“I just can’t. It’s best for you that I don’t.”
“Adults always say that when they just don’t want to explain,” he complained.
She chuckled, trying to sound carefree. “You think so, do you? Well, you’ll figure it out one of these days. You just remember that everything I do, I do to spare you misery. Okay?”
“Making me live with Tiffany isn’t sparing me misery,” he told her grumpily.
She laughed. It was either that or sob. “I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he groused, but then he muttered, “I love you, too.”
She could barely speak again after that. Managing to squeak out a “Good night,” she broke the connection, clutched the phone to her chest and wept until sleep at last overcame her.
* * *
“Poor girl,” Odelia opined, tears glistening in her eyes. She glanced longingly at the door that connected the sisters’ sitting room to the suite she shared with Kent. Strangely, marriage had somehow enlarged Odelia. She was no less scatterbrained or flamboyant—indeed, she seemed rather more so, as Kent encouraged her shamelessly—yet, she had somehow grown more confident and knowing.
“Poor Brooks,” Hypatia said. “The last thing he needs, with Morgan now happily married, is a reminder of all he has lost.”
“This is true,” Magnolia admitted, “and yet, if we’ve learned anything over the years, we’ve learned that God has plans and reasons for what and whom He brings into this house.”
Her sisters murmured their agreement, nodding.
“Our first concern,” Magnolia went on, “must be Eva herself. Perhaps my fear that she is dying is unfounded, but her spiritual condition is not. She blatantly admitted her lack of faith.”
“Brooks originally stated that she would be staying only until her stitches could be removed,” Hypatia revealed, “so our time with her is limited, regardless of the true state of her health.”
“Then, there’s no time to lose,” Magnolia decided. “She won’t like it, but we need to get her to prayer meeting tomorrow night.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Hypatia asked, sounding tired. She tugged the collar of her navy blue silk robe closer about her throat. Magnolia noted idly that its white piping looked very like her skin, which seemed unusually pale tonight.
“Leave Eva to me,” Magnolia said, waving a hand. “Are you cold, sister?”
“This winter has seemed interminable,” Hypatia complained. “I’m off to my warm bed.” She heaved herself out of the armchair where she customarily sat for these late evening chats. The sisters routinely spoke and prayed together at the end of the day, and Magnolia was glad that hadn’t changed with Odelia’s marriage a couple years ago.
“Good night, dear,” Odelia said, uncurling from the corner of the sofa.
“Good night.”
“Kent thinks she needs a good multivitamin,” Odelia whispered as soon as the door closed behind their sister’s back.
Magnolia blinked. She hadn’t noticed that Hypatia needed anything, though perhaps she had seemed to suffer more from the cold this winter than in years past. Kent, being a pharmacist, would know about these things, though.
“Getting her the vitamins and getting her to take them are two different things,” Magnolia murmured. “Maybe we should speak to Brooks about it.”
“Hmm,” Odelia considered. “Perhaps so, though perhaps not just now.”
Magnolia smiled. “I suspect the right time will come.”
“It always does,” Odelia said with a giggle, hurrying toward her private suite and her waiting husband.
Magnolia sighed and shook her head. It had come for Odelia after fifty years, and the result seemed to be one long honeymoon. She prayed that Eva Russell’s time for joy would come before it was too late. Hers and dear Brooks’s.
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