Free The Passion of Mary-Margaret by Lisa Samson Page B

they?
    â€œDo you think we’ll get in trouble?” he asked, knowing the answer if his smirk was any indication.
    â€œWould it be worth it if we did?”
    â€œOh, yes sirree.”
    It took us a full ten minutes, Gerald resting after each step, breathing like a runner after a mile, but, by golly, we reached the deck. And considering he was at death’s door yesterday, I’d say we’d practically run a marathon. Gerald stood by the railing and looked out over his waters and I mean it literally when I say the lines of his face receded like the past back into which he slipped.
    â€œSo how did your mother die?” I asked.
    â€œShe was outside washing the windows to the lantern and fell down on the rocks. Broke both her legs and cracked her head open. She died three days later up in Salisbury.”
    How did I never hear this? Why would an entire town keep Mr. Keller’s secret? Sisters, I still don’t know the answer to that one. There were too many secrets out at that lighthouse. Jude’s was the most dangerous.
    We all grieve what happened to Jude, the massive repercussions he bore due not only to Petra’s decisions but because of the woman herself. I believe it all goes back to this: none of them really believed God actually loved them.
    It’s
hard to come to that point of realization. I know. Despite my calling, it took me years to see it myself. It actually took Jude for me to understand the tenacious love of God, and I told him that. He chuckled, but when I explained, he knew I was right. Oh, we’ll get to that part of the story in due time.
    The calmly committed love of Jude’s father could have never filled the space left inside Petra by a clinging, suffocating mother who claimed she loved her daughter to pieces, but in truth, only used Petra to feel better, to complete her, to fill the gaping space left inside by parents who deserted her to her own grandmother’s care. Petra had other matters to deal with, we’ve figured, perhaps her uncle or a man in the neighborhood. Nobody’s left to tell us and we don’t know for sure what or if anything abusive happened. But Jude and I couldn’t imagine another scenario that would warp someone into what Petra became.
    All those uneven links in a heavy chain holding up years of pain and the inability to cope—no wonder Petra snapped.
    Unfortunately, she took Jude with her in the fall. Somehow he was handed down that maverick blood, or maybe he just heard her complaining too much when Mr. Keller was outside painting the lighthouse or up in the lantern polishing the brass and cleaning the 4th order Fresnel lens. He took his life practically in his hands every time he climbed outside the lantern and washed the windows. But Petra never saw it that way and she used Jude to make up for her husband’s deficiencies.
    So she scrubbed the inside of the house from top to bottom almost every day, the peace cords in her mind fraying with every swipe of the graying rag until one day, according to Jude, she threatened to jump off the lantern and onto the rocks supporting the structures.
    The next day Mr. Keller bought her the skiff.
    I never knew why that was the final straw for Mr. Keller. Now I do.
    So Jude came by his restlessness honestly. I still blame myself for not seeing what was really going on with Petra Keller. But who could guess such a thing? We walk by people every day who are daily experiencing a horror, and we don’t even know it.
    That evening after we visited his father, Jude walked me back to school, made some smart remark softened by the look that came into his eyes at times like that, which told me yes, he understood the parameters of our relationship, but he didn’t have to like it.
    Brister Purnell, his stepfather, came off the boat in a “hel-luva mood.” That’s how Jude described it, and whenever I hear that word, I think of Helluva Good Cheese, which is actually pretty