Free The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel by Val Brelinski Page A

open wide when the truck’s tinkly music began to play.

    Before Jory even woke up, she could hear the hum of her parents’ voices. They were talking in the kitchen in low, fast tones. Jory got up quietly so she wouldn’t wake Frances and put on a pair of shorts and her
Spy vs. Spy
T-shirt. She walked nonchalantly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Her parents were no longer talking. “You’re up,” Jory said, looking only at the plastic milk jug.
    “Yes,” her mother said. “Of course.”
    “How’d you sleep?” her father asked as he always did.
    “Fine,” she answered as she always did. “Where’s Grace?”
    Her father took a small bite of toast. “Do you want some juice?” hesaid. He picked up the carton and held it up toward her. “There’s just enough left.”
    Jory’s mother fastened and unfastened the top button on her bathrobe. “Grace is out back.”
    “She is?” Jory turned and set the milk jug down on the counter with a thump. “Is she okay?”
    “Grace is fine,” her father said firmly and began buttering another piece of toast. “She’s a little tired and worn-out from the trip and Dr. Henry’s going to take another look at her next week and maybe run a couple tests, but, you know, she’s going to be just fine. Absolutely fine.”
    Jory’s mother glanced at her husband and then got up and went to the sink, where she stood looking out the window at something.

    Grace was lying on the chaise lounge in the very middle of the backyard with an old green bedspread pulled over her. She was facing the sun and her eyes were closed. Her hair was longer than Jory had ever seen it. Jory felt suddenly shy, as if she’d never met her sister before. “Aren’t you hot?” she said, and then blushed. It was a stupid thing to say to someone you hadn’t seen in nearly three months.
    “No. Not really.” Grace’s voice was very quiet and sort of far away. She seemed completely unsurprised to be discussing this with Jory. “It’s just that it was so hot in Mexico that now I feel cold everywhere else.” Grace said this without opening her eyes.
    “Are you sick?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Everything looks kind of strange, but maybe I’d just never noticed it before.”
    “Is that why you have your eyes closed?” Jory bent closer to the chaise lounge, as if Grace might not be able to hear either.
    “Like the streets. Have the streets always been this wide? They seem incredibly wide. And clean. Everything is so big and so clean and empty.”
    “You could come look at my and Frances’s room.” Jory smiled even though Grace couldn’t see her.
    “Things smell strange, too. The house, our house, it smells like . . . classical music. Like Rachmaninoff or maybe Albinoni.” Grace laughed a short laugh that was almost a bark. “Dad says I probably just have cultureshock. He says it happens all the time, but usually the other way around. That when you get to a foreign country, you feel like this, not when you come back home.”
    Jory watched a tear ooze out from under one of Grace’s closed lids and slide partway down her cheek. She had never seen Grace cry. Or if she had, she didn’t remember it. “Do you want me to go get Mom?” she whispered.
    “No.” Grace wiped at her face with the hem of the green blanket. “No, I’m okay. Really. So,” she said, smiling crookedly at Jory with her eyes still closed, “tell me everything that happened while I was gone.”
    Jory thought faintly, briefly of attempting this. “There’s nothing to tell,” she said finally. “I got a babysitting job with the Hewetts.”
    Grace pulled the bedspread up even higher, until it covered her chin and mouth. “That’s wonderful, Jory,” she said in her new, faraway voice. “What a perfect chance for you to witness.”

    Tonight their church was having a welcome-back service for Grace. The other mission workers were still in Mexico for another week, but Grace was going to