The Devil's Secret (6 page)

More often lately than ever before, Brandon wondered what course his life would have taken had Tim not adopted him as a rough and thuggish thirteen-year-old. Would he be here getting married today? Would he have become a cop, like his street-smart teenage self had wanted, so he could punish everyone who’d ever hurt him? He certainly would never have met Heather, and that would have been a shame.

He made his way through the tables, fielding various congratulations and shaking various hands in greeting and in thanks. Most of these interactions were as fake as a three-dollar bill, but Brandon didn’t mind. He’d been doing a lot of this lately.

“Hey there, lucky man,” said Shannon Kolsch. “I’m not gonna stop asking until you give me a hint about when we can all expect some little Brandons running around. I hope you’ll bring them around the church every now and again.” She laughed, apparently still unaware that Heather didn’t want kids. Brandon, truth be told, still hoped to convince Heather otherwise, but the subtext behind Shannon’s words irritated him nonetheless.
Conform.
That was what Shannon was really saying. But Heather and Brandon wouldn’t. If they had kids, it would be for their own reasons.
Just one more thing for the church to criticize us about.

Brandon thanked Shannon and went on his way. The reception crowd was mercifully small, and most of the guests were Tim’s friends—not Brandon’s or Heather’s. At least ten times tonight already, Brandon had found himself shaking hands with strangers who claimed to know him.

But when Brandon heard Karen Noyce’s voice, he remembered that sometimes a stranger’s empty greeting was preferable to an acquaintance’s disdain. She sat at a table near the back of the room with her posse of five other women. Her professional slacks, button shirt, and rolled-up sleeves stood out against the tuxedos and formal dresses around her. But what really made her stand out was that Karen, along with every other woman at her table, had a Bible lying open on the tabletop next to her food. Instead of engaging in the evening’s festivities, these women were actually reading the Holy Book in seclusion.
At my wedding!
It took some nerve.

Brandon had sworn to himself that he’d be polite, though. Karen had campaigned against this marriage, but Brandon had nothing against her personally. She’d helped him out of tough spots countless times over the years, and Tim was quite fond of her, so Brandon had tried not to hold a grudge.
And if this is the last fuss she puts up tonight, I should count my blessings.

Brandon stepped closer and overheard Karen’s genteel voice reading from the Good Book: “Because of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Karen glanced up from her Bible to see Brandon listening. Soft light from the centerpiece’s candles glimmered in her eyes. She nodded to him. “Brandon.”

Brandon nodded back. “Pastor Noyce.”

That was all that needed to be said. It was all that
could
be said. Brandon felt the women’s glares on his back as he walked toward the clubhouse’s outer door. He resolved to not let their subdued protest have any effect on him.

Brandon was proud for having married such a brilliant, beautiful woman as Heather. His love for his new wife was strong, unbreakable. Whatever Karen and the rest of the church thought about that love was their problem, not Brandon’s, and certainly not his wife’s. Still, he regretted that all this hassle had been thrust upon the both of them.

“That’s what you get for marrying an atheist,” Tim had told him in the heat of a recent argument. Tim had since apologized, but his words had stuck with Brandon. “I raised you to be a better man than this,” he’d said. “I raised you to love God.”

Brandon had fond memories of his teenage years at Good Shepherd, and the tight-knit, loving community he’d been part of there. They’d even encouraged and nurtured his early interest in science. And that was his only regret about this marriage: it had placed a rift between himself and that community. As far as he was concerned, nothing should have changed in his relationship with any of them: not with Virgil or Hannah or Tim or even Karen, or any of the others. He didn’t want or mean to hurt them. He still cared about them all, and they claimed to care about him, too. But he’d been subjected to such intense scorn after admitting his own irreligion that he’d started to doubt the foundations of every one of his childhood friendships. Alone at night, he’d wept about it several times.

But I can’t argue with them
, he reminded himself. Every reasonable, rational step Brandon had taken away from religion was nothing but a secular lie when viewed by his friends at Good Shepherd Family Church. When Brandon had asserted that he was carefully weighing truth claims, the church just said he was “deceived.”

