Five years ago, on the day before my thirteenth birthday, Dad presented me with a pile of wooden blocks. It wasn’t a birthday present. It was the same pile of blocks that he’d pulled out each year since my tenth birthday. It was known as “The Impossible Puzzle,” over nine thousand unique laser-cut pieces that would fit together only one way, and in one order of assembly, to create a perfect sphere. It was designed by a computer, and only one person had ever solved it without the use of a computer - Dad.
“Will you give it a go again this year?” he asked.
“Austin turned ten this year. Shouldn’t it be his turn?”
“I gave Austin a different puzzle,” he replied.
“Are you talking about that thing you made him do with sounds? That made no sense.”
“Are you sure?” Dad asked. “You solved it in no time.”
“No, I didn’t. I couldn’t hear the difference between half of the sounds, and I certainly couldn’t remember them.”
“Neither could I; so I had the computer assign each sound a number and gave it to you a week later.”
“That was the same puzzle?
Dad smiled.
I looked at the wooden pieces. I told myself that I hated that puzzle; yet they were drawing me in, begging me to solve the mystery that had eluded me on my three previous attempts.
“I guess I have nothing better to do today,” I said.
I worked steadily all day, building on the progress I remembered from earlier birthdays. I was easily halfway done that afternoon, when I walked downstairs with an overnight bag and a pillow. Tonight would be my reward for the efforts.
“I’m going to the sleepover at Jenny’s now,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I just spoke with Jenny’s mom,” Dad said. “Your plans have been canceled.”
“Dad! I’m only going to be a block away. I’ve had lots of sleepovers at Jenny’s house. Why are you cancelling it?”
“It’s cancelled to save you embarrassment in front of your friends.”
He knows. How could he possibly know?
“You were going to start at Jenny’s house, but you were planning to sneak out by ten o’clock to go to a party in Black Forest … party where there would be a lot of drugs - some of them legal, but most of them not.”
“I wasn’t going to try any!”
“It’s still no place for a thirteen-year-old girl. Especially a girl from a Christian family.”
“You mean especially a girl from this family!” I yelled.
I found no sympathy when I looked to Mom, so I took a deep breath.
He was right and I knew it.
“I was so careful,” I said. “How did you know?”
“Solve that puzzle, and maybe you’ll be more successful next time,” Dad said, and left the room.
“Why does he always have to figure everything out?” I asked Mom.
“Because he’s Cephas Paulson. He can’t stop putting puzzles together any more than he can stop breathing.”
“We can all choose to hold our breath, once in a while.”
Mom smiled.
“I know it seems like your father has everything figured out, and believe me, I’ve seen him put together puzzle pieces that I couldn’t even see existed, much less how they fit together … but one of the things I’ve always found most endearing about him is all of the puzzles he messes up.”
“Messes up? What puzzle has Dad ever messed up?”
She smiled again.
“The one I’m looking at right now. He first held you when you were just a minute old and I’ve never seen him stare at anyone or anything so intently. You stared right back at him, then he put his little finger out and you wrapped your entire hand around it.”
Her voice trailed off and she got a curious look on her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just remembered the next thing he said to you. He asked ‘Which piece will you place, Jocie? The first … or the last?’”
She reflected on the question for a moment, then shook it off and looked at me.
“Since then, your father has said that you’re the greatest puzzle in his life because you’re always in motion and the pieces change before he can fit them into place.”
I went back to my room. I wanted to smash my progress on The Impossible Puzzle to pieces, but instead I calmed myself, and prayed for the next thirty minutes. When I finished, I looked at the puzzle, which was sitting in front of a mirror, allowing me to see two sides of the puzzle at once. I rotated it, while watching it in the mirror.
“Puzzles are always in motion,” I said aloud.
I thought about the moving puzzle of my life that allowed Dad to figure out the sleepover plan. The signs of my deception had been everywhere for Dad to see. I had washed my favorite dress; I had bought new makeup, Jenny and I had stopped giggling when Dad walked past my room; those and dozens of other moving pieces were all there, waiting for Dad to assemble into a picture.
