Derailed by Jackson Neta, Dave Jackson Page A

didn’t help how I felt right then. Like someone had cut my anchor and I was totally adrift.

Chapter 6
    Estelle had to work Tuesday, so I spent most of the day with Mom. She slept a lot, and of course, we couldn’t have a conversation even when she was awake, but I think it reassured her that I was there. In the afternoon when Estelle was due to get off work, I left to pick her up, promising Mom we’d be back later.
    But Estelle insisted on replacing me for the evening. “I’ll take that little CD player with some praise music. That’ll perk her up. And I might do her nails for her. They looked a little ragged last night. I’ll be fine. So don’t worry.”
    Well, that was Estelle, always doin’ for someone else, but I shook my head. “What am I supposed to do? Sit around the apartment all evening and worry?”
    â€œNo. You get yourself on over to Bible study. You need the brothers more’n ever tonight.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œNo buts about it. DaShawn’ll be fine. He can do his homework, then watch TV.”
    After we ate supper, I ran Estelle up to the hospital and then drove over to Peter Douglass’s apartment for the Bible study. Denny Baxter was out of town for a coaches’ training event, and his son, Josh, was tied up with an emergency water heater replacement at the House of Hope, so there were just five of us: Peter; Carl Hickman, who worked at Peter’s software company; Ben Garfield, a retired Jewish guy with six-year-old twins; Pastor Cobbs, from my church, who could only attend the Bible study occasionally; and myself.
    We’d been going through the book of Psalms and were up to Psalm 27. I was pretty distracted, thinking about my mom, until we came to verse 11: “Teach me your way, O L ORD ; lead me in a straight path.” Some of the other translations said “right path” or “smooth path.” But when Pastor Cobbs read “plain path” from his old King James Version, it grabbed me. That’s exactly what I needed—a plain path—and frankly, I’d thought God had been showing us a plain path, buying the two-flat with all the affirming signs along the way. But suddenly we’d crashed, and it didn’t seem like he’d been guiding us at all.
    I wanted to talk about it, wanted to tell the brothers how confused I felt. I wanted to ask if any of them had sensed our decision was wrong, and if so, why hadn’t they said so when I was asking for their wisdom weeks earlier?
    But Peter was already reading the next verse. “ ‘Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.’ ”
    â€œOh, that’s me!” Ben Garfield snorted. “We got enemies, Ruth and me. And they’ve been lying about us.” Everyone looked at him in shock. “That’s right,
lying
enemies, and they want to get Havah and Isaac in trouble.”
    â€œThe twins? What are you talkin’ about, Ben?” Peter Douglass asked.
    Ben tipped his head back, frowning at the ceiling as though expecting some kind of revelation to be written there. “Yeah, it’s no secret, it’s hard trying to keep up with two kids at our age. Ruth’s fifty-six, and I’m nearly seventy. But they’re no
vilde chaya
—they’re not hooligans. Just kids, you know. But our neighbor called the police, accusing our Havah and Isaac of stealing his trash bin. Now I ask you, what would two six-year-olds want with a trash bin? Nothing! But he’s lying to the police and to the neighbors. And for some, it’s like a bandwagon. Now they’re saying the kids make too much noise. And they run through their flowerbeds. It’s barely spring, after all! So where are the flowers?” He threw his hands up. “What difference does it make?”
    Ben went on and on, monopolizing our whole time together with this tale