He’d wanted Christianity to be true. He’d desperately wanted God to be real, and had used every excuse he could find to defend the beliefs with which he’d been raised. But when he’d read the skeptics’ arguments thoroughly, they’d convinced him. Tim and Karen understood none of that, even though Brandon had tried to explain it. As far as they were concerned, the devil had gotten to him, and that was all there was to it. He’d gone off to college and been brainwashed by the liberal elite. There was no other possible explanation.

It was Karen who’d led the attack, going so far as to preach a whole sermon about apostasy three weeks ago, a sermon not so subtly targeting Brandon in the pews. And as much as Brandon admired the progressiveness of a church with a female preacher, when she’d voiced disapproval of his “yoking together with an unbeliever,” Brandon had given up his attempts to find a middle ground with her.

Even after that, Karen had cornered him in the hallway one Sunday morning to tell him that she was praying for him to give up his sinful lifestyle. (Never mind that literally nothing about his lifestyle had changed during his deconversion.) She’d insinuated that his marriage was doomed to unhappiness, and that he’d end up falling into pornography addiction. Brandon still wasn’t sure where she’d gotten that last bit from. He’d never cared for porn, even in private.

But Karen had saved her harshest offensive for earlier tonight, when she’d cornered Heather in the bride’s dressing room and actually tried to talk her into leaving Brandon. He still seethed at the memory. If he never had to see that woman again in his life, he’d—

“Ah, Mr. Barnett,” said a server carrying a platter of wine glasses. “Would you like some wine?”

At the interruption, Brandon realized that all his muscles were tight, his teeth clenched.
Damn it, there I go again.
He’d promised Heather that he’d forgo his proclivity for pessimism just for one day, and so far he was failing. He forced himself to laugh, relax, and shake out his arms. “No thanks, I don’t drink,” he told the waiter. Had Tim not informed the country club staff that Brandon was a recovering alcoholic? Oh well: Brandon had certainly recovered enough by now to resist the temptation. It’d been Heather who’d helped him grow into sobriety…

And there she was, sitting way out on the edge of the pier, knees bent toward her chest, arms around her knees. She’d taken a liking to that quaint spot by the lake the first time she’d seen it, during last year’s summer vacation.

Brandon opened the door and stepped outside. The band’s rendition of “What A Wonderful World” grew muffled behind him as he strode past the garden onto the empty lawn, then down the hill toward the lake.

The air was brisk for mid-April. Brandon tightened his jacket around himself and walked a little faster. He tried to read Heather’s mood in her posture, but couldn’t. Time and time again, he’d assured her that they didn’t have to have a formal wedding. He’d even admitted his aversion to the idea of marriage. And he’d explained that his family and friends would be rough on her. But she’d felt that a wedding was an important statement to make to Brandon’s hometown community. Brandon couldn’t argue with her on that.

It’s not like any of it ultimately matters, anyway.

As his feet thumped against the wooden pier, a magnificent burst of sheet lightning lit up the clouds in the distance. At least the Heavens were celebrating their union.

“Hey,” he said as he approached Heather, who’d changed into a simple blue frock.

She turned to see him, gave an oddly solemn smile, then looked back over the water. “Hey. How you doing?”

Brandon sat next to his wife and slid a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Hanging in there. What about you?”

“I’m okay. How’s my dad?”

“Still acting like he knows you, like you’ve been best buds for years. Seems like he’s having a good time.”

“Cool. That preacher woman still throwing a tantrum?”

“No, not really. She seems okay.”

“Hmm.”

Crickets chirped and water sloshed against the bottom of the pier. Every few seconds, a paddleboat tied to a support column knocked against the pier’s outer joist. Cool moonlight reflected off the lake, beaming from both above and below onto Heather’s skin and her navy dress, which blended with the deep blues of the night around her. If not for her shivering, she’d have looked right at home in this pastoral of rural Virginia.

