The Chaplain's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

missed a night of reading at least a little of the Bible.   Soon he began to understand what so many people don’t.  The first message of the Bible is about God.  The secondary message is how God works with imperfect people to bring about His will.
     
    Toby had a flash of inspiration one night in October.  “If God can work through an asshole like David, maybe He can work through an asshole like me.”
     
    November came to Tacoma, but the only reason that the inmates knew it was because of the calendar on the wall.  Toby and John had begun to talk about Toby’s options when he was released in less than two months.
     
    “Where are you going to go when you get out?” John asked one day after they had finished talking about how the 2013/14 NBA season looked.
     
    “I guess I’ll go to my Mom’s house.  She hasn’t answered the phone anytime when I’ve called, though.”
     
    John frowned a little.  “Wait a minute.  Hasn’t she come to see you since you’ve been in here?  Even once?”
     
    Toby shook his head and looked down at the tabletop.  “No.”
     
    John took a deep breath and let it out before speaking again.  When he resumed the conversation it was in a quieter voice.  “Would you like for me to give her a call?  I will, you know.”
     
    Toby shrugged.  “I guess.  That is if you want to.  I don’t know if she will talk to you either.  She’s pretty pissed at me.”
     
    “I guess she is if she hasn’t even come by to see you.  Do you get any visitors at all?”
     
    Toby’s face fell a little.  He hadn’t talked to John about this because he felt embarrassed.  He was the only prisoner that had been in the tank more than a month who hadn’t had even one visitor.  Some of the inmates got a visit every other day, some more often than that.  One guy had gotten back to back visits from his wife AND his girlfriend one day.  Toby had been incarcerated for over six months and hadn’t seen anyone except John and Max Lundquist. He was ashamed to have to answer truthfully. Toby wasn’t going to lie to John, though.  He answered with a simple, “No.”
     
    John’s heart, always exposed to his counselees a little bit, went out to Toby.  The kid had made some poor choices, no doubt about it.  But where did it say that committing a sin, especially one where no one was harmed in a lasting way, meant that love should be withheld.  He decided right then that Toby’s Mom should be contacted.  What was the meaning of “loved one” anyway if there was no love proffered?
     
    The next morning, before he went to the jail on his normal rounds, John placed a call to Toby’s mother.  Wanda Phillips answered the phone on the third ring.
     
    “H’lo.”
     
    “Ms. Phillips, my name is John Boylan.  I’m a chaplain at the Pierce County Jail.  Could I have just a few moments of your time?”
     
    “Is this about Toby?”
     
    “Yes ma’am it is.  I’ve been visiting with your son off and on since he got to jail, and I would like you to know that I think there is a lot about Toby to like.  He…”
     
    Wanda laughed out loud, piercing John’s ear with her cackle.  Finally she spoke after clearing her lungs from what sounded like a lifetime of tobacco phlegm.
     
    “Wait!  Don’t tell me!  You think that he’s a good ‘un underneath, right?”
     
    “Actually I do.  I’ve gotten to know him and we...”
     
    That was as far as John got before being interrupted. “Stop right there, John is it?”
     
    “Yes ma’am.”
     
    “Stop right there John and let me learn you a few things about Toby.  You know him for a few months, you say, and now you presume to tell me that my son is a good boy!  Well he’s not!  Sure he can tell him mama that he loves her but then he goes right back out and breaks my heart again  He’s been trouble from the day he was born.  I don’t have time for it!  I don’t have time for him, and that’s final!
     
    John had heard