It was getting dark, late, when I finally stepped out of my room.
Everyone had left after the many hours of given condolences to my family, and me just in my room... going over what I knew in my heart I had to do.
When my mother and father saw me step out into the light of the dining room, I froze a little... seeing Hegbert there, his pale thin skin seeming near death itself, and I think at that moment, we both wished for it upon ourselves.
"Landon, you're finally up." my mother said with tearful eyes and I nodded my head slowly, just giving a signal that I heard her.
"Yes..." I said back quietly and began to approach Hegbert but my father stepped before me and said.
"Everyone was asking about you..."
I could have snuffed that away. The only reason why Jamie had become so beloved and missed was because I had brought her forth from the shadows of the town's unforgiving nonchalance to all she did.
I had said 'yes' to the role she had offered me, to be the father in the play who sees the angel. And what were the words that had started to set my heart alight with love?
"You're beautiful..."
Most of the town didn't understand Jamie, just that she was the good Christian girl that would probably always be there doing good without the help of anyone but God.
But I had helped her, reluctantly at first, but the more I saw of this hidden beautiful girl that hid behind a plain modest exterior, the more I realized just how wrong most of us had been about her.
"They were?"
I spoke this back barely to my father, responding to his statement, and Hegbert cleared his throat a little, seeming not knowing himself what to really say.
He had been on bad terms with my family over the wealth my father had inherited from his own corrupt father, and even though my dad was a good man and congressman, we were living off an evil man's doings.
"Yes, son," my mother said again and got up. She came over to me and hugged me tightly, tears rolling down her cheeks in buckets and she continued.
"They wanted to say, 'sorry-"
"And they did say sorry," I spoke back, interrupting her, "To Jamie, on her deathbed."
"Landon..." Hegbert spoke up just then, and I quickly dashed my eyes to look over at him, seeing his disappointment at my response, "Jesus says that if your brother asks for forgiveness seven times, forgive him seventy that seven times."
I couldn't fight the words of our Lord. I stood still, holding back from saying anything.
"Everyone received Jamie's love of them and our Lord in the end."
"But that's not enough!" I suddenly yelled and Hegbert just cleared his throat. He was drinking a cup of tea and taking his time doing it.
I suddenly realized that the reason why he had come here was that if he had gone home tonight... he would have been by himself... in a house of so much death.
"Landon, I know you're upset..." my dad said to me carefully, as I looked at Hegbert, and only felt pity for the elderly minister. More than pity itself... pure pain for all he had been through in his life.
"No," I said suddenly and pushed my father away coming over to Hegbert and saying to him, "The Lord spoke to me tonight."
"Landon!" My mother gasped and Hegbert's ears seemed to perk up at that claim.
"Landon, don't be irrational..." my father said sternly and I swung around to face my old man, then back at Hegbert.
"He spoke to me," I said again, tears rolling down my cheeks uncontrollably and the old minister remained still, listening, "I opened the bible... to get answers to all of this, and how I could fix this."
"Fix what?" My father asked me, hopeless in what I was trying to put forth, "You can't fix death... I'm sorry, Landon... but Jamie is with Christ now."
I knew that to be true, but that wasn't what I was trying to say.
"No." I continued, and knelt down beside Hegbert, looking pleadingly into his eyes, and the old man just looked at me, for once, lost and confused, "How to fix us."
"What are you talking about?"
"We are surviving off an evil man's debt..." I said just then, swishing my neck around to turn my head up to my father. The man I called dad just gasped at my words, "Grandpa was bad, dad, he was bad! And I can't live off what he built."
My father came and placed his hand on my shoulder, trying to give me pressure to get up and stop acting the fool.
"Landon, no, we're not."
"WE ARE!" I yelled and stood up, tears in my eyes as I faced my old man down. He looked at me, unsteadily and I just begged. Just cried, "We are living on a house of sand... we have been for the last seventy years... and one day, God is going to make it rain... and everything you think we have built on sovereignty and trust, will wash away."
"DON'T SAY THAT!"
"IT'S TRUE, BUT!" I screamed back and got up, glaring at him and him at me. In the distance, my mother was in a heap of tears and I yelled.
"I can't go to university... knowing that it's because of Grandpa's wrongs."
"Landon!" My mother gasped when she heard me say this.
