Chapter 1 #3
Abel glared at Mariah Lowe. “Your meager attempt at thanking my son for saving your daughter’s life is not necessary, and your daughter’s knee is still bleeding.”
He gave Roger Lowe a strange look, then picked up his son and took his family away.
Roger Lowe looked down at his daughter. She was shivering and rain-soaked, and the cut on her knee had to be painful. Ashamed that he had not immediately picked her up, he scooped her up in his arms and began reassuring her everything was okay as they headed back to their car.
But Mariah was more concerned about the unnatural child that had been allowed in their school than she was her own daughter’s injury, and was complaining all the way back to their car.
Miss Ellen was sad. She knew others in the area would feel the same as the Lowe family had. She’d come here to teach children, not indoctrinate them. And this moment was clearly her signal that it was time to move on.
* * *
Tate sat in his mother’s lap all the way home with his head tucked beneath her chin and a blanket wrapped around him to take away the chill of being so wet. His mother and daddy were silent, which made him certain they were angry.
They were angry, but not with him.
The power was still off in Star Ridge as they sat down at the kitchen table with milk and cookies. Tate took a bite of his cookie, but his fear of having done something wrong made it hard to chew and swallow.
Then his daddy reached for his hand. “Tate, I need to apologize to you. I know I told you not to talk about your special gift, but I was wrong. If you had done what I told you to do, everyone would have blown away. I was wrong, and your mama agrees with me. You were born with a great gift, and it was wrong of me to ask you to deny it…understand?”
Tate sighed. All the weight of guilt and fear began to fade. “Then I didn’t do a bad thing?”
“Absolutely not!” Abel said. “You did a very good thing. But now the decision to help when you feel the need has to come from you. If someone asks you something that you think is wrong, you are not required to help them. As you grow older, you will understand more about what I mean. For now, if you are confused about what someone is asking of you, ask me first. I’ll know if they are honest people, or if they want you to help them steal or harm. Okay?”
Tate’s eyes widened. “People do that?”
Abel sighed. “There are good people and bad people everywhere. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other.”
Tate nodded. “Like Briar’s mama. She’s a bad person.”
Lilith gasped. “Honey! Why would you say that?”
“Because she didn’t want Briar to be her little girl. She wanted a boy. Briar will be smarter and prettier than Mrs. Lowe. She doesn’t want that,” Tate said.
Lilith frowned. “That’s something you must never tell. It would break Briar’s heart to think her mommy doesn’t love her.”
Tate nodded. “I know, Mama. That’s why I am Briar’s best friend forever. I protect her from mean people. Briar is getting stitches in her knee. Will that hurt her more?”
“No, son, the doctor will put medicine on it first that will make it numb. She won’t feel the stitches,” Abel said.
Lilith opened her mouth, but Abel caught her eye and shook his head.
She sighed. Abel was right. They knew nothing about how their son’s mind worked.
And now, at the age of nine, if he already knew all this and had designated Briar Lowe as a person he needed to protect, then he already knew things they would never understand.
Their job was to love and protect their son until he became a man who could protect himself.
* * *
As with all things, time does heal, and things that had been destroyed were being rebuilt on the mountain, except for the school. The children from the church school integrated into the small public school in town for the last weeks of the semester.
When school was out for the summer, unless they were playing in their own backyards, the local park was the gathering place for adults and children alike.
Tate Bandy liked playing baseball in the park with the other boys, but he was always looking out for Briar’s welfare too.
Days turned into weeks as summer welcomed each day with the usual sweltering heat and afternoon rain showers. Any day that a breeze was strong enough to come over the ridge and down into the valley was a blessing.
On his days off, Abel took Tate fishing, and on pretty days when Lilith wasn’t canning something from their garden, she took him to the park to play.
The other children had no issues with Tate, but gossip was becoming the norm about Tate Bandy’s mother.
The fact that her son was different was attributed to something she’d surely caused, and it was beginning to influence the way other kids related to Tate.
They played with Tate at school, but their parents didn’t want him in their homes.
It was the beginning of a slow exile for Lilith and her son.
With Mariah Lowe constantly feeding the fire of rejection, women traded gossip and lies about Lilith Bandy, ranging from “she must have been doing drugs when she was younger,” to her having sinned in some way and this was God’s punishment.
Those women did not see a blessed child.
They saw damaged goods and placed the blame on Lilith.
Lilith heard the whispers. She saw the looks. Everywhere she went, she silently bore the scrutiny and the hate, until one day the pressure of it broke her.
* * *
It was just after the Fourth of July.
Mariah Lowe was sitting on a park bench with two of her friends when Lilith and Tate entered the park. As soon as Tate saw his friends flying their kites, he ran to join them, leaving his mother behind.
Lilith’s heart sank. Mariah Lowe, Jeanette Tilly, the banker’s wife, and Delores Caldwell, a teacher from the Holy Waters school, were all sitting together, glaring at her—daring her to even try and join them. Before she had a chance to find a different place to sit, Mariah Lowe waved her away.
“You aren’t welcome here. You don’t belong. Find somewhere else to sit,” Mariah said.
Lilith glanced at their faces as she was passing, seeing hate, judgment, and disregard for her feelings, and, for the first time, not only spoke up, but defended herself.
“What on earth made any of you assume I would want to be seen with you? You are all hateful, mean-spirited women. Your opinions mean nothing to me. Instead of being grateful that my son saved your children, and saved Delores’s life, you have chosen hate. Shame on you. Shame on all of you.”
As usual, Mariah had opted for wine with her breakfast instead of coffee, which meant her judgment was already impaired, and being maligned in such a way by a woman of no regard enraged her.
She leaped up from the bench and slapped Lilith across the face so hard it knocked her backward.
When she fell, the crack of her head hitting the sidewalk made Jeanette and Delores cry out in dismay.
They were horrified by Mariah’s unexpected violence, then panicked when they realized Lilith was unconscious.
It was the blood oozing out from beneath Lilith’s head that made Mariah realize the extent of damage she had caused. The red handprint from her slap was forming on the side of Lilith’s face, and she wasn’t moving.
Delores even screamed at her. “Mariah! What have you done?”
Mariah was already sorry, but began making excuses, while Jeanette Tilly was on her phone calling for help.
What none of them knew was that Tate had “seen” it happening even before Mariah slapped her and was already running toward his mother, screaming “Mama, Mama,” at the top of his voice.
Everyone on the playground heard the terror in the child’s voice and turned to look. When they saw a woman lying on the ground, they all came running.
Mariah was weeping, but the tears were for herself, not Lilith.
“She fell and hit her head,” she said, intending to explain it away with backup from her friends, and then all of a sudden, Tate Bandy was on the scene, standing between his mother and Mariah Lowe with his fists doubled and his little face twisted with rage.