Contents

  1. The Time of No Goodbyes

  2. Alicia Marie Suggs

  3. First Day of School

  4. Be Ye Kind

  5. Finding Anne

  6. The Secret Diary

  7. The Color Green

  8. Betsy Lou

  9. Blessings and Curses

  10. Everything Will Never Be All Right

  11. Are You There, God?

  12. Secrets and Loss

  13. Bleeding Heart

  14. Forgive Our Trespasses

  15. The Rainbow Halo

  16. Fear Not

  17. All Shall Be Well

  18. Love with a Capital Letter

  Acknowledgments

  If you’re wearing a T-shirt that says in big capital letters I ❤ JESUS, you shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the street bawling your eyes out. But that was exactly what Birdie was doing. She had raced out of Gran’s house just in time to see the old Subaru swing around the corner. Mom must have been driving because Birdie got a last glimpse of Daddy sitting next to Baby Billy’s car seat. They never looked back, and they didn’t hear her yelling, telling them to wait—that she had changed her mind—that she wanted to go with them.

  It was too late.

  It wasn’t until the volunteers from the Lions Club had left and they stood in the empty apartment looking at nothing that Birdie realized her bicycle was gone. The sofa, the kitchen table and chairs, all the beds—even the TV—had been carried to the truck. Daddy had finished stuffing the trunk of the Subaru and the tiny U-Haul trailer with all the boxes and baby furniture when she thought of it.

  “Mom! Those guys stole my bike!”

  “Oh, Birdie. No one stole your bike.”

  “Then where is it? Daddy didn’t put it in the car or in the U-Haul. You gotta call them. Tell them to bring it back! Now!”

  “We can’t do that, sweetie.” Mom sighed. She’d been doing a lot of sighing lately, and it wasn’t her style. “I’m sorry. I should have told you, but it’s been hard to think straight, and they were so thrilled to get a bike. They said bikes always do well in their summer sale.”

  “But it’s my bike!”

  “There was just no room, either in the car or the U-Haul … Did you know everything they make from the sale goes to help blind people?”

  As if that would make it okay.

  “It was really too small for you,” Daddy chimed in. “We need to get you a new one, a regular-size one.” He studied Birdie’s grim expression. “I promise.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as we can afford it,” Mom said. Like never.

  It was downhill from there. Birdie hardly spoke in the car on the way north even though Daddy was sitting in the back seat, too. The passenger-side front seat was piled to the roof with stuff, which meant that some grown-up had to sit in back. “Your mom’s the better driver,” he said as he climbed in with Birdie and Billy.

  She was sure that before Billy was born, Daddy used to drive a lot, and he never sat in the back even when he wasn’t driving. She should have been happy he was in the back, but Baby Billy’s car seat was plunk in the middle—right between them—and even if she felt like talking, which she certainly did not at the moment, how could she talk to Daddy across the stomach of a six-month-old baby who cried a lot and wouldn’t even go to sleep in a moving car?

  It was a known fact that every normal baby in the world just naturally passed out as soon as a car was shifted into drive and began to move. “I think something must be wrong with your brother,” Melanie had said when Birdie complained to her friends that Billy never slept in the car.

  During the whole week that Mom and Daddy and Gran tried to settle the family into their new quarters, Birdie watched soap operas. She hated the place, hardly bigger than a closet, that was supposed to be her new bedroom. She spent her days in the living room watching TV. They should have yelled at her for being lazy and selfish. They didn’t even fuss at her for watching daytime soaps. They just didn’t care. Didn’t they remember how they used to fuss about children turning into ignorant couch potatoes? Maybe she needed to scream like Billy so they’d come running. But seriously …

  On Monday Mom had gone to the local Dollar Store and applied for a job. Daddy said she should take her time, try to find a better job, but she shook him off. They were hiring at the Dollar Store. She was sure she could get a job there. If she hated it, she’d try to find something else. Right now, they needed the money. She promised not to start before he left. No one suggested that Birdie start school before then.

