Free Pulling Home by Mary Campisi

said, “but he likes Mommy best.”

Chapter 9
    “It’s life, Alice. We can either choose to live it, or lose it.”—August Richot August Richot believed in the power of forgiveness. He said God’s children were
    noble creatures who might lose their way but deserved the light of another chance. He preached this on Sunday mornings to a packed congregation, taught this in his Bible study classes, and prayed this along the bedside of the infirm in Holly Springs Memorial Hospital. God was all forgiving, all knowing, all understanding.
    This is why Alice Wheyton sought him out one sunny afternoon four days after
    her son’s funeral. Father Benedict knew about dogmas and doctrines but what did he know of living them? Pastor Richot lost a wife to multiple sclerosis and raised a son and a daughter. He knew grief. He knew loss.
    Alice first started meeting with him after Rachel died. She’d needed to understand how a good and noble God could strike down such a pure and innocent child. Father Benedict called it destiny and simply added Kara’s name to his prayer list, reminding her in his soft voice it wasn’t her place to question our Almighty Savior. Pastor Richot offered no explanation other than his belief that God would provide strength to carry her through this horrible grief. He did not try to stop Alice when she railed against the Creator. He simply listened, then put her in touch with a family the next town over who had lost a daughter Rachel’s age to leukemia. Alice attended prayer groups and grief counseling, even dragged Joe twice, though he barely spoke to anyone, and she met with Pastor Richot every week for the first year. Gradually, life settled into a pattern of unspoken loss and by the third year, Alice could sit on Rachel’s bed without breaking down. Joe never said a word about the time she spent in their daughter’s room or the Barbies she lined up side by side year after year. He was a good man who knew her grief was too deep for him to touch.
    And now that grief had tumbled into an abyss too deep and dark for even Alice’s
    stalwart faith. God had snatched another child. Jack was all she had left. And Kara.
    Pastor Richot would know what to do. He possessed a more practical, sympathetic
    attitude than Father Benedict. Besides, from the looks of things, they were going to be relatives. Leslie would make a wonderful daughter-in-law—unlike Audra Valentine who had kept their only grandchild on the opposite side of the country.
    “Alice, you look like you haven’t slept in years.”
    She offered a withered smile to the man who’d become as much friend as
    confidant. “I feel like I haven’t.”
    He nodded and slid into a worn leather chair next to her. “I know.” His voice
    spilled over her in soothing tones. People said when he spoke, their troubles softened, and when he prayed with them, those troubles shrank.
    “Pastor Richot, I just don’t know what to do.” He’d told her long ago to drop the title and simply call him August, but she’d not been able to do that. Alice wanted reminding that he was a man of the cloth, a guide to her troubled soul with years of schooling and experience.
    “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
    She yanked a tissue from her shirt pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Where on earth
    to begin?” She sniffed. “I’ve got to find a way to talk her into keeping Kara here. I can’t let her go yet. She’s all I have left of Christian. Doesn’t that woman know that? Can’t she have at least a little concern for the people who loved him?” Her voice rose with her conviction and the realization that Audra Valentine probably didn’t know and wouldn’t care if she did.
    “I assume we’re speaking of your daughter-in-law?”
    “Who else forces me to confession once a month?”
    “Have you tried asking her outright?”
    Alice let out a huff of annoyance as she recalled the debacle. “I did. She gave me a flat out no. I’m thinking Jack should talk to