The Hidden Side by Heidi Chiavaroli

Author:Heidi Chiavaroli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Historical, FICTION / Contemporary Women
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2018-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

NATALIE

DECEMBER 2016

The realization came to me in the middle of a Francesca Battistelli song.

I had gone the last two, maybe even three minutes without the dark knowing of the past three months in the forefront of my mind. It was the words of the song that brought the truth tumbling upon me once again as I stared into the black weave of the microphone.

“And everyone has a heart that loves to hide . . .”

There had been so much hiding. Maelynn, Chris. Even Mike. We continued to await the trial, and Mike still had not gone to visit our son.

“Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not . . .

“There is freedom found when we lay our secrets down at the cross, at the cross . . .”

I swallowed around the knot in my throat. The words also brought to mind the security I’d found the last two weeks in picking up my role as Skye. The outpourings of welcome on both the air and our Facebook page had been overwhelming. While my listeners knew Skye wasn’t my real name, and some enjoyed guessing, they also assumed I’d only needed time away from work—as that was all Tom had relayed. One woman had suspected my absence had something to do with the high school shooting, and offered her prayers to me on our Facebook page, but no one connected me to Chris’s name and likeness splayed over the media.

“And mercy’s waiting on the other side . . .”

Francesca’s voice faded and Chris Tomlin’s “O Come All Ye Faithful” began. I shrank away from it, from the reminder that Christmas was upon us, that I had let Mike set up the tree alone. I had gone to buy a few stocking stuffers but froze at the thought of them not being allowed through security at the prison, of Maelynn opening them, alone, on Christmas morning. I’d left a half-filled carriage in Target, run to my car to catch my tears before anyone could see.

Tom looked up from his computer and took off his headphones. I did the same.

“Randy wants to let a call through, but he’s not sure if you’ll be up for it.”

“What is it?” I imagined another hurting mother, like the day of the incident. I’d been able to help her because I’d been confident that I knew how to be a mother. I’d been confident in the stability of my own life, that I could speak a loving word into the depths of tragedy.

But now I was in those depths. I didn’t have much to offer.

I thought of Francesca’s words stating that we were all a mess, that we should all bring our brokenness, and in it, we might find mercy.

Yet I had decided to mask the messy beneath the hurting, to come back to work embracing my identity as Skye instead of the mother of a killer.

After all, some things were better left buried.

“It’s Chase Stevens’s mother. Maybe you could scoot out early?”

My skin turned to gooseflesh the moment Tom spoke Chase’s name.

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