ANOTHER JOAN?

Season 2 Delving into Secrets

"A couple came in to complain that their 14-year-old daughter claimed to get visits from Jesus and chatted with him like he was the guy next door." Lily looked around. "I've heard of a penny dropping, but not three sets of silverware. What's going on?"

Joan glanced around. Lily, Kevin, Mom, and Dad were looking puzzled. Luke and Adam were staring at Joan, as if to say that in Godly matters she was the one in charge.

Had the time finally come, she wondered, to reveal the secret once and for all, with Adam and Luke to back her up? If she was dealing with just one outsider, she might have risked it, but she found the opposition too formidable, knowing their characters as she did. Dad didn't believe in God, and Kevin, though not doctrinaire on the subject, had never shown any interest in religion. Lily, who obviously WAS interested, had just expressed her skepticism at the notion of "chatting" with the Almighty. And Mom was basically unpredictable; she had been hovering between Lily's philosophy and Dad's for almost two years.

On the other hand, Joan had had an idea this past spring: that telling part of the truth might make it easier to tell the whole truth later.

"It's a case of danger voodoo--" she began.

"Déjà vu," corrected Luke automatically.

"Back when I had Lyme Disease, I had weird hallucinations, and in one, I thought was talking straight to God. I told Adam at the time. God didn't look like pictures of Jesus, or an old man with a beard, but a cute guy of roughly my age."

Mom looked startled. "That's odd. I remember a dream I once had---"

Now it was Joan's turn to stare. Was it possible that Cute Boy God had tried to appear to Mom once? Had he failed to make contact? But God didn't make mistakes, did He?

Was Mom a possible candidate for the revelation after all? But Will was the next to speak. "You never mentioned this to us."

"What was the point? I was trying to forget the hallucinations and get back in tune with the real world. I did tell Luke, though, when--"

"I was doing a psychology project at school," Luke improvised.

Kevin didn't know what was going on, but apparently he felt some loyalty to his siblings to get them out of an awkward jam. "So what else can you tell us about this couple at your church?" he asked his wife.

"Nothing," she said, staring at her plate. "I've blabbed too much already. I just wish everybody'd forget what I said--"

That makes four of us, thought Joan.

----

Because of his broken leg, Luke was temporarily living in the ground-floor room that had once been donated to Aunt Olive. He could have used Kevin's lift to get upstairs, but that was designed for wheelchairs, not guys on crutches. It was the most natural thing in the world for Joan and Adam to stop by before retiring to their home in Adam's studio. It was also cover for a conversation in confidence.

Luke was on his computer as they walked in, but he hastily blanked the screen.

"No need for that, Luke," Joan teased. "We know you're talking with Grace." Though, come to think of it, it should be the middle of the night in Italy. Maybe he was leaving Email messages.

"Yeah," said Luke, "but you don't know WHAT I'm saying to her."

"Raunchy stuff, huh?"

"Yeah," Luke repeated hastily, too hastily. Joan was suspecting that he was actually writing maudlin I-love-yous. In which case it was probably good that they interrupted him. Grace would have low tolerance for such fluff.

"Let's change the subject," declared Joan, getting tired of the teasing. "We gotta find out about this girl."

"Well, you're not getting any more out of Sister Lily," Adam observed. "The Church has had centuries to work out rules about confidentiality. The confessional, you know."

"Then we'll have to find out indirectly," declared Joan. "I wish Veronica Mars was here, instead of being stuck in California."

"All those beaches and waves, poor girl," Luke said sarcastically. "But seriously, Joan, why get involved?"

"Do you remember last year, when Grace overheard me talking to God, and the two of you were convinced that somebody was taking advantage of me? Well, I think somebody's exploiting this girl, and we can put a stop to it."

"But you WEREN'T getting exploited, Jane," Adam reminded his wife. "So why couldn't this girl be on the level as well?"

"If God's talking to her, why wouldn't He tell me?"

"Think 'Mysterious Ways'," said Luke. "And from a practical point of view, what can we do? Sister Lily isn't going to volunteer any more information. Are you going to spy on her? Because if you get caught, she'll feel violated, professionally as well as personally. Do you want your sister-in-law to hate you for the rest of your life? I don't."

"Maybe you could hack into--"

"No. There are certain things I refuse to do, and using my computer skills to pry into an innocent's affairs is one of them. I did it last fall because I was convinced that Ryan Hunter was a threat to the community. This isn't that sort of an emergency. If you can give me evidence that the girl is in danger, I may change my mind."

Joan wished that God would appear in one of His forms and break up the impasse, tell them the right thing to do. But He didn't. Not in the Girardi home, nor on the way back to the studio. As the Girardi-Roves pulled out their sofa-bed, Joan gave up for the night. They would have to make a moral choice on their own -- which actually put them in the same situation that normal humans felt all of their lives.

"I don't know," said Joan, snuggling up against her husband. "Maybe Luke's right and this is much ado about nothing. But I think God prompted Lily to mention the girl, because He WANTS me to look into this."

"If it means that much to you, Jane, I'll help out," said Adam. It was characteristic of him that he usually avoided speculation on "what God wants", and accepted the others' interpretations, particularly Joan's.

"How?"

"I've got sort of an idea. Have you ever read THE INVISIBLE MAN?"

"There are three INVISIBLE MANS," said Joan, benefiting from three years working in a bookstore. "H.G. Wells' science-fiction story, Chesterton's mystery, and Ralph Ellison's satire."

"I'm thinking about the Chesterton version. A guy goes in a heavily guarded building and murders his rival, and nobody remembers seeing him go in. Why? Because he disguised himself as the mailman, whom everybody EXPECTED to go in. It made him effectively invisible."

"Well, I don't want to murder somebody, just get extra information from Sister Lily. What are you planning?"

He told her his idea.

TBC