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Hannah said nothing, nonplussed by the image that popped into her mind of Aidan in his pajamas, his hair disheveled, his eyes heavy-lidded. Alyssa watched her with a knowing expression that held a hint of warning, and Hannah’s cheeks burned as it occurred to her just how many women must have fancied themselves in love with Aidan Dale over the years. She must be one of dozens, hundreds even, who’d fantasized about him. Wished him unmarried to this astute, composed woman.
“Hannah,” Becca said in a loud whisper. She stood in the doorway, holding up her port. “Mama wants to talk to you.”
Hannah suppressed a sigh of relief. “Please excuse me, Mrs. Dale.”
“No, I should be going,” Alyssa said. “We’re off to Mexico tonight, and South America and California after that, and I’m still not completely packed.”
“A long trip, then,” Hannah said.
“Three weeks. Long enough.” She didn’t need to add, For him to forget you.
For a while, it seemed he had. Summer gave way to fall, and the temperature finally dropped down into the double digits, and as the first holos of cavorting skeletons and witches on broomsticks began to appear on her neighbors’ front lawns, Hannah’s memories of Aidan started to lose their definition, taking on the hazy quality of images seen through tulle. If he’d ever had feelings for her—and she was becoming doubtful that he had—he must have since come to his senses, as she herself needed to do. Even to think of being with him, a married man, a man of God, was a grave sin. And so in Bible study, she made a point of sitting next to Will, a shy young man who’d been casting yearning looks her way for weeks, and when he finally got up the courage to ask her out, she accepted.
She’d had two serious boyfriends, one her senior year of high school and the other in her early twenties. They were nice young men, and she’d enjoyed their company and attention, but neither of them had stirred anything deeper in her than affection and a sporadic sexual curiosity she had no intention of exploring, not with them. That wasn’t enough. They weren’t enough.
Nor, she soon realized, was Will, though by every rational measure he ought to have been. He was a veterinarian, sweet, shy, funny in a self-deprecating way. They started dating in mid-October, and by mid-November, when the oak leaves began to drift to the ground in spiky brown curls, she knew that Will was falling along with them, and that she was not. “Please, Hannah, give him a chance,” her mother urged, and so she continued to see him. He became ardent, spoke of love, hinted at marriage. She stilled his roving hands and deflected his near-proposals. Finally, when his frustration turned to anger, she cut him loose, bleeding and disoriented, her own heart perfectly intact.
Aidan wouldn’t leave it intact, she’d known that from the first. Long before they became lovers, she could foresee that there would be an after, and that it would lay waste to them both.
Still. She hadn’t envisioned this: herself a Red, an outcast, while Aidan went on with his life and his ministry, moved with Alyssa to Washington to take up his new post as secretary of faith, continued to inspire millions by his words and example. Hannah knew he thought of her, missed her, grieved as she did for their lost child. Blamed himself and tormented himself with what-ifs. Probably hated himself for not coming forward.
Still.
She watched the fly buzz busily around the room. When it landed on the floor beside her, she killed it with a vicious smack of her hand.
I AM A RED NOW.
It was her first thought of the day, every day, surfacing after a few seconds of fogged, blessed ignorance and sweeping through her like a wave, breaking in her breast with a soundless roar. Hard on its heels came the second wave, crashing into the wreckage left by the first: He is gone. The first subsided eventually, settling into a dull ache, but the second assailed her with relentless fury, rolling in every ten, twenty minutes, gone, gone, gone, swamping her with fresh grief. The sense of loss never diminished. If anything, it seemed to grow more raw as the day of her release neared. She wondered how her heart could hold so much pain and still continue its measured, insistent thumping.
If only he were here, I could go to him. The notion was absurd, a puerile fantasy, and though she dismissed it at once, its ghost lingered, flitting about at the edges of her thoughts and stirring up memories of the first time she’d gone to him, at the hotel in San Antonio. With them came the inevitable twinge of desire. Even now, after all that had happened, she still felt it.
It had started with a call, a couple of weeks before Christmas. The despondency that had weighed on her like a lead apron during the last weeks with Will had lifted, leaving her more determined than ever not to settle for anything less than a bone-deep love. She’d felt it once, or the beginnings of it; she could and would feel it again. Aidan Dale, she swept forcibly from her mind. She begged God’s forgiveness for having desired him and swore to Him and herself that she’d never be so weak again.
