Authors: Karen Kingsbury
During the break before their auditions, Jenny Flanigan came up to the table and took hold of Katy’s hand. “No favors, Katy. Treat them like anyone else.”
They were just the words Katy needed to hear. “Thanks.” Her heart swelled and she squeezedJenny’s fingers. “I needed that.”
Bailey was first up when they got started again. Her audition was upbeat and right on key. Everything about it proved that Katy had nothing to worry about.
The Flanigan girl was a natural, a willowy beauty with a sweet voice. She moved easily onstage, and Katy guessed she would be a wonderful dancer. Katy made a note next to Bailey’s name to call her back, maybe for the part of Becky Thatcher. She could always ask Alice Stryker to have the dress adjusted.
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Sarah Jo was next, and Katy held her breath. Okay, let’s see what she’s got.
SarahJo sang “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid, and after the first line, Katy understood Mrs. Stryker’s determination, The girl looked unremarkable—thin with wispy brown hair—but she sang with her entire being, letting the song flow through to her fingertips as she stretched out her hands during the chorus.
Very simply, Sarah Jo Stryker lit up the room. Her voice was amazing, beautiful and full, mature in a way that sent chills down Katy’s spine. She was composed and self-assured, presenting the song in a way that made everyone in the room see her as Ariel, the conflicted mermaid.
No wonder her mother expected SarahJo to be famous. If the girl wanted a career on the stage, she definitely had the voice and stage presence for it.
When she finished, a burst of applause came from the group seated in the sanctuary. Sarah Jo gave Katy a weak smile and a slight shrug.
Katy’s heart went out to her. It was clear Sarah Jo expected to be penalized because of her mother’s behavior. Katy returned the smile with a nod. She stared down at her notepad and pursed her lips. Apparently she’d have to find a way to work with Mrs. Stryker. She poised her pencil over the paper and wrote SarahJo Stryker—callback.
Next up was Ashley Zarelli, a sweet, dark-haired seventeenyearold who had overcome a troubled past. As an infant, Ash had been left in a dresser drawer for the first two months of her life. A local senator and his wife took her for the next eleven months, but then the state stepped in and placed her back with her biological mother. Life spiraled downward quickly, but not until Ash was four years old did the state take her from her biological mother for good and return her to the couple. She’d been part of the Zarelli family ever since.
Tani Zarelli, Ash’s adoptive mother, once told Katy that as dif 29
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ficult as her daughter’s life had been, she was certain the Lord had given her a message regarding Ashley. That one day she would be a teacher of His Word. It was a promise Tani and her husband held on to when Ash was younger and suffered from low self-esteem and nightmares.
As the Zarelli girl took the stage, Katy was struck by the faithfulness of God.
Here was a precious teenager who had been left for dead by her biological mother, now glowing with the light of Christ. Ash’s involvement in the theater was a living picture of God’s promises alive and at work. In the last CKT
performance—Charlotte’s Web–Ashley had worked with Tim Reed to lead the cast in Scripture reading or prayers.
She sang a song from 1he Sound of Music and did well enough to earn a callback.
The auditions continued right up until seven o’clock, with one hundred thirty-six children from both ends of the CKT age range—eight-year-olds auditioning for the first time to eighteen-year-olds taking their last chance at a part.
Once the kids and their parents were out of the building, Heath Hudson approached Katy. “Want me to wait for you?” Katy’s mind went blank.
“Do we have plans?”
“No, I just, uh . . 2’ Heath’s cheeks grew a shade darker. “I thought maybe I’d wait in the other room and we could get coffee when you’re done.”
“Heath, that’s so sweet.” Katy took his hands in hers. “But we’ll be a while, and when we’re done I need to get home.” She paused. “Okay?”
“Sure.” Heath gave her hands a squeeze and separated himself, taking a few steps back. ‘I’ll see you Friday at practice.” “Right.” Katy gave a friendly wave. “See you then.”
When she turned back to her creative team, both Nancy and Rhonda had knowing looks on their faces. Katy held up one hand. ,Stop. Don’t even start.” Being single around so many
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families meant someone was always trying to set her up. But that night they had more to talk about than Heath Hudson.
