Emilie Richards - The Color Of Light

Analiese could see that every time she tried to catch her breath, the coughing got worse. “She’s had the cough awhile?”

“It’ll ease in a minute. Too many years of smoking.”

This didn’t sound like a smoker’s chronic cough. This sounded like a woman struggling not to turn her lungs inside out. “Won’t the emergency room see you, even if you can’t pay?”

“She won’t go. Too many people poking around in our lives.”

Analiese realized that was something of a warning. If she poked too hard the family might just disappear.

Which would certainly resolve her upcoming battle with the council over taking them in.

Dougie and Shiloh arrived hauling battered suitcases that were so old they didn’t have wheels. Dougie’s was small but still a feat for a boy that young.

“How old are you, Dougie?” Analiese asked. “You’re a strong guy.”

“Guess.”

She smiled. “Maybe eleven?”

“Nine!” He did a little victory dance, then took off to examine every corner of their new quarters. While the rest of the family was exhausted, Dougie was clearly galvanized.

“You calm down now,” Man told his son, but with no enthusiasm.

“I’m going down to get the leftovers,” Analiese said. “I bet hauling everything up two flights of stairs worked up everybody’s appetites.”

“I can eat a horse!” Dougie shouted.

“I’ll help, Ana,” Ethan said.

They left together, Dougie’s exuberant shouts filling the apartment and still audible from the second floor landing. On the first floor she led Ethan to the kitchen, flipping lights as she went.

The room was as neat and well organized as a television test kitchen. The committee that oversaw potlucks and social hours was headed by a woman who had once run the cafeteria at a state penitentiary. Analiese opened the refrigerator and stared at all the neatly packaged and labeled leftovers.

“You’ll get in trouble for this.” There was no condemnation in Ethan’s voice.

“It’ll be nice to get into trouble for something that matters so much. Not the hymns I chose or the stoles I wear with my robe.”

“Or the design for the rose window.”

“Call me crazy, but I truly believe something other than a bearded European Jesus with a lamb on his lap would be more fitting for the twenty-first century.”

“They’ll see it your way eventually and come up with something everybody can live with. But this?” He shook his head. “Not so sure.”

She set out the leftovers as she spoke. “We’re all forced to take stands. It’s part of being human. This is just one night, and more people will understand than won’t.”

“Ana, are you deluding yourself?”

She knew what he meant, but she refused to acknowledge it. “No, I really think many people will support what we did here.”

“You know that’s not what I was asking.”

She took out the last of the leftovers and closed the refrigerator before she faced him. “You think they’ll be here more than one night.”

“I do.”

“It could be just one.”

“No.”

She gave up the pretense. “We have an apartment they need. It’s standing there empty. They’re cold and tired and hungry. They have no place else to go.”

“I’m not the one you’ll need to convince.”

She smiled. “You know, once upon a time I had a really great job. I got to dress up every day and stand in front of a camera and tell stories. I’m trying to remember why I gave that up.”

“You still get dressed up and tell stories, only different ones. And sometimes those stories change people’s lives forever.”

“Every single day I tell myself it’s the process in ministry that’s important, the way we reach decisions and learn better ways to communicate with each other and with God. And really, I believe that most of the time. Things don’t always have to go my way, just as long as everybody’s learning something.”

“This will be different.”

She nodded. “It will. Because the Church of the Covenant will never recover if things go wrong here. We can never again pretend we’re a true religious community with anything important to say if we toss these people out on their ear.”

chapter five

THEY WERE FINALLY GONE. The woman Ana and the man Ethan. Shiloh hadn’t paid much attention to last names, considering that the best she had hoped for was that these strangers wouldn’t call the police. She hadn’t expected that she would need to remember anything about them.

Ana was pretty, with hair so dark it might even be black, and blue eyes so pale they were kind of startling. The man was older, but Shiloh wasn’t good at guessing people’s ages. His hair was turning gray, and Ana’s wasn’t—at least she wasn’t letting it—but he had a kind face that was easy to look at. He and Ana weren’t married. Neither wore a wedding ring.

Whoever they were, whatever their last names, they had turned over this apartment to her family as if it meant nothing. Just like that, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother helping her get ready for the ball. All in a day’s work.

And yet, as strange as everything was, now the Fowlers had a home for the night. A kitchen. A bathroom with a shower and a tub. Real beds, even if there were no sheets, but who cared? She had used her sleeping bag for so long that it felt like home to her. No matter where they had to sleep, she could crawl into her bag or, on a bad night if they were forced to sleep in the car, she could cover herself with it and pretend she was in her own bed.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Dougie stopped chewing long enough to direct his question to her. He was working on his second turkey sandwich. Shiloh was glad Ana had brought up a loaf of bread along with everything else. It was easier to portion out the turkey that way. Otherwise Dougie might have eaten it all, although if Belle had been feeling better, she would have been sure to take her own share.

“I ate,” Shiloh said, and she had. A turkey sandwich, some dressing, a dab of cranberry sauce, green beans. Everything had tasted so good, the way food had tasted in Ohio when it was cooked in a kitchen with lots of pans and plenty of time to make sure everything came out the way it was supposed to.

“Daddy ate, too, but Mama doesn’t want anything.”

Shiloh had noticed, and she knew what that meant. Belle was happiest when there was food in her mouth. If she wasn’t eating when so much good food was available, it meant she really was sick. Shiloh tried hard to find good things about her mother, but one she didn’t have to make up was that Belle rarely complained.

“Maybe she’ll feel hungrier after she takes a shower.” Shiloh could hear the water running in the bathroom. Man was helping Belle because coughing made her weak, and once she had just fainted dead away. Nobody wanted her to drown.

Dougie pointed. “I could eat another slice of that pie.”

“No, you can’t, because I’m not going to let you. We’re saving that for breakfast.”

Dougie was as used to eating strange things at the wrong time of day as she was, and he didn’t argue.

“I would like to live here,” he said through the final bite of his sandwich.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Who cares? It’s not full all that often, is it?”

“We can’t live here, so don’t get used to it.”

“Maybe they’ll let us if we clean it up real nice.”

“They said this was just for tonight, and tomorrow they’re going to help us find another place.”

“I liked camping under that bridge.”

“It’s getting too cold to camp.” Shiloh was sorry they had to talk about this, but Dougie was irrepressible. If she told him to stop, he would talk louder and longer.