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Susannah wiped her boots on the welcome mat and slipped them off as she entered the house. “Kitty, I’m back!” she called.
God, please forgive me for being abrupt with Ricky in the parking lot and for being impatient to get home. Thank you for bringing me here safely. Please make Kitty’s stomach able to handle lunch a little late without it messing up her snack time later on.
Derek glanced up from the couch as she passed. “How was church?”
She jumped into her apology without answering his question directly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t back sooner. Service got out late, and the roads are pretty icy.”
Derek held his wrestling magazine in his hands. “Don’t worry about it. She did fine. She’s just in there listening to her tapes.”
Years earlier, Susannah’s mom had saved up enough money to buy the first ten years of the Adventures in Odyssey radio dramas on cassette. Since she refused to bring a TV into the home, the episodes were Kitty’s primary mode of entertainment when everyone else was busy. When their tape player broke a while back, Derek had to order a new one online since none of the local stores sold them anymore.
Susannah hurried into the back room, mentally calculating how she would adjust her sister’s feeding schedule now that lunch was delayed. With a digestive system as fickle as Kitty’s, the ramifications of even a fifteen-minute deviation from normal could last for days.
Dear God, please help it not get too bad this time.
She felt guilty for wasting God’s time on these sorts of prayers. With all the lost and hurting in the world, with all the people destined to die in their sins and suffer for eternity, why should God care about her sister’s eating habits?
Of course he cared, but that still didn’t keep Susannah from feeling guilty.
Kitty was lying down when Susannah came into the room. “Oh, so you’re going to keep your head to the wall and not say hi. Is that it?” She kept her voice playful and walked up to her sister’s bedside. “You better watch out, or I might have to tickle you while I’m rubbing the kinks out of your back.”
She didn’t have to touch her sister. Just hearing the word tickle was enough to make Kitty snort even though she tried to hide her amusement.
“I can see you trying not to laugh over there.” Susannah reached out, but Kitty flinched. “I’m not tickling you,” she told her sister. “That was just a joke. But let’s give you a little backrub before we get you ready for lunch.”
It was Susannah’s mom who discovered that Kitty could handle her bottle of formula better after a massage. That simple discovery had helped Kitty gain fifteen pounds and kept her from needing a permanent feeding tube.
With hands and fingers made strong from years of practice, Susannah probed out Kitty’s tight muscles and addressed them one by one. “Everybody missed you in church, you know. That new pastor, the one I told you about with the pretty wife from California, he said to me. ‘Susannah, when do I get to meet that gorgeous sister of yours I’ve been hearing so much about? I’m beginning to think you made up a story about her just to tease me.’”
Kitty’s body tensed up as she let out a jerky laugh. Susannah kept kneading the knots out of her sister’s shoulders.
“You think it’s funny, but now I’m about to get in trouble with the pastor because he’s sure I’m lying. I told him I’d bring him a picture of you, but he said, ‘Well, anyone can find a picture online these days. How do I know you’re not going to find a picture of someone else’s sister and bring it to me instead?’”
Derek cleared his throat in the entrance to Kitty’s room. “Got to run, you two, or I’ll miss the afternoon service.”
“Thanks again for coming by,” Susannah said.
“No prob.” Derek winked. “See you later, kiddo.”
“Thanks for visiting!” Susannah called out in that same cheerful voice she always used around Kitty and then went back to her story about the pastor. “So anyway, Pastor Greg said, ‘If you don’t bring your sister to the Christmas Eve service, I’m going to assume that you just made up the entire story, and I’m going to be really mad at you.’ So I said, ‘Oh, please don’t, Pastor. Kitty wants to come to church. She really does, but you know how much Mom worries about her. She doesn’t want her going out in the winter when she could catch a cold. Or what if she slipped on the ice while we were helping her into the car?’ So he agreed that he wouldn’t mind waiting to meet you. ‘Your mom’s such a wise woman,’ he said.”
