“Then why break into SVO?”
He frowns. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“But I don’t,” he says.
“Project members broke into SVO last night, trashed the entire office,” I tell him. “That’s why I’m here. Call off your fucking dogs.”
“You have proof of that?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Why are you so sure it was us?”
I open my mouth and then I close it again. Lev pushes his sleeves farther up his arms, facing the sink. He turns the water on and reaches for one of the dirtied plates, and it’s so strange to see him do something as ordinary as wash dishes and I realize I can’t have it both ways; that he’s either a man and should do this, or he’s more than a man who deigns to. He’s just a man. He is just. A man. He scrubs at a plate, rinses it, and then sets it gingerly in the drying rack, gazing out the window. Foster and the little girl are no longer in view.
“The Project may have enemies, but we are no one’s enemy,” Lev says. “And I knew, early on, to live boldly in faith, our work would have to be our first line of defense and it would have to speak for itself. Our mission is not, and has never been, to silence our detractors but to make our work louder than them. SVO is free to write what it wants and we won’t stand in its way. We will continue to do the work.” He faces me. “I would hope a journalist as respected and committed to the truth as Paul Tindale would make sure any story he wrote about us was verifiable fact. Regardless, we didn’t break into your office. An action like that runs counter to everything we stand for.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your choice,” he replies.
“What you did to Jeremy—”
“Be very specific if you’re going to talk about Jeremy.”
“You isolated him. Held him hostage, just like Bea. Kept him from his father—”
“We didn’t keep Jeremy from his father.”
“That’s not what Arthur seems to think.”
“Then that’s something about himself Arthur isn’t ready to confront. Over the years, we’ve become a sanctuary for those looking to start over. People view their redemption as a clean slate in all aspects of their lives. No one who comes to us is forced to leave anything behind they’re not willing to part with. Jeremy didn’t want a relationship with his father and we respected that. We didn’t intervene. If he had decided to reopen lines of communication with Arthur we would have embraced it. I wasn’t his keeper either.” Lev moves toward me. “But I know that doesn’t quite serve your narrative.”
I close my eyes briefly, as though I can reset myself every time I do and reclaim my hold on this situation, if I ever had it.
“I was there when Jeremy died.”
“So Casey said.”
“That’s how I know you’re responsible.”
A shadow crosses Lev’s face.
“How would you feel,” he asks quietly, “if you made a commitment to something you believed in, and you lived and embodied that belief, only to have it perverted by someone else’s refusal to accept or understand it?”
He gives me a moment to answer, but I don’t.
“Jeremy did amazing work,” Lev continues. He reaches absently for his pendant, rubbing his thumb over it. “He was a part of several outreach initiatives for those in need. He was one of our leading members in youth mentorship. He loved us and we loved him. To deny his autonomy and erase his life’s work, to reject his faith so you can rewrite him a victim of mine and The Project’s, for the sole purpose of validating your hatred of us and your anger at your sister is … deeply awful.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard, I feel the skin giving in to my teeth. The ugly taste of copper is quick to follow.
“If anyone could have saved Jeremy, shouldn’t it have been you?”
“No. Because I’m not God,” he says. “I’m just a man.” He moves closer, taking up the whole of my vision, forcing eye contact, and his closeness activates a flight response in me, makes my mouth dry, my lips and fingertips numb. There’s a vise around my heart and my heart flutters frantically against it. “Tell me what it is that you want from us.”
“I want the truth.”
“I’ve given you the truth and you reject it.”
“I want my sist—”
The sound of that voice. The sound of her voice. That small, broken girl clawing against the wall inside me, but now the wall’s gone and I feel its absence and a flood of need in its wake. I want my sister, the girl whispers in me and the words try to slip from my mouth whole. I bite down. I want my sister. It’s louder than Jeremy’s voice still echoing in my head. His last plea blurs into her sorry refrain until they form a whole new want: Find her.
“Lo.”
The gentleness of Lev’s voice makes me flinch but there’s something else—my name. The way “Gloria” sounded on his lips earlier, as though he’d never said it before and how effortlessly “Lo” falls from them now. The thought of being spoken about between him and Bea hardens something inside me enough for my anger to rise above all my want.
“Didn’t Casey tell you? It’s not Paul’s story anymore. It’s mine.”
“Is it?” he asks.
“Yeah. Starts with a half-dead kid in a hospital. All she’s got left in the world is her big sister until The Unity Project takes her away,” I say. “I remember every single call with Casey, every door she slammed in my face, all the times she told me Bea wanted nothing to do with me. What would people think of that? How you treated a child? A broken, orphaned kid—” My voice splinters. “And now Jeremy. He joins The Unity Project, shuts his dad out and jumps in front of a train. I think you’re poison. I think the world needs to know.”
Lev doesn’t respond.
“And if all that doesn’t get everybody’s attention, maybe this will.” I gesture between us. “Lev Warren’s first meeting with the press since 2011.”
I turn and step into the hall just as the little girl runs up the porch steps, giggling, Foster trailing behind her. She stops in her tracks when she sees me and watches me carefully through the screen, her face obscured by mesh.
The floor creaks quietly behind me.
“There’s so much you don’t understand,” Lev says at my back.
“If The Unity Project doesn’t want this story getting out,” I say without turning around, “then Bea needs to tell me a different one and she needs to tell it to my face.”
PART TWO
2012
To give the gift of atonement, Bea must first be redeemed.
To be redeemed, Bea must let go of all she knows she is.
She presses the phone to her ear, trembling, while she waits for an answer. She takes in the serene winter scene outside the window before her. Her eyes follow a beautiful blue sky down to the tops of the snow-dusted pine trees that stretch across the perimeter of the property, and, beyond them—though she can’t see it—the lake, shimmering, she knows, with light.