Free Prince Tennyson by Jenni James Page B

her arm on my shoulder and Cameron on her hip. But she hardly noticed Cameron at all—instead, she was talking about the Bible. She couldn’t wait to read more. Mom loved reading the Bible all the time now.
    I remembered my promise, so I read with her, which made her happy. Even now she was saying, “Chelsea, after dessert tonight, we’re going to look that part up, aren’t we? I know you would like to see what the preacher was saying about those verses in James.”
    â€œYeah, sure.” I nodded and smiled when Mom tucked me closer to her. It felt nice to have Mom so close to me so much now.
    When we got to the car, we waited for Grandma Haney and Hannah to come over and unlock the door.
    Hannah was skipping and holding Grandma’s hand at the same time. My grandma was really happy, laughing at Hannah. I liked to see grandma and Hannah having such a good time, it made my heart warm.
    We needed this. We needed to have something that brought us together like this. Church was good, even if it wasn’t true. It still made us happy.

    ***
    After we got home and changed out of our church clothes and had dinner and dessert, Mom took me back to her frilly pink bedroom from when she was a girl and we opened the Bible to James. She was really excited about the James chapters, and she was saying how they had the answers she had been hoping for.
    I just looked around her room and let her talk. Her walls were pink and her pictures were of lots and lots of ballerinas. My mom used to want to be a ballerina when she was little. Not anymore. Mom didn’t dance at all anymore.
    I walked over to the little dresser. It had a shelf above it, and on that shelf there were a bunch of pretty ballerina figurines. One of them was broken. She was wearing a purple tutu and both of her arms were off and lying next to her.
    I picked her up. She was so tiny and so fragile, but she was smiling. Her hair was pretty, with a purple bow on the side of her bun. I touched her tutu with very careful fingers. There were a couple of chips missing where they had broken off from the tutu, as well. The ballerina had been through a whole lot and she looked funny, but she was still smiling.
    My fingers touched that smile. Her mouth was wide and beautiful. Even without arms, she was the most beautiful ballerina I had ever seen. I smiled too. I wanted to be like that. Broken, beautiful, but still smiling.
    â€œOh, here it is!”
    Mom’s voice almost caused me to drop the ballerina. I quickly stood the figurine up next to her two broken arms and came across the room to Mom’s bed, where she was sitting.
    â€œSee?” My mom pointed to the open Bible. “It’s under Epistle of James. I thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t find it at first. I had to look for Epistle, not James.”
    I smiled. I wasn’t sure what to say, because I wasn’t really sure what she was talking about. Instead, I sat down on the bed with her.
    Mom grinned over at me and then started to read.
    I watched her lips move as she read the words out loud, but never really heard any of them. Her lips were pretty, like the ballerina’s. They were red like hers, too. Mom’s lips stopped talking. They smiled, and for a moment, they really did look just like the ballerina’s wide smile.
    My eyes flew to hers. The spark was there, way in the very back. It was there.
    What happened? What did I miss?
    â€œCan you believe it?” Mom laughed and snuggled the Bible up close to her. “All along, I’ve been looking for this passage, and here it is. Just like the speaker said it would be. Right here in James, chapter 1, verses 5 and 6” She held the Bible out to me and pointed with her finger. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
    I looked at the James chapter and furrowed my brow. It looked the same as all the rest to me.
    â€œRead it,” my mom insisted as she tucked the book into my hands. “Go on.