My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss)

by Carmen Richter

  “Okay, guys, let’s go ahead and get started,” Peter announced.

  Though I turned my attention to the front of the room and listened as he started to teach a lesson about love and acceptance, I couldn’t help looking back at the door every few minutes, hoping Darla would make a reappearance. But she never did.

  “Mom! Look at this picture I colored!” Nathan exclaimed when my parents came back to the children’s room to pick us up after the service.

  My mom completely ignored the picture he was trying to shove in her face, so I quietly took it from him, folded it in half, and slid it into the kid Bible he always brought to church with him, even though he couldn’t actually read it.

  It was no wonder why Nathan always asked me the hard questions and basically stuck to me like glue every second he could. My parents were forty-five and forty-eight years old when they found out he was on the way, and at that age, they’d been expecting a mid-life crisis, not another kid. In fact, I got the distinct impression that the only reason my little brother had even been born at all was because they were completely against abortion, no matter what the circumstances. That broke my heart, because this sweet, curious, funny, and empathetic kid deserved so much better than parents who were too checked out to bother interacting with him.

  “Do you have your Bible?” she asked flatly.

  “I’ve got both of our Bibles right here, Mom,” I muttered.

  “Good. Let’s get home. I have a headache,” she grumbled, glaring at my dad.

  “Come on, boys,” my dad ordered. “You heard Mom. No dallying.”

  I held my hand out, and Nathan took it immediately as we headed outside. My dad went to get the car – because God forbid my poor mother had to walk halfway across the parking lot – and pulled up under the overhang in front of the building. Without a word, my mom got into the front seat.

  I rolled my eyes. Had she completely forgotten that she had a four-year-old son here who still needed to be attended to?

  Oh, right. She had a headache, so clearly, she was exempt from being a parent for the evening.

  I went and opened the door to the backseat, then bent down to pick Nathan up.

  “Come on, squirt. Let’s get you buckled in,” I said, setting him in his booster seat and tickling him in the ribs.

  He squealed and giggled. “That tickles!”

  “Nathan!” my dad snapped. “Mom has a headache. Keep your voice down.”

  With a sigh, I quickly got him buckled in, then went and got in on the other side. Before I’d even fastened my seatbelt, my dad was pulling away from the building.

  “Why didn’t Darla come back tonight?” Nathan asked as we started the short drive home. “Did she not want to color with me anymore?”

  Why on Earth had Pastor Jones thought that was an appropriate way to handle that situation? His daughter had been this age once. He had to realize that the kids were going to ask questions about what they’d witnessed. Didn’t he give a crap about parents having to explain that to their kids?

  Well, obviously not, if he was pulling these kinds of stunts in the middle of the children’s service.

  “No, bud,” I said, ruffling his hair. “Her dad just wanted her in the adults’ service tonight.”

  “Is that why he was yelling at her?” he asked.

  A lump rose in my throat and my blood started to boil in my veins. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or punch something, but I felt some kind of way about what had gone down tonight. I was equally worried about my friend and upset that I had to be the one to talk to Nathan about what he’d witnessed tonight. This was not okay on so many levels.

  “Maybe,” I mumbled. “I don’t really know. But I promise it has nothing to do with you. Darla loves you very much. She would have come back if she could have.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m one hundred percent sure,” I assured him. “She’s not mad at you.”

  There might have been a lot of unknowns about what happened tonight, but that much, I did know for sure. Darla loved every single one of the kids at that church, but even though she claimed not to play favorites, I knew she thought of Nathan as a brother. Knowing how much he’d missed her tonight would kill her.

  My dad pulled the car into the driveway, and my mom got out and paid attention to her son for the first time tonight. If you could call unbuckling him from his booster seat and telling him to go inside with Dad paying attention to him. I grabbed both of our Bibles and started to head inside, but she grabbed my arm before I could.

  “Brendan, you shouldn’t be encouraging his infatuation with that girl,” she scolded me.

  My jaw clenched and my hand balled into a fist. Whatever her issue with Darla was, it needed to stop. Darla had been nothing but sweet and humble ever since I’d known her, and she adored Nathan. Why was that an issue?

  “What is your problem with Darla?” I growled. “Why all of a sudden is it such a problem for you that Nathan and I are spending time with her? It was never an issue when we were growing up, but now that she’s getting older, it’s not okay anymore?”

  “It’s none of your concern!” she exclaimed. “What is your concern is doing what I tell you, and that’s staying far away from that girl! For your information, I’ve been informed that she’s a seriously disturbed child and has major disciplinary issues. She’s not someone either of you need to be spending time with. She’s a bad influence.”

  What the hell? Seriously disturbed child? Major disciplinary issues? Bad influence? Was she joking? If you looked up “well-behaved kid” in the dictionary, there would have been a picture of Darla Jones next to the definition. She obeyed her father blindly, to the point that it actually worried me, and she was the quietest and most soft-spoken girl I’d ever met.

  So why was my mom under the impression that Darla was some sort of juvenile delinquent? What on Earth was Pastor Jones saying to people about his daughter? Just today, he’d tried to convince me that Darla lacked the mental capacity to understand her own thoughts and feelings, and now he was telling my mom that she was disturbed and acting out? Why was he trying to smear his daughter’s image like that to everyone? What could he possibly gain by doing that?

