Chapter 10
I drove Jamie home from the orphanage later that night. At first I wasn’t sure whether I
should pull the old yawn move and put my arm around her shoulder, but to be honest, I
didn’t know exactly how she was feeling about me. Granted, she’d given me the most
wonderful gift I’d ever received, and even though I’d probably never open it and read it
like she did, I knew it was like giving a piece of herself away. But Jamie was the type of
person who would donate a kidney to a stranger she met walking down the street, if he
really needed one. So I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it.
Jamie had told me once that she wasn’t a dimwit, and I guess I finally came to the
conclusion that she wasn’t. She may have been . . . well, different . . . but she’d figured out
what I’d done for the orphans, and looking back, I think she knew even as we were sitting
on the floor of her living room. When she’d called it a miracle, I guess she was talking
specifically about me.
Hegbert, I remembered, came into the room as Jamie and I were talking about it, but
he really didn’t have much to say. Old Hegbert hadn’t been himself lately, at least as far as
I could tell. Oh, his sermons were still on the money, and he still talked about the
fornicators, but lately his sermons were shorter than usual, and occasionally he’d pause
right in the middle of one and this strange look would come over him, kind of like he was
thinking of something else, something sad.
I didn’t know what to make of it, being that I really didn’t know him that well. And
Jamie, when she talked about him, seemed to describe someone else entirely. I could no
more imagine Hegbert with a sense of humor than I could imagine two moons in the sky.
So anyway, he came into the room while we counted the money, and Jamie stood up
with those tears in her eyes, and Hegbert didn’t even seem to realize I was there. He told
her that he was proud of her and that he loved her, but then he shuffled back to the kitchen
to continue working on his sermon. He didn’t even say hello. Now, I knew I hadn’t exactly
been the most spiritual kid in the congregation, but I still found his behavior sort of odd.
As I was thinking about Hegbert, I glanced at Jamie sitting beside me. She was
looking out the window with a peaceful look on her face, kind of smiling, but far away at
the same time. I smiled. Maybe she was thinking about me. My hand started scooting
across the seat closer to hers, but before I reached it, Jamie broke the silence.
“Landon,” she finally asked as she turned toward me, “do you ever think about
God?”
I pulled my hand back.
Now, when I thought about God, I usually pictured him like those old paintings I’d
seen in churches—a giant hovering over the landscape, wearing a white robe, with long