perfect-glass

Do you know how hard it is to paint kindness?_ She leaned her hip against a desk in the corner of the room, still watching me. __t__ the only part of a person I really want to capture. Everything else seems to get lost in layers of deception or defensiveness. But not kindness. You can__ hide it. And people either are or they aren__.

I__ not sure about all the particulars that led to this moment. Do I believe life is a series of dots to be connected_or that no one can outrun destiny_or that all roads lead to truth and coincidence is a lie to distract us? The reason I was in this place no longer mattered. The harsh reality stared me in the face and demanded an immediate decision. Walk away and blame it on my age. Or stay and try to help a woman who had slowly become my friend over the last few weeks.

But with her eyes closed, she began to whisper. __f you have someone to love, then love. If you have someone to forgive, then forgive. You think, when you__e seventeen, there__ time enough for that, but there__ not. There__ no time at all.__ squeezed her hand, trying to think of how to respond. But she took the burden from me and kept whispering. __ou want to know why God gave us people to love? Because that__ the only way we can understand how he feels about us. Desperate and jealous.

Camus and Henry waved to me from that muddy truck. They both wanted me to get over myself.So, this was me, getting over myself. And it was about time.

What I know about you, Henry,_ he said. __s that you, as big as you are, know how to walk gently on this earth.

We formed an impromptu circle just so we could look at each other and memorize faces. We hardly noticed the waiting officials. We hardly noticed anything but our little family whose ties weren__ loosening at all. In fact, this impending separation only seemed to be binding us together with a double overhand knot, hard to untie and unfailing.

I get that. For you, it__ more than following a bunch of rules__o sex, no booze, no swear words, pray every night and twice on Sunday.

I couldn__ stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me. I knew the truth of it.He was laying me open and bare to him and to God.There wasn__ a more intimate act. I would never recover from this.

New rules__e needed new rules. No one opens the main doors but me. No one leaves the property without me. No one goes outside without letting me know. I had these horrible images in my head of kids being restrained against their wills, of kids crying my name out, begging me to help them when I was powerless. Desperate times_ Lord, my soul called out. Lord_somehow that__ as far as I could get. I didn__ have the words.

I__ felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we__ all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around.A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess.And wasn__ that just how life usually felt__ confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

Jo told me once that she was an old woman everywhere but in her studio. __here I__ only myself,_ she__ said. Standing in the middle of masterpieces that only Jo had ever seen and touched, I knew what she meant.

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger_they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.

Look at this one._ I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent, knobby collarbone. He looked_complicated and hungry. She__ captured him focused intensely on a book, his face pressed against a wall like he was resting. Or waiting.

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

I__ stumbled upon the inner sanctuary of a woman who loved the world. Loved the faces of people she saw. Loved the way a hand looked when it was relaxed. Loved the way a woman looked when she touched her own face. The way a man looked when he opened himself to her. Loved the way wind changed a tree or a field or a child__ hair. The beauty of a neck meeting a shoulder. The softness of a smile that wasn__ forced.

I really want to believe that when our Quiet Waters kids wake up in the middle of the night, scared, they__l remember being in their bunks with John and Kate and Whit and me right there protecting them,_ he said. __ hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there__l be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.

He was taking a leap here, negotiating with a crackhead, under the table, in a dark cantina. The courage etched on his face came from loving Aidia so much he__ close his eyes and walk through fire to see her safe.

Henry drew a shaky breath. __o me a favor, Meg.___nything,_ I whispered.__on__ fall for Quinn O__eill. If you__e going to do this thing with him_go to this dance, don__ fall for him.___ever,_ I said. __ promise.___ecause I__ all filled up on sad right now._ He sniffed again and I could tell he was more in control. __nd you can__ ask me to sit by and watch you get all caught up in this guy. I can__ handle that__hinking he swept you off your feet because he bathed in body spray and dressed up._ His voice sounded rough. __ know you think I__ being funny right now, but I__ completely serious. Don__ make me watch that happen.___ou know my heart,_ I said. __t__ yours.