The Turning by Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online

something sharp. Her father disliked any hint of uncertainty. He carried himself with absolute conviction that all the things worth having an opinion about were there in black-and-white. Anyone with half a brain could see what was right. One of Richard Linn’s favorite expressions in an argument. He’d even used it against his daughter.
    Only not today. To her astonishment, he asked, “Would you like us to pray with you?”
    Suddenly she found herself unable to hold back the tears. “That would be really nice.”
    Her father prayed first, then her mother. By the time they finished, Jenny was weeping openly. She had to take a pair of hard breaths before she could manage, “Thank you, Daddy.”
    “You haven’t called me that in a very long while.”
    “Just a minute.” She set the phone down on the carpet beside her, and used the top sheet to clear her face. As she picked up the phone again, a thought hit her. Unbidden. Unwanted. And yet the harder she resisted, the more certain became the conviction. She put the phone to her ear and said, “I have something I need to tell you. I was engaged to be married.”
    Jenny’s mother drew a very sharp breath, but it was her father who demanded, “When was this?”
    “Five months ago. We were engaged for seven weeks. Then he broke it off. He said …”
    She dropped the phone, her sobs so tight she gripped the carpet in order to draw a breath. She had no idea how long it took before she picked up the phone and went on, “He said we’d taken all this too fast. He didn’t love me enough to want to spend a life together. And it was better if we didn’t start.”
    She only realized her mother was crying when she mangled the words, “Better for him, maybe.”
    “That’s exactly what I thought,” Jenny agreed.
    Her father asked, “I don’t understand. You were engaged to be married, and you didn’t even tell your own parents?”
    “We weren’t talking back then, remember, Pop?” The recollection of her rage was enough to help steady her voice. “You were all over me about working for the election of the Democratic senator, remember that? I met my fiancé during the campaign. I wasn’t going to give you the pleasure of criticizing his politics too. And when it was over, I wasn’t going to let you say that it all fell apart because I had the bad sense to love a
Democrat
. A
liberal
. Because they couldn’t be
trusted
.”
    “I would never have said …”
    “Come on, Pop.”
    He sighed. “All right. Yes. You’re right.”
    Jenny smiled through her tears. “Wow. Did I really hear that?”
    Her mother said, “Richard, tell Jenny what you said last night.”
    Her father went gruff and sour. “We’ve covered enough ground for one day.”
    “Richard, tell your daughter.”
    “I said you humbled me, how you spoke. You were the wise one. I felt—”
    “Ashamed,” her mother filled in. “Your father said he felt ashamed. He wished he had been the one to rise above the arguments. He wished he had been the one to say that he loved you.”
    Jenny knew it was time. “I need to tell you both what happened last Sunday before I came to the house.”
    As she spoke, she found herself reliving what had occurred during her Sunday school class, when she had suddenly found herself overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit’s presence, and heard the silent voice of God. Telling her to take the impossible turning, and go do what needed doing. And that she would find him waiting for her there.
    When her parents did not respond, Jenny asked, “Where are you?”
    “Parked outside the airport parking garage,” her mother said. “We didn’t want to risk losing the phone signal.”
    Richard’s voice sounded gravelly, his words slow to emerge. “Do you think—has this event run its course?”
    “I don’t know
what
to think. I never expected anything like this to happen. Not to me. I live by my brains, I analyze everything to death. But there it was. The voice of God. Boom. Like