Nicholas Saved

By Rick Kantola

Intelligent, pretty, and talented, nineteen-year-old Heather Keller
appears to have a brilliant future ahead of her—until she is seduced
into a Northern California cult. Heather travels the perilous borders
between faith, mysticism, devotion, and fanaticism, while confronted
with the psychological and political levers designed to tip spirituality
into madness. Her mother, with the help of others in her small town,
fights back to reclaim her daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456808105

Rick Kantola

Rick Kantola lives in Sacramento, California. His other publications include the novels Nicholas Saved and Arden Park.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Rick Kantola.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art: Detail from Acrylic Painting by Hillary Werth.

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CONTENTS

Part INicholas Returns

Part IIHeather Returns

Part IIIKinship

Part IVThanksgiving

Part VRetreat

Part VICarl

Part VIILast Days

Part VIIIEighteen Months Later

In Memory of My Father

T hanks to Rob Redman of the Fiction Desk for critiquing early drafts of this novel.

PART I

Nicholas Returns

CHAPTER 1

S arah Klein sat and prayed. She did not think about her boys, who squirmed on the pew beside her. She heard Ike, her little one, when he let out a long squeal, but his voice seemed to come from a distant world, the real world being the quiet place where she talked with God.

For the past three months, ever since Nicholas had returned from prison, the only place she could feel close to God was here in the sanctuary of the New Life Assembly. Nicholas was changed. It had started before he went to prison and now seemed complete. He’d always been capable of lies and horrible anger, but there’d been a pure spring that bubbled up in him, washing both of them clean after each new sin, a place to which she and he could always go together that was gentle and pure. By the time he’d come home, the spring had gone dry.

Pastor George now made the altar call. Though she would have liked to, Sarah did not step forward. After prayer meeting the Wednesday before, he had told her that the call was for those who were coming to the Lord for the first time.

Coming forward so much as once a month or so makes it look like you’re losing the Lord just about as often as you’re finding Him, he’d said, squeezing her arm and giving a chuckle. I know there’s nothing like the joy and assurance of first being saved—nothing like it in the world, and that’s because it’s not of this world. It’s a small piece of heaven, a tiny spark off that great blaze of glory we’ll all know on the day of rapture. He lost himself for a moment in contemplation of the rapture, a state of mind she knew and respected, but he must also have detected the dismay on her face for he collected himself and went on in his cheerful manner. "I’m not saying you can’t come forward. If you feel you need to come forward, you step right up, and I know God will descend upon you just as He always has. But He can descend on you right there in the pew just the same. He can descend on you right there in your pew where you can keep a thumb on young Lucas and Isaac there."

With these words, he’d nodded toward Lucas and Ike, who were wrestling next to the door to the women’s bathroom. Lucas, even at that moment, had been propping the door open with one arm and trying to shove his younger brother inside with his knee.

Sarah now closed her eyes, raised them to a hanging light above her, and invited the river of light and peace to flow into her in the same way it did when she knelt and felt Pastor George’s hand touch her head. She was reconciling herself to the weaker flow she felt here in the congregation and assuring herself that George had not said she shouldn’t go forward at all, only less often, when she became aware that Lucas and Isaac had quit their half-prone squirming and were now standing. Lucas gripped the pew back in front of them, his silky, black curls just before her nose; Ike stood on the bench, his arm wrapped around her neck. His puffier curls rubbed against her ear. Their skin was lighter than hers, an olive shade of white skin, but their hair was just as black and curlier.

That’s Daddy, Ike said.

It’s not, Lucas said. Dad don’t come to church ever.

Ike stretched up until he threatened to fall onto Lucas. She grabbed his collar and pulled him back, and he punched her breast. It is too Daddy, isn’t it?

The man who now stood at the front of the church had his hair slicked back with oil, which made it seem less wavy and almost black instead of the soft brown she’d once run her fingers through. When he was clean-shaven, as he was now, the contours of his face always puzzled her, but it was Nicholas. Nor was Isaac right in saying that he had never been to church. He’d slipped into the back pew of the New Life Assembly on each of the last three Sundays, ever since she’d asked him to move out of her house. He’d always left before George’s benediction. She hadn’t pointed him out to the boys because she hadn’t wanted to disappoint them.

