Read Online On Every Side by Karen Kingsbury - Free Book Online Page A

it. Now the idea seemed to belong to another person.
    Carrying the roses, Jordan tried to remember where his mother's plot lay His eyes fell on a grave that looked newer than the rest, with tiny blades of grass just starting to poke through a fresh mound of dirt. Jordan meandered toward it and saw a large, bronze plaque at the base of the plot. “Robert Samuel Moses, 1944-2001, Lover of Betty, Sarah, Faith, and Jesus, most of all. Religious freedom fighter.”
    What?
    Jordan's gut recoiled at those last words. Religious freedom fighter? Bob Moses? Hadn't he worked corporate law back whentheir houses were next door to each other? If he was a religious freedom fighter, that meant…
    Jordan hunched down near the stone and hung his head. It meant he and Bob Moses had been waging battle on opposite sides of the war. They could even have wound up in court against each other. The reality cut Jordan to the core. How disap-pointed would Mr. Moses be if he knew the truth about Jordan's occupation? Especially after the Moses family had done so much for Jordan, his mother, and his sister…
    Jordan studied the tombstone again.
Jesus, most of all…
Jesus, most of all
.
Jesus, most of all…
    His mind flooded with images of his dying mother, of Heidi driving off with the social worker—and Jordan's heart steeled itself again with determination. What good had Jesus done for his mother? For him or his sister? For that matter, what good had He done for the Moses family? Faith and her parents and sister had lived for God, trusted in Him, depended on Him, and where had it gotten them? Bob Moses was buried just as deep under-ground as Jordan's mother. Two people who loved God more than life, yet here they were. Their lives cut short by the very same God they'd spent a lifetime serving.
    He stared at the roses in his hands and scanned the burial grounds. The image of a willow tree appeared in his mind and he looked over one shoulder, then the other until he saw it. There, at the back of the cemetery…the pauper's section, where they buried people with little money People forgotten over time. Jordan clenched his teeth and strode in that direction, not stop-ping until he found it. The white marker was dirty, dulled by the years and neglected. Weeds—though cut back—grew around the plot.
    Tears stung at Jordan's eyes.
Mom…
    He knelt and laid the flowers on the ground, noticing howthey dwarfed the small stone. “Evelyn S. Riley mother.” That was it; all that was left to remember her by. Jordan ran his fingers over the rough marker and ached to have her at his side again, yearned once more to be the boy who would run home from school and share his day with her, feel the validation of her hug.
    Jordan pictured her, pretty and petite, a brown-haired woman whose hardships in life he'd known nothing about because she'd never once complained about them. Jordan's father had aban-doned them before he and Heidi were out of diapers. Two years later police notified his mother that Earl Riley had been killed in a head-on collision with a cement wall. Drunk and out of work, behind the wheel of a stolen car. Jordan's mother had been care-ful to spare him and Heidi the sordid details, but after she died— when Social Services stepped in and took them—the facts were repeated before judges and social workers a number of times.
    “Jesus will take care of us, kids… don't you worry about us…
“
    His mother's words rang simply, sweetly through the whispering fronds of the willow tree, as though she were still speaking them now. A teardrop rolled off Jordan's cheek and landed on the grave marker and he rubbed it with his fist, cleaning off some of the dirt.
    Jesus. Jordan released a short laugh. Yes, lot of good He'd done. Left Jordan's mother to raise two kids alone, then sat back and watched while she died of cancer. What kind of God would let that happen?
    “I'm going home, Jordan… this isn't my home and it isn't yours, either. Cling to Jesus,