She nodded her head.
He reached back and gently squeezed her cheek. "Thank G.o.d for delivering me," he said.
Serenity smiled as he turned back around. Something her grandmother had said to her during one of their visits suddenly returned to her memory.
"A sad soul can kill you," her grandmother had said. "You remember that."
Somehow Serenity knew she always would, and in the backseat of the car she whispered "thank you" to G.o.d for keeping her father alive.
Tia sat in the front seat next to Lorenzo silently thanking G.o.d as well. Her emotions, fractured as they were, had begun to reconnect. Her heart expanded as she looked over at him. And she thanked G.o.d again for what she was feeling.
Through her darkest days, G.o.d had continued to love and nurture her like no one else could. He had placed her feet back on solid ground, and she would not make the same mistake twice. Her soul had been replenished, her strength renewed. She knew that whatever else was to come she would overcome it just as long as she called on the name of the Lord for her strength.
Tia turned the volume up on the radio as Lorenzo pulled out of the parking lot. The sound of a woman"s powerful voice sang in an upbeat tempo, and halfway through the song Tia joined in with the singer.
Both Serenity and Lorenzo listened to Tia"s voice, strong and clear, as she sang "I Got The Victory" from the bottom of her soul.
Chapter Fifty-two.
The following week, Tia and Lorenzo were on their way to their first counseling session together. As Tia drove past the cemetery, Lorenzo"s thoughts returned to the water baptism he"d received on Sunday.
"You know what was odd about my baptism?" he asked Tia.
"No, what?"
"The water."
"The water?"
"Yeah," he said pa.s.sionately. "It was ice cold going under, but I kid you not . . ." he repositioned himself, ". . . I felt this warm sensation when I came back up."
Tia continued driving as Lorenzo silently watched the tombstones erected above the ground pa.s.s swiftly before his eyes. He turned his head until he could no longer see any of the grave sites.
"There but for the grace of G.o.d go I," he said.
"Amen," Tia said in agreement.
Lorenzo turned his attention back to the counseling session he and Tia would soon have. "Now that Tony"s been offered a full-time position at the treatment center in Waukegan, I guess I won"t be seeing him at the clinic anymore."
"You sound like you"re a little sad about that," Tia said poking him softly in the side.
"Maybe a little. I mean, he wasn"t my counselor or anything, but he was the one who did the initial intake, and, I don"t know, he really made me feel comfortable." He stared out the window. "Especially when I found out he used to be on drugs." He turned back to face Tia. "Did you know that?"
"No, I didn"t. Shari never told me."
"I guess the past is the past," Lorenzo said. "Unless you"re using it to help somebody else, there"s no point in going around saying, "Hey, look at me. I used to be a drug addict!""
They both laughed at the silliness of what he was saying. But the part about using the past to help someone else remained in Lorenzo"s thoughts.
Fifteen minutes later, they entered the clinic, and Lorenzo checked them both in at the front desk. He sat down next to Tia and noticed a man sitting in the chair right across from him. Lorenzo recognized the look of despair in the man"s eyes; a little over a month ago, he might have been looking at a reflection of himself.
Since he"d started counseling, Lorenzo had come to understand that his addiction to the pills was really just a symptom of his underlying issue-one that had gone unresolved for too many years. Turning to pills may have started out as a method of escapism from a painful past, but once the pills became a habit, his escapism quickly transpired into a ball and chain.
He"d come to realize that all he"d ended up doing was trading the memory of a painful past for a recurring and unpleasant experience in the here and now. And he hadn"t even had enough sense to see that.
But for the grace of G.o.d he would still be imprisoned. He knew Jesus was the answer just like Tony, the other counselors, and all the members in his group meetings said He was. Jesus held the key. Lorenzo may have opened the door at some point, but he never really let Him in.
A counselor came to the door and called out a name. The man sitting across from Lorenzo stood up and walked slowly toward the counselor. Lorenzo watched him until the door swung close behind him. Then Lorenzo leaned toward Tia. "Guess what."
