Be careful what you wish for—you may get it, thought Brent.

He lay staring at the ceiling of the hundred-year-old bedroom.

After the departure of the demons, Brent had once again ended up standing alone in Elizabeth’s bedroom. All he had wanted was to awaken back in his mamaw’s farmhouse, believing that there would be nothing to do as the teenage girl slept. Now that he had received what he had wished, a pang of regret ran through his system. Had he blown it? Had he actually wished himself out of Elizabeth’s life, accidentally and forever?

How could things come to an abrupt end without resolution?

He had awakened to the day that he and his family would be leaving Kentucky for Ohio, and it was quite possibly the final time that he would ever see his ‘Green Gables.’ Discouraging, to say the least, but at the moment, it was Elizabeth with whom he was most concerned.

Did leaving this house for Ohio mean that his visits to help Elizabeth were over? Had he been given a set amount of time to protect her and the baby, but blown it? Was he never to find out what happened?

Brent sat up, swung his feet off the bed and onto the floor, and then he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

He smelled bacon.

At least I’ve got that going for me this morning.

Brent got up, changed into some day clothes—clean jeans and a T-shirt—then headed down the stairs for breakfast.

When he walked into the kitchen he found that his Aunt Susan was frying up eggs, bacon, and sausage. His mom was in the process of closing the oven door after pulling out a pan of freshly baked biscuits. Brent’s stomach growled.

His Aunt Susan glimpsed him coming into the room and turned to him. “Good morning, Brent,” she said with a big smile. She received the response that Brent was sure she was hoping for, because he couldn’t hold back a spontaneous smile of his own.

“Good morning, Aunt Susan. Good morning, Mom.”

“You always seem to wake up right on time whenever breakfast comes from the stove,” said his mom with laugh.

“Here’s to perfect timing,” Brent replied, attempting to allay any appearance of discouragement.

“Your dad, Lydia, and Uncle Mike are in the back dining room,” said Aunt Susan.

Brent walked back. The men and Lydia were listening to the old AM radio that had rested on the same small table by the back door for decades. At the moment, a news broadcast was playing.

“Good morning, Brent!” said his Uncle Mark.

Everyone seemed just a little too lively this morning. His dad raised a hand of acknowledgment, and his sister gave him a smile.

Brent gave a quick wave and a “G’morning.” He could see that they were intent on listening to the only electronic form of entertainment that the house had to offer.

“In international news today, Russian President Boris Yeltsin again called on Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to move immediately to transform the Soviet Union to a free-market economy. Gorbachev rejected the idea, stating that it is his new union treaty that must be implemented, allowing for a slow transition. He went on to say that the increasingly democratized block of Soviet republics needs the Soviet Union’s economic power and current markets in order to prosper.

“Moving on to the Middle East, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein remained defiant this morning, stating that his country’s invasion of Kuwait was a legitimate re-assimilation of sovereign Iraqi territory. President Bush, today, called on nations to condemn the actions of Iraq and to exert diplomatic pressure to force the Iraqi president to relent and withdraw his troops…”

“The world never stops being an interesting place, does it?” said Uncle Mark to no one in particular.

“It’s making me a bit nervous,” said Lydia.

“Why?” asked Brent, as he moved to join them in the oval dining booth.

“The Middle East. It’s where my squadron is tasked to deploy if anything ever happens over there.”

Their dad looked at Lydia, his face becoming serious. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, well, there never really seemed to be a reason to talk about it. All eyes have been on the breakup of the Soviet Union. Who was concerned with the Middle East?”

“I doubt there’s anything to worry about,” said Uncle Mark. “There are all kinds of mini-crises all over the planet. We don’t jump into every one of them.”

“Hopefully, you’re right,” said Lydia.

“Yes, hopefully you’re right,” said their dad, concern evident in his eyes.

Aunt Susan and Sharon Lawton walked into the dining area with plates of steaming food. Setting them down on the large table, they both went back and retrieved all the plates and utensils necessary to turn good food into good eating.

BRENT SPENT THE remainder of the morning on the front porch of the old farmhouse doing two things: viewing the scenery out in front of the house all the way up into the lush, green mountains and reading some of the novel he had brought with him from Ohio. It was a quiet—almost peaceful—way to spend the morning of the first Tuesday in August. The beautiful outdoors, though, would be too hot and humid to enjoy in another couple of hours.

He closed the novel again, using his finger to mark his spot. Almost peaceful.

In a matter of six or seven hours, the family would be cooped up in the car again heading for home, and yet, during all of his time in Kentucky, nothing that he had been dealing with had been fully resolved.

He still didn’t understand the when and why of his mamaw’s death.

He still didn’t know how things were going to turn out for Elizabeth.

