Summer Sanctuary (14 page)

“That's okay, Dad,” I said.

“Anyway, I'm glad to see that you find peace here in the sanctuary by playing piano.” Dad cleared his throat. That was a sure sign that he was going to change the subject and move on to what he really wanted to talk to me about. “You know, your mother was a little worried about you with Kyle being gone all summer and the new baby on the way and all.”

“I'm okay, Dad,” I said.

Dad nodded. “I know you are. I think your mother was about convinced, too, until this week with the rain all day Wednesday. She said you still weren't yourself last night or this morning.”

“It has been kind of a long week,” I agreed. He waited. I did, too. He broke the silence first.

“You know, it won't be long before the new baby's here,” Dad said. “It could be a couple of weeks before we all get settled in and used to each other.”

“I know, Dad,” I nodded.

“But no matter how busy or crazy it gets you can always come find me, right?” Dad kind of pulled me toward him with the arm he had been resting behind my back.

“I know.” I just kept nodding.

“Okay, Matthew,” he said. “So is there anything else we need to talk about?”

I pushed Dinah out of my brain and tried to think of something else. I just needed to think of one thing to talk about and that would convince Dad we were good for at least another week or two. Then he could convince Mom.

“Do you think the baby's a boy or a girl?” I asked.

Dad laughed. “I've stopped trying to guess. I thought Luke was going to be a girl, and then when he wasn't, I was thoroughly convinced Johnny would be a girl.” He stretched his arms back out and crossed his legs. “What do you think?”

“I think it's a girl,” I said, leaning back and crossing my legs like Dad, only in the opposite direction.

“I guess we'll know soon enough,” Dad said.

I nodded. “Do you know what Kyle calls the baby?” I asked. Dad shook his head. “He calls her Acts.”

Dad nodded seriously. His eyes were smiling, but he pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. Hmmm. It does have a ring to it, don't you think?”

We both laughed.

“I love you, Matthew,” Dad said.

“I love you, too, Dad.”

T
HAT SUNDAY MORNING
, just as Dad was getting into his sermon, it happened. We were in our usual pew, three rows back on the right side. Mom was in the middle. Luke and Mark were on her left; Johnny and I were on her right.

“Over the past few weeks, I've preached about God's holy temple, and how God is not a respecter of persons. Today, I want to talk to you about sanctuary.”

Mom gave me this funny look. The more Dad talked about the church being a sanctuary, the more I had this feeling that Mom knew about Dinah.
How? How could she know?
I remembered her saying that God talks to each of us differently.
Maybe God somehow let her in on the secret.

Mom gave me a reassuring glance.
She knows all right. She's waiting for me to tell her when I'm ready.

Johnny started getting restless. Mom leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Could you hold him on your lap and see if he'll sit still?” I nodded and whispered to Johnny as I lifted him on my lap. He settled down, but it wasn't long before I heard some commotion coming from Luke and Mark on the other side of Mom.

I looked at Mom to see why she wasn't trying to quiet them down. She had an odd look on her face again. Her eyebrows were all wrinkled up, like she couldn't quite decide what to do. Finally, Mark whispered loud enough for me to hear what he was saying, “Just be quiet before you get us all in trouble!” That got Dad's attention, too. He frowned at Mark, but continued preaching.

Then the whole congregation heard Luke say, “But it's wet! Mom had uh accident!” Dad looked at Mom. Mom just grimaced.

Dad shot out of the pulpit, shouting, “Are you all right, Theresa?”

Barking erupted from behind me. Suddenly a black Labrador wearing a brown leather backpack bounded up the aisle toward Dad, leash trailing. Dad and the dog slammed into each other right by our pew. Dad grabbed the pew and managed to keep from falling.
That got the whole congregation on its feet. Everyone except Mom. It was like the Tower of Babel. I could hear all these people talking, but none of it made sense.

Then Mrs. Miller came hobbling up the aisle after the dog calling “King! King! Here boy! Heel! Heel!” A yapping collie with a pink backpack trotted along beside her.

Mark and Luke were whooping and hollering, which only excited the dogs more. Johnny was jumping up and down, too. “Doggie! Doggie!”

“Get these dog-suh away from my wi-fuh!” Dad snapped. He sounded exactly like Grandpa!

Jim Reed, a volunteer firefighter, sprang into action. He grabbed Tom Stone and Ben Arnold, and the three of them herded Mrs. Miller and her dogs away from my dad, back out of the sanctuary.

“Theresa! Are you all right?” Dad asked, moving into the pew in front of us.

Mom nodded. “I'm fine, dear, but I think my water just broke.”

“The baby!” Dad shouted. “The baby's coming!”

Dr. Westin appeared beside me. “Would you mind if I have a seat here by your mom?” she asked. I took Johnny by the hand, and we scooted down the pew
away from Mom. “Any contractions, Theresa?” she asked as she slipped her fingers around Mom's wrist to check her pulse. Dr. Westin was some kind of foot doctor. I seriously doubted she had ever delivered a baby, but I was glad she was there just the same.

“I've had some Braxton-Hicks contractions on and off all week,” Mom told her. “I had a mild one just before my water broke.”

“Okay, let me know if you have another one, and we'll start timing them.” Mom nodded. “When are you due?”

“Next Friday, the 16
^th
,” Mom told her. Mom was taking deep breaths, but she looked like she was doing okay.

“Looks like you're not going to have to wait until then,” Dr. Westin said, smiling.

Jim Reed's wife, Lois, made her way to the front and took Mark and Luke by the hand. Mrs. Reed was Luke's Sunday school teacher, and she'd had Mark and me before Luke. She called over to me, “Matthew, bring Johnny. You boys come with me.” I looked at Mom, and she nodded.
Everything's going to be okay.