Today, he was wearing prison clothes—a blue work shirt, dark jeans, no belt. They could not have been the same clothes he wore on the day he was released from Conover; she’d watched him dump those in a trash can at the rest stop. He’d tossed out even the underwear, undressing right beside the trash can to put on the drawstring pants she’d sewn for him.

He reached the front of the church—the only soul to come forward on this Sunday—and stopped before the steps to the dais, beside and below George’s pulpit. He looked up once toward George, then bowed his head and folded his hands in front of him. The cuffs of his jeans gathered about his canvas basketball sneakers, making him seem small. The last time she’d seen him so small was when she’d first visited him in prison.

Pastor George smiled down on him, then out on the congregation. He stepped from behind the pulpit.

You all know how I am, he said. I can’t hardly deny that I am sometimes a greedy soul. He again smiled down on Nicholas’s bowed head. Nothing gives me more pleasure and more satisfaction than bringing souls to the Lord—every time a man or woman accepts Jesus, the angels rejoice and so do I. So, under normal circumstances, nothing would give me more pleasure than to see a hundred souls up here instead of one. He paused yet again, as though waiting for God’s message to reach his tongue. "But these are not normal circumstances, and I believe that God may have planned for us to see a single soul before us this morning. In fact, I’m sure He did, for this young man’s soul bears a remarkable testimony. I breach no confidences in telling you that the first chapters of his story were ones of sin and loss. Loss of self-respect, loss of his family, loss even of his freedom.

When the Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus, saying, ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them,’ Jesus answered them with a parable. It’s a story you know well, from the fifteenth chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke. A proud, sassy young man demands his inheritance from his father. Probably struts and snarls and threatens his poor old dad until he gets it—and then moves off to a far country. There he wastes everything in riotous living. Now the gospel doesn’t tell us exactly what riotous living was, but I believe we can imagine some of it. Today, it would be Miller Light or Gallo. Or something he put up his nose or in his arm. Back then, it would have been wine from a clay jug. They wouldn’t have had cars with TVs and wet bars, but you can bet that young man never walked anywhere when he could have somebody carry his chair. Women—harlots, his brother says—that’s a thing that hasn’t changed, has it? Some of the congregation laughed. George’s gaze remained stern, giving the men time to quiet and consider the sin in their laughter, before he went on.

Aside from the two Kleins, every parishioner above the age of ten had heard the story of the prodigal son at least a dozen times, but Sarah listened with rapt anticipation, even dread. The story of their lives was being told, and she awaited the ending.

Nicholas’s back remained still as a blue stone. His feet never shifted, his shoulders never rolled, and he never let his head bob. He never lifted a hand to scratch his face.

But hard times are ahead, George said, even famine. And soon all this young man’s inheritance is gone. Now, at one time this boy would have rather died than do a day’s work, but necessity is a hard taskmaster. Not only does this boy learn to work, he works in the lowest of jobs, feeding the pigs.

George, who equated brevity with backsliding, went on to describe in detail how the boy decided to come home, where even the servants lived better than he did now; how his father met him with tears of joy, killed the fatted calf in his honor, and gave him a gold ring; then how his brother, who had stayed home and done everything his father asked of him, complained.

Now, I ask you, did that brother have a right to be angry? George asked. "A boy who read his scriptures and said his prayers, who took his whuppings and told his dad he was sorry when he’d done wrong. A young man who waited for the right woman, a woman who could bring goodness, strength, and faithfulness to his household, a pure woman his daddy could be proud to make a part of his house. In short, a young man who did everything his daddy asked of him—ssaddled his camel, trained his servants, brought him his pipe and slippers. Did he have a right to be angry? Darned right he did. If the same thing happened to you, would you be angry? You bet you would. I know I would be.

"And yes, the boys’ father did rejoice at having his lost son back, maybe more than he should have. But he’s not a foolish man. He understands how his other son feels, and he consoles him. ‘All that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.’ My brothers and sisters, it is meet that we should make merry today, for I present to you, to you as the family of God, a lost son, Nicholas Klein."

The story had taken a turn somewhere and become someone else’s story and had not ended by telling Sarah the story of her life. She wanted to pray and find the real meaning for herself, but Ike now pulled her face around to look at him. I told you it was Daddy, he said, loud enough for the congregation to hear and to emit a sharp bleat of laughter. Pastor George laughed as well. Nicholas now twisted his shoulders toward the congregation and scanned the crowd. He let his tear-swollen eyes fall first on one face and then the next, until he found Ike. He smiled then, and the church women moaned with delight. Nicholas turned back and again bowed his head. Ike pounded his mother’s arm in triumph.

