He didn’t, either. Her comments didn’t make much sense. But he offered what he hoped was a comforting smile. Her lips quirked into a sad smile in reply, and it struck him how much she resembled Mrs. Z’s daughter Sandra. And Shelley. And—his pulse jumped as realization bloomed—probably the third Zimmerman daughter, too. The one who kept Alexa because she’d given her baby to a family member to raise.
He blurted, “It’s you.”
Her eyes—blue, like the other Zimmermans—flew wide. “W-what?”
He flopped limply against his seat and closed his eyes, pressing his memory. Anna—Grace had said she didn’t know who her family members were, so she was unaware that the woman in the wheelchair was her grandmother. But did Mrs. Z know? She’d never said anything to indicate an awareness, but he’d watched the older woman gaze at Anna—Grace with affection—sometimes with a secretive smile on her face. She knew. And Alexa knew. Alexa had called herself an imposter and suffered the agony of not really being a Zimmerman while welcoming the real Zimmerman offspring into her home and—
“Mr. Forrester? What did you mean?” Anna—Grace’s wavering voice derailed his thoughts.
He floundered for an answer. “It’s you … Steven loves, so you two will be okay. Give it time.”
She dabbed her nose with the napkin. “When are you leaving for Chicago?”
“As soon as I get loaded.” His chest tightened. He wasn’t ready to go. His story was finished, but there was something else he needed to do here.
“W-would you take me to the bus station in Wichita? I want to go back to Sommerfeld.”
He started to agree, but then Aunt Myrt’s advice came out of his mouth. “Are you sure you should? Running away from a problem never solved it.” Wasn’t that what he was doing—running back to Chicago to escape the odd yearnings that had nibbled at him from his first days in this town?
She chewed her lip, uncertainty marring her brow.
He smiled and lapsed into Big-Brother-Briley mode. “You know what? I think you need a night to sleep on it. Really decide if leaving is the best thing to do.” He surprised himself by adding, “What would your father tell you?”
Shame crept across her features. She hung her head. “He’d tell me to pray about it.”
The yearning returned, stronger than ever. He pushed it down. “Then maybe you should.”
“I know I should.” She aimed a sheepish look at him. “My father isn’t my birth father. I was adopted.”
Briley held his breath. His recorder was in the console. Could he hit the Record button without disrupting the moment? She might give him something he could use. The lid was still up from when he pulled out the napkin. He reached in and snagged a packet of gum while unobtrusively punching the square button on the recorder with his knuckle. “Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hm. Somewhere out there I have another mom and dad, the ones who supposedly gave me life.” Her gaze drifted out the window, as if the people would materialize from the scrub trees. “But honestly, the ones who really gave me life are Andrew and Olivia Braun. Because they’re the ones who raised me and loved me and taught me and called me their child.” She looked at Briley again. “They taught me, more than anything else, I am God’s child. He has wonderful plans for me, because good fathers—and God is a very good Father—always want the best for their children.”
Tears swam in her eyes, but they didn’t spill. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Steven and me. We have some big things to work out. But the God who gave me to Dad and Mom will give me a good future. And He’ll do the same for Steven, because whether or not we become husband and wife, we’ll always be God’s children.” She tipped her head. “Are you God’s child, too, Mr. Forrester?”
Briley
Briley stepped past his pile of belongings and sat in one of the vintage chairs. He laid the recorder on the table, lining it up with the checks on the little square of cloth, and hit the Play button. Then he listened. He listened to Alexa’s voice. He listened to Anna—Grace’s voice. He rewound it and listened again. But not to the words. To the emotions.
In both recordings when the girls spoke of God—the One they called Father—their voices changed. Even though both were distraught during the recordings, they calmed when they uttered God’s name. A sense of peace, of serenity, of surety entered their tones. As he listened, his eyes slid closed, and a fleeting memory from a day he’d done his best to forget wiggled its way to the forefront of his thoughts.