Such was her state of mind when the church office called. A part-time coordinator’s position had opened up with the First Corinthians ministry. Was Hannah still interested?
For a moment, she was too stunned to answer. She’d applied to work at Ignited Word several years before, but paying positions were rare and highly sought after, and nothing had ever come of it. The First Corinthians ministry, or the 1Cs as it was more familiarly known, was the church’s charitable arm, charged with helping the community’s neediest and most troubled members. It was also Reverend Dale’s pet project. He could often be seen behind the wheel of one of its shiny white vans, delivering food to the poor, driving addicts to rehab and homosexuals to conversion therapy retreats. He’d named it for his favorite Bible verse, 1 Corinthians 13:2, which he often quoted in his sermons and interviews, always using the original King James scripture—“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing”—as opposed to the NIV version, which replaced the word charity with love. There are infinite kinds of love, Reverend Dale liked to say, but charity is the purest of them all, because it’s the only one that doesn’t ask, What’s in it for me?
Had Aidan put Hannah’s name forward for this position? And if he had—and why else would they be calling, after all this time—was it out of kindness, or something else?
“Miss Payne?” the woman said, drawing Hannah back to the conversation. “Would you like to come in for an interview?”
Kindness, Hannah told herself, as she scheduled the appointment. Kindness and nothing more.
She interviewed with the office manager, Mrs. Bunten, a middle-aged woman with a forbidding, deeply lined face that concealed a compassionate and motherly nature. Hannah later learned that the lines had been incised by grief; Mrs. Bunten had lost her husband and two sons in one of the scourge riots and been born again soon afterward. Now, ten years later, Ignited Word was her entire universe, and Reverend Dale was the glorious sun blazing at the center of it. That much was apparent to Hannah from the beginning. Mrs. Bunten spoke fondly enough of God and His Son, but it was when she talked about Aidan that her face took on the glow of true veneration.
The pivotal moment in the interview came when they were discussing Hannah’s father’s recovery. “A miracle,” said Mrs. Bunten.
“Yes,” agreed Hannah. “I thank God for it every day. God, and Reverend Dale.”
Mrs. Bunten gave her a smile that was positively beatific. “I can see you’re going to fit in perfectly here.”
The job was twenty hours a week, most of it spent doing clerical work at the 1Cs office, although Hannah was sometimes asked to serve in the soup kitchen or make deliveries. Her first week, she didn’t see Aidan once. But then on Monday of the following week, he walked into the office carrying an unwieldy tower of brightly colored boxes of children’s toys. “Ho ho ho,” he boomed, slightly out of breath.
Mrs. Bunten hurried to help him. Hannah followed more slowly, caught between eagerness and reluctance. Mrs. Bunten took the top few boxes, revealing his face. “Thank you, Brenda,” he said. Then he saw Hannah. “Oh, Hannah. Hello.”
His smile was ingenuous, pleasantly surprised. Kind. Hannah plummeted. “Hello, Reverend Dale.”
“Now, Reverend,” said Mrs. Bunten, all but clucking as she handed Hannah the boxes and took the rest from him, “you know you shouldn’t be carrying all that. Mrs. Dale will be mad at us both if you throw your back out again.”
“Alyssa worries too much.”
Mrs. Dale. Alyssa. Hannah turned away and set the boxes down. His wife.
“How’s your father doing?” he asked.
“Daddy’s well. He’s back at work. His left eye’s still a little fuzzy, but we’re hopeful it’ll heal in time.” Aidan doesn’t feel it.
“I pray it will. Please give my very best to him and your mother.”
“I will.” He doesn’t feel it, and that’s for the best.
He asked how Hannah was liking it here, and she said very much, thank you. He inquired after Becca and sent congratulations on her marriage. Mrs. Bunten interjected, marveling at how he never forgot a person’s name once he’d prayed with them. He protested her tendency to exaggerate his virtues. Hannah made the appropriate responses. She felt numb and foolish.
Aidan’s assistant interrupted them, calling to remind him about his four o’clock meeting with Congressman Drabyak. Aidan tapped his forehead ruefully, said he’d better be on his way, welcomed Hannah to the 1Cs and excused himself.
