Prospect Street by Emilie Richards Page A

unless I get to live in the attic.”
    â€œWhat are you, kiddo, a bat?”
    â€œI bet it’s neat up there. And that’s where the ghost lives, right?”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as a ghost.”
    â€œMrs. Garfield said there was. She said ghosts are spirits who get kicked out of heaven for not doing what they’re told.”
    Faith suspected this was just another way for the eternally creative Mrs. Garfield—Alex’s fifth-grade teacher—to ride herd on her son. She ruffled Alex’s wild red curls. His hair—both color and texture—was only one way he was different from everyone else in the family. Faith didn’t believe in ghosts, but a changeling sat right in front of her.
    â€œListen, maybe you can make the attic a workshop right off the bat. A place to invent.”
    â€œOff the bat?” Alex chortled. “Off real bats? Do you think the attic really has ’em?” The thought seemed to please him.
    She hoped that bats were one problem they wouldn’t face.
    Alex’s face brightened even more. “Can I go to a different school?”
    â€œYou’re okay with the idea?”
    â€œAwesome.” He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to say anything else. “Maybe someplace where they like me better?”
    Now, soaking in the whirlpool tub that she would be giving up in a little over a week, Faith wondered why she had ever agreed to enroll Alex in a school where he felt rebuffed. In her present state of mind she wanted to blame it on David, but she couldn’t. She had bought an entire way of life, an entire way to think, when she had married David Bronson. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known.
    Her father had been the one to introduce her to her future husband, touting the quiet young man as an up-and-coming force in conservative politics. Late bloomer Faith was just beginning to feel her own way through life, but she was so enamored of David, so thoroughly and instantly smitten, that she willingly traded her fledgling independence to become his wife.
    She knew what came with the package. She had watched her own mother build her life around her father’s career, so instinctively she did the same. For fifteen years she worked side by side with her husband to create a perfect family, and she learned to see it as her calling.
    And she had done her job well. Time and time again she had been asked to speak on the subject of making a Christian home, an honor she avoided by claiming she was too busy making one to lecture on the subject.
    On the other hand, David never missed a chance to speak on the subjects he held dear. He was soft-spoken and modest, a rarity in political and religious circles. He abstained from criticism of differing views, and stated his own succinctly and compassionately. Had he used the master of divinity degree he earned at Harvard to become the next pastor of his evangelist father’s mega-church, the theme of every sermon would have been “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
    But on Arnold Bronson’s death, David hadn’t ascended tohis father’s ministry. Now Faith wondered if even then her soon-to-be ex-husband had been wrestling with his personal demons. For in keeping with his father’s commandments, he would have been called on to forcefully revile the sin of homosexuality. And surely some part of him had questioned the wisdom of that.
    With her eyes closed and the soothing fragrance of chamomile and citrus surrounding her, Faith could almost feel sorry for David. He had lied; he had used her to perpetuate a myth about who he was. But she knew he had never wanted to cause her pain.
    She opened her eyes and looked down at her body stretched languidly in the herbal-scented water. She was never pleased at what she saw. She had a runway model’s small breasts and narrow hips, but not the long legs to go with them.
    She wondered if her very lack of feminine