“I'll reach out to him,” Fiona offered. “He’s my trainer, too.”
“Do you think Alexis could have been having an affair with Hank at the time of her death?”
“No,” she answered immediately. “He's excellent at his job but he’s older than I am and not at all her type.”
“Okay,” Jeremiah said. “Kelly?”
For the first time, they were stumped.
“Even though,” Jude said, “we don’t know who Kelly is, it’s likely one of the people we’ll be talking to will know who she is. I’ll add a question about her to the worksheet.”
And so it went. “That’s all of them,” Jeremiah finally said, setting the paper aside.
“I’m going to need more wine,” Mom stated.
Remy checked the time. Very soon, on this mid-morning Tuesday four days after The Kiss, Jeremiah would arrive at Wendell’s. She and Jeremiah were going to hike to Maiden’s Cliff—the spot where Alexis had either jumped or been killed. They’d be out in a public place. That and the seriousness of the location would bolster her control.
She was prepared!
This was fine. She was sitting calmly at Wendell's kitchen table, very much over whatever temporary insanity had possessed her at Appleton when she’d kissed him.
Wendell wandered in and opened his bread drawer.
“There are no more donuts,” she informed him. “I bought frozen bran muffins for you instead.”
His shoulders slumped. “Why would anyone freeze a muffin?”
“Convenience and nutrition.”
“But not tastiness.” He stuck a bran muffin on a small plate and put both in the microwave.
“Can I talk to you about something?” she asked as he waited for the muffin to thaw.
“Of course.”
Wendell had been a theologian and pastor, which made him her resident expert in matters of faith. She relayed to him what she’d explained to Jeremiah the other night, about how she’d distanced herself from God. “Jeremiah asked me if I still struggle with the emotions I asked God to take away. I said no and he wondered aloud if it’s possible, then, that Goddideventually answer my prayer by taking the emotions away. My knee-jerk reaction in the moment was to tell him no. But I’ve been thinking about it and now I’m not so sure.”
“Ah.” He carried his muffin over to the table and sat across from her, his adorably pointy face empathetic. Today’s sweater was green with a lawnmower stitched into the front.
“I hate thinking back on the months following the assault,” she confided. “The feelings were so huge, it was like they became my whole identity. I was nothing but atoms of rage, bitterness, and humiliation. At the time, I believed I’d never get free of them.” It had been skin-crawling, panic-inducing terrible.
“I understand,” he said simply. “As you know, I’ve been struggling with sorrow and grief. I don’t have any quick fixes. But I can tell you what I know, if you want me to.”
“I do.”
He stacked his long hands on the table. “I know that God has a soft spot for those of us who feel like we’ve been thrown onto the garage sale pile. A giant soft spot for us. He’s never closer to us than when we’re beaten up, unloved, betrayed.”
“Then why, back then, did He seem so far away?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes the way things seem isn’t the way they are.”
“I was right to pray for Him to remove those feelings, so why didn’t He go ahead and remove them sooner?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I’ve been asking Him to remove my sadness. And what did He do? He sent you.”
She released a surprised laugh. “I’m not an answer to prayer! I’m making you clean your house.”
“Answers to prayer don’t always look the way you expect them to. My sadness isn’t gone but it’s much better, you know. Because you’re here, Remy. And now I have company.”