Three weeks ago this young man who stands before us today knocked at my office door and asked to learn about Jesus, George said. I suggested he begin by memorizing the Ten Commandments and reading the Sermon on the Mount. Three days later he returned. He’d memorized the Ten Commandments—I tested him on that—and as we talked about the Sermon on the Mount, I realized he’d memorized that as well. Now, that’s a pretty long piece of sermonizing, enough to fill three chapters and one hundred and eleven verses of scripture. Some of you have been studying scriptures all your life. At one time or another, most of you probably put stars beside your name for every verse you memorized, and I know one or two of you know the Sermon on the Mount chapter and verse, word for blessed word.

George nodded now to Brother James, a man aged enough to forget to put in his teeth, but who could recite endless verses of scripture. Someday, Sarah hoped, the world and the word would fit together for her in the same perfect way they did for James.

But think about it, George continued. We’ve had a lifetime. This boy had three days. He held three fingers in the air and wiggled them. Three days, he repeated. "When I told him that was a remarkable accomplishment, he told me that they were remarkable words.

But it didn’t stop there. By no means. Nicholas and I talked through most of the night, and at some point—it might have been two or three in the morning—he recited to me from memory the Parable of the Talents, a lesson that appears seventeen chapters further on in the Book of Matthew: ‘For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even which he hath.’ Now, that was a puzzling scripture for this young man, as it may at times have been for some of you, puzzling because he didn’t understand the multitude of ways that God rewards the righteous.

Sarah’s Sunday school class had been studying the parables since Christmas. Some in her class had said the Parable of the Talents spoke only about spiritual gifts, others that it referred only to the material world. A man who wore a pink handkerchief in his suit coat pocket said it meant God wanted His faithful to be rich. She’d not been able to understand what Jesus meant. His words had felt wrong to her, harsh and even evil. Hearing them again so soon, especially on this day, sent a tremor through her, as though the foundation of the church were cracking.

She stared hard at Nicholas’s back, trying to find a way to see into him, hoping he had changed. She then raised her eyes to George’s beaming face, and she knew that George could see no further into Nicholas’s heart than she could.

Nicholas waited with his head bowed while George stepped out from the pulpit to stand in front of him.

It was out of the watery chaos that God created the world, George said. It was after the flood that God promised never again to destroy the earth. It was the waters of the Red Sea that God parted to lead the people of Israel from slavery to freedom. And Jesus himself was baptized in the waters of the River Jordan.

He signaled for Nicholas to step onto the dais, put his arm around his shoulders, and led him to the back. He lifted a white sheet from what looked like a low table to reveal a corrugated metal trough that showed scallops of rust along its rim. When they’d stepped behind it, Nicholas raised his eyes and looked out on the congregation. There had been a time when Sarah believed she could read the universe in the lights of his blue eyes.

For there are three that bear record in heaven, George said, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

Nicholas now stepped out of his laceless sneakers, and George helped him climb up into the trough. He looked out on them with unwavering eyes, the bare skin of his chest whiter than Sarah had ever known it. George now asked him the same question he’d once asked her.

Do you renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways?

I do, Nicholas said, his voice clipped with anger at the devil’s ways.

I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. George pushed him down, and a wave of water bumped out onto the floor. He held him there for a moment, then lifted him. Nicholas came up face first, water streaming off the back of his head.

Amen, George said.

The congregation answered with a resounding Amen.

Nicholas climbed from the trough, ignoring George’s helping hand, and stood in front of it. George took a stack of white cloth from behind the pulpit and handed Nicholas a towel from the top of the stack. The congregation watched quietly, while he dried his face and shoulders. George then unfolded a white robe and held it while Nicholas inserted his arms. He wrapped it tight around himself, turned his back to the congregation, and stepped out of his pants. A woman behind Sarah gasped and exclaimed, Oh, my goodness!

When Nicholas again faced the congregation, George wrapped an arm around his shoulders once more and patted the fabric of the robe.

It isn’t a cashmere robe and we don’t have a gold ring for you or any silk slippers, but welcome home, lost son. Welcome to the family of God.