“Oh, here,” Brandon said. “You want my coat?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He draped the coat over her shoulders, and she snuggled into it.

“I kinda wish we hadn’t held the first ceremony in Seattle,” Heather said. “I could use some friends here now.”

“Yeah, me too.” He left unsaid that few of their college friends could afford to fly to Virginia for a wedding, and that Tim wouldn’t have footed the bill.

“I know you hate wedding customs, but I wish I had enough people here for a bride’s side, and then you could’ve had a groom’s side. I mean, you have all these people here, and I… I don’t know.”

“Hey, I feel just as alone as you. Trust me.”
Oh, what am I doing? She needs encouragement now—not my negativity. I need to cheer her up.
“Remember Shannon? She just asked me about kids again. Can you believe that? That makes four times just today.”

Heather’s eyes remained focused on the dark tree line on the far side of the lake. Brandon studied her. Actually, she seemed to be looking beyond the tree line, deep into the darkness of the woods themselves. He’d never seen this look on her face before, and its aloofness scared him a little.

“I have a boy named Benjamin,” Heather said in a voice barely above a whisper. “He’s five. Just started kindergarten.”

Silence hung between them as Brandon tried to discern the meaning of what she’d said. “I’m sorry, what? You have a child?” That would certainly be news to Brandon, but he guessed she was making some kind of joke, or telling some kind of riddle. The woman he knew wouldn’t have withheld such important information from him.

“No, I don’t have a child,” Heather said, her gaze lingering on the distant trees. “Of course I don’t. Not this time.”

“What?”

“Do you believe in past lives?” she asked nonsensically. Heather was staunchly nonreligious—had been the one to convince Brandon that God didn’t exist. Yet now she was raising such a supernatural notion with a straight face?

“I—uh…” Brandon stuttered, caught off guard. She had to be joking.

“I wonder,” Heather continued softly, “if you live through too many past lives, will you start to remember them?”

“I’m sorry, hon. What are you talking about?”

“Did you ever know a girl named Crystal?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

Finally she looked him in the eyes, and she appeared completely lucid. She smirked. “Sorry, I think I’ve had too much to drink.”

Aha. Now this makes sense.
“Well it’s a good thing I don’t drink anymore.”

“Thanks to me.” She grinned disarmingly.

“Yeah, thanks indeed. I’ll return the favor sometime.” He pecked her on the lips, and as he did, he smelled wine on her breath.

But Heather never drank, at least not around him. Had she been indoors socializing, Brandon wouldn’t have thought much of it. But with her way out here, alone on the pier, he wondered if this was her way of recovering from her earlier confrontation with Karen. “Here, let me help you inside. They want us to cut the cake.”

Brandon started to get up, but Heather stayed put, so he sat back down. She was looking out at the trees again, and her smile had faded.

“Hon, seriously. What’s wrong?” Brandon asked.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

Brandon had grown up avoiding uncomfortable truths, and he’d had enough of it. He wasn’t about to let unspoken sorrow further tarnish their wedding night. He placed his hand atop hers and gently massaged it. “Hon…”

Her expression collapsed into a frown, and she released a shaky sigh. “Let me do this for you,” she said. “Let
me
be the strong one tonight.”

That touched Brandon, but with his gratitude came guilt for having let her place such a burden on herself. Her good-natured veneer was cracking under the weight of the wedding guests’ resentful stares. The reception seemed tame enough to Brandon, but he chided himself for forgetting how much of a stranger Heather was here.
At least she got away from them to get some air.

“Hey, I’m okay, hon,” Brandon said. “You don’t have to do anything for me, or for anyone else. Nobody’s opinion here matters. Pretty soon we’ll be away from all this and we’ll never have to look back. We can even leave right now if you want. I’ll tell them you weren’t feeling well, and we can—”

“No.” With Brandon still running his hand tenderly over hers, she turned her palm upward and squeezed. “I can handle it,” she said. “I can handle it. Just don’t shove the cake in my face, okay?” She tried smiling again, and partially succeeded.