Free There You'll Find Me by Jenny B Jones Page A

it take to get some attention here?
    I have things to tell you, but I don’t think there’s any point. It’s like you took a can opener and peeled the lid off my heart and leaped out the day Will died. Why are you so silent? Of all times to leave me alone .
    “Sleeping or praying?”
    I turned my head and found Sister Maria walking toward me. Her lined face had a rosy glow that, on any other woman, could only come from a Sephora counter. But I couldn’t say I’d ever seen a sister buying up the MAC. Her khaki pants were perfectly ironed and her Sacred Heart polo tucked neatly inside her stretchy waistband. As she slid into a chair beside me, I caught that same twinkle in her eyes, as if she were only seconds away from delivering a clever punch line.
    “I, um, I thought I’d have a little time with God before we started.” That made me sound so mature. So holy. Never mind that only one of us had showed up to the divine meeting.
    Sister Maria looked straight ahead, a smile pressing into her round cheeks. “It’s a good place to sit and think. I come here quite a bit myself. And it has great acoustics. I’ve found it’s the best place to practice my Beatles tunes. I sing the part of Paul, of course. My pitch is just about perfect on ‘Let It Be.’ The trick is to stay away from dairy. Clogs the throat.” She directed her focus on me. “Now, we were talking about you.”
    “We were?”
    “I believe I gave you some homework. How did it go?”
    “My keyboard was delivered yesterday. I practiced for three hours last night.”
    “Not that homework.”
    “Oh.” I hugged my backpack to me, resting my chin on top. “I went to the Cliffs of Moher.”
    “Good girl. And?”
    “And that’s it.”
    “What did you see?”
    “The cliffs.” My mind took me back, and I could almost feel the nip of the air on my face. “The birds. The ocean below us.”
    “Those are the basics. What did you really see?” Sister Maria waited for me to continue, with a look on her face that made me want to get the answer right.
    “I guess . . .” That deep stuff—it was like wading through pudding. “I saw what my brother did when he was here a long time ago. I could’ve stood in the very same spot. I watched the same waves and climbed on the same rocks. My brother said it reminded him of the verse about God’s faithfulness reaching to the skies, like the view.”
    “Hmm.” Her lips pursed as she considered this. “And did you sense God there? Did you hear him then?”
    I gave a faint laugh. “God isn’t exactly hanging out with me these days.”
    “Nunsense.” She snorted and elbowed me again. “That was a joke. It gets Sister Mary Theresa every time. Of course she’s also touched in the head, not that you heard that from me.” Her face straightened into a mask of seriousness. “Finley, you simply must keep praying.”
    Like I hadn’t been? Well, sorta. “But he’s not listening.”
    “Oh, he’s listening all right.”
    “No. Trust me.” I jerked my chin upward, where a ceiling hung overhead, blocking me from the sky. Me from God. “Haven’t heard a peep from him in over a year.”
    “So the line’s clogged up. Sometimes when we get bad mobile reception, we don’t know if it’s our line or the other person’s.” She set some scales on the stand. “Hard to tell. So much interference with the signal these days.” She set some scales on the stand. “I believe God spoke to you at the cliffs.” Her hand came to rest on the top of my head. “But perhaps you weren’t truly listening.”

    From my place below the set, I watched Beckett stand in a tree, thirty feet above us, attached to a series of cables. Taylor Risdale, wearing a cranberry silk dress with a waist I couldn’t fit one leg into, fluttered her Chinese fan.
    The director grabbed his megaphone. “And . . . action!”
    Beckett flew through the air, his hair blowing in the breeze, and his white shirt, unbuttoned to midchest, undulating as he