At the door, he turned back. “Brenda, I forgot to tell you, there are a bunch more toys out in the van. They need to be wrapped by tomorrow. I’m taking them to the shelter at three.”
“We’ll see to it, Reverend,” Mrs. Bunten said.
Aidan turned to Hannah. “Would you like to come along? To the shelter? It’s wonderful, watching the children’s faces light up.”
His own held nothing but friendly interest and eagerness—to see the children. Perhaps he hadn’t put her name forward after all, not even out of kindness. Perhaps it was God’s doing that she was here, a penance for her desire: to see his face and hear his voice and know that he could never be hers.
“I’d love to,” she said.
And so it began, their long, tortured mating dance, though it was months before she recognized it as such. She existed in a state of silent longing, punctuated by bursts of guilt and fear that someone would notice. Aidan treated her as he treated everyone, with a pastor’s professional warmth.
Hannah had been working at the church for six weeks when Alyssa came into the office with Aidan. She stopped short when she saw Hannah, and Hannah knew he hadn’t told her. Because it was too unimportant to mention, or …?
“Hello, Mrs. Dale.”
“Hello,” Alyssa said. “Becca, isn’t it?”
Sensing the ignorance was feigned, Hannah said, “That’s my sister. I’m Hannah.”
“Hannah joined us just before Christmas,” Aidan said. “She’s doing a terrific job.”
The remark sounded forced and awkward. Hannah smiled uncomfortably.
“Of course she is, darling,” said Alyssa. She slipped her arm around Aidan’s waist and gave Hannah a wintry smile. “My husband inspires hard work in others. People hate to disappoint him.”
Aidan’s unease was obvious, and Hannah was all but certain Alyssa had complimented him on purpose, because she knew how he hated being praised. Perhaps their marriage wasn’t as idyllic as everyone believed.
“Oh, I’m sure Hannah would do a good job for anyone,” he said.
“Well,” said Alyssa, “let’s not keep her from her work.”
The Dales got what they’d come for—the keys to one of the vans—and left. Alyssa preceded Aidan out the door. At the last second he swiveled his head to look back at Hannah, and she had a queer sensation, as if she were pulling it with a string. Their eyes met, held, dropped away at the same time.
So, she thought. So.
AFTER THAT THE real torment began. Aidan’s behavior toward Hannah was unchanged, but there was a charged quality to their interactions that had been missing before, and she knew she wasn’t suffering alone. Their attraction grew slowly, haltingly, unacknowledged but unmistakable. To Hannah it often seemed like a pregnancy during which they were both waiting, with equal degrees of excitement and trepidation, for the inevitable emergence of the new thing they were creating between them. They were rarely alone together, and then, only briefly and by accident—a chance encounter on the stairs, a five-minute span when Mrs. Bunten was in the restroom. Aidan was constantly surrounded by people, all of them wanting something from him: his attention, his blessing, his opinion, the touch of his hand on their shoulders. Hannah grew to resent them all, even as she felt the echo of their hunger in herself.
Most of all, she resented and envied Alyssa Dale. Aidan’s wife had become a frequent visitor to the 1Cs office, pitching in wherever help was needed. Mrs. Bunten commented on it one day, saying how nice it was that Mrs. Dale was taking such an interest in their work. With Hannah, Alyssa was coolly polite and, when Aidan was around, watchful. When it was just the women, she was more relaxed, though she always maintained a certain reserve, an air of apartness. Still, she worked as hard as any of them, was generous with praise and kept them amused with her wry sense of humor. Mrs. Bunten and the other women adored her, and even Hannah began to admire her. It occurred to her more than once that in different circumstances, she and Alyssa Dale might have been friends.
In the meantime, the tension between Hannah and Aidan continued to mount. At times it was so palpable she half expected it to materialize, sinuous and glistening, in the air between them. Every night before bed, she prayed for God’s forgiveness. And every night, she lay sleepless and imagined Aidan lying beside her. She knew she should quit the 1Cs and remove herself from the temptation of being around him. She even composed a letter of resignation to Mrs. Bunten, but she couldn’t bring herself to say “Send” any more than she could make herself ask God to help her stop loving Aidan.
