Prince Tennyson (9 page)

“Hi, Chelsea!” Sarah smiled and opened the door wide, then yelled behind her, “Mom! Chelsea's here!”

“Hi,” I said as I handed over the bag that was on my handlebars. “I brought cookies to share.”

“Cool!” Sarah giggled, then grabbed my hand and took me to the kitchen. Her mom was there chopping up some carrots and putting them in a pot. There was a baby girl, younger than Cameron, sitting in a high chair. “Look, Mom! Chelsea brought us cookies. Can we eat them? Please? Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?”

Sarah's mom laughed. “Yes, you can each have two.” She set the knife down and walked over to the counter where Sarah put the bag. “But be sure to eat them at the table.”

“Yay!” I watched Sarah jump all over the place. She was so excited and happy.

“Don't forget to use plates and napkins,” Sarah's mom reminded her.

My crazy friend bounced to the cupboard and pulled down some plates. Then she skipped to the pantry and came back with two napkins. I turned when I heard the baby laugh. She was clapping and watching her big sister. For a minute, I just watched Sarah and her mom and their baby. They were different. Smiling and silly and . . . free.

I wanted to live like that again.

Walking slowly to the table, I sat down at my place. Sarah chattered away to her mom while I munched on my cookie. I thought about the last time I saw my dad in the kitchen and my family was silly and happy and free.

Dad had just come home and gave Mom a kiss on her cheek and wrapped his arms around her. I was at the table doing my homework. He kissed her neck and rubbed her shoulder with one hand while he stole some cheese she'd shredded for dinner with his other hand. Mom closed her eyes and made a funny noise and turned around in my dad's arms to see his mouth full.

I smiled when I remembered her laughing at him. “Ryan! You're just as bad as the kids. Do you know that?”

“Of course. It's why you love me so much.” He winked at me and swooped Mom up and twirled her around the kitchen until she squealed. “Ryan! Stop. The meat will burn!” She tried to scold him, but she was laughing too much.

Dad and I both knew she loved being held by her prince more than anything. Even more than if she was scared the food burnt or not.

“I'll just have to take us all out to eat then,” he said, then kissed her on the mouth and chin and cheeks and eyes until she laughed some more.

We went out to eat that night.

I grinned as I nibbled my cookie. Mom needed to laugh. I thought about church and all the smiles she had for the people there, and I wondered if the next Sunday would be just as good.

Chapter Sixteen

THE NEXT SUNDAY
WAS
good. Mom was smiling again when we came out of the chapel, and this time she was chattering nonstop. She liked seeing her old friends and hearing about God. She said it made her happy.

I let her talk and tell me about it the whole time we walked to the car. She had her arm on my shoulder and Cameron on her hip. But she hardly noticed Cameron at all—instead, she was talking about the Bible. She couldn't wait to read more. Mom loved reading the Bible all the time now.

I remembered my promise, so I read with her, which made her happy. Even now she was saying, “Chelsea, after dessert tonight, we're going to look that part up, aren't we? I know you would like to see what the preacher was saying about those verses in James.”

“Yeah, sure.” I nodded and smiled when Mom tucked me closer to her. It felt nice to have Mom so close to me so much now.

When we got to the car, we waited for Grandma Haney and Hannah to come over and unlock the door.

Hannah was skipping and holding Grandma's hand at the same time. My grandma was really happy, laughing at Hannah. I liked to see grandma and Hannah having such a good time, it made my heart warm.

We needed this. We needed to have something that brought us together like this. Church was good, even if it wasn't true. It still made us happy.

***

After we got home and changed out of our church clothes and had dinner and dessert, Mom took me back to her frilly pink bedroom from when she was a girl and we opened the Bible to James. She was really excited about the James chapters, and she was saying how they had the answers she had been hoping for.

I just looked around her room and let her talk. Her walls were pink and her pictures were of lots and lots of ballerinas. My mom used to want to be a ballerina when she was little. Not anymore. Mom didn't dance at all anymore.

I walked over to the little dresser. It had a shelf above it, and on that shelf there were a bunch of pretty ballerina figurines. One of them was broken. She was wearing a purple tutu and both of her arms were off and lying next to her.

I picked her up. She was so tiny and so fragile, but she was smiling. Her hair was pretty, with a purple bow on the side of her bun. I touched her tutu with very careful fingers. There were a couple of chips missing where they had broken off from the tutu, as well. The ballerina had been through a whole lot and she looked funny, but she was still smiling.

My fingers touched that smile. Her mouth was wide and beautiful. Even without arms, she was the most beautiful ballerina I had ever seen. I smiled too. I wanted to be like that. Broken, beautiful, but still smiling.

“Oh, here it is!”

Mom's voice almost caused me to drop the ballerina. I quickly stood the figurine up next to her two broken arms and came across the room to Mom's bed, where she was sitting.

“See?” My mom pointed to the open Bible. “It's under Epistle of James. I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find it at first. I had to look for Epistle, not James.”

I smiled. I wasn't sure what to say, because I wasn't really sure what she was talking about. Instead, I sat down on the bed with her.

Mom grinned over at me and then started to read.

I watched her lips move as she read the words out loud, but never really heard any of them. Her lips were pretty, like the ballerina's. They were red like hers, too. Mom's lips stopped talking. They smiled, and for a moment, they really did look just like the ballerina's wide smile.

My eyes flew to hers. The spark was there, way in the very back. It was there.

What happened? What did I miss?

