THE MEETING. PART FIVE: CHARLIE

Charlie Woods was home alone. His classes had been cancelled that afternoon due to some sort of teacher training day or something. He didn't care. He wouldn't have gone to class that day anyway. He would have called in sick, even though he had no physical ailment. But he was feeling nauseous because of that he had just seen.
Charlie had been renting a house off campus with two friends for two years after a terrible two years of living in the dorm. The house wasn't all that nice; four bedrooms, one and a half baths, a small kitchen and a small front room, no garage or even much of a yard to speak of. The only thing he, Max, and C.J. prided themselves on was the big screen TV they had saved up for six months to buy. The entertainment center filled almost a third of the front room and had run them nearly five thousand dollars altogether, but even though this was their most prized possession, Charlie had to work to refrain from kicking in the TV screen.
He had been flipping through the channels when he happened to pause on one of the cable news stations and saw his sister's face. It was an old file photo of Jessica Woods, the one of her sitting in the park that Sunday. He had known that his father was visiting Vincent J. Hynes today, and he knew that the media had somehow found out about it, but it still didn't seem real until he saw Jessica on television.
The scene shifted from the file photo to a shot of his dad walking briskly into the prison, ignoring the dozens of reporters. There was a graphic at the bottom of the screen which read "Victim's father meets with killer." Then a reporter stood there with the prison as a backdrop and a microphone in her hand. Her nearly flawless face bore a somber expression, but Charlie knew she was far from somber. He remembered very distinctly from a decade earlier that when the cameras were off, the reporters were greedy, heartless, and overbearing. This pretty blond lady had gone to that prison for the sole purpose of exploiting Alex Woods, his grieving family, and his dead little girl. She didn't care about any of them, and neither did most of the people tuning in to the broadcast.
"Yes, Michelle," the reporter said, "Reverend Woods is inside the facility at this moment and we can only assume he is meeting with Vincent Hynes. His wife Aimee is here as well, but she did not go inside. We attempted to ask her a few questions about her husband's decision, but she declined to be interviewed. I'll be here when Reverend Woods comes back out and we'll see if we can get a statement from him."
Then the story was over and another one, this one about a skirmish in the Middle East, took precedent. Charlie and his friends received two other cable news networks and he checked them both only to see similar accounts of his father brushing off reporters and a promise of an update. One did a short revalidation of the Hynes case, focusing mainly on Jessica. When it was over, Charlie flipped off the TV and began to sob.
Why, after all these years, why did this have to be dug up and flung back at him? Why couldn't these people just let Jessica rest in peace? Why couldn't they leave the Woods family alone? And why didn't his father just burn that letter and say, "To Hell with Vincent Hynes!" That's where the monster was going anyway.
Charlie remembered the day Jessica went missing. The last things his sister had said to him was, "I'm going to kill you, you little brat!" Charlie had been more hurt than angry. After all, it was just a stupid picture and he was just having fun. It had haunted him for ten years that the last time he had seen his older sister they had fought. He never got to say good-bye to her and the last memory she would have of her little brother was of him saying, "I don't know what the big deal is. You look ugly in ever picture!"
But Jessica had not been ugly. Not ever. Charlie had loved her so much and had always thought that she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever known. He was just being a stupid little brother. He never meant to hurt her. If only he could just go back and tell her that.
He hadn't cried this hard since Jessica's funeral. He was glad that Max and C.J. weren't home, though he was sure that they would understand. He would much rather be alone.
He still remembered the day Jessica went missing like it had just happened. They hadn't told Charlie or his younger sister Chrissy until they had gotten home that afternoon. They had gotten off the bus to find a police car and three news vans. From that point on, they fell into the nightmare that the next year of mourning, trials, and media harassment became. Chrissy barely understood what had happened, but Charlie was old enough to understand rape, and to understand murder.
Charlie had always been a good kid. He had never been the typical minister's son. He wasn't a trouble maker and was well liked and respected by the church, his school, and the community. All that changed the day Jessica disappeared. He stayed home from the school the whole week after she was kidnapped and returned to class the following Monday only to be sent home before lunch with a five day suspension for fighting. He didn't remember what the fight was about, but it was so severe that the only reason he hadn't been expelled was the "extenuating circumstances" involved.
"My sister is not a circumstance!" he had screamed at his principal before his father took him home. At the time, his parents were so preoccupied with what had happened to Jessica that his behavior went mostly unnoticed, which only worked to encourage it. He became known as a "bad boy," always getting into fights, and by the end of that year he was smoking and drinking. The summer before eighth grade he was caught smoking pot by his father. That brought Alex back to reality long enough to deal with his son and with their ensuing talk, the punishment, and the assistance of the church's youth pastor, Pastor Larry, Charlie was able to get his act together before he ended up doing something really stupid.
His behavior improved, his grades, which had slumped, returned to their honor student levels, and he poured himself into church activities. But only Charlie knew that his motives behind the improvements weren't what everyone around him believed. He had originally tried to push out his emotional turmoil through his violence, drinking, and drug use, which would have gotten much worse had he not been caught. He was scared straight, that was sure, but now he was pushing away the turmoil with academics and church.
Not that he cared about God. He was furious with Him. God had allowed his big sister to die. He had sat back and watched as that sick pervert violated her and then strangled the life out of her. God hadn't done a single thing to stop it. Never once in his entire life had Charlie doubted the existence of God, but since Jessica's death, he hated Him. He would never say so to anybody and nobody was the wiser, but his facade of Christianity was simply that. The activities kept him busy and the appearance of righteousness kept people, especially his family, from bothering him.
He was even a leader in the Christian Student Association on campus and nobody involved in the CSA, not even Chrissy, who was a freshmen at the same school, even suspected that his faith was less than genuine.
Chrissy had been at the house a few months earlier when they had seen the first news story on television about Alex Woods' impending meeting with Vincent J. Hynes. The first thing that they did was call home and ask their father if it was true and if he was crazy.
Charlie's pretense of faith was so convincing even his father believed it. Alex asked him to keep the meeting in prayer, which he promised he would do, though if Charlie did happen to pray, it would be his first real prayer in nearly a decade.
Chrissy had prayed, and he had gone through the motions for her sake. He even said a few words out loud, all the time just burning with a rage and hatred with which he had burned for a decade.
And he had been silently burning with that rage since that phone call. Whatever his father was doing with Hynes at that moment was a waste of time, and even if, by some odd chance, God could actually forgive that evil monster, then he was the sort of God that Charlie wanted nothing to do with.
The phone rang. He didn't answer it. After four rings, the machine picked up the call. After the brief outgoing message, a familiar voice filled the room.
"Charlie? Are you there?" It was Chrissy. "Come on, Charlie, pick up. I need to talk to you. I want to know if I can come over. I just saw Jess on TV. Please, Charlie, if you're there, pick up the phone."
Reluctantly, he did.