He didn’t know how to handle the additional loss of this old house with all of its memories.

Brent leaned his head back against the house’s wood siding and closed his eyes.

Joshua, what’s going on? It still feels like everything’s collapsing. I thought there would be answers.

He lifted his head and sighed.

Will Elizabeth’s reality continue as I sleep in my own bedroom in Millsville? I need to know how it ends. I don’t want to leave yet, especially if its resolution is somehow tied to this house.

The door to the porch opened. Lydia stepped out into the sunlit morning. She walked over and sat next to Brent on the pillow-padded bench.

She sighed.

“Exactly,” said Brent.

She looked over at him and gave him a sad smile. “I asked Mom and Aunt Susan if we had to wait until everyone got here before we could choose certain items in the house to take with us. They said it was best if we did wait.”

Both of them redirected their eyes to the view ahead of them.

“I hope I can remember what all of this looks like,” said Lydia.

“Dad said he’s going to take a lot of pictures.”

“I know. But it won’t be the same.”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone should be here in about two hours. I guess everyone’s last day is today.”

Brent nodded.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of praying,” Lydia said. “I’m starting to feel better, I think. I’m going to get over my anger at God. I know I said it already, but you were right; I don’t know Mamaw’s story. I’ve got to believe that God knows what he’s doing—not just with her, but with all of us.”

Brent looked over at her, choosing to remain quiet.

“I mean, either God’s heart toward all of us is good or it’s not. Either the Bible is true or it’s not. I don’t get to create a mixture of good and bad in God, and I don’t get to just choose certain things in the Bible to be true. It’s the Word of God.”

Brent pursed his lips and turned back to look over the yard.

He sighed.

She’s right, and you know it.

PEOPLE FILLED THE living room. Three house fans were set up to blow, as best they could, over the large group. All the children of Brent’s grandparents were sitting in a room that they had occupied many times together as they had grown up.

Brent wondered at the nostalgia.

For whatever the reason, Brent had thought that everyone would just hop right into claiming mementos from the estate, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Aunt Susan—the baby of the Moore family—had called everyone together to just sit, relax, and talk. It had been the right thing to do. The laughter and the memories shared among the family were priceless.

He, his sister, all of their cousins, and all of the spouses heard stories about…

How they all spent most of the daytime hours during the coldest days of winter in the same room to stay as warm as possible.

How the hottest days were spent at the ‘swimming hole’ in the creek just up the road.

How the three girls would spend time with their mother learning how to sew and knit and bake.

How the three boys learned from their father how to build things with their own hands and how to hunt.

All six of Brent’s aunts and uncles had stories to tell about the one-on-one time that each shared with their “Mother” and “Daddy.”

There was a lot of laughter on the final day together in the mountains, just as there probably was when six brothers and sisters were kids growing up in the old house.

Eventually, Aunt Susan—still called Sissy by her brothers and sisters—decided to take it upon herself to switch the conversation over to how to handle the contents of the house.

Brent didn’t know how all of this was going to play out. Were there any items over which some of them would quarrel?

“Well,” she began, “I guess we ought to get through this. I know that most of us have to leave tonight to head back to our homes.” Taking a moment to look around at everybody, she said, “I think that there are too many of us in here to all do a walkthrough, so I would like to suggest this: All six of us kids and our spouses get to stay, along with all of our children. If all of our grandchildren and those who have married into the family would do us a huge favor and head on outside, it would be greatly appreciated. We’ll try to get through this process of looking for keepsakes—and arguing about who gets to keep them—as quickly as possible.”

There were a few quiet laughs and giggles among the older adults. Everyone seemed agreeable to the terms, and Brent was glad that he got to remain.

The family stayed together, moving through each room meticulously. While all of the Moore children and their spouses—including Brent’s mom and dad—reminisced over the things located throughout the house, he realized that all of the grandchildren had stuck together as well, recounting their own memories. Neither Brent nor his cousins tried to grab at anything, at least until their parents left one room for another.

Certain things that were not particularly special to the parents held great value to their children: a hat that had frequently been worn by their mamaw while some of them had attended church with her; an old BB gun that most of the grandchildren had fired at some point when they visited as children; little knick-knacks that had always caught one or another’s attention.

On and on it went, from room to room.

No one seemed to argue about anything, though there were certainly personal requests for certain items. A couple times Brent could hear a sound of disappointment, but it almost always seemed to be followed up by a trade of some sort or the suggestion of another item.

As items were collected, many of them were taken out to cars by spouses in order to keep hands free to look at or take possession of other things.

Brent was surprised when, after it was all said and done, the house didn’t look as barren as he had expected. Many things would be left behind, things that had once held some personal value to their Mother and Daddy—Mamaw and Papaw.