“Now, don't you worry, Theresa,” said Mrs. Reed. I'm going to take these boys back to your house and
make sure they get some lunch. We'll just wait to hear from you.”

“You wait here, Theresa,” Dad said. “I'll run home and get the car to drive you to the hospital.”

“My bag is packed at the foot of our bed,” Mom told him.

Kyle's mom came running up holding a stack of towels from the nursery. “Here you go, Theresa.” Dr. Westin took a towel and helped mop up around Mom.

Kyle's dad caught my dad before he could take off. “Come on, Paul. Let's get Theresa into our car, and I'll drive you both to the hospital.”

Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at Dr. Westin. Dr. Westin nodded, “I'll be happy to ride along if it makes you feel any better.”

Dad reached in his pocket and turned to Kyle's mom. “Here are my car keys. Theresa's bag's all packed at the foot of our bed. We'll meet you at the hospital.”

My brothers and I filed out the back of the church with Mrs. Reed. Mr. Reed was standing by Mrs. Miller, trying to get the dogs calmed down and into the car. “I understand,” he was saying. “Let's just get you all home.”

Mrs. Reed shook her head. “Strapping a little knapsack on a dog's back doesn't make it a service dog,” she muttered. “You'd think they'd have sense enough not to let untrained dogs into the church!”

I
T WAS
T
UESDAY
afternoon before things settled down enough at our house for me to go to the library. I hadn't been there since Thursday morning, the last day I saw Dinah. I went directly to the computer room and logged onto Yahoo. I had three new e-mails: two from Dinah and one from the NASA astrophysicist.

Dinah sent one Thursday night before she left, and another one yesterday afternoon. I opened the one from yesterday.

Hey PK!

I was kind of hoping I'd have an e-mail from you by now, but I guess you've been busy. We're moving to Cincinnati tomorrow morning. Mom has a friend with an apartment downtown. We'll stay with her until we can afford a place of our own. Mom says she'll be able to find a job at a restaurant. She says we just need to get out of here and go someplace with better public transportation.
It'll be another year before she gets her driver's license back. I haven't told her yet, but she doesn't have to worry about us ever going hungry. There's tons of free food out there!

It may take me a week to find a computer I can use to write you, but don't worry. I will. Please write soon!

BHD

Next I opened Dinah's e-mail from Thursday.

PK,

Please don't be sad. We'll see each other again someday. I promise. Until then we'll write. Here's the poem I wrote when I spent the night in the barn with the farting cows!

Someone, Anyone

I just want someone to care about me

Someone who'll understand

Someone who wants to listen

Someone to be my friend

Is there anyone who wants to love me?

Anyone who'll let me be

Myself—whoever that is

I only want to be me

Wasn't long before I found you. Thanks for being my somebody.

BHD

I clicked on reply.

BHD,

I hope you like Cincinnati. Mom had a baby girl on Sunday, and they didn't name her Acts. Her name's Katherine Joy, and we call her Katie. She's beautiful. Mom went into labor right in the middle of the morning service. Old Mrs. Miller had her dogs there for the first time, and they went berserk. She's not allowed to bring another dog into the church unless it's really a trained service dog. She'll probably go buy a dozen of them to bring with her while she gets all of her own trained!

I'll write more soon. I miss you!

PK

Next I opened the e-mail from the astrophysicist.

Hello,

Please take a look at this answer for the time dilation formula.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971109a.html

If you plug in the numbers then you get about .9999993 c (the speed of light) which is the speed that god must travel to make the time on earth appear to be 1000x longer.

Hope this helps,

Mike and Georgia for “Ask an Astrophysicist”

I went to the website. It used the same formula I'd already found and talked about the twin paradox.

In the case of the twin paradox, the assumption is that the person gets in a ship and then is in this different reference frame. At some point he turns around, thus switching reference frames again, and when he gets back home he now is back in the reference frame of the Earth. Depending on how fast the ship went, much less time elapsed for him than his twin brother who stayed at home. This will be shorter by a factor of:

sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2) : where v = speed and c = speed of light

If God were traveling at .9999993 times the speed of light, time on earth would only be going 1000 times faster. So one year would be like a thousand years. That couldn't be right. It's supposed to be one
day
is like a
thousand years, not one
year
is like a thousand years. There are 365 days in a year. 365 times a thousand is 365,000. And that's not counting leap year. That's another 250 days. Time on earth should be 365,250 times longer, not just a thousand times longer.

I went back to the web page I found through Jeeves. It went through lots of examples showing that there's not much time dilation at 50% of the speed of light or 75% of the speed of light or even 99% of the speed of light. The real significant time dilation doesn't start until you get to 99.99999% of the speed of light. The NASA astrophysicist only calculated it at 99.99993% of the speed of light. To reach one day is like one thousand years or 365,250 times longer, you have to be going 99.9999999999999% of the speed of light.

Hard to believe that four billionths of a percent could make such a difference. That's like one person out of all the people who have ever lived on the earth. Maybe every little bit can make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. Kind of like a mustard seed.

I copied down all of the calculations and logged off the computer. There was still time for me to sit under our tree and read all of Dinah's poems again. I wondered if the library had any songbooks I could check
out with
Blowin' in the Wind
or
What a Wonderful World
. That would be a good project for tomorrow.

Laurie Gray earned her B.A. from Goshen College and her J.D. from Indiana University School of Law. Between college and law school, she taught high school Spanish, working summers as an interpreter in Guatemala. An experienced trial attorney and child advocate, Laurie is the founder of Socratic Parenting, LLC (
www.SocraticParenting.com
).
Summer Sanctuary
is her first novel.