She winked and he laughed.
Coffee gurgled on the stove, and Winter brought it over and sat down.
“I’m going to pray for us,” Gabe said.
Harley stared at him as he helped Sunni into a chair.
Her brother was going topray?
Since when—
Gabe bent his head and the words fell on her. “Lord, we’re grateful for second chances. That you never leave us in darkness. That you sustain, deliver, provide, and bring us into light. Thank you for this food you provided. Protect us this day as we get home. Amen.”
She didn’t realize she’d been staring until he lifted his head.
The smile Gabe gave her seemed to laser right through her. “When did you ... I mean ...how—?”
He reached for the oatmeal, scooped some into Sunni’s bowl. “When did I get saved?” He poured oatmeal into his own bowl. “Did you not hear the preacher at Mom and Dad’s funeral?”
She’d been mostly consumed with fury, so, “I was there, but ... I guess not.”
Jericho offered to dish up her oatmeal. She nodded.
“He started with Psalm 119, ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.’ And then he talked about how Mom was a faithful Bible reader.”
Yes, she was.
“And then he talked about Dad and how he’d become a Christian. How when he arrived in Alaska, he’d been sort of wild. Worked as a guide but was essentially homeless and how Pastor Neil had found him sleeping in his car and invited him home for a meal before church. And then he preached the sermon that changed Dad.”
She only remembered the steady and quiet version of her father.
“I think he might have been preaching to me, actually.” Gabe smiled, and she couldn’t get past the clear-eyed, solid, even wise version of her younger brother. So much like her father, really, her throat filled.
Dad would have liked to see Gabe kick his demons. Or maybe he had, given Gabe’s story.
It had been her left in darkness.
“Then he talked about Titus 3:1–7. It’s a passage about how we start out foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all sorts of passions and pleasures. How we live lives of darkness. And then how, in the kindness of God, and in his love, he sent a savior. And not because of anything we did but because of his mercy.” He picked up his coffee. “The part that got me was the offer of rebirth. The idea that I could start over.”
Jericho held out the bowl of brown sugar and she took it.
“Right then, the choice stopped me. I could go down into the grave with Mom and Dad, let the grief take me into darkness. Or I could let God save me. Get reborn. The way of the foolishis to go our own way. My pride deceived me into thinking that I could fix things, figure things out and make all the lies I believed go away on my own. That I could somehow untangle myself from all the things that had trapped me.”
He looked at Sunni. “God does not keep a record of wrongs.”
She reached up, took his hand.
Then he turned his attention back to Harley. “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Harley smiled. “Dad used to say that. I thought he was using it to make sure we didn’t lie.” She drew in a breath. “How?” She added a bit of the brown sugar to her oatmeal.
Jericho’s hand on her wrist stopped her and she looked over. “Easy with the sugar,” he said softly, his voice low, just for her. “Your hands are shaking.”
Oh.They were.
She set down the spoon, and his fingers threaded through hers under the table. Steady.
Gabe kept talking. “Yeah, well, apparently, it was that sentence that made Dad realize he’d been living lies. And me too. After the service, I talked with Pastor Neil and exchanged my stupid, foolish, dead life for a new one. I was struggling with addiction again. I’d moved from drugs to alcohol, and I knew I was headed for trouble. So I checked myself into treatment and met Sunni again.”
