Free Edge by M. E. Kerr Page B

joke.”
    â€œI know you don’t have my dog. Gloria’s home. The dog warden found her and brought her back right after you hung up on me.”
    I was relieved. At least she wouldn’t have to go all night worrying about getting Gloria back.
    â€œI was wrong,” I said. “It was petty. I’m sorry.”
    â€œDo you know what you put me through, Scott Perkins?”
    I just hung up.
    I stood there with my face flaming.
    â€œScott?” My father was looking all over for me, calling me and calling me. “Scott! Are you here? The car’s ready!”
    All the way home he lectured me on how contrary I was. Why couldn’t I have waited to phone Al? What was it about me that made me just go ahead and do something I was expressly told I shouldn’t do? “Just when I think we’ve gotten someplace,” he said, “you turn around and go against my wishes.
    â€œ Why ?” he shouted.
    I said, “What?” I hadn’t been concentrating on all that he was saying. I was thinking that now she knew my name—don’t ask me how—and now what was she going to do about it?
    â€œI asked you why you go against my wishes,” Dad said. “Nothing I say seems to register with you.”
    â€œIt registers with me,” I said. “I just seem to screw up sometimes.”
    â€œI can hardly believe my ears.” He was smiling. “You actually said sometimes you screw up. That’s a new one.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “That’s a new one.”
    Then we both laughed, but I was still shaking, remembering Mrs. Whitman saying my name that way.
    When we got in the house, Mom said, “The funniest thing happened while you were gone. The phone rang and this woman asked what number this was. I told her, and she asked whom she was speaking to. I told her and she said, ‘Perkins … Perkins. Do you have a boy named Scott?’ I said that we did, and she said, ‘This is Martha Whitman. Tell him I’ll see him this summer. I’m teaching remedial math.’”
    I figured that right after I’d hung up from calling her about Gloria, she’d dialed *69. I’d heard you could do that. The phone would ring whoever called you last. That was why she’d asked my mother what number it was and who was speaking.
    Dad said, “You see, Scott, Mrs. Whitman doesn’t dislike you, or she wouldn’t have called here to tell you she’d see you this summer.”
    â€œI was wrong,” I said. “Wrong again.”
    Oh, was I ever!

GRACE
    S unday mornings when my father stepped up to the pulpit, I could almost hear the congregation groaning inside, saying to themselves: Here we go again, another of Yawn’s boring sermons.
    The best thing about Reverend Edward Yourn was that he looked so earnest and impassioned. Sincere blue eyes, silky black hair, this fine smile—I hoped I’d keep looking like him, because he’s great that way. If you hadn’t heard him begin by announcing that his subject that morning was “Worship as a Time for Realignment,” you might have thought he was going to kick off a really provocative meditation the way they say Father Garzarella does at Holy Family. The sermon board down there promised things like “I Don’t Believe the Bible,” and “Heeeeerrrrre’s Jesus!”
    Dad announced “Religion Without Righteousness,” or “The Meaning of Redemption.”
    â€œDaddy has a more formal style,” my mother claimed “Some people prefer that.”
    â€œMom, his nickname is Yawn. In college they called him Snore.”
    â€œIt’s just a play on our last name, Teddy.”
    â€œI don’t have nicknames like that. And I’m Ted, or Teddy Yourn. Dad is always Edward.”
    â€œNot always.” Mom smiled. “I call him lots of things besides Edward.”
    I am not a religious person. Dad said that a