Read Online The Inheritance by Tamera Alexander - Free Book Online

She’d dreaded this moment and had been putting it off, letting Emma play outside after breakfast while she pondered what to tell the child. The truth, most certainly . . . But how? She snagged a tangle.
    “ Oowie !”
    “I’m sorry, sweetie.” She rubbed the tender spot on Emma’s head. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” But she was about to do exactly that—regardless of how gently she tried to phrase what needed to be said.
    She turned Emma to face her and stared into eyes the same brilliant blue as Janie’s had been. She prayed for the right words and the wisdom not to say anything that would frighten the child—like some of the things that had been said to her when her own mother had died.
    She took Emma’s hands in hers. “Emma . . . your mama didn’t just go to sleep. Her body was sick, and she didn’t have the strength to get better.” McKenna spoke slowly, as tenderly as she could, and watched for the slightest sign of comprehension in Emma’s expression. “Your mama . . . passed away early this morning. She’s in heaven now with Jesus and your papa, and with your baby brother, Aaron.”
    The light in Emma’s eyes flickered. She squinted, and McKenna could see her young mind working to keep up. Oh God, help me to be what I need to be for her.
    “It’s hard to understand this, Emma, I know . . . But the last time you saw your mama was when she had a fever. Do you remember that?”
    A slow nod. “I helped Doc Foster get her water ’cause she was thirsty.”
    McKenna somehow found a smile. “You’re a very brave girl.” She leaned closer. “Your mama’s body is still in her bed inside, and we’re going to go see her together in just a minute.”
    “But you said she was with Jesus . . .”
    “She is, sweetie. But her body is still here.” How to explain this to one so young? She briefly looked beyond Emma across the sea of field grass bowing in the breeze to the mountains rising stony and gray in the distance. “When you see your mama, you may feel . . . different inside, and that’s okay. I did, too, when I first saw my mama’s body after she’d died.”
    Subtle suspicion slipped into Emma’s gaze. Children were much more perceptive than most adults gave them credit for. Robert always had been.
    The warble of a songbird drifted close and brought an idea with it. “Have you ever seen a bird’s nest when it’s full of eggs?” McKenna asked, already knowing the answer.
    “My papa showed me one in the barn. It had babies in it.” Emma scrunched her face. “But we can’t touch them.”
    The sparkle in those precious eyes caused a pang in McKenna’s chest. “Do you remember what the nest looked like after the babies had grown up and flown away? When it was empty?”
    Emma nodded again.
    “In a way, that’s what your mama is going to look like when you see her. It’s still your mama’s body, but she won’t be inside of it anymore. She’s with God now.” Images of long-ago days brushed up against her thoughts—images of her mother lying still and lifeless in death.
As soon as she’d walked into the front parlor—only four years older than Emma now—she’d known. And a part of her had been frightened. Not of her mother, never of her. But of the absence of her mother while still having the shell of her still there.
    For a long time, she’d stood in the doorway, staring at the woman who’d rocked her at night when she’d awakened from bad dreams, who nursed her when she was sick, who’d stayed up late mending her skirt when McKenna had once gotten too close to the livery’s forge. But the woman lying across the room in the pinewood box had not been her mother. Not anymore.
    McKenna cradled Emma’s cheek. Looking at a loved one who had passed away changed a person. And she wondered how it would change Emma, especially being so young. Yet not allowing Emma to see her mother a last time, denying her that chance to say good-bye—however a five-year-old could—wasn’t