Rooms - James L. Rubart [116]
Micah’s body went limp. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. Really, I mean it. Thanks.”
Silence.
“You’re welcome, Micah.”
He hung up and plopped onto a deck chair, stunned. His dad had said the words. It wasn’t his imagination. He’d said it: “I’m sorry.” A miracle. Maybe not on the level of the loaves and fishes, but for him it was close. And he’d called him Micah. Not son. Micah.
A flicker of hope toward his dad darted through his heart, almost too ethereal to accept. He pushed the thought aside and wondered what he’d been doing in Bandon and Newport for the past six years.
His focus turned to the surf smattering around two towering rocks that sat a hundred yards offshore, a haven for seagulls and sea lions in repose. It reminded him of something. The painting!
He sprinted to the room, heart pounding.
When Micah reached the door, he hesitated. What if it hadn’t changed? And even if it had, it wouldn’t explain the madness blowing through his life. He’d prayed multiple times, asking to know the meaning of the painting and how it tied into his two realities. There were no answers.
But still, it drew him like a magnet, and he continued to believe it was the key to unlocking the ambiguity his life had become.
Micah stole a quick breath, stepped into the room, and gasped. He saw the change instantly: the home was just a few brush strokes from being finished.
It was his home, standing on his bluff, overlooking his stretch of beach.
Why hadn’t he seen it till this moment?
As the painting had developed, there had been enough similarities between it and his own stretch of beach to make him wonder, but not enough to be sure. Somehow the painter had used a perspective of his beach that didn’t make it obvious. Now he understood why. The image was reversed, a mirror of his house and the beach in front of it.
The edge of the bluff stood slightly higher and narrower in the painting, but it was his bluff. The mountains in the background were higher and held fewer trees, but they were his. The waves were thicker, richer, more powerful, but it was the surf he’d grown to cherish.
But there were no subtle differences about his home. The closer he looked, the more detail he saw. Even the way the light played on the windows was intricate and exactly the way it looked when he came back from his early morning runs.
He’d taken photos of the house from the beach, even enhancing the colors with Photoshop to make the picture more vibrant. But those photos didn’t touch the richness here.
Why had he been chosen as the one person to see this masterpiece?
An hour, maybe two, and it would be finished. When?
He longed to know the artist, be immersed in the knowledge of how waves could be made so lifelike, mountains so majestic, the home so lifelike.
For more than an hour Micah sat and soaked in the painting, until a melancholy feeling settled over him. The changes were exhilarating, but they revealed nothing as to why his life had disintegrated.
After dinner he sat in his favorite overstuffed leather chair, Archie’s next letter resting on his 501s. Micah had avoided reading the letter earlier in the week as the last few had been portents of devastating circumstances. But where else could he turn? Rick had all but abandoned him; Sarah and Micah didn’t exist in this current reality; and the voice? He sighed. The voice was batting below .100.
He held the envelope up to the golden light that came from the lamp next to his chair. “Lord, if You’re anywhere near Cannon Beach, have Archie give me some hope.”
CHAPTER 41
November 24, 1992
Dear Micah,
Soon it will be time for you to confront your greatest foe—your villain—face-to-face. It will be just you and him, confronting one another in a fierce battle for truth and freedom. Ah, but Micah, the good news is, it will not be just you and him. For as the Scriptures tell us, greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world. In the strength you possess alone, there is no hope of victory.