Grounds to Believe

by Shelley Bates

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Did Mommy tell you that?”

  Disdain wrinkled the child’s small nose. “Uh-uh. I just know.”

  “Did you like it with the church?”

  She shook her head vigorously. Gently, Ms. Iverly brushed a strand of the shaggy hair out of the child’s mouth.

  “I have to weed the garden, and pray a zillion times a day. And ask people for money, even crabby people. I wish daddy would hurry up.” Kailey’s voice trembled a little on the last words. The doubt underlying her stubborn hope caught at Julia’s heart.

  “Kailey, would you like to meet your daddy? He loves you so much. He’s been looking for you for a long time.”

  The child stopped cutting. “When?”

  “How about now? See that man over there?”

  Her uncertain gray gaze locked on Ross, then returned to the social worker, begging her not to be playing a trick, to be making a promise that would never materialize. “That man?” The scissors were motionless in her hand, poised for a piece of paper that had fluttered to the floor.

  Ross clutched Julia’s arm, and she felt the tremors coursing through it. Julia touched his hand gently and gave him a little push, blinking back tears.

  Ross walked slowly to the table, and Ms. Iverly stepped back to lean against the wall.

  “Kailey?” His whisper cracked, and a lump rose into Julia’s throat at the raw emotion in it. The little girl still did not move, but watched him carefully as he approached, as though she were a wild creature who might break and run at the least alarm. “Sweetie?”

  He knelt beside her chair, tears swimming in his eyes. “Hi, baby. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” Her solemn eyes took him in, detail by detail. “You stopped moving, didn’t you? So I could find you. What a smart girl.”

  The scissors dropped on the floor. Neither father nor child paid any attention.

  “Daddy?”

  Julia could see the effort Ross made to give her time, to stop himself from hugging her right away, so she could adjust her mental picture from the idealized perfection of the people in her pictures to this wet-eyed man in the scuffed leather jacket.

  “Yes, baby. It’s me.”

  “Daddy!”

  Kailey flung herself off the chair and into her father’s waiting arms.

  Later that evening, Julia considered calling someone—Rebecca, her mother, Derrick—to let them know where she was and when she’d be back. Then she thought about how she’d explain where she was: ninety miles away, unchaperoned, at nine o’clock at night, with a non-Elect man.

  That would go over well. Even the fact that he was a cop wouldn’t stop the scandal.

  No one would consider Ross’s feelings or the fact that he had to appear before a judge early tomorrow, or how heroically he was controlling his impatience and frustrated love. His little girl had allowed him into her heart so suddenly and completely that even Julia, who had been taught that modern-day miracles were a publicity stunt perpetrated by worldly churches, was tempted to believe.

  The phone in this motel room didn’t work, anyway. In fact, it wasn’t much of a room—just a nightstand between two beds. But the sheets were clean, and there was a bathroom, and they were a short walk away from Kailey, who had just been persuaded to go to bed. She was terrified that Ross wouldn’t be there when she woke up, so he had made himself comfortable on a plastic chair next to her cot until she’d fallen asleep.

  Even then, he’d had a hard time tearing himself away. Julia thought he’d be just as happy to spend the night right there, watching over her like a grim, wary eagle, but Renee had convinced him that the pale, hollow-eyed look would not be the best way to present himself to the judge.

  Julia patted the blanket, which was sturdy and warm, on the far bed. “I’ll take this side, if you want to be closer to the door.”

  Ross shook himself out of his abstraction. “Sure it’s okay with you to share a room? They probably have another one if you don’t feel right about it.”

  “At a fruit festival? I don’t think so. We were lucky to get this one, and that was only because it’s on the other side of town.”

  “It looks bad.” He smiled, as if they shared an inside joke. Which, she supposed, it was.

  “But I know the truth. I know how badly you want to be there at the crack of dawn when Kailey wakes up. Besides, we’re in this together.”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Regardless of the kisses they’d shared and the emotions they’d been through, she had no claim on him. They weren’t a couple. And what she’d just said sounded as if she were asking for some sort of commitment about the future.