  They wanted as much time with Daddy as possible. But Birdie had pretty much ruined that, hadn’t she? Moping around and pretending to feel sick for most of the week. Even Wednesday night, when Gran took them all out for maple creamies, Birdie had pouted. Chocolate was her favorite, not maple. Couldn’t they bother to remember that?

  Then the terrible last morning arrived. Mom came to wake her up, but Birdie just burrowed under the pillow and pretended to be asleep.

  “Come on, sweetie. Get up.” Birdie didn’t move. “Birdie, please. We’re not going to see Daddy for a year. Even if you don’t want to go to the airport, at least get up and say goodbye.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice was muffled by the thick duck-feather pillow, to which she was probably allergic, but who would care? “I feel awful. I might give him something.”

  “Oh, Birdie,” Mom said in her don’t-be-ridiculous tone of voice. She stood in the doorway for a moment or two, then, sighing loudly enough for Birdie to hear it through the feathers, she left. Birdie listened to the click of her boot heels as she walked the short distance to the kitchen.

  Birdie thought she could hear a whispered conversation, and then there was the sound of her father’s heavier step. “Birdie.” He said it quietly because he had walked right to the side of her bed. “I’ve got to go now, okay?”

  What a stupid thing to say. It was not okay. It would never be okay.

  “I want you to help your mom and Gran while I’m gone. No kidding, slugger. I really need you to step up to the plate.” Why did he say that? She hated baseball.

  When she didn’t answer, didn’t even turn to look at him, he bent down, gently pulled the pillow off her head, and kissed her ear. “I’ll miss you, baby,” he said. And was gone.

  The closing of the heavy front door made Birdie sit up straight. She put her hand right on the heart of her Jesus T-shirt. What was the matter with her? How could she let her daddy go to war without even a real goodbye? Jesus would never do that. Being scared that someone would die was not an excuse. At Bible Camp, Reverend Colston had told them that Jesus gave his friends a long, beautiful goodbye message the night before he died.

  She jumped out of bed, stuck her feet into her bunny slippers, and raced out of the house … just in time to see the old Subaru swing around the corner. She was too late.

  When she turned, still bawling, to go back to the house, Gran met her holding out her jacket.

  “Sweetie, here. Put your jacket on. It’s freezing today.”

  Without a word, Birdie shrugged on her old Salvation Army Store jacket. She couldn’t talk. She’d already said too many wrong words before she even got out of bed this morning.

  Birdie went back into the empty old house, went to her tiny room, pulled off her jacket, and got into bed. Once again, she pulled the pillow over her head. There was nothing else to do. She lay there trying not to think, but the view of the disappearing car kept rattling around in her head. Mom was driving him to Essex Junction, where the guard was gathering for the ceremony. Then the soldiers would get on the buses to the airport, from where they’d fly to some base and on to Iraq, where they’d all die.

  She grabbed the pillow with both hands and smashed it down harder against her face. She would never see her daddy again. She didn’t cry. She was too scared and mad to cry, but the pillow kept her from screaming out loud.

  Later—it might have been minutes or hours, who cared?—Gran came in. Well, it was her house, thought Birdie, so maybe she thought she had the right to come busting in, invading somebody’s privacy. Birdie wanted to tell her to go away, but she just pinched her lips together under the pillow and didn’t say anything, even when Gran sat down beside her on the narrow bed.

  “Elizabeth?” Her grandmother never called her Birdie. That was Daddy’s name for her. In the story she begged him to tell her over and over again, he would tell her how much he and Mom had longed for their very own baby, so the very first sight of his own little birdie was the happiest moment of his life—right up there with the day he married Mom. It didn’t matter to Birdie that he’d called her that because she was skinny and didn’t have any hair and was always squawking to be fed. She loved that Daddy called her Birdie. Elizabeth was the name her parents used when they were unhappy with her. Gran said it wasn’t respectful to call a beautiful, almost grown-up girl Birdie.

