Angel Sister (14 page)

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When her mother came home late Sunday afternoon, Kate couldn’t stop smiling. Maybe everything was going to work out after all. Grandfather Reece was better, sitting up in his chair and sometimes even saying the words he intended. Her father was there with them. No work on Sunday and no drinking either, unless Kate’s nose was tricking her. Her mother must not have smelled any alcohol on him either as she stepped into his embrace and let him hug her for a long moment. That had made Kate feel best of all.

Evening services at Rosey Corner Baptist Church had been canceled, so they stayed home. They ate peanut butter and jam sandwiches out on the front porch to escape the heat inside the house and washed them down with sweet iced tea. Daddy said they might as well enjoy the ice instead of just letting it melt away in the icebox. Besides, the iceman would bring more on Tuesday. For dessert Kate and Evie had stirred up some caramel icing to spread between graham crackers. Lorena ate so many that Mama said she was sure to be sick.

When the neighborhood kids started showing up after supper, Tori ran out to play hide-and-seek with them, but Kate stayed with Lorena, who thought hide-and-seek was scary after the sun went down. Kate told her the fading daylight just helped them stay hidden, but Lorena said she didn’t want to hide. Ever. Instead they ran after lightning bugs rising up out of the grass and caught them on the wing. They didn’t put them in a jar, because Lorena worried that the bugs wouldn’t have enough air even if they did poke holes in the lids.

“Why do they light up like that?” Lorena asked as she watched one of the lightning bugs crawl across Kate’s hand.

“Because that’s how the Lord made them.” Kate gently pushed the bug over onto Lorena’s hand.

Lorena held her hand very still while the lightning bug crawled across her fingers. “But why did he make them that way? He didn’t make the bugs like that back home. None of them lit up.”

Kate was surprised. “You didn’t have lightning bugs at night?”

“Uh-uh. Mommy woke me up to see them right after we crossed over the big river. I thought they were fairy lights.” The bug opened its wings and lifted off Lorena’s hand. She watched it rise up in the air. “Do you think God made them light up so we would believe in fairies?”

“I don’t think so, sweetie.”

“Then why did he?” Lorena looked at Kate.

“I don’t know. Let’s go ask Daddy.”

Kate’s father laughed when Lorena asked him about the lightning bugs. “That’s the easiest question I’ve had all year,” he said. “The good Lord made them that way so they can find the special one they love.”

“But how can they find the one they’re looking for? All their lights look alike.” Lorena stared out at the lightning bugs twinkling in the twilight.

“To you perhaps, but not to all those lightning bugs. They’re probably looking back at you and saying we all look alike, and wondering how we ever find the right love for us with no little lights to guide us.” He smiled at Lorena.

Lorena giggled and looked at Kate. “Your daddy’s silly.”

“But he has the answers,” Kate said.

“That answer.” Kate’s father sounded a little sad as he looked away from Kate and Lorena out toward the sky. “Not all the answers.”

“Nobody ever has all the answers,” Kate’s mother said softly.

Kate spoke up fast right behind her. She wanted her father to keep smiling and laughing tonight. “I’ll bet you can tell Lorena how people find the right love without having flashing lights.”

He kept looking up at the stars, but the smile was back on his face. “That I can. It’s up there in the stars.” He pointed toward the sky. “When each new baby is born, the Lord has one of his angels write that baby’s name on a star. Two per star. Then when the right time comes, the boy and girl gaze up at the stars, see their names there, and the rest is history.”

“Is it really that easy? That sure?” Kate asked as she gazed up at the stars too. It might be nice to see her name there and know who her one true love was going to be.

Mama laughed a little. “Not at all. Sometimes it takes a poem.” She reached across the space between her and Daddy to hold his hand.

“Oh yeah,” Kate said. “Like
Evangeline
.”

“Evie?” Lorena looked up at the stars and then out toward the road where Evie and George were leaning against his car talking. “Is her name up there on a star with George’s?”

“Whoa. Let’s slow down. I don’t think Evangeline has looked at the right star as yet,” Mama said as she held her free hand out to Lorena. “You look tired, sweetheart. Come, sit in my lap and Daddy Victor will tell you a story.”

Lorena hesitated. “I can’t. I might go to sleep.”

“That’s all right. I can carry you to bed,” Mama said.

