Her head wagged back and forth. “No. He didn’t hurt me. Just locked me down here.”
“Let’s go upstairs and you can tell me what happened.” The sheriff led her up the stairs. Sat her down at the same table where her pie and water glass still sat.
Flies swarmed it.
She closed her eyes. “Please. Take it away.”
“It’s gone.” Another man spoke.
Then it hit her. The gunshots she’d heard earlier. “Where’s ... Julian? Did you shoot him?”
No one answered, but heads lowered.
She jerked out of Joshua’s grasp and raced out to the garden.
“Wait, Anna—”
What if he didn’t know God? Her heart tore in two.
When she reached him, she stopped short and had to put a hand to her mouth. Blood oozed from several wounds on Julian’s chest and stomach, and a pool of it grew underneath him. Bile burned her throat and she swallowed against it.
He coughed and sputtered. “Mama, I was a good boy. I stopped the darkness.”
Joshua wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she reached up to squeeze his hand. With a pleading glance to him, she took a tiny step closer and knelt beside the dying man.
“Oh, Julian, I’m so sorry....”
“If we don’t stop the bleeding....” Josh’s voice was strangled beside her. “I need to find something—”
“No. It’s too late....” Julian lifted a hand and it fell back at his side. “You prayed for God to save me ... even after ... I did ... this....” He choked and closed his eyes. “Why?”
She couldn’t speak. Tears clogged her throat. None of them, not even she, knew what horrors this man lived with. The horrors visited on him all his childhood. The horrors of what he’d done. What he might have done to ... her.
“Because”—Joshua’s arm around Anna tightened as he spoke—“God loves you, Julian.” He knelt beside Anna. “He sent His Son to be the sacrifice to fix all of us.”
Tears pooled in the dying man’s eyes as he glanced back and forth between Anna and Josh. He reached out again. “Forgive me?”
“Yes.” No matter what he’d done, she could freely give it. Becauseshe’dbeen forgiven.Thank You, God.
Joshua reached forward and gripped Julian’s outstretched hand. “I forgive you.”
Julian’s eyes closed.
And didn’t reopen.
Strong arms beside her helped her to stand. They walked back over to the house and waited outside.
The sheriff and his deputy joined Anna and Joshua. “I know this is difficult, but I need you to start from the beginning. Your father said there was a skull in Julian’s garden.”
“First, you need to know that there is more than one body out there.” The words came out stronger than she expected even though she was pretty certain her stomach wouldn’t cooperate for long.
The sheriff’s shoulders drooped. “I was afraid of that. Go on.”
She told them her story and tried not to look at the garden as the men flung dirt over their shoulders. When she got toJulian’s confessions at the end, she couldn’t take it anymore. She ran over to the bluff and retched in the dirt.
Had she contributed to Julian’s issues by being so stubborn? The thought had turned over and over in her mind the last day. If only she’d listened to the men who loved her and wanted to protect her.
It wasn’t Mary’s fault for being kind to him either. Anna wouldn’t want to change her sweet friend’s spirit for anything in the world. They needed more people like her. People willing to love the unlovable.
