The Project, page 7
“You look well.” His voice is quiet but firm. Firm, yet somehow edgeless. “Are you?”
He once again studies my scar—then the rest of me. The question feels more personal than he has a right to ask, but anything less than my answering it feels cowardly.
“Made a full recovery,” I say.
“Good. Then Ossining was the best thing for you.”
I press my lips together, preventing a bitter smile. Living with Patty in her place, on her terms … well, it wasn’t the worst thing for me, but I’d be hard-pressed to call it “the best.” I remember the day I left the hospital, I asked Patty to drive us past the house. The feeling in my gut when I saw the swing in the yard—everything looked so unbearably the same that it was as though my body believed the loss was a dream I’d finally woken up from. I sobbed, begged for her to let me out, but she told me it was too much for me. She would always think it was too much for me. I’d never go home again.
It’s like we talked about, Patty had said of the arrangement, but I swear no one talked to me about it. There are so many gaps from that time, so many ICU nightmares that felt more real to me than what was actually going on. Some of my memories confuse me still, and now I have no one to tell me the difference between what was and was never.
Bea called me once at Patty’s. I was on painkillers and all that remains of the conversation was the last thing she ever said to me. I know that was real because it burrowed itself into my bones, became a life raft for the months that followed.
We’ll see each other again.
Two years at Patty’s and I never saw her.
Even after I made it back to Morel, I never saw her.
I blink at the sudden sting in my eyes. The weight of the moment presses down on me in this small kitchen, standing across from Lev Warren, and it wants to drown me in its truth: he’s only a man, and if he’s only a man, what does that make me?
Less than her sister?
“You have my time. You have my attention,” he tells me.
“I’d rather hers.” The words fracture as they leave my lips, too pathetic to be an insult. The look they inspire him to give me makes me feel impossibly bound to a body that has only shown him its weakness. I close my eyes, turning my face away.
“I’m not your sister’s keeper and The Project has never been your sister’s prison. I accept that you think of me as your enemy because it’s easier than believing she made a choice that you were not made a part of.” He pauses. “Gloria.”
I open my eyes.
“You have my time,” he says again. “And you have my attention.”
“Casey said if I keep trying to expose you, I’ll fail.”
“She’s right. We have nothing to hide.”
“Then why break into SVO?”
He frowns. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“But I don’t,” he says.
“Project members broke into SVO last night, trashed the entire office,” I tell him. “That’s why I’m here. Call off your fucking dogs.”
“You have proof of that?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Why are you so sure it was us?”
I open my mouth and then I close it again. Lev pushes his sleeves farther up his arms, facing the sink. He turns the water on and reaches for one of the dirtied plates, and it’s so strange to see him do something as ordinary as wash dishes and I realize I can’t have it both ways; that he’s either a man and should do this, or he’s more than a man who deigns to. He’s just a man. He is just. A man. He scrubs at a plate, rinses it, and then sets it gingerly in the drying rack, gazing out the window. Foster and the little girl are no longer in view.
“The Project may have enemies, but we are no one’s enemy,” Lev says. “And I knew, early on, to live boldly in faith, our work would have to be our first line of defense and it would have to speak for itself. Our mission is not, and has never been, to silence our detractors but to make our work louder than them. SVO is free to write what it wants and we won’t stand in its way. We will continue to do the work.” He faces me. “I would hope a journalist as respected and committed to the truth as Paul Tindale would make sure any story he wrote about us was verifiable fact. Regardless, we didn’t break into your office. An action like that runs counter to everything we stand for.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your choice,” he replies.
“What you did to Jeremy—”
“Be very specific if you’re going to talk about Jeremy.”
“You isolated him. Held him hostage, just like Bea. Kept him from his father—”
“We didn’t keep Jeremy from his father.”
“That’s not what Arthur seems to think.”
“Then that’s something about himself Arthur isn’t ready to confront. Over the years, we’ve become a sanctuary for those looking to start over. People view their redemption as a clean slate in all aspects of their lives. No one who comes to us is forced to leave anything behind they’re not willing to part with. Jeremy didn’t want a relationship with his father and we respected that. We didn’t intervene. If he had decided to reopen lines of communication with Arthur we would have embraced it. I wasn’t his keeper either.” Lev moves toward me. “But I know that doesn’t quite serve your narrative.”
I close my eyes briefly, as though I can reset myself every time I do and reclaim my hold on this situation, if I ever had it.
“I was there when Jeremy died.”
“So Casey said.”
“That’s how I know you’re responsible.”
A shadow crosses Lev’s face.
“How would you feel,” he asks quietly, “if you made a commitment to something you believed in, and you lived and embodied that belief, only to have it perverted by someone else’s refusal to accept or understand it?”
He gives me a moment to answer, but I don’t.