Lorena stepped back away from the porch. “I can’t go to sleep. Not yet.”

Kate touched the little girl’s shoulder. “You can go ahead and say it. Right here on the porch. We’ll say it with you if you want.”

Mama looked puzzled. “Say what?”

“Her name,” Kate explained. “Lorena’s mama told her to say it every night and every morning so she wouldn’t forget.”

“Mommy’s saying it too. She said if I listened real hard I’d be able to hear her in my heart.” Lorena put her hand over her heart and looked at them fiercely as though she didn’t think they would believe her. “And I can too.” Her fierce look faded until she just looked sad. “Sometimes.”

Mama blinked her eyes fast as she reached over to touch Lorena’s cheek. “Of course you can. And even when it doesn’t sound out real loud, you can be sure your mother’s love is still whispering in your heart. Softly like angel wings.”

“But you’re right about keeping your part of the bargain,” Daddy said as he leaned toward Lorena. “So let’s hear you say it.”

Lorena stepped out to the edge of the porch and raised her arms over her head as she looked up at the stars. “My name is Lorena Birdsong.” Her voice was strong and true.

On the porch, Kate and her parents echoed Lorena’s name. “Lorena Birdsong.”

Out in the yard, Tori shouted out Lorena’s name too when she heard them say it, even though it gave away her hiding place to Pete Wiley, who was it. Over by George’s car, Evie looked up and called the little girl’s name too.

“I hear her.” Lorena wrapped her arms around her middle to give herself a hug before she crawled up into Mama’s lap and smiled over at Daddy. “Now you can tell me a story.”

Kate leaned back against one of the porch posts as her father told a story about two lightning bugs searching for one another. The neighborhood kids began leaving for home, and Tori came up to the porch to lay her head in Kate’s lap and listen to the story too. The soft murmur of Evie’s and George’s voices floated across the yard.

Kate wondered if this was what people meant when they said that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. She felt so peaceful, so happy. Grandfather Reece was getting better. He wasn’t mad at her. Lorena was safe in Mama’s lap. Kate’s parents were holding hands, and the story Daddy was telling made a smile bubble up inside Kate.

Lorena fell asleep, but Kate’s father kept on with his story. Even after he finally had the lightning bugs to their happily-ever-after ending, they sat on the porch and talked about whatever came to mind as the moon came up and cast night shadows across the yard. None of them wanted such a perfect day to end.

But in spite of prayers to hold off tomorrow, Monday came. It started off better than the Monday before, when Kate had smoked up the kitchen trying to get the fire going in the cookstove. So she felt like Christmas in June was still happening when she smelled coffee perking, bacon frying, and biscuits baking when she went into the kitchen.

“You want me to do something?” she asked.

Mama looked over her shoulder at Kate from where she was turning the bacon. “Oh, Kate. You’re up early. You should have slept in like the other girls.”

“I like being up early.” Kate gave her mother a good morning hug. “Especially when it’s hot like today’s going to be.” Kate grabbed a piece of the newspaper off the table to fan herself. “It’s hot as blue blazes in here already. How do you stand it cooking in here all summer? Sometimes last week I had to go out on the porch to get my breath. I think we should just eat apples and peanut butter till it gets cooler.”

“That’s an idea.” Mama laughed and wiped the sweat off her face with her apron. “But the good Lord gave us wood and a stove to use it in and good things to cook on it, so I guess I can stand the heat. Besides, I’m used to it. I had to start doing all the cooking when I was twelve.”

“Yeah, when your mother died. That had to be awful.” Kate took the metal fork from her mother and turned the bacon.

Mama peeked in the oven at the biscuits and then stirred the oatmeal. “Well, the cooking wasn’t all that bad, but losing my mother was. I still miss her.”

“I missed you last week,” Kate said without looking up.

“I wasn’t that far away, and you were over there almost every day,” Mama said as she lifted some plates out of the cabinet.

“I know, but it wasn’t the same. It was scary here without you.” Kate flattened one of the pieces of bacon against the pan and watched the grease sizzle out of it.

Her mother set the plates down, took hold of Kate’s shoulders, and turned her around to face her. “Look at me, Katherine Reece. What do you mean scary?”

“I didn’t know how to do things,” Kate said.