“I won’t give you a hard time, Katy.” Al crossed his arms and gave his wife a teasing poke in the ribs. “You girls are terrible around each other. Can’t she say hello to Heath without you setting a wedding date?”
They all laughed, but the silliness faded quickly. The creative team huddled for the next hour and decided on forty-three kids for callbacks. There would be some sixty kids in the play, but not everyone needed a callback to get a part. The second day of auditions was only to cast the speaking parts. Some children would earn smaller ensemble parts merely on the strength of their first audition.
Katy’s stomach was in knots by the time she drove back to Clear Creek and pulled into the Flanigans’ driveway. The knots were normal. Auditions were the hardest of all. In a perfect world, every child wanting a part in the play would get one, but Katy had parts for less than half the kids who tried out.
And something about the way she felt was different this time. The lights in the house were off, which was good. She didn’t want the distraction of conversation, not tonight. Not only because of the task that lay ahead the next day, while she and her creative team held callbacks and cast the show, but because of something else, something that made the knots in her stomach worse than usual tonight.
Katy lay awake trying to figure out what it was, and she kept coming back to the same thing—the memory of the college girl and her boyfriend at the back of the sanctuary. Even after three hours of auditions and another hour of discussion, Katy couldn’t get the picture out of her head.
The longer she thought about it, the more it made sense. Because for all the richness of CKT and all the ways she felt part of the biggest family anyone could ever hope for, there was no de
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nying the basic truth. Katy had no one to call her own, no boyfriend or special someone as a prospect for the futurel
As she fell asleep she was convinced that the thing causing knots in her stomach was more than anxiety over casting Tom Sawyer, something more than worrying about what part Bailey Flanigan or SarahJo Stryker or Tim Reed or Ashley Zarelli might earn at callbacks. It was something no one else could see or understand, something so big it threatened to send her packing her bags and running straight back to Chicago.
A deep and crushing loneliness.
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AsHLEY BAxTER BLAKE was sitting at her easel putting the finishing touches on a lakeside painting and missing her mother when she heard the front door open.
“We’re home!” Landon’s voice rang through the house, and the sound of a child’s footsteps followed.
“Mommy, we caught the greenest frog on the whole shoreline!” Cole was six now, kindergarten behind him. He had mud smudges on his cheeks and lake scum stuck in his blond hair. “I couldn’t get him ‘cause he was lickety fast, but then Daddy creeped up real quiet and—” Cole made a sweeping motion with his hand–”he snatched him just like that.”
Landon entered the room, the knees of his jeans caked with dirt. He looked at Ashley, his eyes shining, speaking volumes before he ever said a word.
“Actually—” Cole scratched at the green slime stuck in his hair—”Daddy caught three frogs. He’s the bestest catcher.”
“Three?” Ashley raised her eyebrows in Landon’s direction, teasing him. “My big, strapping, firefighter husband catching
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not one but three frogs on a sunny summer morning? I’m so impressed.”
“Yeah, me too.” Cole’s eyes were big and excited. “But the last one was the greenest one.” He looked up at Landon. “It even had bright green feet, right?”
Ashley lowered her chin in Cole’s direction. “And where’s the bright green froggy right now?’
“Oh, we let him go.” Cole gave a serious nod. “He lives at the lake.” His eyes lit up. “But we can catch him again next time, right, Daddy?”
“Right.” Landon dropped down to Cole’s level and worked his thumb across one of the smudges. “Hey, how about that shower?”
“Oh yeah.” Cole grinned at Ashley; then he bent halfway over and shook his hair.
“No lunch until we get the dirt out of our hair.” He straightened; then with a quick wave at both of them, he dashed out of the room and down the hallway toward the bathroom.
Ashley set her paintbrush down. She used the back of her hand to brush a lock of hair off her forehead; then she moved away from the easel and into Landon’s arms. “Sounds like a successful morning.”
“Mmmm.” He nuzzled her face. “A hike along the lake with my favorite boy.., bright green frogs..” He kissed her, a kiss of smoldering passion and desire that had only grown stronger in the year they’d been married. “And now this.” He drew back and looked into her eyes. “Mornings don’t get much better than this.”
