“Yes,” Amy immediately answered.
Ian left the room.
“Eat a cookie for me,” Jeff called after him.
After Amy tucked Ian into bed, she thought about going directly to the writing room so she could read in private. But to avoid Jeff would be an act of cowardice. She returned downstairs to the family room and curled up on the couch with a book while Jeff was on the computer adjusting his roster for a fantasy football league he’d joined with some friends from church. Amy took a break and fixed a cup of hot tea. Jeff joined her at the kitchen table, and she braced herself for a fresh volley of reasons why she needed to get a job as a domestic worker.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself about Megan,” Jeff said. “She wants to please us, but she also feels the need to show that she’s an independent person.”
“I know that’s part of growing up, but the growing pains are real.”
“For both of you. And I don’t always pick up on what’s going on between you. Let me know when you need reinforcements.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Amy felt herself relax. Knowing Jeff cared and wanted to be there for her with Megan helped a lot. He reached out and touched her on the arm in a simple gesture of reassurance. She picked up his hand and kissed it.
Before going to bed that night, Amy and Jeff prayed together. One of Jeff’s best qualities was honesty when he talked to God, and he never tried to manipulate Amy in his prayers. He honored her earlier request and didn’t mention working for Ms. Burris. The simple integrity of Jeff’s prayer life was an attribute Amy knew she would incorporate into a book character someday.
Toward the end of the prayer, Jeff placed his right hand over Amy’s left hand and asked God to bless her and give her strength. When they finished praying, Amy knew she’d rather have Jeff with his real flaws and strengths than the more perfect yet imaginary men who lived in her stories. She closed her eyes and drifted into a peaceful sleep.
In the middle of the night, she found herself in the heavenly living room.
Most mornings Jeff got up before Amy and went downstairs to brew a pot of coffee. Amy joined him as the last bit of water seeped through the grounds.
“Did you knock on Megan’s door?” she asked. “It’s been taking her longer to get ready the past week.”
“No. Do you want me to go upstairs and do it?”
“Drink the first cup of coffee,” Amy said with a wave of her hand. “I’ll let her know it’s time to get going.”
Megan groaned in response to Amy’s gentle nudge of her shoulders.
“How does my hair look?” she asked, her eyes still closed.
Amy surveyed the silky dark strands that covered her daughter’s pillow.
“Like something from the cover of a women’s magazine at the grocery store. Your hair is always beautiful. All you’ll need to do is brush it out.”
Megan rubbed her eyes. “Thanks for giving me straight hair.”
“You’re welcome. What do you want for breakfast?”
“Is Dad cooking?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell him a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar would be nice.”
When Amy returned to the kitchen, Jeff was cooking oatmeal the old-fashioned way on top of the stove.
“How did you know Megan wanted oatmeal?” she asked.
“She mentioned it last night before she went to bed. I’m glad she didn’t change her mind in her sleep.”
“I had an interesting night,” Amy said as she took her favorite mug from the cupboard. “I went to the living room.”
“Did you get an idea for a new book?”
Amy put a spoonful of sugar and a dash of creamer into the mug, which was decorated with pictures of hummingbirds from all over the world. She added coffee until the dark brown liquid reached the top. She stirred it slowly as she debated whether to repeat the words she’d heard in the night.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” she said.
“Uh-oh,” Jeff said, glancing down at the stovetop. “Hey, get me some water, please. This oatmeal is getting too thick.”
Amy filled a measuring cup with water and handed it to him. Jeff never asked about her dreams. After they were engaged, she told him about them and emphasized how personal they were. Jeff wasn’t curious about supernatural things and didn’t challenge her desire to keep her dreams private.
When Amy received the biblical foundation for her first novel in a dream, Jeff perked up because it might have a practical impact on their lives, but he continued to honor the barrier Amy had established. If she wanted to tell him something, she would.
Breakfast wasn’t a family meal. Jeff ate his oatmeal while Amy made sure Ian was awake. Ian liked to eat before he got dressed, and he had returned to his bedroom by the time Megan appeared and sprinkled brown sugar over a scoop of raisins in her bowl. Jeff came through the kitchen on his way out of the house to work.
“Thanks for remembering, Dad,” Megan said. “It looks yummy.”
Jeff patted her on the head and gave Amy a quick kiss.
“We’ll be working at the Burris house all day,” he said. “Would it mess you up if I put in an hour of overtime?”
“Go ahead. I’ll save supper for you. And don’t forget the football game. Ian wants to go.”
“Sure.”
“Anything you want me to ask Ms. Burris?”
“No,” Amy said more sharply than she’d intended.
“Okay.” Jeff held up his hands.
“Please, not yet,” Amy responded. “I need to think about it some more.”
After Jeff left, Amy put a small serving of oatmeal into a bowl. She might delay the conversation, but working as a housemaid for Ms. Burris would be a topic for future discussion with Jeff. She poked at her oatmeal. Amy’s mother had never perfected the art of cooking oatmeal and usually produced a gelatinous mess. Jeff’s version was much more appetizing, but fifteen years of marriage hadn’t reprogrammed her attitude toward the dish.