He envisioned himself—tall even then for his age but slight of build, in disheveled clothes a size too small, untied shoelaces dragging, and unwashed hair straggling over his dirty face. The remembrance carried him away, rolling like a movie screen behind his closed eyelids.
Mama reached across the seat, her elbow pressing into his stomach, and pushed the car door open. “Get out, Briley. Go see the firemen.”
Briley looked through the wide opening into the fire station, at the shiny red trucks still wet from a fresh wash. He wanted to see those trucks up close. He clambered out of the car, then turned to Mama. “You comin’?”
She examined her fingernails, painted red and chipped on the edges. “No. Just go on.”
Shyness clutched him. He reached for her. “You come, too.”
She slapped his hand, fury pulsating from her. “Just go, Briley! Go!”
Her anger scared him. He started crying. “But, Mama …”
Mama growled and pushed him hard. His heels caught on the curb and he fell flat, scuffing the palms of his hands. He cradled them to his chest as Mama yanked the door closed and zoomed off.
Briley sat on the curb, staring after her, willing her to come back. But she didn’t. So, scared and crying, he pushed himself to his feet and crept through the wide-open door, hunching his shoulders to make himself as small as possible.
An older guy with gray hair and the beginning of a potbelly spotted him and frowned. “What’re you doing in here, kid?”
Briley peeked at the man through his thick, matted bangs. Would the fireman hit him? He rasped, his heart pounding, “M-my mama told me to come in here. An’ then she drove away.”
The man clomped toward him, and Briley let out a little squawk when the man scooped him up. He carried Briley to a chair, sat, and settled him on his lap. He held Briley—dirty, snot running down his lip, sour smelling from urine and sweat—close. So close Briley heard the man’s heart beating in his ear. And the man whispered tenderly, “Now, don’t you worry. Everything’ll be all right. You just stick here with me, son, okay?”
Briley had huddled in the fireman’s lap until a police officer and a lady he later learned was a social worker came along and took him. He hadn’t wanted to leave the comfort of the man’s lap. He’d never felt so secure.
The recorder reached the end, and Anna—Grace’s voice echoed in the quiet room: “Are you God’s child, too, Mr. Forrester?” Suddenly Briley was five years old again, wrapped in a pair of sturdy arms while a heart beat a comforting thrum in his ear. A voice whispered, “You just stick here with me, son, okay?” And Briley looked up and said, “Okay, Father.”
Alexa
Alexa paused in rolling out crusts for tomorrow morning’s quiche and looked out the window. The lights in the cottage still burned. She frowned and turned her attention back to the crust. When Anna—Grace came in almost three hours ago, she indicated Briley would be in soon to pay his bill. So why hadn’t he come?
He was packed. She’d spotted his luggage in the cottage when she went out that morning to strip the bed and gather the dirty towels. He’d asked for his bill, and he had the notes for his story. His story … Worry stabbed, and she uttered another prayer to stave it off. Peace returned, and she added aloud, “Thank You, God.”
She transferred the crust to a ceramic pie plate and crimped the edges of the soft dough, forming a rope pattern. She smiled as she pricked the bottom of the crust a few times with a fork, remembering Mom’s relief when Alexa took over cooking
duties. “I can cook,” Mom had said while pulling Alexa into a hug, “but only because we have to eat to survive. For me, cooking is a chore.”
But for Alexa it was a joy. It always had been, from the time she received a toy Tasty Bake Oven for Christmas from Linda and Tom the year she turned six. She tucked the crust into the oven to brown and tipped her head, pondering which of her parents was the baker. Surely this interest in cooking was inherited because she hadn’t learned it from Mom. She sank onto the stool next to the counter and rested her chin in her hand. The questions that had plagued her since the evening Mom divulged the truth of her parentage begged for answers. She hadn’t pursued it because no one outside of Grandmother, Mom’s siblings, and Paul knew the truth.
