Matters of Faith by Kristy Kiernan Page A

beliefs?”
    â€œYou mean their religion.”
    â€œYes. I suppose.” Meghan had grown up with Marshall’s interest in religion, and she turned to me when she had questions. I always enjoyed our conversations. They gave me an opportunity to remember my parents and their interest in the world, their absolute willingness to discuss every theory as a possibility, and Meghan was learning to be inquisitive about life, which, I admit, I adored.
    I loved having these two interesting children here, growing up on the backwater edge of the Everglades. Surrounded by people who’d lived here for generations, who made their livings from fishing or manual labor, it thrilled me to be raising children who could move easily in both worlds. It was vanity, of course, arrogance even, but I could not help but enjoy the thought that I was somehow diluting Cal’s hard genes with my more genteel ones, making a lovely cocktail of children who knew how to think in abstract and didn’t wince at getting their hands dirty or toughened by honest work.
    I loved it when Meghan looked at me as she was looking at me now, thoughtful and curious, her brown eyes, flecked with the gold of her father’s, pensive. “I think they’re sort of like Kyle. I don’t really know what the name of their church is, but it’s, you know, their way of life?”
    I nodded. Kyle, a friend Marshall had met his senior year in high school, had been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an interesting young man, but the friendship, for whatever reason, had been short-lived. I wasn’t completely clear on all their beliefs, but at least I had some direction to go in. “Interesting. What makes you think she’s like Kyle?”
    â€œWell, he talked about healing and laying on of hands and stuff, and that’s why she knows sign language, because she learned it before their church healed her sister.”
    â€œWhat was wrong with her?” I asked, fascinated now.
    â€œShe couldn’t talk, or hear, and she was sort of learning challenged, or something. But they healed her, I mean, the people in the church did.”
    â€œShe can talk, and hear now?” I asked.
    â€œShe didn’t say, she just said they healed her. Do you think that really works?”
    And here was where Cal and I differed. Cal would have simply said “no.” I didn’t believe in absolutes. Who was I to say? I couldn’t say that I believed it, but how could I say that it never happened? Because I’d never seen it? Because it wasn’t widely accepted?
    â€œI don’t know,” I answered. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful though?” I wanted her to see possibilities, to accept the right of others to believe what they wanted to, even if it wasn’t what she, or her parents, believed.
    She nodded, and then looked out the window, searching the driveway. “Ada said she’d watch Heathers with me if you let us,” she said.
    Ah. This? Definitely not new. “Sorry, honey. We’ve discussed this.”
    She sighed, a huge, precursor-to-teen-angst sigh. And that was when I knew that yes, this new was good. Because I did not feel dread well in me at the thought of Meghan turning into a teenager. Instead, I could not keep my mouth from curling into a delighted smile. I was looking forward to every bit of it, to seeing her change, and test her boundaries, and blossom—yes, I actually thought the word blossom —into a young woman I was going to be so proud of.
    After Marshall and Ada returned we set up the Scrabble board in the living room, and when Cal returned from working in his outbuilding, he joined Meghan as a team. None of us were any match for Marshall though, who seemed lit from within, and this, too, I reveled in.
    Cal and I left the children in the living room sometime after eleven, when Ada finally cajoled Meghan into playing the piano for her, and as we