Words caught in her throat. Something inside her broke loose. It felt like a dam was cracking, or maybe a puzzle was coming together.
“I have preached so many sermons that I can’t possibly remember them all, but that one … that one was different. There was a young couple in our membership celebrating the birth of a child. I had notes planned for that message, but I didn’t use them.”
He looked at her and smiled. “But the spirit gave me new words. A life ending and a life beginning. It was quite … quite meaningful.”
For a long moment, Amber couldn’t speak. She was afraid if she did, the tears wouldn’t stop. He reached out and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, bear-bear. I feel it, too.”
The waitress came and placed their food down, giving them a break from the heavy subject they’d just laid out between them. She took a couple of bites and regained her voice.
“But this guy, Morales,” she said, “are you saying you remember him as well?”
Something changed in her father’s tone, it went flat, emotionless. “I do. He came down front at the end of the sermon. I didn’t make an altar call, we had another event or something at the end. But he came down and knelt and asked me to pray over him and the baby. He was friends with the couple who’d just had the child.”
Amber slid a picture out of her backpack. “Is that him?”
“Yes,” he said, no hint of uncertainty in his voice.
It struck her as odd that he was so sure, but it made sense. Everything else that day was etched so clearly in his mind.
“I baptized the baby,” he said, “And then I baptized him. First time—and the last—I’d ever done anything like that.”
The dam that had been cracking … broke. A flood of memories rushed at her like a torrent of water. The baby, the man, the anniversary of her mother’s death.
“I … I was … I was there.”
“Yes,” her father said, as tears slid down his face. “Yes, you were.”
11
Revelations
Psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists call it dissociative amnesia. The brain pushes a traumatic event back and hides it deep in your subconscious. The person experiencing this sometimes has an altered memory of the trauma, but in Amber’s case, she had no memory of it at all … until today. When her father revealed the spare details of the Sunday in question, the fog began to lift. It wasn’t a sudden revelation, but more like a television screen coming into focus.
But underneath it, for reasons she didn’t fully understand yet, she felt an undercurrent—no, more like a riptide—of dread. After lunch, she’d accompanied her dad to his home, the same home she grew up in. It looked exactly like every other house in the neighborhood. Stucco exterior, an arched doorway, and red clay roof tiles. The yard was scraggly, he’d let it go. Seeing her old room, which her father and mother had eventually made a guest room, was first like meeting a stranger, but when she laid down on the bed and closed her eyes, she could almost see the alternating pink and purple walls, the fluffy pink bean bag chair, the small white melamine desk, and the doll chest overflowing with different girls and plush animals (also pink and purple.)
She hadn’t meant to nap, but the quick turnaround flights had left her a bit lagged and before fifteen minutes had passed, she was asleep. Her mind decided this would be a good time to reveal the true details of that fateful Sunday. Oddly, she realized she was dreaming. The lucidity of it was bright and clear, but everything else … and it was literally everything … was red.
Hate.
She felt so much anger and violence, but she didn’t know why. It was a normal Sunday, at least, as normal as they had been after her mother died. This particular day, was the anniversary of her mom’s death. It was always hard, but her father made it his mission to make the day a little less dark. She began to recall the sermon. She had cried. Everyone in the church had cried. The people with the new baby had felt so special and blessed by this inspirational service. In her dream she saw two men shaking hands and slapping backs at the front of the chapel. She always sat in the choir, though she never had a good singing voice. Unsure whether her mind was playing tricks on her, or if she had really seen it, she saw that one of the men was a younger Marcario Morales. The other, maybe a friend of Morales, was a bit hazy.
Morales looked almost the same. His jet-black hair was a bit longer and thicker. His smile was wide and flawless. She was almost convinced that he was the same man, a real person, the man she was now trying to help … but then she saw his eyes. Something about them was different from the Marc she had met back in the Sullivan Correctional Facility. The man in her dream leered at her. She couldn’t see herself in the dream, but she knew she was only fourteen at the time. His gaze seemed completely … wolf-like.
Suddenly, the scene shifted to the family home. The sun was setting, orange and purple, over the horizon. The smell of fried chicken, greens, and black-eyed peas filled the air. Sunday dinner. For a long time after her mother died, her father went through all the same rituals, fixed all the same meals, said all the same prayers. It was as if he was trying to ease the pain of their mutual loss.
And then … the door. A knock. No, more like an insistent pounding. She watched over her father’s shoulder as he opened the door. And there he was, Marcario Morales, the man who had undressed her with his eyes back at the church. Her father, ever a man of