When Briley printed his story, the truth would extend beyond these walls to the entire community. Very soon her secret would no longer be a secret. Then would she be free to search for her parents? She couldn’t honestly say she wanted to know them or claim them—she had Mom, and she didn’t want a replacement—but she wanted to know where she came from. Her history. Mostly, she wanted to know why they hadn’t kept her. Briley said there were people who would help. Should she ask for help?
Someone tapped on the back door and then cracked it open. Briley peeked in. He smiled—a heart-melting smile that made her forget for several seconds the torture he’d put her through with his decision to print Mom’s wrongdoing. She stood quickly and waved him in.
He held up a stack of twenty-dollar bills. “I got cash from the ATM to pay you. Everything on the invoice and a little extra.”
She took the bills, folded them in half without counting them, and slipped them into her apron pocket. Her stomach trembled, facing him after their disagreement. She wasn’t sure how to act. She left her hand in her pocket around the wad of bills and fingered the crisp edges. “You didn’t need to give me extra.” Lifting one eyebrow, she managed to tease, “You didn’t print them yourself, did you?”
He laughed, his white teeth flashing and a dimple briefly appearing in his whisker-dark cheek. “Ha! No. Not this time. You deserve the real deal. Because you, Miss Alexa Zimmerman, are the real deal.” The humor faded, and he turned a serious look on her that sent her pulse scampering into double beats. “Alexa, there are three things I need to tell you. Well, the first thing is actually a question.”
She gripped the bills and swallowed against her dry throat. “Okay. What?”
“First, is it all right if I stay one more night? Go to service with your family in the morning and maybe have lunch with all of you before I head out?”
Grandmother had already invited him, so she knew it would be all right. “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
He pulled in a breath, making the buttons on his shirt go taut across his chest. As usual, his recorder formed a bulge in his shirt pocket. She stared at the bulge while he talked.
“Second, you’re not an imposter.”
She whipped her attention from the recorder’s bump to his fervent face.
“You are very much your mother’s daughter. By your own admission, she loves you. She earned the title ‘mother’ by caring for you your entire life. Additionally, your grandmother loves you, your aunts and uncles and passel of little cousins love you. To them, you are theirs, and neither blood nor a legal document would make an ounce of difference.”
His image wavered because tears clouded her eyes. She choked out, “What’s the third?”
He grinned and held up his finger. “I’m not finished with the second one yet. There’s another part, and it’s the most important part. Are you listening?”
She nodded.
“You’re not an imposter because you are a member of God’s family. He is your forever Father, and you are His child for eternity. Yes?”
For a moment she stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. He’d never spoken so easily of God before. Then the truth of his words washed her with a fresh rush of grace so sweet it became a lilting melody in her heart. God Himself must have given Briley that message for her. “Yes. Yes.”
“Now the third …” He reached into his pocket and plucked out the recorder. He held it in his fist between them. “I told you I gave you a little extra in your payment, but there’s another ‘extra’ I want you to have.” He opened his fist and held the recorder flat in his palm. With his other hand he reached in and deliberately pushed the third button. The Delete button.
A whirr sounded, and Alexa gasped. She bounced her awed gaze from the recorder to Briley’s face. “Did you …”
Slipping the recorder back into the pocket, he gave a slow nod. “It’s gone. I also deleted the files from my computer. I decided I didn’t need to tear you down in order to build myself up.” A tender smile grew on his lips. Peace, joy, and contentment glowed in his dark eyes. “It’s enough just to be the Father’s child.”
“Oh, Briley …” She clapped her hands to her cheeks and stared at him through a mist of happy tears. She would have stood there, silently celebrating forever, if he hadn’t leaned sideways and aimed a grimace at something behind her.
“Um, Alexa? Whatever you put in the oven, I think it’s burning.”
She whirled around. A thin line of smoke snaked out from the oven door. “My quiche crust!” She yanked the door open and used her apron to pull out the pan holding a blackened facsimile of a pie crust. She dropped the pan on the counter, and chunks of charred pie crust bounced over the edge. She stomped her foot and turned to launch a complaint, but Briley’s impish grin stilled her words.