Nicholas’s face shone. His white teeth flashed. The mournful tears that had been in his eyes when he turned to Ike had brightened and turned hopeful. He looked to his sons and smiled at each of them before he turned to Sarah. She studied his eyes as they played over her. The others would see pleading in them. She saw only that they remained closed to her. She drew a deep breath and held it around a sickening hardening of her heart.

Good people, Nicholas now said, turning back to the congregation, friends, I gated out of Conover State Prison eight months ago, but only today am I free. And it is to all you who I owe thanks. For it was through you that God has worked: ‘For I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me . . . . ’ He paused and let his eyes play from one face to the next, studying each as his eyes passed, a second here, five seconds there, even longer on the next face, until far too much time seemed to have passed, and the whole congregation fell silent with mortification. I was in prison, and you came unto me, he concluded, opening his arms before him.

George stepped back and gazed upon him, then raised his hands and began a series of gentle claps. The whole congregation, all fifty of them, seemed to sigh with relief. They clapped and sang praise and hallelujahs so loud that Sarah now wondered if they truly believed they had visited him in prison. George gave the blessing and walked Nicholas, still in his robe, down the middle aisle. Sister Meredith pounded hard on the upright piano.

CHAPTER 2

T he church had no narthex, but two rows of pews had been left out at the back, allowing room for a small assembly. Sarah turned her head to glance back. George and Nicholas stood together, greeting and celebrating with members of the congregation. In his white robe, with his face now flushed, Nicholas was no longer small.

Sarah turned back to face the front. She was not ready to stand with him in church. She would not have known how to be, whether to smile or to cry. She bowed her head and closed her eyes against the clattering voices and the resounding bars of Onward Christian Soldiers. No prayer came to her.

Frank Briggs had been ushering Mrs. Anderson down the center aisle when she came in, but she’d led her boys to a side aisle and found her own way to their pew. Before Nicholas had come back, Frank had always found a place to sit where they could turn to see each other during the service. Now, he always ushered and slipped into a pew somewhere at the back between his duties. She would have liked to be able to turn to him now. She would have learned from his eyes what she should do—what God wanted her to do.

The sound of George’s voice made her look up.

Hey, boys, he said, tousling Ike’s soft, floppy crown of hair. He sat down beside her.

The boys did not like George—their likes and dislikes, like their father’s, were often a mystery to her. Can we go see Dad? Lucas asked. She nodded her assent, and they were off for the back of the church.

It was a good thing your husband did today, George said.

She did not deny this.

He asked me to speak with you.

She nodded her assent.

He prays he’ll get his family back.

She looked down at her clasped hands. One thumb crossed the other so tightly that it had turned yellow, while the trapped thumb was swollen and red. Without looking up, she said, I’m frightened of what he might do.

He’s never hit you?

"I had a boyfriend before who hit me sometimes. Nicholas hit him."

I don’t blame him.

He hit him with a board.

George winced. Prison changes people. It takes some time to get over it.

He’d changed before he went to prison.

The Lord changes people, too. I believe Nicholas was washed clean—not exactly today maybe, but in the last couple of weeks. He’s been reborn. He’s put on a new skin. I’ve seen the change in him. He’s not the man he was.

When she’d first come to Summer River, they’d lived in a cabin out on the river. Moments had always come when a pure river of joy flowed between them. But the cabin had been burned down, and the river had dried up inside him.

After he was released from Corcoran, he’d stayed in her house and shared her bed for six weeks. He’d often been gone—visiting his lawyer, he’d said—but that wasn’t the reason she’d asked him to move out. He’d always visited other women. From their first days together, there had been times when he went away from her, sometimes for days at a time. Nor was it because he’d hurt their boys, though he could talk right over what Lucas was saying about school or Isaac about some toy or game. He’d never threatened or even so much as raised his voice to any of them, yet when she was in the same room with him, she could feel him burning inside. The heat pushed against her face.

Does being a Christian mean that I must believe that he’s reborn? she asked.

It was a measure of George’s decency that he did not reply at once, as was the scripture with which he finally chose to reply. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’ That’s in Jeremiah seventeen and no doubt as true as the day the prophet spoke it. Jeremiah was a hard man who spoke in hard times. Jesus showed us another way. I think Jesus would say you have to at least give it a chance. I’ve never seen anyone so inspired by the gospel as your husband.

