Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [106]
Grace waited in the car while Kessler walked Thomas back to his office. “What’s going on, friend?” the pastor said.
“I don’t want to keep you from your family, Will, really. I’ll get through this.”
“Nonsense. Now you’ve suffered a blow, and it’ll be good for you to talk about it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t yet. Sorry.”
“You upset with God?”
Thomas let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t think that’s the way I’d put it. Disappointed maybe. Frustrated. Puzzled for sure. Not upset. Not angry at Him. How could I ever be?”
“It’s okay to be, you know. He can take it.”
“I know. And I’ve told people what you’re telling me. But how could I ever be angry at the One who has lavished so much on me? We both know I deserve Henry Trenton’s fate, not the life I enjoy. No, I could never really be mad at God.”
Kessler seemed to study him. “Thomas, I’m in a rather awkward spot, trying to counsel a man with your experience. But I’m going to ask you to consider something—just consider it. Allow for the possibility that you’re so low because you’re in denial about your thinking about God right now. Now, don’t look at me that way. I know all the denial stuff sounds like psychobabble. But I just have to wonder if your crisis, your inability to start seeing this in context and perspective, is because you’re not allowing yourself to be honest with the Lord.”
Thomas lowered his head and gazed at the pastor. The young man was trying so hard. And he seemed to genuinely care. “I appreciate your concern,” Thomas said. “And I will think about what you’ve said.”
Part Two
39
Addison
Brady Darby spent much of the next two years in and out of juvie hall, then was tried as an adult at eighteen for a botched escape attempt when he was just days from having served his time. He spent most of the next year in the local jail, which he would not have survived without having earned his chops in juvie.
One place he didn’t want to wind up was back in the county jail. That, many said, was worse than the state’s supermax, because rather than being isolated from each other, prisoners were crammed together all day every day.
Every time Brady had been released from juvie—once for good behavior, twice due to overcrowding—he had used the new criminal knowledge gained inside to find more and more creative ways to ruin his life. Petty theft, a clownish armed robbery (which he claimed he didn’t realize he could be charged with since he was faking a weapon with his finger tenting his jacket pocket), and finding himself in the middle of a very real drug bust had turned him into a jail rat, on his way to becoming a career criminal.
At yet one more sentencing, a judge clearly at the end of his patience cocked his head and squinted at Brady. “Listening to you will spoil my lunch, Mr. Darby. To hear you tell it—” he grabbed a sheaf of papers and waved them about—“none of this is ever your fault. Misdemeanor, misdemeanor, petty crime, felony, felony, felony. But no, in your sedated mind, it’s always a misunderstanding. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, blamed for someone else’s crime, victim of bad counsel or an overreaction from a hanging judge, you name it. Well, I’ll gladly serve as your excuse this time, son. I’m tired of your sorry face.”
Even Brady’s aunt and uncle had given up on visiting him, having heard, Aunt Lois said, “one too many tall tales. Just know that we will continue to pray for you, Brady. But you won’t be seeing us again until you’re out and make the effort to come to us.”
That last hurt Brady, because they were the only ones who ever brought Peter to see him.
His mother made a huge show of disowning Brady and bad-mouthing him to everyone she knew:
“He knows better.”
“He wasn’t raised like that.”
“I don’t know where he learned that kind of behavior. Must have got it from his no-account dad.”
When such comments got back to Brady, he just shook his head. As if she’s ever been a real mom.
Truth was, Brady had given up on himself. Since his brief, so brief, season in the