Unfinished Business
I'm working on a suspense-thriller novel
I’ve published two creative non-fiction books, an illustrated children’s book, and hundreds of essays, but never dabbled in fiction… until now. Yes, I’m actively writing a short suspense-thriller. The working title is “Unfinished Business” with the tagline, The dead may rest. The past does not. It sounds like the title of one of those small, bent-spine paperbacks you find for $3 at Half-Price Books, doesn’t it? Here’s the thing. I write to think. Writing helps me process my ongoing travels with grief, anxiety, depression, and vicarious trauma. Writing this story, so far, is part of that. The main character is a former trauma center chaplain, who left his work in the hospital to pastor a small country church outside of Fort Wayne, IN. He’s based on me. The story is 100% fiction, but the main character’s journey is deeply informed by my experiences. Writing Pastor Caleb Rourke and creating the fictional small town of Presley, IN has been deeply therapeutic. Some writers keep everything under wraps until it is finished. They want to move methodically, slow and prodding. Every idea needs to be fully developed, and every error corrected before letting anyone else lay eyes on their work. That’s great. Sometimes I do that too. But in this season, I’ve found it most helpful to my creative process (and the healing it generates in me) to work quickly and share along the way… before things are “finished.” So, I’m going to share “Unfinshed Business” as I write it here on my Substack. I’ll start today with the intro and chapter 1, and my goal is to share a new chapter each week until the draft of the book is finished. There is a place in my brain that says, “This is risky.” But, what do I have to lose. So, dear reader, without further adieu (my Wordle starter word, BTW) here is the beginning of “Unfinished Business,” typos, plot-holes and all.
INTRO
A cheap galvanized tray filled with playground sand and votive candles sat on a small table at the front of the church. Each candle lit in memory, flickering with names not spoken aloud. They lit them from a large pillar candle the pastor had found in the sacristy—misshapen and melted, like the tier of a wedding cake left in the sun. But there was still a wick to burn, and it fit the aesthetic. The Longest Night service was over. The sanctuary sat empty now, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. His own grief lived close to the surface this time of year. Advent always did that. But he hid it well. The flames danced as the wax melted into the sand. One by one, they buried themselves. Thin ribbons of smoke rose from the wicks like whispered farewells. It was a thin film of grace over the storm still churning underneath. He watched until only the pillar remained, its flame steady. Then, drawing in a deep breath, he sighed his grief onto the flame, and it surrendered. The hundred-year-old floorboards creaked a gentle hymn as he walked down the center aisle. The red wooden doors thudded closed behind him, and the sanctuary fell into a cavern-deep darkness. But the darkness only held for a breath. The wick flared unbidden, piercing the black like a stone through glass.
CHAPTER 1
It was like seeing hundreds of faces all at once. The flashing of their indistinguishable features overloaded his senses, and a sound like untamed electricity cracked in his ears until he saw her face. Hers was the only one he could remember, from the hundreds of deaths he witnessed in his years as a chaplain in a hospital trauma center. There was a popular social media trend during those four years that asked people to, “Poorly describe what you do for a living.” Caleb always quipped Haley Joel Osment’s catchphrase from The Sixth Sense, “I see dead people.” It was true. So much of his job involved being present when or shortly after people died. Whether a 96-year-old grandparent who lived a full life, or a young person in an accident, Caleb was there to walk with people through the first moments of their grief, and help them take the first step forward toward healing. Almost 800 deaths in four years. That’s how many people Caleb responded to, so his “I see dead people” job description was as accurate as it was a quip. They all had faces and names, but he didn’t remember most of them. Maybe that sounds callous, but forgetting is really the only way to cope when death and trauma is your job. His mind buried the faces and names to protect him. That much death is too much for anyone. But you never really forget. Those faces and names were the crack of electricity that surged through his body as he fell forward, forehead thudding against the bathroom wall. The impact startled him awake, but he just stayed standing, with his forehead pressed against the tile, cold and unyielding, bearing the weight of his body and grief until his knees buckled, falling to the floor in a heap. The floor smelled like an unnatural mixture of chemicals, lemon, and pine that someone in a lab in the 70s determined is what clean smells like. He coughed as he breathed in the “clean.” These surges came often. Caleb was used to them. But some were worse than others. This was one of the worst in a while, because her face came into focus at the end of the flash. Mira’s face. Mira Jameson. Among 800 other nameless, faceless deaths, Caleb remembered hers. Her name and face became the archetype, the image of all the other deaths wrapped in one. Mira was 13. When they rushed her from the ambulance bay into the ER, a paramedic straddled her lifeless body on the gurney, compressing her bare chest with his palms, frantically trying to get her heart to beat on its own. The wail of her mother still haunted him. Guttural and desperate. There is nothing else like the sound of a mother when her child dies. It’s the sound of a broken heart and it screamed in Caleb’s ears as he tried to find his own breath, still laying on the floor like forgotten laundry in a teenager’s bedroom.
Mira Jameson, age 13.
Official cause of death: self-asphyxiation by strangulation.
