The Project - Courtney Summers Page 0,46

it. Her greatest accomplishment in The Unity Project, so far, might be him.

After Foster quietly closes the door, he folds her into a hug. There’s something about his gratitude that makes Bea feel so powerful. He’s older than her, more educated, more accomplished, has saved actual lives as an ER physician—yet he calls her at night to thank her for saving his. His faith radiates from him now, a stark contrast to the brokenhearted man she found in the chapel; a child had died due to an intake error, the aftermath a desperate, ugly scramble to assign blame. He still has nightmares of that tiny body seizing, the small heart it held, stopping. She’d brought him to Lev, days later, who pressed his hands to Foster’s shell-shocked, gray face, and whispered in his ear.

I know what the world has brought you to and all that you have had to endure. I want you to know the path to redemption will ask less of you than you have already been forced to give, and give more than you have ever received. Do you accept your atonement?

Bea got to witness Foster’s baptism. She stood on the shore of the lake, tears rolling down her cheeks, as Lev put Foster under the water. He reemerged dazed, blissful, redeemed. It was so … affirming to see her journey reflected in his eyes. She’ll never forget those seconds when the water was everywhere, air nowhere, the sun glittering past the surface, a new world. For one brief moment, she thought she would die.

Then her head broke water and God was everywhere.

They step outside and into The Project’s truck, giddy with the day’s work ahead. She lets Foster drive. He pulls out of the parking lot while Bea clutches her bag to her chest and they make their way to Bob Denbrough’s house on the opposite side of Morel. The Unity Project is in a very specific phase of development that Lev calls sewing. Half of their efforts are devoted to expansion, the other half is now devoted to sewing themselves into the fabric of the communities The Unity Project has established themselves in, to give themselves every possible advantage to succeed in bringing salvation to the world.

You are, Lev told them the other day, our doctors, our social workers, our members of the PTA, our secretaries, our counselors … Make use of these talents. Spread our Word.

Foster has already proven himself worthy in this regard. Without his contacts in the hospital, they would have never learned of Bob Denbrough’s wife’s overdose. The burden of her husband’s infidelities finally got to be too much. She’s going to be discharged today. It’s not public knowledge and could never be, but The Unity Project can’t be idle in the face of someone else’s suffering and so they’ve created a care package for the couple to find when they get home. There are fresh-made baked goods inside, some Project literature and a note of support.

Forgive and comfort him, lest he be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Confirm your love to him.—The Unity Project

On their way back, Foster asks Bea what it would take to end up in Chapman House. He wants, he says, to be close to Lev. Bea understands that feeling. She is close to Lev but there’s always a part of her that wants to be closer than that. She feels some distance, a space reserved only for God, and she wonders if the longer they belong to each other, the less discernible the distance will be.

Come when he calls, Bea tells him. The natural progression is from Morel, to Bellwood to Chapman, once you’ve proven yourself.

She wasn’t the natural progression, he points out.

What Lev and I went through, she tells him, was different.

It’s the opening he’s seemingly been waiting for. He’s heard the story, but never directly from her, and some things about Lev and The Project should never be posed as a question. He makes sure it’s not a question now:

I believe everything—but I’d like to hear you say it.

And Bea tells him.

Lev Warren brought her sister back from the dead.

She lives in the memory as she walks Foster through it, and the miracle lights on his face as though he is there, witnessing it in real time.

He wishes he could have witnessed it.

Where is she now? Foster asks of Lo.

Lev’s seen her in The Project, Bea says, and she has held onto that vision every day since joining because every day, there’s something beautiful