PRESENT DAY
MULVANE, KANSAS
“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
“Matthew nineteen twenty-one,” Wren said as she looked at the index card in her hand. She turned to stare out the school bus window, lost in thought. She saw a black-and-white cow with its head up, like it was trying to say hi to her.
“Twenty-six.”
“What?” She was still distracted by the Chick-fil-A cow that stared at her from the field.
“Twenty-six. You said twenty-one, but the verse is nineteen twenty-six.”
“Beth, look at that cow. Not a care in the world. No school. Nothing.”
“Wren, you want to be a cow? Really?”
Beth was a great friend. She was always good for a laugh to ease the stress.
“No, I don’t want to be a cow. I just wish things were different.”
The light turned green, and the school bus chugged forward. Wren watched the cow go back to eating grass. She looked down at the Bible verse her mother had written on the neon-green index card. It had been her mother’s favorite verse. She had prayed it over her baby girl every morning before she left for her teaching job at the elementary school.
Wren asked Beth the next question. “Can you come over later and look at the book before I mail it off?”
They had been working on a kids’ picture book about a girl who loses her mother to cancer. The book was written to honor Wren’s mom who had passed away from cancer only a year ago. The girls planned to give any money they earned to cancer research. Their teacher had a friend who worked for a publishing house and agreed to print the book.
“Of course,” Beth said. “My brother doesn’t have baseball tonight. I’ll ask my mom for a ride.”
“Okay. Just text me.” Wren kept her eyes on the index card. It was the only piece of her mother she had left that really meant something. There were the pictures and the memories, but the index card was the thing that gave her hope.
The bus traveled on down the country road, navigating the curves and straightaways all the same: slow. The beauty of nature was erased by Wren’s impatience. All she wanted to do was get home and look at the book draft one last time. It was homemade, nothing but the printed pages glued to construction paper along with their hand-drawn pictures, but it felt like the real deal.
Her father promised they would get it to the post office before the five o’clock pickup. That way the publisher could have it by the beginning of next week.
Added to the slowness of the bus was the silence that hung over the students. Normally, the ride home was a cacophony of noises: shouts, laughs, whispers, coughs, sneezes, singing. Now all Wren could hear was the buzzing of the big bus tires rolling over Highway 15. Even Lucy Jones was quiet. And that girl could talk.
Suddenly sirens tore through the quiet, ripping it to shreds. Just as the bus crossed over Dog Creek, Wren saw the red lights. The bus pulled over. A fire engine pulled out onto the road in front of them and drove north. Seconds later, a police SUV zoomed past with its lights flashing and siren wailing, warning drivers to get out of the way.
The bus resumed its mission of delivering the children of Jobe Elementary to their respective houses. Wren still stared at the card. Oh, how she wished her mother would be home to greet her.
“I see smoke! Look!”
The voice belonged to Allen Decker, the obnoxious class clown. He sat in the front seat by the main bus door. Wren saw that Allen was looking through the huge windshield, his neck craned to get a good view.
“Wow! Whatever’s burning is toast!” Allen added the last word for effect, as if something burning wasn’t enough drama.
She couldn’t see anything from her seat.
And just like that, the silence was erased. The bus erupted in nervous chatter as the children offered a hundred thousand guesses about what was burning.
As the bus crawled to a halt, Wren noticed they weren’t at a regular stop. She got up and leaned over the seats directly across the aisle and saw why the bus had stopped. Her entire street had been blocked off by emergency vehicles. She thought she saw her dad standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by rescue personnel.
“Let me out!” Wren hustled up the aisle toward the front of the bus.
The driver had the door open for her. “Be careful.”
But Wren wasn’t listening. She was already running down Southcrest Drive.
Once her eyes scanned the street and her brain caught up and realized it was her house that was burning, her legs seemed to slow down. It was like her feet had gone from concrete to quicksand. She willed herself forward to where her dad was standing. When she got to him, his arms opened to receive her in a bear hug.
“I’m sorry, honey! I’m so sorry!”
“What happened?” The question was out of Wren’s mouth before she could take it back.
“I don’t know. I was out back on a phone call. When I came in, I smelled something burning. It was the TV wire in my bedroom. By the time I got in there, the curtains were burning. I tried to put it out, but it spread too fast.”
Wren looked at the black shell of her house. The destroyed structure stood there like a charcoal skeleton. Three firefighters were holding the firehose and shooting water over it. This could not be happening.
Her book manuscript!
“Dad, the box on my desk. Did you grab it?”
“I’m sorry, angel. I grabbed our laptops. The firefighters came and pulled me out. Oh baby, I’m so sorry!” He grabbed Wren in another hug.
But the nightmare kept getting worse. Wren couldn’t do this anymore. Her life was a dead end. Impossible to overcome. It felt like God had simply walked away and let her and her dad fend for themselves.
She pulled away from her father’s embrace and took off running. If her lungs and heart could handle it, she’d run forever and never stop.
She ran down the street.
Away from the fire.
Away from her dad.
Away from the pain.
When her legs and lungs finally protested, she collapsed on the sidewalk. She put her face to her knees. The green index card was still in her hand.
“Open her eyes.”
The voice belonged to a woman, but when Wren looked around, no one was there.
She must be losing her mind. The fire was the last straw. Why would God allow this? It was too much for anyone to bear, let alone a young kid.
The world was broken.
Gone.
Wren closed her eyes and prayed that when she opened them again, she’d be staring at her phone and the alarm to get up for school would be ringing. And this whole wicked day would never have happened.
She cried out to God, “Why did You forget me and my dad? Why?” Her body shook from the stress of it all. She clenched her fists and tried to hold back a new flood of tears. It was just too much.
Way too much.
She rubbed her face and wished more than anything that this whole day—whole life, really—was just a bad dream she’d wake up from any second now. She wished she could see her mother one more time. Just one more hug…
But she wasn’t in a dream. And her mother wasn’t here to give her a comforting hug.