Daddy was talking to Pastor Anderson in the church study while Bell, me, and Bean were waiting for him on the front pew. Bean had been crying, even though he would never admit it to anybody. Bell was flipping through the hymn book, and I knew she was trying to busy her mind. I sat pulling a string on the knee of my jeans.

“He’s coming back. Right, Sweet Potato?” Bean whispered against my arm.

“I don’t think so, baby.” I leaned my head against his and pulled him in closer to me.

“Don’t say that,” Bell said, breaking the eerie silence around us. “He’ll be back. We gonna pray him back. He’s coming back, like Jesus’s second coming. It’s a guarantee.”

I said, “There’s one thing I know about this life. Another day ain’t promised. We have no assurances about this world. Haven’t you learned that in our walk?”

I wanted to hurt Daddy for telling Bell our walking was the Lord’s doing. For him putting Maize in a gang way. What was he doing back there with that preacher for so long? Oh, let me guess—asking for forgiveness? Finding his calling?

Ray never talked about Denise’s brother, and I couldn’t ask. I didn’t really want to know. Tell me lies. Tell me he went off on a fisher boat in Maine to catch them crabs. Tell me he hitchhiked across the States to California to see the sunrise on another ocean. Don’t tell me he joined a gang, robbed, killed, in any order. And I thought Denise was an only child. Oh, right. I guess she was.

But Maize was my best friend, my true, and these last three days of my life, since he’d vanished, had been the hardest I’d ever had to face. Picking out Momma’s casket wasn’t anything compared to this. I’d expected her to OD anytime. I didn’t see this one coming—but that might be the biggest lie I’d told myself yet. We were ’bout on our way, doggone it. Daddy had to keep moving, even though I’d stopped.

Our free ride at the preacher’s house had come to an end. Him and his pretty wife with her nice suit and matching bags had come back. We left. Daddy had us at the motel at the end of West Fifth until …

Bell took timid steps up to the pulpit. Step one, her voice got confidence. Step two, she started to fly. Step three, her voice was on angel wings. She was singing from the hymn book, and I hadn’t heard it before. She probably didn’t know the right way it was supposed to go, but she made those lyrics her own. A call-out for Maize.

When she finished, she collapsed on her knees, her little head falling into her hands like an old woman praying for a miracle. Oh, Lordy! My heart couldn’t take much more of this. The preacher and Daddy were out now, standing down at the door frame, watching Bell. The preacher was more grief-stricken than Daddy, who seemed cool during this chaos. It made me seethe with resentment.

I went to Bell, picked her up, and held her in my arms. Bean came and curled up like a baby by my feet. They knew Maize was gone, but we hadn’t the heart to tell them he’d chosen the gang life. Daddy stood in the doorway with some papers in his hand. What had he done? He’d signed us away. That’s what he’d done. He signed us away and had already made peace with it. That was why he seemed so blank-faced in our time of turmoil. He had failed, cut his losses, and was moving on … without us.

“Sweet Potato, why don’t you take the kids out the back to Patty? She’s got lunch ready for all the volunteers, and maybe the little ones will want something to eat.”

Why was it that any time there was some kind of death or disaster, the only thing anybody could blessed think about was filling their stomachs? I needed somebody to fill my soul, and He’d turned his back on me.

Ray came in with a stack of flyers he’d been copying from the church computer. It had a picture of Maize and contact information for the church. What person out there on the street would contact the church? But for some reason they didn’t want the Soul Food name on it. We couldn’t put the motel phone number down, because that was another stupid temporal. What messes did we tend to make with our lives?

Daddy stepped forward. “I’ll take them back. Maybe you could sit here with Sweet Potato a minute until I get back.”

Oh, the old stalling technique. He was going to tell me he was shipping Bell and Bean off to Mr. and Mrs. Foster. Well, we’d have to see about that. I couldn’t even look at him as he pulled Bell and Bean away from me, shushing them as he took them on out the back door to the parsonage.

“I’m almost eighteen,” I said softly to the preacher.

Never had a birthday meant so much to me in my life. I was dreading it before, but now I was counting down the days.

“Don’t run, too, Sweet Potato.” The preacher patted my hand.

“I’m not talking about running, sir. I’m talking about claiming.” I pointed to the door. “I’m taking them from him.”

“You can’t do that.” He bowed his head. “He gave them to Patricia and me.”

“What?” I shrieked.

I flew from the pew and headed out the door. Daddy was coming in, and I collided against his six-foot-three frame.

“How dare you? How dare you do this to me?”

“I freed you. You’re free.” Daddy took me by my arms and sat me back down beside the preacher.

“Free!” I cried. “I ain’t never been free, and I won’t be. I am chained to them. My life is connected to them. My very being is in them. You can’t go giving something away that never belonged to you in the first place. They have always been mine.”

“I am their father. I gave over my rights to Preacher and First Lady, because I have to go to the street. And where I’m going, they can’t follow, and for what I’ve been told I might not even make it back myself. I had to think this through the right way, and for the first time in my life I think I did it.”

“We have been to the street. We are the street.” I beat against his chest, and he let me.

“I’m going to find Maize. If I have to go to the depths of hell and pull him out burning, I will do it.” Daddy wiped his brow, already sweating at the thought of it.