  But he only nodded. “I don’t know how I would have made it through this without you.”

  He held out his arms and she went into them like a homing pigeon, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to seek comfort and shelter there.

  After a moment, Ross set her away from him. “You want to go first in the bathroom?”

  Well, that answered her unspoken question, if nothing else. She was worrying about mistaken assumptions, and he was worrying about who got the bathroom first.

  It helped to have a sense of humor when there was a man around.

  “I wish I’d known this was going to be an overnighter.” She looked in her purse, just in case at some point she might have stashed something more useful than a comb in there. “My kingdom for a toothbrush.”

  “I keep an emergency overnight kit in the bike in case I ever get stranded,” Ross said. He handed her a small case. “Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo—samples from the drugstore—twenty bucks. And a granola bar.”

  She seized the little case like a starving person. “Shampoo? You’re kidding.” She gave him a quick hug of sheer happiness. “That’s worth more than twenty bucks to me right now. I feel like someone dragged me backward through a hedge.”

  “Help yourself.”

  She emerged twenty minutes later feeling like a new woman, and Ross took the kit and disappeared into the bathroom with it.

  “I guess the first thing on the agenda tomorrow is a shopping trip,” he said when he returned. “Kailey’s clothes are so old I wouldn’t use them for shop rags.”

  With a pang, Julia thought how much fun it would be to shop for a girl who wasn’t required to wear black. Madeleine made all Hannah’s clothes, with the requisite ruffles and elongated hems, but they were still black. She would love to take Kailey on a spree and buy pint-size jeans and sleeveless sundresses and neon-pink T-shirts. Neither she nor the child had ever had any such thing.

  Even a dream as simple as that was impossible.

  She pulled the blanket up to her chin. It felt very strange to be in a room with a man, and stranger still to go to bed fully clothed.

  Ross collapsed onto the edge of his bed with a sigh that seemed to come up from his feet. “I still can’t believe it,” he said quietly. “Half of me expects to wake up any minute now. She just took to me. Just like that.”

  “Maybe Anne didn’t portray you in as bad a light as you thought,” Julia said, trying to be fair. Only Kailey’s behavior would tell them for sure.

  “It’s that Miriam woman I’d like to get my hands on. Leaving my daughter on her own just on the off chance I’d figure it out in time. The only reason we did is because God led us here. Otherwise the chances of me missing her and CPS taking her into the foster-care system would have been too high for me to beat.”

  “Do you really think God had anything to do with it?” The question was wrenched out of her, past years of conditioning not to talk about spiritual things with Outsiders.

  But Ross wasn’t an Outsider. Not to her.

  His gaze was gentle and uncritical, with certainty behind it. “Absolutely. I don’t believe in coincidence. Not with this many pieces scattered on the board, moving around for days until they came together right here. You and me, Kailey, the Sealers. No matter how careless she was, even Miri
am couldn’t fight the design. It’s humbling, is what it is.”

  Without warning, he got up and sat beside her, and took her hand in a hard grip. His fingers were warm and solid and very sure. He bowed his head.

  “Lord, I thank You from the bottom of my heart for bringing Julia and Kailey and me together today. I praise You for Your design, and love You with everything I am. You make me want to serve You for the rest of my life, just to show You my gratitude. But I know You know my thoughts even before I do. Thank You, dear Father. Thank You.”

  When Julia dared to look at him again, his eyes were squeezed as tightly shut as his fist around her hand, and a tear trickled slowly down the side of his nose.

  She felt so unworthy of God’s love—or Ross’s, for that matter—that even tears wouldn’t come. The prayers she’d prayed were so dry and selfish…all form, no function. Not like this. Not from the heart, offering praise, offering the very self to the One who loved it most.

  She felt crushed, lifeless. Dust.

  Gently, she unwrapped Ross’s fingers and slipped into the bathroom to find him a tissue.

