Ellis still remembered—his hands shaking in the estate lawyer’s office—the first time he read the words his great-grandfather had written during his time at the Cairo Museum. Ellis had to go find a Bible—check the language himself. Like most, he’d grown up thinking Cain killed Abel with a stone. But as he flipped through the pages, speed-reading through chapter 4 of Genesis: “And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” That was all the Bible said. No mentions of stones or rocks or any sort of weapon.
Time and history added other ideas, filling texts with theories of clubs, sticks, and wooden staffs. The Zohar, the most important work of the Jewish Kabbalah movement, insisted that Cain bit Abel’s throat, which led others to proclaim Cain as the world’s first vampire. And in ancient Egypt, archaeologists found hieroglyphics depicting a weapon made from an animal’s jawbone and sharpened teeth.
It was this theory of the jawbone that filled up half the diary. Shakespeare wrote that Cain’s weapon was a jawbone, featuring it in Hamlet. Rembrandt depicted the same instrument in one of his portraits, even including Abel’s dog barking in the background.
But for Ellis’s Cairo-based great-grandfather, the real question was: How did this obscure theory from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics suddenly become such a rage in seventeenth-century Europe? For years, there was no logical explanation—until his great-grandfather read the story of a small group of Coptic monks who emigrated from Egypt to the north, where they hoped to hide the small but priceless object they’d stumbled upon. The object from God Himself.
Then the Leadership took interest. The group was new then. Untested. But extremely enthusiastic—like Ellis, especially now that he was so close.
There was only one thing in his way.
Across the park, Cal slid on his knees, his flashlight shining into Lloyd Harper’s terrified face.
A trickster, Ellis decided. Every family had a trickster.
In the passenger seat, Benoni cocked her head, which meant Ellis’s phone was about to—
The phone vibrated in Ellis’s pocket. Somehow the dog always knew.
“Officer Belasco,” Ellis answered as he readjusted the badge on his uniform.
“You still with the driver—what’s his name again?” the Judge asked.
“Lloyd,” Ellis replied, watching Cal’s father across the park and unable to shake the feeling that the bleeding old man was far more than just a driver.
“He get the Book yet?”
“Soon. He stopped for some help first,” Ellis said as he eyed just Cal.
In 1900, the Book—one writing called it a “carving,” another an “emblem”—whatever it was, it was stolen from the Leadership. Ellis’s grandfathers hunted it for decades, tracing it to father and son. Always father and son. And tonight, seeing Cal and his dad, Ellis finally understood how near the end was. All he had to do was wipe out these villains. Then Ellis—for himself, for his family—would finally be the hero.
“Is that concern in your voice?” the Judge asked.
“Not at all.” Ellis scratched Benoni’s nose, barely even hearing the ambulance siren that approached behind them. “Lloyd Harper can bring as many dogs as he wants into this fight. It won’t take much to put ’em down.”
6
You’re gonna feel a sting,” the nurse says, wheeling my dad into one of the emergency exam rooms. As she’s about to pull the curtain shut, she turns back to me and stops. “Only relatives from here. You related?”
I freeze at the question. She doesn’t have time for indecision.
“Waiting room’s back there,” she says, whipping the curtain shut like a magician’s cape.
Sleepwalking toward the L-shaped hub of pink plastic waiting room chairs, I’m still clutching the mound of my dad’s crumpled belongings—his bloody shirt, pants, and shoes—that the EMTs cut off him. A digital clock on the wall tells me it’s 1:34 a.m. To Roo-sevelt’s credit, as I slump down in the seat next to him, he doesn’t say a word for at least four or five seconds.
“Cal, if he’s really your dad—”
“He’s my dad.”
“Then you should go back there.”
I start to stand up, then again sit back down.
I’ve waited nineteen years to see my dad. Nineteen years being mad he’s gone. But to hop out of my chair and peek behind that curtain and reenter his life . . . “What if he doesn’t want me back?” I whisper.
Smart enough to not answer, Roosevelt quickly shows me why, after he raised his own hell in high school, he was such a great Methodist minister. Sure, he still had his rebellious side—with a few too many Iron Maiden quotes in his sermons—but the way he breathed life into Scripture and related to people, everyone loved that pastor with the ponytail.
The only problem came when church leaders told Roosevelt they didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t married. In the wake of all the church pedophile cases, it didn’t reflect well that even though he was from one of the wealthiest families in town, at nearly forty years old, he was still single. Roosevelt pleaded, explaining that he hadn’t found anyone he loved. His family tried to help by throwing around their financial weight. But in rural Tennessee—where a handsome, unmarried, thirty-eight-year-old man can mean only one thing—his church refused to budge. “If you want to be queer, don’t do it here,” said the message that was spray-painted on the hood of his car. And Roosevelt had his first personal heartbreak.
Which is why he empathizes so well with mine.
“Cal, when you were little, you ever watch The Ten Commandments?”
“This gonna be another sermon?”
“Boy, you think you’re the only one who likes saving people?” he teases, though I know it’s no joke. No matter how happy he is, Roosevelt would kill to have his old parish back. It’s not ego; it’s just his mission. He’ll never say it, but I know that’s the reason he took this job. And though I bet his family could easily buy him a new church, well, it’s the same reason he won’t buy us a new van. Some battles you have to fight by yourself. “Think about the Moses story, Caclass="underline" Little baby gets dropped in a basket, then grows up thinking he’s Egyptian royalty—until his past comes kickin’ at the door and reveals to him his true purpose.”
“That mean I’m getting the long beard and the sandals?”
“We all hate something about our past, Cal. That’s why we run from it, or compensate for it, or even fill our van with homeless people. But when something like this happens—when your dad shows up—maybe there is a bigger purpose. ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’ Genesis 50:20.”
Staring down at the pointy tips of my dad’s shoes in my hand, I don’t say a word. When my mom worked in the hospital, she used to lecture us about the importance of good shoes. As a cleaning lady, it was the one personal item she could see in every room. Fancy clothes were replaced by hospital gowns, but under every bed . . . Show me someone’s shoes, and I’ll show you their lives.
Thanks to that ridiculous mantra, my dad used to always have one pair of shiny black lawyer shoes (even though he was a painter) and a pair of tan cordovans (which my mom was convinced meant you were rich).
Today, in my lap, he’s got black loafers. And not the cheap kind with the tough leather and the seams coming undone. These are nice—buffed and narrow at the toes; Italian leather soles.
I read the label inside.
“What’s wrong?” Roosevelt asks.
“These are Franceschettis.”
He cocks an eyebrow and looks for himself. He’s the one from money. He knows what it means.
“Franceschettis are expensive, aren’t they?” I ask.