Unlimited by Davis Bunn

Author:Davis Bunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

As he slipped into the last pew, Simon saw this was not the first time they had lost power. Not by a long shot. A number of the older kids, Juan included, moved around the front, lighting candles and placing them in little stone holders. Juan refused to meet his eye. Simon could understand that. He knew now that he had taken the kid in the wrong direction. It shamed him as well. When Pedro slipped into the pew beside him, Simon could not even bring himself to return the man’s greeting.

Harold led the kids in song, then prayed, and spoke, and prayed again. Simon listened, but he really didn’t absorb anything. He was too intently focused on the kids, and on Harold. The kids didn’t merely obey him. They loved the old man. They trusted him. They listened with their entire being. They followed his direction. And he led them to God.

Harold had been a successful businessman. He had stamped his mark in the competitive world of international industry. He had been a NASA scientist. He had done so much, but Simon knew this was what the man considered his greatest triumph. This was where his entire life had been leading. To this moment. Standing in front of a group of castoff kids in an orphanage on the brink of closure. Teaching them the right way to live.

The difference between these orphans and Simon’s early years could not be denied. His clearest memory of his own parents was how they had shouted at one another. And the way his mother smelled when she leaned over him at night, the gin and the cigarettes on her breath and her clothes. His dad had been perpetually angry and often drunk. Simon had lived with his grandmother for a while, but she wasn’t well, and he’d become a ward of the state. He’d lived in foster homes, some good, others truly awful.

But school had been a breeze, and he looked old for his age, so at fifteen he used a fake ID to land a job waiting tables. He aced the SATs and got accepted to MIT, earning a scholarship that he almost lost a half-dozen times, going up before the disciplinary board so often he knew all of their names. Getting kicked out had been a foregone conclusion. It was amazing he’d lasted to his senior year.

Only Armando Vasquez had refused to give up on him.

Which was when the shame threatened to choke off his air. The burning in his lungs was matched by the coal-like fire behind his eyes. Simon bent over his knees and fought for control.

He felt a hand come to rest upon his shoulder and knew it was Pedro. Which only made control harder to come by.

When he straightened, he realized that the chapel was empty. It surprised him, how he hadn’t even noticed their departure. The air was clogged with the smell of old wax and smoke rising from a dozen extinguished candles.

Pedro asked, “You are okay?”

Simon swallowed hard.

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