He held his hands outward. “Hmm, can you say, ‘well done’?”
She burst out laughing. She couldn’t help herself. What did it matter that the crust was burned when she stood next to a newborn child of God? Chortling, she nodded and gave his arm a light whack. “Yes, Briley, I can say ‘well done.’ I would even say very well done.”
Anna—Grace
Anna—Grace put down her pen and reached to rub the back of her neck. Knots of tension met her fingers, and she held her head low and kneaded for several minutes until the tightly bound muscles relaxed. When she lifted her head again, her gaze fell on the letters she’d spent the past hours hunched over the desk writing.
One for Mom and Dad, one for Steven.
Putting her thoughts down on paper had always helped her sort things through. She didn’t know yet if she’d actually mail the letters. As Briley had advised, she intended to sleep on it. But she was sure by morning, after prayer and a night of rest, she’d know the right thing to do.
She picked up the letter for Steven, leaned back in the chair, and read what she’d penned.
Dear Steven,
I’m sorry for running out on you like I did today, but your sudden change in plans pulled the rug out from under my feet, so to speak, and I needed to find a way to stand again. I suppose it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise that you want to be a teacher. Now I can look back and see hints of it—the way you’ve always been good with younger children, your interest in math and history, even the way you sat down and started grading papers at my house that day as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I can see you being a good teacher, and if that’s what you end up doing, I’m sure your students will be very lucky to have you.
But, Steven, I wonder why you never told me you wanted to teach. I understand you didn’t want to hurt your parents, but really, would it have pained them as much as you think? Becoming a teacher isn’t the same as what Kevin did, running off and never coming back again. They would have known where you were and what you were doing.
You claimed to love me, you asked me to share your life, but you didn’t tell me what you wanted to do with your life. Instead, you tried to trick me into being the one to send you down a pathway other than farming. That hurts the most. I keep thinking, shouldn’t you trust the one who is going to be your wife? How can you really love me if you didn’t trust me?
I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I can’t i
magine my life without you. But right now I need some time to heal from this hurt. I need time to restore my trust in you. In us. I’m going back to Sommerfeld as soon as I can arrange travel. I will be praying for God to heal my heart and to restore our relationship if we’re meant to be as one someday. I hope you will pray for the same thing.
Lovingly,
Anna—Grace
She set the letter aside and closed her eyes, trying to imagine Steven’s response to it. She prayed he would take it well, would understand, and would want to work toward a reconciliation. But if he didn’t, she would trust God had something else in store for her.
Her parents’ letter was much shorter, essentially a request for them to bring her home at their earliest convenience. If she ended up mailing it, she would explain everything in person on the drive home. She’d know by morning whether she would stay or go.
Guide my heart, God. Please guide my heart.
Steven
Steven had always believed he would feel better once he let his secret out, but he didn’t feel better. He wanted to be proud of himself for finally telling Anna—Grace the truth, but deep down he knew he’d gone about it all wrong. Her stunned look of betrayal played in his memory as he crossed the parking lot to the convenience store’s pay phone and punched in his folks’ phone number. He’d do better with his parents. But when his dad answered the telephone, and Steven blurted, “Dad, there’s something I need you to know,” then proceeded to share his long-held desire, Dad didn’t say a word in response. Instead, Mom’s voice came through the line, wary and worried.
“Son? Your dad just handed me the phone and went outside. What’s going on?”
Steven leaned against the rough brick wall and told his mother the same thing he’d told Dad. “I should’ve said something before now, but I didn’t want you to think I was like Kevin—selfish and disobedient.”
Mom was silent for several seconds, and when she spoke, her words sounded tight. “Do you really think so little of us, Steven? God Himself put a call on your heart. You think we’d hold you back from following it?”
When Grace Sings Page 33