  “Elizabeth?” Gran said again. “I made some cocoa. Would you like some?” From under the pillow, Birdie shook her head.

  Gran patted her shoulder. When Birdie didn’t respond, Gran sat there quietly for a minute before clearing her throat. “I’d like to make this room nicer for you while you’re here—make you feel like it’s really yours. Would that help? I know it’s small, but you could help me choose a new quilt or nicer curtains—something to make it look more like yours and not like the overflow space it used to be.”

  Exactly. How were you supposed to make a closet practically under the sta
ircase friendly? Even Harry Potter couldn’t do that.

  “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen when you feel like getting up.” She gave Birdie another pat and stood up. “I think your mother will need cheering up this evening. I can’t do that without your help.”

  She was gone at last. Birdie yanked the pillow off her head and rolled over on her back. The ceiling had stains on it from a leak that had probably happened before Birdie was born. You’d think in ten years a person could scrape together enough money to fix a ceiling. But it was always money. That’s why they were all in this mess. In fact, Daddy had joined the guard in the first place just to bring in a little money.

  Then came September 11, 2001. Birdie shivered and pulled the covers close to her chin, squeezing her eyes to shut out the sight of the flaming towers she’d seen on TV. And after that came not one but two wars, and neither of them was over yet. Daddy had already gone to war twice, and now he was going again.

  Even if two different presidents said both wars were nearly over, people were still going there and still getting killed. Lots of guys can survive one, maybe two deployments, but number three and BOOM! Of course, it had been that awful Warren Matson in Brattleboro who had whispered it just loud enough for Birdie to overhear in the lunchroom. Oh, if she could only unhear it.

  Her grandmother was back at the door. “You haven’t eaten all day,” she said. “Let me fix you something. What do you want?”

  What did she want? It was what she didn’t want. First of all, she had never wanted a little brother. But mostly, mostly she didn’t want her daddy to go to Iraq and die. She hadn’t wanted terrorists to hit the twin towers, and all these years later, there were still terrorists everywhere.

  Everybody said so.

  She didn’t want to go to bed every night wondering if she’d wake up in the morning. She didn’t want to die. And she would. Everybody did. People pretended that you wouldn’t. Or they’d say, only when you’re really old and don’t want to live anymore. But that was a lie.

  Why did grown-ups lie all the time?

  Reverend Colston at Bible Camp said it was against the commandments of God to lie.

  Gran was still waiting for an answer. “I’m okay,” Birdie lied, and turned her face to the wall.

  Well, God should know lying was different for kids. Sometimes they just had to lie.

  She stopped herself. Suppose God was listening. Well, of course God was listening, stupid. God heard everything. She didn’t mean she was so sick of the world that she wanted to die. No! She just wanted everything different.

  Why couldn’t God roll history backward as well as forward? Why couldn’t He go back to September 10, 2001, and fix things so the next day was an ordinary sunny day in the fall and not the start of two wars and horribleness? If she was God, she’d sure run things differently.

  Like press reset and let a new story take the place of the terrible one.

  God wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. Okay, so He wouldn’t start over, like with Noah and the flood, but couldn’t He just let someone in her family win the lottery or something so they’d have enough money and Mom didn’t have to go to work while Daddy was overseas, so they wouldn’t have to move to Gran’s because rent on the apartment would be too high, and she wouldn’t have to start in a brand-new school where she didn’t have any friends?

  At the thought of that—being alone and friendless, when God knew perfectly well that she was shy and had a hard time making friends (remember that first summer at Bible Camp?)—the rock inside her that had kept the tears dammed up broke loose. She began to cry like a baby, so loudly that she was sure her grandmother could hear her through the walls. She pulled the covers as well as the pillow over her head and cried into the black cave they made.

  When the flood finally subsided, she wiped her nose on the pillowcase. Of course. That was it. That was what she had to do. Birdie sat straight up on the bed, then hesitated. Maybe with something this important, she’d better kneel and show God she meant business. Reverend Colston always said it was good to kneel down when you prayed. It showed you were humble before God.