"We have to fix the debts... we can't just let them lie."
"They're in the past, Landon!" My father begged me to understand and all throughout this, Hegbert was keeping silent.
"They affect people... today," I spoke back in such anger that my father suddenly struck me hard in the face.
My mum screamed.
I stumbled back, shakened. I looked at him, and saw the look of pure dire rage in his face, before it fell back to a broken shocked expression... as if he couldn't understand what he had just done.
I just leant against the table in the place where I had settled from my fall, breathing in and out unsteadily and my father said to me. His voice cold but serious.
"You are going to university. You're not going to waste your life away."
"Not on evil money..."
"You've gotten into his head!" my father suddenly yelled at Hegbert and the old minister got up slowly from the table. Wiped the crumbs from the scone he had eaten and turned to look at my father with sad, distant eyes.
"No... I think the Lord has."
He began to leave the house after that, my mum still crying and my father sat down on a seat in fury... not understanding the man I was becoming. The man I should have always been.
"If you are so sure that this is what the Lord wants... what God wants... why don't you leave this house of sand... and live on dirt."
My father's words were cold and slicing in their hurting venom. I stood up unsteadily, still hurt by that strike.
"Because if you are abandoning university, to follow a dead girl to an early grave... a grave where you are not making the world better, but worse... you can leave this house."
"Worth!" my mother suddenly yelled at my father, her pain and agony at his command crucifying her soul at the thought of the loss of her son.
I looked at my dad. Looked at him with tears in my eyes and only whispered.
"There is so much good we could do if we only give it all back-"
"Go." my father said.
I looked at him, my heart beating frantically and I said in only a tearful cry, "Dad...?"
"Go!" He yelled, and clasped his hand to his forehead, tears streaming down his cheeks.
I stood up straight and looked at my crying mother and tearful dad, and I gulped, nodding my head in pain.
"I will."
I began walking out of my childhood home, out to the street and saw standing just outside the door, under an old street lamp, Hegbert.
"Mr Sullivan..."
"So... you want to follow in the footsteps of Christ?" he asked me, and I nodded my head quickly, afraid of what else I could say or do.
"Then please get the book that carries the words you will need to survive."
I looked at him confused for a second, when suddenly, in panic, I realized Jamie's bible was still in my room. I ran back into the house, across the hall and to my bedroom.
I picked up the heavy large book and began to rush out of my parents' home, but just as I passed my parents in the kitchen, I froze.
As I watched a sight I had never seen before.
My father and mother hugging each other, both kneeling on the ground and crying in pain.
"I love you..."
The two stiffened when they heard me say this, but I continued... almost in hurting pain at my truth.
"But I love Jamie more..."
I left after I said that and could just hear a broken roar come from my home as I ran back outside to before Hegbert.
"C'mon..." he simply said and began to walk in hard strides to his car in the distance.
I stood there, holding the heavy bible in both my hands and could still hear the tearful moans from the home I had grown up in... my grandfather's house... a house of sand...
I needed to be on rock... for the first time in my life.
I had to stand by myself.
I suddenly came back to the present moment as I heard Hegbert start up his car, and I hurriedly ran over to it, getting in the passenger seat and taking heavy pants out at the thought of where we'd go now.
The rain had settled and it was a quiet dark night, a quiet empty one that had been filled with a young man's first decision.
To become a disciple... to follow Jamie in following Christ.
"Welcome..." Hegbert said to me as he pulled his car out of its spot on the side of the road, "To carrying the cross..."
"Anything for her..." I said in tearful words and wiped my soaked face with the sleeve of my jumper.
"The thing is, Landon." Hegbert said to me, very seriously, and we drove down the empty street till we came to a red light, "You can't do this for Jamie... you have to do this for you. It's all... or nothing for God, Jamie knew that. And you have to know that too."
I shivered as I heard him say these words, and I knew in my heart they were true. It was all for God, or it was all for nothing.
"I'll do it for him..." I finally spoke in a shaky voice, and Hegbert nodded his head.
"Then I guess..." he said, and I looked at him slowly, a soft sad smile on his pale thin lips and I swallowed... as I did not know where I would go from here. But I knew one thing, I had one person on my side... the same person I never thought I would turn to in the end.
Hegbert Sullivan.
"Welcome, to the family."