“Jeremy did amazing work,” Lev continues. He reaches absently for his pendant, rubbing his thumb over it. “He was a part of several outreach initiatives for those in need. He was one of our leading members in youth mentorship. He loved us and we loved him. To deny his autonomy and erase his life’s work, to reject his faith so you can rewrite him a victim of mine and The Project’s, for the sole purpose of validating your hatred of us and your anger at your sister is … deeply awful.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard, I feel the skin giving in to my teeth. The ugly taste of copper is quick to follow.
“If anyone could have saved Jeremy, shouldn’t it have been you?”
“No. Because I’m not God,” he says. “I’m just a man.” He moves closer, taking up the whole of my vision, forcing eye contact, and his closeness activates a flight response in me, makes my mouth dry, my lips and fingertips numb. There’s a vise around my heart and my heart flutters frantically against it. “Tell me what it is that you want from us.”
“I want the truth.”
“I’ve given you the truth and you reject it.”
“I want my sist—”
The sound of that voice. The sound of her voice. That small, broken girl clawing against the wall inside me, but now the wall’s gone and I feel its absence and a flood of need in its wake. I want my sister, the girl whispers in me and the words try to slip from my mouth whole. I bite down. I want my sister. It’s louder than Jeremy’s voice still echoing in my head. His last plea blurs into her sorry refrain until they form a whole new want: Find her.
“Lo.”
The gentleness of Lev’s voice makes me flinch but there’s something else—my name. The way “Gloria” sounded on his lips earlier, as though he’d never said it before and how effortlessly “Lo” falls from them now. The thought of being spoken about between him and Bea hardens something inside me enough for my anger to rise above all my want.
“Didn’t Casey tell you? It’s not Paul’s story anymore. It’s mine.”
“Is it?” he asks.
“Yeah. Starts with a half-dead kid in a hospital. All she’s got left in the world is her big sister until The Unity Project takes her away,” I say. “I remember every single call with Casey, every door she slammed in my face, all the times she told me Bea wanted nothing to do with me. What would people think of that? How you treated a child? A broken, orphaned kid—” My voice splinters. “And now Jeremy. He joins The Unity Project, shuts his dad out and jumps in front of a train. I think you’re poison. I think the world needs to know.”
Lev doesn’t respond.
“And if all that doesn’t get everybody’s attention, maybe this will.” I gesture between us. “Lev Warren’s first meeting with the press since 2011.”
I turn and step into the hall just as the little girl runs up the porch steps, giggling, Foster trailing behind her. She stops in her tracks when she sees me and watches me carefully through the screen, her face obscured by mesh.
The floor creaks quietly behind me.
“There’s so much you don’t understand,” Lev says at my back.
“If The Unity Project doesn’t want this story getting out,” I say without turning around, “then Bea needs to tell me a different one and she needs to tell it to my face.”
PART TWO
2012
To give the gift of atonement, Bea must first be redeemed.
To be redeemed, Bea must let go of all she knows she is.
She presses the phone to her ear, trembling, while she waits for an answer. She takes in the serene winter scene outside the window before her. Her eyes follow a beautiful blue sky down to the tops of the snow-dusted pine trees that stretch across the perimeter of the property, and, beyond them—though she can’t see it—the lake, shimmering, she knows, with light.
The water will be cold.
But first, this.
Patty picks up.
Bea asks for Lo.
She took her meds a little while ago. She’s in no state to talk.
Bea insists. A series of sounds follow. Patty’s voice again, gentler than Bea’s ever heard it, encouraging Lo to open her eyes: That’s a girl, you’re fine … the soft sounds of Lo surfacing, the clumsy transfer of the phone from Patty to Lo’s weak grip and finally, her sister’s voice in her ear, thick as molasses: Hello?
When Bea says, Hey, Lo, Lo replies, Mom?
The silence that follows is painful, but much less painful than it would be if Lo were more aware. It’s better this way, Bea tells herself. Better to have Lo blunt at the edges and open instead of angry and closed off, blaming her for things so far out of her control.
Bea. Lo corrects herself. Is it really you?
She ignores the pang of guilt the question inspires and asks one of her own. She wants to know how Lo is feeling. Lo’s answer is slow to travel the distance from her head to her mouth to Bea’s ear: Tired. She’s so tired. Healing is exhausting work.
Bea swallows hard, an ache spreading outward from her heart. As much as she wants for what’s in front of her, she also wants to stay on the line like this forever, exchanging as few uncomplicated words as she can because it’s been so long since it was easy with Lo.
She feels a reassuring hand squeeze her shoulder and focuses on the warmth of it through her shirt. She thinks of the water past those trees and how it will be cold.
I gotta go to sleep, Lo mumbles and Bea begs her to wait, to hold on, she has to tell her something important. Okay, Lo breathes and Bea steels herself to say it, but what comes out of her mouth instead is, I remember the day you were born.
No matter how far time pushes her from it, Bea will always remember it like it was yesterday. She tells Lo of her anger and fear, how selfishly she resisted Lo’s arrival up until the point she was asked to give her new sister a name. Bea didn’t want to do it but then she heard a voice inside her. Years later, she’d come to understand who it belonged to.