The coroner never suspected foul play. He said it was a classic teenage suicide; A spontaneous, tragic, irrational, irreversible decision made by a kid upset with her mom.
Caleb pushed up from the floor, sat on the edge of the tub, and buried his face in his hands. It was going to take more than coffee to get through today, but coffee was a place to start.
***
The ritual of morning coffee was grounding for Caleb. He meticulously spooned eighteen grams of Ethiopia Guji into a metal cup on the scale. He’d dialed in this batch on his grinder earlier in the week to pull a perfect double-espresso shot for his first Iced-Americano of the day. The beans rattled as he poured them into the hopper and after a satisfying screech, a fine powder emptied into the portafilter. He leveled and tamped the grounds with the care and precision of a surgeon, locking the wooden handle in place under the showerhead of the espresso machine. With a buzz, the machine pumped water into the grounds and extracted a single line of 36 grams of rich coffee and crema into the awaiting shot glass. The shot cooled as he poured it over water and ice, and the first sip was like a healing elixir as it hit his tongue and he prayed,
Christ, steady me in this quiet hour.
Spirit, unwind the knots I’ve tightened through the night.
Maker of mercy, gather what’s splintered in me, and let the pieces rest in your hands.
From the storms I carried into sleep, call forth stillness.
From the words I regret, speak your forgiveness.
From the dry places, grow something green.
From my thin and tattered faith, weave a shelter for today.
From the grief that clings like ash, breathe your fire of love.
Let me walk into this day broken, but held.
Afraid but accompanied.
Weak but willing.
Amen.
Those words hung on the wall above his coffee bar. The framed print was a gift from Ronni, the church custodian who had a faith that could move mountains, and swore more than any sailor Caleb had ever met. She gave it to him on his one-year anniversary as the pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church.
“Let me walk into this day broken, but held. Afraid but accompanied. Weak but willing.”
Those words repeated in his prayers like a loop while he finished his coffee.
He took the white tab-collar from the front pocket of his black clerical shirt and fit it around the front of his neck. A small drip of wax had hardened on the left sleeve, a remnant from last night’s service. It flaked off as Caleb scratched at it, leaving a whitish residue as persistent as his grief. He wondered if anyone would notice it or the slight aroma of smoke that still lingered on his clothes from the candles. Laundry was never a priority, and this was the cleanest clergy shirt he had. Black shirts never get dirty, right?
“Let me walk into this day broken, but held. Afraid but accompanied. Weak but willing.” he said in a whisper as he closed the front door behind him. Days-old snow still clung to barren trees, and sat in dirty piles along the road, where the plows went through.
***
Salt and sand rattled underneath “Trusty Rusty” his beloved 2004 Honda Civic Hatchback, as he drove to work in silence, hoping it would drown out the broken-hearted wail that still echoed in his ears. It didn’t, and Mira’s expressionless face and the image of her body, motionless and broken, lingered behind his eyes.
“Rusty’s” brakes squealed like an out-of-tune choir as Caleb turned up the gravel drive to All Saints Lutheran Church. Car maintenance was as much a priority as laundry. Trusty Rusty always stopped eventually. Four German farm families laid the limestone foundation and hammered together the oak planks that became All Saints. Over one hundred years later and it still stood strong in the small town of Presley, Indiana. Presley is only 30 miles outside of Fort Wayne, but it could just as easily have been on another planet. Fort Wayne is the second-largest city in Indiana. Not quite an urban center like Indianapolis, but bigger than most people realize. Violent crime in Fort Wayne was such a regular occurrence that some locals called it “mini-Detroit.” Presley was the opposite, and All Saints was a picturesque building on the edge of town. The outside was pristine and white. Fresh evergreen wreaths hung from the arched red doors at the front of the building. The doors had heavy iron hinges that spoke of the steadfast faith of the small congregation who gathered there. It was a small, simple church about two miles outside of town. Most of the members were aging. There were a few people who would bring their grandchildren, but most of the younger families had left, favoring the bigger, more modern churches in town. All Saints would never be big or modern. When Caleb first arrived, they didn’t even have Wi-Fi. No rock band or words projected on the wall. Just a poorly played organ, a rag-tag choir who sounded remarkably like Trusty Rusty’s brakes, and the old hymnals. Not the green ones from 1978, those were too new. They proudly sang from faded red 1941 hymnals with broken spines and yellowed pages. It was perfect. After four years of running from crisis to crisis, this slower pace was exactly what Caleb wanted—exactly what he needed.
Rusty rolled to a stop in front of the church building. The congregation had attached a small cinderblock wing to the sanctuary back in the seventies. There were a few Sunday School classrooms, a narrow “Pastor’s Study,” plus a kitchen and Fellowship Hall—but the only way in was still through the heavy red doors to the sanctuary.
Caleb imagined the original iron key that had once unlocked those doors a hundred years ago. In his mind, a hunched-over caretaker, dragging one leg behind him like a character out of Scooby-Doo, met the pastor at dawn to open it. Sadly, a keypad lock had replaced both key and caretaker before they ever called Caleb as their pastor. But the doors still offered a delightful creak, echoing through the empty wooden building each morning like a greeting from the saints.
