I wanted to tell her what I’d long believed.
That even Death had a heart.
He just didn’t have anyone who might accept it, so it went ungiven.
I didn’t say any of that.
We were sisters, but we were not the same. For a long time, I’d believed we were because people always told me I was so much like my sister. It was only implied, sometimes blatantly, that I was the pale imitation. But I’d learned the hard way to strip our relationship of comparison.
We did not have to be contrary traits. We could both be beautiful, smart, happy.
In our different ways.
I decided to take a page out of Priest’s book and show her through actions, not words. They were so much more powerful.
So, I only smiled slightly, wrapping my sister’s love around my aching heart, and leaned forward to tug her into a hug. She fell into it as if she had been poised and ready, exhaling into our embrace the way one did when they’d held their breath. I giggled slightly as she nuzzled into my hair, then sobered slightly to get in just one parting shot.
“If you stopped thinking about who Priest is and focused on who I might be, I think you’d have an easier time…You know, he calls me his ‘Little Shadow’,” I confessed into the soft cloud of her hair the way I might have in confession at First Light Church. “If it helps you, think of it like that. I may be your sunshine girl, but everything has a shadow. Priest is mine.”
* * *
* * *
“What is faith?”
First Light Church was quiet, the echoing, almost resonant silence of a holy place that felt like velvet against your skin and soft stuffing in your ears. The faces of the eight-to-ten-year-old boys and girls in the semi-circle curving out from either side of my chair were placid with thoughtfulness. They considered my softly worded question as if it was scripture itself.
They were good kids—the boys with tidy hair and pressed button-ups that made them look like somewhat silly and adorable caricatures of older men, while the girls all seemed molded immaculately after their mothers just as I had once been.
Not a rebel among them.
Except…
“Faith is the belief in something you can’t see, hear, or touch,” Sammy Radcliff declared, his voice petulant, his chin at an angle of defiance. “Faith is for people who don’t care about getting real answers to their questions.”
I blinked at the red-headed ten-year-old boy who was one of my sister’s greatest friends. He was autistic but highly functioning, especially after working for years with his therapists and Loulou at the Autism Center. I didn’t know him that well. I tended to avoid close relationships with people Loulou had already bonded with to avoid the inevitable comparison.
“Don’t say that, dummy,” Ethan Mannix snapped, leaning forward in his seat to frown. “You want God to strike you down?”
“Hey, hey,” I soothed. “How do we treat each other? With compassion and kindness, even if someone doesn’t share the same views as us. Sammy, maybe you can explain why you feel that way?”
I wanted him to explain so that the children could have a true discourse on the subject, but also because I agreed with him to a certain extent.
Faith was not about receiving answers.
Sammy blinked his wide eyes. “If you want answers, why do you ask someone who will not give you answers?”
There was logic in that, at once simple and profound. I studied Sammy, with his unruly mop of hair and the stain of something on his shirt contrasted to the keen purpose in his gaze. He was a contradiction, and I found myself smiling.
I liked contradictions.
“Faith isn’t about concrete answers, though, Sammy,” I explained, leaning forward to increase the intimacy of our conversation. I remembered vaguely that Lou had once said Sammy liked to be touched and cuddled. My fingers twitched to push back a springy lock of that fiery hair only a few shades lighter than Priest’s. “Faith is about sensation. You say you cannot believe in something you can’t see or touch, but have you ever heard of a sixth sense? The sense of the spirit. You can feel faith in your body the way you feel sadness or guilt, happiness or wistfulness. When I think of those things I believe in, not just God, but my family, my friends and my faith in their love for me, I feel it radiate in my chest.”
I thumped my hand over my heart, then splayed my fingers wide, watching as Sammy tracked the movement, as he cocked his head slightly in another faint mimicry of Priest’s more robotic movement.
The rest of the kids listened raptly, even Billy Huxley, wane and red-eyed from lack of sleep because his poor dad was dying of a heart condition, seemed animated by my words.