Ten Plagues

“Oh, did I?” Keren said in a sleep-roughened voice. “I was just thinking of Pastor Jekyll and Detective Hyde.”

Paul furrowed his brow. “Who?”

“You. How are you doing with your split personality? Did you get yourself back? Did you ever figure out who ‘yourself’ is?”

Paul sprawled back in his chair. “It took some doing. I spent days in prayer, trying to rediscover the calm, unselfish Pastor P.”

“Any luck?” Keren knew she couldn’t be with the calm, unselfish Pastor P. Her life would destroy him. And she didn’t want to be with Paul the cop. He was a jerk.

Paul leaned forward to brace his forearms on his knees and turned his head sideways to look at her. “I never exactly found him. I don’t know for sure if I really wanted to.”

“Why not?” Keren crossed her arms and relaxed back into her chair with her legs stretched out in front of her.

Paul quit looking at her and stared at the floor between his splayed knees. “I refuse to believe that Pastor P wasn’t real. He was. I needed to serve with my whole heart for a while after I left the police force. But all this taught me there is strength in my anger. You remember when I came charging into that room with you and Caldwell?”

“Yes, my knight in shining armor, racing to my rescue.” Keren grinned.

Paul turned to look at her with a squinty-eyed glare. “Except Higgins got there first. Higgins saved you—what a grandstander.”

“I kind of like him. I mean, he did save my life.”

Paul shook his head. “I had your gun.”

“I noticed.”

“I picked it up in that room where you dropped it.”

“Excuse me,” Keren said with a stern frown. “It was knocked out of my hands. I would never drop my gun.”

Paul nodded and tried to look serious. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t forget it,” she growled.

“I wanted to use it. I was frantic, furious, completely insane worrying about you.”

“Poor baby.”

“And on the way to rescue you, O’Shea gave me a little talking to about how terrific you were and how deeply you embraced your faith.”

“O’Shea said all that?” She thought of her taciturn partner.

“Well, yeah. He said it in about five words, with a lot of grunting, but I got the message.”

“That sounds like him,” Keren said fondly.

“Anyway he said enough. And I knew the truth of those words I’d said so many times, ‘To live is Christ and to die is gain.’ I gave you up to God. I quit worrying. We still drove at top speed, don’t get me wrong. But the point is, I still felt all the strength of my anger, but it wasn’t out of control. I need to respect it, even use it once in a while. I had finally healed enough that I could quit fearing that part of myself.”

“I’m glad.” Keren leaned forward until she rested her forearms on her knees in a replica of Paul’s pose. She turned her head to look at him. They were inches apart.

He erased those inches when he kissed her.

A very sweet minute later, Paul said, “You did lean close like that so I could kiss you, right?”

“Right,” Keren whispered.

“The thing is, I’m always going to run the Lighthouse. It’s a calling, and I can’t turn my back on it.”

Keren nodded. “And I’m always going to be a cop. It’s a calling,

and I can’t turn my back on it.”

“But I wouldn’t necessarily have to live above the shelter. There’s a really beautiful little Christian school about three miles from the mission. I’d like our kids to go there. And if we lived close to the school, that’d be more convenient.”

Keren’s smile widened until she laughed just a little. She never took her eyes off him. She was afraid if she blinked, her dreams might disappear.

He laughed back, just a little, and he kept his eyes on her, too.

“If that is a marriage proposal, it’s the worst one I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh yeah? Well, how many of them have you heard?”

She waited and watched and loved. “A couple. One was really romantic.”

“The guy who dumped you when he found out you had a spiritual gift he didn’t like?”

“Yeah.”

Paul arched one eyebrow. “A lot of good all his romance did you. You want poetry? Marry Robert Frost.”

“I don’t want him, I want you.”

Paul reached across the inches between them and clasped her hand in his. He looked at her until she felt like he had taken her inside of himself. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I love you, Keren. I’ve been waiting until I got myself centered in my faith before I came to talk to you.”

“Your faith was never in danger, Paul.”

Paul gave a quick jerk of his head. “Absolutely not. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get pretty mixed up for a while. Not about believing in Jesus. But about where I was meant to be, what I was being led to do with my life.” He bounced their hands gently between them. “What I was supposed to do with you.”

“Had trouble with me, did you?” she asked.

Paul shrugged and let go of her hand and reached into the pocket of the dark blue sweatpants he was wearing. He pulled a little velvet box out of his pocket. “Not so much trouble that I didn’t go out and get you this.”