“But you did it. Everybody got fed. The beans even got canned.” Her mother’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “That’s what you need to remember.”

“But everything was so hard.” Kate hated the whiny sound in her voice. She cleared her throat a little. “I didn’t think everything would be so hard.”

“With no one to help you,” Mama said softly.

“Well, Evie and Tori helped. I didn’t do it all. And Aunt Hattie helped with the beans or we would have never gotten them done.”

“What about your father?” Mama’s eyes seemed to burn into her. “He was here to help you, wasn’t he?”

“He was at the shop most of the time.” Kate slid her eyes away from her mother’s face. She couldn’t see what it would help to get Mama upset about Daddy staying out all night drinking, even if that was the scariest thing. She wanted to keep having Christmas in June and not open up a box of trouble. “I didn’t think he’d know that much about cooking.”

Kate’s mother pulled her close against her and stroked her hair. “Your father knows about a lot of things. We just need to trust him.”

“I do, Mama.” Kate’s voice sounded muffled against her mother’s chest. “I love Daddy.”

“I do too, sweetheart. I do too.” Her mother stepped back and patted Kate’s cheek. “But I guess we shouldn’t let breakfast burn up.” She turned to take the biscuits out of the oven.

Kate forked the bacon strips and laid them out on a piece of brown paper sack to drain out some of the grease. She wished she could drain out her worries as easily, but the worries were like a thorn deep in her mind that kept poking her. She looked over at her mother. “But what happens when somebody trusts us and we let them down?”

Mama looked up from stirring the oatmeal. “You’re talking about Lorena, aren’t you?”

“And me.”

“You aren’t going to let Lorena down.”

“But Evie says she was at the store and Ella Baxter was there talking about when she got her new little girl.”

Mama looked as if some of those worry thorns were poking her too as she reached over to touch Kate’s arm. “We’re going to have to trust the Lord to help us on this one, Kate.”

“But . . . ,” Kate started.

Kate’s mother scooted the oatmeal and the skillet with the bacon grease back to the cooler part of the stove and pulled Kate over to sit down at the table with her. She looked at her intently for a moment before she said, “Real trust pushes out the buts. When your father was in the army over in France, sometimes it would be weeks, even months between letters. I’d read things in the paper about this or that battle and almost go crazy with worry. I imagined the most awful things. And then I lost our baby.”

“I didn’t know you had another baby,” Kate said.

“Well, I was only a few months along. Nobody knew I was in the family way except Gertie and Aunt Hattie. He hadn’t even quickened in my womb, but I felt the loss as if I’d already borne him and held him in my arms. Somehow losing that sweet promise of life made me doubly afraid your father would never come home and I’d be alone forever.” She reached up and put her hand on Kate’s cheek. “That I’d never have the chance to hold you beautiful girls.”

“You couldn’t have known about us then.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve always been in my heart.” A smile touched her lips and then slid away. “But after I lost that first baby, my arms ached with emptiness and I sank into despair. Aunt Hattie helped me through that dark time. She’d just lost her Bo, but she didn’t let that keep her from helping me. She said we can’t always understand everything that happens. That sometimes we can’t understand anything that happens. And at times like that we have to just hand it all over to the Lord. She taught me a verse out of Proverbs. Proverbs 3:5. ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.’”

“But I don’t want it to happen. Lorena belongs with us.”

“She does. We just have to keep praying that the Lord will help the others see that too.” Her mother squeezed her hands. “Now you run tell your sisters breakfast is ready. I hear your daddy on the back porch.”

When Kate went back to the bedroom, Tori and Lorena were up getting dressed while Evie had the sheet pulled up over her face trying to pretend it wasn’t morning. Lorena ran to hug Kate’s legs. “Tori says we can go fishing this morning in Mr. Graham’s pond. She’s going to show me how to put a worm on a hook.”

“As long as I don’t have to show you.” Kate made a face as she picked up the little girl and kissed her.

“You’d better watch out that Fern doesn’t get you,” Evie said from under her sheet.

“Who’s Fern?” Lorena asked.

Evie threw back the sheet and sat up. She held out her hands like claws toward Lorena. “Mr. Graham’s crazy sister. She’ll grab you and make you stay in a house made of cedar trees, just like the witch kept Hansel and Gretel in the gingerbread house.”