Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2) (7 page)

“Lift your chin,” a make up artist named Gwen instructs. Doing so, I cast a sideways glance at Kennedy.

The crew holds up a few different lip colors, ranging from light p
in
k to concerning red. I watch her eyes roam over the options, pausing at the darkest shade, seeming to try it on in her mind. With a heavy sigh, she points to the lightest one.

“Nice choice,” I comment.

“It’s not really a choice,” she shoots back. “I’m still a CU student, and need to follow the rules, right?”

“Right,” I offer without much emotion.

I don’t know enough about Kennedy to know which color she might choose if not under the umbrella of the guidelines, and that’s a thought that spears my chest. We’ll get there, I’m sure, but I’ve got to keep it together. The perfect push-pull balance of dealing with someone who you made sure—quite legally—was going to have no bearing on your life. Only, from the very second I walked away she was there in the full weight of the shame and regret I felt as my life spiraled downward almost infinitely.

In the corner of the kitchen, Jahara is speaking with Wendy and someone who appears to be a production assistant. The interviewer, a man probably a little older than I with salt-and-pepper hair, sits in his chosen chair in the living room. Waiting. A hungry look
i
n his eyes and a disarming smile on his face, I force myself to swallow and get my game face on. I have nothing to hide. Not anymore.

You take care of her out there. If they start chewing her up, I want you to sacrifice yourself. In any way you have to. Do you hear me?

Sitting straight while the production crew twitters around my living room, I reflect on the words Wendy whispered to me upon entering my house this morning. She was in rare form, strung out on too
little sleep and too much caffeine. She picked up Kennedy from the dorms and they arrived at my house at precisely six-o’clock to begin preparing for our live segment.

Sacrifice.

A word both Wendy and I are far too familiar with for wildly different reasons. I forced sacrifice on the young, beautiful college student when I asked her to raise our child without me. And, I unknowingly sacrificed a large chunk of my soul in the process. More recently, both Wendy and I have been sacrificing our comfort levels to guide Kennedy through this whole thing.

Despite having seen each other a few times over the last five years, it’s always been in a “hello” and “goodbye” context before and after meeting Kennedy for the rare lunches we were granted. To be in near constant contact with each other for the past couple of days has been unsettling for me, but I can’t imagine the feeling
s
that must be bubbling through Wendy’s chest.

As if she hears my thoughts, Wendy Hamilton looks in my direction.

Sawyer, Roland. Her last name is Sawyer, now. You know this.

It really does look like time stopped for her somewhere in our
j
unior year of college. Sure she’s got a little grey in her hair, but she always carried herself with a kind of intensity that
would
lead you to believe she’d been born with a grey streak. She’s just as beautiful, though. Especially given all I put her through. And am still putting her through. There’s a surprise in her face. One that looks as light as the night I asked her out for our first date, and one that’s as shocked as she sounded when I called her for the first time in eight years. Maybe it’s horror, not shock. Anyway, that was a decade ago, but feels like yesterday as I watch her face pale a little before returning to her conversation.

“They’re ready for us,” I swear Wendy says, though her back is now to me and the voice is coming from my left. “Roland?”

It’s only when I hear the voice again that I realize it’s Kennedy, not Wendy.

“Are you okay?” she asks when I turn to face her. She arches an eyebrow while waiting for my answer.

I nod, pulling my lips back in a smile so practiced it feels natural. “I’m perfect. Let’s do this, huh?”

It took me five years of sobriety and three more of intentional practice to pull off the kind of composure Kennedy is demonstrating through this interview. The beginning of which covered a brief, sensational overview of my “rise to fame” as they called it, and the events surrounding Kennedy’s “outing” as my daughter.

“But you did call Joy Martinez an unsavory word upon discovering the flyer, didn’t you?”
That was one of the award-winning journalist’s first questions of my victim of a daughter in the whole mess.

“I did,”
she replied confidently.
“I should have responded differently, but we all make mistakes sometimes.”

“Couldn’t you say the same for Joy?”

As if she’d anticipated this retort, Kennedy crossed her legs and smiled sweetly.
“I can’t speak for her, but I do believe there is a deep difference between a mistake and a plan. Even the justice system follows that logic.”

Now, though, the questions are getting deeper, and I’m nervous
about
how she’ll handle them. I’ve had years of public speaking experience. Given that having a poker face is half the game, though, I’d say she has a fair shot. And I don’t even play poker anymore.

“So, Pastor Abbot, let me turn to you for a moment,” Greg Mauer says to me in a hopeful tone, as if his questions will be as such.

I smile. “Please, call me Roland.” Although it’s been a few years, hearing the title in front of my name sometimes takes me by surprise. And I want him, and everyone watching, to know that I really do feel just like “Roland”
,
and “Pastor” is simply what I’m called to do.

“First off,” he smiles, and I instantly recognize the facade. He doesn’t have any emotion behind what he’s about to
s
ay. I suppose he wouldn’t, because he doesn’t know us as well as his note
cards likely tell him he does, “how does it feel to be sitting next to your daughter in public, and to be able to call her your daughter
?
”

I take a deep breath, grateful that Wendy is in another room and I can’t see her face through the barrage of questions. “Greg, it’s unlike anything I could have imagined,” I admit, tears stinging my eyes. “But, I do want to clarify that Kennedy did grow up in a loving home with two very loving parents. My absence from her life did not preclude her from that.”