  Birdie got down beside her bed. The covers tickled her nose, but she’d make the bed up after.

  Now she put her hands together like that praying hands picture they hang in churches.

  Okay, God. No. Dear Heavenly Father. That was better. Dear Heavenly Father, I’ll stop acting like a jerk, if you’ll start acting like God and take care of us for a change. No. Erase that last part. I’ll get up right up now and start acting normal if you’ll … I mean, I will love you and Jesus and be a witness in the world if—if you will just keep my Daddy safe. Okay? Deal?

  Promise?

  Love, Birdie. I mean, Amen.

  Slowly she opened her eyes and stood up. Light was pouring through the one small window onto the floor. Light. “I am the light of the world.” Jesus said that. It was like Noah’s rainbow. A promise. God was telling her it was a bargain.

  She sat down on the side of the bed. Her I ❤ JESUS T-shirt and pajama bottoms felt clammy, as though she’d been sweating as well as crying there under the covers. She grabbed her bathrobe and ran upstairs to the full bath. There was only a toilet and basin across from the closet room.

  Under the hot shower she washed everything, her hair included. When she finished, she went back down to her room and laid out clean clothes. Although her I ❤ JESUS shirt wasn’t exactly clean and was still a bit sweaty, she put it on anyhow. Her sweatshirt would cover it up so Gran wouldn’t see it wasn’t clean.

  There, God, how’s that? I’m doing my part. I’m clean and dressed. Oh, yeah, I mean, yes. Thank you for the sign. There. That should make God know she was really trying.

  When Birdie appeared at the kitchen door, her grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book and drinking something from a cup—not a mug, a delicate china cup with a saucer under it. Gran was weird like that. She didn’t have much money either, but she liked things like cups with saucers and the good silverware she’d inherited from her own mother.

  “You’re up!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Feeling better?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mom would have corrected her. She liked for Birdie to say yes or no, not grunt an answer—especially when she spoke to grown-ups, most especially when she spoke to Gran, who used to teach high school English and liked proper speech. But Gran chuckled and said she was retired and wasn’t about to start grading her granddaughter’s grammar.

  Well, Birdie wasn’t going to mope and cry anymore. She had made a bargain with God there on her knees in the closet room. If she’d be good, step up to the dadgum plate like Daddy said, God would be good, too. Wasn’t that what He had promised?

  “I think I’ll just have a bowl of cereal, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course.” Gran stuck a marker in her book and started to get up.

  “I’ll get it,” Birdie said. “You’re busy.”

  Birdie took down the box of generic cornflakes Mom had brought from home and got the milk carton out of the refrigerator. They were out of bananas. She’d eaten the last one yesterday, and no one had felt like going to the store when they had such little time left with Daddy.

  It’s hard to do ordinary things when you are tiptoeing around God, trying to be almost perfect. You can’t even complain about generic cereal. Birdie put extra sugar in the bowl to make up for the lack of fruit and ate most of the flakes, her elbow on the table and her head propped up on her hand. As she ate, she stared at her grandmother’s bent head, her hair almost totally gray now and cut nearly as short as Daddy’s. She never wore makeup or fancy clothes. Maybe when your husband has been dead for years and years, you don’t make a special effort to fix yourself up.

  She wasn’t beautiful like Mom. Daddy said the first time he saw Mom, he thought she was the most beautiful person in the world. No, Gran wasn’t beautiful. Not that she was ugly. She had a really nice smile, and sometimes Birdie thought she was actually pretty. And she wasn’t all that old, was she? Sixty something? Seventy?

  When Birdie had finished all she could swallow, she took the still-half-full bowl to the sink and rinsed out the soggy flakes. “Um, Gran?” Gran looked up. “I think I’ll go for a walk.” She couldn’t think of anything else to do, and she didn’t want to go back to bed. Not after her bargain.