Another night when it was raining, Ester sneaked Faith through the fence into Ester’s cozy house. Faith remembered shaking and trembling and expecting Ester’s mama and daddy to yell at her to go home, that they didn’t want a mangy wet dog in their home.
Daddy would have gotten out the belt then and striped her legs and Mama was so weak from the sickness, she would have cried but done nothing.
But Ester’s mama had folded her into her arms in a big snuggly hug, led her to the bathroom, drawn a hot bath and put bubbles in it. Faith had slid under the bubbles to hide her bruises, but not before Ester had seen them. But Ester hadn’t said a word about them. She just rambled on and on about the Believers, the faith-based group her mama had joined, and Faith felt a spark of hope for the first time in her life.
Ester gave her a warm pair of pajamas with kitty cats on them and she’d snuggled in the twin bed beside Ester’s and slept the best sleep of her life. Only she’d woken up at dawn panicked. She’d quickly changed back into her ratty pajamas, which Ester’s mama had washed and dried for her, tiptoed downstairs, slipped through the backyard and the hole in the fence and crawled back in the doghouse.
After that, the visits became a pattern. Mama got sicker and had to go to the hospital and died there. After the funeral, Ester’s mama offered for Faith to stay at their house for a while and Daddy was glad to have her off his hands, so he didn’t even pitch a fit. Eventually when he ran off, Faith thought she’d gone to heaven.
She’d started attending church with Ester and her family. After a few weeks, she’d started believing in signs like rainbows and cardinals and sunshine, and her faith had sprouted like a weed blooming into a sunflower. Now, she volunteered at the women’s shelter hoping to ease other kids’ troubled lives the way Ester and her parents had her own.
Ester hummed a hymnal as she pulled up the long drive to the Bentons’. “Lordy, this is a right pretty place,” Ester murmured.
“It is that,” Faith said. “But there’s pain inside that house. Has to be. Anybody who loses a child must suffer something awful.”
“Maybe that sweet pie you made will help,” Ester said.
Ester parked and Faith smiled at her wonderful friend. Ester was plump and squishy and believed food and prayer solved everything.
They both climbed out on aging knees and hips, gathered the containers of food they’d brought, a nice pot roast with baby potatoes and carrots, a broccoli and cheese casserole, homemade yeast rolls and Faith’s pie, and carried it up to the front door. Ester knocked and Faith glanced around the property. She couldn’t imagine only two people living in a house this big. What in the world did they do with all this space?
When no one answered, Faith rang the doorbell again, this time calling out, “Is anyone home? We have a delivery.” Smiling, she burst into a chorus of an old classic praise song that Faith remembered from when she’d attended church with Ester as a child.
Ester joined her, her heart lifting. The Bentons might be rich, but money couldn’t take their grief away. Whatever she and Ester could do to offer support, no matter how small, felt right in her soul.
Finally, the door opened, and a pale-faced woman in a turtleneck and black slacks answered the door. She barely looked at them, tugging a strand of hair across her cheek, but not before Faith noticed a bruise on the upper corner of her temple. Her eyes looked red-rimmed and dark circles shadowed her eyes.
Faith and Ester both pasted on a friendly smile although they knew what that bruise meant. “I’m Faith and this is Ester. We brought you and your husband a nice homemade meal.”
The woman’s lower lip quivered. “Why would you do that?”
Faith frowned and Ester looked perplexed. It was just what good kind people did.
“Because your family suffered a terrible loss,” Faith said.
“And this way you won’t have to cook,” Ester added.
“We can bring it inside and say a prayer with you if you’d like,” Faith offered.
Footsteps sounded behind Mrs. Benton then a man’s deep voice. “Who the hell’s at the door?”
He appeared next to his wife towering over her as she hunched deeper into her shell.
“We’re with the Believers. With the storm coming, we wanted to drop you two off a nice hot meal,” Ester said cheerfully.
The man’s dark eyes narrowed to slits. “We don’t want your meager handouts, and we certainly don’t need your prayers. Now leave and don’t come back.”
Stunned, Faith gaped at him.
Ester raised her chin. “We’re just trying to be neighborly?—”
But Mr. Benton slammed the door in their faces and shouted at his wife. “I told you not to open the damn door. Not to anyone. Especially those crazy old bats.”
Faith and Ester exchanged worried looks.
“It’s probably just the pain making him talk like that,” Ester murmured.
Only Faith remembered the bruises on his wife’s face and the meanness in his eyes and knew it was more than the pain.
