The Atonement Child Read Free

thanked him and said she would be ready. By morning, Dynah had decided against coming back to NLC because of Ethan. If she was infatuated after a few days, she knew she would be head over heels in love if she saw him every day of the year. And NLC wasn’t so big a campus that she could miss him. No, she didn’t want to become one of the legion, and she held no false hopes of becoming his choice.
    She smiled now, thinking of it, feeling his engagement ring on her finger with the back of her thumb. She had been so nervous on the drive back to O’Hare. She had told Ethan he could drop her off in front of the Delta terminal, but he had insisted he would accompany her inside. He parked, took her carry-on, and stayed with her. When they got inside the airport, he stood with her in line as she got her boarding pass. She had been so embarrassed, she wanted to crawl into a hole.
    “I know I haven’t seen much of the world, Ethan, but I don’t need babysitting,” she had said, trying to laugh off his concerns.
    “I know that,” he said quietly.
    “I don’t need a bodyguard, either.”
    He looked at her, and she felt foolish and young, too young for him. There had been such an intensity in his eyes that she had blushed.
    “Come back to NLC, Dynah.”
    It had sounded like a command. She smiled. “Do you have to meet a quota?”
    “God wants you here.”
    He sounded so serious, so certain, she had to ask. “How do you know?” Surely, if God wanted her at NLC, God would tell her.
    “I just know, Dynah. I knew the minute I saw you.”
    Looking into his blue eyes, she decided not to dismiss what he said. In truth, she wanted to believe him. She wanted to see Ethan Turner again, and the thought that he wanted the same thing was heady incentive indeed.
    “Will you pray about it?”
    She nodded, knowing she would be doing little else.
    She didn’t hear one word from Ethan through spring and summer, but five minutes after she walked into the gymnasium for registration that fall, he came up to her and put his hand on her shoulder as though staking public claim to her. The first thing he did was introduce her to Joseph Guilierno, his best friend and roommate.
    Joe was a surprise. He didn’t appear to fit the NLC mold but looked more like the many young men she had seen around San Francisco on excursions with her parents. Tall, dark-eyed, strongly built, Joe looked street-tough and older than Ethan. Not so much in years as worldly experience.
    “No wonder,” Joe said cryptically and extended his hand. His fingers curved around hers firmly as he smiled. Three months later, after she was wearing an engagement ring, Joe told her that Ethan had come back to their apartment the day he picked her up at the airport and said he had met the girl he was going to marry.
    “I asked him if he had consulted God, and Ethan said it was God who put it in his head.”
    Smiling again now as she had when Joe first told her that, Dynah reached the corner of Sixteenth. She let her mind drift along rosy avenues. Ethan had a wonderful future laid out for them. He would graduate with honors at the end of the year. Dean Abernathy was very impressed with his work and was encouraging him to go on for his master’s. The dean had already arranged for Ethan to work part-time at one of the local churches. Dynah would be able to finish her education as well. Ethan was adamant that she get her degree, convinced that her studies in music and youth ministry would be of great use in his ministry.
    She felt so blessed. They would be equally yoked, working together for the glory of God. What more could she want?
    Oh, Lord, You are so good to me. I will do anything for You. All I am, all I ever hope to be, is from You, Father. Use me as You will.
    A car pulled up alongside her and slowed to her pace. Her heart jumped as she noticed it looked like the same one that had passed her on Maple Street. Her nerves tensed as the window lowered and a disembodied male voice