When Joy Came to Stay (3 page)

Suddenly Maggie’s mind drifted, and her eyes jumped back a sentence:
Your little ones…little ones…little ones…kneel beside the bed of your little ones.
…

Her eyes grew wet and the words faded.
What about us, Lord? Where are the little ones we’ve prayed for? Haven’t we tried? Haven’t we?
She remembered the testing, the experimental procedures they’d participated in, the drug therapy and nutrition programs that were supposed to help her get pregnant. A single tear slid down her cheek into her mouth. It tasted bitter, like it had come from some place deep and forbidden in her soul, and she wiped at it in frustration.

Nothing had worked.

Even now her arms ached for the children they didn’t have. Foster kids, yes…but no babies to pray over, no little ones to be thankful for.
Why, Lord? It’s been seven years.
…

You had your chance. You don’t deserve a child of your own.

The truth hit hard, and her breath caught in her throat.

Maggie blinked twice, and the taunting voice faded. She quickly included a footnote at the bottom of her column advising readers that there would be more information in the coming weeks and months on the issue of abused and forgotten children in the Social Services system. She saved her changes and sent the file to Ron’s computer.

“It’s in.” She spoke loudly, and when she saw her editor nod, she turned her attention back to the now blank computer screen. Seconds passed, and a face began taking shape. The newsroom noise faded as the picture on the screen grew clearer, and suddenly Maggie could make out the girl’s features…her pretty, innocent face; her lovely, questioning eyes.

Do you know where my mama is?
the girl seemed to ask.

Maggie wanted to shout at the image, but she blinked twice and before her mind could give her mouth permission to speak, the girl disappeared.

It was her of course—the same girl every time, every day She saw the child everywhere, even in her dreams.

The girl’s presence had been a constant for nearly a year, making it difficult for Maggie to think of anything else. As a result, the days were no longer consumed with her work as a columnist, her role as a foster mother, or her duties as the wife of an important lawyer and civic leader. No, each day had become consumed with the idea that one day—perhaps not too far off—the little girl would not fade into air.

One day, the girl would be real.

The visions of the blond child had pushed Maggie to the edge of insanity. And with them came something else that filled Maggie’s mind even now, a darkness that threatened to destroy
her, to leave her locked in a padded cell, wrapped in a straight jacket. Or worse.

The problem wasn’t so much that she was misplacing her car keys more often than usual or forgetting dentist appointments or leaving cold milk in the pantry by mistake or seeing imaginary little girls every time she turned around. It was all of that, yes, but it was something more that made her truly question her sanity. It was the certain feeling that something hideously dark and possibly deadly—something that now seemed closely linked to her secret—was closing in on her.

Something from which she couldn’t escape.

A chill ran down Maggie’s spine; the secret was no longer something she could ignore, something she might pretend had never happened. It didn’t matter whether she acknowledged it or opened it and laid it on the floor for everyone to look at.

It simply was.

Indeed, its presence had become a living, breathing entity It was the embodiment of darkness that lay beside her at night and followed her through the making of beds and breakfast and daily appointments in the morning. It sat next to her in the car, breathing threats of destruction should anyone find out the truth—

Stop this! You’re making yourself crazy!

Maggie pushed away from her desk and gathered her things. Fresh air, that’s what she needed. Maybe a walk through the park. She glanced at a stack of magazines on her desk and did a double take. There she was again! Gracing the cover, looking directly at Maggie…the same little girl.

Then in an instant, she was gone.

Air released from Maggie’s lungs like a withering party balloon.

Yes, she was losing it—free-falling over the canyon’s edge—and there was nothing she could do to prevent the coming crash. She wanted help, truly she did, but there wasn’t anywhere she could turn, no one to talk to.

No one who would believe that Maggie Stovall was having a problem she couldn’t handle by herself.

Finally, desperate, she’d placed her name in the offering bucket when the pastor had asked which women would like prayer from an older, senior Christian. Maggie didn’t know if it would help, but it couldn’t hurt. And it was better than facing someone with the truth.

She headed for her car.

How had things gotten so bad? Years ago she would have had two or three days a month like this and called it depression. Not that she told anyone how she was feeling, even back then. She was a Christian after all, and Christians—good Christians like her and Ben—did not suffer from depression. At least not as far as Maggie could tell. But this…this
thing
that haunted her now was beyond depression.

Far beyond it.

This was the kind of thing that sent people packing to psychiatric wards.

A
MANDA
J
OY SAT HUDDLED ON A NARROW BED, LEANING AGAINST
the chilly wall of the third house she’d lived in that month. The silence was scary, like in the movies before something bad happened…but then she was only seven, and lots of things seemed scary. Especially since coming to the Graystone house.

Footsteps echoed in the distance, and Amanda gulped. Mrs. Graystone was awake, and that meant she’d be coming to check on her. Pushing herself off the bed, Amanda yanked on the covers and straightened the sheets. Beds had to be neat or…

Amanda didn’t want to think about it.

Maybe there was another place she could go, some other foster family who wanted a little girl for a while. She tugged on the bedspread as she remembered the house she’d stayed at just after summer. Her social worker had called it a mistake, a bad placement. Five days later Amanda was packed and sent to a home five miles south, a working farm with three teenage boys.

She shuddered at the memory.

