Come Before Winter – Chapter Four – ???
December 4th, 2021
2 Timothy 4:21, “Do your utmost to come before winter.”
CHAPTER FOUR – ???
The knob turned, the door fell open, and at once Mercy let out a little cry. How in the world did that dumb letter get into her room?! A little freaked out, Mercy glanced all around her, back down the hall and in the direction of the stairs she had just pulled herself up. Nothing. No one. ‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Is anyone here? Patsy?’ and then, like a whisper, ‘Daddy?’ She listened quietly. Still nothing. Nothing but loud silence.
Leaving the door standing open behind her for quick escape, if necessary, Mercy slid in the room like a suspect. She searched all around her, not that there were many places to hide in her one-room fortress. She shared a bathroom and the kitchen, but she glared suspiciously at her closet before rushing to its door and throwing it open. Empty. Mercy heard her heart thump in her chest and her thoughts spin in her head. Be careful what you wish for, girl, she thought, recalling at once how just minutes earlier she’d scolded herself for having not accepted the letter Patsy delivered to her. Rather, attempted to deliver to her. The girl sighed out loud, the only noise in the forlorn space. She let her bag fall from her shoulder to the floor and turned to stare down the envelope. ‘It’s not going to open itself,’ she said to no one as she bent over to retrieve it.
There it was again, that childlike scribble. Mercy Day, it read. She turned it over in her hands, and that’s when she saw the sticky note attached to the other side. From Patsy; she wrote:
‘Dear Mercy, I couldn’t bear for you not to have this, the only link to your family, so I’m going to slide this under your door. I imagine you kicking yourself for not taking it as I am sure eventually your curiosity will get the best of you, and you will want to know what your father wrote. If you don’t feel that way, I hope you will forgive me, but at least it is in your hands now, and up to you whether to open it or throw it away. We love you, Mercy. Please know we are here for you if you need us. I am praying for you. Lovingly, Patsy PS: it would be an honor to be your mom!’
A small sob escaped Mercy’s lips. Pulling her door shut, she sunk to her bed, turning the envelope over and over in her hands, reading and rereading the sticky note from Patsy. ‘It would be an honor to be your mom!’ ricocheted in the chambers of her heart. Even if she never chose to open the letter from her dad, she had this…this! ‘It would be an honor to be your mom!’
Mercy had only scant recollections of her own mother. She disappeared before Mercy could even talk. One day she was there and the next she was not, and the memory of her had faded before the child could utter ‘Mama’. There wasn’t a picture left of her, and Mercy had an empty well of mamahood from which to draw to imagine her face and her features and no one anymore to ask. A long time ago, her grampa, her hero, would have been someone who knew her mother, but he’d gone away too, and like the well, Mercy’s patience and belief in waiting had long since run dry. What Mercy did have was an entire lifetime of question marks. Why? Where? In fact, all her life, Mercy had felt she was nothing more than a question herself.
They’d all left. Mercy buried her head in her hands as the weeping began. She never allowed herself to go here anymore because it was a useless war to win, like going into a battle with nothing but your bare hands and street clothes on while everyone else was dressed to fight. Many years ago, while other little girls were playing house and babies and imitating their mommies, Mercy was silently guilting herself for being such a bad girl that everyone chose to leave. And down through the years, she learned to cuddle up to the shame so it kept her cautious to never be that bad little girl again. She made straight A’s, completed all her chores, said ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Thank you, sir’, cleaned her cubbys and put away her belongings, and never, no never, asked anyone for anything so no one would ever have to say ‘No.’ She was the perfect child. And she also learned to never need anything from anyone and had never allowed herself to feel attachment to any person so she could never be disappointed when they too went away. That is, until the Mason family came along.
Now this. What was she to do with this? What? Why? More questions in a long lineage of questions. Clutching the letter to her heart, Mercy fell into a deep sleep, and in her sleep, she had a dream.
Psalm 68:5-6a, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, He leads out the prisoner with singing.”
To Be Continued…