In June, Hannah turned twenty-five. The morning of her birthday she walked into the office to discover a large potted orchid sitting on her desk. It looked as exotic and out of place in the spartan 1Cs office as a zebra pelt would have, or a Ming vase. The petals were yellow, with crimson splotches, and the plant was draped in a perfect U.
“Where did this come from?” she asked Mrs. Bunten. Alyssa, thankfully wasn’t present; she’d accompanied Aidan on an extended mission to Africa.
“It was just delivered. Addressed to you.”
Flustered, Hannah turned her back to the other woman and pretended to look for a card, knowing there wouldn’t be one. When she touched one of the petals with her forefinger, it felt soft and vibrantly alive, like skin.
“You didn’t tell us you had an admirer,” Mrs. Bunten said in a coy, chiding tone.
“It’s from my father,” Hannah lied. “He always sends me an orchid on my birthday.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Bunten, disappointed. “Well, happy birthday, dear. I’m sure you’ll meet someone soon, as pretty as you are.”
Hannah couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. What did it mean, that Aidan had sent her this extravagant, sensual thing? For of course it had come from him; the absence of a card was the proof. Was he surrendering to his feelings at last? Should she? What would happen next?
She had three excruciating weeks to ponder the answers. It was the longest she’d gone without seeing him, and she was edgy and distracted. She comforted—and tormented—herself by watching vids of his preaching, often joined by her parents. At first she was nervous, afraid her face would give her away, but finally she realized that her expression mirrored theirs and those of every member of his audiences. The world loved Aidan Dale.
HE RETURNED ON a Friday, which was one of Hannah’s days off, and then there was the weekend to get through. She went to church with her parents on Sunday as always. Aidan’s sermon was unusually fervent that day, rousing the congregation to a near frenzy of exaltation. He concluded quietly, with a passage from 1 John: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” Though she was sitting too far back for him to see her, Hannah was sure he was speaking to her.
Monday, she wore her dark green dress, the one that always made her mother’s brow crinkle because of the way its plain lines accentuated her figure. She spent the day in a state of twitchy anticipation and even stayed an extra half hour, but he didn’t appear. She left feeling despondent and confused. He’d never uttered an inappropriate word to her. Never gone out of his way to be alone with her, never touched her. Had she imagined it all then?
The next morning she got a call from the church office: one of the volunteer chaperones for the True Love Waits jamboree in San Antonio this weekend had had to cancel due to a family emergency. Could Hannah take her place?
“Of course,” she replied. She knew Aidan was attending; Mrs. Bunten had mentioned it yesterday. Had he suggested Hannah?
She spent a fretful week waiting, oscillating between certainties: he had, he hadn’t, he had, he hadn’t. Aidan himself was away again, overseeing the opening of a new shelter in Beaumont. Hannah could do nothing but wait: for Friday to arrive at last, for the caravan to reach San Antonio, for her teenaged charges to be checked into the hotel, welcome packets to be handed out, mixups and dramas—“I was supposed to be in Emily’s room!”—to be sorted, the opening-night fellowship supper to be over. Aidan was supposed to be presiding, but there’d been thunderstorms in East Texas, and his flight had been delayed. The groans of disappointment this news elicited from the twenty-five hundred teens in the room drowned out Hannah’s own small sound of frustration.
After supper she paced in her room, waiting for the vid to ring or not, combing over what few facts she had. Fact: the church office had hundreds of volunteers to draw from, but they’d called her, Hannah, just as they’d called her for the interview. Fact: Aidan was coming alone. Alyssa was away for a week, visiting her parents in Houston. Fact: the other volunteers were sleeping two to a room, but Hannah had one to herself. Could it be mere coincidence, that she was the odd woman out?
She was half expecting, half despairing of a call, so when she heard the knock just after eleven, it startled her. It came not from the door to the hallway, but from the one to the adjoining room: three soft raps. Hannah’s heart leapt, but she didn’t hurry. She proceeded to the door at the stately, measured pace of a bride walking down the aisle.
She took a deep breath, undid the latch and opened the door. Neither of them moved or spoke at first. They just looked at each other, absorbing the fact that they were here, together, alone.
