to have the present for the last day of school.
Mom and Dad and Lillie all heard my scream when I saw the Range Rover, white with tan interior, sitting in the driveway. I was the hit of the class. Rawlins knew I would be. Times like that supplied with me sufficient blinders, I guess.
Oh my. I see nothing but sky. And Hannah Grace? Is she all right? Where’s Lillie? Rawlins screams again. Shut up! Just shut up!
I remember the Christmas Eve I read the first chapter of Song of Solomon and how it changed me forever, how I realized the Lord felt such intimate love for me and how I longed to feel that for Him. Maybe I should have thought of Rawlins as I read it, but something didn’t ring true when I placed him in the shoes of the lover.
Daddy collapsed the next day on Christmas, two hours after Rawlins, down on one knee, presented me with an engagement ring. All my worrying was for nothing. My father spent a week in the hospital and the tests showed all sorts of things. Chiefly the need for open-heart bypass surgery.
While they were taking care of Daddy, Rawlins accompanied me to the canteen. I put some change into the sandwich machine and began to punch in the numbers for a chicken salad on wheat.
Rawlins pulled my hand away from the key pad, pushed “clear,” and punched in a new code. “You’ve gained some weight over the holidays, Anastasia.” He slid open the clear plastic door and removed an apple.
“Rawlins, I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“You want to end up with arteries like your father’s?”
The next week was a blur of hospital waiting rooms and magazines, conversations with strangers, and counting the squares in the carpet patterns. Dad made it through surgery looking pale and bloated, then pink and skinny.
Mom pulled me aside on New Year’s Day and asked me how everything was with Rawlins. The message was clear enough.
I spun my engagement ring around my finger and told her not to worry. I would always make sure everything was okay. After he changed my sandwich for an apple, I began to have my doubts. But it didn’t matter, did it? And the key in the lock on my cage turned.
The last Sunday of that January, Rawlins asked Daddy’s permission for me to begin going to church with him from then on out. Daddy complied, but it hurt him. I know he figured that another sheep would be added to the congregation, not one taken away to another shepherd’s flock.
“You’ll love Pastor Cole,” Rawlins told me as we walked through the bare woods behind the manse, several cardinals coloring the scene. “Now there’s a man close to the Lord. A real prophet. I actually saw him work a miracle once.”
“You’ve never talked about him before.”
He squeezed my hand. “You weren’t ready. But with our marriage in six months, it’s time we built our household. That’s the way God would have it.”
Today I know that he should have said, “the way Alban Cole would have it.” But I had no idea what had been happening to my husband-to-be. And I was blinded by his looks, his money, and the things he bought me, like me security I saw in the eyes of my mother.
As it turned out, we didn’t really attend The Temperance Church of the Apostles, as the membership was limited and exclusive. But he did a study with the pastor every Sunday afternoon while I sat with two of the women from the church and prayed for the two men inside the pastor’s study. I asked Rawlins why we couldn’t go to Saint Stephen’s in the morning and, boy, did I wish I hadn’t. We’d go out for breakfast together instead at what I dubbed Church of the International House of Pancakes.
Lillie
Cristoff is a very private person, bodily speaking. I’ve never seen him without a shirt on. Never! In all these years! So when the time came for the exam, I squeezed his hand, kissed his cheek, and asked him if it was just the same to him and all, could I go out and get a breath of fresh air?
I like to give him control. I do.
Mom and Dad and Lillie all heard my scream when I saw the Range Rover, white with tan interior, sitting in the driveway. I was the hit of the class. Rawlins knew I would be. Times like that supplied with me sufficient blinders, I guess.
Oh my. I see nothing but sky. And Hannah Grace? Is she all right? Where’s Lillie? Rawlins screams again. Shut up! Just shut up!
I remember the Christmas Eve I read the first chapter of Song of Solomon and how it changed me forever, how I realized the Lord felt such intimate love for me and how I longed to feel that for Him. Maybe I should have thought of Rawlins as I read it, but something didn’t ring true when I placed him in the shoes of the lover.
Daddy collapsed the next day on Christmas, two hours after Rawlins, down on one knee, presented me with an engagement ring. All my worrying was for nothing. My father spent a week in the hospital and the tests showed all sorts of things. Chiefly the need for open-heart bypass surgery.
While they were taking care of Daddy, Rawlins accompanied me to the canteen. I put some change into the sandwich machine and began to punch in the numbers for a chicken salad on wheat.
Rawlins pulled my hand away from the key pad, pushed “clear,” and punched in a new code. “You’ve gained some weight over the holidays, Anastasia.” He slid open the clear plastic door and removed an apple.
“Rawlins, I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“You want to end up with arteries like your father’s?”
The next week was a blur of hospital waiting rooms and magazines, conversations with strangers, and counting the squares in the carpet patterns. Dad made it through surgery looking pale and bloated, then pink and skinny.
Mom pulled me aside on New Year’s Day and asked me how everything was with Rawlins. The message was clear enough.
I spun my engagement ring around my finger and told her not to worry. I would always make sure everything was okay. After he changed my sandwich for an apple, I began to have my doubts. But it didn’t matter, did it? And the key in the lock on my cage turned.
The last Sunday of that January, Rawlins asked Daddy’s permission for me to begin going to church with him from then on out. Daddy complied, but it hurt him. I know he figured that another sheep would be added to the congregation, not one taken away to another shepherd’s flock.
“You’ll love Pastor Cole,” Rawlins told me as we walked through the bare woods behind the manse, several cardinals coloring the scene. “Now there’s a man close to the Lord. A real prophet. I actually saw him work a miracle once.”
“You’ve never talked about him before.”
He squeezed my hand. “You weren’t ready. But with our marriage in six months, it’s time we built our household. That’s the way God would have it.”
Today I know that he should have said, “the way Alban Cole would have it.” But I had no idea what had been happening to my husband-to-be. And I was blinded by his looks, his money, and the things he bought me, like me security I saw in the eyes of my mother.
As it turned out, we didn’t really attend The Temperance Church of the Apostles, as the membership was limited and exclusive. But he did a study with the pastor every Sunday afternoon while I sat with two of the women from the church and prayed for the two men inside the pastor’s study. I asked Rawlins why we couldn’t go to Saint Stephen’s in the morning and, boy, did I wish I hadn’t. We’d go out for breakfast together instead at what I dubbed Church of the International House of Pancakes.
Lillie
Cristoff is a very private person, bodily speaking. I’ve never seen him without a shirt on. Never! In all these years! So when the time came for the exam, I squeezed his hand, kissed his cheek, and asked him if it was just the same to him and all, could I go out and get a breath of fresh air?
I like to give him control. I do.
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