Page 95 of Running to You

“No problem,” Michael said. “Call when you’re close, and I’ll meet you. No need to show the thugs what car you’re driving.”

Sam had no idea how they were going to hide the sedan—or the Porsche Michael was driving—but maybe Michael would figure it out by the time they got there.

“Feel better?” he asked Eliza.

“Strength in numbers. Hopefully, we can get in and out without any problems.”

Only if their luck changed, and Sam wasn’t counting on it.

And he needed to know what was going on. “Am I going to have to drag this story out of you?”

“Sorry. Just trying to figure out how to start. I know you want me to tell you who Levi is, and I promise I will, soon. For now, I want you to know that he’s not a boyfriend or a husband or anything like that.”

“Oh.” Sam tried not to let his relief show, but he could feel her watching him in the dark car. Not that he’d hidden his jealousy. Or had any plan to explain it away. “Okay.”

“Some of it’s still a little fuzzy, so bear with me. Five years ago, I had clients, a married couple. Jedediah and Lola Keller. He was a physician, and she was a psychologist. They had a good deal of money, and I talked them through their investment options. We’d only worked together a couple of months, but they were impressed with me and offered me a job in Utah, where they planned to open a home for troubled young women. I declined immediately. You and I were together, and I thought—hoped—we had a future.”

He wasn’t sure why she paused, but he nodded. Wanting her to keep going.

“That was a really hard winter. Selling Dad’s business, losing my job, losing all Dad’s friends and coworkers their jobs… It was like his death all over again. I’m sure that seems dumb to you—”

“It doesn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t really understand what you were going through, but I work with a lot of grieving people in my job, people like you and your mom. I’ve learned that grief is…sneaky. You think it’s gone, but it’s just looking for a new way to attack.”

“Interesting way to look at it. And insightful.”

For all the good it’d done him with Eliza.

“Anyway,” she said, “when I saw you with Kylee… It wasn’t just that you were flirting. Or that you’d lied to me—which, I know you didn’t. But from my perspective, that’s what it looked like. Which made me question everything—your integrity, and your loyalty, and…”

“I get it. You made assumptions, which felt right at the time.”

“My heart was broken.”

“And you took the job the Kellers offered you, even though both your mom and Jeanette told you not to.”

“Yeah.”

“That wasn’t like you.”

“Let’s just get through the facts. We’ll come back to my reasoning later.”

They seemed too closely linked to separate, but she was pressing on.

“The Kellers had already moved out there and bought the property. There was a house on it, and they let me live with them until my house—right next to theirs—was finished. They built a dorm, and a few months later, we welcomed the first women. Mostly girls, really. Late teens, early twenties. A couple of them were addicted to drugs. One was pregnant. I didn’t know all of their issues, only that their families were willing to pay—no small amount—for the Kellers to help them learn how to manage their lives. It was rehab, in a sense, but not just from drugs. It was more like rehab from…from bad decisions. And trauma. All the women were in trouble in one way or another. And I guess, in a sense, they were all addicted. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, video games, pornography. Many were addicted to men and approval and love. Or what passes for love to those who don’t know any better.”

He knew the type, avoided the type, even back before he was walking with the Lord. Because those kinds of women were too easy to exploit, and he had enough to feel guilty about.

“More came over the years,” Eliza continued. “A few had been abused—physically, sexually—some since childhood. They were angry, dangerously so. Or riddled with anxiety. Or depressed or despairing. The Kellers helped them.”

“How?” Sam asked. “Did they develop some kind of a twelve-step program? Are they believers, or—?”

“No, not Christian. They didn’t use the AA steps. Nothing like that. Lola counseled them. She and Jedediah provided plenty of places for the girls to work. Every year, they planted and harvested crops—vegetables and fruit. There were horses and cattle and chickens and goats, all of which needed to be cared for. It was a huge property covering acres of land, all surrounded by a security fence.”

It sounded idyllic. He could see the draw for people trapped in chaos. When Sam’s world felt out of control, he needed to get outside, take in fresh air, see the world. Something about the sheer size of the ocean, the grandeur of the mountains, reminded him how small he was. How big God was.

“Some women preferred woodworking or crafts,” Eliza said, “focusing on things they could sell, like quilts or jewelry or benches or picnic tables. The goal was to teach them to work hard and make their own way, their own decisions. Good decisions.”

“A lesson you needed to learn.” Sam shouldn’t have said that, but at least the words had been gentle, not accusatory.