Sundry Days Read Free Page A

don’t understand why girls have to be so—I don’t know—
    and why you never even see any after sixth grade.  They’re rare, that’s the word one of my dads used.  They’re special.  Not like boys.
    Probably I won’t be the only one who wants to marry Rebekah, when she’s grown up.  I bet there’ll be hundreds of boys lining up to be her husbands. It’ll be like a contest, a competition, even though we’re not supposed to have competitions.
    If it is a competition, I’m going to win.  And I’m not going to share her.

Chapter 3
    Susannah
    Domestic Disturbances
     
     
     
    I’ve got all kinds of information, strategies and techniques in my bag of tricks.  I’m a certified family counselor, after all.  I’ve been practicing for more than ten years.   Tom and I spend our days helping people who struggle with family issues.
    So why can’t I help myself?  Or know what to do when it comes to my own family?
    I don’t think Tom knows what to do, either.  Not this time.
    “We have to think things over,” he says, wavering between husband and counselor mode. “It’s important to look at this from all angles, to make sure it will work for everyone involved.  There isn’t going to be an easy answer.”
    He just doesn’t want to come right out and say no. And I don’t either, even though my gut instinct tells me very clearly that it’s not a good idea.
    My niece, Rebekah Laurelton, needs a mother.  Her own mother has been out of the picture since she was three.  Danny and John want her to come live with us, even though they say they’ll miss her terribly.
    It would be best for her, they both believe.  No one has said anything about it to Rebekah yet.  But Danny and John are pretty sure she’ll happily agree.
    She’s not happy now, they tell me.
    Well, what 12-year-old girl is happy?  That’s what I want to know.
    I’ve known Rebekah since she was a baby.  Her mother, Dora, was my friend.
    Dora just couldn’t take it anymore.  She married Danny when she was 18, and Ryan’s brother, John, two years later.  They were supposedly compatible.  That’s what all the pre-marital evaluations indicated.  Similar backgrounds.  Shared values and interests. Personalities that appeared to mesh.
    But Dora never really wanted to be a wife, let alone a mother.   She just did what she was expected to do, and then hit the jackpot the first time she allowed herself to become pregnant.  A girl.
    I think she must love Rebekah, must have loved her.  How can you not love a child you’ve birthed and cared for through infancy and the toddler years?  Dora, however, was determined to live another life, her own life. And she loved herself more.
    She was depressed, she said. I didn’t doubt she was. People sometimes get depressed. They work through it.
    But when she told me, right before she left, that she thought Rebekah would be better off without her, and so would Danny and John, I told her that was a load of crap.
    Not very professional of me to use those words.  Not very evolved.  But Dora Laurelton, in my opinion, had absolutely no right to give in to her urges and desert her family. Which doesn’t really matter, since that’s what she did.
    She went to live somewhere on the coast of Tennessee, and no one here has heard from her since. Dora considered herself an archaeologist, and said she was heading to an outpost to join other “archaeologists”—most of them female, I think—supposedly looking for remnants under the sea of ancient civilizations that got swallowed up in the wake of all the major seismic activity after The Great Flood.
    Maybe it’s important work.  But so is mothering a young girl.
    Danny and John are good fathers. They’ve done their best. They want to do the right thing for their daughter.  But lately, things have gotten complicated.
    It’s Danny who’s the biological father of Rebekah. Unofficially, of course. There’s never supposed to be any talk of biological