Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Complete Box Set (Books 1-9)

Straightened-11

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Kennedy didn’t know how to argue. It wasn’t fair for Nick to drag her into these kinds of debates when he knew she hadn’t studied to the degree he had.

“I’m sorry.” He swiped his screen and studied the map again. “I mean, I totally get that a lot of Christians can’t get past the book of Leviticus and have to hold onto the notion that all homosexuality is wrong. But that’s what gets good kids like Noah out on the streets. I work at this homeless shelter for teens every other Friday night. You know what? A lot of them are there just because their biology doesn’t agree with their parents’ standards of normal. Did I tell you I met a kid once whose dad actually paid for him to have s*x with a prostitute to try to ‘fix’ him and make him straight? I mean it. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I wanted. The boy was a virgin. Most he’d ever done was flirt with a boy or two in some internet chatroom. So what’s his dad do? Risks STDs and subjects his own child to unthinkable s****l abuse to straighten him out. I’m sorry, but does that sound like the way Jesus would handle the situation?”

Of course it wasn’t, but that didn’t mean Nick had all the answers, did it? She was tired. Tired of the arguing. Debates that spun around in circles like a dog chasing its tail, except there was nothing cute or amusing about any of it.

Noah’s dad was dead. Their house burned. Carl and Sandy’s too. Woong could have been killed. How could there be a resolution to this entire convoluted debate if either side resorted to arson and murder? Where was the justice? The compassion? Kennedy’s roommate Willow had sent her a petition last semester. Some group in Africa was gang-raping lesbians in order to “cure” them. Of course, Kennedy had signed the appeal. At the time, that sort of abuse had felt so foreign. So far from her little Harvard bubble. Did things like that truly happen in the US? Could they?

And those weren’t the only questions vying for her mental focus. Who had set the fire that killed Wayne Abernathy? And where was his son? Why was he hiding?

Nick’s phone beeped, and he slowed the bus to turn down a residential side street. He leaned over to read the addresses better before pulling into a modest-sized home with a small picket fence lining the walkway up to the porch.

“Here we are. Let’s go see how Jodie’s doing.”

CHAPTER 14Jodie looked tired and even more timid than normal when she opened the door for Kennedy and Nick. She put her finger to her lips. “My grandma is trying to get Charlie to sleep.”

As far as she could remember, Kennedy had never met Charlie, the Abernathys’ nephew they adopted last fall.

Kennedy slipped her shoes off while Nick gave Jodie a big hug. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

And that’s when Jodie started to cry. Huge drops that seemed to defy just about every law of gravity and physics slid slowly down her cheeks, dissolving into the yellow and brown shag carpet of her grandmother’s house.

“I’m sorry,” Nick repeated.

Kennedy was always at a loss in situations like these, always felt as clumsy as a court jester when she tried offering comfort to someone. She looked around. Maybe there was some Kleenex she could pass on to Jodie. It beat standing around staring while she cried.

“Want to sit down and talk?” Nick gestured to the couch.

Jodie followed him, her head bent low. She had always been a petite and demure little thing. Now, she looked as pathetic as a puppy caught out in a rainstorm. She couldn’t catch her breath between her sobs. The sound of her gasping cries seized Kennedy’s lungs up as well.

Take every thought captive.

She wasn’t a slave to anxiety anymore. Her deliverance hadn’t come through some miraculous, dramatic event. Some healings took longer than others, she had come to realize. Jesus healed the leper with a single touch. He was healing her PTSD, by contrast, in small steps at a time, so that she had to measure her progress in months instead of days or even weeks.

God has not given us a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear.

She had the power of the Holy Spirit in her. That didn’t mean she could cast out her anxiety like an unruly demon, but it did mean she could turn her thoughts toward Jesus. Ask him to carry her through this trial. Show himself real and present to her in the midst of the difficult times.

Kennedy focused on her breathing but then stopped herself. What was she doing? It was Jodie’s father who’d been murdered, not hers. It was Jodie who was hyperventilating on the couch. And Kennedy was standing there worrying only about herself. What was a little tightness in your chest compared to the grief of losing your father?

When had she grown to be so selfish?

She sat down on the other side of Jodie and took her hand. “I’m sorry.” It sounded so much lamer coming out of her mouth than Nick’s. What was it he had that made him so present, so accessible to these teens when they needed him? It was a good thing he was the youth pastor, not her.

“Have you heard anything from your mom?” Nick asked.

Jodie sniffed loudly, and Kennedy glanced around once more looking for tissue.

“No, she’s been talking with this detective all night. They say that ...” Her voice caught. She wiped her nose with her sleeve and tried again. “They say that ...” She rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling as if the words might be written up there. “The detective thinks my dad was murdered.”

“It can take a few days for them to find out if something like this is arson or just an accident.” Kennedy was glad for all those crime scene novels she liked to read in high school. At least she could offer something more useful than an awkward apology. “It’s probably too soon for them to know anything now. They must just be talking with your mom in case ...”

“It wasn’t the fire that killed him.”

Kennedy caught Nick’s eye. He looked as surprised as she was.

“What do you mean?” she asked at the same time Nick said, “Maybe we don’t need to talk about that right now.”

