Lexy St. Clair…” Kris’ mind went numb and she was unable to read the remainder of the
information accompanying the photo.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “Please help Lena and Ed and Lexy. Please, Lord, please don’t let them die. Keep them safe and set them free. They have given up so much to fight back this evil that threatens our country. Please help them, and please make the Court strike down the NDAA.”

When she had gained control of herself, Kris
opened the word processing software and typed carefully
:

“Keith, I want to thank you so much for everything you have done for all of us—for Mom and Dad, for Karyn and the kids, for Michael and Jeff and for me. I don’t know what I would have done without you. No matter what happens today, I want you to know that I will always be grateful.

“
Now that this is
finally
over, I pray that you will start a new life somewhere safe.  I want you to be happy, Keith, and to find the joy and peace that comes from having a relationship with Jesus. And I want you to be at peace knowing that all of us know
that you did everything that you could possibly do.  I love you very much.”

She closed the notepad and left it
on the desk.  She washed her face
,
brushed her teeth
,
smoothed
her hair
into a chignon at the nape of her neck
,
and w
alked
out the door.

The air was cold as she stood on the lawn of the Capitol. The rain had
turned into a wet slushy snow that fell like great frozen teardrops
against her skin.  From her taxi she had seen the cherry blossoms
. How
was it possible to have a morning that cold
when
lovely pink cherry blossoms
were in full bloom
all over Washington D.C.
?
Kris thought that these next few hours would determine her future—whether she would live, whether Michael and Jeff would live, whether she would ever hold Mitch again, but the trees blossomed just as they had every spring.  Long after she and Michael and Jeff were all just memories, the trees would be blooming and the bright blue and green mallard ducks would be swimming in the reflecting pool of the Washington Mall.

“I’m sorry I’m late,”
t
he voice behind her was Keith
’s.
“I spent the night destroying hard drives. Jessie and Kyle crossed the border into Canada early this morning. I stayed behind to make sure that if things go bad today the Feds won’t be able to find anything to implicate those guys. I thought I could make it back before you
left
so
that
I could drive you.”

“Keith, you shouldn’t be here.
You’ve done everything you can do. You need to be some place safe.”

“I am some place safe. Living or dying we follow the Lord.  Come on; let’s go,” he took her hand and led her up the cold, wet concrete steps.