The First Phone Call From Heaven: A Novel Read online

  He grabbed his coat, slipped it on, and caught his reflection in a glass-framed map, the strong chin that he’d once shared with his son. They had both been tall, with loud voices and hearty laughs. “My lumberjacks,” Doreen used to call them. Jack thought back to the day Robbie asked him about joining the marines.

  “Are you sure about this, son?”

  “You fought, Dad.”

  “It’s not for everyone.”

  “But I want to make a difference.”

  “Could you see yourself not doing it?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Then I guess you have your answer.”

  Doreen was livid. She insisted Jack could have talked Robbie out of going, instead of being so stupidly proud of his son’s courage.

  In the end, Robbie enlisted—and Jack and Doreen split up. Four years later, when two soldiers came to Coldwater to deliver the bad news, they had to choose between houses. They went to Jack’s house first. Doreen never forgave him, as if that were also his fault, along with Robbie dying ten thousand miles away.

  The end is not the end.

  Jack leaned forward, still wearing his coat, and once again pressed the redial button on the phone. The same beeps. The same silence. He dialed a different number.

  “Hello?” he heard Tess Rafferty say.

  “It’s Jack Sellers. Did you get a call today?

  “Yes.”

  “Could I stop by?”

  “Yes.”

  She hung up.

  In the early 1870s, Alexander Bell showed Mabel’s father—his future father-in-law—a list of his proposed inventions. Gardiner G. Hubbard was impressed with several of them. But when Bell mentioned a wire that could transmit the human voice, Hubbard scoffed.

  “Now you’re talking nonsense,” he said.

  On Saturday morning, Sully, fed up with the nonsense of heavenly phone calls, parked his father’s car outside a trailer marked ROWE CONSTRUCTION, which he’d located on the outskirts of town. It was important to confront this thing, shoot it down before it did more damage. Grief was hard enough. Why should he have to explain hocus-pocus lies to his child? I want to call Mommy in heaven. Sully was angry, wound up, and he hadn’t done anything besides mourn in so long, this actually felt like a purpose. In the navy he had investigated cases within his squadron—accidents, equipment failures. He was good at it. His commanding officer told him to try for the JAG corps, be a full-time legal guy. But Sully preferred flying.

  Still, it hadn’t taken much to track down Elias Rowe’s place of business. Sully approached the trailer, which sat at the front of a dirt lot. Two skiffs, a backhoe, and a Ford pickup truck were parked out back.

  He stepped inside.

  “Hi, is Mr. Rowe in?”

  The heavyset woman behind a desk had her hair pulled up in a bandana. She studied Sully before answering.

  “No, I’m sorry. He’s not.”

  “When does he get back?”

  “He’s out on jobs. Is this about a new project?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Sully looked around. The trailer was cramped, crowded with blueprints and file cabinets.

  “Do you want to leave a name and number?”

  “I’ll come by later.”

  He returned to his car, got in, and cursed. As he began to pull away, he heard an engine start. He looked in his rearview and saw a man behind the wheel of the Ford pickup. Had he been there the whole time? Sully stopped his car, jumped out, and raced to the truck, waving his arms until it stopped. He approached the window.

  “Sorry,” he said, panting. “Are you Elias Rowe?”

  “Do I know you?” Elias asked.

  “My mother knows somebody you know. Look.” He exhaled. How was he going to put this? “I’m a dad, OK? A single dad. My wife . . . died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elias said. “I have to—”

  “My son, he’s still dealing with it. But this stuff about phone calls from heaven. You’re one of those . . . you say you got a call?”

  Elias bit his lip. “I don’t know what I got.”

  “See? That’s the thing. You don’t know! But come on! You have to believe it wasn’t someone calling from the dead, right?”

  Elias stared at the dashboard.

  “My son. He thinks . . .” Sully’s heart was racing. “He thinks his mother is going to call him now. Because of your story.”