“Might you say your absence protected her?” he presses. “Given your bout with alcoholism and the years you were unable to keep a steady job?”

“You could,” I concede. “But, what matters most is we’re here now. At this point.”

Greg Mauer’s smile grows broader and he leans forward. This can’t be good.

“Once you found Jesus, Roland, why didn’t your life-changing transformation include fighting to get your daughter back in your life? Especially once you became a pastor—literally working for God.”

Running my tongue over my teeth, I carefully consider my response. “There would be nothing Godly about ripping a girl out of her safe, loving home to come live with a stranger, Mr. Mauer.”

He’s fishing. Fishing for one of us to falter. To offer some sort of “gotchya” moment to somehow wave in front of the nation as an example of “Christians Gone Wrong.” Why we can’t just have a simple interview and be done with it is beyond me.

“Kennedy,” he changes direction, “what were your thoughts when you learned that your birth father was
the
Roland Abbot
?
”

She clears her throat and uncrosses her legs, settling for re-crossing them at her ankles. “When I first met him he wasn’t
the
Roland Abbot,” she chides. “He was just my birth father who happened to be a pastor.”

“Was that strange for you?”

I have to admit, I’m listening closely to her responses. To questions I’ve always had, but lacked the opportunity to ask without seeming probing. I’ll leave the probing up to the Today Show.

Kennedy shrugs. “Not any more so than any other job he could have had, I guess. It just kind of came with the package.”

“Now, your stepfather adopted you after he and your mother got married. You have his last name.” Greg tilts his head to the side, as if considering his prey before sinking his teeth in.

Kennedy simply nods.

“How does he feel about everything that’s gone on for the last couple of days? Including you identifying yourself as Roland’s daughter, despite bearing the last name of another man?”

My cheeks burn all the way to my ears as a surge of protectiveness extends from me to Kennedy. She’s being challenged on choices she had little-to-no say in. Being born to a single mother, adopted by another man, and not raised as my daughter. All plot points in a story she’s been forced to live out, but given no pen with which to alter the arc.

Until now.

“Dan has been amazingly supportive. I think …” Kennedy pauses, causing me to look over at her. Her eyes fall for a moment, eyebrows scrunching in as if working out a problem for the first time. Finally, she looks up and continues. “I think that he has more in common with Roland than me or my mother do. He’s a father, and I think he understands something about what Roland might be feeling, or has felt over the past eighteen years. It’s given him a perspective of heart that none of the rest of us can have.”

A lump forms in my throat. I’ve only met Dan Sawyer once in person, and only just learned that he was the author of the letter that set the stage for changing my life, but Kennedy is spot on. In the wisdom that’s far beyond her years, I sense deep in my own heart that as a father, Dan was able to reach out to me in a way no one else would have been able to.

Greg smiles warmly, a smile that finally reaches his eyes as he stares at my daughter in slight wonder. “You’re an incredible young woman, Ms. Sawyer. A lot of people in your position might run and hide or use their new found fame to promote an agenda, but that doesn’t seem to be your goal
.
”

“No,” she answers calmly. “
It
’
s not.
My goal is to learn where I came from and decide where I want to go. Running won’t fix that.”

My eyes volley back and forth, following their conversation. Repressing the urge to dash in and save her, I sit back. Kennedy doesn’t seem to need saving in this moment.

“Your father and this school—Carter University—they’re quite different from the Episcopalian churches you’ve attended in your life. In form and function.”

“They are.”

“What do you think about all of it?”

Kennedy huffs a slight chuckle out of her nose and grins. “There’s a lot to think about. And, for now, that’s all I’m doing. Taking it all in.”

“No doubt you have friends and roommates who have far more conservative opinions than you do.”

She shrugs. “Sure. The same can be said for any of my friends.”

Greg’s eyes move wildly across Kennedy’s face, as if growing frustrated that he can’t make her say the wrong thing. Whatever he perceives to be the wrong thing.

“So,” he presses, “what becomes of your friendships when you’re seated across the political aisles from them? I see you’ve got some pretty impressive activist work under your belt for such a young person. Marriage rights rallies, reproductive rights marches … your mother is just as well known in these
progressive
circles as Roland is in the evangelical community.”

“I suppose so.” She takes a deep breath. “As to what happens to the friendships? If they’re based in love, Mr. Mauer, we’ll be able to learn something from each other, I’d hope, and policy will unify us rather than destroy us. Isn’t that what Jesus preached the most about? Love?”

Check mate.

Greg shifts his gaze to mine and adjusts his position. “Let’s switch gears here for a moment.”

Because you’re not getting the sensational story you’d hoped for?

“Roland. You live and breathe a biblical, fundamental way of life. Your daughter was raised in one of the most liberal political hotspots in the United States. What influence do you hope to have on her life?”

Though she’s in another room, I swear I can hear Wendy’s teeth grind together. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Kennedy close her eyes for a moment, as if she’s saying a quick prayer. I don’t have enough time to decipher what she might be praying about. Though, an educated guess would lead me to believe she just doesn’t want me to embarrass her. She
is
still a teenager, after all.