  Even then, in the protective dark that gave away no secrets, the tears wouldn’t come.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The illuminated face of his watch told him it was six-fifteen. Quietly, so as not to wake Julia, he knelt by the bed for a few minutes of communion with God.

  He slipped out of the room and jogged the half block to the shelter, where he took up his station, on the plastic chair next to Kailey’s cot. He’d promised he’d be there when she woke up. Nothing would have prevented him from keeping that promise.

  Somewhere out back, half a block away, a rooster crowed to welcome the sun, and Kailey opened her eyes with a gasp, a sudden movement prompted by fear.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m right here.” His voice was low and soothing, a contrast to his thoughts. If he could just get his hands on the Sealers, just once, for doing this to her…

  “Daddy?”

  “Yup. I’m here.”

  She scrambled out of bed, a borrowed nightie about three sizes too big wrapped around her like a sheet, and into his lap. He held her close, breathing in the scent of freshly laundered cotton and clean child.

  “I thought I had a dream.”

  “No, sweetie. This is real. We’re going to ask the people here if you can come and live with me. Would you like that?”

  “Do you live in a camper?” From her eager tone, a camper was the epitome of comfortable living.

  “No. I live in an apartment in a big town.”

  “What’s a ’partment?”

  “It’s a building where everybody gets their own set of rooms. It has a park across the street, and a pool downstairs where you can swim.”

  “Can I swim?”

  “I’ll teach you. Your mom used to swim like a fish, so you probably can, too.”

  “Mommy died and went to join the army in Heaven. Miriam said I had to be good or I’d die, too.”

  “Miriam was being mean, and she wasn’t telling you the truth.”

  “I’ll be good, Daddy. Don’t leave me behind.”

  “Sweetie—” his voice broke “—even if you were as bad as you could be, I wouldn’t leave you behind. We’re going to live together forever.”

  Judge Olafsen wasn’t terribly happy about hearing Ross’s petition in his living room on the weekend, but when Renee Iverly explained the mitigating circumstances he relented.

  When the papers were signed and they were on their way back to the shelter, Renee turned to Ross. “Usually I order a home study and all that before I release a child. We’re still going to do that, but I’m going to award you provisional custody, pending its results. Your devotion to Kailey has been obvious to me and to all the staff. I think if we kept the two of you apart any longer, that would do more harm to her than if we released her right away.”

  “How soon is right away?” Julia asked, when a glance at Ross told her he was struggling to speak past the lump in his throat.

  “As soon as we get back and I do the paperwork.”

  She was as good as her word. Julia had never seen a woman give so much of her own time and care to other people’s children. She could be going to a festival or boating on the lake on this sunny morning, but instead she was slogging through a pile of paperwork so that one small family could be reunited.

  Julia had heard Melchizedek say that worldly people did good deeds for their own gain, while the Elect did them for the glory of God. But every day she spent with Ross, it seemed, some teaching of Melchizedek was proven wrong. If the Elect did good deeds, such as inviting the less fortunate to dinner, they did it among themselves. They certainly didn’t reach outside the boundaries of the group. The bastion of rules and caution that had protected her from the world outside was crumbling, precept by precept and line by line, and she was getting a good look at the view outside it.

  Maybe living in the world wasn’t such a bad thing, if it were populated by people like Renee and Ross. It had its Miriams, too, of course, but on the whole, the Renees and Rosses gave it hope.

  Ross and Kailey emerged at last from Renee’s office. Ross slung his jacket over his shoulder, gripped Kailey’s hand in his, and grinned at Julia as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his back.

  Which it had, when you got right down to it.

  “You are the happiest man I’ve ever seen.” Not even Owen had been this radiant on his wedding day, and she’d been judging men’s looks by that standard for years.

  Ross grabbed her around the waist and kissed her soundly, then knelt and kissed Kailey with relish. “I’m the happiest man on the planet. I have my two best girls with me, it’s a beautiful day, and I think even the Lord is smiling.”