“Are you going to the football game tonight?” Megan asked her.
“No. I’ll stay home.”
“Bethany’s mom is going to take us.”
“Okay. Then you can come home with Dad and Ian.”
Megan looked up from her bowl. “Some of us want to go out for pizza after the game.”
“Who?”
“Bethany, Crystal, Alecia, and Sadie.”
“Where?”
“Pizza Palace.”
The locally owned restaurant was large, well lit, and crowded on Friday and Saturday nights. There weren’t any dark booths or secluded corners. It was as safe a place as existed in Cross Plains for fourteen-year-old girls to go in a group.
“Is Bethany’s mom going to stay with you?”
“No, but she’s going to come back and get us after about an hour or so. Can I go? I really want to. Alecia has to be home by eleven, so we won’t be out late, and I have my own money for pizza. Crystal and I are going to share a small one with spinach and mushrooms on it.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?”
“I really, really want to go,” Megan responded with a plaintive look.
“All right.”
“Thanks,” Megan said.
Megan returned to her oatmeal. Amy took a few sips of coffee.
“How did Bethany talk her mother into doing all the driving around?” she asked.
“Oh, she’s nice,” Megan said without glancing up.
Megan finished breakfast and went upstairs, leaving Amy to mull over the difference between nice and not-so-nice mothers. She hoped Megan’s memories of her would be more pleasant than Amy’s childhood recollections of oatmeal.
Amy spent the morning performing maid duties in her own house. She cleaned the upstairs bathrooms, a job that included fishing Megan’s hair from the bathtub drain. Long strands of her daughter’s hair didn’t look
so beautiful covered with soap scum. Then she organized the items under the cabinets and scrubbed the floors. When she finished, Amy inspected her work with satisfaction but knew no member of the family would notice or thank her. A follow-up thought stopped her. What if Jeff noticed and used it as a reason to push the possibility of a part-time housecleaning job?
After taking a shower, Amy dressed for lunch. It was a five-minute walk to Natalie’s house. It was a clear, cool day, so she pulled on a burgundy sweater on her way out the door. The air was crisp, and Amy was glad the stifling humidity of summer was gone.
The developer of their neighborhood had installed narrow concrete sidewalks on one side of the street. The two hundred cookie-cutter houses in the subdivision were built close together. The total population of Cross Plains was around thirty thousand people, so the neighborhood was one of the biggest residential areas in town. Owners of the homes ran the gamut from retirees wanting to downsize, to young professional couples just starting out, to families like Amy’s with the primary wage earner employed in a high-paying hourly job.
An older woman walked slowly down her driveway to retrieve a rolling trash container from the curb. The woman looked familiar, but Amy couldn’t remember her name. There wasn’t time for Amy to make a quick detour to the other side of the street.
“Good morning,” Amy said as she came closer.
The older woman squinted at her through her glasses.
“Oh, it’s the author,” she replied. “What are you doing out on a walk? You should be home writing another book. I loved your novel and bought a copy to send to my sister in Phoenix. She liked it, too.”
Amy desperately tried to recall the woman’s name.
“Thanks, Mrs. Brewster,” Amy said with relief.
“Would you have time to meet her for a few minutes when she comes for a visit at Christmas? I don’t want to be a nuisance, but it would mean a lot to her.”
“Uh, sure. Just let me know. You can stop by my house or I can come to you.”
“That’s wonderful. She’ll be excited. She goes to a huge church and has loaned her copy of the book to all her friends.”
Cecilia had told Amy that each book was read by an average of 2.3 readers. Extensive loaning hurt sales, but it also meant the message was getting out to a larger audience. That figure mattered the most to Amy.
“Let her know I finished a new novel last week. It will be available early next year.”
“I can’t wait to find out what happens to Ann Marie.”
“It’s not a sequel. It’s a fresh story with new characters.”
“But I really liked Ann Marie,” Mrs. Brewster said with obvious disappointment. “Her trust in God even when her husband was unfaithful to her was so inspirational. And when he asked for her forgiveness, I cried like a baby.”
This was familiar territory for Amy. Series were popular, especially with female readers, but both of Amy’s books were stand-alone novels. She often had to respond to similar comments forwarded to her website.
“Me, too,” she answered. “But I think you’re going to enjoy the new novel. It’s called The Everlasting Arms. The title is taken from the first part of Deuteronomy 33:27: ‘The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’”
“Oh, I like that already,” Mrs. Brewster said, brightening up.
“Maybe I can give you and your sister a sneak peek and share a page with you when she visits.”
“That would be wonderful! But I’m not going to tell her. It’ll be a Christmas surprise.”
Amy said good-bye and continued her walk. What a writing career lacked in financial stability, it made up for in personal satisfaction.
Natalie’s house had a brick facing, which made it slightly different from Amy’s house on the outside, but the two houses had identical floor plans. It was odd walking into the same house and seeing it decorated so differently.