It always pained Susannah to talk about their mother in the present tense like that. She had tried explaining before, but there was something about Kitty’s pure and innocent mind that couldn’t grasp the finality of death. The few times it did sink in, Kitty either threw up or refused to eat, and then she still forgot about it the following day. It was Derek who finally told Susannah she may as well talk to Kitty as if their mother were still alive. Susannah hated the hint of deceit, but in the end decided maybe her stepdad was right.
Kitty was so empathetic, and her gut was so connected to her emotional life, that Susannah knew she shouldn’t dwell on these disturbing memories, especially not before lunchtime. She smiled and infused as much cheer into her voice as possible and said, “I saw your boyfriend today.”
Kitty displayed her pleasure by kicking the mattress with her one good leg. It was no secret that Kitty’s crush on Ricky Fields extended at least as far back as the homeschool prom when he’d been Susannah’s date.
Susannah was glad to see her sister so happy. “He asked how you’re doing, you know. Wants to know if you still keep his picture on your nightstand.”
Two more kicks, one right after the other.
Susannah sighed melodramatically. “Imagine how sad he was when I told him you’d forgotten all about that picture.”
Kitty thrashed her head to the side. Even though her sister was grinning broadly, Susannah didn’t have the heart to carry on the teasing further. “I’m joking. He knows how special that picture is to you. Do you want to look at it after I help you sit up?”
Another kick. This one calmer.
“Ok.” After working out the worst of Kitty’s knots and gently turning her over, Susannah raised the head of the bed so she was sitting up. “Do you want lunch here or in the kitchen?”
Kitty slapped her thigh with her right hand. “Here?” Susannah guessed.
Two slaps now. Kitty threw her head to the side.
“Oh. You want to see the picture. I told you that’s what we’d do first.”
Kick.
Susannah reached for the framed photograph. “All right, here’s your Prince Charming. Isn’t he handsome?”
Kitty grunted in agreement, and Susannah stared at the image. The night of the homeschool prom, while Susannah had done her best to endure Ricky Field’s awkward mannerisms and sweaty hands, her mom had noticed Kitty’s dejected mood and decided to give her a prom of her own. She dressed Kitty up in a hot-pink bridesmaid’s gown from decades earlier, poofy bows and all. When Ricky brought Susannah home for her ten o’clock curfew, Mom and Kitty were in the living room listening to My Girl, one of the only secular songs the Peters owned.
“You look beautiful, Kitty,” Ricky had said, bowing slightly toward her wheelchair, and for the first time Susannah thought she might have liked to kiss him if she had permission to.
Without waiting for any prompting, he walked up to Susannah’s mom and asked, “May I dance with your daughter?”
Her mom’s expression was hard to read when she answered, “You’ll have to ask her yourself. Kitty, do you want to dance with this boy?”
One kick. Grin. Another kick.
“That means yes,” Susannah explained, wondering how in the world her date expected to dance with her sister, but apparently Ricky’s somewhat clunky moves were well suited for the occasion.
“I got sunshine on a cloudy day,” he sang, apparently forgetting he’d spent the entire night with Susannah completely tongue-tied. At first, by the way he pushed Kitty back and forth in her wheelchair, she may as well have been a vacuum cleaner, but by the second chorus, he grew a little savvier, even tipping her back on her wheels for a dip and making her mom squeal in fear.
Kitty howled — which really is the literal way to describe it — with delight, and after the last chorus died out, her mom ran to grab the camera to capture the moment forever. In the photo, Ricky had taken Kitty’s good hand and was leaning over it like he was about to give her a kiss. There was something charming in his expression Susannah recognized even as she joked around with her sister.
“I still can’t believe you stole my date from me that night.”
A kick and a wide grin.
“That’s probably why you made Mom get you all dressed up, huh? You knew that one look at you and Ricky Fields couldn’t resist, right?”
Grinning even wider.
Susannah set the picture back on her sister’s nightstand and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Come on, let’s get you some lunch.”