  “Does He smile?” Kailey wanted to know. “He’s getting ready for a war.”

  Ross picked her up and walked out the door of the shelter, Julia close behind.

  “Well, shrimp, Miriam didn’t tell you the truth about a lot of things. I bet she didn’t tell you the truth about God, either. He’s not some kind of mean old general, ordering an army around. He’s full of love and joy, and you know what?”

  “What, Daddy?”

  “So are we. And that means God is right here inside us, doesn’t it?”

  Kailey was silent, trying to puzzle that one out.

  Ross kissed her, then glanced at Julia. “So…rumor has it that it’s illegal for three people to ride on a motorcycle in this state. We need to get back to Hamilton Falls. Any suggestions?”

  That was easy. “I’ll take Kailey on the bus.”

  The two of them sat in the back of the bus, with Kailey on her knees on the seat, waving at Ross every few minutes as he followed them on the motorcycle. Even after the twentieth time, he still waved with just as much enthusiasm as the first. Kailey was delighted at the attention.

  “My daddy has the biggest, baddest motorcycle in the world,” she told the woman sitting in front of them.

  Julia had to laugh. “He could drive a junker and you’d still think it was the biggest, baddest one,” she teased.

  The little girl looked from Ross to Julia. “Are you going to marry my daddy?”

  “I don’t know,” Julia answered, groping for the truth at the suddenness of the question. She just didn’t have it in her to whitewash a story for this child. “He’s my friend, but I don’t know if he wants to marry me. Even if he did, you’re more important to him right now.”

  “Where are we going, then?”

  “To my house. Daddy’s on vacation in the town where I live. Maybe he’ll let you sleep over.”

  “Do you live in a ’partment?”

  Julia considered this seriously. “Yes. On the top of an old house. My friend Rebecca lives in the bottom. You can see into the tops of the trees from my front window.”

  “Do you have a little girl?”

  “No. I have a little niece, though. She’s three.”

  “Does she l
ive with you?”

  “No, she lives with her mommy and daddy and brother. Except her brother’s sick so he’s in the hospital.”

  Julia felt as though she’d stepped out of time since they’d left for Pitchford. As soon as she got home she was going to call Madeleine to find out how Ryan was. As the bus rolled into Hamilton Falls, trailed by the rumbling motorcycle, she tried to come up with an explanation for missing the young people’s meeting and staying away overnight. She’d been trying since last night, though, and was no further ahead than when she’d started.

  There was one thing she did know.

  “Ross, where are you staying?” she asked when they got off the bus and walked over to where he’d parked the bike. Kailey immediately clambered up on it, and he held it steady for her.

  “I’ve got a motel room. Paid by the week.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “Are you going back to Seattle with her?” She hadn’t thought about it until this minute. What if he said yes, strapped the little girl to the seat and they rolled off into the sunset, never to be seen again? What would she do then?

  He shook his head. “I’m still on vacation. I thought about spending a few more days here.”

  “In the motel?”

  “Sure, unless you have a better idea.”

  She had two bedrooms. One was full of Rebecca’s late husband’s stuff that she couldn’t bear to throw away—including his mother’s antique brass bed. There was nothing to amuse a child with in a motel room, whereas at her place there was a box full of Ryan’s and Hannah’s toys and books. There were snacks and juice and games and…well, why couldn’t they stay with her?

  It was impossible. Melchizedek would be on the doorstep like an avenging angel as soon as he heard. And what on earth would Rebecca say? Brass bed notwithstanding, she’d probably evict her.

  Julia’s mouth set stubbornly. How could she be evicted for offering shelter to a little girl who had been neglected and abused her whole life? Whose idea of a wonderful place to live, Ross had quietly told her, was a camper?

  “I sure do,” she said. “You guys can stay with me. Come on, Kailey. Let’s go make some lunch while your dad gets his stuff and checks out of his motel.”