  Elias set his jaw. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “It would help me—it would help him—if you told everybody it’s not true.”

  Elias squeezed the wheel and said, “I’m sorry,” again, this time as he pressed the accelerator. The truck lurched forward and turned onto the street, leaving Sully standing, with his palms up, alone in the lot.

  That evening, Elias drove to a public pier on Lake Michigan and waited for the last light to fade from the sky. He thought about the guy who’d stopped him earlier. He thought about the son he’d mentioned. He thought about Nick and Katherine and Pastor Warren and the sanctuary.

  Finally, when darkness was complete, he stepped out of his truck, walked to the end of the pier, and took his phone from his coat pocket. He remembered when he was a boy and his mother would give away their leftovers to a soup kitchen. One time he asked, Why couldn’t they just throw their food out the way most people did?

  “What the Lord gives you,” his mother had said, “you do not squander.”

  Elias looked at his phone and mumbled, “Forgive me, Lord, if I am squandering your gift.” Then he threw the phone high and far toward the water. He lost sight of it in the darkness, but heard a tiny plop as it broke the lake’s surface.

  He stood there for a minute. Then he got back in the truck. He had decided to leave Coldwater for a while, let his chief foreman oversee the jobs. He didn’t want any more strangers running up to him, seeking help. He had canceled the number, canceled the account, and rid himself of the actual unit.

  He drove out of town feeling relieved and exhausted, as if he’d just slammed a door against a rainstorm.

  The Seventh Week

  As the days passed in Coldwater, Katherine noticed people staring at her. In the bank. At Sunday-morning service. Even here in the market, where she’d been shopping for years. Daniel, the stock boy, glanced away when she caught him looking, and Teddy, the bearded man behind the meat counter, caught her gaze and too quickly said, “Hey, Katherine, how’s it going?” At the end of the aisle were two older women in long coats, who didn’t even bother to hide their pointing.

  “You’re the one, aren’t you?” they asked.

  Katherine nodded, unsure of how to respond. She quickly pushed her cart away.

  “May God bless you,” one of them said.

  Katherine turned. “May God bless you too.”

  Katherine wrestled with her desire to be humble, as the Bible said, and her desire to shout in glory, as the Bible also said. It made every encounter a challenge. All these eyes on her! She’d had no idea how one TV interview could make you so visible.

  At the checkout counter, she lined up behind an overweight, balding man in a Detroit Lions sweatshirt. He unloaded his basket. When he looked at her, his expression changed.

  “I know you,” he said.

  She forced a smile.

  “You showed us a house once. Me and the missus.”

  “I did?”

  “It was too expensive.”

  “Oh.”

  “I ain’t been working.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It is what it is.”

  The woman behind the cash register eyed the two of them as she rang up the man’s few items, a large bag of potato chips, butter, two cans of tuna, and a six-pack of beer.

  “Do they let you talk to anyone else?” the man asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “When they call you. The spirits from heaven. Could you talk to someone else if you wanted to?”

  “I don’t understand.”<
br />
  “My father. He died last year. I was wondering . . .”

  Katherine bit her lip. The man looked down. “It’s all right,” he said. He handed the cashier a wad of one-dollar bills, took his bag, and left.

  Three Days Later

  NEWS REPORT

  Channel 9, Alpena

  (Amy stands in front of Harvest of Hope Baptist Church.) AMY: As we told you first here on Nine Action News, it all started in this small town, when a woman named Katherine Yellin informed her church of a phone call from a most unlikely source—her sister, Diane, who died two years ago.

  (Close-up of Katherine and Amy.)

  KATHERINE: She’s called me six times now.

  AMY: Six times?

  KATHERINE: Yes. Always on a Friday.

  AMY: Why Friday?

  KATHERINE: I don’t know.

  AMY: Does she explain how she’s doing this?

  KATHERINE: No. She just tells me she loves me. She tells me about heaven.

  AMY: What does she say?

