Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2)(80)

Nora offers a sweet, wistful smile. “Yes. Julia is three years younger than Roland. She’s married to Carl, and they have Tristan, who is ten, Olivia—Livy—who is six, and Braden is three.”

I point to the fridge where a picture displays a toothy, blond family huddling around a beach sunset. “That’s them, right?”

Without looking, Nora nods. “They went to Hawaii last year.”

“Geoff is the other brother,” I prompt, needing more of a refresher there.

“Geoff is the baby.” Nora laughs quietly. “He’s thirty-two. His wife, Lindsay, is lovely.”

I want to ask why there was no mention of Carl’s redeeming qualities as a child-in-law, but sit on that one.

“Their children,” she continues, “are Marley—a girl who’s five—and one-year-old twins. Eloise and Jacob.”

“Wait.” I hold up my hand, and Nora bites her lip as if she anticipates what I’m about to say. “They have a child named Jacob and one named Marley? How will they ever survive a Christmas season when they get older?” For some reason, I know I can let my hair down around Nora, so I skip social restraint in favor of asking how she feels about grandchildren seemingly named after A Christmas Carol characters.



She clears her throat, making a show of trying to maintain composure. With a chuckle, she sighs. “We don’t talk about the names. What is it?” Nora tilts her head to the side. She caught me staring into space.



“I knew Roland was—wait, is it weird for you that I call him Roland?”

“Honey, as far as Roland is concerned, I gave up qualifying weird long ago. I’m so grateful to meet you; I don’t care if you call him that guy. Well, maybe not that …” She trails off into nervous laughter, so I wave it off and continue.

“Anyway, I knew he was the oldest, but I didn’t really think about how weird that must have been when he dropped out of college and came back here … you had high school students still. And he was all—”

“Belligerent.”

My eyes shoot to Nora, who doesn’t look an ounce hurt by my questioning.

She shrugs, and continues. “It was what it was. We gave him tough love, soft love, kicked him out, brought him back … all of it.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why keep bringing him back?”

She eyes me as if this is the weirdest thing she’s been through in a while. “He’s my son, Kennedy. Letting him go was just as loving as bringing him back as far as the times were concerned. Tim and I did what we felt was best in each circumstance. I think the bringing him back was harder, but that was more for us than him. We had to practice forgiveness and healing … I’m rambling,” she announces. “What I mean to say is, it was a period of learning and growth for the whole family that I wouldn’t change for anything.”

“How so?” I peel the staple out of the paper teabag, letting the leaves fall in a clump into the empty cup.

“We all had a lot to learn about God, and I guess that was the only way he felt he could get our attention.”

While Tim offered a pleasant, standard rendition of grace before dinner, I haven’t picked up an evangelical scent since I walked in the door. Roland did tell me his parents practiced like him, but it hasn’t felt weird in here. Of course, I take that to show the new normal that’s sunk into my brain since attending CU.

“Were you, like, church-y before all of this?”

Nora nods, slowly. “Sure. Christmas, Easter, and grace every single night. We’d say nightly prayers but I don’t think any of it sunk in. We were talking the talk, but only walking every few steps, or so. God called us to the carpet when he delivered a slumped over drunk of a son on our doorstep.”

Hearing her frank description of Roland is all at once hard to hear and a relief. It comforts me that she operates in reality and isn’t going to gloss over the story, even while she’s on her way to revealing God’s plan for her in all of it.

“Sorry,” she says as if she’s heard my thoughts. “I don’t know how much you—”

I hold up my hands. “Trust me, I know a lot. Maybe not everything, but I have listened to his sermons for a few years.”

“And your mother?”

I know what she means. “She never said anything bad about him unless I pushed. And, even then, it was more her hurt, I guess. She was always careful, though.”

It’s like I’m hearing it for the first time as I’m saying it. I had friends whose parents went through nasty divorces and there was so much mud slung, even the neighbors were in the splash zone. That was never the case with my mom and Roland. She loved me enough to keep the worst at bay unless she had no choice. But, it seems as though my stepdad’s words are coming back to me … she must have loved Roland enough to protect the truth about him she knew was in his heart somewhere.

“This has been too much,” Nora interrupts my thoughts again, seeming to sense I’ve slipped away. “Let’s have more cookies.”

“With any luck,” I reply, accepting another pair of delicious cookies, “I’ve inherited your slender genes.”

She laughs, and we toast our cookies mid-air before consuming them. We sit in cookie-filled silence for another half hour before Tim and Roland return, a bag of unnecessary groceries in Roland’s arms. Within another half hour, Tim and Nora turn in for the evening, and I’m washing the dishes I insisted Nora let me handle, since she spent all day keeping me well fed.