  “Well, it’s not like either of us see her outside of school and church anyway,” I bit out. “Anything else?”

  “No, that’s it,” she said matter-of-factly with a smug, superior smile on her face, almost like she was proud of herself for this little display.

  “Okay. Good. I’m going to go help Nate brush his teeth and get into his PJs, since you have a headache,” I said as sarcastically as I could manage, making it clear that I didn’t buy that excuse for a second.

  Beyond done with her bullshit, I took off toward the house without giving her a chance to respond and headed straight to my brother’s bedroom. He was sitting on his bed holding his little platypus Beanie Baby and looking like he was on the verge of tears.

  My heart squeezed as I closed the bedroom door behind me and went to sit next to him. Screw what my mother said. Nathan was happier with his surrogate big sister in his life, and I wasn’t about to discourage his relationship with her just because my mom had gotten a bug up her ass.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours, bud?” I asked.

  “What did I do wrong?” he mumbled. “Dad told me to go right to my room. He only does that when I’m in trouble.”

  I knew it was wrong, but sometimes I genuinely hated my parents. There was absolutely no excuse for treating Nathan like a nuisance just because it wasn’t convenient for them to spend time with him or they didn’t feel like being the parents of a four-year-old on any given day. They’d made the choice to keep him and raise him instead of giving him up for adoption, and that meant they had responsibilities. But every chance they got, they shoved those responsibilities off on me. Not that I minded in the slightest because I loved this kid more than I could put into words, but it wasn’t fair to him. He didn’t understand why Mom and Dad
didn’t want anything to do with him half the time.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Nate,” I told him. “Mom and Dad are just super tired tonight, so I’m going to help you get into your PJs and get your teeth brushed. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you pick a name for this platypus yet?” I asked, trying to distract him.

  “Darla,” he murmured. “Cuz she’s the one who told me what it was.”

  I chuckled. “She’ll love that. I’ll tell her when I see her at school tomorrow.”

  Finally, I got him to look at me, and his pure, innocent smile killed me. I would have done anything in the whole world to see that smile.

  “Since Mom didn’t want the picture I colored, can you give it to Darla for me?”

  Seriously. This kid. How could my parents just shove him off to the side? He was too cute.

  “How can I say no to that face?” I chuckled. “How about if I help you write ‘To Darla, from Nathan’ on it so she’ll know it’s from you?”

  “Okay!” he said excitedly.

  I grabbed his Bible and pulled the picture out of it, then went to get one of his big hardcover picture books and pulled a pen out of my Bible case. I had no idea why I even bothered taking it to church with me on Wednesdays, but it was force of habit, I guessed.

  “Okay, you know how to write ‘to,’ right?” I prodded as I handed him the pen.

  “T-O,” he said out loud as he scrawled on the top of the page. “How do you spell Darla?”

  “Big D,” I instructed, then waited for him to form the letter. “Little A. Little R. Little L. And little A. Good job.”

  It was the messiest writing job on the planet, but it was kind of hilarious. And I knew it’d make Darla smile.

  “Remember how to spell ‘from’?”

  “I forget,” he said sheepishly.

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “Big F. Little R. Little O. Little M. Now just write your name. You remember that part, right?”

  “N-A-T-H-A-N,” he spelled out loud as he scribbled it out, then handed the paper to me.

  “Good job, bud,” I said as I slid it into my Bible case for safekeeping until I got back to my bedroom. “Okay, let’s go brush our teeth. Come on.”

  The next morning, I left for school a little early on purpose so I could meet Darla’s bus before the bell rang. I went to the gate as soon as I got there, and it turned out to be perfect timing. Two minutes later, I saw her speed-walking in with her head down, like she didn’t want to talk to anyone. I weaved my way through a couple of people so I could get to her.

  “Hey, Dar,” I said, putting a hand on her arm to catch her attention.

  She gasped and flinched away from me as she raised her head, and the second she saw my face, I swore I saw her shoulders sag in relief.

  “I’m sorry, Brendan. I can’t talk to you,” she muttered as she tried to walk past me.

  What? What did she mean, she couldn’t talk to me?

  Of course. Her father.

  “Because your dad said so?” I clarified.

  She nodded.

  What the hell? Seriously, what was going on in that family that her father had her so scared to even talk to me at school, where he was nowhere to be found?

  “How’s he going to find out?” I asked.

  “He has ways. He always finds out everything I do,” she said quietly, her voice breaking. “I’m not allowed to talk to anyone at school or at church for the next two weeks. Especially not you, Kate, or Ash. And if I disobey, he’ll punish me even more.”

  Nope. I wasn’t going to let this happen. I wasn’t going to let her throw away two friends as amazing as Kate and Ashton just because her father was a bigoted asshole, and I wasn’t about to let him tell me who I could and couldn’t talk to.