  KATHERINE: She says everyone you lose here, you find again there. Our family is all together. Her. My parents.

  (People on lawn of Katherine’s house.)

  AMY: Since Nine Action News first reported the strange calls, dozens of people have flocked into Coldwater to meet Katherine. They wait for hours to talk to her.

  (Katherine speaks to them in a circle.)

  OLDER WOMAN: I believe she has been chosen by God. I lost my sister too.

  AMY: Are you hoping for a similar miracle?

  OLDER WOMAN: Yes. (She starts crying.) I would give anything to speak to my sister again.

  (Amy, standing in front of house.)

  AMY: We should note that so far no one has been able to verify these calls. But one thing is certain.

  (She points to crowd.)

  Lots of people believe that miracles do happen.

  (She looks at camera.)

  In Coldwater, I’m Amy Penn, Nine Action News.

  Pastor Warren tugged on his hat and headed out, giving a small wave to Mrs. Pulte, who was on the phone. She lowered the handset and whispered, “When will you be back?” but was interrupted by the other line ringing. “Harvest of Hope . . . Yes. . . . Can you hold a minute, please?”

  Warren exited, shaking his head. For years, the church could go all morning without a phone call. Now poor Mrs. Pulte barely had time to use the bathroom. They were getting calls from around the country. People asked if their Sunday services were available over the Internet. They asked if there were special prayer books the congregants used—especially the ones who heard the blessed voices from above.

  Warren hobbled down the street, leaning into a whipping autumn wind. He noticed three unfamiliar cars in his church parking lot, and saw unfamiliar faces staring out through the windows. Coldwater was not a place where strangers went unnoticed. Families lived here for generations. Houses and businesses were passed on to children. Longtime residents were buried in the local cemetery, which dated to the early 1900s. A few of the tombstones were so worn and faded you could no longer read them.

  Warren recalled the days when he knew every congregant in town, and was healthy enough to visit most of them on foot, hearing the occasional “Morning, Pastor!” yelled from a porch. The familiarity had always comforted him, like a low, steady hum. But lately that hum had turned to a screech. He felt disquieted—not only by strange cars in his parking lot or a news reporter in his sanctuary.

  For the first time in his life, Warren felt less belief than others around him.

  “Pastor, please, have a seat.”

  The mayor, Jeff Jacoby, pointed to a chair. Warren sat down. The mayor’s office was just two blocks from the church, in the rear of the First National Bank. Jeff was also the bank president.

  “Exciting times, huh, Pastor?”

  “Hmm?” Warren said.

  “Your church. Two TV reports! When was the last time that happened in Coldwater?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I know Katherine from the mortgage world. She took her sister’s death real hard. To get her back that way . . . wow.”

  “Do you think she’s gotten her back?”

  Jeff chuckled. “Hey. You’re the expert.”

  Warren studied the mayor’s face, his thick eyebrows, bulbous nose, a smile that shot up quickly, revealing capped teeth.

  “Listen, Pastor, we’ve gotten a lot of calls.” As if on cue, he checked his cell phone for messages. “There are rumors that it’s not just Katherine or the other fellow—what’s his name?”

  “Elias.”

  “Yeah. Where did he disappear to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, anyhow, I was thinking it would help to have a town hall meeting, you know? Just for Coldwater folks. Answer some questions. See what to do next. I mean, this thing is getting pretty big. I’m told the hotel in Moss Hill is filled.”

  Warren shook his head. The hotel was filled? In October? What did all those people want? Jeff was typing something on his phone. Warren glanced at the man’s shoes, supple brown leather with perfectly tied laces.

  “I think you should lead the meeting, Pastor.”

  “Me?”

  “It happened in your church.”

  “That wasn’t my doing.”

  Jeff put down his phone. He lifted a pen and clicked it twice.

  “I noticed you haven’t been in those TV reports. Are you not speaking to the media?”

  “Katherine is speaking enough.”