The morning sun filtered through the stained glass, casting fractured beams across the worn pews. The windows told the story of Christ’s seven last words, and Caleb’s gaze, as always, went to the one that held him together and tore him apart: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
He stood still in the center aisle, eyes locked on the window’s haunting image. Indigo and bruised violet clashed with jagged streaks of crimson. In its center: a mouth open in a cry, lips parted mid-scream. There were no other figures, only a sky split in two. Even the thin black bands holding each fragment of glass in place seemed to tremble.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The words weren’t a meditation. They were a confession. They were Caleb’s honest prayer, day after day, as he tried to hold on to whatever faith he had left.
A crackle of memory. The electric flash of faces, the tile floor, the smell of lemon-pine returned like a wave. “God, not again.” Caleb shut his eyes tight. But this time, the current passed as his peripheral vision caught something flickering near the altar. He blinked his eyes to see a single flame dancing from a melted pillar candle, lopsided and half-spent. Caleb turned away from the stained glass and sighed. “Ronni’s gonna kill me.”
***
He blew out the candle and walked sheepishly through the door at the side of the chancel, toward the office. Down the hall, he spotted Ronni dropping a dollar store K-Cup into the machine for her morning “coffee”—off-brand (often expired) Donut Shop with six hazelnut creamers that were so artificial, no refrigeration was required. Something can’t go bad if it starts that way, Caleb thought.
Ronetta “Ronni” Keel had been the church custodian for as long as anyone could remember. A pickle jar with the words “Swear Jar” written on an index card sat empty next to the coffee machine on her rusted gray metal desk. A former pastor had started it, hoping to curb Ronni’s salty vocabulary. It didn’t work.
“Swearing is one of my spiritual gifts,” Ronni only half-joked.
Caleb wasn’t sure how spiritual it was, but he had to admit—her creative profanity bordered on art. If Ronni actually put a dollar in the jar every time she swore, the church could’ve replaced the roof years ago.
But her language never bothered Caleb.
Despite the rough edges, no one loved All Saints more than Ronni. She cared for the building, yes—but she loved the people, and they loved her back.
Pastor Hermanson baptized her as a baby. Her parents brought her to worship every week until her mother died just before Ronni’s fourth birthday. Her dad was a good man, but he never really recovered. Between his grief, two jobs, and raising a daughter alone, church wasn’t a priority.
But when Pastor Hermanson asked the congregation, “People of God, do you promise to support Ronetta Marie Keel and pray for her in her new life in Christ?” the people of All Saints answered, “We will, and we ask God to help and guide us.” And they meant it. People took turns picking Ronni up for church and sitting beside her in worship.
She was in high school when Mr. Peterson—the church sexton—retired. They hired Ronni to clean on the weekends. But even before that, she came in every afternoon after school. She did her homework at the same metal desk where she still made her dreadful hazelnut “coffee” and ignored the swear jar.
“Did you notice anything when you came in?” Ronni asked, looking up from her mug. “Ronni, I swear I blew that candle out.”
“You shouldn’t swear,” she cackled. “You’re a pastor. Put a dollar in the jar!”
“I don’t have any cash. How about an IOU? That’s as good as cash. Or I could make you an actual cup of coffee.”
“I take Venmo. And my coffee is just fine,” she said, taking an exaggerated sip from her favorite mug. It was white porcelain with, “Of course I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice!” printed in plain black type.
“Whatever, Ronni. Anyway, I’m sorry about the candle. I’m sure you called me a few choice names when you saw it still burning. But don’t worry—‘As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by Christ’s authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of your sins…’”
“Shut the hell up, Rev,” Ronni laughed.
They went through this exchange almost every morning. It was their own irreverent liturgy to start the day.
Caleb smiled. “But seriously. Sorry about the candle. The last thing I want to do is burn this place down.”
“You couldn’t put that candle out if you tried, Rev.”
Caleb blinked. “Ronni, I have a master’s degree. I do know how to put out a candle.”
“Not that candle, Rev.” Her voice dropped. “Nobody can. That flame is unfinished business. It’ll stay lit until you figure out whatever business it wants you to resolve.”
Caleb laughed, unsure if she was messing with him. “Whatever, Ronni.”
Ronni looked at him, serious now, her eyes steady, and voice low.
“Rev. I’m serious. Some lights don’t go out ‘til the truth gets named. And sometimes truth smells like smoke.”
“You smell like smoke,” Caleb quipped. It was true. She always smelled of Camel no-filters.
Ronni cackled as she drained the last of the lukewarm brown water from her mug.
“That’s my perfume. Isn’t it lovely?”
“Lovely.”
“Alright. Guess I'd better get busy before my boss gets upset. He’s a real ass!”
“Swear jar!”
She gave him the one-finger salute as she walked down the hall.
Stay tuned for chapter two!