“Your Eli, though?” He looked confused. “A week and a half ago, you said you were leaving after the wedding and we were…done.”
“And last night I said I’d stay through the storm and while I’m here, I’d do some…research to…to bridge the gap of faith that has separated us,” she said. “Yes, I said I was leaving but now there’s a storm that’s keeping me here.”
A smile twitched. “And you don’t think there’s a God?”
That made her laugh. “I don’t,” she said, tempering that truth by tapping his chest. “But I do think that I love you. I know I do. And we’re not…done.”
He grasped her hand and closed his much bigger one around it. “I love you, too, Kate. I really do. I don’t want you to leave. And I don’t want our…gap of faith, as you call it…to break us up. But…”
“But it’s real,” she conceded. “I’m still an atheist and you’re still a Christian. Nothing will change that.”
“Nothing?” he pressed. “Then you won’t do the research?”
“Yes, I will. In fact, I’ve already started planning my strategy.”
He looked interested. “Which is…”
“I’m going to do it the way I do everything,” she said. “I’m going to read the scholarship. The historians, the philosophers, the people who’ve actually argued the question rather than people who’ve sung about it. I want primary sources. I want peer-reviewed work. Of course, there’s archeology, so I’ll want?—”
“Read the Bible, Kate.”
“Well, that won’t?—”
“Yes, it will. Read the Bible.” He said it without irony, the way he said anything he believed completely. “That’s the only place to start, then you can get to…peer reviews. If you have to.”
Did he really imagine she’d just read it and believe? Seriously, how could he know her and think that? She was a multi-degreed scientist with a mountain of published papers to her credit.
“Eli, with respect, the Bible is…” Kate searched for a word that wouldn’t insult him. “It’s a primary source for the people who already agree with the conclusion. It’s like asking me to evaluate a battery by reading the brochure written by the manufacturer.”
“Written by the witnesses. Firsthand, in person, reliable witnesses.”
She sighed, sensing this was going to be a disaster and might break them up faster than her first trip to church.
“Read what the witnesses wrote and decide if it lines up,” he continued. “You’d read it skeptically. I’m not asking you to read it any other way.”
She might as well readCinderellaand take the word of the stepsisters as, well,gospeltruth.
“Eli, that’s not how I’m going to get to the information I need. It’s…folklore.” Which only sounded slightly better than “fairy tales” and still made him wince. “It’s walking on water andmultiplying bread and fish and talking snakes. I am a chemist. I’m not built to give credence to that. I need to do proper research. I need to examine the quantity and quality of early manuscripts and how accurately they’ve been translated. Then I need to investigate the archeological evidence, evaluate internal coherence and contradictions, and compare historical sources. I’d need to assess?—”
He pushed up, surprising her with the intensity of the move and the sudden separation.
Dragging his hair back with one hand, he walked toward the railing and looked at the beach, then he waved.
“Hey, girls. Emma’s on her way down.”
She heard a female voice reply—either Amanda or Riley. Friends of her daughter who she didn’t even know, but he did.
“Are they here?” Emma darted out in her favorite workout shorts and a tank top, bathing suit straps visible underneath. She popped over to the railing and waved. “Hey, guys! On my way.”
Without waiting for an answer, she spun around. “I’ll be on the beach. We might come up for water or a bite, but…” Her voice faded as she looked from one to the other. “You two good?”
“Of course,” Kate said quickly. “Go, have fun.”
“Bye!” She hesitated, looking at Eli, who was less than a foot away. Squeezing her eyes shut, she gave him an impulsive hug. “See ya, Eli!”
With that, she disappeared down the spiral steps to the deck and the boardwalk, leaving Kate in stunned silence. She didn’t get a hug from her own daughter, but he did.
After a minute, he turned from the railing and looked at her. “You can do all that extensive research, Kate. It will take a year. Or, you can read four books in the Bible, which will take an afternoon, do a sprinkling of research, then come back, look me in the eye and tell me the resurrection didn’t happen.”
