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I am losing my mind.
Once inside her car, she deliberated whether to drive away, call 911, or summon her courage and chase the soldier out of her house—after all, he could only be a product of her imagination. If she called the police, they would search her house and find nothing. If she dared to go back inside, something even more awful might happen to her. She might go from beingalmosthis to beingfullyhis. Snippets of the movieThe Exorcistpanned through her mind.
With adrenaline still coursing through her bloodstream, she kept one eye on the door while she pulled her phone from her purse. Her hand shook uncontrollably. In the past, she would have called Faith, but Faith had too much on her plate. She couldn’t add to it. Perhaps she could trouble Fitz, who might possibly still be with Faith. Then both of them would know she was crazy.
She opened her contact list. There at the top was Amos McLeod’s name.Not him. Even so, she found herself putting a call through. He answered after three rings.
“Senior—Hello, Grace.” He’d nearly answered the way he answered his work phone.
Just the sound of his gruff voice reassured her immeasurably. “I have a question.”
“Fire away.”
“It’s about post-traumatic stress. Can it make you imagine things, like someone is following you?”
She held her breath in the subsequent silence.
“Who’s following you?”
Doubt kept her from answering.
“Grace.” His tone became coaxing. “What’s going on?”
His concern had her searching her mostly dark windows for any sign of the soldier inside.
She filled her lungs with air. “There’s someone in my house, like one of the Venezuelan soldiers I was hiding from in Ayacucho. I keep seeing him, especially here. Sometimes he’s not physically here, but I feel his breath on the back of my neck. And sometimes I dream about him. He spoke to me once. He said that I was almost his.” She couldn’t believe she was telling Amos this. What was he supposed to do? Call an ambulance so they could haul her off in a straitjacket?
“Are you okay to drive?”
The soft question relieved her immensely. She looked down at herself. “Yes. I don’t have any shoes on, though.”
“Come toCamelot,then. I would come to you, but Simon just fell asleep. You can stay here tonight.”
She hesitated for less than a second. “Okay. Be there in ten minutes.” She dropped her phone in her purse, then punched the ignition, all too ready to flee. She was still putting on her seat belt when she reached the top of her neighborhood. A wary glance in the back seat reassured her. The soldier wasn’t in her car with her. He wouldn’t dare go near Amos. Why she was sure of that, she couldn’t say.
As she sped along a dark road lined with trees, Grace shook her head at the absurdity of what was happening. She was running to the very man responsible for this nonsense. If she’d been allowed to bring Mateo home with her the first time, none of this would be occurring. All the same, she couldn’t wait for Amos to wrap his powerful arms around her and tell her everything would be all right.
CHAPTER10
“Evil is real.”
Those were not the words Grace wanted to hear, but at least Amos hadn’t scoffed at her description of the soldier stalking her. Instead, he’d brought her up to the houseboat’s sundeck to talk. With the stars twinkling above them and the marsh grass rustling under a sultry breeze that smelled of freshly cut grass, he’d sat her down and pulled a second, heavy chair close to hers, so their knees touched. Craving the safe feeling that gave her, she didn’t pull away.
“I’ve come face to face with evil more times than I can count,” he said, continuing their discussion. “It feeds on fear.”
She nodded in agreement. “But how do you confront it?”
“Well, I always think of the passage in the Bible, ‘If God is for you, then who can be against you?”
God again. “What if God isn’t for you?”
Amos turned his head. The starlight illuminated his incredulous expression. “God isalwaysfor you, Grace. You’re His creation. He loves you the way you love Mateo. The way that I love Simon.”
Bitterness welled up in her. “I doubt it. He gave me a dead baby, and now He’s keeping me from my other son.”
Amos exhaled loudly. “I know exactly how you feel. I, too, blamed God for Simon’s disappearance at first. But Candace was the one who took him from me, not God. Bad things happen in this world, where people have free will. And men whose hearts are filled with ambition have caused great suffering, but that’s not God’s doing.” He covered her hand with his and held it firmly.
Her stomach lurched at his touch, but not unpleasantly. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded if he pulled her onto his lap.
