A Child's Wish

“I don’t want her in my room.”

“This is my house, young lady. My friends are welcome wherever I say they are.” Clearly Mark was shocked. And not at his best.

“I won’t say my prayers if she’s there, and you can’t make me do that. They’re between me and God.”

“Kelsey Elizabeth!”

“No, Mark, it’s okay,” Susan said, placing a hand on Mark’s arm as he rose.

“It’s not okay,” Mark reached for his daughter, hauling her around the table with a hand on her upper arm. “You apologize at once.”

“No.”

“Kelsey, I said apologize.”

His grip wasn’t firm enough to hold the child if she attempted to pull away. But his voice could have stopped a grown woman in her tracks.

“No. They’re my prayers and you have no right to give them to anyone.”

“You, young lady, have no right to speak disrespectfully to me or to anyone else I bring into this house.”

Kelsey stood resolute, her chin puckered with displeasure.

“I asked you to apologize.”

“No.”

“Kelsey, Susan has been nothing but kind to you, taking you shopping for clothes, cooking for you, offering to help make your Easter dress. Inviting you to tea.”

“She’s trying to be like my mother.”

Susan shrank and Meredith’s heart ached for her friend. But her entire body was filled with Kelsey’s misery and she had no idea how to make any of it stop.

“She’s not trying to be like your mother at all, Kelsey,” Mark said. “But she is trying to help, when your mother isn’t here to do so.”

“I don’t need her help.”

“Kelsey! I will not stand for this rudeness.”

Kelsey stomped her foot. “And I won’t stand for you trying to make her into my mother!” she screamed. “She’s not my mother! She’s not! I hate her!” With one quick glance at Susan, accompanied by a sob, the little girl tore out of her father’s grasp and ran for the house.

“Kelsey!” Mark started after her.

“I’m going to go,” Susan said at the same time.

“No, wait,” Mark turned back and then looked toward the house, his brows drawn.

Meredith stood. “Mark, you stay with Susan. You’re too angry to give Kelsey what she needs right now. I’ll go to her.”

His clenched lips relaxed after a long moment and he nodded, his shoulders dropping. “I don’t know what to do with her,” he said. “I never would have believed she could behave that way.”

“She’s hurt,” Meredith said, worried about both Kelsey and her friend. Susan’s eyes were filled with tears. “And she’s scared.”

And she might kick me out of her room, as well, Meredith thought as she headed into the house alone.

MARK WAS SITTING by himself in the living room when Meredith came out of Kelsey’s room almost an hour later.

“Where’s Susan?”