Read Online When You Believe by Deborah Bedford - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Deborah Bedford
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know what else I’m supposed
to do.”
WHEN LYDIA STEPPED through the heavy front door, the inside of Big Tree Baptist smelled faintly musty, like carnations and crisp paper and ginger
windmill cookies. As she entered the narrow foyer with Charlie’s check in hand, she entered the place where she had first
come to believe that she deserved to be loved. Aunt Donna, Uncle Cy’s wife-before-Jane, had brought her here every summer
when she’d come to visit. She remembered pie suppers and Layne Shanholtz standing behind the microphone and singing “When
We All Get to Heaven,” his voice turned up so loud on the speakers that it sounded like the woofers might burst. She wondered
sometimes, out of all the kids she had met loitering in the kitchen, if one of them—even then—might have been Charlie Stains.
There had never been time, during those visiting summers, to know everyone’s name.
Although her own parents had never taken her to church, Aunt Donna had brought her and, in this place, Lydia had come to believe
things always easy for a child to believe. And after she had graduated college, after she had accepted her teaching position
and had moved to Shadrach full time, Lydia still came.
She detoured now and stepped into the sanctuary. At the front of the little church, a hickory altar stood gleaming with furniture
oil. Light streamed upon it in rays of gold, red, and blue from the pattern in the stained-glass window above it. How strange
that, when Charlie had bought a boat, it would have to be picked up here.
At that moment she heard a noise down the hall. A scuffling on the carpet, as if someone might be dancing.
Then,
blam.
Something hard hit the wall.
She wasn’t alone in the building. Lydia’s first fear was that someone might have overheard her conversation with Charlie outside.
She stood listening, motionless, wondering if the sound would come again.
It did.
Charlie’s check for the boat was still crammed inside her pocket. Lydia began to make her way along the wall toward the sound.
She followed the noise until she came to a door that opened like the barn door on
Mr. Ed,
separated into halves, the bottom latched tight, the top swinging open an inch or two.
AGES 3 AND 4 read a metal placard that had been screwed into the drywall. Below that, in a red Magic Marker:
Please pick up your child immediately following the service. No child will be allowed to leave without a parent.
She tried the knob. Once upon a time, this had been where the smell of the cookies had come from. The hinges squeaked and
the rest of the door began to swing wide. Suddenly, in an odd moment of providence, even before the door opened far enough
for her to see, Lydia knew exactly who would be standing on the other side.
Shelby.
And sure enough, there she was, alone in the preschool Sunday school room, sidestepping her soccer ball, foot working it forward
and back, as if the ball, the way she shot it, the way it moved, absorbed all of her attention. Shelby zigzagged the ball
right, left, right, left, until she shot,
bam,
through a goal she’d set up through two miniature Sunday school chairs.
“So this is what you do when you skip school? You come here instead?”
The ball rebounded and Shelby grabbed it, tucked it against her right hipbone. She cocked her knee, a motion that belied the
unease in her eyes. “Sometimes,” she said, her voice more broody than Lydia had ever heard it before.
“What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same question about you.”
Shelby balanced the ball— HAND-SEWN BUTYL BLADDER it said—then spun it back and forth between both hands. She surveyed Lydia with suspicion. “Who said I was skipping school?”
“A lucky guess, I suppose.” Lydia shrugged. “Your mother came to pick up your homework. Does she know where you’ve been all
day?”
A hard and fragile laugh, sounding as if she was about to break. “Why would she know where I am? I
to do.”
WHEN LYDIA STEPPED through the heavy front door, the inside of Big Tree Baptist smelled faintly musty, like carnations and crisp paper and ginger
windmill cookies. As she entered the narrow foyer with Charlie’s check in hand, she entered the place where she had first
come to believe that she deserved to be loved. Aunt Donna, Uncle Cy’s wife-before-Jane, had brought her here every summer
when she’d come to visit. She remembered pie suppers and Layne Shanholtz standing behind the microphone and singing “When
We All Get to Heaven,” his voice turned up so loud on the speakers that it sounded like the woofers might burst. She wondered
sometimes, out of all the kids she had met loitering in the kitchen, if one of them—even then—might have been Charlie Stains.
There had never been time, during those visiting summers, to know everyone’s name.
Although her own parents had never taken her to church, Aunt Donna had brought her and, in this place, Lydia had come to believe
things always easy for a child to believe. And after she had graduated college, after she had accepted her teaching position
and had moved to Shadrach full time, Lydia still came.
She detoured now and stepped into the sanctuary. At the front of the little church, a hickory altar stood gleaming with furniture
oil. Light streamed upon it in rays of gold, red, and blue from the pattern in the stained-glass window above it. How strange
that, when Charlie had bought a boat, it would have to be picked up here.
At that moment she heard a noise down the hall. A scuffling on the carpet, as if someone might be dancing.
Then,
blam.
Something hard hit the wall.
She wasn’t alone in the building. Lydia’s first fear was that someone might have overheard her conversation with Charlie outside.
She stood listening, motionless, wondering if the sound would come again.
It did.
Charlie’s check for the boat was still crammed inside her pocket. Lydia began to make her way along the wall toward the sound.
She followed the noise until she came to a door that opened like the barn door on
Mr. Ed,
separated into halves, the bottom latched tight, the top swinging open an inch or two.
AGES 3 AND 4 read a metal placard that had been screwed into the drywall. Below that, in a red Magic Marker:
Please pick up your child immediately following the service. No child will be allowed to leave without a parent.
She tried the knob. Once upon a time, this had been where the smell of the cookies had come from. The hinges squeaked and
the rest of the door began to swing wide. Suddenly, in an odd moment of providence, even before the door opened far enough
for her to see, Lydia knew exactly who would be standing on the other side.
Shelby.
And sure enough, there she was, alone in the preschool Sunday school room, sidestepping her soccer ball, foot working it forward
and back, as if the ball, the way she shot it, the way it moved, absorbed all of her attention. Shelby zigzagged the ball
right, left, right, left, until she shot,
bam,
through a goal she’d set up through two miniature Sunday school chairs.
“So this is what you do when you skip school? You come here instead?”
The ball rebounded and Shelby grabbed it, tucked it against her right hipbone. She cocked her knee, a motion that belied the
unease in her eyes. “Sometimes,” she said, her voice more broody than Lydia had ever heard it before.
“What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same question about you.”
Shelby balanced the ball— HAND-SEWN BUTYL BLADDER it said—then spun it back and forth between both hands. She surveyed Lydia with suspicion. “Who said I was skipping school?”
“A lucky guess, I suppose.” Lydia shrugged. “Your mother came to pick up your homework. Does she know where you’ve been all
day?”
A hard and fragile laugh, sounding as if she was about to break. “Why would she know where I am? I
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