Into the Fire

                      (From my unpublished novel The Fixer)

CHAPTER 2

     “What’s wrong with you?”
     “What do you mean?” Lamb looked up from her invoices, slightly perturbed at the question.
     “C’mon, Lamb. You haven’t said ten words to anyone since you got here.” Dan Johnson leaned on the doorframe with folded arms. “Your expression is somewhere between frustration and hacked off. Level with me.”
     Dan could always read her body language. That’s why after only a few dates he confronted her with proof of why she shouldn’t go out with him anymore since she wasn’t really comfortable dating him. She’d protested, of course, and tried to justify her awkward behavior, but in the end she concluded he was right, and they became good friends. Now engaged to a woman who adored him, Lamb was glad because a great guy deserved a devoted woman. He and Lamb simply hadn’t been meant for each other.
     Lamb looked up from her desk across the short distance to his penetrating taupe eyes. “Alright. I am hacked off. I’m mad that my stupid parents were such flakes, bless their souls. I’m mad because my oldest sister carries on as if she’s my martyr-like mother incarnate and after spending the last four years of her life with a truly good man decides to dump him after he asks her to marry him because she’s sure he’ll leave her one day. My younger sister, on the other hand, Ms. Modern-Day-Power-Woman, who is the female version of my dad who was ‘a rambler, and a gambler, and a sweet-talkin’ lady’s man’ to quote a Joni Mitchell song, won’t commit to anyone, calls my older sister a flake because of her being a head case regarding relationships. Oh, forgive me, Lord, for calling my parents stupid. And for my anger and frustration at my sisters.” She finished her tirade. Despondent.
     “Huh.”
     “Yeah. Not much you can say about it, is there?”
     “Well, I could probably say something reasonably intelligent if you’d ever told me anything about your parents, but you were decidedly coy with any information concerning them.”
     “Be glad for that, trust me. Oh I suppose lots of people have parents who weren’t exactly the best role models for their children. It’s just that mine were considerably weird in a lot of ways, and it rubs off, not withstanding the genetic codes.”
     “Well, other than your aversion to me, you’ve always seemed fairly normal, Lamb,” he teased with a straight face.
      She laughed. “Stop it. ‘Aversion’? That’s a good one.”
     He smiled at her, his fondness for her evident in his expression. “You’re the only believer in your family?”
     “Actually, both of my parents experienced death bed conversions, neither of which my sisters were able to personally witness. Other than that, I guess it’s just me. Mom’s side of the family is gone. It was very small, single child families, almost as if each life was an accident on their part. Dad’s family—who knows? There could be some out there, but we only met a handful of them, and those are all gone now, too. There’s the possibility we have some half brothers or sisters out there, but either they weren’t informed of Dad’s death which is hard to believe because of his relative fame, or they just didn’t know the whereabouts of the service we had for him. Or maybe they didn’t care he was gone.” She looked down at her cluttered desk. “I don’t know.”
     “You know, it’s kinda neat that all the ‘stuff’ will be resolved in heaven. And it won’t matter anymore.” He gazed down at his Chuck Taylor’s. “Everybody’s got ‘stuff’, Lamb.”
     “You too?” Surprise darted from her voice.
     “Unlike you, I would’ve spilled my guts about it all, but you never asked,” he said with fake indignation.
     Her sheepish expression returned to her desk. “I was afraid to. If I asked, I had to answer for mine. Couldn’t do it. Not then.”
     He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, actually. Like I said, I would’ve told you all about it, but I didn’t really want to either.”
     “Do you now?” Her inquiry came out tentative but sincere.
     He pushed the lone chair in her small office to face away from her desk and straddled it. “If it’ll help, I’d be glad to.”
     “It might. I can’t guarantee it will, though.”

Father, thank you for every storyline, every word and inspiration. Thank you is never enough. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.