“Can you believe it?” Mom laughed and snuggled the Bible up close to her. “All along, I've been looking for this passage, and here it is. Just like the speaker said it would be. Right here in James, chapter 1, verses 5 and 6” She held the Bible out to me and pointed with her finger. “Isn't it wonderful?”

I looked at the James chapter and furrowed my brow. It looked the same as all the rest to me.

“Read it,” my mom insisted as she tucked the book into my hands. “Go on. You'll like it, I promise.”

“Okay.” I glanced back at the Bible. “Where?”

“Verses 5 and 6.” Her smile grew again. She really did look a lot like that ballerina.

I looked down and read verse 5.

If any of you lack wisdom , let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given unto him.

Upbraideth? Does the Bible believe that God doesn't like braided hair?

Just as I was about to ask my mom about it, I looked up—she was still smiling. This wasn't a joke.

Confused, I looked down and read the next verse.

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

It still made no sense. None at all.

“Mom, what does this mean?”

She chuckled a girlish-sounding chuckle and took the book back from me. “These verses talk about how if you need to know anything at all, you can just pray and ask God and He'll tell you.”

“Really?” I couldn't believe it. “That's what those scriptures said?”

“Yeah, really.” Mom smiled. “But there is a condition. You have to be very, very serious when you ask God a question. You can't just ask him something silly and expect an answer—you have to mean it.” She trailed her finger down to verse 6 and showed me. “See? You have to ask him in unwavering faith. You have to be strong and believe that God will answer you, and He will.”

“Oh.” Well, that blows that, then. There was no way He would ever answer any of my questions because I didn't believe in Him, right? But I was curious. “What are you going to ask God, Mom? What's your question?”

My mom looked at me and laughed like I had just asked the funniest thing in the whole world. She held the book tight to her chest again and fell back on the pillows.

“Mom?” I didn't understand what was so funny. I really wanted to know. “What? What is it?”

Mom gasped and chuckled some more, and even wiped her eyes. Finally she sat up. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burst out like that. But your face was so funny. You should've seen the way you looked at me. And then, I was just so happy to have found this answer that I just lost it. I don't know.” Mom shrugged while she grinned like a little girl. “I think I'm just extra silly because I'm so happy.”

Her eyes did have sparks in them. Maybe she really was happy.

I smiled. “So what's the question you want to ask God?”

“Well, duh!” Mom giggled again. “I'm going to ask Him if He's real or not. What else would I ask?”

“Oh, cool.”

So much for Mom's smile—it wasn't going to last long. When my mom looked back down at the Bible, my mouth fell. I sighed quietly to myself. Pretty soon she'd know what I knew.

Chapter Seventeen

I WAS WRONG. MOM'S smile didn't go away—in fact, it grew. I think I was as surprised as anyone when my mom walked into the kitchen on Tuesday and announced that she knew God was real. I know I was surprised because I dropped the gallon of milk I had just pulled out of the fridge. Thank goodness it still had its lid on. Had it been Wednesday, the lid would've been off, and milk would've spilled everywhere.

Even Grandma Haney stood frozen next to the toaster, one hand in the air and the other next to the little plate of butter on the counter. Actually, the only people moving in the room were Cameron and Mom. She sprang past Grandma and ran to pick up the milk jug.

“Whoa, Chelsea. Are you okay? Did the milk carton hurt you when it fell?”

Grandma stood frozen for a moment and then I watched her hands come alive and pull the toast out of the toaster. My eyes connected with my mom's. “What?”

Mom laughed. “I'm going to take that as a no.”

I blinked. Mom's eyes looked happy. Happier than I'd seen them in forever. Almost as happy as they were when Dad was still here. I had to ask. “How? How do you know?”

Mom glanced at me funny as she set the milk on the counter. “How do I know it didn't hurt you? Are you saying the milk carton hurt you, hon?”

I shook my head. I caught Grandma's raised eyebrows as she silently walked to the table next to Hannah, who was watching us with her mouth open. I glanced back over at my mom. “I … uh, no. I didn't mean about the milk. How do you know that God is real? What happened?”

Grandma lowered her piece of toast and watched us too. Cameron made some car noises in his cereal, but I zoned him out. I really wanted to hear what Mom said.

She amazed me by holding my shoulders and then squeezing me to her. My mom had really gotten into hugs. I liked it.

“I don't know,” she whispered excitedly in my ear. “It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and the easiest thing I never knew existed.”

“Really?” I was confused.

“Yeah.” Mom giggled as she pulled back and held my hands. “It's so easy, Chelsea. You have to do it.”

“But I thought you said it was hard.”

“No. Yes.” Mom smiled and shook her head. “It is hard because you have to wait. And you think the answer will never come, and you go through everything crazy, waiting to see if God will answer your prayer or not. So yes, that's very hard. The waiting part.” She brushed her hand over my forehead and moved some of my bangs out of my eyes. “But the prayer when you ask God for something and then He answers—that's the easy part. It's so easy, you'll never even believe how easy it is.”

“Really?” I glanced at Grandma Haney. She was smiling. I think this was a special day for my grandma, to see that her daughter believed in God. But there was still something I wasn't quite sure of, so I blurted out, “What did He do? What did God say? Did you see something? And how do you know it was God talking, anyway?”

Okay, I didn't mean to add the last part, but I really did want to know what was going on, so I was glad I did, especially when Mom answered me.

She turned around and talked to Grandma too. “I knew God was real, because early this morning when I asked again, I had no distractions. It was just me in the dark praying to God. And this time—” she glanced up at me and smiled a watery smile “—I felt him, Chelsea. I really, really felt God.”