Murder on Birchardville Hill by Ruth Buchanan

Author:Ruth Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: christian Fiction
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Published: 2017-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

12

In one sense, Mitchell Charles David Johnson and I weren’t that different. Like him, I had no family to spend Christmas with. Unlike him, however, I hadn’t murdered mine. If anyone was at fault for the death of Mom and Dad Scott—or for the death of my birth parents, for that matter—I knew whom to blame.

In eternity past, Satan attempted an assault on the throne of God. For his pride, he'd been cast from heaven. He'd slithered into Eden, tempting first Eve and then Adam to sin.

Mankind’s rejection of God’s good law led to the fall—introducing pain, suffering, and death into the world. So if I wanted to assign blame, I'd start there.

For Mom and Dad Scott, the cause of death had been old age—beautiful, glorious old age. In old age they adopted me and gave me a home and an inheritance just before I aged out of the foster care system. To my chagrin, they’d labored to learn Chinese culture, buying a rice cooker, three sets of house shoes, and chopsticks‒all while listening endlessly to a scratched set of learn-Mandarin CD’s that Dad Scott picked up at a yard sale.

The fact that I knew nothing about China and had no desire to learn seemed beside the point. They were all-in. They even took to using sun umbrellas and drinking loose-leaf teas.

Our time as a family was brief. Dad Scott had already known he was dying when they'd adopted me. Indeed, that’s why they’d chosen to adopt. Their only daughter had died in her youth, and with no other children or living relatives, they'd sought someone to draw into their family and bless with their estate.

This, they told me, was the outworking of the Gospel.

Only a year after Dad Scott passed, Mom Scott suffered an aneurysm in the backyard. I'd found her slumped over the gardenias.

Thanks to the Scott estate, I'd been able to complete a journalism degree debt-free. In a misguided effort to honor all my parents, I’d then taken a trip to China.

Disaster.

Looking as if you don’t fit in is infinitely preferable to looking as if you belong but are actually an imposter. Every time I asked servers or shop owners if they spoke English, they stared at me as if I were an alien—a literal one from outer space. I’d planned a leisurely jaunt through the major cities and around the countryside, but after a trip to the Great Wall, a week in Beijing, and three days in Shanghai, I gave up. I flew home early and applied to the local paper.

I landed on the cops beat. Then followed by the Johnson trial, the podcast, and the book.

If ever a person could claim that a murder had made her career, it would be me.

Not that I didn’t feel guilt sometimes. Irrational guilt, for sure. But guilt.

Guilt isn't an emotion I should hold onto. At least, not guilt for things beyond my control.

I know that this, too, is an outworking of the Gospel.

I bear no guilt for the death of my birth parents.

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