When She Woke. Hillary Jordan

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      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.”