Read Online A Rose Revealed by Gayle Roper - Free Book Online

room, and took the chair across from me. Esther was radiant over the fact that he had joined us.
    “You have no idea what you’re in for,” he told me as he put his hands together and stretched them in front of him.
    I couldn’t imagine why both Jake and Elam were making such a fuss over a game of Parcheesi. It was only a child’s game, for heaven’s sake.
    “I’m red,” Esther announced as she gave a little bounce in her seat.
    “She’s always red, no matter what the game,” Jake said. “It’s her lucky color.”
    “I don’t believe in luck,” Esther said in gentle reproof.
    “Then I’ll be red tonight,” Elam said, reaching for the red men.
    “No!” Esther yelled, grabbing the four red men from the box before Elam could get them. She cleared her throat delicately. “I like red.”
    We set our men in our squares and began throwing the dice to see who went first. When Esther won the right to go first, she bounced in her chair and shouted, “Gut!”
    Elam and Jake looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
    On our first turns none of us rolled the requisite five to move onto the board. As she threw for the second time, Esther got a three and a two. She clapped and moved a man onto the board. “Just watch. Just watch,” she said, a taunting quality in her voice. “I’m going to beat you all!”
    As the game moved on, I marveled as quiet, shy Esther disappeared. She was replaced by an intense, competitive young woman. She counted every move with every player. She mocked, she teased, she hooted, she trash-talked Amish-style.
    “I’m sending you back to the beginning, Rose. And I don’t want that blue man of yours to get back on the board until Christmas. He’s an ugly color. Keep him out of my way!”
    “Is she always like this?” I asked Jake and Elam.
    “I think she’s got her good manners on for company,” Jake said.
    “Ha, Elam! I’ve got you blockaded!” Esther couldn’t sit still. She walked around the table to Elam and pointed to her pair of men blocking Elam’s green man as if he couldn’t see for himself. “You aren’t going anywhere and I’m going Home. Look! I’m taking this little red man all the way Home.” And she marched her man up the last stretch and Home.
    “I don’t know, Esther,” Elam said calmly, his eyes studying the board. “I don’t think he goes Home. I think you miscounted.”
    “What?” Esther, bristling with tension, put her finger on the board and began to count again. “No, I did it right.”
    “Only if you started at this place.” He pointed where her man had stood at the end of her last turn. “But you were here.” And he pointed back a space.
    “I was not,” she said hotly. “I was here!” She pointed to the spot where her man had been. “Wasn’t I?” She looked at me.
    I looked from her to Elam and saw the gleam in his eyes. “I think he’s teasing you, Esther.”
    “What?” She spun to Elam, appalled. “You can’t tease about something like this.”
    “No,” he said kindly. “ You can’t tease about something like this. I can.”
    She sat back in her chair, her expression distressed, her cheeks scarlet. She looked beautiful. “Oh, no! I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’ve been praying so hard that God would take my winning spirit away.”
    She looked so genuinely penitent that Elam smiled and said, “You were right in your counting. Your man is Home.”
    Her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth to let out a huzzah of some kind when she caught herself. “That’s nice,” she said softly. “I’m pleased.”
    She stayed gentle and sweet for two more turns. Then she landed on one of Jake’s men. “Hah! He goes back to the beginning, Jake. This is my space now! Back, back, back! Come on, get him out of here.”
    “What does she do when she loses?” I asked Jake later as we drove to the movies. Esther had won and done a discreet victory dance around the table. Then she had gathered up the game pieces, put the