Nicholas has a gift for words.

I don’t believe in divorce, George said. "I believe that marriage is forever, but I know Nicholas was unfaithful—he admitted that to me—and Jesus said, ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.’ That sounds to me like Jesus made an exception for adultery. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so I can’t say you’d be wrong in being done with him. But then again I saw the pain in his eyes when he admitted to having been unfaithful. I saw real suffering there, and I think, or rather my opinion is, that you ought to give him another chance."

Sarah pondered the words fornication and adultery, thinking that one must be on the outside and one on the inside. The words would hold different meanings for George than they did for her or Nicholas.

It’s not anything he does with anyone else, she said.

And he’s never beaten you?

He would never beat me.

Or your boys?

No. He’s good to the boys.

I’ve been twenty years pastoring. I’ve talked to many couples at odds, and I can tell you I’ve despaired at any person understanding all that goes on between a man and a woman. Sometimes I’ve been amazed at how deep people learn to cut with so little as a lift of their chin. But if you could give him one more chance—if it’s true that he’s changed—there’s so much to be gained.

How much was there to be lost? she wondered. A job in a store. A rented house with a white fence and beds of violets. Jars of jam in the kitchen cabinets. A bedroom for her boys. What were these things? Pride? Vanity? Had she ever really believed in any of them? What were they compared to the redemption of a man’s soul? What were they compared to vows of marriage?

If I go back to him, I can’t be responsible.

George hesitated. That comment perplexes me.

She had once believed that her blood and Nicholas’s flowed together. She’d thought she knew every molecule of him. Had the core of him hardened since then, or had he always hidden parts of himself from her?

You believe what you’ve seen? she asked. You believe what he’s told you?

I do. And I believe what I feel.

I would feel like I was giving up.

You can always put your trust in the Lord. Surrendering to God isn’t the same as giving up.

She paused and closed her eyes: it was so easy when it was giving in to the Lord. I am able to trust in the Lord, she said. You can tell him that I will try—

George gave her one careful pat on her leg, saying, I think it’s the Christian thing to do.

—but I can’t answer for him.

No one expects you to.

He put his hand on Sarah’s and said, He’s waiting for you outside.

CHAPTER 3

N icholas, dressed now in dark slacks and a white shirt, leaned against the back of his car.

Let’s go for a ride, he said. He herded the boys into the back, while she settled into the leather passenger seat. The car was new and bright black. He said it belonged to Tony Radinovich, his lawyer, but he’d had it ever since he’d come home. It smelled new and expensive. She didn’t have a car herself. Everywhere she needed to go she could walk.

Instead of turning toward town, he drove out onto the ridge. Five minutes later, they were winding down through the curves that led to the river. The boys were quiet, as though waiting to hear what their father would say. She’d lost faith that words could make things better.

When they reached the river, he pulled out onto the flat span of the bridge and stopped between the two rusted rails. For nearly three years, they and seven others had lived on a mining claim a quarter mile upstream from the bridge. Nicholas had named it Manzanita Farm. But mining claims were made for mining, not living. When a fire had swept up the canyon, the forest service had let their cabins burn down.

She’d spent three springs on the river and harvested two-and-one-half gardens. She’d been happy there. She’d felt as though she’d been rescued from a flood of people who didn’t understand her and wanted things she couldn’t give them. Never in her life had she been able to find words to describe or explain what she felt and knew. Nicholas had demanded no words. Silence had been a comfort between them. She could swim naked in the river or dance all night in front of a fire. She could live inside her own thoughts and feelings with no one to pull at her.

Every day on the river had offered new miracles. In March, the grass grew up through the brown stubble, and the dew along the paths reflected a glow that shot straight to her heart. By April, poppies and lupines colored the rock gardens on the sides of the canyon, and the soil warmed to her bare feet. Summer was sun, sweat, warm rocks, and cool river water streaming against her skin; tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden and, when the deer didn’t take it first, sweet corn. By fall, the acorn squash lay heavy in the garden bed. The canyon walls cut the days short, and they no longer had to dive beneath the surface of the swimming holes to find icy cold.

She’d felt Lucas grow and quicken as she lay in their dark, smoky cabin, under mounds of down warmth. He’d been born in April, in that same cabin and bed. Nicholas had waded across the still dangerous river to bury his afterbirth on a sunny hillside where it looked down over the river and cabins.