Kennedy shut her mouth.

“I just can’t believe any of this is real.” Jodie was leaning her head against Nick’s chest. Kennedy understood why he hadn’t wanted to come here alone.

He rested his cheek on the top of her head. “I know, kiddo. These things always seem to take a lot of time to sink in.”

Kennedy wondered if Nick knew that from firsthand experience, or if it was something he read in one of his many youth ministry books.

“I keep thinking it’s a bad dream.”

Kennedy had heard people say things like that in novels, and it had always sounded so cliché to her. Maybe the authors actually got it right.

“That’s normal. Sometimes it won’t feel real for days.” Nick spoke slowly. Kennedy realized how relaxing his voice could be if he weren’t fumbling over his words or getting so worked up about political controversies. “That’s the thing about grief.”

“That’s right.” Kennedy patted Jodie’s hand, wondering why that was such a common physical response. It’s not like Jodie was a kitten or a puppy in need of attention. “Scientists think that maybe it’s the brain’s defense mechanism so that you don’t have to ...” She stopped herself. Why was she giving the poor girl a psychology lesson? Maybe she should have read some of Nick’s books herself. Or gotten lessons in grief counseling. Some people were just so much better at this sort of situation. Like Sandy. She always knew what to say when people were hurting. It was as if the Holy Spirit just opened her mouth and out poured words of comfort and love, as if she knew the very message the listener needed to hear. Kennedy tried to imagine what Sandy would say if she were here, but all she could think about was how tired she had looked when she headed to Nick’s bedroom to sleep with Woong. Kennedy just hoped Jodie and Nick were too distracted to realize how horribly she was botching this conversation.

Jodie shook her head. “I can’t figure out who would do this to him. He’s the nicest guy I know. The best ...” She stopped herself again. A little moan escaped.

Nick patted her on the back. “For now, try not to worry about the investigation or anything like that. It could have been a bad accident. We don’t know ...”

“It was the golf club.” Jodie wasn’t making any sense. Kennedy wondered if maybe she was delirious. Grief could do that, couldn’t it?

For once Nick didn’t seem to know what to say, either. They both waited while Jodie caught her breath.

“The golf club,” she repeated. “Someone hit him on the head. Cracked open his skull. The detective said he was dead before the fire even started.”

CHAPTER 15As much as Kennedy would have liked to get more information from Jodie about the fire, she knew better than to press for details. Nick seemed to be doing a perfectly fine job offering all the comfort and support he could, so Kennedy let him do his work without trying to force herself into a conversation she obviously wasn’t qualified to handle. Give her a spectrophotometer and a cuvette full of solution, and she could calculate the absorbance of just about anything. Give her a crying girl and a murdered politician, and she was about as useful as Friar Laurence was in keeping Romeo and Juliet alive.

For lack of anything better to do, Kennedy spent her time observing Nick, making mental notes about the way he handled things. Maybe it would help her in the future. If it had been Kennedy leading the conversation, she would have tried to fill in every single silence with some kind of clichéd word of encouragement. Nick, by contrast, seemed perfectly content with long spells of quiet. That was lesson number one.

He listened while Jodie talked about the fire, how she’d heard the alarms and hurried to get Charlie out of his toddler bed. “He was crying. Like he already knew something was wrong.”

Jodie talked about how she ran with him downstairs to the mailbox, which is where their family had agreed to meet in emergencies. Up until that point, Kennedy thought her dad was the only one who came up with fire escape plans. She wondered if Wayne had grilled his family about safety measures in the event of earthquakes, tornados, and tsunamis, too.

During a long pause, Nick stood and got Jodie a glass of water from the kitchen. Lesson number two. Why hadn’t Kennedy thought of that? She hated feeling so useless. At least when she became a doctor, she’d have plenty of things to do to keep her hands busy so she wouldn’t feel so awkward and superfluous in the midst of a crisis. Still, it was a long time before she got her MD.

Jodie took a sip of water. Her hand wasn’t shaky. Kennedy was jealous. Nick was doing such a good job calming her down, they couldn’t even hear Jodie’s choppy breathing anymore.

“So how long did you and Charlie wait alone at the mailbox?” he asked.

“My mom got there a minute later. She was calling 911. She asked me where Dad was, so I said I hadn’t seen him yet. I’d only thought to grab Charlie and ...”

Nick didn’t say anything. Kennedy wondered how much practice it took to get yourself comfortable with such silence.

“My mom went back in, and I was really scared for her. I thought maybe she’d get stuck in there, you know? Like in the movies when the door’s on fire or something so you can’t go out. Then I thought I’m glad she’s so brave because my dad’s been real busy lately with this bill thing he’s working on, and so maybe he slept through the alarm. But then I saw my mom was in her pajamas, so wouldn’t she have known if dad was sleeping or not ’cause she would have seen him in bed? So that meant he must be awake, but if he was awake, he would have heard the alarm and gotten us all out. So it was real confusing.”

Kennedy tried to remember if she’d ever heard Jodie use that many words in a single sitting before. There must be something she could say in reply. A Bible verse, maybe? Tell Jodie that God works all things together for good? How does that comfort a girl whose father’s been murdered?