In Things Unseen by Gar Anthony Haywood

Author:Gar Anthony Haywood [Haywood, Gar Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781725280014
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2020-11-06T08:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

FOLLOWING HER INTERVIEW of Laura Carrillo, Allison took only one Uber assignment—transporting a pair of chatty, surgically enhanced women from Bellevue to Laurelhurst—before calling it a day. It was only noon, but Carrillo’s story was already writing itself in Allison’s head and she was loath to lose a word.

She went home to work, eschewing the frenzy and expense of the coffee shop. Once she was at her desk, headphones on and laptop open, Allison rarely ever moved again until sleep or the dawn forced the issue. Today, it would have taken a team of mules to draw her from her chair.

Listening to her recording and hearing Laura Carrillo’s answers all over again, Allison was once more filled with amazement and euphoria. Amazement because Carrillo’s account remained astonishing, and euphoria because it held the potential to breathe some life back into Allison’s writing career.

The hoax Carrillo was accusing Michael and Diane Edwards of perpetrating could not have any basis in fact. People did not fake the deaths of their children, for financial gain or otherwise, only to reenter them later into the very same social circles from which they had been removed. And even if such people did exist, they would lack the power to make everyone of their acquaintance, with a singular exception, oblivious to their deception.

As for the small matter of motive: What reason could the parents of Adrian Edwards have had to perform such a convoluted feat of subterfuge and magic? Laura Carrillo didn’t know, and had made little effort to speculate.

Until she met them, Allison could only assume the Edwardses were innocent victims of Carrillo’s unhinged imagination. To think otherwise would lead farther down the rabbit hole than Carrillo had already taken her. For instance, if Diane Edwards had indeed told Carrillo her son died eight months ago but was alive again today by the grace of God, Allison would be left to draw only one of three conclusions, each more incredible than the last: Edwards was no saner than Carrillo; she and her husband were gaslighting the teacher to destroy her; or she had told Carrillo the truth.

The first was a remote possibility, the second, one even more remote, and the third was simply out of the question. Or was it?

For the first time since she’d heard the name Laura Carrillo, Allison gave the idea of miracles more than a passing thought. Did she believe in such things? As scriptural signposts that went part and parcel with her faith in a Judeo-Christian god, she had to say yes, of course she did. What fool would believe in a god that lacked either the power or the will to do the impossible when answering their most desperate prayer often required nothing less? But buying into miracles in concept and believing God performed them now, thousands of years after the death of Christ, were not the same thing. Allison did not give God that much credit anymore. She offered prayers to Him, yes, but the things she hoped for in return were relatively minor, in keeping with her low expectations for intervention.

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