Natalie’s husband worked as a professional photographer. Amy knew that their income fluctuated; however, Natalie had received a sizable inheritance when her parents died, and her house was beautifully furnished. She’d turned the master bedroom into a fantasy suite complete with a whirlpool tub, and the backyard was filled with top-of-the-line playground equipment for the boys. The kitchen had granite countertops and a beautiful ceramic-tile floor. On the walls throughout the house were original watercolor paintings. Natalie was a talented artist who specialized in beach and nature scenes. She’d given Amy two paintings as gifts. Amy hung one in her kitchen and the other in the master bedroom.
Jeff believed it would be hard for Luke and Natalie to recoup what they’d invested in the house when they sold it, but Amy knew Natalie didn’t think that way. She feathered her nest the best she could, then opened it up for others to enjoy. An invitation to one of her holiday parties or summer cookouts was highly prized in the neighborhood.
Amy rang the door chime that played the first few notes of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In a few seconds Natalie opened the door. She was wearing an apron that made her look like a busy housewife from the 1960s.
“What have you been doing?” Amy asked.
“Cooking something messy. I’d like to give you a hug, but I don’t want to get anything on you. Come into the kitchen.”
Amy could see splotches of brown, green, and yellow on the apron.
“Where did you get the apron?” she asked as she followed Natalie through the family room with its large flat-screen TV and fancy speaker system. A separate part of the family room was arranged for people to sit and talk.
“It belonged to my grandmother. I found it when I was cleaning out my mother’s house and couldn’t bear the thought of throwing it away. When I was a little girl, my grandmother would wear it when we made sugar cookies or brownies.”
“What are you making today?”
“I hoped it would be a treat for our lunch, but it’s turned into a science experiment.”
They entered the kitchen.
“Walk softly,” Natalie whispered.
“Why?”
“I don’t want the soufflé to fall.”
Amy glanced at the wall-mounted oven.
“What kind of soufflé?”
“Herb. It’s got basil, rosemary, thyme, nutmeg, fresh mustard, Monterey Jack cheese, and more eggs than a doctor would recommend for a lumberjack to eat in a month. I bought a bunch of fresh stuff at the new organic market.”
“Sounds like fun.”
A buzzer went off.
“That’s it,” Natalie said.
Natalie gingerly took a pair of oven mitts from a drawer and cautiously opened the oven door. She raised one of the mitts to her mouth.
“Uh-oh,” she said.
She reached into the oven and took out the soufflé and held it so Amy could see it. The dish was golden brown with generous green sprinkles, but it was as lopsided as a ski slope. One side towered over the other, which had completely collapsed.
“It looks like a volcano erupted and blew off half the mountain,” Natalie said with a frown as she set the casserole dish on a blue trivet. She pointed at the collapsed side. “And the people who lived on this side were buried alive under a molten egg-and-cheese mixture.”
Amy laughed. “I bet it tastes scrumptious.”
Natalie took off the apron and hung it on a hook beside the stove.
“I wonder why it does that?” she said, inspecting the soufflé from another angle. “The one on the cooking show was as flat as an airport runway.”
“You’re inspiring me,” Amy responded.
“What do you mean?”
“The way you describe your soufflé is more entertaining than some of the scenes I write in my books.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better. At least it’s you. I’d hate to serve something like this to a group of women from the church.”
There was a small antique cherry table against one wall of the kitchen with a vase of fresh flowers in the middle. Natal
ie scooped out a serving of soufflé from the fluffy side for Amy and another for herself. It was steaming hot.
“It’ll cool in a jiffy,” Natalie said. “Let’s eat.”
Amy put a tiny bite in her mouth. The hot soufflé instantly melted, leaving a marvelous combination of flavors on her tongue.
“This is amazing,” she said.
Natalie looked skeptical but sampled a bite herself. Her eyes lit up.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
Nibbling the soufflé occupied the next few minutes. Amy didn’t want conversation to distract her from savoring the dish.
“I won’t forget this lunch,” she said, placing her fork beside her plate. “I expected a nice salad. This is so much more fun.”
“If I can’t experiment on you, who would be my guinea pig?” Natalie asked.
“I ate like a pig. Are you going to feed this to Luke for supper? I think it would taste good warmed up. The boys might even try it.”
“I’ll fix a plate for Luke so he won’t see how lopsided it is, but I can’t count on the boys. They’ll need a backup dish, something I know they love, like ravioli from a can. Do you want some hot tea?”
“Sure.”
Natalie filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove before returning to the table.
“I haven’t been able to get your warning about Noah’s field trip out of my mind,” she said.
Amy flinched. She’d hoped they’d get through their time together without the subject coming up.
“Tell me more about the dream that made you believe he might be in danger.”
Amy took a deep breath. “Like I said, it was a quick image that came back to me when you mentioned the fire station.”
“So, if I hadn’t said anything, you wouldn’t have brought it up on your own?”
Amy hadn’t thought about that aspect of the experience.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true. Your words triggered it.”
“Then I’m glad I mentioned it,” Natalie said. “Is that the first time that’s happened to you? You know, seeing something that might happen in the future and warning someone about it?”
“Like that, yes.”
“But you’ve had other dreams?”
The Living Room Page 5