I moved the Impossible Puzzle to the middle of the room and started picking up puzzle pieces as I walked around it. Piece after piece revealed its secret to me as I circled, until, at just after midnight, I slid the last one into place.
There were still lights on downstairs; so I picked it up and carried it down with me. When I saw Dad, I tossed it at him. He caught it, and for a moment he looked proud, before his face shifted completely.
“Go to bed, Jocie,” he said.
I heard him leave the house. He didn’t return until after breakfast the next morning.
“I’m sorry I missed your birthday breakfast,” he said.
He tried to hug me, but I pulled away. I was still mad at him about the party and the puzzle, and now he’d even missed my breakfast. He let me go, ate a quick breakfast, and left again. Mom came into my room a while later.
“Jocie?”
She stopped when she saw the completed puzzle.
“Wow. Did you do that in just a day?” she asked.
“It’s nice of someone to notice.”
“If you’re referring to your father, he noticed. Something came up last night. Something I need to talk with you about. Dad chose not to warn the other parents about the true purpose of the sleepover. Your friends all went to Black Forest, but someone had heard that there were Washed girls coming to the party and they laced the food with drugs. They were all attacked. Dad has been with their families all night.”
******
Aunt Kimberley fulfills Dad’s request: she feeds us a massive dinner and offers us comfortable beds for the night. I’m up early the next morning and Aunt Kimberley catches me at the basement door, where I’m looking at growth marks on the wall. Every Easter, Austin and I, along with all of our cousins, would get lined up and measured.
“I guess I’m officially the shortest now,” I say. “Even little cousin Alice passed me this year.”
“Your father started that tradition the first Easter that you could walk,” Aunt Kimberley says.
“When I was little, I loved being measured,” I say. “It became a lot less fun as everyone caught up and eventually passed me. Do you remember how Austin acted the first year that he was taller than me?”
“He was even worse the year after that,” she replies, and we both smile.
“Mom said that God made me the perfect height to be me …” I say, “… but I remember Dad’s look more than anything. It was like I’d added to the list of ways he could be disappointed in me.”
“Jocie? Why on earth would you think you’ve ever been a disappointment to your father?”
I can’t help it. My face turns to sadness as I think about it.
“Aunt Kimberley, would you say that my Dad is a happy person?” I ask.
“I’ve never known anyone happier,” she says. “They say that when he was The Cult Hunter, he could part a crowd just by looking at it, but after he met Christ, all of that was lifted from him. I’ve only watched what happened to him inside the mountain once, but even as he was being whipped, you could see in his eyes that he was unburdened. Live or die, he knew in his heart that the Lord was with him.”
My eyes start to tear up as she speaks.
“Why then …” I start, but can’t finish the sentence.
“My dear, whatever is the matter?” she asks.
“Why does he …”
I start to cry.
“Let it out, Jocie,” she says, and holds me gently.
It comes out in spurts, as I sob.
“Why does … he always get so … so sad when he … when he looks at me?”
“I don’t know, Jocie.”
“There are so many moments of my life that should be happy memories, but all I remember instead is Dad’s face. I was so proud when I solved ‘The Impossible Puzzle,’ but he looked disappointed; I was proud when I finally free-climbed a rock with a big overhang, and he was proud for just half a second, like he’d forgotten to be disappointed and then remembered, and there was that face again.”
“Jocie, you listen to me!” she says. “Your father has never been disappointed in you.”
“Then why …”
“He knows something, Jocie. He’s pieced together a thousand little things that nobody else could hope to understand, just like he did when he was your age. Whatever it is, he’s not disappointed in you. He’s scared for you. He’s scared because he loves you, and …”
“And what?” I ask.
“He knows, Jocie. He never told anyone, of course. Not even your mother, until recently.”
“What does he know?”
“He knows that you received the same gift that he has.”
“The whole family knows that I’m good at puzzles.”
