CH. 4: CHOPPY WATERS
1052 Words
The clink of silver and stemware drifted beneath cathedral ceilings, softened by ambient gospel and the low murmur of satisfied guests.
The Sanctity’s grand salon shimmered in candlelight and calculated luxury—hand-painted murals catching shadow along the arches, plates arranged like still lifes before men and women in designer belief. Everything about the scene suggested grace under money.
Clarissa sat near the middle of the long table, dressed in oyster silk and polite composure. Around her, donors leaned close to church officials, wine softened into generosity, and the hum of curated abundance thickened in the air.
Joel rose from the head of the table.
The conversation quieted without command. Even the music dimmed—seamlessly, electronically, divinely timed.
He smiled. Broad. Steady. Weightless.
“Friends,” he began, voice modulated to just below theatrical. “Tonight isn’t simply about dining together. It’s about standing in agreement—about aligning faith with action.”
A few nods, soft murmurs of approval.
“We are called,” Joel continued, “not to accumulate—but to activate. Not to hoard—but to harvest. We do not build ministries like monuments. We build them like wells—deep enough to draw life again and again.”
Clarissa watched.
She had seen him deliver this posture before. The cadence. The pauses. The off-script glance to make someone feel seen. The moment of stillness before the pivot from scripture to metrics.
He moved fluidly now into that next turn.
“In just the past year,” he said, “we’ve funded seven international education centers, launched mobile clinics in three countries, and baptized over six hundred new believers.”
A beat.
“But friends, this is only the beginning. We are laying the bricks of a generational legacy. We are investing in eternal dividends.”
Applause.
Joel smiled through it, humble but firm. Then he lowered his voice slightly.
“And tonight,” he said, eyes moving across the room like a benediction, “you have the opportunity to be part of something far bigger than a voyage. You’re helping set the course for a church without borders, a mission without ceiling.”
Clarissa blinked.
For a moment, she saw the Honduras ledger—Joel’s handwriting looping beside the word streamline. Numbers blurred. Something shifted.
Her gaze swept the room. Heads nodded. Eyes shone. Wallets opened, metaphorically if not yet literally.
But hers drifted past the shimmer, past the affirmations, to the corner table where Sofia Ramirez sat.
She wasn’t smiling.
She wasn’t clapping.
She was writing.
Slowly. Intently. As if cataloging a sermon, or dissecting it.
Clarissa recognized the tension behind her own eyes—not a headache, but a pull. A pressure building in places she hadn’t known were hollow.
She looked back at Joel.
His hands now open, wide in invitation. His tone rich, smooth, certain. Scripture braided with strategy, sanctity lacquered over sales.
The applause came again, louder this time. Chairs shifted. Wine glasses lifted.
Joel sat, beaming.
Clarissa lifted hers too. The smile found her lips automatically, the same way breath finds lungs.
She took a sip.
The wine tasted sharp—metallic at the edges.
And beneath the candlelight, beneath the music and mirrors and movement, she felt it again:
The water rising.
The laughter was still echoing in the grand salon when Joel touched her elbow.
“Just a moment,” he said, with the kind of smile that looked like it belonged to the room behind them. But his hand, light on her arm, was already steering her away.
They passed through a narrow staff door—one she had never used in heels—and descended into the muted hum of metal and function. The ceiling dropped. The lighting shifted from warm gold to clinical blue. The air smelled of steel and heat and something faintly electrical.
The service passage was tight, utilitarian. Pipes overhead, exposed. A corridor built for movement, not presence.
Joel stopped and turned to her. His voice was low. Not hushed—controlled.
“I need to talk to you about the discretionary fund logs.”
Clarissa blinked once. “Now?”
“It’s just about timing,” he said, already smoothing the shape of the ask. “Before we dock, we need to streamline a few items. Clarify some narrative paths.”
She said nothing.
Joel stepped slightly closer, his height exaggerated by the closeness of the walls. “You know how these numbers can be misread—especially by people looking to stir up drama. There’s no malice, of course. Just confusion. And we don’t want confusion, do we?”
Clarissa’s pulse began to flick at her collarbone.
“They trust us,” Joel continued. “They trust you. You’re the face of clarity. Your notes. Your balance sheets. If we adjust a few of the earlier entries—just reclassify, really—it’ll align with the new reporting format.”
He said it the way he said everything: as though it had already happened.
She opened her mouth, but nothing formed. Her body remembered what to do before her conscience caught up: nod once, blink slowly, let the silence stretch just long enough to suggest consideration, not resistance.
His tone gentled.
“I knew I could count on you.”
A moment passed.
Then he reached out and brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek.
“Always my compass,” he said softly.
She felt it like a weightless pin pressed into silk. Not pain—just placement.
He turned and disappeared into the corridor, his footsteps swallowed by metal and air.
Clarissa remained.
The pipes above her buzzed faintly. The floor beneath her shoes vibrated with engine pulse. She pressed one hand to the wall for balance.
Her breath was too shallow. She knew that.
She adjusted her necklace. Not for symmetry—for control. Something to center. Something to do with her hands.
Her reflection caught in the dull metal surface opposite—blurry, bent by ridges and bolts. A version of herself trying to look composed in a hallway built to move things unseen.
She smoothed her dress. Composed her face.
Then turned, steady on the outside, and climbed back toward the light—where the candles flickered and the mirrors remembered her smile.
- Writer
