The House on Malcolm Street by Leisha Kelly Page A

eggs at least partly because he thought Marigold had extra boarders. Did she have any chickens of her own? Had she been struggling for enough food to put on the table? We would be a terrible burden if that were the case.
    “Go right on readin’,” Marigold told her nephew, and I wished she’d let it go. I couldn’t remember the number of the psalm she’d chosen, but it had started out unnerving and hadn’t gotten any better.
    “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me . . .”
    Suddenly I remembered where I’d heard those words before. John had read them late one night as I walked and prayed, trying to coax our baby to sleep. Poor little Johnny James had been so ill several times in the few short months of his life. And John had been so confident in his recovery. All for naught.
    Marigold motioned at me to keep cooking. She insisted on cleaning up the mess herself. I tried to concentrate, to show her and her nephew that I could be a decent cook, a decent help to them. But I broke an egg against the side of the pan and another got a little overdone as I tried to scrape up the splatter. They’d not be very pretty eggs, but hopefully they’d taste all right.
    Marigold had the last of the biscuits in the oven in two shakes and then sat down across the table from her nephew, bringing him more biscuits and jam. Eliza sat beside her and accepted a biscuit immediately. But Josiah just kept reading.
    “Thou hast possessed my reins; thou hast covered me from my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”
    I took him a plate of eggs. He stopped and looked down at it but didn’t say a word.
    “Go ahead and eat,” Marigold told him. “You’ll have to be out the door pretty quick.”
    He set the Bible aside, glanced at me, and then bowed his head for a moment before lifting his fork. I wished I knew if prayer was his regular habit or only a precaution under the circumstances. But I tried to act as if I hadn’t noticed and set to work scrambling a batch of eggs for the rest of us.
    “What does ‘possessed my reins’ mean?” Eliza suddenly asked.
    I drew a breath. It was hard enough to answer some of her questions privately, but in front of Aunt Mari and Mr. Walsh? I was about to reluctantly admit that I wasn’t sure when Marigold answered confidently.
    “That means God had control of the making of you before you were even born,” she explained. “He knew all about you and worked out every detail to make you the special person you are.”
    “Before I was born?” Ellie questioned. “Did I have curly hair even back then?”
    “In God’s eyes you did.”
    I hoped they would stop before the conversation progressed any further. But my Eliza was too much of a thinker and too full of questions for that.
    “Did he know all about my baby brother too?”
    Marigold put her arm around my daughter’s shoulders. “He knows everything there is to know about every one of us, child. No matter how old or young. He made us who we are.”
    “Then did he make my brother sick?”
    I would not have been prepared for such an abrupt question, nor would I have handled it very well. But the words were not spoken with any kind of bitterness, and Marigold didn’t seem troubled by them in the least. Her words were steady and strong, as though she’d had plenty of time to think them through.
    “Whether God formed him weak of body or whether the enemy in this world caused that for trouble, I can’t say. But I know that child was purposed of God and loved by him just as much as anyone that’s ever been born.”
    I suddenly realized that Josiah was watching me as he ate, probably waiting for some kind of reaction. Did he know about my baby?