Would you like to take a walk? Nicholas now asked.

No, she whispered. A car was coming up behind them. She pointed to it.

They’ll go around, he said.

The car inched by in the far lane. The driver waved pleasantly. Nicholas ignored him.

When the other car had moved up past the first curve on the far side, he said, I could get the claim back.

We couldn’t live there, though.

No. Times have changed.

He started the car forward again, driving slowly, as he usually did.

The cabin on the river had been no more than a single room, with a half-wall to hide the bed from the wood stove and table, yet it had never seemed too small. Nor, before Nicholas had come back, had her cottage seemed too small. It was as though she and her sons had lived in a single heartbeat, just as she and Nicholas once had on the river. During those first weeks after he’d come back from prison, when he was living with them in the cottage, the walls had seemed ready to burst apart.

My conviction is going to be overturned, he said. She didn’t answer, and he went on. Tony thinks we’ll get the house back, too.

I love my house, she said. Lucas can walk to school. He has friends.

What they did to us was wrong. They stole our property.

What she didn’t say now, because the boys were just behind them, was that they’d taken the house because he’d bought it with drug money. Instead, she said, You didn’t have a job.

I bought that house long before any of the other happened. I had assets. We can establish that. His voice had turned matter-of-fact, as though nothing more needed to be said.

They passed the turnoff that led up the hill to Karen Mitchell’s house. She and her daughter, Heather, had been living in a cabin on the river just above Manzanita Farm at the time of the fire. Her house wasn’t part of the claim, but it had burned, too. Instead of moving to the barn in the valley, she and Heather had moved in with Gust Marler. They’d never left. Karen was another thing to thank the river for. She remained Sarah’s closest friend. She was the only person she’d ever invited into her cottage.

You remember how you once told me you believed that I could do anything in the world? Nicholas asked.

I remember. I still believe you can.

Then believe that I’ve changed.

I don’t disbelieve that.

I learned things in prison. I know now that the world wasn’t what I thought it was. I thought everything just happened. I now see that spirit predominates over all things. I know that it’s the only real thing.

Are you a Christian?

Every word I’ve said and every prayer I’ve spoken are all true.

Are you a Christian?

I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian and I’m more.

What does that mean?

"Christianity is of the spiritual world. It isn’t all of it."

They were now passing Frank Briggs’s house, just off the bank to the right. A small one-story house. His car wasn’t in the drive. The curtains were pulled tight.

Frank’s house, Nicholas said.

Yes.

She’d told him about Frank the first week after he’d come home. Everybody, he’d said, had to do his own time in his own way.

They arrived at the lane that led up to their old house, and he turned into the entry and stopped. A metal gate had been installed between the tall gate posts. It was chained and padlocked, as it had been for the last three years.

She pictured the big house at the top of the lane, with its two-story main building. Single-story wings led off behind it, separated by a courtyard. Each room in the wings had its own bathroom, like motel rooms, so people could live in the house and never see each other. The kitchen was all shining steel. The wood floor in the living room was sealed under a thick coat of plastic.

After they’d taken Nicholas away, she’d felt like she was living in someone else’s house. She hadn’t been strong enough to mother her boys. She’d screamed at them. She’d slapped Lucas across his face.

I’m not going to move back here, she said.

He put a hand on her leg and pressed until she turned to look at him. He now looked directly into her eyes. She had seen him do this many times, sink the light of his eyes into other people until they seemed to overflow with him.

We’ll have the entire ranch someday, too, he said.

The Summer Ranch was a thousand acres. When Nicholas had gotten the house and their seven acres, the pasture land had gone to someone else.

It would be so much money, she said.

The money will happen.

CHAPTER 4

N icholas first conquered the adult Sunday school class. He began by saying little, asking only those questions that were befitting to a newly saved Christian and occasionally reciting a verse of scripture to reinforce or amplify the lesson that Jerry Akins presented. The verses he chose, while familiar to many, were now seen through fresh eyes, and for many, including Sarah, they seemed to take on new and startling meanings. Jerry, who taught the class as a Christian duty and followed the curriculum methodically, welcomed Nicholas’s comments as much as everyone else. He encouraged him to speak out and even asked him to speak the closing prayers.

When