Gideon's Gift by Karen Kingsbury Page A

was guilty as
     sin. It was ordered not to operate until a brake inspection and all necessary repairs had been performed on the entire fleet.
    “What this company allowed was an abhorrent act of negligence,” the judge said at the verdict.
    The judgment was more than the attorney hoped for. After everything had been divided between the plaintiffs, Earl received
     two million dollars for the unnecessary deaths of Anne and Molly.
    With the legal victory, Earl had expected to feel relief from the constant hurt of missing his girls. Their deaths were not
     in vain, after all—no one else’s mother or daughter or wife would die as a result of that company’s negligence.
    But there was no relief whatsoever.
    When the check for Earl’s money arrived in the mail, he drove to the bank, opened a savings account, and deposited the entire
     amount. He wanted nothing to do with it. The check was blood money—money bought and paid for with the lives of Anne and Molly.
    That night back at his parents’ house he knew it was over.
    He could no longer play the game, no longer get up each morning pretending there was a reason to live, a reason to come home
     at the end of the day. If not for his parents he would have bought a gun and ended his life. Certainly he wanted to die. Wanted
     it more than anything. But he was afraid to kill himself, afraid such a move might hurt his chances at getting into heaven.
    And getting into heaven was his only hope of seeing Anne and Molly again.
    But if he couldn’t kill himself, at least he could stop living. Stop pretending.
    As his parents slept that night he reached under his pillow and pulled out the red gloves. He still slept with them near his
     face, pretending he could smell Anne within the fibers, though her gentle scent had long since faded. In the closet he found
     an old duffel bag and filled it with a few jeans and T-shirts, a raincoat, a pair of boots, and the red gloves. Then he opened
     his wallet, slipped a photograph of Anne and Molly inside, and shoved it in his pocket.
    For the next hour he took a final look at the house he’d grown up in, the box of artwork Molly had made for him, the photographs
     that lined the walls. It was over, all of it. Earl’s injuries had healed by then, but the man he’d been had died right there
     on the street beside Anne and Molly.
    He scribbled a note to his parents telling them not to look for him. “I can’t do this anymore,” he wrote them. “Forgive me.
     I love you both.”
    An hour later he was at the train station and by the next morning he was halfway to Portland.

    “ I had planned to find a quiet place where no one knew me, sit down, and wait for death.” Earl stared out the window of the
     mission. “But it didn’t work that way.”
    D. J.’s voice was kind. “It usually doesn’t.”
    “It took me a while to get smart about the streets. They stole my wallet, my clothes, my sack. Over time I lost just about
     everything from my old life. But not the red gloves. Never them.” Earl shifted his gaze back to the mission director. “Until
     this past November. Someone found me under a tarp and took them off my hands while I slept.”
    “Ah, Earl. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
    Earl fumbled in his pockets, his eyes locked on D. J.’s. Then he pulled out the red gloves and held them up. “These are the
     gloves. At least I think they are. They look… exactly the same.”
    The mission director stared at them for a moment. “I don’t understand.”
    “Me, either.” Earl lifted the gloves higher. “This is the gift I got from Gideon.”
    Confusion spread across D. J.’s face. “The gloves your wife made?”
    “I think so. They don’t have her initials, but they’re the same in every other way.” Earl let the gloves fall slowly to his
     lap. “That child couldn’t have possibly known what they would mean to me. I still can’t imagine where she found them. But
     I know this: Her gift saved my life. She made me want