Justice by Emily Conrad

Author:Emily Conrad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: christian Fiction
ISBN: 9781522300465
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Published: 2018-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

27

Jake threw wooden pallets from Contact Point’s basement into the alley. Technically, the clutter in the pool hall still belonged to Mom, but she wouldn’t be able to take care of all of this, and he boiled with too much anger to do desk work. If the project didn’t take all day, he’d head over to Hillside and see if there was something he could throw around there, too. He returned to the basement for another load.

“Are these going, too?”

He turned.

Caleb stood behind him, peering into a box.

Jake hadn’t heard of plans for him to be in town this weekend, which hinted that he knew about the video.

“Brook called last night,” Caleb said.

Brook. How close were those two? But Caleb had come to help, and Jake was short on allies. “It’s all got to go.”

Caleb grabbed the box, and they climbed back upstairs.

“I don’t know why people think I’m the next best thing to you. But when they want to talk about you, they call me.” He hefted the box into the dumpster. “So keep it together. I’m not qualified to take over all your people.”

“People?” Jake led the way back inside.

“Devin.” The old stairs creaked beneath their feet. “Brook.”

“What’d they say?” Jake grabbed the next box.

“Devin mostly had questions.”

“I bet.”

Devin had only met Caleb a handful of times. He must’ve been desperate for help.

“He’s going to be a dad. He tell you that?”

Caleb sucked in a breath. “No, he asked about you and Brooklyn. I told him to call you.”

“What about Brooklyn?”

“She’s embarrassed. And worried.”

They pounded back up the steps.

“About?” Jake asked.

“She thinks you don’t know what you’re up against. She said something about dragging you into this and how she’s interfering with God’s plan for your life. She thinks it’s her fault.”

“Harold dragged us into this.”

They lifted the boxes into the dumpster.

Caleb turned his head from the dust cloud that rose and swiped a hand over his hair. “What about you?”

Jake sat on the cement stairs. The blue sky overhead stretched pale and clear. A nice day, wasted in an alley with a dumpster. “I quit church today.”

“What’s that mean?” Caleb folded his arms. “It’s not a job.”

What little peace he’d retained scattered. “I went to talk to Pastor Simeon this morning.”

“With Brooklyn?”

“She didn’t answer when I invited her. I told Pastor I’m not the father. He said if he let me keep leading the high schoolers, he’d look like a gullible old man. Then he said Devin and Lauren are having a kid. Her mom came storming in, said I was lying about Brooklyn being raped and my example is why Devin and Lauren slept together. She wanted someone to blame, and I’m that scapegoat. I resigned and left.”

“So you’re letting Harold win.”

Jake scowled.

Caleb splayed his hands. “This is exactly what he was going for, right?”

“This isn’t Harold. This is church. Deanna probably would’ve believed me over Harold, if it weren’t for Lauren being pregnant. To get this from the church after all the work I’ve done is a slap in the face.

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