  “He only found out about Kate and Ash because Ethan’s an ass,” I told her. “It’s my fault because I tried to get him to shut up at church last night. And you told me the only class you have with him is homeroom, which only happens, what? Once a month, maybe? Your dad’s not going to find out who you’re talking to before school or who you have lunch with. I promise you. And you can’t let your dad take Kate and Ash’s friendship away from you just because he’s decided that Leviticus is supposed to be taken literally.”

  She snorted quietly, but didn’t say anything.

  “I promise, Dar. He’s not going to find out. I’m sure as hell not going to tell him. He’s on my shit list right now anyway because he upset Nate last night,” I said without thinking.

  Damn it. I shouldn’t have said that. The last thing she needed was to feel guilty that Nathan was upset that she didn’t come back to the kids’ service last night.

  “He scared Nate?” she asked, barely audible.

  Shit. I knew I hadn’t been imagining her fear last night. It was getting more obvious by the day that she was afraid of her father, and for her first reaction to hearing that Nathan was upset to be an assumption that he was scared just confirmed it. Because why would she assume he was scared of her father if it wasn’t a feeling she herself was familiar with?

  “Not really scared,” I clarified. “He just missed you and he didn’t understand why your dad was yelling at you. Actually…” I took my backpack off and got my math textbook out of it, retrieving the folded coloring sheet from inside it. “He asked me to give this to you.”

  She unfolded the paper and covered her mouth with her hand as a couple of tears trailed down her cheeks. Taking a deep breath, she wiped them away.

  “He even spelled my name right,” she finally said.

  “He might have had a little help with that part,” I admitted. “He asked me to give it to you and I suggested that he write your name on it.”

  “It’s adorable,” she sniffled. “Is this Smurf Jesus?”

  “Apparently,” I laughed.

  “Tell him I love it,” she chuckled as she folded it back up and took her backpack off to put it in the front pocket. “I’m going to tape it up in my locker.”

  I smiled. “He also named that little platypus after you. He said it’s because you’re the one who told him what it was.”

  That made a fresh round of tears well up in her eyes, and before I even realized what I was doing, I pulled her into my arms, squeezing tight. For a second, she stiffened, but then she relaxed and slid her arms around my waist, resting her head on my chest and wetting my shirt with her tears.

  As much as I tried to suppress the way I felt about her, in moments like this, I couldn’t. When I had her in my arms like this, it felt like everything was right in the world, even though the reality was that so much was wrong that I didn’t even know how to begin to fix it.

  “Tell me how to help you, Dar,” I murmured. “It kills me to see you like this.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” she said through her tears.

  “Promise you’d tell me if there was?” I pressed.

  She nodded.

  I sighed. “Just please promise me you’re not going to blow Kate and Ash off. They’re good friends to you, and I can’t stand the thought of your dad taking that away from you. You need people like them in your corner.”

  “Why do you care so much?” she sniffled as she backed away from me.

  “Because you’re my friend,” I said. Because I want you to be so much more than my friend.

  No. I couldn’t go there.

  Forgive me, Lord, I prayed. Help me to keep my thoughts about her pure. And please, help her. Protect her. Give her strength and help her to see that she’s not doing anything wrong.

  “And because when someone I care about hurts, it makes me hurt too,” I told her. “What your dad’s doing and saying isn’t right, and I just…I can’t let him take your friends from you. It’s not fair. Not when he’s never even met them.”

  “He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to know they exist. If it was up to him, he’d grab some stones and go all first century on them.”

  “Pretty
sure the Bible says something about he who is without sin casting the first stone,” I chuckled humorlessly. “And your dad definitely isn’t without sin.”

  “No one is,” she sighed. “I won’t stop talking to them. I promise. Kind of hard anyway since Ash is in my English class and I have Bio with Kate.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  “Can you tell Nate I’m really sorry I can’t be in the kids’ service for the next couple of weeks? And tell him I miss him so much. I can’t stand him thinking I’m not there because I don’t want to be.”

  “I’ll tell him. I promise. And, I mean, if I just happen to bring him into youth group on Sunday, you can’t help it if he gives you a hug, right?”

  Her smile lit up her whole face, and for the umpteenth time in the past week and a half, it took every ounce of self-control in me to stop myself from kissing her. Instead, I just pulled her into my arms again.

  Why did I have to develop feelings for the girl I couldn’t have? I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep this up for another day, let alone the next two years until I could get out of this school.

  Chapter 6

  Darla

  Pull Me Out

  “Darla?” came Kate’s voice from behind me. “Brendan? Is everything okay?”

  I took a deep breath before letting go of Brendan. Then I wiped my eyes and turned to look at her and Ashton. I knew it was stupid because I hadn’t even known them for two whole weeks yet, but they were already two of the best friends I’d ever had. They were the only people I’d ever met who just accepted me without questions or judgment and who didn’t care who my father was or how I’d been raised.

  “Oh, my God, honey. What’s wrong?” Ashton gasped.

  “Can I give you a hug, hon?” Kate asked me.

  Another lump formed in my throat and I knew I’d start crying again if I tried to talk, so I just nodded. Kate pulled me into her arms and squeezed tight, and then I felt Ashton’s arms wrapping around me from the other side. And just that simple gesture did it. All of my efforts to keep the waterworks from starting up again were for naught. They just let me cry for a minute before Ashton finally broke the silence.