The boys’ parents wanted a foster girl to give the missus a hand with laundry and indoor chores. But while she did up dishes or folded laundry the boys teased her until she was afraid to get dressed or take a shower. Two weeks later the mister found her in the barn, hands tied behind her back with baling twine. Her shirt lay in a rumpled heap on the ground, and the boys were taking turns poking at her, threatening to do terrible things to her if she screamed.

The boys received a whipping from their pa, and she escaped with her social worker before dinnertime.

She didn’t know what she would have done without her social worker. For a moment, Amanda forgot about the chores and sat slowly on the corner of her bed. Kathy Garrett.

In some ways Kathy was more like a mother than anyone she’d ever known. Anyone except the Brownells.

The Brownells had been Amanda’s only real parents. They adopted her as a baby and gave her a wonderful life for five short years.

The house was quiet again, and Amanda wondered if Mrs. Graystone had fallen back asleep. There had been an empty liquor bottle on the table when Amanda got home from school. Alcohol made Mrs. Graystone very tired, so maybe she would sleep for a long time.

Amanda slipped off the mattress and lifted the plain, gray bedskirt, poking her head under the bed. There it was. Gently she pulled out a brown paper bag, opened it, and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the contents inside. A photograph of her with the Brownells, three folded-up awards she’d won in school, a bracelet she’d found in the lunchroom the year before. She plucked out the picture and stared hard at it. The checkered dress she’d worn that year was a hand-me-down from the neighbors. All the girls in kindergarten had laughed at it, but Amanda figured out how to make them stop. She prayed for them.

She’d knelt beside her bed at the Brownells and prayed. “Dear Jesus, help those girls in my class be nice. Because they don’t have happy hearts, at least I don’t think so.”

Neither did Mrs. Graystone. Which was why Amanda had been praying for her, too. She sighed and set the photograph back in the sack. As she peered inside, her eyes fell on the yellowish newspaper article.

Amanda pulled it out and opened it carefully.

She couldn’t read very well, but she’d read the article often enough to know what it said. It was a news report of the accident that killed the Brownells.

“Icy tree limb lands on car, kills Woodland couple,” the big words on top yelled out.

Amanda felt tears stinging her eyes. The smaller letters said how the Brownells had a five-year-old daughter. But they didn’t say there was no one for her to live with once the Brownells were gone.

She remembered meeting Kathy Garrett for the first time at school that afternoon—the day of the accident. Kathy told Amanda that she had known her as a little baby and that she had helped the Brownells with the adoption. At first it had been nice, sitting in the office talking with the pretty lady. But then Kathy told her about the accident and after that her tummy had felt sick inside.

Sick and scared.

“You can stay with us tonight, sweetheart,” Kathy said. “But after that we’ll find you a foster home. A place where you can stay until another family adopts you.”

They’d found a home. A foster home, like Kathy had talked about. And then another one. And another one. But the best times of all were when Amanda was between foster parents and got to spend a night or two with Kathy and her family.

Amanda closed her eyes and pictured Kathy Garrett’s home. Warm, with lots of light and laughter and good smells from the kitchen. Someone was always talking or telling a story or singing or dancing. When Amanda was there she didn’t feel like her name was Brownell at all. She felt like it was Garrett. Like she belonged there. Like she was one of them. She even had her own chair at the kitchen table.

At times like this she wondered if they left her empty chair at the table when she wasn’t there, if the Garretts missed her as much as she missed them.

She opened her eyes again, folded the article, and slipped it back inside the bag. It was the same bag she’d had for two years, and she was careful not to rip it as she folded the top down and slid it back under the bed.

Kathy Garrett was married to a happy man named Bill. He would lay on the floor and wrestle with the kids until they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. He always laughed. But one time…

One time Bill didn’t laugh. When he brought everyone together in a circle once to pray for Amanda. During the prayer, when he thought she wasn’t looking, Amanda caught him crying. Not loud tears like kids cry, but quiet ones that rolled off his face and didn’t make his nose sound stuffy.

Amanda stared at the barren walls in the chilly room, but in her mind she could see Bill and Kathy, laughing, playing with their children. Lots and lots of children. The Garretts had more kids than anyone Amanda knew. Seven altogether, all squeezed into three happy bedrooms. Kathy liked to say it wasn’t the size of the house that mattered, it was what the house was made of. After living in a dozen different houses in two years Amanda was sure of one thing: Kathy wasn’t talking about bricks and carpet and stuff.

She was talking about feelings. So as far as Amanda was concerned, the Garrett house was made of all love and sunshine.

There were footsteps again and Amanda’s heart quickened. Mrs. Graystone had four other foster children living with her, all of them crammed into two small bedrooms. Her husband drove a truck for a living and was hardly ever home. The other kids liked to tell secrets about Mrs. Graystone, and the first day Amanda arrived they told her what they thought of their foster mother.

“Old Graystone uses all our money to buy her smelly cigarettes,” one of the kids told her that first day.

Amanda frowned. “What money?”

An older girl laughed out loud. “The gov’ment money, goof-ball. She’s supposed to use it to buy us food and clothes and stuff.”

“Yeah, but she never does,” the first boy poked Amanda on
the shoulder. “You’ll see soon enough. Two meals a day if you’re lucky. And if you’re hungry at night then too bad for you.”