As Brent had made his way with his cousins through his mamaw’s bedroom—the room that, back in the day, had doubled, back in the day, as a family and guest gathering room—he noticed that both his mamaw’s and papaw’s Bibles were gone, taken by someone else who must have also recognized their importance and value.

Brent’s disappointment must have been easily seen, for Lydia walked up to him, took his right hand, and gave it a squeeze. At least he would come away from the old house with the old black-and-white photograph that had hung on the wall of the living room—the one of his mamaw and papaw when they were in their mid-twenties, the one that he gravitated to with each visit to the old home. At least he had that.

SINCE MOST OF Brent’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with their spouses and children, had stayed at other locations—most of them in hotel rooms—they were already packed for their travels home. Most had much longer drives than did he and his family, so Brent’s mom and dad spent a good amount of time out in the front lawn saying goodbye to relatives that they might not see again for quite some time.

Brent and Lydia did the same, but they and their cousins were much more emotionally removed than those brothers and sisters who used to live in the farmhouse. There were some handshakes and a few hugs among the younger generation, but that was really about it. Most of them seemed to be watching with interest as everyone’s parents said goodbye to one another.

It wasn’t long before cars were filled with people and on their way out. Brent saw one car, though, that was entering the property. As it came to a stop, he was able to see through the windshield and determine that he didn’t know the woman behind the wheel; at least, he didn’t think so. Whoever this woman was, she waited to exit the car until the last of Brent’s relatives—except for his Uncle Mark and Aunt Susan—had departed.

Sharon Lawton’s attention was drawn to the vehicle. She squinted to see who was inside. The car door finally opened, and out stepped a woman who looked to be about the same age as Brent’s mom.

Sharon’s mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide. “Sandy Colter?!” she called out, as she began to walk quickly toward the woman.

“Sharon!” The two rushed into each other’s arms, laughing and acting like young school girls.

Brent, Lydia, and their dad, along with Mark and Susan, migrated toward the two boisterous women. When the two finally let each other go, Brent’s mom turned to face them.

She let out a short, excited scream and said, “I can’t believe it! Everyone, this is Sandy Colter. She and I were best friends all through school—kindergarten all the way up through high school! She skipped off after graduation and married our school mascot, Tommy the Tiger!”

Sharon’s friend laughed. “I should’ve expected that’s how you’d introduce me!”

Sandy turned her attention to Brent’s Aunt Susan and paused for a moment, concentrating on her.

“Sissy? Is that you?!”

The two of them walked into each other’s’ arms, as well.

“Wow! The last time I saw you, Sissy, you had just graduated with my brother! It’s so good to see you!”

Uh-oh, thought Brent. This is horrible timing for them.

Sharon Lawton introduced Sandy to her children and to Keith. Then Aunt Susan did the same with Uncle Mark.

It was right in the middle of Uncle Mark saying, “Good to meet you,” that his mom grasped what Brent had realized only moments before.

“Oh, no,” Sharon bemoaned. “We’re leaving to go home in about an hour.”

Brent saw the disappointment register in Sandy’s face, as well. The two old friends that had been jubilant only moments before felt instantly deflated.

“I’m sorry that I came so late, Sharon,” said Sandy. “News may travel fast throughout the hollers, but not down in Pikeville. I only just heard about your mother yesterday, and I couldn’t come out here until I got off of work.”

“It’s not your fault, Sandy. Don’t worry about that. I’m just sad that we’re having to say goodbye almost as quickly as we said hello.”

“Can I at least help you pack?”

“I’d be grateful for your company for as long as we’re still here.”

Both families, along with Sandy, who was arm-in-arm with Brent’s mom, entered the house to continue making preparations to leave.

Sandy drew in a quick breath of amazement. “Oh, Sharon, this house is still so familiar to me! Next to nothing seems to have changed.”

And thus recommenced a friendship that had been lost for nearly thirty years.

Uncle Mark and Aunt Susan left the two of them to get reacquainted while they resumed their packing. Brent was about to run upstairs to pack all of his things, when his dad walked up to the two women.

“Sharon, I had already taken tomorrow off from work so that I could have it as a day to relax. You know, before having to endure a two-day work week,” he said with a smile. “How about we use tomorrow as a travel day instead?”

“Really?”

His dad gave her a little smile and nodded.

A look of genuine appreciation covered her face. “Thank you, Hon. Thank you very much.”

Keith Lawton turned away, allowing the ladies to begin an evening of not having to pack a single thing.

It struck Brent just then that Joshua may have done the very same thing for him: providing a break from packing and allowing one more chance to save the lives of two girls he had grown to care about so deeply.