Alison Strobel - The Heart of Memory

She couldn’t deny it, much as she wanted to. And she couldn’t deny that he was right about the ministry – it had to be closed. Keeping it open was impossible-and at this point, not even reasonable. She wiped tears from her cheeks with her sleeves. “Fine. Shut it down then. Just tell them… tell them I’m not strong enough to keep working.” She let out a snort. “Oh, what do I care-you can tell them the truth if you want. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway.”

She stood and turned toward the stairs, but Shaun sprang from his seat and grabbed her arm. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Back to my room. I have books on cellular memory I’m reading.”

“Well – can I at least come up with you? Bring up my bag?”

She was confused. “What-are you staying here?”

“Of course. I’m staying with you-aren’t I? I mean, I assumed…”

His words died off as they blinked at each other in awkward surprise. The thought of sharing her bed with him made her skin crawl. “Um, that’s fine… I guess. I just thought…” She sighed. “Never mind. Bring your bag.”

Maybe Tabitha had a cot he could sleep on.

SHAUN THREW HIS BAG INTO the back of the taxi. “So you’re coming back Wednesday, right?”

She cringed. “Actually, I changed my flight again.”

Great. Another $75 down the drain. “But you’ll be back for Thanksgiving at least, right?”

“I-well-you know, that’s two weeks away, we can talk about it later.”

He shook his head but said nothing. She kept her mouth shut so nothing snarky could slip out. He slid into the back seat of the cab and shut the door without saying goodbye.

Savannah watched the cab kick up dust down the long driveway, and willed the tension in her shoulders to finally release. It had been the most awkward two days of her life, having Shaun here; but even though she was glad it was over, she wasn’t glad to see him go. Not because she missed him, or for any reasons at all affectionate or intimate, but because of what he was going to do once he got home.

She went back up to her room and crawled under the covers of her bed to continue reading her book. It was an autobiography about a heart and lung transplant recipient who had experienced drastic changes in her personality after her surgery. It was one of the most well-known and well-documented instances of cellular memory, and Savannah found comfort in the author’s familiar struggles. She was making a list of things the woman had done to cope with the bizarre experience, hoping to create a roadmap to follow as she tried to figure out life while sharing Charlie’s heart. When she’d first found the book she’d researched the author, hoping they might be able to connect and Savannah might glean some wisdom from her. But the first article she’d found had been the woman’s obituary.

She read through lunch, not feeling up to socializing with the other Refugees or Aniyah, and only stopped when her cell phone rang in the early afternoon. Marisa’s name came up on the screen, which was the only reason she answered. “Hi, Marisa.”

“Savannah, hi. Is Shaun still there?”

“No, he left a few hours ago. How did you know he was here?”

“Brenda told me. I talked to her earlier. That’s actually why I’m calling. She phoned me this morning because she wanted to know if I knew anything about A &A shutting down.”

Savannah sat up, confused. “What? Why was she asking about that?”

Marisa’s stalling sigh made Savannah ill. “Apparently a couple people’s paychecks bounced over the last couple days. She tried calling Shaun about it, but he never answered his cell.”

She thought back to his visit and realized she’d never even heard his phone ring. Would he really have turned it off? Or not even brought it? He never did that. He knew before he came out that A &A was going to close.

“Anyway, people over there are in a panic and no one knows what to do or what’s going on. That’s why Brenda called me; she was hoping I’d heard something from you, or could at least get some information for them.”

Savannah hung her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Oh, Marisa… yes, we actually are closing A &A. But we just decided that yesterday. Shaun didn’t tell me how desperate things were right now; I thought we were closing it because the future was so uncertain. I had no idea things were already as bleak as they are. I feel awful. Listen-tell me whose checks bounced and I’ll pay them out of our personal account.”

Marisa gave her the names, and Savannah swallowed back her tears as she wrote them down. The guilt and depression she’d managed to keep at bay while on her sabbatical came crashing down on her as she stared at the names of people she’d worked with for years.

“There’s something else,” Marisa said. Savannah could hear the delicate note in her voice that told her how uncomfortable she was bringing this up. “I never told you about this because… well, I figured there was a reasonable explanation and I didn’t want to make any assumptions. But now…” She sighed. “Months ago, when I’d given Shaun your receipts from the tour, I ended up finding a few more that had fallen out of the pile in my car. I brought them back in and he was already gone, but the other receipts and a reimbursement form were sitting on his desk. I figured I’d make it easy on him and list them on the form myself, and when I did I saw items on the form that weren’t from the tour. I had never seen the charges before, they didn’t ring any bells.”

Savannah remembered doing the same thing, and how she’d held on to the information to use as a weapon should she need it. She’d forgotten about it. But she wasn’t about to admit she already knew and hadn’t done anything about it. “Thanks for telling me, Marisa. I’ll ask Shaun about that.” She made an excuse for leaving and hung up as quickly as she could.

Messing around with receipts… She couldn’t think of any reasons for doing such a thing that didn’t involve some sort of financial scheming. But that made her consider something else. What if closing A &A wasn’t entirely her fault? The thought gave her a brief shot of relief, until it sank in that Shaun was then guilty of something that was likely to be unethical, possibly even illegal.

Oh, Shaun. What have you done?

SHAUN’S WORLD CRUMBLED A LITTLE more when he came home from the office two days later. Jessie’s car was in the driveway, and that wasn’t a good thing in the middle of the week. He didn’t have to see the bank statement to know why she was there.

He hated himself. He’d been hating himself for a while, but just not dwelling on it. He’d redirected the brunt of his loathing to Savannah, though she didn’t know it – mostly the hating was done in his head. But the inevitable had finally happened, and now his daughter was caught in the net. What kind of father was he? What kind of husband, what kind of business manager?

The walls were closing in. It made it hard to breathe.

He snuck in quietly, hoping to establish a defense before facing Jessie. He prepared his speech, then walked the house in search of her. The sooner he got this over with, the better.

She was crying in her room. He knocked gently on the door, then opened it. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

His sympathy brought on a fresh round of tears. She buried her head in his chest, which surprised him-he’d expected her anger. After a few minutes the sobs died down and she said, “Adam broke up with me.”

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “Wh-what? Why, what happened?” He began plotting Adam’s demise.

“Because of A &A shutting down. He said he couldn’t imagine marrying into the family that screwed his over so bad.”