She turned toward him. "What?"
"I think I want to be a counselor."
She arched her eyebrows. "Really?"
"Yeah," Lorenzo said as he scanned the room. "I do." He counted twenty-one other clients all waiting to be seen by a counselor. They stood or sat with their shoulders slumped and their spirits broken, making small talk and joking with one another while their eyes conveyed a message of lost hope. "I want to do what Tony and all the other counselors did for me."
"You mean getting you off those pills?"
"No, that was G.o.d," he said staring off into s.p.a.ce. "Tony and the other counselors were just the tools G.o.d used to get to me. Now, I want Him to use me to do the same thing for other people."
"I think that"s beautiful," Tia said.
"Yeah, and with G.o.d"s help, I"m going to get my act together so I can counsel others and share my testimony too." He began nodding his head. "One day, I"m going to be the light for somebody else."
"You already are," Tia said and squeezed his hand.
Lorenzo smiled. Yes, G.o.d had delivered him out of the darkness, and he was going to be a living testimony to what the power of G.o.d can do for anyone who calls in earnest on His name.
G.o.d was the true path to deliverance and freedom. It was a proven truth, a proven cure, and Lorenzo knew he couldn"t keep that to himself. His heart and soul would not allow it. Not this time.
Epilogue.
Homer sat at the table in the county jail and looked at the attorney the court had appointed for him. He took note of her polished ability to stare him straight in the eye and try to fool him with her smile. He didn"t trust her. He knew she was just like everyone else . . . smiling in his face while determining which part of his back that knife she kept sharpened would go into. And just because she was all dressed up and called herself an attorney didn"t make her any different. That"s just the way women were, and that"s exactly why he wasn"t going to admit to any wrongdoing.
"I"m not pleading guilty," he said to the attorney. "Let"s get that clear now."
"If you go for a trial jury," she said, "it"s not going to look good for you."
Homer was adamant. "I"m not pleading guilty. I didn"t do anything wrong. I didn"t do anything those girls didn"t want me to do."
The attorney sighed. "You realize they were minors, and that makes it against the law, right?"
"I didn"t do anything they didn"t want me to do," Homer repeated.
The attorney closed her notebook and stuffed it, along with all her other papers, into her briefcase. She looked at him once more before she stood up to leave. "We"ll talk again next week," she said before leaving the visitor"s room.
Homer snickered to himself as he watched her walk away. He was escorted back to the common room and walked slowly to one of several round tables that were scattered throughout the room. The tables, with four metal legs connected to small round areas for sitting, reminded Homer of silver spiders bolted to the floor.
He sat down at an empty table in the corner of the room and began to look at the books situated on an antiquated bookshelf several feet away. He scanned the variety of paperback and hardcover books on the shelf and suspected they were just as old as the piece of furniture they sat on. He heard a voice behind him and turned around quickly.
Three inmates were lowering themselves down onto the remaining round metal seats. One of them was a tall, athletic man who the other two inmates referred to as Big Butch. The second one was just as tall but slender, and the third inmate was short with a stocky build.
The voices blaring from the television bolted on the wall blended in with the voices of all the inmates. Homer pointed to his ear.
"I said what are you in here for?" Big Butch repeated.
Homer waved his hand. "Just some bogus charges," he said.
"What kind of charges?"
Homer studied the ma.s.sive bulge created in the inmate"s arms when he placed his elbows on the table. "Some girls accused me of doing some things I didn"t do."
"Oh yeah?" the short stocky inmate said and glanced at Big Butch. "What kind of things?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," the slender inmate said. "We"re being rude. We didn"t even introduce ourselves. I"m Stony," he said. He pointed to the short, stocky inmate. "This here is Chunky."
"And they call me Big Butch," the tall, athletic inmate said. He stared hard at Homer. "You can see why."
