Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [7]
Ravinia looked past Thomas and broke into a beatific smile. “Dirk!” she said, rising.
Thomas turned and stood as a tall, bald young man embraced his daughter. “Excuse me,” Dirk said, shaking first Grace’s hand, then Thomas’s. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Dirk said he and Ravinia had to hurry to the cafeteria and insisted her parents join them. “My treat,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Thomas said.
“Sure I do! Come on.”
The Darby Trailer
“You and Petey clear your own table, don’t you?” Aunt Lois said.
“We hardly ever eat at the table,” Brady said.
“Honestly. . . . Well, at my house, everybody buses his own dishes.”
“What’s that mean?” Peter said.
“Clear your place and at least put the dishes in the sink. I’ll wash ’em tonight. And we’ll flip to see who dries.”
“Let Petey dry.”
“Hey!”
“I got a job,” Brady said. “I don’t need to be doin’ housework, too.”
“What’s your job?” Aunt Lois said as they maneuvered around each other in the tiny kitchen.
“When the park Laundromat closes each night, I go clean it. Dust the machines, mop the floor, fill the detergent dispensers, collect the money from the coin boxes.”
“How long’s that take?”
“About an hour, but it’s every night, so I make a few bucks a week. That’s how I pay for my movies and could afford the fees for football. Ma sure wasn’t gonna spring for it.”
“And now you’ve quit? What kind of sense does that make?”
“I wanna do something else, that’s all.”
“Can I play my video game until it’s time to dry?” Peter said.
“You got homework, young man?”
Peter laughed. “In third grade?”
“Go on, then,” she said.
Brady sat back down as his aunt did the dishes.
“You know what I got to ask you, don’t you?” she said.
He shrugged. Of course he knew.
“She touch him again since you threatened her?”
“You kiddin’? I told her I’d kill her, and I meant it.”
“You wouldn’t kill your own mama.”
Brady swore. “You know I would.”
“Don’t talk like that. You know better. And you know it’s the booze that makes Erlene—”
“It’s more than booze now, ma’am. I don’t know what else she’s doing, but trust me, when she’s not drunk, she’s high.”
Cafeteria | Emory University
It didn’t take long for Thomas to determine that Dirk Blanc’s budget was hardly stretched by paying for a couple of visitors’ meals. It turned out he was the offspring of two lawyers and worked at the library only because he felt it was the right thing to do.
“Dad and Mom do a lot of pro bono work, so it didn’t seem fair to make them foot the whole bill for my degree.”
“They sound wonderful,” Grace said. “Are you people of faith?”
Thomas noticed Ravinia blink slowly as if mortified, but Dirk didn’t miss a beat. “Not really, no. But we certainly admire religious people and applaud what you do. Don’t misunderstand. We’re not atheists by any means. I’d say we’re more spiritual than religious.”
“‘Religious’ doesn’t really describe us, either,” Grace said, but Thomas surreptitiously pressed his knee against hers and she fell silent. This wasn’t the time or place. If Ravinia was as enamored of this man as she seemed, there would be more opportunities to get into this.
Dirk shot Grace a double take and smiled pleasantly. “Not religious? A pastor and a pastor’s wife?”
Ravinia rose. “Let’s get some dessert.”
The Darby Trailer
Aunt Lois looked at her watch. “What time’s your mama get off work?”
“Hours ago.”
“But she parties?”
Brady snorted. “That’s one way to say it. I think sometimes she and her boss party alone.”
“Is she often this late? What time do you have to clean up the Laundromat?”
“Half hour or so. It closes at ten.”
“And you leave Petey here alone?”
“Have to. Can’t wake him up and drag him along.”
“You poor boys.”
“Don’t worry about us. Worry about him when I finally get out of here. I wish you’d take him.”
“Don’t think I haven