From down the hall, they heard the sound of the shower. Ashley drew Landon closer and kissed him again, longer this time. When she stopped for a breath, she giggled, brushing her nose against his. “Know what I love?”
Landon ran his hands down the length of her arms and searched her eyes. “What?”
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“I love hearing Cole call you Daddy.”
Light and love mixed together and shone from Landon’s eyes. “Not as much as I love having him as my son.”
Ashley moved into his arms again and laid her head on his chest. “All those years I fought you. How could I have been so stubborn?”
He kissed the top of her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Look at what we’ve got.”
Landon was right. Never mind her escapades in Paris, the fact that she’d come home pregnant and alone and feeling like the Baxter family black sheep. Landon had always been there, coaxing her toward him, making her believe she was worth something even when she couldn’t believe it herself. They survived the years when he was in New York City and she was dealing with fears about her health.
Years when she never would’ve
dreamed they’d find a life together.
But here they were.
He pulled back and studied her painting. “You haven’t done one of the lake from that angle before. I like it.” He cocked his head, his voice tender. “Reminds me of the last Baxter picnic.”
“Before Mom died.” Ashley took a step closer and ran her fingers along the edge of the canvas. “I thought so too.”
“Will there be people in it?”
“I think so.” She looked at him. “I’d like to put an older couple on a bench looking out at the water. We’d only see the backs of their heads.”
Landon shifted his attention to the painting and then back to her. “Your parents?”
Tears stung Ashley’s eyes. “Mmm-hmm.” She let her gaze drift to the image of the lake. “It’s like if I put her in my paintings, I can keep her memory alive longer.”
“Ash.” He held his arms out to her. “Come here.”
In the background the shower stopped, and they heard Cole moving about in the bathroom.
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Ashley closed her eyes and let herself get lost in kandon’s embrace.
“I can’t believe it’s been almost a year.”
“I can still hear her voice.”
“Me too.” Ashley sniffed and looked up at Landon. “Every time we visit Dad it’s like I sense her there, working in the kitchen or having tea at the dining-room table. Reading a magazine in the living room.” She hesitated. “I miss her so much.”
Landon didn’t say anything, and Ashley was glad. He didn’t have to have an answer every time she missed her mother. It was enough that he held her and let her talk about her feelings.
“Know what I’ve been thinking?” She moved back to her easel and sat on the stool, facing him.
“What?”
“We need to get involved in some … I don’t know, some community work.
Something in Mom’s memory.”
Landon leaned against the wall and looked out the window. “Your work at Sunset Hills was like that.”
He was right. The work she’d done with Alzheimer’s patients at Sunset Hills was something that would’ve honored her mother’s memory. But she had left the job after getting married and never returned. The owner of the house had hired a new manager, and now she only stopped by on occasion to visit her favorite residents.
Ashley sat a little straighter. “Kari was telling me about this new theater group in town—Christian Kids Theater—something like that.” She and her sister Kari had grown much closer in the past year, comforting each other in the wake of losing their mother. Now she tried to remember the details of their conversation.
‘That’s right.” Landon squinted. “One of Ryan’s coaching buddies is involved, isn’t he? Jim Flanigan?”
Ashley snapped her fingers. “That’s it. Jim Flanigan. He and his wife have kids in the theater group, I think.”
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“So…” Landon moved closer, smiling. “What’s my little dogooder wife thinking up?”
“Well…” Ashley felt a surge of hope rise within her. It was one more thing she loved about Landon, that even when she was missing her mother the most, he could help her find a reason to smile. “Maybe they need help making sets, you know, painting backdrops, that kind of thing.”
“Hmmm.” He scratched his chin. “I thought you said you wanted us both to get involved.”
“I do.” She hopped off the stool and reached out, taking hold of his hands, “You can paint, Landon. Just because you’re a big macho fireman doesn’t mean you can’t paint.”
“I can paint a house maybe.” He gave her a skeptical look, but the way his eyes danced told her he was considering the possibility. “Theater sets).”
“Yes.” She tugged on his hands and angled her head. “Mom loved the theater. We could work at it together and do it in her memory.”