  Jeff chuckled. “The woman can talk. Anyhow, we should have a plan, Pastor. I don’t have to tell you our town’s been hurting. This little miracle could mean real opportunities.”

  “Opportunities?”

  “Yeah. Maybe tourist stuff? And visitors gotta eat.”

  Warren folded his hands in his lap.

  “Do you believe this is a miracle, Jeffrey?”

  “Ha! You’re asking me?”

  Warren said nothing. Jeff lowered the pen. He flashed those capped teeth again.

  “OK, honestly, Pastor? I have no idea what’s happening with Katherine. I don’t know if it’s real or made-up. But have you noticed the traffic out there? I’m a businessman. And I can tell you this much—”

  He pointed to the window.

  “That is good for business.”

  Their most recent conversation had only been a minute long, but Tess could not forget it.

  “Do you still feel things in heaven, Mom?”

  “Love.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A waste of time, Tess.”

  “What is?”

  “Anything else.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Anger, regret, worry. . . . They disappear once you are here. . . . Don’t lose yourself . . . inside yourself . . .”

  “Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “For everything. Fighting with you. Doubting you.”

  “Tess . . . these things are all forgiven. . . . Please, now . . .”

  “What?”

  “Forgive yourself.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Tess.”

  “I really miss you.”

  A long pause.

  “Do you remember making cookies?”

  The line went dead.

  Tess burst into tears.

  Cookies—and other desserts—had brought Tess and Ruth together. Ruth ran a small catering business and, unable to afford any help, she used Tess as her assistant. Ruth had been supporting herself since divorcing her husband, Edwin, when Tess was five. Edwin bolted to Iowa without the slightest custody effort and was never seen in Coldwater again. People in town rolled their eyes and whispered, “Now there’s a story and a half.” But over the years, when Tess would ask about her father, Ruth would only say, “Why speak about unpleasant things?” After a while, Tess stopped asking.

  Like most children from broken homes, however, Tess yearned for the party tha
t was missing and battled with the one that remained. A single mom was not common in Coldwater, and it bothered Tess that wherever she went, people asked, “How’s your mother?” as if divorce were some kind of lingering illness that required regular checkups. Tess often felt like a caregiver for her mother’s solitude. At weddings, she and Ruth silently organized desserts in the kitchen and, when the music played outside, they glanced at each other like fellow wallflowers. With most everyone at these affairs attached to a spouse, Ruth and Tess were viewed as a couple; it made people more comfortable that Mrs. Rafferty had somebody.

  The Catholic church was another story. Divorce was still frowned upon there, and Ruth endured the disapproving stares of other women, which grew more intense as Tess blossomed into a stunning teenager, whom the men always seemed to pat on the shoulder when they said hello. Tess grew weary of the hypocrisy and stopped attending services once she graduated from high school. Ruth implored her to return, but she said, “It’s a joke, Mom. They don’t even like you there.”

  Right up to the end, when Ruth was in a wheelchair, Tess refused to take her to Catholic Mass. But now she sat in her living room, Samantha sitting across from her, and wondered if she should call her old priest.

  Part of her wanted to keep these talks with her mother small, private, the way a dream can always be private, as long as you don’t share it.

  On the other hand, something supernatural was happening in Coldwater. Jack Sellers. The woman on TV. The other man they mentioned from Harvest of Hope. She was not alone. Maybe the church could provide an answer.

  These things are all forgiven, Ruth had said.

  She looked at Samantha.

  “Call Father Carroll,” she said.

  Jack pulled his car into the driveway. His heart was pounding.

  He had made up his mind to tell Doreen about the calls, today, no delaying. He had phoned to say there was something they needed to discuss, and he planned to get right to it when he walked in, no waiting until something distracted her and he lost his nerve. He didn’t care if her new husband, Mel, was there. This was Doreen’s son. She had the right to know. Jack figured she’d be mad that he hadn’t told her thus far. But he was used to her being mad. And every day he waited made it worse.