Read Online When You Believe by Deborah Bedford - Free Book Online

Forget the wind. I was going to let a big-mouthed bass take hold and pull us along.”
    “My father already knows how to do that. Uncle Cy taught him.” Reluctantly, Lydia edged out of the seat and slid past the
     running boards to the ground. “Charlie—”
    “Was looking forward to getting the name painted on the boat.” He talked as if his whole life had ended, now that he understood
     what Shelby was accusing him of. “Was going to get the lettering done in blue and gold, by a professional at Shadrach Signs.”
    “Charlie—” She came up behind him, her arms at her sides, her mouth feeling like she’d swallowed a cotton boll. “What did
     you do with your kids today?”
    He was traipsing around the bow of the vessel he’d named
Charlie’s Pride
, his footsteps digging deep into the gravel. “I couldn’t wait to moor her at the new dock at Viney Creek. The new
Porter
dock.” He turned, stopped. It must have taken that long for her question to sink in. “What do you mean, what did I do with
     my kids?”
    “In class.”
    He shrugged, furrowed his brows at her. “What we always do in class. Build things.”
    She asked this next thing as lightly as a butterfly descends and settles, barely landing, fluttering away again. She hated
     herself for checking up on him this way. She couldn’t stop thinking about the note to Shelby she’d caught a glimpse of. “Any
     homework this week?”
    “No.” A frown. “Why?
    “Do you ever assign any homework when the kids miss class?”
    Say yes, Charlie. Yes. Say that, just for Shelby, you sent something today.
    “When we study joinery. I’ll assign homework for everybody then. They’ll go out to search for basic joints.”
    “That’s the only time you’d send an assignment home? Joinery?”
    “Tongue and groove joints. Bevel joints. Dovetails and miters and lap joints. They’ll drive everyone crazy, looking. We’re
     doing finishes now. Smoothing with sandpaper and steel wool. Applying waxes, oils, stains—”
    He broke off his train of thought suddenly and stared down at her. “What are you doing? Checking up on me or something? You
     still want to know if I’ve had anything to do with that girl?”
    “Did you send something home in Shelby Tatum’s homework packet today?”
    He met her intent scrutiny head on, his face a shield. “No.”
    She needed to escape. The afternoon sun tinted everything around her a translucent saffron—the tree limbs, the jagged rocks
     along the sidewalk, the steeple that pierced the sky like a radiant awl. Uncle Cy had said once that he felt the golden presence
     of something here, as real as when he watched the sun rise and the blue haze sink toward the water like a coverlet, down at
     the Brownbranch.
    “Lydia? Don’t you believe me?”
    “I’ll take your check in, if you’d like. You can stay out here and fondle your new boat.”
Fondle.
Now why had she used such a word as that? “I need to get away.”
    He said nothing to her. He reached for his blank checks and tore one across its perforation with an angry, brittle sound.
    “You can’t act like what Shelby’s saying doesn’t matter.”
    For a long moment he just stood with that bruised expression in his eyes. And she stared up, past him, as if directions for
     what to do next were printed beside the steeple in the sky.
    “I wanted to talk to her, Lydia,” he said in the mangled voice of someone having a nightmare. “I wrote her that note to see
     if we could discuss this, if we could work out what’s going on. Please don’t judge me until I’ve had a chance to do that.”
    She took Charlie’s check from him. “I’m not judging,” she whispered, closing her eyes because she couldn’t look at him anymore,
     “but I can’t let you have access to her. I won’t let you talk to her or see her again.” In the silence between them, the contention
     began to grow, something tense and sullen and explosive. “I told her I would protect her. I don’t