Homer nodded his head. "Yeah, I can. I"m Homer," he said holding out his hand.
Big Butch ignored Homer"s extended hand. "I know who you are. You the dude who likes to mess with little girls. I heard about you."
Several other inmates had migrated to the table where Homer and the other three men sat. Homer relished the attention he was getting. For the first time in his life, he felt important, like people wanted to hear what he had to say, and so he continued to talk.
"Well, they weren"t that little," he said with a smile. "They were old enough to know what they were doing."
"Yeah, but you said girls," Stony said. "How old were they?"
"Let"s just say they were younger than me," Homer said and chuckled as he looked around the table.
"How much younger?" Stony continued to probe.
The looks of repulsion on the faces of the other inmates caused an uneasy feeling to sweep over Homer. He tried to brush it off by continuing to talk. "They weren"t too young to know what they were doing," he said. "And then they tried to say that I forced them to, you know, do things with me." He laughed. "But they"re lying." He looked around the table. "We know how girls are, right?"
No one answered.
"Continue," Big Butch said with a tense look on his face.
"Yeah, so I met this one girl," Homer said. "And she just begged me to show her the ropes. You know, teach her the tricks of the trade." He sat up straight. "So I did."
"What kind of tricks did you teach her?" Chunky asked.
"Forget that," Stony said backhanding the air. He glared at Homer. "Man, you making this seem like you was some kind of angel exalted in the sky."
"More like a fallen angel," Chunky said. "And you getting closer and closer to the ground as you speak."
Homer tried to mask his nervousness. "What are you talking about? Those girls liked it, and I just told you they wanted it." He looked at Big Butch. "You know what I mean, right?" He elbowed the side of his arm.
Big Butch looked at his arm, then at Homer. "No, man, I don"t know what you mean."
"Aw, come on. Why else would they have agreed to meet me?" He sighed and shook his head. "That"s why I can"t figure out why they"re complaining now."
"Maybe because they were little girls," Stony said, staring straight-ahead.
"They weren"t that little," Homer said, elbowing Big Butch"s arm a second time.
"Don"t do that again," Big Butch said.
"Don"t do what?"
"Elbow me. As a matter of fact," he said, standing up, and the other two inmates stood up as well, "don"t touch me at all. Those little girls might have "liked" it as you say, but I don"t."
They all walked away and the rest of the inmates dispersed, leaving Homer as he had begun-alone at the table.
"Hey, what"s wrong with that dude?" Stony asked. "He"s limping around here bragging about what he did to those girls like it"s cool or something."
"Nah," Chunky said, "that ain"t cool. That ain"t cool at all."
"Yeah," Big Butch said. His face hardened. "Old short leg gon" need some schoolin"."
"Who gon" be the teacher?" Chunky asked.
"I"ll let you know," Big Butch said as he looked over in Homer"s direction.
When the "lights out" call rang out, Homer had long stopped talking. He lay down on the thin mattress, and as soon as he closed his eyes he saw the disapproving looks that had been on the faces of the other inmates earlier.
The story about the girls he"d told them in the common room had been meant to impress them. But the looks on the faces of Big Butch, Stony, and Chunky reflected anything but that. Homer tried to reason away their expressions as just the look of a hardened criminal. But no matter how hard he tried to pretend, his instinct told him something different.
An uneasy feeling came over him as he struggled to remove the visual images of their faces from his memory. Had he told too much? His mind began to race. What would they do to him? Homer had heard many stories about terrible things happening to inmates in jail. Was he about to be one of them? He thought about what the police officer had said to him earlier while he was conducting the strip search.
Homer, along with the rest of the newly admitted inmates, had been ordered to get undressed. He had carefully removed his shirt and pants and had stood with his socks and boxers still on.
"Everything off!" the officer had yelled.
Seconds later, the officer had approached Homer with a hateful glare in his eyes. "You"re the one who likes messing with little girls, huh?" he"d whispered in a slow and deliberate manner.