“Not really,” I said.
She nodded a little. “I think that’s what I’d do if I were there, if I ever go, I mean. I’d just look around to really see the place, or sit quietly and listen.”
This whole conversation struck me as strange, but I didn’t press it, and we walked in silence for a few moments. And since she’d asked a little about me, I sort of felt obliged to ask her about herself. I mean, she hadn’t brought up the Lord’s plan or anything, so it was the least I could do.
“So, what do you do?” I asked. “Besides working with the orphans or helping critters or reading the Bible, I mean?” It sounded ridiculous, even to me, I admit, but that’s what she did.
She smiled at me. I think she was surprised by my question, and even more surprised at my interest in her.
“I do a lot of things. I study for my classes, I spend time with my dad. We play gin rummy now and then. Things like that.”
“Do you ever just go off with friends and goof around?”
“No,” she said, and I could tell by the way she answered that even to her, it was obvious that no one wanted her around much.
“I’ll bet you’re excited about going off to college next year,” I said, changing the subject.
It took her a moment to answer.
“I don’t think I’m going to go,” she said matter-of-factly. Her answer caught me off guard. Jamie had some of the highest grades in our senior class, and depending on how the last semester went, she might even end up valedictorian. We had a running pool going as to how many times she would mention the Lord’s plan in her speech, by the way. My bet was fourteen, being that she only had five minutes.
“What about Mount Sermon? I thought that’s where you were planning to go. You’d love a place like that,” I offered.
She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye. “You mean I’d fit right in there, don’t you?”
Those curveballs she sometimes threw could smack you right between the eyeballs.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said quickly. “I just meant that I’d heard about how excited you were to be going there next year.”
She shrugged without really answering me, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to make of it. By then we’d reached the front of her house, and we stopped on the sidewalk out front. From where I was standing, I could make out Hegbert’s shadow in the living room through the curtains. The lamp was on, and he was sitting on the sofa by the window. His head was bowed, like he was reading something. I assumed it was the Bible.
“Thank you for walking me home, Landon,” she said, and she glanced up at me for a moment before finally starting up the walk.
As I watched her go, I couldn’t help but think that of all the times I’d ever talked to her, this was the strangest conversation we’d ever had. Despite the oddness of some of her answers, she seemed practically normal.
The next night, as I was walking her home, she asked me about my father.
“He’s all right, I reckon,” I said. “But he’s not around much.”
“Do you miss that? Not growing up with him around?”
“Sometimes.”
“I miss my mom, too,” she said, “even though I never even knew her.”
It was the first time I’d ever considered that Jamie and I might have something in common. I let that sink in for a while.
“It must be hard for you,” I said sincerely. “Even though my father’s a stranger to me, at least he’s still around.”
She looked up at me as we walked, then faced forward again. She tugged gently at her hair again. I was beginning to notice that she did this whenever she was nervous or wasn’t sure what to say.
“It is, sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—I love my father with all my heart—but there are times when I wonder what it would have been like to have a mother around. I think she and I would have been able to talk about things in a way that my father and I can’t.”
I assumed she was talking about boys. It wasn’t until later that I learned how wrong I was.
“What’s it like, living with your father? Is he like how he is in church?”
“No. He’s actually got a pretty good sense of humor.”
“Hegbert?” I blurted out. I couldn’t even imagine it.
I think she was shocked to hear me call him by his first name, but she let me off the hook and didn’t respond to my comment. Instead she said, “Don’t look so surprised. You’ll like him, once you get to know him.”
“I doubt if I’ll ever get to know him.”
“You never know, Landon,” she said, smiling, “what the Lord’s plan is.”
I hated when she said things like that. With her, you just knew she talked to the Lord every day, and you never knew what the “Big Guy upstairs” had told her. She might even have a direct ticket into heaven, if you know what I mean, being as how good a person she was.
“How would I get to know him?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but she smiled to herself, as if she knew some secret that she was keeping from me. Like I said, I hated it when she did that.
The next night we talked about her Bible.
“Why do you always carry it with you?” I asked.
Now, I assumed she carried the Bible around simply because she was the minister’s daughter. It wasn’t that big of an assumption, given how Hegbert felt about Scripture and all. But the Bible she carried was old and the cover was kind of ratty looking, and I figured that she’d be the kind of person who would buy a new one every year or so just to help out the Bible publishing industry or to show her renewed dedication to the Lord or something.