Aidan’s fine-boned face was etched with sorrow and longing. Hannah studied it, seeing for the first time that his features, while attractive, were unexceptional, and that what made it so arresting were the contradictions it held: boyishness and sensuality, self-assurance and humility, faith and apprehension, as if of some terrible blow yet to be struck which he alone could foresee.
“I’m not the man you think I am,” he said. “I’m a sinner. Weak, faithless.”
“You’re the man I want,” Hannah said. She felt oddly calm now that the moment was here, happening outside of her head. She had no misgivings, just a sense of absolute rightness that she knew could have come only from God.
“I’m the worst sort of hypocrite.”
“No, not in this,” Hannah said. “This is honest. This is right. Don’t you feel it?”
“Yes, I feel it,” he said, “like I’ve never felt anything in my life. But your honor, Hannah. Your soul.”
She took his hand and brought it to her chest, laying it over her heart, then put her hand over his heart, which was beating in wild contrapuntal percussion to the hard steady cadence of her own. She waited, and finally he pulled her to him and kissed her.
He kept his eyes closed that first time, even when she cried out from the pain of it. At the sound, he grimaced as though he were the one being hurt. She hadn’t told him she was a virgin, not out of any desire to hide the fact, but simply because it seemed self-evident. It was for him that she had waited.
“It’s all right,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not.” His hips moved faster. His body shuddered. And then he cried out himself, but not in pain.
Now, Hannah closed her own eyes and let herself imagine how it would be to see him again. To lie with her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder while he stroked her hair and spoke of random things—a dream he’d had the night before, a sermon he was struggling with, an idea he hadn’t shared with anyone else. But the fantasy stuttered and halted, just as their conversations all too often had when one of them inadvertently said the wrong word, puncturing the fragile membrane that sheltered them from the outside world. “Home” conjured Alyssa in the bed between them. “Church” raised the specter of discovery and scandal. “Tomorrow” or “next week” led to thoughts of a future together that they could never have.
For there was no question of Aidan’s leaving his wife. He’d told Hannah so bluntly that first night, as he was getting dressed. “I can never offer you more than this,” he said, waving his hand to encompass the rumpled bed, the generic room. “I love you, but I can never leave Alyssa. I can’t bring that kind of shame on her. Do you understand? You and I will never be able to love each other openly.”
“I understand.”
“You deserve that, with someone,” he said. “A husband, a family.”
Lying in the damp bed with his scent on her skin and her body aching from their lovemaking, she couldn’t imagine being with another man. Even the thought of it was repugnant.
“I don’t want anyone else,” she told him.
TWO (#ulink_e22b0985-2ca5-563d-98a3-74893ba06f83)
SUNLIGHT BOUNCING OFF concrete, glinting on razor wire and steel, bathing her face in warmth. Cool wind buffeting her skin and stirring her hair, vivid blue of sky piercing her eyes. Sounds of cars whizzing past, a snatch of song from a radio, the tweeting of birds, the chirping of locusts, the crunch of two pairs of feet on gravel. The sensory input was dizzying, overwhelming. Hannah stumbled, and the guard walking beside her took hold of her upper arm to steady her. As he did so, his fingers brushed against the outside curve of her breast. Intentionally? She gave him a sidelong glance, but his wide brown face was impassive, and his eyes were staring straight ahead.
They approached a large, windowless building six stories tall: the prison. As they passed beneath its shadow, Hannah felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Only the most violent felons were kept behind bars—first-degree murderers, serial rapists, abortionists and other offenders deemed incorrigible by the state. Most of them served life sentences. Once they went in, they almost never came out.
As they neared the gate, it began to move, sliding into the wall with a mechanical groan.
“You’re free to go,” the guard told Hannah. She paused on the threshold. “What’s the matter, pajarita, you afraid to leave the nest?”
Giving no indication that she’d heard him, she squared her shoulders and stepped through the opening, into the world.
She stood in a short driveway leading to a parking lot. She walked to the edge of the drive and scanned the lot, one hand shielding her eyes against the morning sun. There was no movement, no sign of her parents’ blue sedan. She fixed her eyes on the entrance, willing the car to appear, telling herself her father was just running late.
“Hey, gal.” The voice, a man’s, came from behind her. She turned and saw a small booth she hadn’t noticed to one side of the gate. A guard was leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his chest. “Guess your friend ain’t coming,” he said.
