They stop at a fence along the property, observing members dragging benches into the barn. In another few hours there will be, Lev called it, “a family meeting.” He asked Bea to come early because he wants her to meet his family, to see herself among them. Bea marvels at the thought, her mind never far from the nights she leaves the hospital for her empty home where her own family isn’t and will never be.
Do you know about Lev? Casey asks her. Beyond what he’s done for you?
Bea knew about Lev and The Project in that abstract way you know about something that exists outside of your own needs, their mission far removed from the kind of person Bea understood herself to be. She remembers the girl on the bridge over the summer, remembers watching some of the scene unfold on TV before—it embarrasses her to admit this—changing channels. She knows more than that now, was eager to learn if Lev Warren entered everyone’s life as dramatically as he did hers and how many miracles followed with him. She found the Vice article. She doesn’t know if she should bring it up, not because she believes it—she doesn’t—but because it strikes her as rude and she wants Casey to like her. She glances at Casey, who gives her an encouraging smile because she knows what Bea is thinking.
Of course she knows.
If the Vice article revealed anything, Casey says, it’s that people get so comfortable in the prisons they make for themselves, they instinctively reject what will set them free. Their scrutiny of The Unity Project represents a failure of its people to look inward. Do you agree?
Bea nods.
Then let me tell you about Lev, she says, the way it’s meant to be told.
And Bea hears it, for the very first time, out there at the Garrett Farm.
* * *
1980, Indiana. A boy is born.
His mother doesn’t love him; she shows him so with her fists.
He’s hurting, angry and alone. He yearns to be seen.
He’s seventeen when he wanders into the church and feels the pull of God before he has the language for such feelings. The place is warm. The place is love. As he joins the congregants in prayer, a miracle occurs: he is no longer angry. He is no longer alone. The boy is filled with a sense of purpose he’s never felt before. He sees that he is God’s instrument.
God calls on him to follow, and he does.
Their fingers entwined, Casey takes Bea down the path to the barn.
The boy becomes a man. The man’s faith takes him to the seminary, where he will give his life over in service of the Lord, but he soon realizes there is no God in church, only men who hide their sin behind its walls. The man feels its sickness, can feel God’s grace smothered by its sickness, so he turns to the world and finds still more sin-sickness there: for-profit wars, people without, pockets bared by recession, hands outstretched, no hands to them extended. The man is not on the path he thought he was. He no longer knows what the path is. He returns home, to his hateful mother, where she strips him of his ego and he kneels. He prays. He prays for thirty hours and he does not sleep, eat or drink.
They come to a stop in front of the barn doors. Inside, Lev stands in the middle of a circle, his family gathered around him.
All of them, Bea realizes, waiting for her.
In the thirtieth hour, Casey says, God sent Lev a vision. He’s chosen to share it with you.
Casey lets go of her hand and fades gently into the background as Lev makes his way over to Bea, coming to a soft stop in front of her, his eyes only on her. He presses his palm to her face and it is warm, and it is love.
Are you ready to receive it? he asks.
* * *
Bea stands in a field alone, tears silently streaming down her face as the walls of a church build themselves around her heart. She is not sad. She is not afraid. She’s awake. Everything is different than it was before. She stares up at the sun, the sound of bells ringing faintly in her head until she realizes it’s her phone. Texts from Patty.
Lo’s awake, the first one reads.
And the next: Lo’s awake and she’s calling for you.
OCTOBER 2017
There’s a stretch of road between the towns of Chapman and Auster that was once covered in my parents’ blood. They were spread all over the highway and breathed their last breaths there. These days, people drive through it as though it’s not a sacred place—just the distance between where they started and wherever it is they hope to end up. Now I stand where Jeremy stood as travelers hurry to their platforms, unaware of what happened here a month ago. Or, if they remember, they’ve moved on quietly from it to go about their lives.
I wish I was built like that.
I stare down at the flyer in my hand.
THE UNITY PROJECT WELCOMES ALL TO ITS ANNUAL PUBLIC SERMON AT THE GARRETT FARM.
Bea is almost guaranteed to be there. If I want to talk to her, I need to be there too—unannounced, of course, because when Bea gets word of me, she has a habit of disappearing.
I haven’t tangled with The Unity Project in a long time. The last time was supposed to be just exactly that. Since then, I haven’t tried to talk to Bea. I don’t even talk about her. If I’d had to place a bet on which one of us was going to break those rules first, it wouldn’t have been her.
So why, after all these years, did she put my name in a dead boy’s mouth?
And what was he telling me to find?
I step back inside the station to check the time.
Fifteen minutes.
No delays.
“I’m headed there too.”
A woman with deep brown skin with amber undertones and warm brown eyes stands nearby. Her hair is in braids that fall halfway down her back. If I had to guess, I’d put her in her late thirties or the first blush of her forties. She smiles, looking to the flyer clutched tightly in my hand. “To the sermon, I mean.”
“You a member?”
“I am.” No small hint of pride in her voice.
I glance around the station, wondering how many others might be here to scope out potential marks. I should’ve anticipated it. Members of The Project lack enough shame to seize any opportunity. I turn back to her, and push my hair away from the left side of my face for an unobstructed view of the scar. Certain members would know me to see me, and I them. Jeremy shouldn’t have been one, but now I wonder if he was the exception or the rule.
Probably better to find out before boarding.
But the scar doesn’t seem to light on the woman the way it did Jeremy. She registers it, but in that subtle way decent people do. She asks if I’ve ever been to a sermon before. I tell her I haven’t and she says, “You’ll have an amazing time.”
“And what if I don’t?” I crumple the flyer and toss it in a nearby trash can. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s my kind of thing.”
“What else have you got to do today?”
I grimace.
“I’m not going to pitch you, but we’ve got time before the train if you want to get a coffee and talk about it, or if you have any questions you want to ask.” I hesitate. She shrugs. “It’s cool if you don’t, but … I just have to tell you, I was in the same spot you were, like, literally. I was right exactly there deciding whether or not to take the train to the sermon. A Project member found me and helped me make my choice. I felt like I had to say something.”