You’ll enjoy coming to a new school.”
“But if we don’t have a house to live in, how can we move here?” Brooke asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I don’t have an answer to your question now. But I’ve been planning for months to start a new life in this town, and I will not willingly give up my plans.”
Eventually, she might have to return to Willow Creek, but not without checking her options. Janice wondered if her alternative idea of selling Mountjoy and buying another house in Stanton would be feasible. She doubted that the property would bring a good price in its present condition. Janice slowed the car to take another look as they drove past her legacy on the way into town.
“Looks like a haunted house to me,” Brooke observed.
A chill tingled along Janice’s spine again, for the same thought had occurred to her. She sensed that Mountjoy spelled trouble for her. Did danger lurk behind the thick undergrowth?
Her father’s visits to the family home had been infrequent, and after he became an adult, he never spent a night in the house. He avoided the place because, in every generation, a Reid had died a tragic death at Mountjoy. Would she be the Reid to die in the present generation? Annoyed at the thought, Janice questioned what had happened to her common sense. Again she remembered her uncle’s letter and his comment about mysterious happenings at Mountjoy.
During the four years she’d spent at the Valley of Hope, Janice had learned a lot about the Bible. Miss Caroline Renault, the director of the facility, had emphasized the necessity of memorizing Scripture verses. When she was especially troubled, Janice always reached into her storehouse of Scripture verses for a spiritual truth that encouraged her to carry on.
Glancing at Brooke’s woebegone face, fear again threatened to overwhelm Janice. Searching frantically for an antidote to combat this fear, Janice dipped into her memory bank.
“Brooke, Miss Caroline always said that the Bible can help us work out our problems. Let’s think of some Bible verses to encourage us to face the future with hope.”
Brooke sniffled and blew her nose with a pink tissue that she took from the pocket of her brown shorts. “I don’t know many verses ’cept the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third psalm.”
“That psalm has a lot of encouraging words. Can you think of one verse to say over and over when you’re scared?”
“‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’”
“That’s a good one,” Janice said. “The one I’m thinking about is from the New Testament. The apostle Paul encouraged his young friend, Timothy, by saying, ‘God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power; and of love, and of a sound mind.’ We won’t let that old dilapidated house scare us. Let’s think about how it looked a hundred years ago.”
“In that picture you have?”
“Yes. Maybe we can make it that way again.”
With a wistful sigh, Brooke said, “I do want a home of our own. I’m always afraid I’ll have to live with Dad and Mom again.”
Janice winced when Brooke expressed the fear that had worried her until she turned eighteen. “I’m your legal guardian now, and wherever I am, you’re going to be with me,” she said firmly.
“I don’t suppose they’d want me anyway.”
Hatred, so acute it almost choked her, surged through Janice. Her feelings about her parents had been one barrier she couldn’t overcome to maintain a satisfying Christian outlook. She couldn’t forgive her parents for the way they’d neglected Brooke and her. Leroy and Florence Reid were addicted to drugs and alcohol, and they spent most of their time in bars. Even when they were at home, they lolled around in drunken stupors. Most of their money was spent on alcohol, not food for their children.
She could have stood it for herself, but when it became clear even to her young eyes that Brooke was in danger of becoming malnourished, Janice had started hoarding away money taken from her parents’ wallets for food. She’d been successful in keeping them alive for six months before her parents were arrested and convicted of robbing a convenience store. They’d been sent to prison for ten years, with the possibility of parole after seven. Brooke had become a ward of the Department of Health and Human Services when Janice had been sent to the Valley of Hope.
Suddenly it dawned on Janice that it was almost time for her parents to be paroled. Even if they hadn’t contacted their daughters while they were in prison, if her father found out that she’d inherited his brother’s estate, he’d try to take the money away from her. She wished now that she’d been more secretive about where she was moving.
The compassion of Miss Caroline and the other staff members at VOH had compensated somewhat for the physical misery of Janice’s first fourteen years. But her parents’ neglect gnawed at Janice’s spirit every day, and she didn’t think she could ever forgive them. Even when she’d prayed the Lord’s Prayer in chapel services, she had always remained silent when they came to the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Her unwillingness to forgive had always stood between Janice and a satisfactory relationship with God. She believed that Jesus had died for her sins and she’d accepted Him as her Savior. But could she ever claim Him as Lord of her life until she humbled herself and forgave her parents?
Chapter Two
The one-story, rambling elementary school, with a redbrick and stone exterior, was a relatively new structure. Janice halted the car beside a man who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the school, and rolled down the car’s window.
“Are any of the school officials in today?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The principal and the guidance counselor are here, and a secretary.”
“Good. Where should I park?”
He motioned to the front of the building. “Right here beside the school is okay,” he said. “There ain’t much traffic today.” With a chuckle, he added, “But wait ’til school starts—we’ll have plenty of cars around here then.”
“Thanks.”
The man waved a friendly hand and continued sweeping as she and Brooke got out of the car and entered the building through a set of double doors. They faced a long hallway with other corridors to the left and right. An arrow on the wall, labeled “Office,” pointed to the right.
“I’m scared,” Brooke said, her steps lagging.
Janice was uneasy about their situation, too, and she muttered, “‘God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power.’”
She straightened her back, took Brooke’s hand and headed resolutely toward the office. Her shaky self-assurance suffered an immediate setback when she turned the corner and narrowly missed colliding with the same man she’d bumped into at the convenience store earlier in the day.
Lance Gordon couldn’t believe his eyes. He couldn’t be encountering this young woman twice in the same day! Normally, he wouldn’t have given the previous incident a second thought, but this woman’s long-lashed green eyes and stubborn chin had flashed frequently into his mind as he’d continued
