They walked to a bench under the church eaves. Holden spun the ball in his hands as he talked.

“After Yale I landed with a big-time civil litigation firm in New York. I was, as the saying goes, on top of the world. I had a wife and daughter, an apartment on East 86th. Season tickets for the Knicks. Bought all my suits at Bergdorf’s. And, idiot that I was, I had an affair. With a temp in the office. A nineteen-year-old actress. My wife found out about it and, bam, left me, took my daughter. I tried to find them, but Yolanda, that was my wife’s name, was good at what she did, which was to avoid me.”

He reached into his shirt and held the bead necklace in his hand. “My daughter was six when she made me this. It’s the only thing of hers I have left.”

Millie almost reached out to touch it. The whole story felt ineffably sad.

“Anyway, I dealt with it by using drugs. Cocaine, mostly. It was the eighties, after all. The city was covered in snow. It didn’t take long for the firm to boot me out. You know those stories they tell junior high school kids to keep them off drugs? All true. At least it was in my case. The low point came when a drug dealer shot me, tore a big hole in my leg. I almost bled to death.”

A shadow passed over Holden’s eyes, covering everything for a moment.

“Long and short of it, I got out of the hospital and had serious thoughts about ridding the world of one more loser. Me. Still couldn’t find my daughter. So I had nothing left. I found myself holing up in a thirty-dollar-a-week hotel in Newark called the Nazareth. I kid you not. The Nazareth Hotel. And one night that first week, when I was thinking about the best way to kill myself, some of the guys in the lobby were watching Billy Graham on TV. I sat down to listen. And I got hit with a laser beam, right here.”

Holden pointed to his chest.

“I mean, it was like somebody opened me up and poured hot liquid into me. I know this is a cliché, but he sounded like he was speaking right to me. Like he knew exactly what I needed, down to the letter.”

He paused a moment, seeming to gather fragments of memory. “Next thing I know I’m crying, I mean bawling like a baby. The other guys, old geezers mostly, are asking me if I’m having a heart attack. Funny thing is, that’s exactly what it was. An attack on my heart. And when Billy Graham gave that invitation, I got down on my knees on the cheap linoleum of the Nazareth Hotel and prayed for forgiveness of my sins.”

Millie remembered hearing testimonies as a little girl. For some reason, they never really reached her. They were usually laden with emotion and Millie always filtered them through a sieve of cold objectivity. She could not recall ever being moved.

Now, for some strange and uncomfortable reason, she found she was moved by Holden. He was not embellishing or ranting or spouting preacher-talk. He told his story from a deep place inside him and, through some miracle of human connection, it touched her.

“Skip ahead a few years,” Holden said. “I went into the ministry. Started pastoring a church upstate in Syracuse. Did that for a time, and felt called to rescue work.”

The term sent a chill through Millie. Rescue, the anti-abortion term for doing things like shutting down family-planning clinics. She’d written an opinion once denying protesters the right to cross a certain buffer zone near such clinics.

“I ended up in prison,” Holden said. “Now that was funny.”

“Funny?” Millie said.

“Big-time Yale lawyer in the joint for pro-life civil disobedience. Larry Graebner must have had a conniption fit.” Holden sighed quietly. “I finally got out and my lawyer had some news for me. He’d located my ex-wife and daughter. Only my daughter was dead.”

Millie’s chest tightened.

“Drug overdose,” Holden said. “Fourteen years old.” Holden looked down at his hands. “So I sued God.”

His tone was even, unemotional, as if he were reciting the facts of some mundane petty theft case. Then he looked up at her. “I wanted to sue God, tell him what I really thought about him. Disprove him. To myself. I was going to walk away from the ministry.”

“What happened?”

“I wrote up an indictment,” Holden said. “I ended up with a huge legal brief against him. It started to work on me a little bit funny. I found myself arguing God’s side, too. Back and forth. I felt like I was in a body-switching move. But I ended up with my faith back. It hasn’t always been easy since then, but I find that brief is sometimes a lifeline for me. And it’s taken on something of a life of its own.”

“How so?”

“I distribute it in the prisons,” Holden said. “I do some chaplain work at the Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, or down at Wayside. I’m told this brief gets spread around on the inside. And mailed out to other prisons across the country.”

“The prisoners really read it?”

“Sure. Most of the prisoners are jailhouse lawyers to one degree or another. This is something I hope will interest them, get them thinking. And maybe…”

“Yes?”

“If I reach one person, maybe in a way it’s like reaching my daughter. Or a way to atone for not reaching her. Does that sound crazy?”

“Not at all.”

“Hey,” he said jauntily. “Want to read it?”

That was a bolt from the hot blue sky. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s probably very personal.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. But I’d still like you to take a look.”

To her surprise, she wanted to – part of her, at least. And she wanted to tell him about her vision, because he’d talked about something like it in church. For one small moment she wanted to trust this man, and reveal part of herself to him.

But another part of her didn’t want anything to do with him or his so-called brief.

“Thank you anyway,” she said diplomatically. “I really should be getting back to – ”

“Tell you what,” Holden said. “I make a fifteen-foot hook shot from the line, you read it. Deal?”

She looked at him, half admiring his persistence.

“I’ll sweeten the offer,” Holden said. “I’ll make it a left-handed hook.”

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Left-handed hook from the line.”

He smiled and dribbled out to the free-throw line. He bounced the ball a couple of times, took a step with his right foot, and delivered a left-handed hook shot that arced beautifully into the afternoon air and down through the net.

Millie stood up and put her hands on her hips. “You are left-handed! What happened to all that full-disclosure stuff?”

“This is street ball we play here, Your Honor,” Holden said. “Now I’ll just get you a copy of the brief.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

1

On Monday morning the wind came down from the north. Dark clouds conferred in the sky, portending rain. It was the sort of day in the desert Millie had always loved.

Millie took a lounge chair to the backyard with a big cup of coffee and one of her mother’s homemade cinnamon rolls. She told her mother she wished to be left alone, no phone calls. She was going to go into court against Jack Holden. She was surprised at her enthusiasm and genuine interest in finding out what went on in that pastor’s mind. But she had always loved the battleground of ideas, and here it was in her lap.

She settled comfortably in the chair and began to read the thick document. Under the section titled “Statement of Facts” the brief stated:

I have been in jail. I have nearly died. I have lost the people I loved more than anything in the world. I wonder sometimes why I didn’t take my own life. I think I now know why. God isn’t finished with me yet.

The Statement of Facts went on to narrate Holden’s story as he had told her, only in more detail. Millie was caught up in it immediately. She could tell Jack Holden must have been a very good trial lawyer. He had her attention from the start.