It was you, Lo. You gave it to me, somehow.
Lo, faint over the line: I like my name.
Bea laughs a little, wiping at her face.
They told me you were going to die. They told me I was going to have to bury you.
But I’m here. Lo breathes. She’s fading fast. Why aren’t you here?
Bea closes her eyes. She wants Lo to understand that night in the hospital, what was supposed to be Lo’s last night on earth. How it brought Bea to her knees and how it split her heart in half and how its break called forth a miracle. She wants Lo to understand how it felt to be there, to feel death so imminent, a palpable rot, and then to have Lev stand over Lo’s prone body and take it all away. To see him lay his hands on her, to feel the electricity that filled the small space. It was an electricity that traveled through all of them but none more than Lo. The lights flickered just a little, Bea remembers … didn’t they? She thinks that must be the moment it happened. The moment he gave Lo life and death fled from her.
She never told her sister what happened that day because Lev told her not to; when Lo was ready to know it, God would reveal it to her. But Lev’s energy, God’s energy, must have imprinted on Lo’s unconsciousness. When Lo whispered of the man at the end of her bed, the one she mistook for a nightmare, reaching for her, there was only one person it could have been. Bea wants so badly for Lo to understand that everything now stems from this miracle, but she keeps it tucked safely in her heart. Lev promised Bea that Lo would one day understand.
Bea has to trust in that.
Lo, I need you to know something, Bea says quietly into the phone. This is where I’m supposed to be. One day, you’ll walk the same path. We’ll see each other again. But for now, you need to know that I love you so much.
Lo doesn’t respond. Bea listens to her breathing.
And then Patty’s voice on the line: She’s asleep. Let her sleep.
With a shuddering breath, Bea hangs up the phone and then she starts to cry.
Casey wraps her arms around Bea, her hands meeting across Bea’s chest, resting lightly at the point of her heart.
The water will be cold, she says.
* * *
He stands at the edge of the lake, ice edging its shore, the sun just edging the horizon as it slowly sets. He senses her there and turns. He holds out his hand.
Go to him, Casey says softly at her back.
Bea makes the walk to Lev alone.
She takes his hand. It’s warm. They face the lake together and he silently urges her in ahead of him. As soon as her skin makes first contact with the water, she gasps. Her body arches and her knees almost buckle. The cold cuts into her bones. Lev walks in beside her, the water lapping his clothes. He doesn’t flinch.
Merciful Father, your daughter has heard our calling. She accepts your gift of atonement and renounces all sin. In your name, I shall redeem her, so that she can be sanctified and reborn in our image to take her place among our Chosen—and to do your good work.
He moves closer, pressing his body to her body, pressing his mouth to the side of her face before moving to the shell of her ear. He tells her to repeat after him.
She does.
I believe Lev Warren has been called by God. I believe I am his Chosen. I believe he is my refuge and his faithfulness, my shield, and that to dwell in His shadow is to live in the light of the Lord. The world will fall around his fortress, but all inside will remain untouched—for no evil shall happen upon those under the cover of Lev’s wings. In return for setting his love, grace and protection upon me, whenever he calls, I will answer. I will guard him in all his ways. I will honor, uphold and exemplify my salvation in my commitment to God through the workings of His Unity Project and in obedience of His One True Redeemer, Lev Warren. I free myself of my sins, of my past, and of my life before The Unity Project so that I may allow true faith to take root. I understand the sacrifices this asks of me and will continue to ask of me. Amen.
He cups the back of her neck with one hand, the other pressing gently against her chest as he eases her into the water and holds her there.
Her lungs burn for air.
She realizes, faintly, that she doesn’t feel the cold anymore.
He breathes her name.
She lets him in.
NOVEMBER 2017
The surviving letters of SVO’s motto—ALL GOOD STORIES SERVE A PURPOSE—assert themselves amid haphazard slashes of red paint, telling us something new.
A G OD A R OSE
The office is different since the break-in, in those small and crucial ways that leave you fumbling and unsettled. The doors were replaced, their familiar creaking announcements of all comings and goings, silenced. Surfaces bare where breakables once were; every so often one of us kicks around a stray piece of glass that got missed in the cleanup. A mismatch of plates and glasses now in the kitchen cupboards that I suspect Paul volunteered from home. I keep reaching for his favorite coffee mug, then remembering.
The plants didn’t make it.
Paul’s office was completely trashed, his computer turned to pieces. His hard drive was ultimately recoverable but even if it hadn’t been, it’s all on the Cloud. And then there’s the incongruities: everyone else’s stuff was untouched. It was all the evidence Paul needed to rule out the Halloween-high of some asshole college kids.
This was personal.
I stand in front of his door and knock.
“Come on in,” he calls.
He’s wearing his glasses today, frowning at his new computer. He only wears his glasses when his eyes are too tired for his contacts and that only usually happens when somebody’s fucking something up. Today, at least, I’m reasonably confident it’s not me.
“What’s up?”