She smiles and shakes her head.
“Then he even kept it a secret from you,” she says. “The way your minds work is beyond being good at puzzles. You see things most people can’t see, and put together the pieces.”
“If I’m so gifted, why wouldn’t he be trying to develop it?”
“A gift like yours doesn’t need to be developed. It’s just who you are. For some reason, Cephas wanted to keep your gift out of the spotlight … to keep it a secret until the gift is needed.”
“It’s a nice theory, Aunt Kimberley.”
“Jocie, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I eavesdropped when your parents were last here. They quarreled, and I’d never heard either of them raise a voice or say an unkind word to each other; so I listened as he explained it her. You didn’t solve ‘The Impossible Puzzle’ when you were thirteen.”
Yet another disappointment.
“You solved a version that your Dad had altered to make it ten times harder.”
What?
“Why did that cause a fight?”
“They were fighting because he said the burden is now yours to bear. Jocie, he knows the burden his gift has brought him. He would never have wished it onto you. He loves you too much. Every time you did something incredible, it just reinforced what he already knew, and it made him sad.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“The fight also had something to do with a woman named ‘Amelia.’ After that, your Mom stormed out of the house for an hour, and your Dad spent some time staring at those growth marks on the wall, just like I found you this morning. I heard him say ‘just small enough.’ When your Mom came back, they spoke quietly for a while; then left, hand-in-hand.”
******
Austin and Zera wake up and join us for breakfast an hour later.
“Where do we go from here?” Austin asks.
“Don’t say it out loud!” Aunt Kimberley says. “We’re all better off if I don’t know.”
“I have one idea,” I say.
“Austin, before you go, will you see if you can fix the drone that fills my bird feeders?” Aunt Kimberley says. “It broke when your parents were here, but they left so quickly that your Mom forgot to fix it for me.”
When the breakfast dishes are all washed, we use the exit through the willow tree; then find the drone parked in the garden shed. Austin looks at it, while Zera and I sit in the tree and enjoy the fresh air.
“There’s nothing wrong with the drone,” Austin says. “It looks like a programming issue.”
He inputs some new code via his com.
“That should do it,” he says, but the drone zips to the same feeder, fills it, and parks in the shed.
“Good job, boy wonder,” Zera says.
Austin looks at the software again.
“Somebody put a self-regenerating override code in it,” he says. “This is weird. All we need to do is take down that one feeder, and it should reset.”
He walks to the full feeder, which is hanging on an odd shepherd’s hook. He takes the feeder down, but the drone stays put.
“Move the hook, too,” I say.
When he pulls it out of the ground, the drone activates and begins filling feeders around the yard.
“Thank you, Austin!” Aunt Kimberley says from the tree.
“Aunt Kimberley, where did you get this hook?” he asks.
“Your Aunt Cindi gave it to me ages ago.”
“How long, exactly?” he asks.
“At least a ten years. Why?”
“It’s very interesting. May I keep it?”
“Since it’s messing up the drone, go ahead.”
An hour later, we’ve said our goodbyes and been crushed by Aunt Kimberley’s hugs many times over. Our backpacks are full of all the food she gave us, but as we exit the tree, Austin grabs the old hook and finds a way to stuff it in as well.
“What’s the story with the hook?” I ask.
“Not here,” he replies.
By the time we’re just two blocks away, Austin can’t contain his excitement anymore. He stops under a tree and takes out the hook.
“I know where I’m going! I know the special thing I’ve been called upon to do!”
He holds up the hook.
“You’re going to be a shepherd?” Zera asks.
“I know this material,” he says. “It’s the same composite that Dad and I created five years ago to make into bike frames.”
“How? Aunt Kimberley says its ten years old,” I say.
“I know, but look at this.”
He points to some letters engraved in the material.
“Those are my initials, written exactly the way I write,” he says.
Zera looks confused, but I already know where this is going.
“No,” I say.
“Yes, Jocie. This is part of a time machine arena. I’m going to build a time machine!”