“Well, then, you are giving the kids to me,” I told him.

“No. You’re not their mother. You’re their sister.” He leaned in close. “God is leading me to give them to the Andersons. They have a place for them, a home. They have a love for them. God has directed my heart to give them a true home with curtains and rugs, and that’s what I’m doing. It’s for the best, and I know it to be true. Where I’m going, I might not make it back, so I gotta know I finally did something right and gave them a proper place.”

“I am their home. I’m what Bell knows. Bean will go backward, Daddy. We can’t have him losing the ground he’s found here. His feet will give way, like Maize’s did.”

Pastor Anderson spoke softly. “Patricia and I never had children, Sweet Potato. We tried for many years, but the Lord held out on us. Maybe it was for this time, this place, so that we could be here for your family who are in need. We will provide a Christian home for Bean and Bell. We’ll care for them like they were our own—you included.”

The preacher talked the talk. I knew they were good people, or Mrs. Sunshine wouldn’t have stuck around there. But they weren’t my people.

Ray was stepping in again, and I cried out. I ran to him and put my arms around his waist, not caring where we were. I needed him. “Daddy gave them to the preacher. He gave them away like an old pair of shoes. He’s buried me. Maize killed me, and now I’m buried.”

Ray looked over my head. “Is this true?”

Daddy’s voice was heavy. “Yes, Ray. It’s true. It’s legalized and all set up.”

He had to know he’d done wrong. Whatever his intention, he was still giving them away.

Pastor Anderson spoke up. “He’s going to be leaving now to go find Maize. He knows what he’s walking into.”

“Sweet Potato, I might not make it back. I might not walk out of this one. Do you understand what I am saying? The Grims have a reputation, even though I’ve been told they are a small, localized group not affiliated with some of the bigger gangs. They have a unit here. It’s smaller, so I may have that opening of a chance to snatch him back.” Daddy cleared his throat. “But I know once you swear your allegiance, it’s to the death. They can kill me for Maize’s life, for all I care. They can take a substitute.”

“Oh, Daddy,” I sobbed against Ray, “I can’t take this. Maybe we can call Maize out, somehow. We’re the running kind. They’ve never met the likes of us.”

But that hadn’t worked so far. Not a soul had turned up any information about him. He hadn’t shown up for school on Friday, and we’d spent the next three days combing the streets full force with about forty other godly people. The police had been circling the street with the flyers, but they had no information to share, either. Informants weren’t talking. Daddy must have his back against the wall.

“Bell and Bean can’t go on the street again. I’ve decided.” Daddy spoke firmly.

But I was soon to be eighteen, and I could be their legal guardian then. I would quit school and work full time. I could do it. Somehow.

“Sir, you know that Sweet Potato and I are prepared to raise Bean and Bell.”

Ray rubbed my arms, and I collapsed against him. He put his arms around me and led me to the pew, but that was the last place I wanted to park. I didn’t want to sit near the backstabbing traitors.

“What you want and what is best for them are two different things,” Daddy answered. “She has to finish school. She will be the first Jones with a diploma, and that is mighty big. She has to finish out this year. That is best for her.”

“Don’t talk about what is best for me. Like you knew how to raise us. Don’t you sit here and try to tell me you think I’m incapable of taking care of them youngins,” I spit out at him.

Pastor came in with the counseling tone. “I don’t think that’s what your Daddy is implying at all. You’re still in school, Sweet Potato. You have to graduate. Ray has already signed up for the Army and will be leaving soon. Mrs. Sunshine said that she would take them, but we already have the room at our home. Patty doesn’t work. She does all the pastoral care as my wife to assist me in the ministry. And even though that takes a lot of her time, she would have the proper time to devote to the children. Mrs. Sunshine has the Soul Food to keep up all day and night. We are the perfect place. God has provided.”

“Tell God to bring Maize back, if He’s providing,” I cried.

Ray let out a sigh. He knew we were facing an impossible situation. “God is working through this as we speak.” He hated to meet my gaze.

Ye of little faith, the girl of a soon-to-be preacher man.

“Daddy, let’s go on back to the motel. I’ll keep the kids while you go off searching.”

“No. We checked out. And I’ve got something else to tell you, too.”

I was defeated. My match was over. I was learning some tennis language, since it was strange requirement for all of us project and homeless kids to learn how to play tennis at The Dream. I was at Love-40 on a match point. No chance of a comeback.

I knew what I had to do. I knew how to run, too. After I found Maize, I would take the kids and never look back. Daddy would never be able to find the four of us. This was a big world, and I could get lost in it.

Daddy was more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him. “I want you to listen to me, now. I want you to hear all that I have to say. I’m going to try to get it out the best I can.”

His hand was outstretched to mine—those strong hands I’d always admired. But I didn’t reach for him. I clung to the only lifeline that meant anything to me now, my Ray. And I knew that when I ran, I would have to leave him in the dust, too. For my family, I would have to sacrifice it all. Ray would wait for me to get the kids settled and safe. I knew he loved me that much. I might not ever understand the reasons why he did, but I knew he would understand if I ran. God would make way for us. I had to get Maize and the kids back first.