Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [8]
“What does she care? He’s just in her way.”
“But she’d at least see him as personal property, and no way she’d let me raise him.”
“You might be surprised,” Brady said.
“I should have started home an hour ago. I told Carl I’d be back by midnight.”
“No way now. You wanna go with me when I go to work?”
“I’m not leaving your brother alone, even if you think you have to. But you hurry back. Your mama’s gonna demand to know why I’m here, and I want to tell you all together.”
“Even Petey?”
“’Fraid so.”
“So it’s about Daddy, eh?”
“Hush.”
The Emory Inn
Thomas knelt by the bed next to Grace, as he had done every night since their wedding.
“Rav’s in love,” she said. “We either need to get that boy saved or pray it doesn’t work out. The last thing I want is to see her unequally yoked.”
“Hmm.”
“What are you thinking, Thomas?”
“I don’t know. Just that I’m not so sure they’d be unequally yoked.”
She turned to face him, and he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. “What are you saying? I led that girl to Jesus myself.”
“Well, it’s clear she’s left Him somewhere along the way, wouldn’t you say? How old was she, Grace?”
“Very young, of course, but so were you and I when we came to faith. I believe she meant it and knew what she was doing.”
Thomas felt himself welling up, and he did not want to break down in front of Grace. She had always been so strong for him, through every struggling pastorate and every dismissal.
“I’m praying Rav was sincere, honey,” he said. “But do you realize how long it’s been since she even pretended to be a believer?”
Grace lowered her forehead to the mattress. “I know I wouldn’t want to relive her teen years for anything.”
Touhy Trailer Park
As Brady finished tidying the Laundromat, he wished his mother would stay out all night, forcing Aunt Lois to wait. It was nice to have her there. But of course he was curious, too. What had his father gotten himself into now?
Brady used a special key to open the coin boxes and dumped all the change into a bucket he took into a back room to sort. Besides the envelope of cash the owner tucked into a ceiling joist for him each week, Brady also absconded with the equivalent of three washes and three dries from each of the ten washers and ten dryers. Truth was, he made more skimming than he did in pay. That was something he would not tell his aunt. She was already praying overtime to keep him out of hell, he knew.
Another benefit of Brady’s job was getting his choice of the magazines stocked for people waiting for their wash and dry cycles. He believed his lifting of his favorites was less obvious because he made sure to leave Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and of course all the women’s magazines. He waited until the new People and Movie News and Entertainment Weekly came in, then took the previous week’s editions.
If his aunt asked about the magazines, he would tell her the boss had said he could have them. He would not be able to explain his jacket pockets bulging with quarters, so he would just move slowly and find a reason to head back to his and Peter’s bedroom, where he could unload.
But as he came within sight of their trailer, he saw his mother’s rattletrap car parked next to Aunt Lois’s.
4
The Darby Trailer
Erlene Darby was just emerging from her car, sensible shoes incongruous with a too-revealing black waitress’s dress that matched her dyed hair.
“Hey, Ma.”
She whirled and swore. “Don’t do that, Brady! Like to scare me half to death.”
Have to be twice as loud next time, then.
Erlene nodded toward Aunt Lois’s car. “What’s she doing here?”
“Won’t say. Some news about Dad.”
“Hope it’s bad.”
“Likely is. She’s fixing to wake up Petey so we can all hear it together. You’re a little late. Later than usual.”
“I’ll thank you to mind your own business.”
Lois had apparently heard the car and was waiting at the door. She embraced Erlene tight.
“All right, all right, Lois. Let me sit down. Then out with it.”
“Nice to see you, too. I didn’t know you worked nights.”
“Well,